XXI 
CHURCH AND SCHOOL 
WHEN you see little groups of people assembled 
at the houses or moving from place to place, 
the men newly shaven, the women and children 
dressed in their best, you may know it is Sunday. 
When there is no church, everybody goes visiting, 
and one should think from the numbers collected 
in the dooryards of some of the houses that these 
visitations must strain the capacity of the bean-pot 
considerably. For whoever comes must be invited 
to dinner. 
If it is "preaching-day" the people are found all 
moving towards one point, the settlement church, 
which, like the school-house, generally stands "at 
a point equally inconvenient for everybody." In 
the villages and larger settlements, the minister is 
resident, and the churches are like other country 
churches, but outside the villages, services are con- 
ducted in the barnlike little "church-houses" by an 
itinerant preacher, the frequency of whose visits 
depends upon the size of his parish and the distances 
he has to travel. Hence it happens that upon the 
death of a person in a remote district, although the 
actual "burying" takes place at once, one may be 
invited weeks or months or even a year or more 
afterward to attend the " funeral," a very important 
