honored more than ever.  When they told her that probably three years more than the two that had been given to the work were needed to finish the jetty, and that there was a slight possibility that another one would be needed for the best improvement of the harbor, she thought her interest in the matter could be better kept alive If she should hunt up her old trigonometry and learn that all over again!  With this idea she left the young men, whose kindness to her she fully appreciated, and went to find her party.  She soon found, on the yacht ready to go back to town, all but Miss Ray; she had chosen to take one of the many carriages which she had noticed were constantly taking passengers back and forth from the town to the Cliff, at the rate of ten cents apiece.

Later in the afternoon their attention was arrested by another one of the town-criers,—­Tom had learned that there were three in the town,—­who was crying out that a meat-auction would be held that night at half-past six o’clock.  When they were told that these meat-auctions had been the custom of the town for years, they were anxious to attend one; but another engagement at that hour prevented their so doing, much to Tom’s regret.

The next day was Sunday.  As Bessie and Tom were anxious to see all of the nine churches of which they had read, they were, at first, in doubt where to go; whereas their mother had no questions whatever, since she had settled in her own mind, after having reduced all sects to the Episcopal and the Roman Catholic, that the Episcopal Church was the true historic one, and, therefore, the only one for her personal interest, that she should go to the St. Paul’s on Fair street.  Mr. Gordon usually went to church with his wife, although he often felt that the simplicity of the early apostolic days was found more in the Congregational form of worship.  This day he yielded to Tom’s desire to go to the square-steepled Congregational Church on Centre street, to hear Miss Baker, who had been preaching to the congregation for three years.  He entered the church with some prejudice; but soon he became so much interested in the good sermon that he really forgot that the preacher was a woman!  Miss Ray and Bessie went to the Unitarian Church on Orange street, to which the beautiful-toned Spanish bell invited them.  After an interesting service, on their way out they met Tom, who wished to look into the pillared church of the Methodists, near the bank, and also into the “Ave Maria” on Federal street, where the Roman Catholics worshipped.  Miss Ray, being anxious to attend a Friends’ meeting in their little meeting-house on Fair street, decided to do so the following Sunday, if she were in town; while Bessie said that she should hunt up then the two Baptist churches, the one on Summer street, and the other, particularly for the colored people, on Pleasant street.  Their surprise that a town of a little less than four thousand inhabitants should contain so many churches was modified somewhat when they remembered that once, in 1840, the number of inhabitants was nearly ten thousand.