SKETCHES OF NEW ENGLAND. SATURDAY EVENING. It's no in titles nor in rank; It's no in making muckle mair; If happiness hae not her seat And centre in the breast, Nae treasures, nor pleasures, That makes us right or wrang.-BURNS. THE good old custom of observing Saturday evening as the commencement of holy time is fast going into disuse. In the cities and larger towns of New England it is already done away with, and the next twenty years of our innovating age will hardly leave a relic, in the most sequestered hamlet of the mountains, of what was half a century ago universal custom. I have called it a "good old custom ;" and I believe that no one who has ever beheld its practical effect upon the condition of a community, or upon the individuals composing that community, will be disposed to deny that it is so. Aside from the ties which all customs, handed down to us from our fathers, and which are associated with the memory of the Puritans, have over us, binding us to the holy principles which they loved and honored, there is something I believe in the very nature of the sacred observance of Saturday eveningin its calm preparations and unusual stillness-which fits us better for the duties of the Sabbath, and tends to render the day a more holy one: "sacred to the Lord, and honorable.” There are places in New England where the custom is still observed in all its pristine strictness. They are not the manufacturing villages which are studded thickly along her wild and rapid streams, and which forever crowd the bustle and noise of labor's appointed hour into the night as well as the Sabbath; nor are they the large towns where business facilities have drawn streamlets into them from the great tide of emigration; nor the capitals of the States; nor the market towns of the rich intervales and meadows; nor the new settlements on the borders of the forest; but they are the quiet old homes of the peasantry of the mountains; the ancient farming towns of the commonwealth, whose soil, too rough to tempt the avarice of the indolent, has been handed down with the staunch virtues of its first cultivators, from sire to son, from the earliest settlement of the country. The external appearance of some of these old agricultural towns makes a singular impression upon a stranger. The time-worn church is situated most likely on the highest and bleakest hill where its builders could find a public road, and behind it run off the long sheds, numbering as many stalls as there are chaises and wagons in the parish. Low gable-roofed farm houses of every shade and color, stand like decrepit patriarchs among the huge barns which have grown up around them. Red schoolhouses in the centre of each district; old cemeteries, with the slate head-stones half sunk in the earth, or hid in the rank luxuriance of the grass; whole miles of moss-covered stone-walls; the road, without regard to hills or points of the compass, winding from farm to farm; the powder-house, the pound, the poor-house, and county-house, are all objects of notice to the traveller. The antique garb of the inhabitants may strike him strangely; but if he be in a pleasant humor, the rustic civility which accompanies it, and which he meets with every where, cannot fail to delight him. The urchins, trudging homeward from school, greet him with doffed hats and ready bows; the checked frocks and aprons in their rear render the graceful courtesy; while the complaisant smile of the parasol'd and glov'd school-ma'am betrays her pride in the good breeding of her little flock. If it chance to be a pleasant afternoon of summer, he will find bright faces looking after him from every door; the grandame plying her knitting-needles or turning the foot-wheel, less for gain than as a thrifty pastime; the careful mother making "auld claes look amaist as weel's the new;" the daughters carding the white rolls of wool or rapidly as shifting the bobbins of the lace-pillows; and all listening meanwhile to the simple ballad or fast chattering of the neighbor's news from the market town. The boys suspend their ball game while he drives over the green; the veteran 'Squire, the patriarch of the place, "With his old three-cornered hat, His breeches, and all that," respectfully uncovers his head, with the true dignity of the old John Hancock courtesy; the rustic maid, full blown as the summer rose, glances a coquetish look from beneath her dark eye-lashes, and hastens home to tell of the handsome stranger whom she met ; and not least, the fat landlord-mine host of the Sun for forty years-meets him at the door, and welcomes him with a most gracious air to the well-sanded parlor. You are in truth reminded at every step that nature is not out of date here, and that the standard which art and fashion have introduced over the world, which, like the bed of Procrustes, reduces redundances and racks out deficiencies, to suit its dimensions and measurement, has no dwelling-place among the people. Take your fishing-rod in your hand and travel through all the country; sit down by the huge sirloin of the farmer's table, or take pot-luck at the more simple meal of his daily workman; plant your cold and dripping limbs against the peat embers of the cottager's hearth, or before the roaring beacon of the landlord's hall; trace every stream from its mouth through all its windings to its source, and chat with every one you meet; and the same unaffected simplicity; the same honest and manly frankness; the same independence of thought and manner, will arrest your attention every where. The week-day life of these dwellers upon the old farms of New England is to be sure one of wearisome and uneasy labor. But then it is the labor of contentment and innocence, where pride has not dissatisfied the heart, nor luxury enervated the spirit. Nor is it unvaried by bright homes of mirthfulness and enjoyment. Beside the satisfaction with which the owner surveys his thick hay-cocks and waving grain, his fatted herds and heavy fruit trees, he finds scenes of frequent enjoyment in the regularly observed customs which each season brings. Harvest-time from the earliest haying to late in the autumn, is to the young men and maidens a perpetual scene of merry-making. The berrying parties in the dull days of July; the roast-corn frolics; the apple gatherings; and above all the long round of husking-bees, with their rich fun and well earned forfeits, the shows of white linen and fat cattle at the annual fair, and the nobly won premiums of the young housewife, furnish sources of enjoyment, long remembered, and anxiously counted on in the future. But from all the scenes of merriment, the day of raising a new building bears off the palm. For weeks be |