Comfort Makepeace was not insensible to the rapid progress of opinions and principles less rigid than those which he had inherited from his pilgrim fathers. He mourned often and deeply over the degeneracy of modern times, and grew more and more morose, as all the world about him waxed more frivolous and worldly-minded. His neighbors relaxed in the severity of the governing principles which had been handed down to them, and the rising generation were still more widely departing from the faith of their fathers. The land where puritanism had bid fair to hold permanent sway, was fast relapsing into grossest heresy, and the very evils, to escape from which his revered ancestor fled from the land of his birth, were swallowing up the whole people. Old men laughed and chatted, in familiar strains, and the young obeyed the impulse of a buoyant spirit, in revelling unchecked in the delights of social intercourse. Amusements the most frivolous, nay impious, feasting, theatre-going, and dancing, were creeping in apace, and leading frail human nature from her moorings. Even his old and favorite expounder of the faith, who had led his flock for half a century through the green pastures of righteousness, was forced to retire before the alarming spirit of innovation and worldliness. He had been superseded by a young man of airy habits, who had studied the frivolous rules of empty declamation, and who shortened, to a fearful degree, the length of his discourses; while every other exercise of the holy Sabbath became impregnated with the same spirit that was infecting the manners of the whole people. There was no limit to the terrible doctrines that were destroying the land. Comfort Makepeace groaned often and audibly, as he witnessed the changes that had been for years going on around him. His neighbors, despite the zealous appeals he made, were fast falling off from the path of the faithful, and numbering themselves among the worldly sects. Morning prayer no longer sent them forth to labor, and their incoming from the field at night was no longer accompanied by the same devotional exercise. Exhortations, those heavenly weapons, were become less frequent; and even grace at meals was by very many dispensed with altogether. One had gone so far as to treat slightly, if not with absolute worldly ridicule, his respect for the holy scriptures. 'Mr. Makepeace, why give your son so outlandish a name as Habakkuk?' 'Outlandish! Why, neighbor, it is a name from scripture!' 'Pooh!' replied the worlding, 'and so is Beelzebub!' The old man groaned from his inmost breast, but was silent.