"Elder Crane was a very pious man, and he always preached long sermons and made long prayers. The sermons were easier to bear than the prayers, for the people sat through the sermon; but if you had sat down during the prayer, you would have been thought dreadfully wicked, and the Elder might have called your name right out the next Sabbath, and prayed for you as a poor sinner whom Satan was tempting. And so you stood up, of course, though the children sometimes got asleep and fell down, and often the girls used to faint away and be carried out. Semantha Lee did, at one time, almost as regularly as the Sabbath came round, until at last a church committee was sent to labor with her. But Semantha was a very free-spoken girl, and she said some hard things against Elder Crane's prayers. I always thought that it was more her corsets than the length of the prayers. "I never fainted; for up in the new State I had run wild in the woods, and, though I was a frail thing to look at, I had a deal of strength in me. But my thoughts rambled a great deal too often; and sometimes I doubted if I was as near God in Elder Crane's church as I used to be lying on my bed in the chamber of the log-house, and saying my prayers to the bright star that looked down so friendly. I asked mother about it one day, and she said that surely God was about us everywhere; but she added that the church was the appointed means of grace, and that I must follow Elder Crane closely, and try to make my heart feel the words. I did try, but there was so much about the Israelites in the house of bondage, and Moses, and the sacrifices, that, do what I would, I always lost myself in the Red Sea, and the chosen people entered the Promised Land without me. At such times, when my thoughts went wandering, my eyes followed them, and most frequently they went right over to Mr. Jacob Allen's pew. I could not well help it, indeed, for his was a wall pew, directly opposite ours. Mr. Allen seldom came to meeting, being old and rheumatic, but his wife and girls came, and his son, Ephraim.