he week,
and could scarcely change for the better on the seventh day.

But oh, the Sun! It had sent before and cleared every stain out of the
sky. The blue heaven was not dim and low, as on secular days, but curved
and deep, as if on Sunday it shook off all incumbrance which during the
week had lowered and flattened it, and sprang back to the arch and
symmetry of a dome. All ordinary sounds caught the spirit of the day.
The shutting of a door sounded twice as far as usual. The rattle of a
bucket in a neighbor's yard, no longer mixed with heterogeneous noises,
seemed a new sound. The hens went silently about, and roosters crowed in
psalm-tunes. And when the first bell rung, Nature seemed overjoyed to
find something that it might do without breaking Sunday, and rolled the
sound over and over, and pushed it through the air, and raced with it
over field and hill, twice as far as on week-days. There were no less
than seven steeples in sight from the belfry, and the sexton said:--"On
still Sundays I've heard the bell, at one time and another, when the day
was fair, and the air moving in the right way, from every one of them
steeples, and I guess likely they've all heard our'n."

"Come, Rose!" said Agate Bissell, at an even earlier hour than when Rose
usually awakened--"Come, Rose, it is the Sabbath. We must not be late
Sunday morning, of all days in the week. It is the Lord's day."

There was little preparation required for the day. Saturday night, in
some parts of New England, was considered almost as sacred as Sunday
itself. After sundown on Saturday night no play, and no work except such
as is immediately preparatory to the Sabbath, were deemed becoming in
good Christians. The clothes had been laid out the night before. Nothing
was forgotten. The best frock was ready; the hose and shoes were
waiting. Every article of linen, every ruffle and ribbon, were selected
on Saturday night. Every one in the house walked mildly. Every one spoke
in a low tone. Yet all were cheerful. The mother had on her kindest
face, and nobody laughed, but everybody made it up in smiling. The nurse
smiled, and the children held on to keep down a giggle within the lawful
bounds of a smile; and the doctor looked rounder and calmer than ever;
and the dog flapped his tail on the floor with a softened sound, as if
he had fresh wrapped it in hair for that very day. Aunt Toodie, the cook
(so the children had changed Mrs. Sarah Good's name), was blacker th