SUNDAY AT HOME

By Nathaniel Hawthorne



Every Sabbath morning in the summer time I thrust back the curtain, to
watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple, which stands opposite my
chamber-window. First, the weathercock begins to flash; then, a fainter
lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower,
and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold, as it points to
the gilded figure of the hour. Now, the loftiest window gleams, and now
the lower. The carved framework of the portal is marked strongly out.
At length, the morning glory, in its descent from heaven, comes down the
stone steps, one by one; and there stands the steeple, glowing with fresh
radiance, while the shades of twilight still hide themselves among the
nooks of the adjacent buildings. Methinks, though the same sun brightens
it every fair morning, yet the steeple has a peculiar robe of brightness
for the Sabbath.

By dwelling near a church, a person soon contracts an attachment for the
edifice. We naturally personify it, and conceive its massive walls and
its dim emptiness to be instinct with a calm, and meditative, and
somewhat melancholy spirit. But the steeple stands foremost, in our
thoughts, as well as locally. It impresses us as a giant, with a mind
comprehensive and discriminating enough to care for the great and small
concerns of all the town. Hourly, while it speaks a moral to the few
that think, it reminds thousands of busy individuals of their separate
and most secret affairs. It is the steeple, too, that flings abroad the
hurried and irregular accents of general alarm; neither have gladness and