The Puritan "Sabbath," as everybody knows, began at "sundown" on Saturday evening.

To such observance of it I was born and bred.

As the large, round disk of day declined, a stillness, a solemnity, a somewhat melancholy hush came over us all.

It was time for work to cease, and for playthings to be put away.

The world of active life passed into the shadow of an eclipse, not to emerge until the sun should sink again beneath the horizon.
It was in this stillness of the world without and of the soul within that the pulsating lullaby of the evening crickets used to make itself most distinctly heard,--so that I well remember I used to think that the purring of these little creatures, which mingled with the batrachian hymns from the neighboring swamp, WAS PECULIAR TO SATURDAY EVENINGS.