Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Atlantic Essays

[201] to a Puritan divine, “do you go barefoot because the Papists wear shoes and stockings?” Even the origin of the frequent New England habit of. eating salt fish on Saturday is supposed to have been the fact that Roman Catholics eat it on Friday.

But if there were no prayers said on these occasions, there were sermons. Mr. John Calf, of Newbury, described one specimen of funeral sermon in immortal verse--

On Sabbath day he went his way,
As he was used to do,
God's house unto, that they might know
What he had for to show;
God's holy will he must fulfil,
For it was his desire
For to declare a sermon rare
Concerning Madam Fryer.

The practice of wedding discourses was handed down into the last century, and sometimes beguiled the persons concerned into rather startling levities. For instance, when Parson Smith's daughter Mary was to marry young Mr. Cranch, (what graceful productions of pen and pencil have come to this generation from the posterity of that union!) the father permitted the saintly maiden to decide on her own text for the sermon, and she meekly selected, “Mary hath chosen the better part, which shall not be taken away from her,” and the discourse was duly pronounced. But when her wild young sister Abby was bent on marrying a certain Squire Adams, called John, whom her father disliked and would not even invite to dinner, she boldly suggested for her text, “John came, neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and ye say he hath a devil.” But no sermon stands recorded under this prefix, y