of the scene, we discern either a human being or a wild beast, or both in
one, whom this public infamy causes to roar, and gnash his teeth, and
shake the strong oaken bars, as if he would breakforth, and tear in
pieces the little children who have been peeping at him. Such are the
profitable sights that serve the good people to while away the earlier
part of lecture-day. Betimes in the forenoon, a traveller--the first
traveller that has come hitherward this morning-rides slowly into the
street on his patient steed. He seems a clergyman; and, as he draws
near, we recognize the minister of Lynn, who was pre-engaged to lecture
here, and has been revolving his discourse, as he rode through the hoary
wilderness. Behold, now, the whole town thronging into the meeting-
house, mostly with such sombre visages that the sunshine becomes little
better than a shadow when it falls upon them. There go the Thirteen Men,
grim rulers of a grim community! There goes John Massey, the first town-
born child, now a youth of twenty, whose eye wanders with peculiar
interest towards that buxom damsel who comes up the steps at the same
instant. There hobbles Goody Foster, a sour and bitter old beldam,
looking as if she went to curse, and not to pray, and whom many of her
neighbors suspect of taking an occasional airing on a broomstick. There,
too, slinking shamefacedly in, you observe that same poor do-nothing and
good-for-nothing whom we saw castigated just now at the whipping-post.
Last of all, there goes the tithing-man, lugging in a couple of small
boys, whom he has caught at play beneath God's blessed sunshine, in a
back lane. What native of Naumkeag, whose recollections go back more
than thirty years, does not still shudder at that dark ogre of his
infancy, who perhaps had long ceased to have an actual existence, but
still lived in his childish belief, in a horrible idea, and in the
nurse's threat, as the Tidy Man!

It will be hardly worth our while to wait two, or it may be three,