64 Wisconsin Academy q/ /Skieiices, Arts, and Letters. 



walking in one's garden, cooking, making beds, sweeping house, 

 kissing one's wife or child, must have tempted men even to 

 risk the halter. Those laws were soon repealed, but the Sab- 

 bath, down to the childhood of some of us, burdened men, 

 women and children, specially the latter, with a load almost 

 too grievous to be borne. And the natural result has followed, 

 a reaction so complete, that thousands of the descendants of 

 the Puritans have either given up the pretence of keeping the 

 day holy, or are content with an observance for which their 

 fathers would have put them in the stocks. 



But meanwhile, du.ring the progress of this history of the 

 Sabbath, our population was being steadily recruited from the 

 old world. And the new comers did not usually bring the 

 Sabbath with them, unless they came from Scotland, where 

 the Puritans had succeeded in planting it. But finding here 

 either the New England Sabbath or the English Sunday, with 

 which most of them were familiar, they confirmed and aided 

 in the establishment of Sunday observance as the national 

 custom and law. The immigrants from the continent, gi'eatly 

 in the minority, more or less conformed to American usage ; 

 and all over the land Sunday was marked from other days by 

 the cessation of business, the public worship of God, and the 

 general quiet and rest of our whole people. Within the last 

 quarter of a century events on both sides of the ocean have 

 turned the tide of continental immigration to us, and great 

 changes have resulted in many directions. And one of these 

 has been, that the continental Sunday has been brought to us 

 by thousands, fresh from its own home, accompanied with such 

 associations, and sustained under our universal suffrage, with 

 such political power and other influence, that it threatens to 

 usurp the established American custom and to reign in its 

 stead. 



I can but regard it as unfortunate for all who are rallied 

 against it, that the reaction from the Puritan Sabbath has lost 

 them so many allies. I do not mean allies in talking, but in 



