Yet were they an humble, honest, and upright pair, walking purely before God according to the light they had, and as highly respected and honored in the community, that the fiat of the minister himself--and in those days the minister's word was 'law and gospel' in the smaller New England villages--was hardly more potent than that of Deacon Fletcher. To this couple was born one son, and one only. Much as they mourned when they saw their neighbors adding almost yearly to their groups of olive branches, the Lord in his wisdom vouchsafed to them only this one child, and they bowed meekly to the providence and tried to be content. Why his father named the boy 'Jason,' no one could rightly tell; perhaps because the fleece of his flocks had been truly fleece of gold to him; at all events, thus was the child named, and in the strict rule of this Christian couple was Jason reared. It would be sad as well as useless to tell of the dreary winter-Sundays in the cold meeting-house (it was thought a wicked weakness to have a fire in a church then) through which he shivered and froze; of the fearful sitting in the corner after the two-hours sermons and the thirty-minutes prayers were done; of the utter absence of all cheerful themes or thoughts on the holy days which they so straitly remembered to keep; of the visions of sudden death, and the bottomless pit thereafter, which haunted the child through long nights; of the sighing for green fields and the singing of birds, on some summer Sundays, when the sun was warm and the sky was fair; and the clapping of the old-fashioned wooden seats, as the congregation rose to pray or praise, was sweeter music than the blacksmith made who 'led the singing' through his nose. It would be a dreary task to follow the boy through all this youthful misery, and so I will let it pass. Doubtless all these things brought forth their fruits when his day of freedom came. He was a large-framed, full-blooded boy, with more than the usual allowance of animal spirits. But his father was larger framed and tougher, and in his occasional contests with his son victory naturally perched upon his banners, so that the boy's spirit (which rebelled alway against the iron rule of the household), if not broken down, was certainly so far kept under that it rarely showed itself. It was a slumbering volcano, ready, when it reached its strength, to pour out burning lava of passion and evil-doing. Thus the boy grew up almost to manhood, with very few rays of sunshine cast over his early path to look back upon when he should Teach the middle eminence of life. And the gloom of the present cheerless and austere way caused him to look forward with the more rapture to that time, when, with his twenty-first birth-day, should come the power to do as he pleased with himself: with his hours of labor and of ease, with his Sabbath-days and his work-days.