88 PLYMOUTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE. [CHAP. VI 



township. We went with our landlord first to one, and then, 

 in the afternoon, to the other. Each service lasted about seventy 

 minutes, and they were so arranged that the first began at hall- 

 past ten, and the second ended at two o clock, for the convenience 

 of the country people, who came in vehicles of all kinds, many 

 of them from great distances. The reading, singing, and preach 

 ing would certainly not suffer by comparison with the average 

 service in rural districts in churches of the Establishment in 

 England. The discourse of the Methodist, delivered fluently 

 without notes, and with much earnestness, kept his hearers 

 awake ; and once, when my own thoughts were wandering, 

 they were suddenly recalled to the pulpit by the startling ques 

 tion whether, if some intimate friend, whom we had lost, 

 should return to us from the world of spirits, his message would 

 produce more effect on our minds than did the raising of Lazarus 

 on the Jews of old ? He boldly affirmed that it would not. I 

 began to think how small would be the sensation created by a 

 miracle performed in the present day in Syria and many Eastern 

 countries, especially in Persia, where they believe in the power 

 of their own holy men occasionally to raise persons from the dead, 

 in comparison to its effect in New England ; and how readily he 

 Jews of old believed in departures from the ordinary course of 

 nature, by the intervention of evil spirits or the power of magic. 

 But I presume the preacher merely meant to say, and no doubt 

 his doctrine was true, that a voice or sign from Heaven would 

 no more deter men from sinning, than do the clear dictates of 

 their consciences, in spite of which they yield to temptation. 



In the evening I walked on a roofed wooden bridge, resem 

 bling many in Switzerland, which here spans the Pemigewasset, 

 and the keeper of it told me how the whole river is frozen over 

 in winter, but the ice being broken by the falls above, does not 

 carry away the bridge. He also related how his grandfather, 

 who had lived to be an old man, had gone up the river with an 

 exploring party among the Indians, and how there was a bloody 

 battle at the forks above, where the Indians were defeated, after 

 great slaughter on both sides. 



On entering the stage coach the next morning, on our way 



