Another
followed. "Very well, gentlemen," thought I, "but now please to retire
and give up the field to these children." But no. The superintendent of
the Sunday-school now advanced: the children marched up one by one, as
their names were called, and received their presents from him. Some of
them came very near grinning (poor things!), but in general they looked
as if they were going to their execution. When all was done _the
meeting was dismissed_!
Sauntering through the streets of this village, and making note of the
quaint idiosyncrasies and irregularities of character and manner
displayed by its humbler folk, I thought of the sentiment which Thoreau
so exquisitely expresses in his _Week_: "The forms of beauty fall
naturally around him who is in the performance of his proper work, as
the curled shavings drop from the plane and borings cluster round the
auger." Picturesqueness characterizes the New England white laborer, as
it does the Southern black laborer: especially is this true of those
who have emigrated from Europe when of adult age, and have been unable
to lay aside the picturesque features of their Old-World life.
One winter evening I discovered, a few miles from the village, one of
this class: he was, on the whole, the strangest human being whom it has
ever been my fortune to meet.
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