One Sunday, in the middle of the sermon, the old minister, Doctor Ripley, stood up in the pulpit and said in a loud voice, "Simeon, come here. Take your hat and come here." Simeon was a small boy who lived in the doctor's family and sat in the gallery. We boys all supposed that Simeon had been playing in church, or had committed some terrible offence for which he was to be punished in sight of the whole congregation. Simeon came down trembling and abashed, and the doctor told him to go home as fast as he could and get the Thanksgiving Proclamation. The doctor filled up the time as well he could with an enormously long prayer, until the boy got back. Simeon confessed to some of the boys that he had been engaged in some mischief just before he was called, and he was terribly afraid the doctor had caught him. This old church with its tower, yellow spire, old clock and weathercock, seems to me as I look back on it to have been a very attractive piece of architecture. It was that church which suggested to Emerson the leading thought in one of his most famous poems, "The Problem." In those days, when people were to be married the law required notice to be given of their intention by proclaiming it aloud in the church three Sundays in succession. So just before the service began, the old town clerk would get up and proclaim: "There is a marriage intended between Mr. John Brown of this town and Miss Sarah Smith of Sudbury," and there was great curiosity in the congregation to hear the announcement. The town clerk in my boyhood had been a wealthy old bachelor for whom the young ladies had set their caps in vain for two generations. One day he astonished the congregation by proclaiming: "There is a marriage intended between Dr. Abiel Keywood"--which was his own name--"and Miss Lucy P. Fay, both of Concord." That was before I can remember, as his boys were about my age. Doctor Ripley, the minister in Concord, was an old man who had been settled there during the Revolutionary War and was over the parish sixty-two years. He was an excellent preacher and scholar, and his kindly despotism was submitted to by the whole town. His way of pronouncing would sound very queer now, though it was common then. I well remember his reading the lines of the hymn-- Let every critter jine To praise the eternal God. Scattered about the church were the good gray heads of many survivors of the Revolution--the men who had been at the bridge on the 19th of April, and who made the first armed resistance to the British power. They were very striking and venerable figures, with their queues and knee-breeches and shoes with shining buckles. Men were more particular about their apparel in those days than we are now. They had great stateliness of behavior, and admitted of little familiarity.