There was an old woman once who was noted for being able to say something good about everything and everybody. She was never heard to speak evil of anything or anybody. Once upon a time a gambler died in the city where she lived. He was a miserable sinner, and nobody liked him and nobody had a good word to say for him, even after he was dead. Aunt Maria, the good old lady, went to see him after he had been put into his coffin. The people who were present wondered what good thing Aunt Maria could possibly say about the dead sinner. Aunt Maria entered the room and walked around on tiptoe. After awhile she raised her head and said:
“Friends, I tell you, he makes a mighty nice looking corpse.”
If all the little boys and girls in America to-day knew how the people in the New England states were compelled by law to keep the Sabbath day I think they would realize how much better it is to be living in these days and times than to have lived in those.
The laws concerning the keeping of a New England Sabbath were very severe—that is, before the Revolutionary War, when what was called colonial rule was in force.
No manner of work was allowed to be done; no visiting, no playing, no gaiety of any kind was permitted; just think, boys and girls, it is said that one man was brought to trial and fined for kissing his wife on a Sabbath morning.
Slowly and solemnly, just as if they were going to a funeral, the families all walked to the meeting house on Sundays, some of them having to walk many and many miles.
On reaching the church the men took their places on one side of the house and the women on the other—they didn’t allow men and women to sit together. The children, also, had to sit by themselves, and there was a man appointed to keep them quiet. This man carried a long stick with a hard knob at one end and a little feather brush at the other. The feather end of this stick he would use to tickle the faces of the men and women who might chance to get sleepy and go to nodding during the preaching. The other end he used on the children.
I guess this poor man must have kept busy all the time, for the sermons were very long, lasting for whole hours. Sometimes a man would begin a sermon in the morning and preach up to dinnertime; the congregation would then go out for dinner, and come back and sit for hours during the afternoon to hear the sermon concluded.