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A sense of the importance of rifle-practice is becoming very generally prevalent. Rifle-clubs are organizing in our country-towns, and target-practice by individuals is increasing to a degree which proves incontestably the interest which is felt in the subject.

Bell, and whirling away past the well-known stations; seeing the old south country-towns and hamlets sleeping in the warm light of the pure sun, which gave a yet ruddier colour to their tiled roofs, so different to the cold slates of the north.

He attempted to show its advantages by the healthy longevity attained by quiet old ladies in country-towns. But this is questioned by his critic, Dr. Beddoes, who admits the longevity, but denies the healthiness; he maintains that the old ladies are taking some new medicine every day, at least, if they have a physician who understands his business.

Sometimes a short address was given at the grave, as when Jonathan Alden was buried at Duxbury, in 1697. The Boston News Letter of December 31, 1730, notes a prayer at a funeral, and says: "Tho' a custom in the Country-Towns 'tis a Singular instance in this Place, but it's wish'd may prove a Leading Example to the General Practice of so Christian and Decent a Custom."

It seems very remarkable to me, and of great honour to the Dutch, that those of them that did go on shore to Gillingham, though they went in fear of their lives, and were some of them killed; and, notwithstanding their provocation at Schelling, yet killed none of our people nor plundered their houses, but did take some things of easy carriage, and left the rest, and not a house burned; and, which is to our eternal disgrace, that what my Lord Douglas's men, who come after them, found there, they plundered and took all away; and the watermen that carried us did further tell us, that our own soldiers are far more terrible to those people of the country-towns than the Dutch themselves.

Not only was there hardly any ordinary or extraordinary popular festival that was now celebrated without dramatic exhibitions; even in the country-towns and in private houses representations by companies of hired actors were common.

When he visited their houses in the country-towns, and turned out their chests and book-shelves, he found such wealth as might have lain in kings' treasuries; 'in those cupboards and baskets are not merely the crumbs that fall from the table, but the shew-bread which is angel's food, and corn from Egypt and the choicest gilts of Sheba. He gives the highest praise to the Preachers or Friars of the Dominican Order, as being most open and ungrudging, 'and overflowing with a with a kind of divine liberality. But both Preachers and Minorites, or Grey Friars, had been his pupils, his friends and guests in his family, and they had always applied themselves with unwearied zeal to the task of editing, indexing, and cataloguing the volumes in the library.

"The English clergy, in whose hands education entirely rests, bring up the first young men of the country as if they were all to keep grammar-schools in little country-towns; and a nobleman, upon whose knowledge and liberality the honour and welfare of his country may depend, is diligently worried, for half his life, with the small pedantry of longs and shorts."

Not only was there hardly any ordinary or extraordinary popular festival that was now celebrated without dramatic exhibitions; even in the country-towns and in private houses representations by companies of hired actors were common.

Till the sounds rolled with reverent loudness, as a book was heard to close: "Kai heis Kurios Iesous Christos, di hou ta panta kai hemeis di autou!" He was a handy man at his trade, an all-round man, as artizans in country-towns are apt to be.