"The Puritan Sabbath wuz a very different one from that observed by Moses and the Prophets, which wuz mainly a day of rest." "Wall, I know," sez Miss Yerden, "that the only right way to keep the Sabbath is jest as we do, go to meetin' and Sunday-school, and do jest as we do." Sez Lihu, "Maybe the people to whom the law wuz delivered didn't understand its meaning so well as we do to-day, after the lapse of so many centuries, so well as you do, Miss Yerden." We all looked coldly at Lihu; we didn't approve of his talk. But Miss Yerden looked tickled, she is so blind in her own conceit, and Lihu spoke so polite to her, she thought he considered her word as goin' beyend the Bible. Then Lophemia Pegrum spoke up, and sez she-- "Don't you believe in keeping the Sabbath, Lihu?" "Yes, indeed, I do," sez he, firm and decided. "I do believe in it with all my heart. It is a blessed break in the hard creakin' roll of the wheel of Labor, a needed rest--needed in every way for tired and worn-out brain and muscle, soul and body; but I believe in telling the truth," sez he. He always wuz a very truthful boy--born so, we spoze. Almost too truthful at times, his ma used to think. She used to have to whip him time and agin for bringin' out secret things before company, such as borrowed dishes, and runnin's of other females, and such. So we wuz obliged to listen to his remarks with a certain amount of respect, for we knew that he meant every word that he said, and we knew that he had studied deep into ancient history, no matter how much mistook we felt that he wuz. But Miss Yerden spoke up, and sez she-- "I don't care whether it is true or not. I have always said, and always will say, that if any belief goes aginst the Bible, I had ruther believe in the Bible than in the truth any time." And more than half of us wimmen agreed with her. You see, so many reverent, and holy, and divine thoughts and memories clustered round that book, that we didn't love to have 'em disturbed. It wuz like havin' somebody take a spade and dig up the voyalets and lilies on the grave of the nearest and dearest, to try to prove sunthin' or ruther. We feel in such circumstances that we had ruther be mistook than to have them sweet posies disturbed and desecrated. Holy words of counsel, and reproof, and consolation delivered from the Most High to His saints and prophets--words that are whispered over our cradles, and whose truth enters our lives with our mother's milk; that sustains us and helps us to bear the hard toils and burdens of the day of life, and that go with us through the Valley and the Shadow--the only revelation we have of God's will to man, the written testimony of His love and compassion, and the only map in which we trace our titles clear to a heavenly inheritance.