squares, then another dark brown square, and so on, to represent the
accidental differences of shade always noticeable in the real stones of
which walls are built. To be sure, the architect could not help getting
his party-colored squares in almost as regular rhythmical order as those
of a chess-board; but nobody can avoid doing things in a systematic and
serial way; indeed, people who wish to plant trees in natural chimps know
very well that they cannot keep from making regular lines and symmetrical
figures, unless by some trick or other, as that one of throwing a peck of
potatoes up into the air and sticking in a tree wherever a potato happens
to fall. The pews of this meeting-house were the usual oblong ones,
where people sit close together, with a ledge before them to support
their hymn-books, liable only to occasional contact with the back of the
next pew's heads or bonnets, and a place running under the seat of that
pew where hats could be deposited,--always at the risk of the owner, in
case of injury by boots or crickets.

In this meeting-house preached the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather, a divine
of the "Liberal" school, as it is commonly called, bred at that famous
college which used to be thought, twenty or thirty years ago, to have the
monopoly of training young men in the milder forms of heresy. His
ministrations were attended with decency, but not followed with
enthusiasm. "The beauty of virtue" got to be an old story at last. "The
moral dignity of human nature" ceased to excite a thrill of satisfaction,
after some hundred repetitions. It grew to be a dull business, this
preaching against stealing and intemperance, while he knew very well that
the thieves were prowling round orchards and empty houses, instead of
being there to hear the sermon, and that the drunkards, being rarely
church-goers, get little good by the statistics and eloquent appeals of
the preacher. Every now and then, however, the Reverend Mr. Fairweather
let off a polemic discourse against his neighbor opposite, which waked