Religious expression naturally found its highest point in Puritan communities in the strict and decorous observance of Sunday. Stern were the laws in ordering this observance. Fines, imprisonment, and stripes on the naked back were dealt out rigorously for Sabbath-breaking. The New Haven Code of Laws with still greater severity enjoined that profanation of the Lord's Day, if done "proudly and with a high hand against the authority of God," should be punished with death. This rigid observance fell with special force and restriction on children. A loved poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, wrote of the day:-- "Hush, 'tis the Sabbath's silence-stricken morn, No feet must wander through the tasselled corn, No merry children laugh around the door, No idle playthings strew the sanded floor. The law of Moses lays its awful ban On all that stirs. Here comes the Tithing-man." There were many public offices in colonial times which we do not have to-day, for we do not need them. One of these is that of tithing-man; he was a town officer, and had several neighboring families under his charge, usually ten, as the word "tithing" would signify. He enforced the learning of the church catechism in these ten homes, visited the houses, and heard the children recite their catechism. These ten families he watched specially on Sundays to see whether they attended church, and did not loiter on the way. In some Massachusetts towns he watched on week days to keep "boys and all persons from swimming in the water." Ten families with many boys must have kept him busy on hot August days. He inspected taverns, reported disorderly persons, and forbade the sale of intoxicating liquor to them. He administered the "oath of fidelity" to new citizens, and warned undesirable visitors and wanderers to leave the town. He could arrest persons who ran or rode at too fast a pace when going to meeting on Sunday, or who took unnecessary rides on Sunday, or otherwise broke the Sunday laws. Within the meeting-house he kept order by beating out dogs, correcting unruly and noisy boys, and waking those who slept. He sometimes walked up and down the church aisles, carrying a stick which had a knob on one end, and a dangling foxtail on the other, tapping the boys on the head with the knob end of the stick, and tickling the face of sleeping church attendants with the foxtail. Some churches had tithing-men until this century. A Puritanical regard of the Sabbath still lingers in our New England towns. There are many Christian old gentlemen still living of whom such an anecdote as this of old Deacon Davis of Westborough might be told. A grandson walked to church with him one Sabbath morning and a gray squirrel ran across the road. The child, delighted, pointed out the beautiful little creature to his grandfather. A sharp twist of the ear was the old Puritan's rejoinder, and the caustic words that "squirrels were not to be spoken of on the Lord's Day."