A second theatre in Boston! The souls of young people in peril! One sighs to think what these good fathers would have said if they could have pulled aside the curtain of the future and seen little Beverly with crowds of children accompanied by their fathers and mothers and uncles and aunts and cousins, all pouring into the "movies!" (One of these movies named for Lucy Larcom!) One must go on, and now we are trying to hope that some good may come out of the "movies!" If our little religious library was the "Third Social" there must have been two more in old Beverly. I want you to go back in your mind to a Sunday of that time when even a walk to the woods or to the beach was wicked, when the only books that were proper to read were religious books, when there were three religious services every Sunday and pretty awfully long services. My cousin and my sister and I crawled up a long ladder to the third floor of our barn, among the pigeons' nests, and, nestling down in the hay, produced a _novel_, a real novel, a wishy washy thing, that no money could hire me to read today, and with quiet whisperings read that _wicked_ book. We were in mortal terror lest "Aunt Phebe" should suspect our deep degradation, and "Aunt Phebe" was not a foe either. She was a beautiful, big, kindly woman, as Mrs. Crowell, her step-daughter, would gladly attest. One whose memory goes back like Elsie Doane's and mine must remember the old brick meeting house. My memories of it are pretty hazy and I fancy Elsie will have to go farther back than her mother, for information about that fine specimen of architecture. It had neither cupola nor spire and must have been pretty ugly. It must have been the second meeting house, in which I recall the beautiful alto Mrs. Otis Davis's mother used to sing. I shall never forget how affected my childish ears were when she sang "Oh, when thou city of my God shall I thy Courts ascend" as the choir rendered the anthem "Jerusalem." Speaking of meeting houses, our third and present, one of the most beautiful and "resting" buildings one could worship God in, is a lasting memorial of the taste and genius of our beloved Mrs. Whitman. To her and to Mr. Eben Day, we owe its beauty; and to the generous old church members we owe its existence at all, for they gave freely to its construction. The first minister I have much recollection of was Mr. Hale, who lived with his family in the house now owned by Miss Lizzie Hull. My step-father bought a horse from him, and named him "Sumner." That was Mr. Hale's Christian name. I have often wondered how Mr. Hale felt to have a horse named for him, but I am sure Uncle David meant it as a compliment. In those far away days we had a hermit of our own. It would be more damaging to a claim of youthfulness, on the part of my readers to remember "Johnny Widgin," than to remember the saw-mill.