Farmington was a very godly place; so, at least, her people thought. Among the many well-known attractions of the town, its religious privileges stood easily at the head. A little way up the hill, on a level piece of ground, the early settlers long ago had built a great white church. The congregation the United Presbyterian faith; and this was the state religion, not only of Farmington but of all the country around. The church itself was a wonder to . It seemed to us children to have been built to accommodate all the people in the world and then have room to spare. No other building we had ever seen could be compared in size with this great white church. And when we read of vast cathedrals and other wonderful buildings, we always thought of the United Presbyterian church, and had no idea that they were half so grand.  
The main part of the building was very long and wide, and the ceiling very high; but more marvellous still was the great square belfry in the front. None of us boys ever knew how high it was; we always insisted that it was really higher than it seemed, and we were in the habit of comparing it with all the tall objects we had ever seen or of which we had heard or read. It was surely higher than our flag-pole or our tallest tree, higher than Niagara Falls or Bunker Hill Monument; and we scarcely believed that anyone had ever climbed to its dizzy top, although there was a little platform with a wooden railing round it almost at its highest point. We had heard that inside the belfry was an endless series of stairs, and that the sexton sometimes went to the top, when a new rope was to be fastened to the bell; but none of us had so much as looked up through the closed trap-door which kept even the most venturesome from the tower.
 
The church stood out in plain view from every portion of the town; and for a long distance up and down the valley road, and over beyond the on the farther hill it and white,—a constant to 98the people who lived round about that, however important the other affairs of life, their church and their religion were more vital still.
 
I never heard when the church was built. As well might we have asked when the town was settled, or when the country road came down, or even when the river began flowing between the high green hills. If any one object more than another was Farmington, surely it was the great white church.
 
I am certain that the people of the town, and, in fact, of all the country round, had no thought that religion was anything more or less, or anything whatever, than communion with the church.
 
High up in the belfry swung a bell. None of us had seen it, but we knew it was there, for every Sunday its deep religious tones floated over the valley and up the hills, breaking the stillness of the Sabbath day. Sometimes, when we were a little early at church, at the ringing of the bell we would look up to the tower and fancy that through the open slats of the belfry we could see some great object swinging back and ; and then, too, all of us had seen the end of a rope 99in a little room back of the organ on the second floor, and we had been told that the other end was fastened to the great bell away up in the high tower, and we used to wonder and speculate as to how strong the sexton must be to pull the rope that swung the bell.
 
Every Sabbath morning the procession of farmers’ drove by our home on their way to church, and we learned to know the color of the horses, the size of the wagons and carriages, and the number of members in each family, in this weekly ; we even knew what time to expect the several devotees, and who came first and who came last, and we assumed that those who passed earliest were the most religious and . These Sabbath pilgrims were dressed in their best clothes, and looked serious and sad, as became communicants of the church. The pace at which they drove, their manner of dress, cast of , and silent and were in marked contrast to their appearance on any other days.
 
The Sabbath, the church, and religion were serious and solemn matters to the band of 100pilgrims who every Sunday drove up the hill. All our neighbors and acquaintances were members of the United Presbyterian church, and to them their religion seemed a very gloomy thing. Their Sabbath began at sun-down on Saturday and lasted until Monday morning, and the gloom seemed to grow and deepen on their faces as the light faded into and the darkness of the evening came.
 
My parents were not members of the church; in fact, they had little belief in some of its chief articles of faith. In his youth my father was ambitious to be a minister, for all his life he was on doing good and his fellowman; but he passed so rapidly through all the phases of religious faith, from Methodism through Congregationalism and Universalism to Unitarianism and beyond, that he never had time to stop long enough at any one resting spot to get to preach.
 
My father seldom went to church on Sunday. He was almost the only man in town who stayed away, excepting a very few who were considered worthless and who managed to steal off with dog and gun to the woods and hills. But Sunday was a precious day to my father. Even if the little creek had been by recent rains, and the water ran over the big dam and off on its long journey through the hills, still my father never ran his mill on Sunday. I fancy that if he had wished to do so the people would not have permitted him to save the wasted power. But all through the week my father must have looked forward to Sunday, for on that day he was not obliged to work, and was free to in his books. As soon as breakfast was over he went to his little room, and was soon lost to the living world. I have always been thankful that the religion and customs of the community rescued this one day from the monotony of his life. All day Sunday, and far into the night, he lived with those rare souls who had left the records of their lives and spirits for the endless procession of men and women who come and go upon the earth.
 
Both my father and my mother thought it best that we children go to church. So, however much we protested (as natural children always protest), we were obliged to go up the hill with the moving throng to the great white church.
 
In another part of the town, in an out-of-the-way place, was the unpretentious little Methodist church. It stood at the edge of the woods, almost lost in their shadow, and seemed to shrink from sight, as if it had no right to stand in the presence of the mighty building on the hill. We never went to this church, except to , and we never understood how it was kept up, as its members were very poor. The shoemaker and a few other rather unimportant people seemed to be its only devotees. The Methodist preacher did not live in Farmington when I first knew the town, but used to drive in from an adjoining village in the afternoon, and preach the same sermon he had delivered in his home town in the morning, and then go on to the next village and preach it once more in the evening. Some years later, after a wonderful in which almost all outsiders except our family were converted to Methodism, this church became so strong that it was abl............