cows came home from pasture, and the frogs croaked in the ponds.

Men planting corn in the fields stopped work because they could
not see the corn as it dropped. Women at home lighted candles to
find their way about the house. No one could see the time of day
by the clocks, and white paper looked like black velvet. Many
people were terrified and wondered what was coming. Some expected
a great tornado; others said a comet was due and feared it
portended some great calamity, perhaps a disaster to the armies
in the field who were fighting England in the war of the
Revolution. Still others, more ignorant and superstitious, were
sure that the end of the world had come, that the last trumpet
would soon sound and the dead be raised. One woman sent a
messenger in haste to her pastor to ask what this dreadful
darkness meant, but he only replied that he was "as much in the
dark" as she.

Several gentlemen, who happened to be at the house of Reverend
Manasseh Cutler, the minister in Ipswich, Massachusetts, have
left us a record of their observations that day.

Mr. Cutler wrote in his journal:--

"This morning Mr. Lathrop of Boston called upon me. Soon after he
came in I observed a remarkable cloud coming up and it appeared
dark. The cloud was unusually brassy with little or no rain. Mr.
Sewell and Colonel Wigglesworth came in. The darkness increased
and by eleven o'clock it was so dark as to make it necessary to
light candles ... at half-past eleven in a room with three large
windows, southeast and south, could not read a word in large