



Produced by David Widger










                         TWICE TOLD TALES

                          SUNDAY AT HOME

                      By Nathaniel Hawthorne



Every Sabbath morning in the summer time I thrust back the curtain, to
watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple, which stands opposite my
chamber-window.  First, the weathercock begins to flash; then, a fainter
lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower,
and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold, as it points to
the gilded figure of the hour.  Now, the loftiest window gleams, and now
the lower.  The carved framework of the portal is marked strongly out.
At length, the morning glory, in its descent from heaven, comes down the
stone steps, one by one; and there stands the steeple, glowing with fresh
radiance, while the shades of twilight still hide themselves among the
nooks of the adjacent buildings.  Methinks, though the same sun brightens
it every fair morning, yet the steeple has a peculiar robe of brightness
for the Sabbath.

By dwelling near a church, a person soon contracts an attachment for the
edifice.  We naturally personify it, and conceive its massive walls and
its dim emptiness to be instinct with a calm, and meditative, and
somewhat melancholy spirit.  But the steeple stands foremost, in our
thoughts, as well as locally.  It impresses us as a giant, with a mind
comprehensive and discriminating enough to care for the great and small
concerns of all the town.  Hourly, while it speaks a moral to the few
that think, it reminds thousands of busy individuals of their separate
and most secret affairs.  It is the steeple, too, that flings abroad the
hurried and irregular accents of general alarm; neither have gladness and
festivity found a better utterance, than by its tongue; and when the dead
are slowly passing to their home, the steeple has a melancholy voice to
bid them welcome.  Yet, in spite of this connection with human interests,
what a moral loneliness, on week-days, broods round about its stately
height!  It has no kindred with the houses above which it towers; it
looks down into the narrow thoroughfare, the lonelier, because the crowd
are elbowing their passage at its base.  A glance at the body of the
church deepens this impression.  Within, by the light of distant windows,
amid refracted shadows, we discern the vacant pews and empty galleries,
the silent organ, the voiceless pulpit, and the clock, which tells to
solitude how time is passing.  Time,--where man lives not,--what is it
but eternity?  And in the church, we might suppose, are garnered up,
throughout the week, all thoughts and feelings that have reference to
eternity, until the holy day comes round again, to let them forth.  Might
not, then, its more appropriate site be in the outskirts of the town,
with space for old trees to wave around it, and throw their solemn
shadows over a quiet green?  We will say more of this, hereafter.

But, on the Sabbath, I watch the earliest sunshine, and fancy that a
holier brightness marks the day, when there shall be no buzz of voices on
the exchange, nor traffic in the shops, nor crowd, nor business, anywhere
but at church.  Many have fancied so.  For my own part, whether I see it
scattered down among tangled woods, or beaming broad across the fields,
or hemmed in between brick buildings, or tracing out the figure of the
casement on my chamber-floor, still I recognize the Sabbath sunshine.
And ever let me recognize it!  Some illusions, and this among them, are
the shadows of great truths.  Doubts may flit around me, or seem to close
their evil wings, and settle down; but so long as I imagine that the
earth is hallowed, and the light of heaven retains its sanctity, on the
Sabbath,--while that blessed sunshine lives within me,--never can my
soul have lost the instinct of its faith.  If it have gone astray, it
will return again.

I love to spend such pleasant Sabbaths, from morning till night, behind
the curtain of my open window.  Are they spent amiss?  Every spot, so
near the church as to be visited by the circling shadow of the steeple,
should be deemed consecrated ground, to-day.  With stronger truth be it
said, that a devout heart may consecrate a den of thieves, as an evil one
may convert a temple to the same.  My heart, perhaps, has not such holy,
nor, I would fain trust, such impious potency.  It must suffice, that,
though my form be absent, my inner man goes constantly to church, while
many