m topics suggested by the sermons. She once expressed
herself in this wise:--

"Either Sunday is worth keeping, or it is not. If you do keep it, it
ought to be strictly done. But lately Sunday is raveling out at the end.
We take it on like a summer dress, which in the morning is clean and
sweet, but at night it is soiled at the bottom and much rumpled
all over."

Dr. Wentworth sat with Rose on one side and her mother on the other, in
the honeysuckle corner, where the west could be seen, great trees lying
athwart the horizon and checkering the golden light with their dark
masses. Judge Bacon had turned the conversation upon this very topic.

"I think our Sundays in New England are Puritan and Jewish more than
Christian. They are days of restriction rather than of joyousness. They
are fast days, not feast days."

"Do you say that as a mere matter of historical criticism, or do you
think that they could be improved practically?"

"Both. It is susceptible of proof that the early Christian Sunday was a
day of triumph and of much social joy. It would be well if we could
follow primitive example."

"Judge, I am hardly of your opinion. I should be unwilling to see our
New England Sunday changed, except perhaps by a larger social liberty
_in_ each family. Much might be done to make it attractive to children,
and relieve older persons from _ennui_. But after all, we must judge
things by their fruits. If you bring me good apples, it is in vain to
abuse the tree as craggy, rude, or homely. The fruit redeems the tree."

"A very comely figure, Doctor, but not very good reasoning. New England
has had something at work upon her beside her Sundays. What you call the
'fruit' grew, a good deal of it at any rate, on other trees than
Sunday trees."

"You are only partly right. New England character and history are the
result of a wide-spread system of influences of which the Sabbath day
was the type--and not only so, but the grand motive power. Almost every
cause which has worked benignly among us has received its inspiration
and impulse largely from this One Solitary Day of the week.

"It is true that all the vegetable growths that we see about us here
depend upon a great variety of causes; but there is one cause that is
the condition of power in every other, and that is the Sun! And so, many
as have been the influences working at New England character, Sunday has
been a generic and multiplex force, inspiring and directing all ot