eferable to hoeing corn in the hot sun.

It was a pleasant ride of eight miles along the county road to the
northeastward. We first passed numerous farms, then a "mud pond" and a
"clear water pond," following afterwards the valley of a small river
between two high, wooded mountains, till we came at last to a saw-mill,
grist-mill and a few houses at a place whimsically known as the "city."
Here in a little weathered house the last rites and services to the
deceased were held. Elder Witham, still in his duster, preached a short
discourse during which I felt somewhat distressed to hear him express
certain doubts as to the man's future state. The Elder was a thoroughly
upright Yankee and Methodist, who tried to preach the truth and the
gospel, as he apprehended it; he did not believe that all a person's
faults are, or ought to be, forgiven at his death. I remember the
following words which he made use of on that occasion, for they appealed
to some nascent sense of logic in me, I suppose: "The evil which men do
in this life lives on in the world after they die; and even so the just
penalty for it continues with them in a future state."

The Old Squire, although ordinarily a kind and reasonable man, yet
possessed some of the same severe traits of character, which have
descended in the sons of New England, from the days of the Puritans. I
remember that he said, as we drove along the road, going homeward: "The
death of a drunkard is a shameful end. Such a person can expect other
people to mourn only for his folly."

But these sentiments made far less impression upon me then than the
conduct of the wife of the dead man. I had somehow supposed that he was
an old man; but instead, he was only thirty-four years of age; and his
wife was an auburn-haired, strong woman, not more than thirty, unusually
handsome in face and form. She was in a state of great excitement, not
wholly caused by sorrow. It appeared that there had been a violently
bitter quarrel between the pair, the night before the man's death; and
so far from having forgiven her husband, even then, the woman exhibited
the turbulence of her temper and behaved in an unseemly manner during
and after the services. Her outcries gave me a very strange impression
and in fact so shocked and terrified me, that to this day I cannot
recall the scene without a singular sensation of disquiet. Withal, it
was the first funeral which I had ever attended. As a lad I was in not a
little do