hing but show--and snow and ice and woods and barrenness; and
I, for one, hope we shall let Canada alone.

"I think we shall be obliged to leave Quebec tomorrow evening," says
Halicarnassus, coming into the hotel parlor on Saturday evening.

"Not at all," I exclaim, promptly laying an embargo on that iniquity.

"Otherwise we shall be compelled to remain till Monday afternoon at
four o'clock."

"Which we can very contentedly do."

"But lose a day."

"Keeping the Sabbath holy is never losing a day," replies his guide,
philosopher, and friend, sententiously and severely, partly because she
thinks so, and partly because she is well content to remain another day
in Quebec.

"But as we shall not start till five o'clock," he lamely pleads, "we
can go to church twice like saints."

"And begin at five and travel like sinners."

"It will only be clipping off the little end of Sunday."

Now that is a principle the beginning of which is as when one letteth
out water, and I will no tolerate it. Short weights are an abomination
to the Lord. I would rather steal outright than be mean. A highway
robber has some claims upon respect; but a petty, pilfering, tricky
Christian is a damning spot on our civilization. Lord Chesterfield
asserts that a man's reputation for generosity does not depend so much
on what he spends, as on his giving handsomely when it is proper to
give at all; and the gay lord builded higher and struck deeper than he
knew, or at least said. If a man thinks the Gospel does not require
the Sabbath to be strictly kept, I have nothing to say; but if he
pretends to keep it, let him keep the whole of it. It takes twenty-four
hours to make a day, whether it be the first or the last of the week.
I utterly reject the idea of setting off a little nucleus of Sunday,
just a few hours of sermon, and then evaporating into any common day.
I want the good of Sunday from beginning to end. I want nothing but
Sunday between Saturday and Monday. Week-days filtering in spoil the
whole. What is the use of having a Sabbath-day, a rest-day, if Mondays
and Tuesdays are to be making continual raids upon it? What good do
dinner-party Sundays and travelling Sundays and novel-reading Sundays
do? You want your Sunday for a rest,--a change,--a breakwater. It is
a day yielded to the poetry, to the aspirations, to the best and
highest and holiest part of man. I believe eminently in this world. I
have no kind of faith in a syst