more
piquancy to the provincial society. In the summer riding parties were
fashionable, and in the winter county balls and cotillion parties;
a professor came down from Boston at this season to set up a dancing
school, which was always well attended.

The secular concerns of life engaged the greatest share of the
interests of its inhabitants; and although there existed social and
professional dissensions, there was little sectarian spirit among them
and no religious zeal. The rich and fashionable were Unitarians.
The society owned a tumble-down church; a mild preacher stood in its
pulpit and prayed and preached, sideways and slouchy. This degree of
religious vitality accorded with the habits of its generations. Surrey
and Barmouth would have howled over the Total Depravity of Rosville.
There was no probationary air about it. Human Nature was the
infallible theme there. At first I missed the vibration of the moral
sword which poised in our atmosphere. When I felt an emotion without
seeing the shadow of its edge turning toward me, I discovered my
conscience, which hitherto had only been described to me.

There were churches in the town beside the Unitarian. The
Universalists had a bran-new one, and there was still another
frequented by the sedimentary part of the population--Methodists.

I toned down perfectly within three months. Soon after my arrival at
his house I became afraid of Cousin Charles. Not that he ever said
anything to justify fear of him--he was more silent at home than
elsewhere; but he was imperious, fastidious, and sarcastic with me by
a look, a gesture, an inflection of his voice. My perception of any
defect in myself was instantaneous with his discovery of it. I fell
into the habit of guessing each day whether I was to offend or please
him, and then into that of intending to please. An intangible, silent,
magnetic feeling existed between us, changing and developing according
to its own mysterious law, remaining intact in spite of the contests
between us of resistance and defiance. But my feeling died or
slumbered when I was beyond the limits of his personal influence. When
in his presence I was so pervaded by it that whether I went contrary
to the dictates of his will or not I moved as if under a pivot; when
away my natural elasticity prevailed, and I held the same relation to
others that I should have held if I had not known him. This continued
till the secret was divined, and then his influence w