In these modern days, restaurants, barrooms, and saloons, and similar
places of resort, are chiefly thronged on Saturday evening, when the
labors of the week being ended, the worker, in whatever field, finds
himself at once in need of convivial relaxation, and disposed thereto
by the exhilaration of a prospective holiday. Necessarily, however,
Saturday evening could not be thus celebrated in a community which
regarded it in the light of holy time, and, accordingly in Stockbridge,
as elsewhere in New England at that day, Friday and Sunday evenings
were by way of eminence the convivial occasions of the week. One of
the consequences of this arrangement was that a "blue Saturday" as
well as the modern "blue Monday," found place in the workingman's
calendar. But the voice of the temperance lecturer was not yet heard
in the land, and headaches were still looked upon as Providential
mysteries.

The Friday following the "goings on at Barrington," the tavern was
filled by about the same crowd which had been present the Friday
evening preceding, and of whose conversation on that occasion, some
account was given. But the temper of the gathering a week before had
been gloomy, foreboding, hopeless and well-nigh desperate; to-night,
it was jubilant.

"It's the Lord's doin's, an marvellous in our eyes, an that's all I
kin say about it," declared Israel Goodrich, his rosy face beaming
with benevolent satisfaction, beneath its crown of white hair. "Jess
think whar we wuz a week ago, an whar we be naow. By gosh who'd a
thought it? If one on ye had a tole me las' Friday night, what was a
comin raound inside of a week, I should a said he wuz stark starin
mad."