the they might and probably did all visit our old town at one time or another but not simultaneously and you have fallen into that i positively shudder to think of the fellow adds the scarcely civil critic has learned a bead roll of historic names whom he into his show as he calls it without caring whether they were or not � and sets them all by the ears together but was there ever such a fund of impudence to hear his running you would suppose that these miserable slips of painted with hardly the remotest outlines of the human figure had au the character and expression of michael s pictures well go on sir sir you break the illusion of the scene mildly the illusion what illusion the critic with a contemptuous on the word of a gentleman i see nothing in the sheet of canvas that forms your back ground or in these slips that and jerk along the front the only illusion permit me to say is in the s tongue � and that but a wretched one into the bargain we public men replies the meekly must lay our account sometimes to meet an severity of criticism but � merely for your own pleasure sir � let me entreat you to take another point of view sit further back by that young lady in whose face i have watched the reflection of every changing scene only oblige me by sitting there and take my word for it the slips of shall assume spiritual life and the canvas become an airy and of what it to represent i know better the critic settling himself in his seat with sullen but self complacent i main street and as for my own pleasure i shall best it by remaining precisely where i am the bows and waves his hand and at the signal as if time and had been awaiting his to move onward the street becomes alive again years have rolled over our scene and converted the forest track into a dusty which being with lanes and cross paths may fairly be as the main street on the ground of many of the log built sheds into which the first crept for shelter houses of quaint architecture have now risen these later are built as you see in one generally style though with such subordinate variety as keeps the s curiosity excited and causes each structure like its owner s character to produce its own peculiar impression most of them have one huge chimney in the centre with so vast that it must have been easy for the to fly out of them as they were wont to do when bound on an visit to the black man in the forest around this great chimney the wooden house clusters itself in a whole community of ends each ascending into its own separate peak the second story with its windows projecting over the first and the door which is perhaps arched provided on the outside with an iron hammer wherewith the s hand may give a thundering the timber frame work of these houses as compared with those of recent date is like the skeleton of an old giant beside the frail bones of a modem man of fashion many of them by the vast strength and of their substance have been preserved main street through a length of time which would have tried the of brick and stone so that in all the decay and continual of the street down to our own days we shall still behold these old occupying their long accustomed for instance on the upper comer of that green lane which shall hereafter be north street we see the house newly built with the still at work on the roof down the last of on the lower comer stands another dwelling � destined at some period of its existence to be the abode of an � which shall likewise survive to our own generation and perhaps long it thus through the medium of these we have now established a sort of kindred and hereditary acquaintance with the main street great as is the produced by a short term of years each single day through the settlement enough it shall pass before your eyes into the space of a few moments the gray light of early morning is slowly itself over the scene and the whose office it is to cry the hour at the street corners rings the last peal upon his hand bell and goes wearily with the the and other creatures of the night are thrust back on their hinges as if the town were opening its eyes in the summer morning forth the still drowsy cow herd with his putting which to his lips it a impossible to be represented in the picture but which reaches the pricked up ears of every cow in the settlement and tells her that the pasture hour is come house after main street house and sends the smoke up curling from its chimney like frosty breath from living nostrils and as those white wreaths of smoke though with climb so from each dwelling does the morning worship � its spiritual essence bearing up its human � find its way to the heavenly father s throne the breakfast hour being passed the inhabitants do not as usual go to their fields or but remain within doors or perhaps walk the street with a grave yet a disengaged and aspect that belongs neither to a holiday nor a sabbath and indeed this passing day is neither nor is it a common week day although of all the three it is the thursday lecture an institution which new england has long ago and almost forgotten yet which it would have been better to retain as bearing relations to both the spiritual and ordinary life and bringing each acquainted with the other the tokens of its however which 