Boston, July 12, 1817.

COMPLAINTS having been made at this office of dangers and disturbances arising from the rapidity with which carriages are driven on the Lord’s Day, special persons have been selected to take notice of this indecorous conduct, that the law on the subject may be rigidly enforced.  It is forbidden to drive, during Divine Service, or while the inhabitants are going to or returning from their several houses of public worship, any carriage at a greater rate than a walk or moderate foot pace; and masters and mistresses are responsible, if the servants are unable to pay the penalty incurred by them in this offence.

NEH.  FREEMAN, Superintendent.

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Making hay on Sunday is here condemned in some very choice lines.

—­> There is much more PIETY than POETRY in the following stanzas:—­And though the employment condemned, cannot occur for a season at least, the MORAL inculcated we trust, will have a tendency to prevent other breaches of Holy Time.

THE PIOUS FARMER.

SHOULD it rain all the week and the Sundays prove fine,
Though others make hay, yet I’ll not work at mine;
For, I don’t think, for my part, such sun-shine was given,
Us mortals to lure from the path-way to heaven.

Some to work on the Sabbath will make a pretence,
That taxes are high, and they can’t pay their rents;
But my rents and my taxes I’ll still hope to pay,
Though on sun-shiny Sundays I do not make hay.

    For this shall my heart never call me a sinner,
    While I still hope in God I shall ne’er want my dinner;
    To lay up a store, I’d try every fair way,
    But on Sundays, though sun shines, I will not make hay.

    Some plead in excuse, that, not waiting for Monday,
    Great battles are won, though they’re fought on a Sunday! 
    At famed Waterloo too,—­there’s none greater than it,
    But then, ’tis well known, the lost Tyrant began it.

    ’Tis a custom with me to spend godly that day;
    But while French go to war, and the English make hay,
    Though the season proves wet, and hay gets in but slowly,
    Yet I would not do other than keep the day holy.

    Far, far be from me, to ape those saving Elves,
    Who rob God of his due, to grow richer themselves;
    But be mine the pursuit, which all good men approve,
    To strive to be rich in the Regions above.

    If it rain all the Week, then on God I’ll recline,
    And not work on Sunday, although the sun shine: 
    In this Faith deeply rooted, no ills I forbode,
    That a man’s seldom poorer for serving his God.

Columbian Centinel, Nov. 27, 1816.

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From the “Essex Register,” Salem, May 18, 1822, we learn that there had been trouble caused by ill-bred young men congregating at the public corners on Sunday evening, and also that some females had behaved badly at that time.