I can't make out these puritan fellows, or
evangelical boys, at all. To my mind, religion is a cheerful thing,
intended to make us happy, not miserable; and that our faces, like
that of nature, should be smiling, and that like birds we should sing
and carol, and like lilies, we should be well arrayed, and not that
our countenances should make folks believe we were chosen vessels,
containing, not the milk of human kindness, but horrid sour vinegar
and acid mothery grounds. Why, the very swamp behind our house is full
of a plant called 'a gall's side-saddle.'1
1 This is the common name for the Sarracenia.
"Plague take them old Independents; I can't and never could understand
them. I believe, if Bishop Laud had allowed them to sing through their
noses, pray without gowns, and build chapels without steeples, they
would have died out like Quakers, by being let alone. They wanted to
make the state believe they were of consequence. If the state had
treated them as if they were of no importance, they would have felt
that too very soon. Opposition made them obstinate. They won't stick
at nothing to carry their own ends.
"They made a law once in Connecticut that no man should ride or drive
on a Sunday except to a conventicle. Well, an old Dutch governor of
New York, when that was called New Amsterdam and belonged to Holland,
once rode into the colony on horseback on a Sabbath day, pretty hard
job it was too, for he was a very stout man, and a poor horseman.
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