action, the blacksmith built his shop at the nearest cross-road.
And when some enterprising citizen became possessed of an idea that
there were traders enough toiling to and fro on the rough highways to
the nearest larger village to make it worth his while to be an
interceptor, the first step was taken toward a local centre of
commerce, and the village was fairly begun. It had not yet reached a
remarkable size, though there was a time-honored joke because an
enthusiastic old woman had said once, when four or five houses and a
new meeting-house were being built all in one summer, that she
expected now that she might live to see Oldfields a seaport town.
There had been a great excitement over the second meeting-house, to
which the conservative faction had strongly objected, but, after the
radicals had once gained the day, other innovations passed without
public challenge. The old First Parish Church was very white and held
aloft an imposing steeple, and strangers were always commiserated if
they had to leave town without the opportunity of seeing its front by
moonlight. Behind this, and beyond a green which had been the
playground of many generations of boys and girls, was a long row of
horse-sheds, where the farmers' horses enjoyed such part of their
Sunday rest as was permitted them after bringing heavy loads of rural
parishioners to their public devotions. The Sunday church-going was by
no means so carefully observed in these days as in former ones, when
disinclination was anything but a received excuse. In Parson
Leslie's--the doctor's grandfather's--day, it would have condemned a
man or woman to the well-merited reproof of their acquaintances. And
indeed most parishioners felt deprived of a great pleasure when, after
a week of separation from society, of a routine of prosaic farm-work,
they were prevented from seeing their friends parade into church, from
hearing the psalm-singing and the sermon, and listening to the news
afterward. It was like going to mass and going to the theatre and the
opera, and making a round of short calls, and having an outing in
one's own best clothes to see other people's, all rolled into one;
beside which, there was (and is) a superstitious expectation of good
luck in the coming week if the religious obligations were carefully
fulfilled. So many of the old ideas of the efficacy of ecclesiasticism
still linger, most of them by no means unlawfully. The elder people of
New England are as glad