He was trying to forget his
love for her, in hatred for her class. He was getting to feel toward
the silk stockings a little as Paul Hubbard did.
Probably one of this generation of New Englanders, who could have been
placed in Stockbridge the day following, would have deemed it a very
quiet Sabbath indeed. But what, by our lax modern standards seem very
venial sins of Sabbath-breaking, if indeed any such sins be now
recognized at all, to that generation were heinous and heaven-daring.
The conduct of certain reckless individuals that Sabbath, did more to
shock the public mind than perhaps anything that had hitherto occurred
in the course of the revolt. For instance, divers young men were seen
openly walking about the streets with their sweethearts during
meeting-time, laughing and talking in a noisy manner, and evidently
bent merely on pleasure. It was credibly reported that one man,
without any attempt at concealment, rode down to Great Barrington to
make a visit of recreation upon his friends. Several other persons,
presumably for similar profane purposes, walked out to Lee and Lenox
furnaces, to the prodigious scandal of the dwellers along those roads.
As if this were not enough iniquity for one day, there were whispers
that Abner Rathbun and Meshech Little had gone a fishing.
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