Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/38

 had recently eaten. To distinguish Saturday night, by a dish of beans baked with pork, was one of the peculiarities of their native town. Many of the oldest householders could recollect no instance in which this ancient custom had been violated beneath their roof; and children sometimes formed an inseparable connection in their minds, between this prelusive dish, and the duties of the Sabbath. The inhabitants still preserve this usage of their ancestors, as faithfully as the sons of Rechab transmitted his prohibition of wine to their remote posterity. Cuffee, finding his exordium unchecked, proceeded to relate with proportionable astonishment, that once within the memory of an aged man of his own colour, the Saturday-night Statute-act was violated, at the inn where he was a servitor.

"Next mornin," said he, elevating his eyes with becoming gravity, "next mornin, they ebery soul forget it be Sabba-day. They go 'bout their work—wash, scour—Misse take her knitten-work—Massa write his 'counts Brister go to barn—thrash grain."

He described their utter consternation, when the bell from an adjoining steeple reminded them of their transgression; and the haste with which they made themselves ready to appear in the sanctuary.

He next proceeded to state, on the authority of a young man of his acquaintance, the dire disasters which befel his father's household, for a similar omission. Their residence was on Bean-hill, a section of the town, where this