nly furnish
him with a certificate of honorable discharge. The chairman, at this easy
rate of saving the town's money, wrote it, without suspicion of its
effect. Thereupon, the master read it, put it into his pocket, and by
virtue of the document, demanded payment of the sum in question. It was
paid; and the triumphant master forthwith proceeded--

"To fresh woods and pastures new."

The state of things, in regard to our reading resources, was before the
modern facilities for gadding about existed; and while those who find
time lying heavy on their hands can now steam it a hundred miles to make
a morning-call, journeying was then both more tedious and more expensive,
seldom undertaken except as an affair of business, or with the deliberate
purpose of a long-concerted visit; and a good part of the day was
consumed in travelling half that distance by public conveyance. The
consequence was, that people's pleasures, with their duties, laid mostly
at home, or near at hand. Hence family and friendly ties were more
closely drawn. The better feelings of our nature were, I think, deeper,
than when scattered over a wide but thin social surface; just as the
water in a well is more concentrated, than if diffused in the basin of a
pond. To some extent, therefore, wholesomely isolated, besides the
ordinary round of not very formal visiting parties, there were reading
circles, for those who were prompted by intellectual yearnings,
frequented by young ladies and gentlemen, married or single, at which
passages from the better class of books were read aloud by such of the
male members as felt competent to the exercise, by turns. In fact, taking
into view the intelligence, the inexpensive accomplishments, and the
unaffected manners of the fairly educated among us, it has not fallen to
the lot of most persons to meet with any society more really agreeable.
St. James's, however, and the congregation of the successors of those who
founded the First Church, who had at length become what was called
"liberal," in contrast with the orthodoxy of the rest of the town,
aspired to a higher degree of gentility and accomplishment than the
commonalty; and, in evidence that we were not bigoted, my mother would
sometimes allow me, when a boy, and desirous of some change, to attend
service of an afternoon, at the latter place of public worship with some
friends of the family who waited upon its ministrations. Of the
diversions of the co