Only Mrs. Marjoram took from the cottage with pious love an ancient and much-thumbed book, on whose fly-leaf was written ’Jason Fletcher, His Bible.’  Then, having no longer any reason to conceal the early history of the deceased, she related to the village gossips—­as a warning against trusting too fully to evil appearances—­the following

STORY OF POOR HANNAH LEE.

A long time ago—­before the middle of the last century, in fact—­there dwelt in one of the most flourishing towns in Western Massachusetts a family of Puritan extraction named Fletcher.  Straitest among the strict, John Cotton Fletcher and his wife Mehitabel held all lightness of conduct or gamesomeness of speech as sin most devoutly to be prayed and striven against, and not only ‘kept’ the ten commandments with pious zeal, but, for the better serving of the Lord, invented an eleventh, which read ‘Laugh not at all.’ Holy days they knew, in number during the year fifty-four, namely, the fifty-two ‘Sabbaths’ and the governor’s Fast and Thanksgiving days; holidays they held in utter abhorrence, deeming Christmas, especially, an invention of the devil.  On ‘work-days’ they worked; on ‘Sabbath-days’ they attended the preaching of the word; otherwise, on the Lord’s day, doing nothing save to eat and drink what was absolutely necessary to keep them from faintness.  They lived to praise the Lord, and they must eat to live.  But no cooking or other labor was done on that day, and if the old horse was saddled to carry them to meeting it was because that was a work of necessity.  On Fast and Thanksgiving days—­because they were peculiarly of Puritan origin—­there was an especial effort at godliness, and woe, then, to any profaning youngster who dared to shout or play within sound or sight of Deacon Fletcher’s premises.  Every Saturday night, at sunset, all tools for men and playthings for children were put away, to be disturbed no more till sunset on Sunday.  All papers, books, knitting-work, sewing, were disposed of ‘out of the way.’  It was necessary to milk the cows, feed the pigs, and saddle the horse, but that was all the work that was allowed.  As to any jest on any holy day, that was, beyond all other things, most abhorrent to their ideas of Christian duty.  Life with them was a continued strife against sin, cheered only by the hope of casting off all earthly trammels at last, to enter upon one long, never-ending Sabbath.  And their Sabbath of idleness was more dreary than their ‘week-day’ of work.

Yet were they an humble, honest, and upright pair, walking purely before God according to the light they had, and as highly respected and honored in the community, that the fiat of the minister himself—­and in those days the minister’s word was ‘law and gospel’ in the smaller New England villages—­was hardly more potent than that of Deacon Fletcher.