42 
CAPE COD. 
mon in Orleans, Eastbam, and the towns below, partis 
ularlj on Sunday, in the times of divine service. When 
one woman is affected, five or six others generally sym¬ 
pathize with her; and the congregation is thrown into 
the utmost confusion. Several old men suppose, un- 
philosophically and uncharitably, perhaps, that the will 
is partly concerned, and that ridicule and threats would 
liave a tendency to prevent the evil.” How this is now 
we did not learn. We saw one singularly masculine 
woman, however, in a house on this very plain, who did 
not look as if she was ever troubled with hysterics, or 
sympathized with those that were; or, perchance, life 
itself was to her a hysteric fit, — a Nauset woman, of a 
hardness and coarseness such as no man ever possesses 
or suggests. It was enough to see the vertebrae and 
sinews of her neck, and her set jaws of iron, which 
would have bitten a board-nail in two in their ordinary 
action, — braced against the world, talking like a man- 
of-war’s-man in petticoats, or as if shouting to you 
through a breaker; who looked as if it made her head 
ache to live; hard enough for any enormity. I looked 
upon her as one who had committed infanticide; who 
never had a brother, unless it were some wee thing that 
died in infancy, — for what need of him ? — and whose 
father must have died before she was born. This wo¬ 
man told us that the camp-meetings were not held the 
previous summer for fear of introducing the cholera, and 
that they would have been held earlier this summer, but 
the rye was so backward that straw would not have been 
ready for them ; for they lie in straw. There are some¬ 
times one hundred and fifty ministers, (!) and five thou¬ 
sand hearers, assembled. The ground, which is called 
Millennium Grove, is owned by a company in Boston, 
