abundant log-huts and scanty framed houses, and since three o'clock
yesterday afternoon not a stroke of this world's work has been done.
Last night a preparatory lecture was held, and now comes the
consummation of the whole week's life, in the solemn act of worship. In
which settlement of the Massachusetts Colony is the great observance to
pass before our eyes? If it be Cambridge village, the warning drum is
beating its peaceful summons to the congregation. If it be Salem
village, a bell is sounding its more ecclesiastic peal, and a red flag
is simultaneously hung forth from the meeting-house, like the
auction-flag of later periods, but offering in this case goods without
money and beyond price. But if it be Haverhill village, then Abraham
Tyler has been blowing his horn assiduously for half an hour, a service
for which Abraham, each year, receives a half-pound of pork from every
family in town.

Be it drum, bell, or horn, which gives the summons, we will draw near to
this important building, the centre of the village, the one public
edifice,--meeting-house, town-house, school-house, watch-house, all in
one. So important is it, that no one can legally dwell more than a
half-mile from it. And yet the people ride to meeting, short though the
distance be, for at yonder oaken block a wife dismounts from behind her
husband;--and has it not, moreover, been found needful to impose a fine
of forty shillings on fast trotting to and fro? All sins are not modern
ones, young gentlemen.

We approach nearer still, and come among the civic institutions. This is
the pillory, yonder the stocks, and there is a large wooden cage, a
terror to evil-doers, but let us hope empty now. Round the meeting-house
is a high wooden paling, to which the law permits citizens to tie their
horses, provided it be not done too near the passage-way. For at that