s our breakfast, and thereby lost the opportunity of going
to church with the rest of the family,--an act of gracious hospitality
which the tired travelers appreciated.

The travelers were unable, indeed, to awaken into any feeling of
Sabbatical straitness. The morning was delicious,--such a morning as
never visits any place except an island; a bright, sparkling morning,
with the exhilaration of the air softened by the sea. What a day it was
for idleness, for voluptuous rest, after the flight by day and night
from St. John! It was enough, now that the morning was fully opened
and advancing to the splendor of noon, to sit upon the upper balcony,
looking upon the Bras d'Or and the peaceful hills beyond, reposeful and
yet sparkling with the air and color of summer, and inhale the balmy
air. (We greatly need another word to describe good air, properly
heated, besides this overworked "balmy.") Perhaps it might in some
regions be considered Sabbath-keeping, simply to rest in such a soothing
situation,--rest, and not incessant activity, having been one of the
original designs of the day.

But our travelers were from New England, and they were not willing to
be outdone in the matter of Sunday observances by such an out-of-the-way
and nameless place as Baddeck. They did not set themselves up as
missionaries to these benighted Gaelic people, to teach them by example
that the notion of Sunday which obtained two hundred years ago in
Scotland had been modified, and that the sacredness of it had pretty
much disappeared with the unpleasantness of it. They rather lent
themselves to the humor of the hour, and probably by their demeanor
encouraged the respect for the day on Cape Breton Island. Neither by
birth nor education were the travelers fishermen on Sunday, and they
were not moved to tempt the authorities to lock them up for dropping
here a line and there a line on the Lord's day.

In fact, before I had finished my second cup of Maud-mixed coffee, my
companion, with a little show of haste, had gone in search of the kirk,
and I followed him, with more scrupulousness, as soon as I could without
breaking the day of rest. Although it was Sunday, I could not but notice
that Baddeck was a clean-looking village of white wooden houses, of
perhaps seven or eight hundred inhabitants; that it stretched along
the bay for a mile or more, straggling off into farmhouses at each end,
lying for the most part on the sloping curve of the bay. There