74 CENTENNIAL HISTORY
Pilgrims brought this feeling with them from beyond the sea. The Sabbath was a great and holy day to them, and the Puritans of the other colonies had the same feeling in regard to it-the natural result of their Judaistic view of religion. They discarded the name "Sunday" and employed the Jewish name "Sabbath," and believing that the Sabbath had been transferred by divine appointment from the seventh day of the week to the first, they celebrated it in a thoroughly Jewish spirit, and with more than Jewish strictness. They copied Jewish example even in regard to the hour at which the Sabbath should begin ; they began it at sunset of Saturday night. "The keeping of Saturday night," says Elliott, "dates back to the early days of the Massachusetts colony. We find in one of the Company's letters to Endicott, at the very founding of the colony, a direction to cease labor early on Saturday afternoon. The Rev. Mr. Cotton gave to this the weight of his character, talents and reputation ; and they found it practicable to quote Scripture to sustain it,-for the Bible says, 'The evening and the morning were the first day. ' Nothing then was more easy than to believe that Sunday began with the sunset of Saturday. When that hour came, the cattle were housed, tools were laid up, and doors and gates were carefully closed ; the chickens went to roost, and the singing of birds was no longer heard; a universal hush settled upon New England, as the shadows of evening came over the landscape. Then, after six days of labor, old men and women, young men and children, sat down to rest ; and the stillness of the hour penetrated their hearts… The Sabbath day was at hand, and when at nine o'clock the curfew tolled through the forest, every one went quietly to bed, and slumbered till the Sabbath morning broke." In almost every home, the day was begun with prayer. No more work was done than was absolutely necessary in order to prepare food for the household and the cattle. "Few steps were taken, and there was but little talking, and that in a subdued voice. Personal cleanliness and a decent garb were universal ; and all the peo-