attention was arrested by another one
of the town-criers,--Tom had learned that there were three in the
town,--who was crying out that a meat-auction would be held that night
at half-past six o'clock. When they were told that these meat-auctions
had been the custom of the town for years, they were anxious to attend
one; but another engagement at that hour prevented their so doing, much
to Tom's regret.

The next day was Sunday. As Bessie and Tom were anxious to see all of
the nine churches of which they had read, they were, at first, in doubt
where to go; whereas their mother had no questions whatever, since she
had settled in her own mind, after having reduced all sects to the
Episcopal and the Roman Catholic, that the Episcopal Church was the true
historic one, and, therefore, the only one for her personal interest,
that she should go to the St. Paul's on Fair street. Mr. Gordon usually
went to church with his wife, although he often felt that the simplicity
of the early apostolic days was found more in the Congregational form of
worship. This day he yielded to Tom's desire to go to the
square-steepled Congregational Church on Centre street, to hear Miss
Baker, who had been preaching to the congregation for three years. He
entered the church with some prejudice; but soon he became so much
interested in the good sermon that he really forgot that the preacher
was a woman! Miss Ray and Bessie went to the Unitarian Church on Orange
street, to which the beautiful-toned Spanish bell invited them. After an
interesting service, on their way out they met Tom, who wished to look
into the pillared church of the Methodists, near the bank, and also into
the "Ave Maria" on Federal street, where the Roman Catholics worshipped.
Miss Ray, being anxious to attend a Friends' meeting in their little
meeting-house on Fair street, decided to do so the following Sunday, if
she were in town; while Bessie said that she should hunt up then the two
Baptist churches, the one on Summer street, and the other, particularly
for the colored people, on Pleasant street. Their surprise that a town
of a little less than four thousand inhabitants should contain so many
churches was modified somewhat when they remembered that once, in 1840,
the number of inhabitants was nearly ten thousand.

In the afternoon the party visited some of the burying-grounds of the
town, six of which were now in use. The sight of so many unnamed graves
in the Friends' cemetery