bring my risibles into any thing like composure. Such exhibitions,
fortunately for me, were very rare; but still I found great amusement in
watching the distinctive and marked outlines of the various people that
filled up the seats around me. A Yankee village presents a picture of
the curiosities of every generation: there, from year to year, they live
on, preserved by hard labor and regular habits, exhibiting every
peculiarity of manner and appearance, as distinctly marked as when they
first came from the mint of nature. And as every body goes punctually to
meeting, the meeting house becomes a sort of museum of antiquities--a
general muster ground for past and present.

I remember still with what wondering admiration I used to look around on
the people that surrounded our pew. On one side there was an old Captain
McLean, and Major McDill, a couple whom the mischievous wits of the
village designated as Captain McLean and Captain McFat; and, in truth,
they were a perfect antithesis, a living exemplification of flesh and
spirit. Captain McLean was a mournful, lengthy, considerate-looking old
gentleman, with a long face, digressing into a long, thin, horny nose,
which, when he applied his pocket handkerchief, gave forth a melancholy,
minor-keyed sound, such as a ghost might make, using a pocket
handkerchief in the long gallery of some old castle.

Close at his side was the doughty, puffing Captain McDill, whose
full-orbed, jolly visage was illuminated by a most valiant red nose,
shaped something like an overgrown doughnut, and looking as if it had
been thrown _at_ his face, and happened to hit in the middle. Then there
was old Israel Peters, with a wooden leg, which tramped into meeting,
with undeviating regularity, ten minutes before meeting time; and there
was Jedediah Stebbins, a thin, wistful, moonshiny-looking old gentleman,
whose mouth appeared as if it had been gathered up with a needle and
thread, and whose eyes seemed as if they had been bound with red tape;
and there was old Benaiah Stephens, who used regularly to get up and
stand when the minister was about half through his sermon, exhibiting
his tall figure, long, single-breasted coat, with buttons nearly as
large as a tea plate; his large, black, horn spectacles stretched down
on the extreme end of a very long nose, and vigorously chewing,
meanwhile, on the bunch of caraway which he always carried in one hand.
Then there was Aunt Sally Stimpson, and old Wido