dfather sits in a mahogany chair,
reading a large Bible covered with green baize. Miss Abigail occupies
one end of the sofa, and has her hands crossed stiffly in her lap. I
sit in the corner, crushed. Robinson Crusoe and Gil Blas are in close
confinement. Baron Trenck, who managed to escape from the fortress of
Clatz, can't for the life of him get out of our sitting-room closet. Even
the Rivermouth Barnacle is suppressed until Monday. Genial converse,
harmless books, smiles, lightsome hearts, all are banished. If I want to
read anything, I can read Baxter's Saints' Rest. I would die first. So
I sit there kicking my heels, thinking about New Orleans, and watching
a morbid blue-bottle fly that attempts to commit suicide by butting his
head against the window-pane. Listen!--no, yes--it is--it is the robins
singing in the garden--the grateful, joyous robins singing away like mad,
just as if it wasn't Sunday. Their audacity tickles me.

My grandfather looks up, and inquires in a sepulchral voice if I am
ready for Sabbath school. It is time to go. I like the Sabbath school;
there are bright young faces there, at all events. When I get out into
the sunshine alone, I draw a long breath; I would turn a somersault up
against Neighbor Penhallow's newly painted fence if I hadn't my best
trousers on, so glad am I to escape from the oppressive atmosphere of
the Nutter House.

Sabbath school over, I go to meeting, joining my grandfather, who
doesn't appear to be any relation to me this day, and Miss Abigail, in
the porch. Our minister holds out very little hope to any of us of being
saved. Convinced that I am a lost creature, in common with the human
family, I return home behind my guardians at a snail's pace. We have a
dead cold dinner. I saw it laid out yesterday.

There is a long interval between this repast and the second service,
and a still longer interval between the beginning and the end of that
service; for the Rev. Wibird Hawkins's sermons are none of the shortest,
whatever else they may be.

After meeting, my grandfather and I take a walk. We visit appropriately
enough--a neighboring graveyard. I am by this time in a condition of
mind to become a willing inmate of the place. The usual evening
prayer-meeting is postponed for some reason. At half past eight I go to
bed.

This is the way Sunday was observed in the Nutter House, and pretty
generally throughout the town, twenty years ago.(1) People who were
prosperous and