Side glimpses from the colonial meeting-house

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J^mhaxHi CoUege tfbcwcf

BRIGHT LEGACY

One half the income firom this Lcficy, which was re-
cehred in i88o under the will of

JONATHAN BROWN BRIGHT
of Walthtffl, hlumchntetti. is to be expended for booki
for the College Llbmrj. The other half of the income
is devoted to scholarships in Harvard Universitj for the
benefit of descendants of

HBNRY BRIGHT, JR.,
who died at Watertowa, Massaehasetts, in 1686. In the
absence of sndi dcaceadants, other persons are eligible
to the schoiarshipe. The will requires that this aaaoance-
ment shall be made la ererjr book added to the Ubrarj
nnder its prorisloas.

^ntAn bp (MilUam Boot <Ii00«

COLONIAL TIMES ON BUZZARD'S BAY.

Illnstrated. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $1.50.
THE OLD COLONY TOWN, AND OTHER

SKETCHES. Crown 8vo, gilt top, f 1.35.
SIDE GLIMPSES FROM THE COLONIAL

MEETING HOUSE. Crown 8vo, gilt top,
'fi.50.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.
Boston and Nbw York.

SIDE GLIMPSES

FROM THE COLONIAL MEETING-
HOUSE

WILLIAM ROOT BLISS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

>li94

us l0fZ3J3

UC> iC i ?A.!^«l3

/

{liRAUj

A

Copjrright, 1894
By WILLIAM ROOT BLISS.

A U righU ruervtd.

TIU Riverstdg Pr»ss, CamMdgtt A^ius., U.S.A.
Electrotyped aud Printed by H. O. Houghton & Ca

To
MRS. ALICE MORSE EARLE

MV FBLLOW TRAVBLBR

ALONG THm BYWAYBS AND HBDGBS

OP

COLONIAL NBW ENGLAND

itittt 0fimptfe^ often Bring (ome

RUSKIN

HESE side glimpses will disclose to
the reader some facts so small that
they have not been thought worthy
of mention by historians who have looked at
colonial New England with a broad stare.
But small facts sometimes reveal large pic-
tures of human life ; they make the warp
and woof of common history, while deeds of
armies and of political parties make its sel-
vages. Thorold Rogers, when lecturing at
Oxford on the economic interpretation of
history, said that every fact is infinitely val-
.uable. He would have us search for the
facts of the life of the English people in
such sources as town registers, churchwar-
dens' accounts, court journals, church rec-
ords, obsolete laws, tax lists, old newspapers,

Thb Mekting-Houii Devil ....

Rnu AND Slavkry

Tnt CoMPOsiTB Puritan

Th> Pbrsokaliit op thb MranNO-HousB
Tri Suhhons to Worship ....
The Seatiho of thb Pbople

Thi Wretched Bovs

The Disturbers of Public Worship
The Neighbors op the Meeting-House
The Cohedt and Tkacbdv of the Pulpit

Thb Poor Parsons

The Notorious Mihistbks ....
The Simple Evanorlist ....
The Muse op Choral SonK
The Bible and the Confessional
The Houb-Glabs

** With innocent necromancy he calls the
dead out of tbeir graves, and makes them
play their drama over again."

Jambs Anthony Froudb.

SIDE GLIMPSES FROM THE
COLONIAL MEETING-HOUSE.

I.

THE MEETING-HOUSE DEVIL.

BOR a hundred and forty-eight years
an enormous brass weather - cock
whirled on the tip of the steeple of

the old brick meeting-house in Hanover

Street. There,

" With head erect, and unruffled form, ,
The hearty and tough old cock.
Through nind and rain, and cotd and warm,

All neathera continued to mock ;

And he whisked him round to face the Btorm /

And breast himself to the shock."

He wag nearly two hundred feet above the

street; three times as high as the highest

chimney-cap on Copp's Hill ; so high that

the steeple on which he stood was the most

conspicuous object in Boston, and a land-

2 SIDE GLIMPSES,

mark to seamen coming up the harbor.
There was another landmark on the high-
lands of Truro, — the great hulk of an old
meeting-house, whose windows blinked upon
the Atlantic Ocean, which, for years before
the Highland Light was built, rendered
service to mariners when they sighted
Cape Cod ; and when Nantucket was in her
glory, the homeward-bound whaleship, as she
neared the harbor, sent a man aloft to get the
bearings of the meeting-house steeple. The
conspicuousness of such landmarks in other
parts of New England is noted by a writer
of the last century, who says that the meet-
ing-house in Dudley '' stands on a hill which
commands a south prospect of extensive
farms to the distance of twelve miles ; " and
from one at Shrewsbury, — " east, west,
north, and south, twelve meeting-houses can
be seen."

The meeting-house of colonial New Eng-
land was the centre of the town ; distances
along the highways were measured from it ;
milestones directed the way to it. It stood
for certain customs, principles, and opinions
which were believed to be as immutable as
a divine decree. When I turn back, intent

THE MEETING-HOUSE DEVIL. 3

to hear the story it can tell, it rises before
me on the hilltop as if it were old Kronos
watching, through busy days and silent
nights, the events of the past ; and it seems
to say : —

" I am old, and have seen
Many things that have been ;
Both quarrel and peace,
And wane and increase.
Of ill and of well
Is the tale I tell."

The colonial town, isolated in its situation,
was like a little province living within itself ;
its parliament was the town meeting, but
its ruling influence was the meeting-house,
through which, in one way or another, the
entire life of the townspeople passed. This
influence did not end with the colonial pe-
riod ; it ran so far into the present century
that James Russell Lowell said, in one of his
published letters, " New England was all
meeting-house when I was growing up."

And yet the work of building it encoun-
tered obstacles as various as were the notions
of men. When Joseph Emerson preached
his first sermon at Pepperell, where he was
settled in the year 1747 on a yearly salary of
"sixty-two pounds ten shillings and thirty

./

4 SIDE GLIMPSES.

sis cords of fire wood," he said : " The Devil
is a great enemy to building meeting-ho\ises,
and to the utmost of his power stirs up the
corruptions of the children of God to op-
pose or obstruct so good a work." Let me
mention a few examples of obstruction
made by the Devil to whom this minister
referred.

When the town meeting of Hadley voted,
in the year 1750, to build a meeting-house in
" the center of the town," a dispute arose on
the question, Where is the centre? The
dispute increased to a quarrel which lasted
thirteen years ; during that period more than
fifty town meetings were convened to agree
upon a centre, and were adjourned to con-
tinue the quarrel, which was finally ended
by a lottery. The result of a quarrel begun
at Watertown, in the year 1692, was to build
two meeting-houses where one only was
needed. The hostile feelings that existed
for many years between the opposing wor-
shipers compelled the General Court to
order the removal of both edifices to other
locations ; on the principle, as may be sup-
nosed, that kennels of fiehtine does should

THE MEETING-HOUSE DEVIL, 5

was adopted at Harvard town when the peo-
ple could not agree upon a location for the
meeting-house. Every voter laid a stone
where he would have the house set ; with
these conditions, — that there be two heaps
of stones only, that the heap having the
largest number of stones shall mark the loca-
tion, and the selectmen shall " inspect the
heaps and see that no man lay more than
one stone." When the ceremony was ended,
it was found that no choice had been made
because each heap contained the same num-
ber of stones.

In the middle of the last century, a ludi-
crous result happened to the plans of certain
inhabitants of Concord, a town noted for its
ecclesiastical quarrels, who wanted to live in
peace and enjoy

** The easeful days, the dreamless nights,
The homely round of plain delights,
The calm, the unambitioned mind^
Which all men seek and few men find."

They obtained liberty from the General
Court to be set off and incorporated as a
town under the name of Carlisle ; and as
soon as they undertook to select a site for
their meeting-house they began a quarrel

6 SIDE GLIMPSES.

about it. Three years later, being as far aS*
ever from that peaceful condition for wbich
they had been looking, they petitioned the
Court to be set back to Concord, with all
their former privileges ; among which was,
of course, that of having their own way.

It was a religion of the New Englander
to have his own way. He nourished a will
which closed on its purpose as a steel trap
closes its jaws on a woodchuck. In his phi-
losophy

" Gifts count for nolhing i Will alone is great ;
All Ihinga give way betore il, soon or late."

Nothing but this will, stirred into action by
a disagreement with his neighbors, caused
the migration of Thomas Hooker and his
company, through a hundred miles of the
forest stretching from Boston to the Con-
necticut River, in the year 1636. The old
historian, William Hubbard, says of them :
" Some men do not well like, at least cannot
well bear, to be opposed in their judgments
and notions ; and thence were they not un-
willing to remove from under the power as
well as out of the bounds of the Massachu-
setts." And if we trace back the line until
we reacn Ro ; ■

THE MEETING-HOUSE DEVIL, 7

small children and one at the breast*' (as
pictured in the New England Primer), and
his fellows who suffered under the rule of
Queen Mary, it may be presumed that they
were, like Hooker, victims of "a certain
choler and obstinate will." *

The faculty of provoking a quarrel and of
maintaining it by willfulness was hereditary
in the race. At Wareham, as recently as
the year 1829, there was a quarrel caused
by the fact that proprietors and laborers in
cotton and iron mills recently established
could not obtain seats in the meeting-house,
and they wanted the town to build a larger
one. A few men settled the quarrel by si-
lently assembling at midnight, pulling down
the old meeting-house, and carting away its
remains. Such an act gives a new force to
the biological law by which living beings
tend to repeat their characteristics in their
descendants ; for I find in the records of
Newbury of the year 171 3, that Deacon

1 " Many wise men begin to suspect that the sufferings
of the martyrs and confessors in England were not so much
due to virtue and love of God's cause as to a certain choler
and obstinate will to contradict the magistrate there. ** —
Father Parsons^ A. D. 1598; letter in Historical Manu'
scripts Commission's Report, London.

8 SIDE GLIMPSES,

Merrill and Deacon Brown were summoned
to give reasons for absenting themselves
from the communion table, and they an-
swered in all seriousness that their opponents
had stolen the meeting-house, "violently
pulling it down and carrying it away con-
trary to our minds and consent."

When a quarrel was unusually prolonged,
it was customary for the General Court to
send a " viewing committee " to settle it.
The decision of this committee was always
final ; the house must be built on the spot
where the committee " set the stake," and a
report was required as evidence that this had
been done. The following is one of such
reports. It is of the year 1 747 : " To the
Hon"« Assembly at New Haven These may
inform your Hon" that the Prime Society in
Woodbury Have set up a Meeting House in
the place where the Courts Com^ set the
stake Have Covered & Inclosed it & for
Bigness Strength & Architecture it Does
appear Trancendantly Magnificent pr Joseph
Minor Society's clerk."

At Goshen, on the hilltops of Connecti-
cut, where the atmosphere of every summer
is fragrant with the odor of white clover

THE MEETING-HOUSE DEVIL, 9

blossoms, the farmers of 1740 "voted and
declared to be necessary " the building of a
meeting-house, but they did not venture to
ask of each other the question, Where shall
we build it ? They sent a petition to the
General Assembly of the State, praying for
a viewing committee to come over and set
the stake.

There were other things to be quarreled
about besides the location. At Stamford it
was the size ; whether it shall be thirty-eight
feet square, or forty-five feet long and thirty-
five feet wide. The records say that the
question was left " to the solemn decision of
God by a casting of lots ; and the solemn
ordinance being had, the lot carried it for a
square meeting house." In Wallingford the
doctrine of Probation caused a quarrel in the
church and a secession from it. The seced-
ers began to build a meeting-house eighteen
rods distant from their old house, when an
injunction to stop the work was supported
by the testimony of two women that a min-
ister could be heard preaching at a distance
of eighteen rods. In the mean time there
was a hand-to-hand fight in the foundation
trenches. This was a " spite meetin' house,"

lO SIDE GUMPSBS,

a name given to many others that were built
in New England under similar circumstances.

But some quarrels had a jovial ending,
like that at Mendon, in the year 1727. This
had lasted three years, when one of the op-
posing forces began to show signs of wea-
riness. It was captured by a proposition
adopted in town meeting '' to provide a barrel
of rum towards raising the meeting-house."
After the raising, some person attempted to
cut down a corner post in the frame ; but
the town was in such good spirits that it
voted not to try " to find out who hath by
cutting damnified the meeting-house."

Such quarrels gave birth to anecdotes
which have been preserved in the traditions
of New England. It is said that John Bulk-
ley, first minister of Colchester, was noted
for his worldly wisdom, and for that reason
a quarreling church in a neighboring town
appealed to him for help. He sent his ad-
vice by letter, and at the same time he wrote
to a man working on a distant farm. These
missives were interchanged, and that which
the church received was this : " You will see
/ to the fences that they be high enough and
strong; and you will take particular care

THE Meeting-house devil. h

that the Old Black Bull don't get in." When
this message from the wise parson had been
read, there was silence in the meeting-house.
At last the reader laid down the letter, and
with an air of extreme seriousness he said to
the assembled church : " Brethren, this ad-
vice is just what we want ! We 've neglected
our fences ; they *re as rotten as punk. That
old black bull means the Devil He has
got into our pasture ; and the thing for us
to do is to drive him out and set up stouter
fences ! "

RUM AND SLAVERY,

SHEN the quarrels were ended, they
began to build the meeting-house,
' and they made a holiday when they
raised its frame. As soon as the frame was
up, the townspeople seated themselves upon
its sills to enjoy the eating and drinking by
which the event was celebrated. It was a
very small town if it had not inhabitants
enough to cover the sills.

Provision for the celebration was princi-
pally rum. The town of Groton, in the year
1754, appointed two deacons, two captains,
two lieutenants, one ensign, and one private
to superintend a raising, and to provide " one
hogshead of Rum one loaf of white Sugar a
quarter of a hundred weight of brown Sugar,"
and food for one hundred men. The town of
Harvard, in the vear i711. "voted to provide
two mat

RUM AND SLAVERY, 13

of Rum to be West-india and one New Eng-
land. One hundred weight of brown Sugar,
Likewise Eight barrils of Sider And Eight
barrils of Bear.*' At Carver, in the year
1793, the selectmen bought two barrels of
rum which, they said, was " Licker sufficient
for the spectators." At Framingham, in the
year 1795, "one barrel of rum, three barrels
of cider and six barrels of beer " were pro-
vided for raising the meeting-house.

The people were not inexperienced in pre-
paring mixed drinks with meeting-house
liquors. A formula for the mixture was pub-
lished at Boston in the year 1757, over the
initials of Samuel Mather, which has often
been quoted : —

** To purest water sugar must be joined ;
With these the grateful acid is combined ;
When now these three are mixed with care,
Then added be of spirit a small share ;
And that you may the drink quite perfect see,
Atop the musky nut must grated be.''

An affinity between the rum and the re-
ligion of colonial times was exemplified in
the license granted to John Vyall to keep a
house of entertainment in Boston ; he must
keep it near the meeting-house of the Sec-
ond Church, where he offered his " invitation

14 SIDB GLIMPSES,

to thirsty sinners " who were going to hear
John Mayo or Increase Mather preach.

It was rum that forced the growth of
slavery in New England. The business of
distilling it from molasses had become, at
the end of the seventeenth century, an im-
portant factor in all sea commerce. Con-
necticut prohibited distilling because it made
molasses scarce ; but the prohibition was
stopped when business began to go where
rum could be obtained. In the year 1750,
there were more than sixty distilleries in
Massachusetts and thirty in Rhode Island
turning molasses into rum, gallon for gallon.
Rum proved to be the best commodity in
trading with the southern colonies for to-
bacco, with Indians for furs, with New-
foundland fishermen for codfish, and with
the Guinea coast for slaves. The commerce
in rum and slaves — making a circuit from
New England to the West India Islands,
thence to Africa, thence back to the islands
with slaves, thence home with molasses and
such negroes as had not been disposed of at
the islands — furnished nearly all the money
that was annually remitted to pay for mer-
chandise brought from England. The im-

RUM AND SLAVERY, 15

portation of slaves began early. The first
arrival at Boston was by the ship Desire,
February 26, 1637, bringing negroes, to- ^-
bacco, and cotton, from Barbados. She had
sailed from Boston eleven months before,
carrying Indian captives to the Bermudas to
be sold as slaves, and thus she became noted
as the first New England slave-ship. In
time, slaves were brought to Boston and to
Newport direct from Africa. Peter Faneuil,
to whom Boston is indebted for its Cradle of
Liberty, was deep in the business. Thomas
Amory, one of the solid men of Boston, was
distilling rum and selling slaves to customers
in North Carolina ; to one of them he writes
in the year 1724, saying: "In the fall we
expect negroes here direct from Guinea, a
vessel having sailed from here and one from
Rhode Island." Advertisements of " Just Ar-
rived " negroes may be seen in the Boston
"News-Letter " of the years 1726 and 1727 :

** To be Sold. A Parcel of Negros Just Ar-
rived, viz. Men, Women, Boys & Girls; they
are to be seen at Capt. Nathaniel Jarvis's House
near Scarlets Wharff."

" Likely Negro Boy & a Girl just arrived, to be
Sold by Mr. Samuel Sleigh, at Messieurs Oliver
& Welsteed's Warehouse on the Dock, Boston."

l6 SIDB GUMPSBS,

" Several very likely Young Negros of each Sex,
just Arrived to be Sold at Six or Twelve Month's
Credit, on good security, by Mr. Hugh Hall, Mer-
chant, at whose Ware-house on Mr. Pitt's Wharffe
is sold Barbadoes Rum."

There was no hesitation in selling slaves
on the auction block. I find in the Boston
" News - Letter " of September 19, 1715, a
notice of an auction sale " at Newport, R. I.,
of several Indians, Men and Boys, and a very
Likely Negro Man ; " and in the issue Janu-
ary 29, 1730, is advertised an auction sale
in Boston of "Two Likely Negroes." They
were treated in all respects as merchandise ;
they were rated with horses and cattle. In
an inventory of the property of Parson Wil-
liams, of Deerfield, of the year 1729, his
slaves Mesheck and Kedar were rated with
a " one eyed horse " and a *' weak back cow "
at £io each. I copy these lines from the
inventory of Thomas Bunker's estate, at Nan-
tucket, in the year 1721 : —

" the Indian boy Peleg .... ;£'2o. — "

" the Indian girl Darcas . . . ;fio. — "

"an old horse £ 5. — "

"22 turkeys £2, — "

RUM AND SLAVERY, IJ

In an inventory of the estate of Damaris
Coffin, of Nantucket, in the year 1728, are
three negro slaves rated at £107 los., and
two hundred and seventy. four sheep, with
ninety-seven lambs, rated at ;j^ios 12s. In
an inventory of her neighbor, Nathaniel
Gardner, in the year 1729, 1 find " one negro
boy Toby " rated at £go, with a bull, a cow,
a horse, twenty-seven sheep, eleven pewter
porringers, a warming-pan, and a clock at
£62. Slaves were the most valuable part
of the homestead property.

The mother of a slave had no title to her
child, as appears from the following adver-
tisements published at Boston, in December,
1726: —

"A Likely Young Negro Woman that hath
been about Twelve Months in the Country, and
her child Four Years Old, To be Sold."

" There is a strong able Negro Servant Woman
of 24 Years of Age fit for either Town or Country
Service, being accustomed to both, hath had the
Small Pox and speaks good English. As also a
Child of 16 months Old. To be Sold."

The Virginian as well as the West Indian
plantations were buyers of slaves from New
England importers. I find a letter writ-

l8 SIDB GLIMPSES.

ten by William Fitzhugh, of Westmoreland
County, Virginia, to " Mr. Jackson, of Piscat-
away, in New England," dated February
II, 1682, saying: "As to your Proposal
about the bringing in Negroes next fall, I
have this to ofifer ... to give zooo lbs To-
bacco for every Negro boy or girl that shall
be between the age of seven and eleven
years old, and to give 4000 lbs Tob. for
every youth or girl that shall be between
the age of 11 to 15, and to give 5000 lbs
Tob. for every young man or woman that
shall be above 15 years of age and not ex-
ceed 24, the said Negroes to be delivered
at my landing some time in Sepr. next."

The money value of a slave in each of
these three classes was, at that time, ;£i2,
£16, and ;£20. About the middle of the
next century, the money value of a slave of
the last class was stated in this bill of sale,
by which the seller shows a resemblance to
her slave, in the fact that she could not
write her own name : —

"Milton June the 9 1747 I the Subscriber
Elizabeth Wads worth of mil ton have Raced of
mr. Timothy Tolman of Stoughton the sum of
one Hundred and forty pounds old Tenor in full

RUM AND SLAVERY, 19

for a negro fello abought Eighteen years of age

named Primas — I say Reed pr me in presence

of Benjamin Wadsworth,

her
Elizabeth + Wadsworth"
mark

' Sometimes the trade in slaves was kept
going at such a brisk gait as to strip the
market of mm. In the year 1752, Isaac
Freeman wanted a cargo of rum and molas-
ses within five weeks. His correspondent at
Newport replied that it could not be had
in three months. *' There are so many ves-
sels," he said, " loading for Guinea we cant
get one hogshead of rum for the Cash. We
have been lately to New London and all
along the seaport towns in order to purchase
molasses, but cant get one hogshead." Cap-
tain Scott, not being able to get rum enough
to fill his slaver, took dry goods and sailed for
Guinea coast. There he found difficulty in
exchanging dry goods for negroes, as the wet
goods alone were wanted. He wrote home
that he had got 129 slaves, of which he had
lost 29, and was fearful of losing more. He
said : " I have repented a hundred times ye
buying of them dry goods. Had we laid out
two thousand pound in rum, bread, and flour,

20 SIDB GLIMPSBS.

it would purchase more in value than all our
dry goods." Simeon Potter was for watering
the rum and turning it out to the negroes in
short measure. He instructed his captain
sailing for Africa in the year 1768 : " Make
your Chief Trade with the Blacks, and Lit-
tle or none with the white people, if possible
to be avoided. Worter ye Rum as much as
possible and sell as much by short measure
as you can." This man represented the
commercial morality of the times, when hon-
esty was not always considered to be the best
policy. John Hancock was a smuggler of
teas ; Peter Faneuil was a smuggler of bran-
dies ; it was a common event to find bundles
of shingles short in number, quintals of fish
short in weight, casks of rum and hogsheads
of molasses short in gallons. A punitive
law of the province of Massachusetts Bay,
enacted in the year 17 18, and reenacted in
the year 173 1, declared that "Hogsheads
and casks which ought to answer the gage
by rod have been proved, and upon tryal in
their drawing off there hath been wanting
seven or eight gallons and sometimes more
in a hogshead which persons are obliged
to pay for." By watering the rum, by

RUM AND SLAVERY. 21

smuggling, by short measures, and by slave-
tradingy there grew up in the colonial meet-
ing-house a class of rich and respected
men, whose descendants have been enjoying
results of the wealth so acquired.

At Boston, June 24, 1700, Samuel Sew-
all — who was known as Judge Sewall, Dea-
con Sewall, and Captain Sewall, and who
preferred the last title to all others — pub-
lished an anti-slavery tract entitled "The
Selling of Joseph." He said: "Having
been long and much dissatisfied with the
Trade of fetching Negros from Guinea; at
last I had a strong Inclination to Write
something about it/* He was in favor of a
law imposing an import tax on slaves ; "that
all Importers of Negros shall pay 40 shillings
per head to discourage the bringing of them."
As time passed on and the slave trade flour-
ished, this goodman must have dismissed
his anti-slavery opinions ; for I have read in
the Boston "News-Letter " of June 23, 1726,
an advertisement of which I here give a copy :
"To be sold by Mr. Samuel Sewall at his
House in the Common, Boston, several
likely Young Negro Men & Boys Just Ar-
rived."

22 SIDB GLIMPSES,

The business of trading in slaves was not
immoral by the estimate of public opinion in
colonial times. A deacon of the church in
Newport esteemed the slave trade with its
rum accessories as home missionary work.
It is said that on the first Sunday after the
arrival of his slaver he was accustomed to
offer thanks '' that an overruling Providence
had been pleased to bring to this land of
freedom another cargo of benighted heathen
to enjoy the blessings of a Gospel dispensa-
tion."

Rum was not only distilled in the New
England colonies, it was also imported from
the West Indies to supply an increasing de-
mand It was advertised for sale with dress
goods and articles for women's wear ; such
advertisements I have seen in Connecticut
newspapers of the years 1786 and 1791 : —

" St. Croix Rum
By the hogshead very cheap.

Callicoes and Chintzes, Lawns and Cambrics,
Black and Green Persians, Modes, Lustrings,
Silk and Linen Handkerchiefs, Rattinets, Du-
rants, Tummies, Moreens, Calimancoes, Tambo-
reens. Jamaica and Antigua Rum By the Hogs-
head and Barrel."

RUM AND SLAVERY. 23

A merchant advertises that "St. Croix
Rum will be given for a few thousands of
one and an half inch square-edg'd White
Oak Plank, or Red Oak hogshead staves."
He is fitting out a vessel for a voyage to the
West Indies and Africa. Farmers in the
vicinity hearing of his wants carry in their
oak planks and staves^ and return home
loaded with rum. Rum is found afloat as
well as ashore. I quote an instance from a
Norfolk paper of June, 1787 : —

** On the evening of the 9th the Packet Joseph
and Peggy, from New York, bound for this port,
was lost on a reef of rocks near Smith Island.
The captain, crew, and one woman passenger
clung to the shrouds, and in this perilous situa-
tion remained until next morning, when they
fortunately reached the shore in their boat. On
their landing the barbarous and inhuman conduct
of ruffians in the form of men surpassed the re-
ception they met with from raging elements, who
in place of rendering every assistance in their
power, accumulated their distress by plundering
what few articles they saved; and at the very
time the ocean as it were pitied the sufferings of
her victims by floating a couple of barrels of rum,
so acceptable at this juncture, the monsters,
insensible to every tie of nature or compassion.

24 SIDE GLIMPSES.

forcibly seized them, and left these children of
misfortune to shift for themselves."

An end of slave trading and a decrease of
rum distilling in New England began to ap-
pear soon after the constitution of the State
of Massachusetts was adopted. In the year
1 78 1, Nathaniel Tennison,a farmer of Barre,
who owned ten slaves, was indicted for
'' assaulting beating and imprisoning " one
of them named Quock. He was tried in the
Supreme Judicial Court, where his defense
that Quock was a slave brought from Africa
and sold to him was answered by the Decla-
ration of Rights embodied in the constitution
of the Stat^: "All men are born free and
equal and have certain natural, essential, and
unalienable rights/' The court decided that
slavery had been abolished in Massachusetts
by the adoption of its constitution and Decla-
ration of Rights.

In Connecticut a law of the year 1784
declared that all slaves thereafter born shall
be free at twenty-five years of age. But the
trade in slaves was continued, as appears
from this advertisement in the New Haven
" Gazette " of November 9, 1786 ; —

RUM AND SLAVERY, 25

" To be sold at public vendue on Tuesday the
29th of November instant, at the dwelling house
of Captain Enos Atwater, of Cheshire, deceased,
a good Negro Wench, about twenty years old.
Also a brass wheeFd Clock, a weaver's Loom,
with tackling, sundry feather beds, and furniture
and a variety of articles of household furniture
too numerous to mention."

And this from the New Haven " Chroni-
cle " of January 23, 1787 : —

"Wanted to Purchase. A number of likely
Young Negroes from 14 to 20 years of Age.
Enquire of D. Bowen."

And this from the New Haven " Gazette "
of April 19, 1797: —

" To be sold a healthy strong and active Ne-
gro Boy, about 1 1 years of age. Enquire of the
printers."

The Connecticut census of the year 1790
showed a slave population of more than
two thousand ; its fugitive slaves and slaves
for sale were advertised- up to the end of the
century.

In Rhode Island, the legislature enacted
that no person who may be born after the
first day of March, 1784, shall be held as a

26 SIDB GLIMPSES.

slave, and three years later all slave trad-
ing in that State was prohibited by laws
with severe penalties. But as slavery made
a profitable market for rum, the trade was
continued between Africa and the West
India Islands by Rhode Island men and
Rhode Island vessels, which came home to
Newport to renew their outfits. A letter
dated at Newport, May 9, 1791, and printed
in the "American Museum" of that year,
says : —

" On the 7th instant arrived here from an Afri-
can sea voyage (but last from Havannah, where
the slaves were sold) a bark belonging to this
town commanded by a Captain Wolf, owned by
said Wolf and Caleb Gardiner. One that was
on board this vessel, during the voyage, informed
me that a few days after they sailed from Africa
symptoms of the small-pox appeared upon a fe-
male slave. She was kept in the maintop three
days then taken down, brought to the side of the
vessel and thrown overboard by the captain him-
self. It is said the reason of his drowning her
was lest she should communicate the disease to
those on board who had not had it.''

The universal custom of drinking rum is
the saddest fact in the history of the colo-

RUM AND SLAVERY. 27

nies, and it occasionally aroused a protest
from the colonial pulpit. James Keith,
preaching at Bridgewater in the year 171 7,
said : " Besides other evils which might
be mentioned, I would refer particularly to
the excessive and prodigious expense upon
strong drink ; above all that of Rum ; I say
the scandalous and horrible abuse of Rum
which threatens this land and this place."
A specification in Cotton Mather's indict-
ment against the people of New England,
which, in his own handwriting, is preserved
in the Massachusetts archives, was "A
Flood of Excessive Drinking with Incen-
tives thereto." One of these incentives was
the general custom of anointing the frame of
a meeting-house with rum ; and the habits of
excessive drinking, thus formed at the meet-
ing-house, ran down to distant generations
through the mysterious channels of heredity.
Men were often to be seen standing up to
confess before the congregation that they
had been "overtaken with strong liquor."
Rum became as abundant as water; there
was no assembly, from a wedding to a
funeral, without it. In harvest time the
meeting-house bell was rung, at eleven

28 SIDE GLIMPSES,

o'clock in the forenoon and at four o'clock in
the afternoon, to call laborers from the fields
to drink their allowance of rum. Once a
year, in sleighing time, farmers drove to Bos-
ton or to Newport with their farm products,
to be sold; and they always loaded their
sleds for the return journey with rum, first ;
then they took tobacco and salt codfish;
then, if there was a?ny money left from the
sales, they bought tea and coffee for the
women folks.

Two generations ago, intemperate drink-
ing began to disappear; and when a meet-
ing-house frame was raised at Plymouth,
Mass., in the year 1831, it was stated as a
remarkable fact that " the workmen refrained
entirely from the use of ardent spirits." But
people who went to sea began to reform
themselves earlier than did those who stayed
ashore and built meeting-houses. A letter
published at Philadelphia the 26th of May,
1791, says: "'Tis a fact worthy of notice
that no rum or spirit of any kind was used
on board the ship Brothers, Captain Josiah,
on the late voyage to Canton. The constant
drink of the sailors was spruce beer.*'

IIL

THE COMPOSITE PURITAN.

HE original meeting-house was shame-
fully .unecclesiastical in its appear-
ance without and within. It looked
like a barn. It was covered with cloven
boards ; the preacher stood behind a table ;
the hearers sat upon benches ; daylight en-
tered through square openings protected by
"shuts/* and covered by small glass win-
dows, or paper windows made translucent by
oil. There was neither paint nor plaster in
it ; but there were holes in the floor to be
used as spittoons.

Townspeople habitually grumbled when
taxes were proposed for making repairs, and
therefore the meeting-houses of New Eng-
land fell gradually into a dilapidated con-
dition ; like that in Salem village, which, as
say the records of the year 1692, remained
"for a great while without any repairs so that
by reason of broken windows stopt up by

30 SIDE GLIMPSES. .

boards and others wide open it is sometimes
so cold that it is uncomfortable and some-
times so dark that it is almost unusefuL" In
this shabby house^ built for divine worship, I
hear the minister complaining of " the Lord's
table not being provided with aught else but
two pewter tankards." The Salem meeting-
house was not a solitary example. A war-
rant for a town meeting at Rochester, in the
year 1731, said that the object was "To
know ye Towns Mind Respecting some
speedy care & propper method to Repair the
Meeting House so as to make it comfortable
to attend ye publicke worship." A warrant
for a town meeting at Wareham, in the year
1756, said: "To see if ye Town will raise
money enough to Repair the Meeting House
Glass Windows and make it comfortable."

Similar had been the state of things in
Old England. The "decays of churches
and unseemly keeping of chancels " had be-
come so common in rural towns that Eccle-
siastical Commissioners, by direction of
Queen Elizabeth, ordered the tables of Com-
mandments to be " set up in the east end of
the chancel, to be read not only for edifica-
tion but also to give some comlye ornament

THE COMPOSITE PURITAN, 31

and demonstration that the same is a place
of religion and prayer." These tables of the
Commandments, which were usually flanked
byornate pictorial representations of Moses
and Aaron as large as life, were whitewashed,
or were torn down and broken in pieces, by
the Puritan zealots who ruled England at
times before the Restoration.^

There was no authority competent to set
up the Commandments or any comely orna-
ment in the colonial meeting-house. Its
interior represented the barrenness of the
colonial mind. But this was not true of all
English colonics; the meeting-house in which
the first legislature of Virginia assembled at
Jamestown, in the year 1619, had pulpit and
pews built of cedar, wide windows that could
be opened and shut according to the wea-
ther, and its interior was kept " passing sweet
and trimmed up with divers flowers." The
people who formed the New England colo-
nies, being of a coarser type, had not been
taught the love of flowers ; they felt no desire

1 In the Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, A. D.
1547, days are mentioned when " in d3rvers paryche churches
alle imagys pullyd downe thorrow alle Ynglonde and all
churches new whytte Ijrmed with the commandmenttes
wryttyne -on the walles." ,

32 SIDE GLIMPSES.

to adorn their houses of worship with fes-
toons of clematis and honeysuckle and trail-
ing arbutus ; nor did they care to preserve
them from decay. They were required by
law to build a meeting-house, and by various
laws they were required to go to worship in it.
Sujch laws were enacted and reenacted from
the beginning of the colonies; and in the
year 171 5 the legislature of Massachusetts
declared that all able-bodied persons, "not
otherwise necessarily prevented," who "shall
for the space of one month together absent
themselves from the publick worship," shall
be fined twenty shillings ; and, if unable to
pay the fine, " to be set in the cage or stocks
not exceeding three hours according to the
discretion of the justices." The -existence
of these laws is evidence that church-going
was not a love of the people ; and this fact
can be accounted for if you will look at the
ingredients composing the population which
has been called Puritan.

It was during the reign of Queen Eliza-
beth that "Puritaine" became a name. The
clergy of the Church of England were at a
difference in regard to wearing what John
Fox called "mathematical caps with four

THE COMPOSITE PURITAN, 33

corners," and "theatrical dresses," and " Pop-
ish insignia." A royal decree published in
March, 1564, made it imperative upon all min-
isters of the Gospel to wear the regulation
vestments when officiating at Divine service.
Dissent from this decree by many ministers
became so strenuous that the Archbishop
told the Queen, in regard to the dissenters,
"These precise folks would offer their
goods, and their bodies to prison rather
than relent." Then the dissenters were
first called Puritans ; as " men that did pro-
fess a greater purity in the worship of God,
and a greater detestation of the ceremonies
and corruptions of Rome than the rest of
their brethren."

The Puritan made himself conspicuous by
resisting the impositions of the rubric as to
the use of the cross in baptism, the ring in
marriage, and the kneeling posture at the
communion. He refused to join in religious
services under the guidance of a minister
wearing a surplice or other vestments of the
Church of England. He could say: —

" I am no quaker not at all to sweare,

Nor papist to sweare east and mean a west,
But am a protestant and will declare
What I can nott and what I can protest

34 SIDE GLIMPSES,

** Paul had a doake and bookes and parchments too.
But that he wore a Surplice I '11 not sweare,
Nor that his parchments did his orders show,
Or in his bookes there was a Common prayer." i

The opinion of a period is seldom at fault
in estimating the character of men and
events belonging to it I may therefore
quote from a letter of the " Salvetti Corre-
spondence/' dated at London i6th Decem-
ber, 1628, which says of the Puritans: '*With
those people it is a maxim to oppose every-
thing, never to be satisfied with the present
nor to agree with what is proposed for the
future."

The New England Puritan was not, like
the daughters of Jupiter, "crippled by fre-
quent kneeling." In the services of public
worship he would not kneel, but stood up for
prayer; would not stand up, but sat down
for singing ; would not allow the Bible to be
read from the pulpit ; would not broaden the
a in Hades ; would not have Christmas day
nor Easter morning in his calendar.2 His

1 From satirical verses of the period of the Restoration.

^ It was not until the year 1681 that the Massachusetts
law forbidding the observance of Christmas Day was re-
pealed. But the Puritan still hated it. We get a savor of
his hatred in Sewall's diary of the year 1685, Christmas

THE COMPOSITE PURITAN, 35

climax is seen in the bigotry of John Endi-
cott cutting out the cross of St George
from the flag of his country, because the
Cross was a symbol used by the Church of
Rome. The religious Puritan to whom the
Cross was an offense was a darkened being.
There could have been but little of the true
devotional spirit in men or women who re-
garded with aversion that emblem of the
Passion which stirs devotional hearts to-day.
Not for them was the sentiment of Xavier's
hymn : —

" Tu, tu, mi Jesu, totum me
Aplexus es in Grace."

Palfrey says that the Puritan represented
the " manliness of England." It is truer to
say that he represented the obstinate willful-
ness of the English race. His ranks con-
tained two distinct classes : the doctrinal
and the state Puritans. To secure a political
independence, many doctrinals came to New
England, leaving a land in which John Mil-
ton stood for freedom, to form a state from
which Roger Williams could be banished.

Day : ** Carts come to town and shops open as usual ; some
somehow observe ye day, but are vex'd, I believe, that ye
Body of ye People profane it ; and, blessed be God, no
authority yet to compell them to keep it."

36 SIDE GLIMPSES.

It is welbknown that here they became in-
tolerant and unmerciful, and, as their friend
Sir Richard Saltonstall said, did " fyne whip
and imprison men for their consciences/'
They did this not because of the exigencies
of their political situation, nor because the
teachings of the time were cruel; but be*
cause they had a mission which they could
carry on only by claiming their own way in
all temporal and spiritual matters.

They landed in Massachusetts with inten-
tion to establish a " Theocrasie." John
Winthrop had thought of it on the voyage,
and John Cotton published it in his letter
to Lord Say and Sele, in which he said:
" Theocracy is the best form of Government
in the Commonwealth as well as in the
Church." As the Puritan idea was that
rigid discipline is necessary for man, and
coercion by laws is a necessary part of disci-
pline, they legislated to punish a temper of
mind and a fashion of dress, as well as to
prevent crimes. They based their laws on a
historic covenant with the ancient Hebrews,
and they said, '* No custom nor prescription
shall ever prevail amongst us . . . that
can be proved to be morally sinful by the

" THE COMPOSITE PURITAN, 37

Word of God." ^ They harassed opponents
for nothing which can be acknowledged to
have been a crime ; and they would have
put John Bunyan into Bedford Jail, had
Bunyan and Bedford been in Massachusetts
or Connecticut. Their scheme of govern-
ment eventually failed ; but they never had
any desire to establish one on the principles
of civil and religious liberty.

All this is to be accounted for by the
fact that they were disciples of John Cal-
vin. Who was he? He was a theologian
who lived between the years 1509 and 1564,
in France and Switzerland; and was the
inventor of a system of theology which for
nearly three centuries exercised a prodigious
influence upon all persons who accepted it.
This system teaches that the only assurance
of salvation which a believer in the Christian
religion can have rests upon God's sovereign
purpose, whereby he has predestinated some
men, women, and children to eternal life, and
others to eternal death. The fortunate ones
are said to be " effectually called," and to be
kept in a line of progressive holiness unto

^ TJie General Laws and Liberties of the Massachusetts
Colony^ 1648-1672. *

38 SIDB GLIMPSES.

the end. Calvin rendered some service to
the progress of human thought ; but he was
as bigoted and intolerant as any man of his
time. At his instigation Michael Servetus,
a theologian whose orthodoxy he doubted,
was arrested, while in church at Geneva, and
imprisoned. Calvin desired to have him be-
headed ; but the civil council condemned him
to be burned at the stake; and thus this
preacher perished in October, 1553. Calvin
then found it necessary for his own justifica-
tion to publish a treatise, which appeared in
February, 1554, entitled a "Defense of the
Doctrines of the Trinity against the detesta-
ble Errors of Michael Servetus, wherein it is
also shown that it is lawful to punish Heri-
tics with the sword." A few weeks later
there appeared a " Treatise concerning Heri-
tics/* — a collection of passages from various
authors in favor of religious toleration. It
was compiled by S^bastien Castellion, who
in his preface to the book shows the unim-
portance of such doctrines as Predestination,
and sets forth Christianity as a system of
life, and not a system of dogma. Michelet
says that he established for all time the
great law of tolerance ("posa pour tout

THE COMPOSITE PURITAN, 39

I'avenir la grande loi de la tolerance").
Calvin had already declared that heretics
ought to be punished with death. He knew
Castillion; he pursued him with relentless
persecution; declared that he was Satan's
emissary to deceive the thoughtless; stig-
matized him as ''blasphemous, malignant,
full of animal lusts, a dirty dog, impious, ob-

scene."

John Calvin was duplicated in the Puritans
who founded New England. His spirit ban-
ished Mrs. Hutchinson and Roger Williams.
It hanged the people called Quakers, in the
years 1659 ^^^ 1660, and the people called
witches, in the year 1692. It spoke on the
vituperative tongue of Cotton Mather when
that subtle priest maligned the men of Boston
who established the Brattle Street church, in
the year 1700. It burned at the stake a
negro slave woman, at Charlestown, in the
year 1755; and it tormented the people
called Shakers, in the year 1782. The
founders of New England are not to be
blamed because they were unfriendly to
civil and religious liberty, for John Calvin
stood behind them and shaped the form and
policy of their government. *

40 SIDE GLIMPSES,

Plymouth followed in the Puritan train.
When Winthrop's company bad settled on
the peninsula, which, as their records of Sep-
tember, 1630, say, "shalbe called Boston,"
the Plymouth colony was in a state of decay.
It had been ashore nearly ten years, and had
not established a town nor created a com-
merce. So sluggish had been its growth, and
so comatose was its condition, that no records
of its public life had been written. It had
put to death John Billington, one of the Lon-
don scapegraces who were shuffled aboard
the Mayflower while she lay at Southamp-
ton, and it had punished others of that class,
whose mutinous speeches had caused the
self-protecting "compact" to be signed in
the cabin of the ship when she was at anchor
in Cape Cod harbor. Its trusted agent,
Isaac Allerton, had ''plaid his own game,"
as Governor Bradford wrote, ''and rane a
course to ye great wrong & detrimente of ye
plantation ; " whose future he said, was
"foulded up in obscurite & kepte in ye
clouds." Many of the people were dissatis-
fied with the location ; they said the harbor
was the poorest and the soil the barrenest on
the coast of New England.

THE COMPOSITE PURITAN, 41

While the Massachusetts colony was found-
ing many towns, the Plymouth colony was
steadily loli^sing its population. Winthrop,
writing in the year 1646, felt thankful, in his
sympathy for the colony, that " one Captain
Cromwell," a privateer with three ships and
eighty men who had captured richly laden
Spanish vessels in the West Indian seas,
had been forced by adverse winds into Ply-
mouth harbor ; he said, " Divine Providence
so directing for the help of that town which
was now almost deserted."

The Plymouth colony was saved from ruin
by an overflow into it of people from the
Bay colony who had the means of living.
Erelong it became true that the two colo-
nies were one in theology and politics. As
James Cudworth, the magistrate of Scituate,
wrote: "Plymouth Saddle is on the Bay
horse ; our Civil Powers are so exercised in
matters of religion and conscience that we
have no time to effect anything that tends
to the promotion of the civil weal ; but must
have a State religion and a State ministry
and a State way of maintenance."

The population was a peculiar mixture of
human beings. At the outset, doctrinal Pu-

42 SIDE GUMPSES,

ritans sent by commercial adventurers and
accompanied by educated ministers, who
were to convert the Indians, came to the
Massachusetts in congregations and in com-
panies. The immigrants who came later
were mainly of a different sort. They were
not religionists. They came out of a stratum
of society lying between the gentry and the
peasantry of England. No representatives
of science, or art, or literature came; no
statesman, no poet came ; nor any great
leader of social life. But there did come,
with a few merchants and lawyers, ship-
loads of common people moved by the same
love of adventure which to-day carries Eng-
lishmen to unknown lands : yeomen, trades-
men, mechanics, servants, and idlers. "And
by this mean," as Bradford wrote, " the cun-
trie became pestered with many unworthy
persons."

These all put together made the composite
New England Puritan. Into this mass must
be mixed Huguenots, Germans, Scotch pris-
oners sent by Cromwell, and white slaves
imported from Ireland to be sold, who be-
came the forebears of a part of the popula-
tion ; and to complete the contents of the

THE COMPOSITE PURITAN. 43

cauldron I must add the abundant offspring
of miscegenation between the Indian and the
white races. Those were licentious times
when Winthrop, writing to Plymouth, July
28, 1637, thought it necessary to say, of the
captives taken in the Pequot war : " We
have ye wife & children of Mononotto, a
woman of a very modest countenance and
behaviour. It was by her mediation that
the English maids were spared from death,
and were kindly used by her ; so that I have
taken charge of her. One of her first re-
quests was that the English would not abuse
her body." That Indian mother spoke a
better morality than was then prevalent in
New England. There is now in existence
a manuscript letter concerning the Pequot
captives, from Israel Stoughton to Governor
Winthrop, which is indorsed by the Gov-
ernor, "Received 5th month 6th day 1637."
It speaks of 48 or 50 women and children
taken captives, and then it says : *' There is
a little squa that Steward Calacot desires to
whom he hath given a coate. Lifetenant
Davenport also desires one, to witt a tall one
that hath three stroakes upon her stummach
thus ! ! ! he desireth her if it will stand with

44 SIDB GLIMPSES.

your good liking ; the Solomon ye Indian de-
sireth a young little squa which I know not,
but I leave all to your dispose."

All these people were required by law to
sit in the colonial meeting-house. They
were nominally Puritans, and are so spoken
of by historians and orators. They acquired
certain habits of mind under Calvinian
teachings which became characteristic of
their descendants, in whose acts to-day ap-
pears the original composite ancestor.

Many of Miss Wilkins's character stories
may be read as true delineations of the com-
posite Puritan's hereditary traits, which are
still clinging to the rural New Englander as
moss clings to the old stone walls on his
farm. For example, there is Marcus Wood-
man, who said that the minister "was n't
doctrinal." He spoke about it in church
meeting, and he kept getting more and more
set, every word he said. He had a way of
saying things over and over, as if he was
making steps and raising himself up on
them. Finally he said if that minister was
settled over that church, he himself would
never go inside the door. Somebody re-
plied, " You'll have to sit on the steps, then,

THE COMPOSITE PURITAN. 45

brother Woodman." He answered, gritting
his teeth, " I will sit on the steps fifty years
before 1 11 go into this house, if that man is
settled here ! "

There was the doctrinal Puritan ! His
mind was full of the stubborn animosity of
his remote composite ancestor, whose facial
features he showed in ''a mild forehead, a
gently curving mouth, and a terrible chin
with a look of strength in it that might have
abashed mountains/' Sunday after Sunday
he walks to the meeting-house with Esther
Barney, to whom he is engaged to be mar-
ried, and takes a seat on the steps while she
passes within.

People ask: "Is that Mr. Woodman
crazy } "

The answer is : " No ; he has got too
much will for his common sense, and the
will teeters the sense too far into the air."

So it was with the Composite Puritan of
New England.

^^>^r->J'^<?^

THE PERSONALITY OF THE MEETING- HOUSE.

|HE first refinement made in the co-
lonial meeting-house was the eleva-
tion of the preacher into a pulpit.
Pulpits were beautiful works of art in the
cathedrals of England, and more beautiful
in those of Flanders and the Netherlands.
But some Puritans and Quakers had con-
demned them because, as one of the latter
said "They have a great deal of super-
fluity and vain pains of carving, painting,
and varnishing upon them, together with
your cloth and velvet cushion, because of
which, and not for the height of them above
ground, we call them Chief Places,"

Of the parishes of England it was required
that every church shall set up "a coniley
and honest pulpit, in a convenient place, for
the preaching of God's word." The green
cushion adorning the pulpit was an object of

PERSONALITY OP THE MEETING-HOUSE. 47

special interest. A story of the creation of
this indispensable ornament is told in a par-
ish record ^ of the year 1635 : —

Pd for foure gras greene taselles for the Cossen .012 o

for Silke for pulpit cussen 078

for two ounces and halfe of greene fringe .063
for halfe yard of greene broadcloth ....066

for 7 pounds of flocks 036

for 9 yardes of Gould chaine and 3 quarterns 066

for Satin and four skenes of silk o i 10

for one ell of canvis 015

John Prince for making the Coshen ...050

Church records of Medford state that on
Sunday, July 28, 1771, "was used for the first
time the new pulpit cushion given by William
Pepperell, Esq'% who imported it from Eng-
land at a cost of eleven guineas."

In the second century of New England,
the pulpit became large and lofty, resem-
bling a section of a fortress ; the long stairs
ascending to its door were covered with a
carpet ; a canopy or sounding-board was sus-
pended over it, in which bats made nests;
"and it was no uncommon thing," as the
Branford annals say, "for a bat to get loose

1 The Church Warden's Accounts of the Parish of St,
Marys, Readintr, Berks \ 1550 to 1662.

48 SIDE GLIMPSES.

during the service and go scooting through
the house." Dorcas made a green velvet
cushion for the pulpit ; one of the selectmen
put on his Sunday clothes and with much
ado rode o£E to Boston to buy an hourglass
for it ; and at last it became the Chief Place
in the colonial meeting-house.

The oak pulpit and the green cushion of a
meeting-house which was built at Salem in
the year 171 3 are mentioned in a private let-
ter of that date, which says : " The meeting-
house is well built 3 stories high, 28 by 42
feet, with oak timber and covered with one
and one-half inch plank and with clapboards
upon that, and it is intended to have ye in-
side finished with plastering when ye Pre-
cinct are able. Ye pulpit and ye deacons
seat are made of good oak ; and a green
cushion on ye pulpit given by Mr. Higgin-
son. I had ye above particulars from Mr.
Drake ye builder of ye house who is a man
of considerable acquirement. He also told
me that he prepared a box to put under ye
foundation containing ye year of our Lord
that ye building was begun, and various
particulars about ye framing of ye church.
He also put in copper coins of ye reign of

PERSONALITY OP THE MEETING-HOUSE. 49

our blessed Sovereign Queen Anne, and an
epistle to yc sovereign who shall rcIgn over
these Provinces when ye box shall be found,
and another to ye Household of faith in
Salem Middle Precinct exhorting them to
maintain ye doctrine of ye founders, to ye
utter confusion and sham of all Baptists
Mass mongers and other heretical unbeliev-
ers. Mr. Trush who is himself a Godly man
and a member of ye church would not agree
to put ye box under ye house, as they
thought it savored of presumption and vain
glorying ; and some of them would not agree
to ye sentiments of ye letter to ye House-
hold of faith, but he privately put ye box
under ye pulpit, when ye house was near
built, enclosed in brick and good clay."

In winter the colonial meeting-house was
a cold place. It may be said that the con-
gregation sat " shivering on the brink " of
perdition, if the icy temperature of the house
and the terrible doctrines of the sermon are
to be taken together. Samuel Sewall notes
that there was a " Great Coughing " in the
congregation ; that the sacrament bread was
frozen as hard as pebbles, and pieces of it
rattled as they fell in the pewter plates.

5© SIDE GLIMPSES,

His description of the temperature was true
for nearly two hundred years. The winters
in New England were colder than they are
now. Sewall has mentioned in his diary a
wintry Sunday in January, 1716: "An ex-
traordinary Cold Storm of Wind and Snow.
Blows much worse on coming home at Noon,
and so holds on. Bread was frozen at the
Lord's Table. ... At Six-a-clock my ink
freezes so that I can hardly write by a good
fire in my Wive's Chamber." Another win-
try Sunday is described by Cotton Mather
in February, 1717 : "On the 24th day of
the month comes Pelion upon Ossa ; an-
other snow storm came on which almost
buried the memory of the former, with a
storm so famous that Heaven laid an inter-
dict on the religious assemblies throughout
the country, on this Lord's Day, the like
whereunto hath never been seen before."
Another wintry Sunday is noted by Row-
land Thacher, minister at Wareham, in Feb-
ruary, 1773: "A remarkably cold Sabbath
reaching as far as New York. Some by
their glasses found it to be many degrees
colder than ever was known in New Eng-
land. Many were froze. I myself coming

PERSONALITY OP THE MEETING-HOUSE, 51

home from Meeting had my face touched
with the frost." This was Arctic weather ;
and the obstinacy with which New England
congregations sacrificed themselves to it,
during two centuries, was piteous. When at
last they discovered that it was not sinful
to be warm on Sunday, they tried to induce
the town meeting to put stoves into the
meeting-house. An instance is recorded
in the records of Waltham, of the year 1818 ;
some persons of their own volition had set
up a stove in the Waltham meeting-house,
and had asked the town to furnish fuel for it.
They might, says the writer of the story,
" as well have applied fire to gunpowder and
have expected no explosion." The town
ordered the stove to be put out-of-doors.
Perez Briggs and Ebenezer Bourne, select-
men of Wareham in the year 1825, called a
town meeting, "To see if the Town will
furnish sufficient money belonging to the
meeting-house to Purchase a Stove and pipes
and furnish wood and attendance for said
Stove."

What was the town's reply to this request ?
" Not to purchase a Stove and pipes. Not
to furnish wood and attendance. What

52 SIDE GLIMPSES,

money belongs to the Town to remain in
the Treasurer's hands until otherwise or-
dered/'

Worshipers in these frigid meeting-
houses were the people of whom it has been
said that they wrote notes of the sermons.
The truth was, that the major part of the
worshipers could not write, and many could
not read. This was true in all parts of rural
New England, and it was especially true of
women. The popular opinion about girls
seems to have been that they were not worth
educating ; that their natural occupation was
servile labor, — to scour the pewter, run the
spinning-wheels, wash the dishes and cloth-
ing of the family, tend the hens, the geese,
and the calves. As late as the year 1785,
the town of Northampton voted " not to be
at any expense for schooling girls." ^ In re-
gard to men whose days from sunrise to
sunset were filled with hard labor, the few
who could write were so unskilled in the art
that if they had tried to take notes of a ser-

^ In the year 17921 Northampton, after a long struggle
in town meeting, voted to admit girls to the town schools
from May to October ; but those only who were between
the ages of 8 and 15 years.

PERSONALITY OP THE MEETING-HOUSE, 53

mon the preacher would have reached his
"Aymen" long before they had stumbled
through his Firstly, It is not to the shame
of these people to say that they were illit-
erate. In the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries that was the general condition of all
British communities that tilled the soil for a
living. And others beside yeomen were
illiterate. This extract from a letter ^ writ-
ten by Lady Anna Bertie to her friend the
Countess of Northampton, in the year 17 16,
is an example of the illiterate orthography
of her class at that time, and their gossip
also : —

*\ I wish this Place afor'd aney thing to make
a Letter aney wayes acceptable but all the talke
att prasint is of a very od Weding wich has lately
happned hear, tho you do not know the Lady I
cannot help giveing you an account of, and am
Sure did yu know her you must be of my Mind
that nothing that weres petticoates need dispair
of a husband, She is a boute three score & has
nether beauty witte nor good humour to recom-
mend her she is of a make large enough for the
Grand Senior. Standing one lucky hour att her

^ Published by the Historical Manuscripts Commission,
London.

54 SWB GLIMPSES.

Window thear past by a genttellman about the
same age who casting hies eyes upwards beheld
this Queen of Beauty & att this time was taken
with Such a fluttring att his heart that he could
not rest till he had Broke his mind to her and he
soon found releif, for theay said Matrimony in a
week and hethertoo think themselves they happy-
est Couple in the. King's Dominions, God keep
them so say I."

The crying want of colonial New England
was a school. One of the myths of the col-
onies, the stock tradition of its histories,
is that when a meeting-house was built, a
schoolhouse was built also. A historian
says : " The schoolhouse and the meeting-
house were among the first buildings to be
raised in each newly founded village, and
as fast as the towns grew to a moderate
size these rudimentary schools were supple-
mented by high schools, and in some in-
stances by Latin schools ; '' ^ and the latest
historian of New England says : ''AH the
early settlers paid great attention to in-
structing their children first at home, or in
the ministers' houses, and then in the public
schools, . . . the love of learning never died

1 John Fiske, lecture at Boston, February 7, 1S90.

PERSONALITY OP THE MEETING-HOUSE, 55

out, and the free schools were never aban-
doned." *

There is no truth in such general state-
ments. The school history of New England
is plainly written in its laws, of which there
were a plenty to compel towns to maintain
schools ; but they all were " shamefully
neglected." A law of Massachusetts which
was passed and published June 28, 1702,
says : —

" Whereas it is by law appointed that every
town within this province, having the number of
fifty householders or upwards, shall be constantly
provided of a school-master to teach children
and youth to read and write; and where any
town or towns have the number of one hundred
families or householders there shall also be a
grammar school set up in every such town, and
some discreet person, of good coi\versation, well
instructed in the tongues, procured to keep such
school, every such school-master to be suitably
encouraged and paid by the inhabitants . . .
the observance of which wholesome and necessary
law is shamefully neglected by divers towns^ and
the penalty thereof not required."

> Douglass Campbell, 7^ Puritan Holland^ Englami^
aftd America f pages 30^ 31.

56 SIDB GLIMPSES,

The penalty for a non-observance of the
school laws was then increased from ;£io to
£20 yearly ; and it was declared that " No
minister of any town shall be deemed, held
or accepted to be the schoolmaster of such
town within the intent of the law." Let me
also quote from a Massachusetts law of the
year 1718: —

'^ Whereas notwithstanding the many good and
wholesome laws of this province for the encourag-
ing of schools and the penalty first of ten pounds,
and afterwards increased to twenty pounds, on
such towns as are obliged to have a grammar
school master and neglect the same ; yet by sad
experience it is found that many towns that not
only are obliged by law, but are very able to sup-
port a grammar school, yet choose rather to incur
and pay the fine orpencUty than maintain a gram-
mar school!^

The penalties were then increased from
;f 30 to ;f 40. These laws tell us what the
people thought about schools. They were
accustomed to make spasmodic hirings of a
schoolmaster, from time to time, in order to
show a compliance with the laws ; sometimes
he was dismissed soon after he was hired ;
or he was set to work for a few weeks at the

PERSONALITY OP THE MEETING-HOUSE. 57

centre of the town, a few weeks at an end
of it, and a few weeks at the opposite end.
In the Wareham records of the year 1756
I read: "And the Select men agreed and
Drawd Lotts where the School should begin
first, and the first Lot fell to the East End
of the Town, the second Lot to the Middle
of the Town, ye Third to ye West End."
If there was no schoolhouse the teacher
taught and boarded in private houses, going
from one to another as the shoemaker went
on the same circuit to make shoes for the
families. When for a long time there had
been no school, and the grand jury of the
county had "presented the town" for this
offense against the laws, the chiefest towns-
man was sent to answer the presentment,
and to get the penalty reduced. These facts
are not remarkable if you consider that per-
sons qualified to teach wefe not numerous,
and that money was not plenty in rural
towns. The margin of life was so small
that it allowed no freedom from labor, and
no privilege of being indifferent to the cost
of daily necessities.

To return to the meeting-house. As the
population and wealth of the colonies in-

58 SIDE GLIMPSES,

creased, the towns began to build meeting-
houses of larger size and better quality.
These were nearly square, and the roof
sloped up from the four sides to a belfry-
spire standing on the centre of it. They
contained pews ; for which long sermons and
long prayers must have created a desire.
When, for the first time, pews were built in
England, it was complained that they were
''made high and easie for the parishioners
to sleep in ; " and the Bishop of Norwich, in
the year 1636, found it necessary to direct
"that no pews be made over high, so that
they which be in them cannot be seen how
they behave themselves." A meeting-house
built at Newbury in the year 1700 had twenty
high and square pews; on the outside of
the pews were seats for children ; its in-
terior was open to the roof beams, which
were polished and ornamented with pendants
of a quaint fashion. Then the style was
changed to an oblong house with a tower
built on one end of it, from which arose a
steeple. The Cape Ann meeting-house of
the year 1739 was ninety feet long and
sixty feet wide ; the tower was seventy feet
high, and the white steeple, rising seventy

PERSONALITY OF THE MEETING-HOUSE. 59

feet above the bell-deck, was visible to sea-
men miles away at sea ;

" Whence sometimes, when the wind was light
And dull the thunder of the beach,
They heard the bells of mom and night
Swing, miles away, their silver speech."

As the style of the colonial meeting-house
was changed for the better, so was the dress
of the audience changed. In seaport towns
a trade with Europe had been established,
and the meeting-house felt its influences in
the rustlings of silks and ribbons. Broad-
cloth coats in crimson, yellow, and other
colors, began to take the place of dingy
homespuns ; breeches of buckskin were dis-
carded for breeches of velvet or corduroy;
silk camblet hoods, faced with velvet,^ took
the place of cheaper headdresses, and the
minister was furnished with a Geneva gown
of silk. When reading the manuscript rec-
ords of a town on Buzzard's Bay, I came
upon this, written in the year 1767: "Paid
for Doing ye meeting house and for a Sup-

1 **0n the Sabbath, the 28th of Aug last was taken
away or Stole out of a Pew at the Old North Meeting
House, A Cinnamon Colour'd Womans Silk Camblet
Riding-Hood, the head faced with black Velvet"— Adver-
tisement in Boston News^Letter^ September, 1726.

6o SIDE GLIMPSES.

polidge." The illiterate town clerk proba*
bly had in mind a surplice when he invented
the word "suppolidge" to signify a Geneva
gown, bought for the minister by the town
in the time of a general renovation or '' do-
ing " of the meeting-house.^ Mrs. Gamp was
inclined to a similar perversion of words :
" Mrs. Harris, I says, leave the bottle on the
chimney piece, and don't ask me to take
none, but let me put it to my lips when so
dispoged."

There was no object which the people
saw so often as the great door of the meet-
ing-house. Side doors and back doors and
private doors it had, but the great door
faced the country road on which all travel-
ers passed and tavern-goers loitered. The
stepping-stones and the horse-house and the
hitching-posts were near it. Every wor-
shiper who approached the meeting-house
on Sunday or on lecture day looked at the
great door, even if he did not enter thereby.
It naturally became the town's bulletin-board

1 Injunctions issued by Queen Elizabeth directed the
parish to pay for the minister's surplice : " Every Minister
saymg any publick prayers or ministering the Sacraments
or other Rites of the Church, shall wear a comely Surplice
with sleeves, to be provided at the charges of the Parish.*'

PERSONAUTY OP THE MEETING-HOUSE. 6 1

upon which all informations were posted.
The most important of these were the offi-
cial warnings for a town meeting. When
townsmen were unable to read them it be-
came necessary to send abroad the consta-
bles to give notice "by word of mouth."
This happened at Plymouth, where, as say
the records of the year 1694, "the Town
declared themselves to be against Warning
town meetings by papers set up for that
end, but doe Expect warning from the Cun-
stables by word of mouth when Ever there
shall be ocasion."

Other things were also posted on the
great door during the first century of New
England. Ipswich town compelled the man
who hunted wolves, expecting to get the
bounty of ten shillings for each wolf killed,
to prove his hunt by bringing the heads to
the meeting-house and there "nayle them
and give notis to the constable." At Ports-
mouth, it was ordered that the heads must
be nailed " upon the meeting-house door ; "
but at Hampton, near Portsmouth, there was
an order that wolf-heads are to be nailed
"to a little read oke tree at the north east
end of the meeting-hous." Probably the

62 SIDE GLIMPSES.

face of the great door was already full of
them.

The custom of nailing to the door vari-
ous things for public warning or knowledge
came, like other meeting-house customs of
colonial times, from Old England. Many
years ago, some fragments of skin were
found under nailheads on the principal door
of an ancient church in Yorkshire. There
was a tradition in th^ parish that, about a
thousand years ago, the church was plun-
dered by a Danish robber ; that the robber
was captured, condemned to be flayed, and
his skin to be nailed to the church door as
a terror to evil-doers.^ During the succeed-
ing centuries the robber's skin, stretched
and dried and wrinkled on the door, was
wasted away until the only traces of it re-
maining were small pieces peeping out from
under some of the broad-headed nails with
which the face of the door was studded.
One of these pieces was subjected to the
scrutiny of a microscope. Fine hairs were
found upon it, — such hairs as grow upon
the human body ; and the microscope re-

^ This fact is mentioned in Gosse*s Evenings with the
Microscope.

PERSONALITY OF THE MEETING-HOUSE 63

vealed the fact that they were the hairs of
a person of a fair complexion. Thus the
general tradition, preserved in the parish
for centuries, was shown to be the truth.
The fragment taken from the church door
was a piece of the skin of a Danish rob-
ber, nailed thereon a thousand years ago.

People were as eager to get out of the
meeting-house as the colony laws were to
get them into it. "There is much profane-
ness amongst us," say the Massachusetts
colony records of the. year 1675, "i^ Per-
sons turning their backs upon the public
worship before it is finished and the bless-
ing pronounced." The scene described by
the formal words of these records was no-
thing less than a general flight of people from
the meeting-house to the open air, as soon as
the sermon was ended. It seems to repre-
sent the culmination of an agony ; like that
which is revealed by a hill, in the wild region
of Mashonaland, on whose rock are imprinted
many footsteps of men and animals, all point-
ing to the summit, towards which, in some
primeval time, they were evidently fleeing in
terror from a rising flood. To put a stop
to this profaneness, all selectmen were com-

64 SIDE GLIMPSES.

manded by the General Court to appoint

men to bolt or shut the doors of the meet-
ing-house when the sermon was finished, or
to act in "any other meet way" to keep the
audience inside " until the exercise be ended."
Sometimes constables were stationed outside
the doors to arrest those who escaped too
soon. As the profaneness increased, in spite
of the Court, every generation of selectmen
was compelled to consider some new "meet
way" to stop the stampedes. At last they
made rules and regulations directing the
manner in which congregations must go
out. Here is a regulation put in force at
Groton in the year 1756: "After the bless-
ing is pronounced, pews and all the fore
seats move out first ; second seats to fol-
low, and so on until the whole house be
emptied ; and all persons are to quit the
doors as soon as they are out."

As colonial laws empowered selectmen
"to order the affaires of the towne," their
duties included a care of the meeting-house
as well as of roads, fences, and stray cattle.
They were such lords of the manor that
they, at times, compelled the improvident
and the infirm "to .wQu , — .

PERSONALITY OP THE MEETING-HOUSE, 65

example, in the year 1701 they gave "notis
to a leame gearle whose name is Wodekins,"
staying at Edward Cooke's house, '' that she
doe depart out of Dedham." They granted
various privileges in the meeting-house, such
as to build pews on the overhead beams and
in other queer places; as at Rochester, in
the year 171 8, "to William Blackmer & Tim-
othy Ruggles liberty to build two Seats or
Pews six foot fronting from the wall on the
beams over the galeries on the East and
West Ends of the meeting-house on their
own cost;" "to Israel Bumpus & Joseph
HaskoU liberty to build a seat all along
before the front gallery on their own cost
provided they do it decently." They gave
privileges "to make glass windows for the
conveniency" of pew owners (Pepperell,
1742); to make a private door "from the
outside of the meeting-house" (Medford,
1736). This last-named privilege converted
the pew to a private box ; and I can im-
agine how eagerly the eyes of homespun
gallants watched for the opening of that
door, on Sunday mornings, when the belle
of the village stepped fluttering in, sur-
prising the deacons by the gravity of her

66 StDS GLlAfPSBS.

demeanor. In the meeting-house recently ~
built at Crathie, near Balmoral, in Scotland,
overlooking a long stretch of the valley of
the Dee, a private door was made for the
use of her Majesty Queen Victoria, — a con-
venience similar to that enjoyed by the belle
of the colonial village.

The colonial meeting-house was not a con-
secrated building ; for the truth taught at
the Well of Samaria was that no place of
worship has a distinctive claim of its own.
Yet seiectmen were called upon to prevent
the doing of various things in it; such as,
at Hampton, riding horses into it, and firing
off guns in it ; such as, at Dedham, hitch-
ing horses to "the meeting-house Ladder;"
such as, at Framinghara, " cutting off seats
and cutting Holes through the Walls ; " such
as, at Groton, chewing or smoking tobacco
or leaving "any trash in the meeting-house."
In its loft selectmen stored the town's gun-
powder. There was a little town in Maine
whose gunpowder was stored in "the small
closets within the sacred desk." On the
morning of the battle of Lexington, Cap-
tain Parker said to his comoanv : " Everv
man of you who is equippe^.

PERSONALITY OF THE MEETING-HOUSE. 6;

And those who are not equipped, go into
the meeting-house and furnish yourselves
from the magazine and immediately join the
company ! "

The townspeople were accustomed to as-
semble in the meeting-house for any pur-
pose of a public nature. But if persons
who were not of the orthodox elect desired
to assemble therein, they must obtain per-
mission fronl the town ; as at Branford, in
the year 1750, the records say that liberty
was granted "to professors of the Church
of England in this town, as they call them-
selves, to meet in the Meeting House on
they 25th of December which they call
Christmas." What a doleful Christmas they
found in that Puritan meeting-house I In it
ecclesiastical councils sat ; and town meet-
ings, always opened by a prayer, were con-
vened, at which men sat with their hats on
and made as many disorders as they had
a mind to. These were noticed by colony
laws and by town laws ; such as, " every
man shall speak by turn, rising and putting
off his hat," and when he has said his say
"he shall signify it by putting on his hat
and sitting down ; " he " shall speak his mind

68 S!DE GLIMPSES.

meekly and without noise ; " if he " presume
to speak without liberty of the moderator,"
he is to be fined twenty shillings. Notwith-
standing these laws of restraint, the walls of
the meeting-house resounded at times with a
deafening uproar.

*' The constable to every prater
Bawl'd out — ' Pray hear the Moderator 1 *
Some call'd the vote, and some in turn
Were screaming high — < Adjourn ! Adjourn 1 ' "

V.

THE SUMMONS TO WORSHIP.

|HE bells in the tower of Elstow
Church were rung by John Bunyan
while he was carrying on his trade
as the village tinker. The ringing of the bells
was a pleasurable diversion from his labors
at the forge, because he loved to hear their
sounds. This love clung to him through life,
and it prompted him to cause all the bells to
welcome the pilgrims of his immortal allegory
when they entered the celestial city ; then
"all the bells of the city rang again for joy."
When his conscience came under conviction
in regard to religious matters he gave up the
joyful diversion of bell-ringing, as he gave up
that of dancing. Austerity was a religious
fashion of his people.

Yet there was a daily ringing of bells in
the rural parishes of England. I read in
churchwardens' accounts of payments made

SIDE GUMPSES.

for the ringing of bells on coronation days,
royal birthdays, thanksgiving days, visitation
days, wedding days, Christmas days, on many
holidays, and whenever a member of the
reigning family rode through the town.
Then I read of the passing bell, tolled for
those who were passing out of this life ; and
the pealing bell to announce that some mor-
tal had put on immortality. These signified
an old belief that devils troubled the dying
and lay iu wait to afflict the escaping soul,
and that they were terrified from thijir pur-
poses by the bells.' After the Reformation
that ancient belief in the personal presence
and power of devils continued to exist ; even
Martin Luther, at midnight, heard a devil
(and not a rat) cracking nuts near his bed-
stead. But the reformers taught that the

1 Anno Domini, 1592. (TAt CAur^h (Vantea's Aiamnt

Bftht Parish ef Si. Mary's. Reading, Berk^: 1 550 lo 1662.)

Reed for llie passinge Belle for Mi Webbs . . . ^d.

" for the pasainge Belle for goodwife Bull . . 4 </.

" for Ihe jiassinge lielle for a liliaugcr diiiige at

lioiiabiea 41/.

" for a Prysuners grave and Bell 5 ^.

" for the double Kiiill of MmEliziibelb Bosbey

and hit child

" for hie soUome Knill after the Bui

THR SUMMONS TO WORSHIP. 71

passing bell was rung to admonish the living
and invite them to pray for the dying.

I read of the prisoner's bell, of the solemn
knell after burial, and the double knell for
a mother and her child ; also of the curfew
bell, a signal for all people to cover their
fires and go to bed, which was rung from
every church spire of England, at eight
o'clock of every evening of the year, —

"Swinging slow, with solemn roar ; "

and I copy a reference to it from the parish
records of St Mary's in Reading of the year
1600: "that Wiirm Marshall the Clarke
and Sexten shall have \\\)s, iiijdJ a yere more
paied him to his wages, and for the same hee
is to Ringe the eight a clocke Bell everie
evninge both hoHe dale and workinge dale
thoroughe out the whole yere." In the
booming life of the present day, when men
must drive furiously, or be run over by the
throng, one may feel an envy for the peace-
ful lot of those simpler men and women who
lived under the curfew bell.

The villagers of Old England were proud
of their bells, and the poorest borough was
stimulated to build new bell towers or to

Ja SIDE GLIMPSES.

hang new chimes. The inhabitants of Tot-
nea in Devonshire were so poor that, in the
year 1449, there were only three pcoiile in
the town who paid as much as twenty pence
on "the tax of half-tenths and fifteenths for
the King;" and yet the parish determined to
replace its wooden belfry by a stone tower,
according to the best model, and to rehang
its chime of four bells. This was accom-
plished by cooperative labor of the parish-
ioners, and by contributions of money on
Sundays.*

In the beginning of New England there
were no towns so poor as Totnes. Of but
few of them could it be said : —

" Oft in Ihf woodland, far away,
X% heard [he sound of bells rung faintly."

The call to worship in most of them was
sounded on a drum, beaten back and forth
the highway from the minister's house to
the ends of the village. Sometimes the
sound of a drum was preferred to the sound
of a bell ; as at Wethersfield, the oldest set-
tlement in Connecticut, the rude forefathers
of the hamlet voted "that the bell be rung
noe more on the Sabbath or lecture dales,
1 Green, Taum Lift eftki Pi/lai d

THE SUMMONS TO WORSHIP. 73

but the drum henceforth be beaten." The
first meeting-house bell in New England was
set up in the year 1632 at Newtowne, now
Cambridge, on the Charles River. It was a
small, shrill- voiced crier, and the people, after
hearing its din for four years, became tired
of it and used a drum to announce the hour
for worship. The first bell at Hingham was
so small that when the second house was
built, the selectmen were requested to get a
new bell " as big againe as the old one was,
if it may be had." The first bell at Woburn
was set upon a hill back of the meeting-
house, to give it a wide hearing. The first
bell at Ipswich was hung "on a pine tree
to the northeast " of the meeting-house ; and
the first bell at Maiden was set up on a rock
which is known to this day as Bell Rock.
Near its site is the Bell Rock cemetery, in
which graves were made more than two hun-
dred years ago ; and near by is the Bell Rock
station of a railroad that goes to Boston.
Throngs of travelers, hurrying by short cuts
across the cemetery to catch the morning
trains, have trodden hard paths over the
graves of colonial people who came to meet-
ing when they heard the summons from the
bell that stood on the rock.

I ' '[.yt ^^ I

74 SIDB GUMPSBS,

In the year 1659, a bell was hung at New-
ton ; and the records say that John Cham-
berlin was to have fifty shillings a year for
ringing it, and three pounds if he would also
keep the meeting-house "doore bowlted."
A bell is mentioned at Plymouth in the
records of the year 1679, when " The Con-
stable is ordered by the Towne to take
Course for the sweeping of the meeting
house and the Ringing of the bell and to
pay an Indian for the killing A woulfe."
When a bell was set up at Newbury, the
record says that the selectmen procured '' a
flag for the meeting-house, to be put out
at the ringing of the first bell, and taken in
when the last bell is rung." In the year
1706, a new bell, "of about four hundred
pounds weight," was hung on the meeting-
house of this village, and it became a cus-
tom to notify the villagers of the flight of
time by tolling the day of the month every
night after the ringing for nine o'clock.
Upon this bell were inscribed the words,
" Let us love as brethren ! " — a sounding
satire on the bitter quarrels which existed
for years between the people and their min-
ister.

THE SUMMONS TO WORSHIP. 75

The bell at Lexington, which was hung in
a tower near the meeting-house of the year
1702, must be considered the most famous
of all the bells of New England, for on the
morning of the nineteenth day of April,
1775, it sounded the first national alarm. It
was the original ^'liberty bell," whose cry
went afar on that morning when the em-
battled farmers " fired the shot heard round
the world." Sylvanus Wood, of Woburn,
aged seventy-four years, testified, June 17,
1826, "that about an hour before the break
of day, on said morning, I heard the Lexing-
ton bell ring, and, fearing there was dif-
ficulty, I immediately arose, took my gun,
and, with Robert Douglass, went in haste to
Lexington, which was about three miles dis-
tant." This historic bell disappeared in the
year 1794, when the old meeting-house was
pulled down.

Although there was a bell at Springfield
as early as the year 1646, each family was
taxed a peck of corn or fourpence in wam-
pum yearly, to pay John Matthews to beat
a drum from the minister's house to the
end of the settlement every morning and at
meeting-time. At Dedham, twenty shillings

76 SIDE GLIMPSES,

a year ** in cedar boards " were paid to Ralph
Day for a similar service. At Haverhill, in
the year 1650, Abraham Tyler was chosen
" to blow his horn half an hour before meet-
ing;'* for which service he was paid with
one pound of pork annually from each family.
Jedediah Strong, at Northampton, earned
eighteen shillings in the year 1679 by "blow-
ing the trumpet " to call people to meeting ;
at South Hadley, a shell was blown ; at Sun-
derland, a shell, a flag, and a drum were used
alternately until the year 1751.

Everybody was expected to go to meet-
ing when the summons was sounded. So
ambitious was the real New Englander " to
get on in the world " by his own thrift, that
he was willing to let his horse on Sunday to
those who must ride, while he and his fam-
ily trudged the way afoot. In a farmer's ac-
count book I read, under date of 1737 : —

"Samuel Bates D' for Riding my mare to
meeting two days 5 shillings."

" Ebenezer Bates D' for my mare for your
wife to ride to meeting 2 shillings 6 pence."

For a similar reason he rented a part of
his pew. The same account book says :

THE SUMMONS TO WORSHIP, 77

"Daniel Raymond D' for A right for himself
and wife and child in my pue in the meeting
hous for one year and half ;^i-io.** This
charge was paid with *' 2 ounces of Inedeco, 2
gallons of rum^ 4 pounds of Shuger and one
ounc of peper."

Going to meeting in the summer time was
a pleasant tramp for the wayfarer if he had
eyes to see the boulders covered with mosses
and green tendrils, the roadside trees fes-
tooned with grapevines, the creeks skirted
with marshmallows, the sandy hillocks
clothed in a regal array of foxgloves which
nodded to him as he passed by. But in
cold and tedious winters the journey was
laborious. John Eliot wrote in the Roxbury
Church reoords of the year 1699, "This
winter was very sharp and tedious, we had
much snow and cold weather, the wayes so
difficult and unpassable." Now and then
came days in the end of the year when win-
dows were opened, grass was green along
the south edges of stone walls, field brooks
were running full, and the voice of the mos-
quito was heard in the land. January shifts
the scenes. There arrives a quiet, biting
cold ; suddenly a whirling snowstorm howls

78 SIDB GLIMPSES.

out of the northwest or the northeast, and
the highways are speedily covered under
deep snowdrifts. From that time all paths
to the meeting-house are difficult to be trav-
eled until the sun comes into the north, and
alders begin to bloom, and the tips of elms
to flush with rosy blossoms, and birds are
singing their pertest songs, and foxes have
come out of their holes to sit on sunny
spots, with ears erect, as if watching the
return of spring. But the rustic New
Englander, when he trudged to meeting,
saw none of these things. He was a man
of raw material, burdened with the cares and
labors of a frontier life; and never had his
eyes been open to the beauty of colors and
forms. In this respect his refined posterity
is not unlike him ; for how many now have
eyes to see the lights and shades of nature,
or even the lights and shades of the men
and women who touch their daily lives ?

Riding to the meeting-house of a Sunday,
the farmer carries his wife on a pillion be-
hind him, and a child on the saddle in front
of him. He rides half the distance and
walks the remaining half, leaving the horse
hitched to a tree for the use of a part of his

THE SUMMONS TO WORSHIP, 79

family which has followed him afoot; carry-
ing in hand their shoes and stockings, if it
is summer, to be put on when they reach
the meeting-house. The ways are rough
and narrow, following trails which deer
have made from the feeding to the water-
ing places. In the year 1685, the Plymouth
court was petitioned by seven families of
the town of Bridgewater for *'a way" to
the meeting-house. They complained thus :
** God, by his Providence, hath placed the
bounds of our habitation in Bridgewater,
and on the eastward side of the town, and
about two miles from the meeting-house and
the mill, and some of us have had no way
into the town but upon sufferance through
men's lands. We think it is very hard that
living in a wilderness we cannot have con-
venient room for highways."

A love for divine worship may have light-
ened the steps of many of those who jour-
neyed over the rough ways ; but the law
compelled them to go even if that love did
not exist, and this compulsion created a
general habit of going to meeting. While
some went to worship in sincerity, others
went by force of custom, others to show

8o SIDB GUMPSBS,

their finery, to hear the news, to make a
trade, to meet their friends, or to satisfy the
conscience. Southey tells of a woman in
humble life who, going home from the Sun-
day service, was asked if she had understood
the sermon. "Wud I hae the presump-
tion ? '* was her reply. The quality of the
sermon signified nothing to her if she had
done her duty in. listening to it.

And the minister, as he walked homeward
with one of his hearers, said to him : '' Sun-
day must be a blessed day of rest to you
who are working hard all the week 7 "

" Ay, sir ! " the man replied. " I works
hard enough all the week, and then I comes
to church o' Sundays and sets me down,
and lays my legs up, and thinks o* nothin'.'*
He was like Tennyson's "Northern Far-
mer," who " hallus comed to 's choorch " to
hear the parson, albeit —

** I niver knaw'd what a mean*d, but I thowt a 'ad summut

to saay»
An' I thowt a said what a owt to 'a said, an' I comed
awaay."

So the Sunday religion of many people
can be but little more than a habit of rest
for body and mind. Many church-goers

THE SUMMONS TO WORSHIP, 8 1

there are to-day who have neither the power
nor the disposition to turn their thoughts to
the subject of which the preacher is preach-
ing ; they feel that they are doing their
whole duty by giving their presence to the
services of worship. Jane Taylor said : —

** Though man a thinking being is defined.
Few use the great prerogative of mind.
How few think justly ; of the thinking few
How many never think, who think they do.'*

THE SEATING OF THE PEOPLE.

■OUNG men and young women living
far from each other in the same town,
working hard all day long during six
days of the week, were naturally glad to see
each other on Sunday In the meeting-house.
But in the arrangement of sittings men were
isolated from women. There were " men's
seats" and "women's seats," separated by
impassable barriers. " No woman maid nor
gal shall sit in the mens south alley " was a
law of Redding, and it was the determination
on which similar laws were made in other
towns. At Medford, there was built in the
meeting-house a " foregallery " having in it
three ranges of seats divided, by a barrier
athwart them. On one side of this barrier
men were placed, on the other side women ;
and yet there was no authority that could
prevent them from viewing each other

THE SEATING OP THE PEOPLE. 83

askance. Two years later, the town voted
every " woman maid and gal " out of these
seats. The persecuted race rebelled, caused
a special town meeting to be convened, and
lobbied through an order restoring them to
their places.

•* They *ve beaux to conquer, belles to rival ;
To make them serious were uncivil.
For, like the preacher, they each Sunday
Must do their whole week's work in one day.*'

This unnatural separation of men from
women, which may at first have been a pre-
cautionary measure, became at last a perma-
nent custom ; polished down by rules and
regulations until it reached that point where
it was assumed to be, as it was called, "a
dignifying of the meeting-house." There
had been a similar custom in Old England.
It is on record that seats in the church at
Hawstead were a cause of contentions as
early as the year 1287; and the Synod of
Exeter tried to abate them by declaring that
all persons except noblemen and patrons
when they come to church to say their
prayers "might do it in what place they
pleased." The author of the " History and
Antiquities of Hawstead and Hardwick "
says : —

84 SIDE GLIMPSES,

''From a decaying paper some years ago in
the church chest it appeared that Richard Pead,
Reg'rar'ras, directed an instrument to the Church
Wardens charging and commanding them to
place the inhabitants in such seats in the church
as they should think proper, according to their
estates, degrees, and callings. Returns were to
be made of those that were refractory. Dated,
December ist 1623.'*

The white people of colonial New England
were equal before the law, but unequal before
the pulpit; there they were "classed and
ranked," as described by Whittier in " Mary
Garvin : *' —

'< When the horn, on Sabbath mornhig» through the still

and frosty air,
From Spurwink, Pool, and Black Point, called to sermon

and to prayer,

'*To the goodly house of worship, where, in order due

and fit,
As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the people

sit;

''Mistress first and goodwife after, clerkly squire before

the clown,
From the brave coat lace-embroidered, to the gray frock,

shading down.''

There were no "noblemen and patrons"

THE SEATING OP THE PEOPLE, 8$

waiting to say their prayers in the colonial
meeting-house, but there were men of titles
who desired to get the best seats in it.
"Rank in Our way is Looked upon as a
Sacred Thing," said General John Winslow
in his letter to the President of Harvard
College, October 20, 1740. Therefore mil-
itary dignity claimed a front seat. There
was a good deal of it belonging to officers
of militia, and to men who had been in the
Indian wars, in the expeditions to Louisburg,
Quebec, and Cuba, and who had returned
with large stories and small titles. The
majority of these were sergeants and en-
signs. Even a drummer was somebody in the
social scale. "Drummer Stetson" is men-
tioned in the Scituate records of the year
1725 as an important man. The town of
Newbury voted (1700) that " the worshipful
Colonel Daniel Pierce should have the first
choice for a pew, and Major Thomas Noyes
shall have the second choice." Gloucester
voted (1742) "that Captain William Haskell
should sit in the fore-seat;" and (1757)
probably to make room for another captain,
"that Mister Joseph Hibbard*s wife move
out of the long fore-seat into the short fore-

86 SIDE GUMPSES,

seat." At Wallingford (1716), one captain
was designated ''to set in the deacon's
seat/' another captain ''to set in the first
pue/' and another "to set in the second
pue."

The people made very low bows to an
officer of the King, and gave to him a seat
of extra dignity. At Norwalk (1686), it was
voted : " Thomas Fitch for to be seated in
the meeting-house in the upper great round
seat, as he is the King's commissioner."
His son was assigned to a seat "in the pue
with the Justices/' and the selectmen de-
sired that he would be so gracious as to
"read the psalm and set the tune in the
time of public worship/' (1723.)

Rules for seating the congregation were
not the same in all towns. In some, as at
Bedford (1730), the rule was "to have respect
to them that are fifty years old and up-
wards." In others, as at Rehoboth (1718),
it was " firstly to have regard to dignity of
person, and secondly to age, and thirdly
what charge they have been at in building
the meeting house ; " or, " to have respect to
age, office, and estate, negroes excepted."
At Harvard (1766), those men who paid the

THE SEATING OP THE PEOPLE, 87

largest taxes had the best seats. The rules
were : " The two foremost Scats to be seated
by age and pay ; the rest of the Seats to be
seated by pay only, counting three years
back." At Northampton, men were seated
in the southwest end and women in the
northeast end of the meeting-house. In the
year 1737, this town forbade "men and their
wives" to be placed side by side unless
'*they incline to sit together;" from which
I infer that there was not much connubial
bliss in Northampton. Judge Sewall appears
to have had difficulty in getting his wife
permanently seated in the Old South meet-
ing-house. He wrote in his diary, "Lords
Day April i. Sat with my wife in her Pue.
April 8, introduced her into my Pue and sat
with her there. April 15, conducted my
wife to the Fore Seat."

A rule for seating, observed in many
towns, was characteristic of the natural itch-
ing of the colonists for rank ; placing people
who had a pedigree and an office at the
head, and useful people at the foot of the
line: " ist, dignity of descent; 2d, place of
public trust; 3d, pious disposition and be-
haviour; 4th, estate; sth, peculiar service-
ableness of any kind."

88 SIDE GUMPSBS.

Where age was ranked first, wealth was
made an equivalent to it. An estate taxed
at fifteen pounds, for example, would be
declared equal to one additional year in the
owner's age. Thus, a person thirty years
old, and taxed for three hundred pounds,
could add twenty years to age, in his rank,
and claim a seat in the meeting-house with
those who were fifty years old. But wealth
frequently took the precedence of age. At
Waterbury (17 19), it was voted "to seat by
list of estate and by age." At Woburn
(17 10), the front seats were given to the
''wealthy and liberal/' and the rear seats to
the " aged and poor." The latter complained
to the selectmen that they were " much ag-
grieved at the disorderly seating of many
persons in the house of God, the aintient
behind the backs of the youth." But the
complaint received no attention.

Men who were honored with a seat at a
table enjoyed ease as well as dignity. The
Framingham records of the year 1701 state
that a pew was built " for those men's wives
that sit at the table in the north corner of
the meeting house." In the year 1715, this
town declared "that, as for the dignity of

THE SEATING OF THE PEOPLE, 89

the scats, the table and the fore-seat are
accounted to be the two highest ; the front
gallery is equal in dignity to the second and
third seats in the body of the meeting house,
and the side gallery is equal to the fourth
and fifth seats."

The town of Windsor in Connecticut used
an idiom of the present day when, in the year
1 71 7, it expressed its opinion on the subject
in these words : " Those that have seats
of their own are not to be seated nowhere
else." People " hard o' hearin' " were of
course destitute of dignity; but they were
permitted to sit on the pulpit stairs, or near
by, if there was a vacant place, "for the
advantage and benefit of hearing the word
preached" (Norwalk, 1702), or rather trying
to hear it. Old people were also provided
for; as at Rochester, in the year 1717, it
was " Voted that three Short Seats be built
nye the pulpit Stairs for Antiant parsons to
sett in."

All were required to occupy the seats
assigned to them in the meeting-house,
and they were forbidden, as in the parish
churches of England, "to press into the

90 SIDE GUMPSBS,

seats of others." ^ To enforce these rules a
supplement to the Fourth Commandment
was adopted, by which it was declared that
to sit in the wrong seat " is an act whereby
the Sabbath is profaned." When dignities
increased so fast that there were not seats
enough for those who had equal rank, addi-
tional seats were consecrated by a vote of
the town, and, on the next Sunday, these
new seats were solemnly announced from
the pulpit. In ** dignifying the meeting-
house," white people showed how strong
were their antipathies to black people.
Negro slaves were placed in the further-
most corners of the galleries, and sometimes
in pens on the walls above the galleries.
In the Northampton meeting-house, pews
were built for negroes near the gallery
doors ; those for men were labeled B M,

1 "That whosoever hereafter shallbe Removid by the
Churche Wardens from theire Seates to anie other, And
hee or thaie beinge so Removid will not tarrie and Abyde
in the said Seat but Will or Doc come Jiacke again, shall
paie for everie time so Doinge to the Churche Wardens
Twelve Pence, And if it be a woman wch hathe a husband
That shall so Offende, Then her husband to paie xij^ for
her, And it be a widowe then shee to paie x\]d for her-
selfe." — St, Marys, Readings Berks ; 1550 to 1662.

THE SEATING OP THE PEOPLE. 91

those for women B W. Jacob Prince, a
slave emancipated by the laws of Connecti-
cut, was admitted as a member of the church
at Goshen, in " ye yere of owr Lorde god "
1 801. He was placed in a gallery pew whose
front was boarded up so high that he could
not see the congregation from his seat ; and,
being offended because he was not treated
as a "christian brother" in this dignifying
of the meeting-house, he at last refused to
go to meeting. For this disorder he was
excommunicated. Phillis Wheatley, a negro
slave who lives in colonial history, sat in the
colonial meeting-house, and she dignified it
more than some of her white neighbors.
She was the author of a volume of " Poems
on Various Subjects Religious and Moral,"
printed in London in the year 1773, on the
title-page of which she is described as
"Negro- Servant to M' John Wheatley of
Boston in New England." She was brought
from Africa in the year 1761, when about
eight years old ; and she expressed her
thoughts concerning the transfer in the fol-
lowing lines : —

" 'T was mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
J Taught my benighted soul to understand

92 SIDB GLIMPSES,

That there 's a God, that there 's a Saviour too ;
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our fable race with scornful eye,
'Their colour is a diabolic die.'
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train."

It appears that no general efiFort was made
to convert slaves, lest their conversion
might entitle them to personal freedom. In
the year 16961 ministers at Boston proposed
to the General Court, " That ye wel-knowne
Discouragem^ upon ye endeavours of masters
to Christianize their slaves, may be removed
by a Law which may take away all pretext
to Release from just servitude, by receiv-
ing of Baptisme." This proposal was not
noticed.

Indians also formed a part of the dignity
of the meeting-house. They were cribbed
with negroes, — and the odor of neither In-
dians nor negroes was that of sanctity ; for
in the Plymouth town records of the year
171 5, it is written that ''the owners of the
seat before the place where the Negroes
and Indians sett at the meeting house Doe
give 3 pounds Towards Erecting a plase for
said Negroes and Indians to sett in Else-
where." The Indians were captives of war

THE SEATING OP THE PEOPLE, 93

who had been sold into slavery. At a
Bridgewater town meeting of the year 1676,
"a vote was called to see what should be
done with the money that was made of the
Indians that were sold last, and it was voted
that the soldiers that took them should have
it." Cotton Mather wrote in one of his
diaries, '' I bought a Spanish Indian and
bestowed him as a servant on my father."
John Bacon, of Barnstable, directed in his
will that his Indian slave Dinah be sold and
proceeds " improved by my executors in buy-
ing Bibles." There were also white slaves
seated in the meeting-house. The "Con-
necticut Gazette" of January 5, 1764, adver-
tised: "Just imported from Dublin in the
brig Darby a parcel of Irish servants, both
men and women, to be sold cheap by Israel
Boardman at Stamford." These transports,
as they were called, were sold into service
for a period of years. An advertisement in
the Boston "News-Letter" of the year 1727
says: "A Likely Servant Maid's Time of
about Five Years, to be disposed of."

By men who sat in the colonial meeting-
house the first Fugitive Slave Law was
formed. This law became a part of the arti-

94 SIDE GLIMPSES.

cles of confederation between all the New
England colonies, and it ran thus : —

" If any servante rune away from his mabter
into another of these confederated jurisdictions,
that in such case, upon ye certificate of one ma-
gistrate in ye jurisdiction out of which ye said
servante fledd, or upon other due proofe, the
said servante shall be delivered either to his
maister or any other yt pursues brings such cer-
tificate or proofe."

As the Puritan legislators of New Eng-
land professed to regulate their civil affairs
in accordance with the laws of the Mosaic
period of history, their Fugitive Slave Law
should have been taken from the twenty-
third chapter of Deuteronomy : " Thou
shalt not deliver unto his master the ser-
vant which is escaped from his master unto
thee."

The custom of "dignifying the meeting-
house" was a source of envious feelings in
social life. It created animosities between
families, which descended from one genera-
tion to another, and which were kept alive
by the formula of prayer repeated from the
pulpit every Sunday for " our superiors, in-
feriors, and equals." It lingered after the

THE SEATING OF THE PEOPLE, 95

colonial era had ended ; and the last that
was seen of it was in the secluded parish of
Norfolk, Connecticut, in the year eighteen
hundred and seventy-five.

THE WRETCHED BOYS.

HUBLIC sermons do very little edify
children," was one of the wise say-
ings of Martin Luther. The New
England colonists did not think so, for they
took their children to the meeting-bouse on
Sunday, where they cast them out of the
■ family circle and placed them under the
surveillance of the town. This act appears
to have been necessary because the boys,
and sometimes the girls, were habitually a
pest to the minister and a nuisance to the
dignitaries of the parish. The popular dis-
gust was expressed by a vote of Duxbury,
in the year 1760, to choose a committee to
take care of "the wretched boys on the
Lords day." Certain laws enacted at the
close of King Philip's war, to promote a
better observance of the Sabbath in the
Massachusetts colony, declared that the war

THE WRETCHED BOYS. 97

had been caused by the behavior of those
" wretched boys ; " that, to quote its words,
the war was a punishment of the colony
for the "disorder and rudeness of youth in
many congregations in time of the worship
of God, whereby sin and profaneness is
greatly increased." But, in defense of the
boys, it is to be noticed that " sin and pro-
faneness" were always increasing in the
jaundiced eyes of the legislators of those
days ; and as a scapegoat for the increase
was needed, there was none so easy to be
taken as the boys. John Eliot, minister at
Roxbury, expressed the opinion that boys
had done nothing to provoke the war ; that
wars and disturbances in the meeting-house
were a judgment on the people for wearing
wigs.

Boys had been disturbers of the services
of worship in the colonial meeting-house,
and had been subject to police inspection,
"tyme out of mynd." In the year 1666,
John Dawes, who years before had been an
officer "to oversee youth" in the North
meeting-house of Boston, was empowered
to take care of all persons "that ar dis-
orderly in the time of God sollem worshipi

98 SIDE GUMPSBS,

to compel such as ar without doors to goe
into the metting hous & such as ar dis-
orderly within with a small wand to cor-
rect them/' In the next century the town
of. Harwich was ordering that the three
hindmost benches in the meeting-house be
reserved for boys under twelve years old,
and three benches in the gallery for older
boys ; and two men were appointed "to
look after" these boys ''that they sit in
their seats and be kept from playing." In
the year I7i4» the deacons of Farmington
were requested "to appoint persons who
shall sit convenient to inspect the youth
in the Meeting House on days of publick
Worship and keep them in order."

The men appointed "to look after the
boys " were called Inspectors of Youths ; in
some towns they were called Wardens.
They were not tithingmen, who were col-
ony officers ; ^ they were simply policemen

^ In the report of a Committee of the General Court,
read March 26, 1697, the duties of tythingmen were re-
cited in detail : ** Yr Duty in presenting to the Justices
the names of all such as Continue Tipling in Inns, &
other publicque houses of entertainment especially on the
Lords Day; and such as they find Drunke together with
those that entertaine them ; all profane swears^ and Cursers

THE WRETCHED BOYS, 99

of the mceting-house, and were paid by the
town for their services. John Pike, of Ded-
ham» was paid sixteen shillings, in the year
1723, for "keeping the boys in subjection
six months." When he was hired a second
time, he doubled his price. Thomas Wells
was hired by the vestry of Christ Church
in Boston to "sett in the Galleries and
keep the boys in order." In a Cape Cod
town, John King was appointed to keep
boys "from playing and prophaning the
Sabbath day ; " and the town voted " to
stand by the said John King " if he found
it necessary to strike a boy in the exer-
cise of his authority. This task was too
much for the said John alone, and there-
fore the town appointed four men "to take
care of the boys on Lords day and whip
them if found playing." At Truro, three
men were appointed "to whip boys that
are disorderly on Sabbath days at or about

and the Number as nere as they Can of their oaths ; All
such as are guilty of extortion ; All such as Keep houses
where unlawful Games are used & such as sell Drinke
without Lycence ; the names of such as live Idley without
estates, Suspicious persons, Whores, night Walkers, mo-
thers of Bastard Children; Such as Commit Common
Nuisances."

100 SIDE GLIMPSES,

the meeting house." Not long after this
action, it was ordered "that the town's pow-
der be dried/' as if a bloody contest with
the rising generation was expected. These
are illustrations of a state of things existing
in every parish of New England.

As some men had the town's authority
to flog other men's boys in the meeting-
house, I may conclude that some parents
allowed their children to run wild as ran
their steers. Such a freedom was perhaps
necessary in families of many childreUi
numbering twelve, eighteen, or twe^^ty-four.
When all these were boys, the emaciated,
careworn mother was doubtless glad to
send ofiF a lot of them to sea. As touch-
ing this subject, I copy the following news
item from the New Haven " Chronicle " of
March 13, 1787: —

" Portsmouth N. Hampshire. There are now
living in this town, a lady and gentleman who
have not been married more than twenty years,
and yet have eighteen sons; ten of whom are
at sea, and eight at home with their parents.''

Girls were wild also ; for in Harwich it
was voted "that the same course be pur-
sued with the girls" as with the boys.

THE WRETCHED BOYS, loi

Did these men flog the girls ? The over-
burdened mothers could not send them to
sea. Nor did the fathers trouble themselves
much about the matter, except by reso-
lutions in town meeting ; for example, I
read in the records of Farmington (1772) :
"Whereas Indecencies are practised by the
young people in time of Publick Worship
by frequently passing and repassing by one
another in the Galleries ; intermingling sexes
to the great disturbance of many serious
and well minded people — Resolved that
each of us that are heads of Families will
use our utmost endeavour to suppress the
evils."

What did these colonial boys do to require
so much police supervision ? Through a rift
in the records of Charlestown I can see
some of their doings. They did not stand up,
as the elders did, during the long prayers ;
they sat with their hats on " during ye whole
exercise ; " they sought opportunities to " run
out of ye meeting house " while the preacher
was preaching, or before "prayer be done
and ye Blessing pronounced." I can guess
the rest ; they threw spitballs and nutshells
to the bald heads below them ; they shook

102 SJDE GLIMPSES,

props on the gallery benches; while the
minister was praying, they were humming:

" Noah built the ark,
Shem he laid the floor,
Japhet drave the geese in,
And Ham he shut the door.
Hey trixi rim I Hi trixi rim I
I don't believe Old Noah could swim I
Oh 1 nony, nony, no I "

A note-book of a Justice of the Peace in
Connecticut, of the year 1750, specifies the
behavior of a certain small meeting-house
boy as follows : —

** A Rude and Idel Behaver in the meting hows Such as
Smiling and Larfing and Intiseing others to the Same Evil

'* Such as whispering and Larfing in the meting house
between meetings

" Such as Larfing or Smiling and puling the heir of his
nayber benoni Simkins in the time of publick Worship

'* Such as playing with her Hand and fingers at her heir

** Such as throwing Sister penticost perkins on the Ice it
being Saboth day or Lords day between the meting hous
and his plaes of Abode."

The boys of colonial New England loom
on us as the prototype of the "rough'* of
to-day, and I may imagine that within them
was concealed a protoplasm of the American
Revolution. Irreverence was born in their
English blood. I have read in the church-

THE WRETCHED BOYS. 103

warden's accounts of the parish of St. Mary's,
Reading, that, in the year i6cx), Robert Mar-
shall was paid twelve pence '*to kepe the
boyes & children out of the churche porche
& churche yeard at service time," and that,
in the year 1628, a seat was assigned "for
John Gearey to loke to the boyes,** and that,
in the year 1652, the wardens agreed to
" allow yearly to som one whome they shall
think fitt Twentie shillings for looking to
the boyes and keeping peace in the church,"
and " for tendinge the Churche door to still
the Children."

In the colonial meeting-house Negroes and
Indians made merriment for boys and girls.
Look at Pomp Shorter in the Salem meeting-
house when Benjamin Prescott was ordained,
September 25, 171 3. He is disorderly
during divine service. He is brought down
from his crib above the gallery, and is
placed in a pew between two deacons who
are seated under the eaves of the pulpit,
where they are catching the drips of its
theological shower. This trio in black and
white is facing to the congregation. The
venerable deacons welcome Pomp to their
pew with that austere visage of Puritanism

I04 SIDE GLIMPSES,

which is calculated to chill the mirth of
human nature; but it does not close his
laughing eyes which are turned up to the
galleries, where boys and girls are peering
at him over the edges. The situation is
ludicrous ; boys and girls begin to snicker ;
Pomp smiles a return ; men and women
looking on relax their meeting-house faces,
and, for a moment, the air is infected with
laughter. In that moment the men ap-
pointed to keep order are hustling around
to find out who did it ; and Pomp is set up
in the broad alley to receive from the pulpit
a severe condemnation for this ''breach of
the Sabbath" on a week day. When, in
the year 1733, Philemon Robbins was or-
dained at Branford, Connecticut, whose popu-
lation numbered i6(X) including 130 negro
slaves, the town ordered that " no negro ser-
vant shall be permitted to enter the meet-
ing house." It wanted no Pomp Shorters
present to make merriment for the boys.

■It"^!

THE DISTURBERS OF PUBLIC WORSHIP.

IHE principal disturbers of worship
in the colonial meeting-house, be-
sides boys, were dogs.

" And in that (own a dog waa found.
As man]' doga there be,
Both mongrel, puppf, whelp, and bound.
And curs of low degree."

These dogs were regular attendants at
the Sunday services. They went with the
family ; and as there was a good deal of
sympathy between them and the wretched
boys mentioned in the last chapter, they
also were placed under discipline. At New
London (1662), one of the duties of the
sexton was " to order youth in the meeting-
house and beat out dogs." At Charlestown
(1666), a man was hired at four pounds a
year " to ring the bell to meetings and to
keep out- dogs in meeting time." At Ded-

lo6 SIDE GLIMPSES,

ham (1674)1 a man was paid eight shillings a
year '' for keeping dogs out in meeting time
and shutting the door." Andover did not
object to dogs, but made them pay for the
privilege of coming to meeting. The law of
this town (1672) said: "Whatsoever dogs
shall be in the meeting-house on the Sab-
bath day the owner thereof shall pay six-
pence for every time." At Medford (1745),
ten shillings was the price of a ticket to
''any person who allows his dog to go into
the meeting-house on the Sabbath day in the
time of meeting." At Provincetown (1775),
the law was to pay half a dollar or kill
"every dog that comes into the meeting-
house on the Sabbath day." At Abington
(1793), those who took their dogs to meeting
were ordered to pay " the same fine as for
a breach of the Sabbath."

The dog law of Redding (1662) was pecul-
iar. It ran thus : " Every dog that comes
to the meeting either of Lord's day or lec-
ture day, except it be their dogs that pays
for a dog-whipper, the owner of those dogs
shall pay sixpence for every time they come
to the meeting that doth not pay the dog-
whipper." Twenty-six men wrote their

THE DISTURBERS OP PUBLIC WORSHIP. 107

names, or made their marks, in the Redding
records, agreeing to "pay the dog-whipper"
to whip other people's dogs out of meeting,
while their dogs remained and were recog-
nized as members of the congregation in
regular standing. Of course, boys and girls
laughed, even at risk of punishment by His
Majesty's justice of the peace, to see the
dog-whipper pursuing heterodox dogs when
they were running up and down aisles and
gallery stairs, yelping as his whiplash fell
upon them, but determined like their mas-
ters to stay in meeting until "ye exercise
be ended."

The dog-whipper entered the colonial
meeting-house from old England ; where he
was, like the constable, an important paro-
chial officer, to whom in ancient times pieces
of land were granted. In the parish records
of Barton Turf in Norfolk, mention is made
of the Dog - Whipjjer's Land. It is also
stated that his duties consisted of "wiping
ye dogges out of ye Churche." In the old
church of Baslow is still preserved the whip
of the dog-whipper of the parish. It is de-
scribed as " a unique curiosity ; it has a
stout lash some three feet in length fastened

Io8 SIDE GLIMPSES,

to a short ash stick with leather bound round
the handle." ^ In the register of Youlgreave
Church, Derbyshire, of the year 1609, is
a charge of sixteen pence paid to Robert
Walton "for whipping ye dogges forth ye
Church in time of Divyne Service." I have
seen an action about church dogs older than
that. The parish church of Reading, in the
year 1570, agreed to pay John Marshall four-
teen shillings a year ; and '' in consideration
thereof he shalle from tyme to tyme se the
churche cleane kepte, the seates swepte and
cleane made, the mattes beten, the dogges
driven owte."^ That dogs were earnest
churchgoers appears from the orders issued
by Archbishop Laud, in the year 1636,
which directed that the rail before the com-
munion table shall be made ^* near one yard
in height, so thick with pillars that dogs
may not get in."

Dogs were a necessary part of the New
England town community, because the
neighboring woods harbored wolves and
other wild beasts that preyed upon the

^ Pendleton, History of Derbyshire,
* Church WardetCs Accounts of the Parish of St. Mary*s,
Readings Berks; 1550 to 1662.

THE DISTURBERS OP PUBLIC WORSHIP. 109

flocks of sheep pasturing therein. Owners
of large estates were required by town
laws to keep "a sufficient mastive dog,"
and owners of smaller estates to keep
"a hound or beagle" for "the better fray-
ing away wolves from the town." Boun-
ties were paid for wild animals destroyed
by dogs. The ears of a wildcat (the puma)
would draw five shillings from the town
treasury of Rehoboth, if properly certified.
John Pierce got his certification in this
way : he " brought a wildcat's head before
the town and his ears were cut off by the
constable before two selectmen." At Roch-
ester the whole animal must be brought
"to one of the selectmen with both thire
ears " (the wildcat's ears) " on to be cut
off." This course prevented cheating in
wildcats. One sixpence was the Dedham
town bounty for "an inch and a halfe of
the end of a rattlesnake's tail with the rat-
tle." A hundred years ago, foxes' heads were
worth at Wareham, " three shillings for old
ones, and one shilling for young ones puppied
this year."

There were divers sorts of disturbances
made in the colonial meeting-house. One at

no SIDB GUMPSES,

Providence is described in the newspapers
of June, 1725: "Some evil-minded persons
placed a Sturgeon of about Eight feet in
length on the Pulpit floor, where it lay un-
discovered until the Lord's Day following ;
when it was so much Corrupted that it
swarm'd with Vermine and caused such a
Nausious and Infectious Stench that neither
Minister nor People could by any Means
Assemble in the Meeting House, which oc-
casioned them to perform their Exercise in
the Orchard."

There was a disturbance of another sort in
the meeting-house at Hopkinton, — "a Great
Disturbance," it was called by Squgre Har-
ris, His Majesty's justice of the peace in and
for the county of Middlesex, who made a
note of it in his court record, saying that
Richard Gibbon came before him and " com-
plained of Jason Walker and set forth that
on Lord's Day the 15th of January, 1743,
Being in the Public Meeting house in Hop-
kinton in the forenoon there was a Great
Disturbance which caused the Reverend
M' Barritt to Cease Preaching for some
time. And that the complainant, one of
the Deputy Sheriffs of the County, was

THE DISTURBERS OP PUBLIC WORSHIP, ill

commanded by John Jones Esquire to carry
the Disturbers out of the meeting house ;
and that he Indeavored to obey the com-
mand, but Being Resisted by one Nathaniel
Smith, he ordered Jason Walker in his ma-
jesty's name to assist him in carrying the
said Nathaniel out of the meeting house,
who absolutely Refused to give aid or as-
sistance." Four other men — John Wood,
Thomas Pierce, Eben Claflin, and Joseph
House, Jr. — were convicted, at the same
time, as promotors of this "Great Dis-
turbance ;" the cause of which no one now
knoweth.

In the early years of the Massachusetts
colony, the people called Quakers were dis-
turbers of worship in the meeting-house.
Although they had a keen sense of the
superstition and tyranny of the Puritan gov-
ernment, they would have been a harmless
and quiet people had they been left to them-
selves. Whittier says of the Quaker of the
olden time : —

** He walked by faith and not by sight,
By love and not by law ;
The pressure of the wrong or right
He rather felt than saw."

Ill SJDB GLIMPSES.

By order of the General Court, these people
were imprisoned, branded with hot iron,
whipped with pitched ropes, and banished
from the colony. In the meeting-house at
Boston, one was provoked to break a glass
bottle and shout to the minister, " Thua
will the Lord break you in pieces I " Another,
whose name was Lydia Wardwell, walked, in
the garb of Eden, into the Newbury meet-
ing-house to show to the people the spiritual
nakedness of their rulerii. So severe was
the feeling of the magistrates against Quak-
ers that, in August, 1659, Thomas Macy, of
Salisbury, who fled to Nantucket and there
estabhshed a peaceful community, was called
to account by the General Court for the
simple act of showing the way to four trav-
elers of that sect who stopped at his door on
a rainy morning. He answered the court,
saying : —

" On a rainy morning there came lo my house
Edward Wharton and three men more ; the said
Wharton spoke to me, saying ihey were travel-
ling eastward, and desired me to direct them in
the way to Hampton, and asked me how far it
was to Casco Bay. I never saw any of the men
before except Wharton, neither did I ini.

THE DISTURBERS OF PUBLIC WORSHIP, 113

their names or what they were ; but by their
carriage I thought they might be Quakers and
told them so, and desired them to pass on their
way, saying to them I might possibly give of-
fence in entertaining them ; and as soon as the
rain ceased (for it rained very hard) they went
away, and I never saw them since. The time
they stayed in the house was about three quar-
ters of an hour, but I can safely affirm it was
not an hour. They spoke not many words in
the time neither was I at leisure to talk with
them, for I came home wet to the skin imme-
diately before they came to the house, and I
found my wife sick in bed. If this does not
satisfy the Honored Court I am subject to their
sentence."

In the following October, two of these
weather-beaten travelers were hung on Bos-
ton Common, and were buried there. At
the same time, Mary Dyer, an elderly wo-
man, stood under a gallows, a rope around
her neck. On the entreaty of her family
she was given forty-eight hours in which to
depart out of Massachusetts, with the threat
that after the period, if found therein, she
would be hung. In an order of the General
Court all these victims were described as

114 SIDE GLIMPSES,

" Quakers now in prison for theire rebellion,
sedition, and presumptions obtruding them-
selves upon us."

At that time, the Common was a field of
fifty or sixty acres, in which cows were pas-
tured ; they drank from a miry spring where
the Frog Pond now is, and on warm days
they ruminated in the shade of an elm-tree
near by. The forest that once covered the
Common had been cut away for firewood.
Wild bushes and thickets, with many grassy
hills, slopes, and vales, adorned its land-
scape. Its western edge was washed by the
tides where Charles Street now runs, and
eastward its acres extended to the site of
the Tremont House. It was a "pleasant
Common," said an old. chronicler, where.
^' Gallants a little before sunset walk with
their marmalet madams till the nine o'clock
bell rings, then home to their respective
habitations ; when presently the constables
walk their rounds to see good orders kept
and to take up loose people." On that Oc-
tober day when Quakers were to be hung,
the gallants and their madams, the constables
and the loose people, were probably there
to see the barbarous exhibition and to hear

THR DISTURBERS OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 115

the beating of the drums that drowned the
words of dying men ; for the hard heart of
the General Court had ordered " Capt. James
Oliver with one hundred souldiers taken
proportionally out of each company in Bos-
ton, armed with pike and musketteers, with
powder and bullet, to lead them to the
place of execution and there see them bang
until they be dead."

In June of the next year, Mary Dyer, hav-
ing been found in Boston, was hung on the
Common. There is still in existence a tear-
stained letter written by her husband to
Governor Endicott, pleading for " the life of
my deare wife." It ends with these words :

" Oh let mercies wings once more soar above
justice ballance and then whilst I live shall I
exalt your goodness. But otherwise twill be
a languishing sorrowe, yea soe great that I
should gladly suffer the blow att once muche
rather. I shall forbear to trouble your Honors
with words, — neither am I in a capacitye to ex-
patiate myselfe at present. I only say this, your-
selves have been and are or may be husbands to
wife or wives, and so am I — yea to one most
dearlye beloved. Oh do not deprive me of her,
but I pray give her me out again and I shall bee

Il6 SIDE GLIMFSES.

soe much obliged forever that I shall endeavour
continually to utter my thanks. Pitye me. I
beg it with tears."

Mary Dyer became one of the ghosts of
Boston. Was it to her that Cotton Mather
referred when, in November, 17 16, he wrote
in his diary: "There has lately appeared
in Town an apparition of a Dead person. It
thing so well attested that there can be
no room to doubt it." There is a tradition
that, after long intervals, Mary Dyer has
appeared on the Common, dressed in gray
garments of the fashion of a former time, her
paleface showing the tender expressions of a
noble life ; and when spolcen to she has van-
ished from sight. The story is, that in the
twilight of an evening of October she ap-
peared, and seated herself on a bench beside
an old man, and said to him: "This is the
fairest day of the year, and this Common is
the fairest place in the world ; for here in
October of the year of our Lord 1659, Mar-
maduke Stevenson and William Kobinson
o£Eered up their lives that the minds and
consciences of men might be free in Massa-
chusetts."
In March, another banished Quaker was

THE DISTURBERS OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 117

caught in Boston and was hung on the Com-
mon. Public opinion then declared itself
against these barbarities, and the ruling
mandarins of Massachusetts, having received
words of disapproval from the King, were
compelled to yield to it.

And there were men and women who
made disturbances by noisy sleeping in the
meeting-house. It was customary at Boston
for a man, who carried a staff with a solid
ball on the end of it, to walk about the
house and knock up the sleepers. The pro-
cess of getting asleep has been described in
the journal of a man who slept for a living :
first you become dull to sounds, then you
become drowsy, then you are yawning, then
you arc nodding, then you are turning for a
position, then you are asleep; and soon a
snore summons the watchman, who arouses
you by a tap on your head with the ball ; or,
if you are a woman whose head is concealed
under a bonnet, he wakes you by brushing
your face with a fox's tail.

A Sunday sleeper whose name has been
preserved, and whose brave experience has
amused many generations of his imitators,
was Robert Scott of the Lynn congregation.

|l8 SIDE GLIMPSES.

One Sunday he was hammered out of his nap
so forcibly by a. thud of the awakening ball
that he Jumped up and knocked down his as-
isailant. For this offense he was taken to
court and condemned to be severely whipped
for " common sleeping " at the public exer-
cise and for striking him that waked him.
This "common sleeping" was not done in
Puritan meeting-houses only. The people
called Friends, whose preachers preached not
of Mount Sinai but of the dcceitfulncss of
the human heairt, gave themselves up to the
same enjoyment. The records of the South
Kingstown Meeting in Rhode Island mention
the appointment of overseers who were
charged to suppress •* Sleeping and other
indecencies " in their meeting-house.^

Congregations in Old England were also
sleepy, and they required a "sluggard,
waker," as the churchwardens of Castleton
in Derbyshire designated the man to whom
they paid ten shillings, in the year 1722,
for arousing sleepers " by tapping them over
the head with a wand." But Sir Roger de
Coverley, who, as Addison tells us, was

1 Thomas Hazard son of Rob^^ calVd College Tom : a
Study of Life in NarraganseU in the XVIIIth CctUury.

THE DISTURBERS OP PUBLIC WORSHIP, 119

landlord to the whole congregation, allowed
no sluggard-wakcr to be employed; "for if
by chance he has been surprised into a
short nap at sermon, upon recovering out of
it he stands up and looks about him, and if
he sees anybody else nodding, either wakes
them himself, or sends his servant to them."
It has been said that sleepiness in the
meeting-house can be accounted for on sci-
entific principles; that it is a condition of
hypnotism, indicating a complete absorption
of the sermon instead of inattention to it.
Fixing your mind on the voice of the
preacher produces the conditions necessary
to domination by his mind; the drooping
eyelids and nodding heads do not indicate
the preacher's dullness, but are testimonials
of his powerful influence over those who are
fast asleep. Whatever may be the philoso-
phy of it, the fact remains that on Sunday
the human nature of colonial" New England
seemed to close its eyes for a general drowse
in the meeting-house. The sermon shuts off.
the incessant labors of the week past and of
the week to come, as a barrier reef shuts off
from a sleepy lagoon —

" The long wash of Australasian seas."

^J- Tv'^VU^.-

_w.^-^^ -^, yXj^ ^

IX.

THE NEIGHBORS OF THE MEETING-HOUSE.

IDEON Buckingham advertised in
the " Connecticut Journal," February
7, 1791 : "To be Sold. A Dwelling
House Pleasantly situated in Milford within
a few Rods of the Meeting House, in which
has been kept a Tavern for a great Number
of Years."

As the colonial meeting-house stood in
the centre of the town, a tavern was always
its neighbor. This was a place of general
resort ; to it town meetings were sometimes
adjourned ; in it politicians, idlers, and train-
band captains made their headquarters.
Here selectmen held court attended by the
town clerk, who wrote in the town book
such sales and transfers as were brought in,
together with marriages, deaths, estrays, and
earmarks. The town clerk was not a pink
of learning. As an illustration of his strug-
gles with words of more than one syllable, I

NEIGHBORS OP THE MEETING-HOUSE. 12 1

copy his record from the Rochester book:
"Joseph Benson's disstiniguishin marke is a
hole in ye nigh eare and a slit in ye top of
ye Right eare in Aug ye i : 1699."

Men, like sheep, are gregarious. They
went to taverns to spend their evenings be-
cause the village offered no other form of
social amusement. This habit of tavern
haunting, as it was called by those who con-
demned it, became so general that a conven-
tion of ministers at Boston, in May, 1694,
declared it to be a sin ; they said : " Ye
Liberty taken by Towne Dwellers to mis-
pend their Time in Tavernes which are
places properly & honestly designed but for
ye Accommodation of Travellers — It is
most earnestly pray'd That some effectuall
check may be given unto this way of sinning."
And yet the village parson was often to be
seen there of an evening.

The tavern door stands open ; let us peep
in, after sundown, when the gossips have come
and taken their accustomed places in the
bar-room. Among them you may see such
types of the English family as have been
portrayed by Shakespeare, Fielding, and
Bunyan. Here is Falstaff drinking sack-

122 SIDE GLIMPSES,

posset, telling stories, and falling into great
laughter. Parson Adams comes in and dis-
courses with Talkative the son of Saywell,
who " will talk when on the alebench of re-
ligious matters, and the more drink he hath
in his crown the more of these things he
hath in his mouth." Mr. Facingbothways
is here, supporting both sides of an argu-
ment ; and Mr. Fairspeech is here, and Mr.
Anything agreeing with everybody while he
fumbles in his pockets for a coin with which
to pay his score. These men are samples
of the men of the village. They all do the
same things, think the same thoughts, speak
the same drawl, tell the same stories, and
spend much time in the tavern, year in
and year out. And so each evening passes,
until the low-ceiled room is filled with the in-
cense of tobacco, the candles are burning to
a splutter, and the meeting-house bell strikes
nine o'clock. Then the landlord pulls down
and locks the pickets which inclose the bar,
and the loungers walk silently away to their
homes. It was in the bond which he gave
on receiving from the Court of Common
Pleas a license to keep the tavern, that he
would not " suffer any children or servant or

NEIGHBORS OP THE MRETING-HOUSB, 123

other person to remain in his house tippling
or drinking after nine o'clock in the night."
The landlord's business belongs to the
family. His father kept the tavern; and
should his wife outlive him she will keep it,
until, in turn, the son succeeds to the inher-
itance. You may read in the churchyard the
sculptured story : —

** Beneath this stone, in hopes o^ Zion,
There lies the landlord of the Lion.
His wife keeps on the business still,
Resigned unto the Heavenly wilL" . ' ,■ '

. 'The pound harboring stray cattle -wals d
neighbor of the meeting-house. It was thirty
feet square and six or seven feel high ^ the
first public structure built in the town. 'Othe^
neighbors were the whipping -^6st,' th6
stocks, the pillory, and the wooden horse }
instruments of punishment tvhich ^wierd
adapted to the various incidents ^of colonial
life. Pavid Linnell and Hannah Shelly, of
Barnstable, who confessed fornicatibn, were
flogged at the post " by sentence of the ma-
gistracy." Sometimes there was a merciful
thought in such punishments ; as when Sarah
Osgood, of Newbury, was sentenced "to
be whipped twenty stripes for fornication

124 SIDE GLIMPSES,

within six weeks after she shall be brought
to bed." Thieves were flogged and then
sent to jail. No culprit was beaten with
more than forty stripes, and it was forbidden
by law that "any true gentleman be pun-
ished with whipping unless his crime be
very shameful and his course of life viscious
and profligate." It is worthy of note that
the position of the whipping-post and stocks
was similar to that which they occupied in
the time of the prophet Jeremiah : " Then
Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put
him in the stocks that were by the house of
the Lord."

Men of the trainband who were absent
from the ranks on a training-day, and had
not paid the fines in which they were con-
demned by a justice of the peace, were fa-
vored with a seat on the wooden horse in
presence of a general muster. There was a
fitness in using the wooden horse to punish
a horse thief ; I find such a use reported in
a New Haven newspaper of January i6,
1787: —

** Last Tuesday one James Brown, a transient
Person was brought to the Bar of the County
Court on a complaint for Horsestealing — being

NEIGHBORS OP THE MEETING-HOUSE, 125

put to plead — plead guilty, and on Thursday re-
ceived the sentence of the Court, that he should
be confined to the Goal in this County 8 Weeks,
be whipped the first Day 15 stripes on the naked
Body, and set one Hour on the wooden Horse,
and on the first Monday of each following
Month be whipped ten stripes, and set one hour
at each time on the wooden Horse."

They swore terribly in colonial times. A
law of Massachusetts of the year 1692 said
that every person who shall "profanely
sware or curse " is to pay a fine of five shil-
lings or sit in the stocks two hours. The
fine was also to be " twelve pence for every
oath after the first." John Hull instructed
his captains when they sailed from Boston
that they must pray and not swear at sea,
lest the Lord send foul blasts to wreck his
ships. A law of the year 1746, "to more
effectually prevent profane cursing and
swearing," was ordered to be read in the
meeting-house by ministers " on the Lord's
day next succeeding the choice of town
officers yearly."

A prisoner in the stocks could take to
himself the consolation of TertulHan, were
he familiar with the writings of that ecclesi-

ia6 S/DE GLIMPSES.

astic, who said, " The leg feels nothing in the
stocks when the mind is in heaven." But
the colonial swearers and slanderers were
not set therein because of heavenly qualifi-
cations. The legs of Jane Boulton, of riy-
mouth, were locked in the stocks because
she bad uttered too many reviling speeches.
Idlers standing outside the meeting-house at
Eastham were set in the stocks because they
would not attend the services of worship.
The selectmen of Portsmouth, to protect
prisoners in the stocks from being pelted
with products of kitchen gardens, built their
stocks within a cage, and set the pillory on
top of it, and then they placed tiie machine
at the west end of the meeting-house. The
rulers of those times had no thought of the
sacredness of the human body, which St.
Paul declared to be " the temple of the Holy
Ghost," when they nailed a man to the pil-
lory by his ears and publicly flogged his
naked body. Punishment by the pillory was
considered to be infamous. In the year
1697, William Vesey, of Braintree, was sen-
tenced to the pillory for ploughing on a
thanksgiving day, and for declaring that
James the Second was King, instead of

NEIGHBORS OP THE MEETING-HOUSE, 127

William, for whose escape from assassination
the thanksgiving was appointed. Five years
later he was elected a member of the Gen-
eral Court ; but he was expelled because hd
had suffered infamous punishment in the
pillory.

The heyday of all these barbarous in-
struments was Thursday, known through-
out New England as lecture day, when at-
tendance to hear " the fifth day lecture " was
as compulsory as was attendance to hear the
sermons on Sunday. This service was in-
troduced to the colonies by John Cotton, who
brought it with him from Boston in Old
England, where he had maintained his
"ordinary lecture every Thursday*' in St
Butolph's under direction of the Bishop of
Lincoln. The day was first mentioned in
New England history by Governor Winthrop,
in connection with the opening of a market
in Boston. He wrote, on the 4th of March,
1634 : " By order of Court a mercate was
erected at Boston to be kept upon Thursday
the fifth day of the week, being lecture
day." The reverence in whicjj this day was
held may be seen in the records of John
Cotton's church, wherein a rehearsal of the

128 SIDE GLIMPSES,

misdemeanors of a poor excommunicated
soul included his " sometimes forsaking the
Lecture." In the year 1679, there was made
in Boston '' an order and advice of ye magis-
trates yt all the elders of this towne might
jointly carry on the sth day Lecture." It
then became popular in all the towns of
New England. It was held near the noon
hour ; schools, if there were any, were dis-
missed and labor was suspended, so that no
one should be deprived of the privilege of
attending the lecture.

Samuel Sewall speaks of a lecture day in
midwinter of the year 171 5 when a north-
east snowstorm was raging in Boston and,
in spite of the storm, there were two hun-
dred men and sixteen women present at the
lecture. He counted them because the at-
tendance was small. At these meetings the
names of those persons of the town who
were intending to be married were called
aloud. This gave a little zest to the occa-
sion. Doubtless a greater zest was given by
the fact that somebody was to be set up in
the pillory, or locked in the stocks, or flogged
at the whipping-post, or publicly corrected
before the congregation.

NEIGHBORS OP THE MEETING-HOUSE. 129

The Connecticut Records tell of a lecture-
day sentence passed upon Nicholas Olm-
steed : " He is to stand uppon the Pillory
at Hartford the next lecture day dureing the
time of the lecture. He is to be sett on a
lytle before the begining & to stay thereon
a litle after the end.il' But Walter Gay,
who had been courting the parson's maid,
is allowed to hear the lecture, and then, for
his labor of love, he is to stand up in the
meeting-house and be scolded from the pul-
pit, — " publiquely corrected for his misde-
meanor in laboring to inveagle the affections
of Mr Hoockers mayde." An impudent ser-
vant is brought from prison every week, on
lecture day, after the lecture is ended, to
receive scoldings, until the scolder gets
tired of the occupation. The story is this :
"Susan Coles for her rebellious cariedge
toward her mistris is to be sent to the howse
of correction and be keept at to hard labour
& course dyet to be brought forth the next
lecture day to be publiquely corrected and so
to be corrected weekley until Order be given
to the contrary." With these little weekly
comedies Thursday Lecture was made a pop-
ular institution in colonial New England.

I30 SiDB GLIMPSBS.

The stocks, the whipping-post, and the pil-
lory — all intended (quoting the historic Eng-
lish) "to punyssche trasgressours Ageynste
ye Kyngs Maiesties lawes " — came from
Old England. They stood near every parish
church, John Taylor, a rhymester known as
the water poet, tells us that about the year
1630 —

" In London, and within a mile, I ween,
There are jails and piisons fuil eiglitecn,
And aixly wliipping-poals and stock:. uiiiJ cagca."
It is on record that, in the year 1287, the
Lord Mayor of London " did sharpe correc-
tion make upon bakers for making bread of
light weight;" as bakers make hread now
without any sharp correction. He caused
divers of them to be put in the pillory, as
also one Agnes Dantie "for selling of min-
gled butter," Agnes was, apparently, the
first dealer in oleomargarine. A pillory in
Cornhill was not unlike that which the
selectmen of Portsmouth set up at the west
end of the meeting-house, and claimed as
their own invention. It is described as a
timbered cage with stocks attached to it and
a pillory on top of it ; three instruments of
torture in one. Tbe use of this machine was

NEIGHBORS OP THE MEETING-HOUSE, 131

offered to " bakers offending in the assize of
bread ; " to " millers stealing of corn at the
mill ; " to " balds, scolds, and other offend-
ers." It is well known what the scold was ;
her companion the bald was a poor fellow
who had neither dignity, nor money, nor a
soul above meanness. Some scolds and
balds came to New England. The "other
offenders " for whom a pillory stood waiting
were sometimes of a high grade. For ex-
ample : Dr. Bostwick, for a publication end-
ing with the prayer —

** From plague, and pestilence, and famine,
From bishops, priests, and deacons.
Good Lord, deliver us t "

was deposed from the ministry, was branded
and whipped, then his nostrils were slit and
his ears cropped in the pillory at Westmin-
ster. But his loving wife was there. A letter
written at the time says: "He stood two
hours in the pillory, his wife got on a stool
and kissed him. His ears being cut off she
called for them, put them in a clean hand-
kerchief and carried them away with her."
The grim founders of New England did as
much for Baptists and Quakers, and others
who spoke their minds about the magistrates.

132 SIDE GLIMPSES,

"It is ordered," by the General Court at
Boston, June 14, 163 1, "that Philip Rat-
liffe shall be whipped, Jiave his eares cut off,
fined 40 pounds, and banished out of the
limits of this jurisdiction, for uttering mali-
cious and scandalous speeches against the
Government." There was but one political
party in those days.

THE COMEDY AND TRAGEDY OF THE
PULPIT.

nS^HN the churches of Old England a
KSD Poor Men's Box was set up, on
'^*" which was engraved the appeal :
"Remember the poor, and God will bless
thee and thy store." It is written in the
churchwarden's accounts of St. Mary's, Read-
ing, of the year 1627: " Payde to lohn
Gripp the Joiner for making the poore mans
box and the bannesters to it 8 shillings."
This box was not seen in the colonial meet-
ing-house. People who sat on its hard
benches heard but little of that sympathetic
preaching which impels men and women

" To 3Com th« sordid world."

There was a Society, on whose behalf ser-
mons were preached, " For Propagating Chris-
tian Knowledge to carry the Gospel to the

134 SIDE GLIMPSES,

Aboriginal Natives on the Borders of New
England ; " but there were no temperance
societies; no missionary societies sending
teachers of the gospel into foreign lands.

Colonial preachers had an aptitude for
riding hobby-horses. Mr. Davenport, at
New Haven, preached that men must take
off their hats and stand up at the announce-
ment of the text. Mr. Williams, at Salem,
preached that women must wear veils during
the exercises of public worship. Mr. Cotton,
at Boston, preached that women ought to be
ashamed to wear veils in the meeting-house ;
that married women had no pretense to wear
them as virgins, and that neither married nor
unmarried women would choose to wear
them by the example of Tamar the harlot ;
nor need they wear veils for such purpose
as did Ruth in her widowhood.

In the year 1684, Increase Mather preached
at Boston that " Gynecandrical Dancing or
that which is commonly called Mixt or Pro-
miscuous Dancing of Men and Women, be
they elder or younger persons together, can-
not be tolerated in such a place as New Eng-
land without great Sin." His argument was:

'^Promiscuous Dancing is a breach of the

COMEDY AND TRAGEDY OF THE PULPIT. 135

seventh Commandment, as being an occasion
and an incentive to that which is evil in the sight
of God, There are Scriptures which seem ex-
pressly and particularly to condemn the Dancing
we plead against. It is spoken of as the great
sin of the Daughters of Sion, that they did walk
with stretched out necks, and with wanton eyes,
walking and mincing as they go, and making a
tinkling with their feet. — Isaiah 3. 16."

"Who were the Inventors of Petulant Dan-
cings ? Learned men have well observed that the
Devil was the first inventor of the impleaded
Dances, and the Gentiles who worshipped him
the first Practitioners of this Art. They sat
down to eat and drink, and rose up to play, or
to dance."

And so the preacher went on, drawing
upon imagination for his facts, until he came
to the plea that " Miriam danced and David
danced," according to the Scriptures. To
which his answer was, "Those Instances
are not at all to the purpose ! " There must
have been many hearers in the meeting-
house whose common sense caused them to
smile at such reasoning. Mixed dancing
had become popular in Boston. Samuel
Sewall, writing November 12, 1685, says:

136 SIDE GLIMPSES.

*' The ministers af this Town Come to the
Court and complain against a Dancing Mas-
ter who seeks to set up here and hath mixt
Dances ; and his time of Meeting is Lecture
Day. And 't is reported he should say that
by one Play he could teach more Divinity
than Mr. Willard or the Old Testament."
Mr. Willard was the minister of the Old
South Church. The Puritan prejudice
against dancing was ineradicable. At New
Haven, in the year 1784, when a dancing
master had advertised to teach his art and
had secured patrons, an attempt was made
to expel him from the town.

Mr. Mather preached also against wearing
periwigs. A young woman of Rhode Island,
named Hetty Shepard, when visiting at Bos-
ton,- in the year 1676, wrote in her diary :
** I could not help laughing at the periwig
of Elder Jones which had gone awry. The
periwig has been greatly censured as en-
couraging worldly fashions not suitable to
the wearing of a minister of the gospel, and
it has been preached about by Mr. Mather
and many think he is not severe enough in
the matter, but rather doth find excuse for
it on account of health."

COMEDY AND TRAGEDY OP THE PULPIT, 137

In the year 1722, Solomon Stoddard, min-
ister at Northampton, said : " Hooped Petti-
coats have something of Nakedness ; Mixt
Dances are incentives to lust." In a sermon
to men on the sin of wearing long hair, Mr.
Stoddard reasoned as follows : —

" It is utterly Unlawful to wear their Hair long.
It is a great Burden and Cumber; it is Effimi-
nancy, and a vast Expence. One Scripture that
condemns it, i Cor. 11. 14. Doth not even
nature itself teach you that if a man wear long
hair it is a shame to him ? That which the light
of Nature condemns is a Moral Evil, . . . More-
over, in the next verse the apostle shows that
Nature teaches Women to wear their Hair long.
He saith, If a woman have long hair it is a glory
to her, for her hair is given her for a covering,
but not to Men. Another Scripture doth also
condemn it, viz. Ezek. 44. 20. Neither shall they
shave their heads, nor suffer their locks to grow
long, they shall only poll their heads. Here are
two extreams forbid ; shaving the head, and suf-
fering their locks to grow long. This must either
signify some spiritual thing, but no man knows
what ; or some Gospel Institution ; and if so, why
is it not enjoyned unto ministers in the New
Testament ? Or else it is a Moral Law ; and so
it must be. One part of it is surely moral ; They

138 SIDE GLIMPSES.

shall not shave their heads ; therefore the other
part is Moral also; They shall not suiTer their
locks to grow long."

The style of women's apparel waa a favorite
topic with colonial preachers. Addison says
that women in "their thoughts are ever
turned upon appearing amiable to the other
sex; they talk, and move, and smile, with a
design upon man ; every feature of their
faces, every part of their dress, is filled with
snares and allurements." In the light of
this truth it is difficult to understand what
was the matter at Abington, in the year
177s, when the men of the town "Voted
tbat it is an indecent way that the female
sex do sit with their hats and bonnets on to
worship God in his house." Perhaps they
were feathered women whose headdresses
were adorned with dead and stuffed birds;
or perhaps their hats and bonnets were so
lofty and large that men who sat behind
them were shut off from a view of the pul-
pit and the preacher. Whichever it may
have been, the women of to-day who read
this line of history will feel an inward cry
of nature asserting their kinship with those
women of Abington town.

COMEDY AND TRAGEDY OF THE PULPIT, 139

Fashions in other things, besides veils,
hair, petticoats, hoops, hats, and bonnets,
attracted theological attention. The pretty
woman in Hogarth's picture of "The Sleep-
ing Congregation " represents the trlith of
the adage that the sense of being well-
dressed gives to woman a feeling of satis-
faction which religion is powerless to bestow.
Her flowing robes and the low cut of her
corsage reveal "snares and allurements"
which were the captivating fashion of her
time, both in Old England and in New Eng-
land. She is seated near enough to the foot
of the lofty pulpit to catch every word that
falls from the lips of the droning preacher ;
biit her hands are listless in her lap, her
uncovered head is slightly tilted back, her
eyes are closed, she is softly sleeping. Near
by sits the sensuous and bewigged parish
clerk ; one of whose eyes is winking under
the pressure of sleep, and the other is strug-
gling to keep its sight upon the slumbering
beauty.

They were women, even if they were Cal-
vinists. They laughed at the fashions in
dress of other days, as women laugh now,
and adopted them whenever they came

■40 SIDE OUhlPSES.

around again. They wore large hoops,
peaked stomachers, and modesty pieces, if
in style; and "laid their breasts bare in
the meeting-house." Then came the ser-
mons. Let us turn to one that was preached
by George Weekes at Harwichtown during
the fashions in dress of the Hogarth period.
Of course this minister knew nothing of the
theories of modern art: that there is a vast
difference between the naked and the nude;
that, although an uncultivated mind can
appreciate the immodesty of nakedness,
only an educated mind can understand the
purity of the nude. He preached his own
theory, and I will give his argument: —

"First. The Sin of our first I'arents hath
occasioned a necessity for our wearing of
Cloths whilst we live in this world."

"Secondly. As Clothing is now neces-
sary, so there is a necessity that our Cloths
should be made in some fashion. To make
a Garment without any shape or fashion is
not possible."

" Thirdly, It is not necessary that people
in all Ages nor that all persons in an Age;
nor that one and the same person should at
all times keep invariably to one and the same

4

COMEDY AND TRAGEDY OP THE PULPIT, 141

fashion. . . . There is no law which oWiges
people in every Generation to keep to one
and the same fashion : — where there is no
law there is no transgression. (Romans, 5 :

** Fourthly. We should take heed, that
we become not guilty of breaking the sixth
Command by following such fashions as
have a tendency to destroy our Health. We
should take heed, least we provoke God to
anger against us by following such fashions
as are contrary to the seventh Command-
ment."

"And therefore it is, that I have been and
am still of the mind, that Women by wear-
ing their Hoops, and laying their Breasts
bare, become guilty of breaking the seventh
Commandment."

The preacher, continuing the sermon,
turns his attention from the women to the
men of the congregation. He attacks their
wigs by propounding this question : ** If a
Man cut off his hair to wear a Perriwig,
merely because it is a common fashion, or
because he dislikes the color of his own hair ;
or if he cover his head with such a Perriwig
as doth disfigure him, doth he not therein

142 SIDE GLLMPSES.

walk contrary to God's law ? (Deuteronomy,
6 : S. Matthew, 22 : 37.) "

" Firstly. Adam, so long as he continued
in innocency, did wear his own Hair, and
not a Perriwig. Indeed, I do not see how
it was possible that Adam should dislike his
own hair, and therefore cut it off, so that he
might wear a Perriwig, and yet have con-
tinued innocent/'

" Secondly. When the Son of God ap-
peared in flesh, he did not from a dislike of
his own Hair, cut it. off to wear a Perriwig.
The Lord Jesus always did those things that
pleased his Father ; but if he had found fault
with his own Hair, and had therefore cut it
off to wear a Perriwig, he would have dis-
honored his Father; therefore, 'tis evident
that he did wear his own Hair and not a
Perriwig."

" Thirdly. The Children of God will not
wear Perriwigs after the Resurrection. The
Body of Christ did not consume, nor his
Hair wast in the Grave : he doubtless now
wears the Hair that is essential to his own
head. And the bodies of Believers shall
then doubtless be adorn'd with Hair essen-
tial to their own heads."

COMEDY AND TRAGEDY OF THE PULPIT. 143

** Fofirthly. We have no warrant in the
word of God, that I know of, for our wear-
ing of Perriwigs except it be in extraor-
dinary cases. . . . Elisha did not cover his
head with a Perriwig, altho* it was bald."

" To see the greater part of Men in some
congregations wearing Perriwigs is a matter
of deep lamentation. For either all these
men had a necessity to cut off their Hair,
or else not. If they had a necessity to cut
ofif their Hair, then we have reason to take
up a lamentation over the sin of our first
Parents which hath occasion so many Per-
sons in one Congregation, to be sickly,
weakly, crazy Persons. Oh, Adam, what has
thou done!"

The name of the author of this sermon is
preserved in " Weeke's Hollow ; " the place
in Harwich where he perished during a win-
ter's night of the year 1744.

That was the comedy side of the pulpit ;
there was also a tragedy side. Some preach-
ers announced to their congregations that
infants were lost ; that certain dead persons
were in hell ; that, despite the experience of
St. Paul, God could easier convert the seat
on which they were sitting than convert a

144 ^^^^ GLIMPSES,

moral man ; that the unconverted have no
right to sing Psalms ; that there are sinners
for whom Christ did not die. Some evolved
doctrinal teachings from very trivial subjects.
If a man fell into a well, or was thrown
from a horse, or was drowned in a river, the
event brought forth a homily. Solomon
Williams, of Lebanon, Connecticut, preached
a sermon in September, 1741, "On the sud-
den Death of John Woodward who was
drowned in passing the Ferry at Haddam,
and on the Deliverance of Sam Gray." A
man about to be hung was ceremoniously
brought into the meeting-house to hear the
last sermon of his lifetime, in which he
was probably told, " ' T is a thousand to
one if ever thou be one of that small num-
ber whom God hath picked out to escape
the wrath to come ! " Such sermons were
printed with a thrilling narrative of the
bloody deeds of the criminals, and they were
the only exciting reading which people could
get. Benjamin Coleman, minister at Bos-
ton, preached a sermon in July, 1726, "to
the late Miserable Pirates on the Lord's Day
before their Execution," which was printed
with its piratical story before the week was

COMEDY AND TRAGEDY OF THE PULPIT, 145

ended. Then the body of the pirate captain
was hanging in chains from a gibbet set on
the ledge of Nix's Mate, at the entrance of
Boston harbor; whither the story readers
could go and look at it ; and where for years
it swung in the easterly gales, a reminder of
the fate of evil-doers on the sea.

Thomas Hooker, one of the most noted
of the early colonial ministers, was called
"a Son of Thunder," and was eulogized by
his contemporaries as

" A pourcr forth of lively Oracles ;
In saving souls, the sum of Miracles.'*

In one of his stirring sermons he said to
his congregation : " Suppose any soule here
present were to behold the damned in hell,
and if the Lord should give thee a little
peepe-hole into hell that thou did'st'see the
horror of those damned soules, and thy
heart begins to shake in consideration
thereof; then propound this to thy owne
heart, what paines the damned in hell doe
endure for sinne; and thy heart will shake
and quake at it, the least sinne that ever
thou didst- commit, though thou makest a
light matter of it, is a greater evill then the
paines of the damned in hell. Men shrink

146 SIDE GLIMPSES.

at this and loathe to goe down to hell and
to be in endlesse torments. Oh get you into
the arke, the Lord Jesus ; and when one is
roaring and yelling — Oh the Devill, the
Devill — another is ready to hang himselfe
or to cut his own throat."

It was true ; they were ready to hang
themselves. Those " peepe-holes into hell"
were opened to right of them and to left of
them. The terrible doctrines continually
trumpeted from the pulpit made hearers
anxious about their future state. This anx-
iety, with the cheerless solitude of rural
life, caused them to become morbid on re-
ligious subjects, and relief was sought by
some in suicide. "She hung herself in the
closet under the stairs ; " or, " He went out
to the barn and hung himself in the hay-
loft ;" were stories told in many towns.

This condition of the public mind attracted
attention in the legislature at Boston ; where
a law was enacted, October 16, 1660, whose
preamble contained these words : "Consider-
ing how far Salan doth prevail upon persons
within this Jurisdiction to make away with
themselves." It was Satan, they said, not
the sermonizings o£ the times, that induced

COMEDY AND TRAGEDY OF THE PULPIT, 147

the* suicides. " To bear testimony against
such wicked and unnatural practices/' said
the legislators, "that others maybe deterred
therefrom ; Do order that if any person be
wilfully guilty of their own Death, every such
person shall be denied the privilege of being
Buried in the Common Burying place of
Christians, but shall be Buried in some Com-
mon Highway and a Cart-load of Stones laid
upon the grave as a Brand of Infamy, and as
a warning to others to beware of the like
Damnable practices."

This history destroys the modern theory
that " suicide is 2Xi evidence of culture ; " al-
though the vainglorious Cotton Mather con-
templated suicide, if we may believe his own
confession written on the i6th of March,
1703: "Should I tell in how many Forms
the Devil has assaulted me it would strike
my Friends with Horror. Sometimes Temp-
tations to Impurities, and sometimes to Blas-
phemy and Atheism, and the Abandonment
of all Religion as a mere Delusion, and
sometimes to Self Destruction itself."

The law which I have quoted remained
in force during one hundred and sixty-four
years, or until February 21, 1824, when the

148 SlOE GLIMPSES.

Governor of Massachusetts signed its r=peal.
And yet, on the isolated farms of New Eng-
land, suicide continued to be the outcome of
lives whose mental power had collapsed and
whose hope had become extinct Suicide
was the last stage in the deterioration of a
family stock which, for generations, had been
nurtured on the doctrines of John Calvin.

THE POOR PARSONS.

1HERE was a church as soon as the
parson came. It was the associ^
ation of a few devout men and
women united by a covenant, without a doc-
trine or a creed. " We covenant with the
Lord and one with another and we do bind
ourselves in the presence of God to walk
together in all his ways according as he is
pleased to reveal himself unto us in his
blessed word of truth ; " so opened the first
church covenant made in New England ;
beautiful in its simplicity.

In April, 1629, the Company of Massachu-
setts Bay, at London, having despatched
ships to New England, wrote to its planters
saying : —

" And for that the prpagating of the Gospele
is the thing wee doe prfess aboue all to bee or
ayme in settling this Flantacon, wee haue bin

150 SmS GLIMPSES.

careful] to make plentyfull prvision of Godly
Ministers, by whose faitlifull preachJnge godly
Conversacon, and exemplary lyfe, wee trust, not
only those of or owne Nation wilbe built vp in the
Knowledge of God, but also the Indians may in
God's appointed tyme bee reduced to tlie obedy-
ence of the Gospele of Christ."

The ships carried about three hundred
colonists, with cows, goats, and horses, and
also four ministers. One of the ministers
was Francis Higginson, who had been edu-
cated at Cambridge University, and was
preaching at Leicester as a minister of the
Established Church when he received an invi-
tation to embark " unto a voyage into New
England," with kind promises to support
him.^ He set sail from London with feelings
of sadness, for he loved "our deare native
soyle of England ;" and when they came to

' London, " 23d March, 162S. At Ihia meeting Inlinii-
tion was given by Mr Nowell by lelters ffrom Mr Iiake
lofanson, ihal one Mr lliggeson of Lester, an Able mitiis-
ter ptSers lo goc to or plantacon ; who being approved
for a. reverend grave minister, lilt (or or present occations,
it was thought by llies present to entreat Mr Jno liunifrey
10 ride presently to Lester, and If Mr lliggeaon may Con-
veniently be liad to goe this present vioage tliat he should
deale with him." — KiceTdsef thi Camfiiiiy i/f MasiacJHiitlli
Say.

i

THE POOR PARSONS, 151

Land's End, he called his children to the
stern of the ship and, with thoughts that did
him honor, said : " Farewell, dear England !
We do not go to New England as separatists .
from the Church of England, though we
cannot but separate from the corruptions in
it, but we go to practice the positive part of
church reformation and propagate the Gos-
pel in America." The Company, under an
agreement with him to go to the colony, had
paid to him forty pounds in money, and
covenanted to pay to him yearly thirty
pounds and give to him a house, firewood,
the milk of two cows, and many acres of
land. This was the beginning of that form
of salary which, during two centuries, was
the life-long reward of the poor parsons of
New England. The Company also prom-
ised to him *' a manservant to take care and
look to his things and to catch him fish
and foule and provide other things needful,
and also two maidservants to look to his
family."

He kept a journal of his voyage across
the Atlantic, which presents a pleasing pic-
ture of the man who was so much of a phi-
losopher that he wrote : " Those that love

Ija SIDB GLIMPSES.

their owne chimney corner and dare not go
farre beyond their own townes end shall
never have the honour to see the wonderfull
workes of Almighty God." During the first
week at sea one of his children died; then
the company kept " a solemn day of fasting
and prayer unto God," and the sailors said
they never heard of the like performed at
sea before. He notes that the shipmaster
"used every night to sett the 8 and 12 a
clockc watches with singing a psnlniu and
prayer that was not read out of a booke."
He notes fair winds, and "boisterous winds
blowing crosse," and "foggie and calniish "
days, and "grampus fishes as bigg as an
oxe," and great turtles and whales, and ■
"scools of mackrill," and "a mouiitayne of
ice shining as white as snow," — until, on
the 27th of June, the ship entered what is
now Gloucester harbor on Cape Ann. There,
the journalist says, "was an island wbilher
four of our men with a boate went and
brought back again ripe strawberries and
gooseberries, and sweet single roses."

By written bailots of the little church of
the simple covenant (every man, as says a
contemporary letter, "wrote in a note his

THE POOR PARSONS. 153

name '*), Francis Higginson became the first
regular parson chosen in New England.
After a service of less than a year he died
of a hectic fever ; leaving a repute like that
of Chaucer's Poore Parson : —

'' Christes love and his apostles twelve
He taught, but first he followed it himselve."

The popular judgment of New England
about an educated parson was like that ex- '
pressed in John Selden's "Table Talk:"
"Without school divinity a divine knows
nothing logically, nor will he be able to
satisfy a rational man out of the pulpit."
Colonial ministers were college-bred. Many
of them were settled for life in small isolated
parishes, where they found no books, no
learning, no intellectual sympathies, no
points of contact with the world at large ;
where they received "much, sometimes all
of their scanty salary in kind, eking it out
by the drudgery of a cross-grained farm."

In such parishes the parson's salary was
rarely paid when it was due, and the amount
of it was sometimes unmercifully cut down
by the whimsical votes of town meetings,
because parishioners who hoarded their
small savings were apt to think that the

IS4 SIDE GLIMPSES.

parson was drawing too much money out c^
the town treasury, or too much substance
out of the farms. He was permitted to use
the glebe or " ministry lands " under condi-
tions. A town in Barnstable County stipu-
lated that if the parson "will fence with
cedar " the ministry meadow, his heirs
"may have the fence after his decease."
That bargain was made in the year of our
Lord 1715. The same shrewdness existed
at Wareham in the year 1806, when the
town voted "To procure Rales amif to
Fence the min ner stree Fresh meddo the
Rev Noble Evrit to make the Fence & keep
it in Repare." Nobody objected if he turned
an honest penny by serving as the town's
sweeper and fuller. It is less than a hun-
dred years ago when the parson of Wareham .
was ekeing out his means of living by sweep-
ing the meeting-house for a compensation ol
three dollars a year ; and, as was customary,
he did "winge or rub down the principal
seats" on the day after sweeping; then he
eked it out a little further by running a
fulling mill in which, with pestles and
stampers that rose and fell in troughs con-
tains fuller's earth, be extracted grease

THE POOR PARSONS, 155

from cloths homespun by women of his
congregation. The parson might be the
physician of his parish. For forty-five years
did Samuel Palmer, of Falmouth, preach to
the souls and practice on the bodies of his
people. His gravestone says : "His Virtues
would a Monument supply.*' At Gosport,
on the Isles of Shoals, John Tuck was physi-
cian and parson for fifty years ; so was John
Avery, at Truro, for forty-four years. In
Herbert's old book, " The Country Parson,"
we are told that a parson may become quali-
fied to treat the ills that flesh is heir to by
" Seeing one anatomy, reading one book of
physic, and having one herbal by him."
This was the extent of an education in
physic which the poor parsons of New Eng-
land possessed. Their tool was a lancet ;
their healing doses were herbs of the field
and garden, carefully gathered and hung
in the peak of the garret to be dried,
which were believed to be more potent
than the strong drugs of an apothecary.
When they did not heal, it was the will of
the Lord that they should not Perhaps
the parson's doses, when given " without
money and without price," opened the way

for a willing reception of bis spiritual pre-
scriptions,

The most noted of double-life parsons was
Michael Wigglesworth who, for forty-nine
years, was the physician of Maulden. He
was noted because he was the author of
that famous and dreadful Calvinian poem, —

Tha
DAY OF DOOM,

A Poetical DescriptLon of the

GREAT AND LAST JUDGMENT,

With a Shorl: discourse About

ETERNITY.

In the poet's description of the Day of
Judgment he says: —

" Then lo the bai all (hey diew near
Who died in infancy ;
And acvei had, or good or bad,
Effected personally."

These infants at the bar pleaded that they
ought not to suffer for the guilt of Old
Adam ; for, said they, —

" Not we, but he, ate of the tree
Whose fruit was interdicted."

To this thejudge replied that none can suffer
for what they never did;

THE POOR PARSONS, 157

" But, what you call old Adam's fall,

And only his trespass,
You call amiss to call it his ;

Both his and yours it was.
He was designed of all mankind

To be a public head,
A common root whence all should shoot.

And stood in all their stead."

So the infants had no standing in court ;
and mothers, the reverend poet tells us, are
not allowed in Heaven to distress themselves
with thoughts about the babes who are suf-
fering in that place where

"God's vengeance feeds the flame
With piles of wood, and brimstone flood.
That none can quench the same."

Such was the sanguinary theology taught
in the colonial meeting-house; whither the
babe was carried by a midwife, on the first
Sunday after birth, to be rescued by baptism
from a terrible destiny.

Near the stone wall which bounds the
Bell Rock cemetery in the ancient town
where Michael Wigglesworth preached and
practiced physic stands his gravestone.
Strange to say, his famous poem, which
Cotton Mather said would become immortal,
is not mentioned in the inscription : —

IS8 SIDE GLIMPSES.

Memento Mori : Fugit Hora.
Here Lyes Buried ye Body of
That Faithful Servant of
Jesus Christ ye Reverend
Mr. Michael Wigglesworth
Pastour of ye Church of Christ

at Maulden 49 years who
Finished His Work and Entered

Upon an Eternal Sabbath
Of Rest on ye Lord's Day June
ye 10, 1705, in ye 74 year of his age.
Here lyes Interd in Silent Grave Below
Maulden's Physician of Soul and Body two.

There is an allusion to the poem in this
epitaph written by Mather, for one of its
many editions : —

The Excellent
WIGGLESWORTH.
Remembered by some Good Tokens.
His pen did once Meat from the Eater fetch,
And now he 's gone beyond the Rater's reach.
His body once so Thin, was next to None ;
From hence he 's to Unbodied Spirits flown.
Once his rare skill did all Diseases heal ;
And he does nothing now uneasy feel.
He to his Paradise is joyful come ;
And waits with joy to see his Day of Doom.

It was commendable in a parson, and also
in anybody, to have more than one profes-
sion, The wardens of Christ Church, of

THE POOR PARSONS, 159

Boston, when writing to London in the year
1759 for an organist, said they wanted "to
find a person that understands to play well
on an Organ, a Tradesman or a Barber would
be most agreeable." They intimated that
an organist who could play the barber, or a
barber who could play the organ, would
have opportunities to shave the congrega-
tion; to quote exactly from their letter, —
"the Congregation improving him as they
have occasion in his Occupation."

No matter what was the sum of the par-
son's annual salary, there was but little money
in it. It was composed of various materi-
als. A part might be payable " at Boston at
some shope there ; " a part " in country pay
at this towne;" in it were, perhaps, "two
pounds of butter for every cow ; " a certain
weight in meats ; "upland winter wheat clean
from all trash ; " forty cords of firewood.
Mr. Lowell says, in one of his published
letters, that his great-grandfather, who was
minister of Newbury, used to take the gro-
cer's share of his salary in tobacco ; and there
is a painting still extant representing a meet-
ing of the neighboring clergy, each with his
pipe. One day the parson at Easton brought

l6o SIDB GLIMPSES.

home a bucket of potash and a little black
pig which he had received, as his note-book
says, on account of "payment for preach-
ing the Gospel." John Eliot, who was
known as the Apostle to the Indians, took
for a similar account thirty-four pounds'
weight of copper pennies and gave this
receipt at Roxbury, April 8, 1673 : " Re-
ceived of Colo Williams a Bag of coppers,
weight 34 pounds, in part of my salary for
the year currant, the same being by estima-
tion ;£i-i3-4 lawful money and for which
I am to be accountable." In the year 175 1,
John Wales, of Raynham, took one third of
his salary " in good merchantable iron at £^
per cwt." A part of the salary of Parson
Cotton at Famet was " one ninth part of the
drift fish" that came ashore. These drifts
were dead or stranded whales, claimed by
the town. His majesty's justice of the peace
fined a townsman £1 for "lying about a
whale " that was probably lying on the shore
for the improvement of the parson.

In the year 1747, Edward Pell became
the parson of a Cape Cod town, with an
annual salary of 135 bushels of corn, 15
bushels of rye, 10 bushels of wheat, and

THE POOR PARSONS. i6l

36 cords of firewood. As he preached for
bread without any butter, the poor wife
was probably compelled to fire the oven
every day to bake the salary ; but it did not
sustain him for long, as he died in his parish
during the year 1752. It was a teaching of
the colonial pulpit that the body buried was
the identical body to be raised at the gen-
eral resurrection of the just. This poor
grain-fed parson, when dying, thought of
that day when the trumpet shall sound and,
as the tradition is, he asked his friends to
bury his body in the ancient graveyard, be-
cause if it should be buried under the pines
in the new yard, it '* might be overlooked
in the resurrection." I feel a touch of pity
for this childlike parson. But he might
have bethought him of a passage in a ser-
mon of Jonathan Edwards : ** There is no
hope that God, by reason of the multiplicity
of affairs, he hath in mind, will happen to
overlook them and not take notice of them
when they come to die, and so that their
souls shall slip away privately and hide them*
selves in some secret corner."

The country parson was often struggling
against poverty. When William Emerson

1 63 SIDE GUMPSES.

turned away from his occupation as a school-
master and became the parson of Harvard
town, he said, " I am too poor to keep a
horse." Married five years later, and try-
ing to cultivate the ministry farm, he wrote :
" We are poor, and cold, and have little meal,
and little wood, and little meat ; but, thank
God, courage enough." Three years later,
the church society in Boston founded by
John Cotton wanted him ; and the estima-
tion in which he was held appears in the
fact that it offered to pay to the town eight
hundred dollars, to release him from his life-
long contract The town refused this offer,
but accepted one thousand dollars ; and then
Rirson Emerson with his family moved to
Boston, where he found more meal, more
wood, and more meat than he had found in
his country parish. He said : " The ills of
poverty, however, are not so great as those
of ecclesiastical dissension."

As a studious man, the parson had but
little time for enjoying the society of his fam-
ily, if he followed the example of Thomas
Prince, minister in the Old South meeting-
house of Boston, who wrote the following
order of his daily duties : —

THE POOR PARSONS. 163

" — 1 7 19. Oct. 30. I marry.

Nov. 10. We begin to keep House.
My Proposed Order is

At 5 Get up and go into my Study. Pray and
read in the original Bible till 6, and then call up
the Family.

At 6 J Go to Family Prayers ; and only the
Porringer of Chocolat for Breakfast till 7.

At 7 go into my study till 12^, and then do
something about House till i to Dinner ; except
on Thursday, study till 10^, then Dress, and at
II to Lecture.

Dinner at i.

At 2 Dress and go abroad till candle Light.
Except Wednesday, after Dinner, do something
about House; Saturday, after Dinner, visit at
Dr Sewairs till 2\ and then Home to Study at
candle Light and Study to 9^.
. At 9 J go to Family Prayers and go to Bed.

N. B. I eat no supper."

As a preacher, the parson was not always
remarkable in the estimation of his rural
hearers, because many of them stood on a
plane below his intellectual level. It has
been so ever since those days. Even the
celebrated Dean Stanley, of Westminster
Abbey, when he preached his first sermon
in a country village, was discussed by two old

164 SIDE GLIMPSES.

women on their way home after the service,
and one of them said : —

"Well, I do feel empty like."

"And so do I," said the other; "that
young man did n't give us much to feed on."

The parson was very human. He had
his bottle of rum in the study closet, and in
the cellar he had many barrels of cider made
from his own apples, as was the custom of
the times. He believed in the sentiment of
Goldsmith's song : —

" Let schoolmasters puzzle their brains

With grammar and nonsense and learnings
Good liquor I stoutly maintain
Gives genius a better discerning."

He picked up gladly a marriage fee, and
sometimes a gift of small value came to his
door on New Year's Day. John Emerson,
who was settled as parson of the frontier
town of Conway in the year 1769, and said
of himself that he was "John preaching in
the wilderness," kept a diary in which he
wrote : —

"January ist — Had much company. In the
evening married a couple. Fee $1.25. Had a
cheese given me. Value about $1. Deacon
Ware gave a present of beef. Value about 20
cents.

THE POOR PARSONS. 165

January 4th — Attended to study. Bottle of
rum, 50 cents.

January 23d — Married 3 couples. Fee $6.25.

February 4th — Paid a woman taylor for one
day, 25 cents. Postage for letters, 17 cents.

May 28th — Set out on horseback for a jour-
ney to Boston. The country was in an alarming
condition. Some means must be devised to sup-
press infidelity. Was gone from home near two
weeks. Expenses to and from Boston, $2.16.

July 5th — Bottle of rum, 50 cents.

August ist — Two quarts of rum, $1.50. Paid
for killing hog, 17 cents.

October 20th — Put in the cellar for Winter
use, 38 barrels of cider."

He sometimes fell into the sinful habits
of his people ; as did Joseph Penniman, who
was dismissed from his parish at Bedford
because of drunkenness. He became a
farmer in a neighboring town, and was one
day summoned to pray for the sick inmates
of a house near by. The tradition is that,
standinj; at the top of the stairs, he prayed
"the Lord to he very merciful unto Hczaliel
who licth nigh unto death in the north
chamber ; send thy ministering angels to
comfort Bathsheba, groaning with anguish
in the south chamber ; visit with thy heal-

1 66 SIDE GLIMPSES,

ing grace, Judith, thy sorely afflicted maiden
down stairs." ^

The great day of the parson's life was the
day of his ordination. It was a holiday for
the town, when fifers and drummers came
in from all parts of the county, escorted the
procession of councilmcn, scholars, particu-
lar gentlemen, villagers, and boys into the
meeting-house and out of it, and played stir-
ring music to idlers gathered around the
whipping-post on the Common. An ordi-
nation aroused the drowsy village to a new
life, and the expenses of it were cheerfully
paid in the tax-rates, although they amounted
to more than the parson's salary for a year.
When Edwin Jackson was ordained at Wo-
burn, in the year 1729, the town paid for

433 dinners ;^54 2 6

178 suppers and breakfasts • . . 8 18 o
Keeping 32 horses 4 days. ...300

6 barrels and \ Cyder 4 1 1 o

25 Gallons Wine 9100

2 Gallons Brandy and 4 of Rum . i 16 o
Loaf Sugar, lime juice and pipes . i 12 o

A description of the usual events of an
ordination is given in the following extract

1 Nourse, History of the Town of Harvard,

THE POOR PARSONS, 1 67

from a private letter ^ written by Rev. Law-
rence Conant, a member of the ecclesias-
tical council convened for an ordination at
Salem, September 25, 171 3: "Your brother
Thomas says ye place has grown very much
since you lived here and that ye church has
got 40 members, who came off from Mr.
Noyes' church in Salemtown (13 men and 27
women), and ye town has granted ye Pre-
cinct 5 acres of land, and ye Promise of J[,^
a year for five years, for ye support of ye Gos-
pel in ye Precinct. Ye Church have made
choice of ye Reverend Benj. Prescott for
their Pastor and have voted him £fio a year
and IS cords of wood for his salary, when
single, and J[,^^ when he shall be married.
Mr. Prescott is the oldest son of Esquire
Jonathan Prescott of Concord and is a
promising man about 25 years old, and be-
trothed to Elizabeth Higginson, a comely
daughter of Mr. John Higginson. ... Ye
services in ye meeting house began by read-

1 For a copy of this letter I am indebted to Mrs. Jane
Prescott Townsend, of New Haven, Conn., who is a lineal
descendant of Benjamin Prescott, ordained at Salem, Mass.,
in September, 17 13. An extract from the same letter
appears on page 48.

1 68 SIDE GLIMPSES.

ing a part of ye 1 19th Psalm by Reverend
Cotton Mather. After which he read a por-
tion from Thos. Allen's Invitation to Thirsty
Sinners. Mr. Hubbard then offered prayer
and a Psalm was sung to a most solemn
tune, ye oldest deacon reading line by line
in solemn voice so that ye whole congrega-
tion could join. Mr. Bowers of Beverly next
offered a prayer of Ordination and conse-
cration with ye laying on of ye hands of
ye elders. Mr. Appleton of Cambridge
preached ye sermon from 2nd Cor. 2nd, i6th
verse. * Who is sufficient for these things ? '
Mr. Shepard gave ye charge and the Rev'd
Mr. Greene of ye village ye hand of fellow-
ship and Mr. Gerrish of Wenham made ye
concluding prayer. There was an immense
concourse of people in ye house, so that
every part was crowded and some were on
ye beams over ye congregation. Ye Gov-
ernor was in ye house and His Majesty's
Commissioners of ye Customs, and they sat
together on a high seat by ye pulpit stairs.
Ye Governor appeared very devout and at-
tentive. Although he favors Episcopacy and
tolerates ye Quakers and ye Baptists, he
is a strong opposer of ye Baptists. He was

THE POOR PARSONS, 169

dressed in a Black velvet coat bordered
with gold lace, and puff breeches and gold
buckles at ye knees and white stockings.
There was a disturbance in ye galleries
when it was filled with divers negroes, Mulat-
toes and Indians, and a negro called Pomp
Shorter, belonging to Mr. Gardiner, was
called forth and put in ye broad aisle where
he was reproved with great awfulness and
solemnity. He was then put in ye Deacon's
seat, between two Deacons, in view of ye
whole Congregation, but ye Sexton was
ordered by Prescott to take him out because
of his levity and strange contortions of
countenance, giving great scandal to ye
grave deacons, and put him in the lobby
under ye stairs. Some children and a mu-
latto woman were reprimanded for laughter
at Pomp Shorter.

"When ye services at ye house were
ended, ye Council and other dignitaries
were entertained at ye house of Mr. Epes
on the hill near by, and we had a bountiful
table with bear's meat and venison, the last
was from a fine buck shot in the woods
near by. Ye bear was killed in Lynn Woods
near Redding. After ye blessing had been

lyo SIDE GLIMPSES,

craved by Mr. Gerrish of Wenham, word
came that ye Buck was shot on the Lord's
Day by Pequot, an Indian, who came to
Mr. Epes with a lye in his mouth, like
Anannias of old. Ye Council thereupon
refused to eat of ye venison. But it was
afterwards agreed that Pequot should receive
40 stripes save one for lying and profaning
the Lord's Day, restore Mr. Epes the cost
of the deer and counsiling that a just and
righteous sentence on ye sinful Heathen,
and as blessing had been craved on ye meat
ye Council partook of it except Mr. Shepard
whose conscience was tender on ye point of

venison."

Notwithstanding some scruples in regard
to the venison, it was a jolly ordination din-
ner, and the thirsty parsons may have '' lost
sight of decorum ; " as Parson Smith, of Fal-
mouth, said concerning the company at the
ordination of Samuel Foxcroft in a little
town of Maine.^

1 "January 16, 176$, Mr. Foxcroft was ordained at New
Gloucester. We had a pleasant journey home. Mr.
Longfellow was alert and kept us all merry. A jolly
ordmation. We lost sight of decorum." — Diary of Rev,
ThonMS Smith,

THE POOR PARSONS. 171

Dark days in the poor parson's life were
apt to come when the jolly ordination had
been forgotten, and the humdrum routines
of the town had been resumed. Then his
relations with parishioners sometimes be-
came disagreeable through no fault of his ;
and when he suffered from the meanness of
those who ruled the parish, he could envy
Bunyan^s weary pilgrim resting in that " large
upper Chamber whose window looked to-
wards the Sun rising " and whose name was
Peace. These disagreeable relations usually
arose from his salary business. At first it
was his duty to collect the salary as it was
offered in driblets by the people ; and so he
went about the parish every week "to gather
his own rates." The occupation gave to him
an odious name, and the ungodly refused to
pay what they called " the Priest's rate."
Then the salary was put into the town taxes,
and the town undertook the collection of it
by a constable. Yet it did not always pay
to the poor parson his dues, the temper of
the times was so miserly.

John Robinson was ordained at Duxbury
in the year 1702. His annual salary was
always far in arrear; and at last he was

lyj SIDE GLIMPSES.

forced to bring a suit against the town to
compel a payment. "Well! what do yon
want now ? " said the spokesman of the
parish to him; "If we haven't paid up,
we gave you the improvement of the island
and about thirty acres of upland besides.
Is n't that enough without asking for your
salary ? "

"Ah! yes;" said Mr. Robinson, "you
did give me the island, I 've mowed it and I
don't want a better fence around ray corn-
field than one windrow of the fodder it cuts.
If you should mow that upland you speak
of with a razor and rake it with a comb,
you wouldn't get enough from it to winter
a grasshopper."

After preaching in this parish for thirty-
six years, he was still pressing the town to
paythe arrears of his salary, when a commit-
tee was appointed to make up accounts
with him "from the beginning of the world
to the present day" — August 7, 1738. Two
months later, the following paragraph was
written in the town records : —

"Voted that ther meting hous sliuld be shot
up so that no parson shuld open the same so Ihal
Mr. John Robrson of Duxborrough may not get

THE POOR PARSONS, 173

into said meeting hous to preach an ay more with-
out orders from the towne."

David Parsons, settled at Leicester in the
year 1721, had a violent and long-continued
quarrel with the town ; and when he was
dying, he directed that his body should be
buried in his own meadow, which was far
away from the churchyard. The grave in the
meadow was neglected, its headstone was
removed to make a pavement, and eventually
it became the cover of an ashes pit, where
its inscription declared to the passer-by
that the parson "Was laid here October 12,

1743."

In the year 1761, a young man named
Joseph Sumner was ordained at Shrews-
bury, on a salary of two hundred and forty
dollars a ' year, and he preached in the
Shrewsbury meeting-house for the unusual
period of sixty-three years. In the latter
part of these years, the amount of his salary
was cut down one half. Some one asked
him, "How do you manage to live and
preach on such a small salary ? " He re-
plied, in the simplicity of a poor parson, " I
have learned that they who have much, have
not enough ; but those who have little, have

174 •S:/Z>j? GLIMPSES,

no lack." He had the spirit of Archbishop
Fdnelon, who wrote to a friend, the year
before he died, ''I ask little from men; I
try to render them much, and to expect no*
thing in return."

When, after forty-one years of service, old
age came upon Parson Russell, of Branford,
and he was so indisposed as not to come
forth on the Sabbath, the town hired as a
school-teacher "one who could be helpful
in the ministry;" and it asked the invalid
to state how much might be deducted from
his salary — which was mainly provisions
and firewood — for "supplying the pulpit;"
or, in other words, for paying the school-
teacher. In his reply he wrote : " I con-
clude you will not think it unreasonable to
find me fire wood while I live. As for my
yearly salary, you may do just as God may
incline your hearts. I leave it wholly with
you, depending not on an arm of flesh but
on the Living God for my daily bread, and
I am not afraid but that He, who feeds the
young ravens when they cry, will provide
for my support."

" No gift of comeliness had he, scant grace
Of bearing, little pride of mien —

THE POOR PARSONS. 175

He had the rugged old-time Roundhead face,

Severe and yet serene.
But through these keen and steadfast eyes of blue
The soul shone, fearless, modest, strong, and true.*'

Some eight miles back from Norwich
Landing, on the Thames River in Connecti-
cut, there was in colonial times a small ham-
let known as West Farms. It is now the
town of Franklin. There, in March, 1782,
Samuel Nott was "ordained in the minis-
try " for life, on an annual salary of three
hundred and thirty-three dollars and thirty-
three cents. In his sixtieth anniversary
sermon, which is "most affectionately ad-
dressed " to the children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren of those who invited him
"to settle with them in the Gospel Ministry,"
he reviewed the events of sixty years, and
quaintly said, " I have not been kept from
the house of God during that long period
but eleven Sabbaths ; six of them by the
lung fever in 181 2, and five by breaking a
little piece of skin upon the back of my
right hand." On the day of this anniversary 1
sermon, the choir sang the same hymns, in j
the same tunes of "Lenox" and "Stock-
bridge," that were sung at his ordination

176 SIDE glimpses:

sixty years before. It was a pathetic scene.
All the members of the ordination choir
were dead; all but two old women, seated
near the ancient pulpit, who, insensible to
the music which they sang before the rose-
color of life was blanched, were straining
their dull ears to catch the words of the old
parson's story.

Then the years came and went, until his
life in the parish had extended from the
peaceful into the restless state of society,
and he was so old that the church desired
him to 'May down the ministry in this
place ; " in other words, they asked him to
go. He replied that he was settled for life ;
and he continued to live and to preach every
Sunday, until he was ninety-five years old,
when the town induced him to enter into
a compromise. His salary was reduced one
half, and a colleague was hired at a salary of
four hundred dollars a year, which was to be
increased to five hundred dollars as soon as
the old parson died. He died in the year
1852, ninety-eight years of age; and then
was closed the contract made with him in
the year 1782. After his death the executor
of his estate discovered that he had not

THE POOR PARSONS. 177

received any of the half pay to which he
had been entitled. It was demanded from
the town, and refused. At last, seeing no
chance for an amicable settlement, the ex-
ecutor called to his aid the law. The town
offered to settle the debt for one half its
amount, and the offer was accepted. So
the hereditary Puritan of New England is,
like his composite ancestor, as "penurious
as the last drips of a washerwoman's wring-
mg.

THE NOTORIOUS MINISTERS.

1ERY different from the poor parsons
were the notorious ministers. There
was one in the colonial meeting-
house whose name was Samuel Parris. He
was in Harvard College awhile ; then he was
in commercial business in the West Indies ;
then, being forty years old, he drifted into
the pulpit of the meeting-house of Salem
Village. Here his nature developed itself
in an artful quarrel with his congregation
about a piece of land. On Sunday, the 27th
day of March, 1692, he wrote in his church
book : " The Devil hath been raised amongst
us and his rage is Vehement and terrible,
and when he shall be silenced the Lord only
knows." Researches into the events of his
time have disclosed the fact that the Vehe-
ment Devil to whom he referred was none
other than himself. He had taken hints

THE NOTORIOUS MINISTERS. 179

from Cotton Mather, another notorious min-
ister, whose writings had created in the pub-
lic mind a passion for anything that appeared
to be marvelous, supernatural, and diabolical.
Mather was then thirty years old ; a man of
talent, who exercised a large influence on the
theology and politics of the times, and a
minister with his father in the North meet-
ing-house of Boston. With this enthusiast
as an inspirer, Parris started a witchcraft
conspiracy in the year 1692, which made
the greatest blot on the pages of New Eng-
land's history.

His tools were three children, Elizabeth
Parris, his daughter, nine years old ; Abigail
Williams, his niece, eleven years old ; and
Ann Putnam, twelve years old, a daughter of
the parish clerk. These children had heard
the marvelous witchcraft stories published
by the Mathers, and they were seized with
such a frantic interest in them that they held
meetings to study and perform some of the
witcheries described. They practiced gro-
tesque postures, unnatural outcries, dumb-
ness, convulsions and cramps of the body.
When they had perfected themselves in
these actions, they played them ofif for the

l8o SIDE GL/AfPSES.

first time, in the meeting-house, on the Sun-
day when Parris wrote in his church book
that a Vehement Devil hath been raised.
Deodat^ Lawson, a believer in witchcraft,
preached for Parris that day. After a psalm
had been sung, Abigail Williams cried out,
" Stand up now and name your text ! ** Ann
Putnam shouted to him, " There 's a yellow
bird on your hat ; it hangs on the pin of the
pulpit ! " After he had begun his sermon,
another called to him, " Now, there 's enough
of that I " The people were alarmed, for
in their belief it was the devil who spoke
with the tongues of the " afflicted children,*'
as they were called. The Mathers had por-
trayed the devil as a black man, who carried
a red book and a pen, soliciting subscribers
to his service, whispering in your ear and
standing behind to prompt your speech.
Physicians who examined the children were
perplexed, but finally declared that they were
bewitched. Then the inquiry was, who are
the Vitches that have bewitched them f
The children refused to answer ; but finding
it impossible to escape the earnest inquiry,
except by confessing their own fraud (which
they did confess in after years), they gave

THE NOTORIOUS AflNISTERS, i8l

the names of three persons ; and thereafter
these children, under the control of Parris,
became the chief witch-finders for the Salem
tragedy. This was the beginning of it. Its
result was the imprisonment of more than
a hundred and fifty men and women, and
the murder of twenty who were "as inno-
cent in their lives as they were heroic in
their deaths."

The extravagant superstition of Cotton
Mather appears. in his description of the
passing of the first victim, Bridget Bishop,
to the gallows. He says, " She gave a look
towards the great and spacious meeting-house
and a Demon invisibly entering the house
tore down a part of it.*' The truth proba-
bly was, that a partition or floor had yielded
to the pressure of the crowd of astonished
spectators. This notorious minister was now
in his element. During the summer of 1692,
he with Parris and others caused to be re-
produced in Salem Village, which is now the
town of Danvers, all the horrors of the In-
quisition of Torquemada.

They had Puritan laws to support their
acts. The original laws of the Massachu-
setts colony said : " If any man or woman

1 82 SIDE GLIMPSES.

be a witch» that is hath, or consulted with, a
familiar spirit, they shall be put to death."
A law of the Plymouth colony, enacted in
the year 1636, declared ''solemn compaction
or conversing with the Divell by way of
witchcraft, conjuration, or the like," to be
"capitall offences lyable to death." To
avoid trouble with Indian wizards, this law
was revised in the year 1671, so as to touch
English people only. It said : " If any
Christian, so called, be a Witch, that is hath,
or consulteth with, a familiar Spirit, he or
she shall be put to death." These laws were
in force during the year 1692 by authority
of the province legislature; but they were
not in touch with the new colonial life.
Like a heap of dry bones, they belonged to
the past.

Witchcraft has existed in all times ; and
it exists to-day in those who are known to
us as conjurers, necromancers, legerdemain-
ists, clairvoyants, fortune-tellers, and medi-
ums of spiritualism. These all are con-
suiters of " a familiar spirit." Their highest
grade is seen in a hereditary caste of India
which has made jugglery a fine art, and
which caused the Emperor Jehangeer to be-

THE NOTORIOUS MINISTERS, 183

lieve that he saw a Hindu throw a rope into
the air, run up it, and disappear into space.
Their lowest grade is seen in wrinkled hags,
*' with viper's eyes and weamy wimy voices,"
who thrive on their repute as witches in
rural towns of Old England and perhaps also
of New England ; whose principal business
is with love affairs. A rustic maid discovers
that her lover is false ; she seeks advice from
the village witch, and, acting upon it, she buys
a sheep's heart, sticks it full of pins, and
roasts it over a quick fire while three times
calling her lover by name to return. Then
she says the Lord's Prayer, goes backward
upstairs to her chamber, and the charm which
is to bring back her lover is completed.
"That wer all owin to thickwitch," said a
Somersetshire rustic, whose pig had suddenly
died ; " an' as sure as thee sits in thick chair
be it true theus witches have the power ter
kill our animals an' ter make our loives miz-
erubble. They do kip red books an' funny
letters in 'em an' freames wi' nurruh picters
in 'em, an' tooads 00 dozins ov 'em, and
boss shus, an' all zoorts o' queer things ver
charm in* a peepel." Persons called witches
were hung in Scotland a hundred years be-

184 SIDE GLIMPSES,

fore the Salem tragedy, for causing iron pots,
firlots, and sieves to skip about. The trick
was done by strings fastened to these things
and passed out of a window for a confeder-
ate to pull ; as is explained in Reginald
Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," printed
in the year 1582. At that time, Andrew
Duncan, minister of Crail in Scotland, was
protesting against the cruel tortures prac-
ticed by a neighboring proprietor upon an
old woman who was called a witch ; saying
that ''according to the ordinance of the
Presbytrie, he had tane Geillis Gray, sus-
pect of witchcraft, whom the Laird of La-
thocker tuick from him, and carreit hir to
his place of Lathocker and their torturit hir,
whairby now scho is become impotent and
may not labour for hir living as scho wes
wont." ^

The witchcraft court was a special com-
mission appointed by Sir William Phips, the
fresh governor of the province, apparently
on motion of his intimate friends Increase
and Cotton Mather. He describes how it
happened in a letter written to London :
" When I first arrived I found this Prov-

1 Beveridge, The Churchyard MemoriaU of Crail,

THE NOTORIOUS MINISTERS. 185

ince miserably harassed with a most horri-
ble witchcraft or possession of devils. . . .
some scores of poor people were taken with
preternatural torments, some scalded with
brimstone, some had pins stuck in their flesh,
others hurried into fire and water and some
dragged out of their houses and carried over
the tops of trees and hills for many miles
together." Of course this ridiculous sketch
of the condition of New England society was
dictated for the governor by Cotton Mather.
It was a repetition of his own stories. Con-
sequently, the governor was prevailed upon,
he says, " to give a Commission of Oyer and
Terminer for discovering what Witchcraft
might be at the bottom.**

All the victims of this court were con-
demned on spectral evidence. One of the
*' afflicted children '* would testify that she
saw and felt the spectre of the accused per-
son ; that it tormented her and she struck
at it. A corresponding bruise was found on
the body of the accused, or a rent was found
in its garments. As everybody wore the
same clothing continuously until worn out,
it was easy to find rents in anybody's gar-
ments. Cotton Mather, writing to his friend

1 86 SIDE GLIMPSES.

John Richards, one of the judges, said that
when he finds any bruises' or rents inflicted
by the spectral hands of the accused :
" Hold them for you have catched a Witch."
The court was not a picturesque tribunal,
composed of noted lawyers met to tender
their advice on an important question of
government. It was composed of nine
men, not one of whom had received an edu-
cation in law; two had been educated for
the ministry, two were physicians, others
were tradesmen and yeomen; and one of
the appointees declined to have anything to
do with the business. Five of them consti-
tuted a quorum for trials; one of the five
being always John Richards, a friend and
parishioner of Cotton Mather. Their chief
was Stoughton, deputy governor of the prov-
ince, noted as an obstinate, malignant, and
passionate man. They held their sessions
at intervals in a dilapidated meeting-house,
whose broken windows, covered here and
there by boards, were typical of the dark-
ened condition of their minds. They made
no concealment of an intention to condemn
all prisoners brought to the bar who re-
fused to confess that they were witches.

THE NOTORIOUS Nf I MISTERS. 1 87

No counsel was allowed to the accused;
execution followed quick upon judgment.

When Rebecca Nourse, seventy years old
and eminent for her piety, was tried as a
witch by these men, she was so hard of
hearing and so full of grief that she could
not understand all that was said against her,
and no pains were taken that she should hear.
The " afflicted children " made hidden out-
cries when the jury brought in a verdict of
not guilty, and Stoughton sent them back to
change their verdict. Then he condemned
her to death. To prepare for this fate, she
was taken from prison to the meeting-house
on the communion Sunday before she was
to be executed, and was there excommuni-
cated from the church of Christ, so far as it
could be done by a notorious minister whose
name was Nicholas Noyes.

One of the conspicuous victims was the
Rev. George Burroughs, who had been for
three years, from 1680 to 1683, the minister
of Salem Village, and in the year 1689, a
rival of Parris as a candidate for the same
pulpit. He was now minister of the town
of Wells, in Maine. He was a man of large
stature and great strength, and it was known

1 88 SIDE GLIMPSES,

that he could easily lift a barrel of molasses
or cider, and carry it ashore from a canoe.
Cotton Mather said these were '' such feats
of strength as could not be done without
diabolical assistance." He was executed, and
his body, when taken from the gallows, was
thrown into a hole, without any pretense of
a burial.

Another conspicuous victim was Giles
Corey, a respectable citizen, eighty years
old. When he was brought, as a witch, be-
fore the court, he pleaded not guilty ; but he
would not put himself on trial by the jury
because, as Calef says, " they having cleared
none upon trial, and knowing there would
be the same witnesses against him, rather
chose to undergo what death they would put
him to." He was stretched naked upon the
ground, on his back, and iron was laid upon
him, " as much as he could bear and more."
Under this slow process of torture his tongue
was pressed out of his mouth, and the sheriff
with his cane forced it in when he was dying.

It seems incredible that there was a popu-
lation of respectable white men in New Eng-
land who could look upon these atrocious
travesties of justice without rising up and

THE NOTORIOUS MINISTERS. 189

driving the Salem judges and ministers into
the sea. The spirit of Christianity prohibits
torture ; but Giles Corey was tortured in
the name of it, and by magistrates whose
hearts were so callous that they exulted in
the sufferings of every victim. The prac-
tice of such cruelties in an English commu-
nity would be impossible now, because,
since Puritanism died, a new moral sense
has been born in man which teaches him
that there is a sacredness in human life, and
causes him to shrink from inflicting pain for
pain's sake. It does not pajliate the cruelty
of these men of 1692, to say that they are
to be judged by the light which they had.
They had light enough, both in reason and
revelation, as some of them in after time
confessed. They knew that a part of the
community was opposed to their acts.
Thomas Brattle wrote, at the time : " Al-
though the chief judge and some of the
other judges be very zealous for these pro-
ceedings, yet this you may take for truth ;
that there are several about the Bay, men
for understanding, judgment and piety, infe-
rior to few, if any, in New England, who
do utterly condemn the said proceedings."

190 SIDE GLIMPSES.

These were compelled to keep silence, for
the theocratic tyranny which ruled over the
province made it unsafe for honest men to
express their opinions in public. All were
in fear of being accused of witchcraft, and
many sought for safety by flight into New
Hampshire and New York The promoters
of the Salem tragedy were like the rulers
who threw Christian men and woman to
lions, in order " to make a Roman holiday ; "
like those who burned at the stake the mar-
tyrs of Smithfield ; like those who in France
broke criminals, on the wheel a hundred
y^ars ago ; like those on the Danube who, in
recent years, have impaled their foes. Under
the rule of its theocracy New England had
become one of the dark places of the earth,
" full of the habitations of cruelty."

At last the court was suddenly stopped
by the governor, who said that he "found
many persons in a strange ferment of dis-
satisfaction which was increased by some
hot spirits that blew up the flame . . . that
the Devil had taken upon him the name and
shape of several persons who were doubtless
innocent." In fact, the conspirators had
begun to accuse as witches some of the Bos-

Tim NOTORIOUS MINISTERS. 191

ton ministers, but not Cotton Mather, al-
though, as he himself complained, he was
considered to be the " doer of all hard things
that were done in the prosecution of the
witchcraft."

The first sign of a recovery from the hor-
rible delusion was a proposition made in
October, 1692, for a day of fasting* A
" Committee of Religion " was chosen in the
House of Representatives, and a declara-
tion enumerating " Sundry Evils to be con-
fessed " was drafted. This paper, which is
still preserved in the archives of Massachu-
setts, is in the handwriting of Cotton
Mather, who was alert to put himself on the
right side of the fence in case there should
be a popular uprising. Among other things
he said : —

"Wicked Sorceries have been practiced
in the land ; and, in the late inexplicable
storms from the Invisible world thereby
brought upon us, wee were left, by the Just
Hand of Heaven unto those Errors whereby
Great Hardships were brought upon Inno-
cent persons, and (wee feare) Guilt incurr'd,
which wee have all cause to bewayl, with
much confusion of o' Face before the Lord."

19a SIDE GLIMPSES.

When he wrote that, was he thinking of
George Burroughs, and Rebecca Nourse, and
Giles Corey, and seventeen other victims as
"innocent persons"? He had stigmatized
them in print as " a fearful knot of proud,
forward, ignorant, envious, and malicious
creatures — a Witch gang I **

The governor and council rejected the
declaration written by Cotton Mather, and the
matter remained for some time in suspense.
At last it was acknowledged that a Fast was
necessary to appease the divine wrath, under
which Massachusetts had suffered in many
of its enterprises because, as was generally
believed, of the errors committed in the
witch trials ; and they accepted a declaration
drawn by Samuel Sewall, who had been
one of the judges at Salem. Whittier has
sketched the figure of this noted man in a
few lines : —

" I hear the tap of the elder's cane.
And his awful periwig I see,
And the silver buckles of shoe and knee.
Stately and slow, with thoughtful air,
His black cap hiding his whitened hair,
Walks the Judge of the Great Assize,
Samuel Sewall.''

THE NOTORIOUS MINISTERS. 193

The proclamation was published in De-
cember, 1696; reciting many reasons, it com-
manded, " That Thursday the Fourteenth of
January next be observed as a Day of Prayer
with Fasting. . . . That so all God's peo-
ple may offer up fervent Supplications unto
him. . . . That he would show us what we
know not, and help us wherein we have done
amiss, to doe so no more, . . . especially
that whatever Mistakes, on either hand,
have been fallen into, either by the body of
this People, or any Orders of Men, referring
to the last Tragedie raised amongst us by
Satan and his Instruments, through the aw-
fuU Judgment of God ; He would humble
us therefore, and pardon all the Errors of his
Servants and People."

That day revealed a ray of light in the
general darkness. It marked a halo around
Samuel Sewall. He rises in his pew in the
Old South meeting-house and hands to the
minister, as he passes by on his way to
the pulpit, a written confession of his repent-
ance for the part he had taken in the witch
trials. He stands up during the reading of
his confession to the congregation, and he
silently bows his head when the reading is

194

ended. It is said that, during the remainder
of his life, he observed this fast day pri-
vately on each annual return of it.

"All Ihe dajr long, from dawn to dawn.
His doot mta bolted, bis curtain drawn j
No foot on his silent (hceshold trod,
No eye looked on him. save thai of God,
As he baftled the ghosts of the dead with charms
Of pcnilenl teais, and prayers, and psalms,
And, with precious proofs from the sacred word
Of the boundless pity and love of the Lord,
ilis faith confirtned and his trust renewed
Thai the sin oi his ignorance, sorely rued,
Might be washed away in the mingled flood

w and Ciiiist's dear blood."

The twelve jurymen of the witch court
also repented and published a confession of
their errors. They said: "We ourselves
were not capable to understand, nor able to
withstand, the mysterious delusions of the
powers of darkness and prince of the air ;
but were, for want of knowledge in our-
selves and better information from others,
prevailed with to take up with such evi-
dence against the accused as, on further
consideration and better information we
justly fear was insufficient for the touching
the lives of any. . . . We do declare we

THE NOTORIOUS MINISTERS.

I9S

would none of us do such things again on
such grounds for the whole world."

Nicholas Noyes repented, and caused to
be blotted from his church records the ex-
communication of Rebecca Nourse, Samuel
Parris repented not. After a long struggle he
was driven out from Salem ; he drifted away
into Connecticut, and there he disappeared
from public view. The last mention of him
that I have found appears in an advertise-
ment, published in the Boston "Weekly
News-Letter," the 24th of June, 1731 ; in-
quiring for "Any Person or Persons who
knew Mr. Samuel Parris, formerly of Barba-
does, afterwards of Boston, in New England,
Merchant, and after that Minister of Salem
Village etc., deceased."

As to the reverend Mr. Cotton Mather, he
never made a confession, nor did he show
any signs of repentance. On the contrary,
he set himself to create a witchcraft excite-
ment in Boston, for he needed an illustra-
tion to justify his acts at Salem. He took
in charge a young wench named Margaret
Rule, who lived not far from his house in
Hanover Street, and had been, as he said,
" assaulted by eight cruel spectres ; " which

y

J.' •■

196 SIDE GLIMPSES.

"brought unto her a book about a cubU
long, — a red book and thick, but not very
broad, — and they demanded of her that she
would set her hand to that book as a sign of
her becoming a servant of the Devil." From
the day of this assault, he said, " until the
ninth day following she kept an entire fast,
and yet she was to all appearances as fresh,
as lively, as hearty, at the nine days' end
as before they began. . . . Her torment-
ors permitted her to swallow a mouthful of
somewhat that might increase her miseries,
whereof a spoonful of Rum was the most
considerable."

This wizard show was noised through the
town, and many people came to see it. Let
us go in for a moment. We ascend to her
chamber, which is dimly lighted with can-
dles, and find about thirty persons present.
Increase Mather is sitting on a stool near
the head of the bed. His son Cotton Mather
sits on the bedside, and says to the woman
in bed ; —

" Margaret, do there a great many witches
sit upon you.'"

" Yes," she replies, and then she falls into
a fit. He places his hand upon her face.

I

THE NOTORIOUS MINISTERS, 197

brushes it with his glove ; then he rubs her
stomach. She now revives. He asks her: —

*' Don't you know there is a hard master ? "

'*Yes/'

** Do you believe ? "

She falls into a fit, and he rubs her breast,
when she revives again.

Increase Mather now inquires if she knows
who the spectres are. She knows, but she
will not tell. Then Cotton Mather says to
her : " You have seen the black man, have
you not ? "

" No."

"The brushing of you gives you ease,
don't it ? "

" Yes." She then turns herself and groans
and Cotton Mather says : —

" Now the witches scratch you, and bite
you, and pinch you ; don't they ? "

" Yes."

Increase Mather prays for half an hour,
chiefly against the power of the Devil, and
witchcraft, and that God would bring out the
afflictors. During the prayer Cotton Mather
rubs Margaret and brushes her as before.
After the Amen, he asks her : —

"You did not hear when we were at
prayer, did you?"

198 SIDE GLIMPSES,

"Yes."

" You don't always hear ? "

" No."

Turning about to an attendant, he asks:
** What does she eat and drink ? " The an-
swer is: —

" She does not eat at all, but drinks Rum."

This happened in September, 1693, and is
a fact of recorded history. In the January
following. Cotton Mather was handing about
the town written certificates signed by eight
men (it will be remembered that she was
" assaulted by eight spectres " ), who declared
that they had seen Margaret Rule, " in her
afflictions from the invisible world, lifted up
from her bed by an invisible force so as to
touch the garret floor, while yet neither her
feet nor any other part of her body rested
either on the bed or any support ; and it was
as much as several of us could do, with all our
strength, to pull her down."

Here, evidently, was a trick which has long
been practiced by magicians in India. A
recent writer mentions it as he saw it : ** A
woman seeming to defy the laws of gravita-
tion, sitting two feet from the ground, in
open sunlight, with her wrist on the hilt of

THE NOTORIOUS MINISTERS. 199

an ordinary sword. It is possible," he says,
"that she was sitting in a loop of wire
attached to the sword hilt." Mr. Andrew
Lang speaks of having seen a similar trick.
He says : ** The suspended woman was ex-
amined by an English officer well known to
me and by the surgeon of his regiment, who
could find no wire. She had been mesmer-
ized and was rigid. On the other hand,"
he says, ''a suspended man was exhibited
before the governor of an East Indian
Presidency whose aid-de-camp made a rush
and found a wire."

The curtain falls on the farce of Cotton
Mather and the Tipsy Wench. His impos-
ture is exposed ; many of the notorious
ministers stand by him for a while ; but the
community distrusts him ever afterward.
In subsequent years the reality of his posi-
tion had become so apparent to him that his
record of it excites tender emotions in a
reader of his diary. In this he wrote : —

— " Some, on purpose to affront me, call their
negroes by the name of Cotton Mather, that so
they may with some shadow of truth assert
crimes as committed by one of that name, which
the hearers take to be Me."

200 SIDE GLIMPSES,

— "Where is the man whom the female sex
have spit more of their venom at ? "

— " Where is the man who has been so tor-
mented with such monstrous relatives ? **

— " There is not a man in the world so reviled,
so slandered, so cursed among sailors."

— "The College for ever puts all possible
marks of disesteem upon me."

— "My company is as little sought for, and
there is as little resort unto it as any minister
that I am acquainted with."

— "And many look on me as the greatest
sinner."

Public opinion was soon turned against all
witchcrafts, and became willing to listen to
the sad cries of the children of those who
had suffered; their estates having been
ruined and their families impoverished. On
the 3d day of November, 1709, Cotton Ma-
ther, always ready to catch a favoring tide, ap-
peared with a sermon on the subject which
he preached to the legislature ; speaking as
if he had been innocent of all connection
with the Salem tragedy, he said : —

"In two or three too Memorable Days of
Temptation that have been upon us, there have

THE NOTORIOUS MINISTERS. 20I

been Errors committed. You are always ready
to Declare unto all the World, That you Disap-
prove those Errors. You are willing to inform
all Mankind with your declarations : That Per-
sons are not to be judg'd with confederates with
Evil Spirits meerly because the Evil Spirits do
make Possessed People cry out upon them.

" Could any thing be proposed further, by way
of Reparation, Besides the General Day of Hu-
miliation, which was appointed and observed
thro' the Province, to bewayl the Errors of our
Dark time, some years ago : You would be will-
ing to hearken to it."

They did hearken ; but no reparation was
ever made to the heirs of those who had
suffered death at Salem. At various times
petitions on their behalf were sent to the
General Court, and these were followed by
petitions to reward the heirs of Cotton
Mather. For example : on the 8th day of
December, 1738, the House of Representa-
, tives appointed a committee "to get the
best Information they can in the circum-
stances of the persons and families who
suffered in the Calamity of the times in and
about the year 1692.*'

Four days after this, there was presented

309 SIDE GLlAtPSBS.

to the House a petition of Samuel Mather,
son of Cotton Mather,

" Setting forth the publick and eminent Ser-
vices of bis venerable and honoured Grandfather
and Father in the Cause and Interest of the
Province in many Instances and on Divers Occa-
sions, as particularly therein enumeraied, both in
civil and religious respects, praying this Court
would please to make him an allowance for the
said Services,"

A petition on behalf of Cotton Mather's
sisters was presented from the same source,
December 2oth ; and still another from the
son, on the 23d of June, 1739; praying for
consideration

" On Account of Ihe public and extraordinary
Services of his Ancestors, as entered the 12th
and aoth of December last; and a Petition of
Maria Filield, Elizabeth Byles, and others, Heirs
of Dr. Increase Mather, praying (he Consider-
ation of the Court on account of Iheir Father's
publick Services."

The record says that the question was put
to the House, "Whether any Grant shall
be made the Petitioners ? It passed in the
Negative, and Ordered That the Petitions
be dismissed." Nothing was done for the

THE NOTORIOUS Af/NISTERS, 203

Mather heirs ; and as they stood in the way
of a reparation due to others, nothing was
done for the heirs of the witchcraft victims.
Cotton Mather's diaries, which are pre-
served as curiosities in antiquarian libraries,
speak his own indictment against himself.
They show, first of all, that he was a crafty
politician ; that as a minister, he was in-
fallible in his own eyes, cherished an im-
mense value of his own importance, and
claimed a personal influence with the Supreme
Being. He boasted that his prayers were
rewarded by visions of white-robed angels,
from whose lips he received assurances of
divine favor. You may see in his own hand-
writing an account of his interview with an
angel of God. It is written in the Latin
tongue, and on the margin of the page he
gives his reason for concealing the record in
a dead language: "Ha^c scribo Latine, ne
cara mca conjux has chart as aliquando in-
spiciens intelligat ; " which, being translated,
is, " I write this in Latin so that my dear
wife, should she inspect these pages, may not
understand them." He talked of ghosts that
entered his study and carried away his manu-
scripts ; for he believed that

*04 SIDE GLIMPSES.

K"-Tbe apiriiu»l world
Llet all about lu, and Hi avenues
^_ Are open W ihc unseen feel of phantoms

■^* That come and go,"

His third wife, and "unaccountable con-
sort," as he called her, Lydia Lee, daugh-
ter of a clergyman and widow of a Boston
merchant, did not know what to make of
him ; and some historians have suffered in
the same perplexity. The last biographer •
would palliate his witchcraft intoxications
by a new theory, which is stated thus : — -

"I am much disposed to think that necroman-
cers, witches, mediums — what not — actually do
perceive in the infinite realities about us things
that are imperceptible to normal beings ; but
that they perceive ihem only at a sacrifice of their
higher faculties — mental and moral — not inaptly
symbolized in the old tales of those who sell
their souls. . . . Are we not to-day beginning to
guess that there may be in heaven and earth more
things than are yet dreamt of in your philos-
ophy ? "

The common sense of the English race
can perceive no witcheries "in the infinite
realities about us," nor is it inclined to make
any philosophic guesses about the character

1 Wendell, Cetttm JUMtr, 7%* JttrUmi Prkd,

THE NOTORIOUS MINISTERS. 205

of Cotton Mather. He made a great deal of
noise and did a great deal of harm, but there
is nothing left of him now save a handful of
dust in the tomb on Copp's Hill where he
was buried in the year 1727. The loungers
who dwell in neighboring streets, and who
are sitting on the same benches every sum-
mer day, within the inclosure of the hill,
gossiping, sewing, or spelling out for their
children the quaint inscriptions on the sur-
rounding stones, point to his tomb as to a
relic about which there is some mysterious
notoriety. But those who are familiar with
the events of his times cannot look upon it
without being reminded of another scene.
It is at Salem, on the 19th day August, 1692 ;
he is mounted on a horse standing at the
foot of the gallows on which hangs George
Burroughs, who had been a minister of the
gospel for twenty years ; he points to the
lifeless body swinging in the air, and ha-
rangues the spectators, telling them that this
murdered clergyman was not an ordained
minister, but a witch ; assuring them that
" the Devil has often been transformed into
an angel of light.*'

I

mm^^^

THE SIMPLE EVANGELIST.

10TT0N Mather had been under the
sod thirteen years when Whitcfield
appeared in Boston. The difference
between the two preachers was as between
night and morning. He was then a young
man, just scant of twenty-six years, in whose
favor were a homely countenance, a melo-
dious voice, an eloquent tongue, a graceful
manner, and the repute of a blameless life-
He had graduated at Oxford, was a priest of
the Church of England, and a missionary
evangelist whose sermons were a call to im-
mediate repentance. His method of setting
forth religious truths was a novelty ; and
therefore no preacher, apostle, or prophet
was ever surrounded by audiences so enor-
mous as those which congregated whenever
he preached, whether on week-days or Sun-
days. They overflowed from the meeting-

THE SIMPLE EVANGELIST, 207

house into the highway ; from the highway
into the fields. His fame had preceded him.
A letter dated at Boston, October 22, 1740,
says : ** I perceive you were impatient to
know what kind of an introduction he had
among us. We (ministers, rulers and people)
generally received him as an angel of God.
When he preached his farewell sermon on
our Common there were twenty-three thou-
sand hearers at a moderate computation. . . .
Such a power and presence of God with a
preacher, and in religious assemblies, I never
saw before. ... Mr. Whit efi eld has not a
warmer friend anywhere than the first man
among us. Our Governor has showed him
the highest respect, carried him in his coach
from place to place, and could not help fol-
lowing him fifty miles out of town."

John Wesley said of Whitefield's first visit
to Boston : " While he was here and in the
neighboring places he was extremely weak
in body. Yet the multitudes of hearers were
so great, and the effects wrought on them
so astonishing, as the oldest men then alive
in the town had never seen before."

He came at a time appropriate to his work ;
when a chilling system of religion preached

ao8 SIDE GLIMPSES,

in the colonial meeting-house had stunted
the moral and intellectual growth of New
England as east winds have stunted the
pines of Cape Cod. A majority of the
people had become so degenerate that they
were exemplifying the "total depravity" of
the human race. Conventions of ministers
declared that there had been a " great and
visible decay of piety" in the churches. A
memorial to the General Court of Massa-
chusetts, May 30, 1694, " liy Many Minis-
ters of ye Gospel then meeting in Boston,"
described a condition of sin and iniquity
existing in New England not unlike that
which prevailed in Pompeii when Vesuvius
overwhelmed it with ashes.

All this was a reflection and echo of a
similar condition of society existing in Old
England ; where, from the beginning to the
middle of the eighteenth century, drunken-
ness, licentiousness, infidelity as to religion,
were the characteristics of all classes. In
the year 1710, Mary Wortley wrote that there
were " more atheists among the fine ladies
than among the lowest rakes." Montesquieu,
who visited England in the year 1729, said
that there was no religion at all ther^ " if

THE SIMPLE EVANGELIST. 209

anybody spoke of it, everybody laughed;"
and in the year 1738, Bishop Seeker was say-
ing : " In this we cannot be mistaken — that
open and professed disregard of religion is
become the distinguishing character of the
age." When Sir Robert Walpole was prime
minister, it was a well-relished jest in Lon-
don that he was to introduce to Parlia-
ment a bill to erase the word " not " from
the Commandments and to insert it in the
Creed. This jest represented the charac-
ter of English society on both sides of the
Atlantic.

It was to such a people that Whitefield
came to preach the gospel when no other
preacher could awaken attention. He played
on his audiences as if they were a musical
instrument from which he could evoke many
tones. The histrionic art was bom in him,
but it was refined by a tender sincerity which
convinced his hearers that he was speaking
to them words of truth. They eagerly
listened, and

"The scoffing tongue was prayerful,
And the blinded eyes found sight,
And hearts, as flint aforetime,
Grew soft in his warmth and light."

3IO SIDE .GLIMPSES.

The wonderful effects of his preaching
were due, not only to the state of the times,
but to his personal qualifications for the
work, and to a voice and manner that capti-
vated the attention of all hearers. His voice,
as Frankhn said, produced the pleasure
given by beautiful music, and so perfect was
its articulation that it could be heard easily
by a congregation of thirty thousand people.
Sometimes he wept while speaking ; some-
times he paused exhausted by emotion. In
one of his sermons he addresses an attend-
ant angel, whom he has portrayed as about
to ascend from the congregation to carry a
report to the Eternal Throne. He stamps
with his foot, lifts his hands and eyes to
Heaven, and exclaims, "Stop, Gabriel 1 Stop,
Gabriel ! Stop, ere you enter the sacred por-
tals, and carry with you the news of one sin-
ner converted to God t " This apostrophe to
an imaginary messenger, which in emotion-
less print may appear to be ludicrous, was
accompanied with such natural and eloquent
action that the bistonan Hume said it sur-
passed anything he had ever heard from the
pulpit In the course of another sermoa he
e]a:laims, "Look yonder t What is that I

THE SIMPLE EVANGELIST, 21 1

see ? " Then he describes, in all its details,
the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, and
he makes its sad scenes so plainly visible that
the eyes of the congregation are wet with
sympathetic tears. Southey said of him:
"Sometimes at the close of a sermon he
would personate a judge about to perform
the last awful part of his office. With eyes
full of tears, and an emotion that made his
speech falter, after a pause which kept the
whole audience in breathless expectation of
what was to come, he would proceed : ' I am
now going to put on my condemning cap !
Sinner! I must do it; I must pronounce
sentence upon you ! ' And then in a tremen-
dous strain of eloquence describing the eter-
nal punishment of the wicked, he recited the
words of Christ : ' Depart from me, ye
cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the
Devil and his angels.' "

His sermons were spoken without refer-
ence to any manuscript ; and the reader of
the printed copies finds nothing in them
of that power of eloquence by which he
swayed the repentant multitude. But let us
listen to his sincere words. He is preaching
from the text, "The Lord shall be thine ever-

212 SIDE GLIMPSES,

lasting light." The Brattle Street meeting-
house in Boston is thronged with listeners.
They fill the seats, the aisles, the doorways,
and the windows. He is half through the
sermon as we push ourselves in ; and we
can see that no sluggard-waker is needed to
keep the audience awake, nor any inspectors
of youth to keep wretched boys in order : —
. . • "Jesus Christ the Sun of Righteous-
ness shall be what the sun is to the visible
world ; that is, the light and life of his peo-
ple. I say all the people of God. You see
now the sun shines on us all. I never
heard that the sun said, 'Lord, I will not
shine on the Presbyterians, I will not shine
on the Independents, I will not shine on the
people called Methodists, those great enthu-
siasts.' The sun never said, ' I will not
shine on the Papists;' the sun shines on
all ; which shows that Jesus Christ's love is
open to all that are made willing by the
Holy Ghost to accept of him. And, there-
fore, it is said : ' The sun of Righteousness
shall arise with healing in his wings.' If
you were all up this morning before the sun
arose at 5 o'clock, how beautiful was his
first appearance I How pleasant to behold

THE SIMPLE EVANGELIST. 213

the flowers opening to the rising sun I I ap-
peal to you, yourselves, when you were look-
ing out of the window, or walking about, or
opening your shop, if in a spiritual frame,
whether you did not say : * Arise, thou sun of
Righteousness, with healing under thy wings,
on me ! ' All that the natural sun is to the
world, Jesus Christ is, and more, to his peo-
ple. Without the sun we should have no
corn, or fruit of any kind. What a dark
place the world would be without the siin ;
and how dark the world would be without
Jesus Christ ! And as the sun does really
communicate its rays to the earth, the
plants, and all the lower creation, so the
Son of God does really communicate his life
and power to every new created soul. . . .
How many thousand things are there that
make you mourn here below ! Who can tell
the tears that godly parents shed for ungodly
children ! O, you young folks, you do not
know what plagues your children may be to
you I O, they arc pretty things while young,
like rattlesnakes and alligators which I have
seen when little and beautiful ; but put them
in your bosom, and you will find that they
are dangerous. How many there are in the

814 ^'^^ GLIMPSES.

world that would wish, if it were lawful, that
God had written them childless ! There is
many a poor creature that makes his father's
heart ache. I once asked a godly widow,
' Madam, how is your son ? ' She turned
aside with tears, and said, ' Sir, he is no son
to me now.' What, in the world, can come
up to that ! . . . When I was in Hristol, I
could not help remembering good Mr. Mid-
dleton who used to have the gout very much,
and in that closet were kept his crutches.
Now, thought I, he needs them no more;
the days of his mourning are ended. And
so shall ours be, by and by, too ; when we
shall no longer want our spiritual crutches
or armor, but shall say to the helmet of hope,
the shield of faith, I have no more need of
thee. Then the all prevailing weapon of
prayer shall be changed into songs of praise;
when God himself shall be our everlasting
light ; a sun that shall never go down more,
but shall beam forth his infinite and eternal
love in a. beatific state forever."

It is related that a man who stood listen-
ing to Wbitefield, at Exeter, held a stone in
his hand which he intended to throw at the
IH«acher.' As he listened the stone dropped

THE SIMPLE EVANGELIST, 215

from his hand; and after the sermon he went
up and said : " Mr. Whitefield, I came here
to break your head, but God has broken my
heart," A ship-builder, who was asked what
he thought of him, replied : " When I go to
my parish church I can build a ship from
stem to stern, under the Parson's sermon ;
but when I hear Mr. Whitefield preach I
can't lay a single plank, were it to save my
soul.*' Benjamin Franklin, who heard White-
field preach at Philadelphia, said : " I per-
ceived he intended to finish with a collec-
tion, and I silently resolved he should get
nothing from me. I had in my pocket a
handful of copper money, three or four sil-
ver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As
he proceeded I began to soften and concluded
to give the copper ; another stroke of his
oratory made me ashamed of that, and I de-
termined to give the silver ; and he finished
so admirably that I emptied my pocket into
the collector's dish, gold and all."

The results produced by Whitefield's preach-
ing in New England have been diversely
interpreted. A letter dated at Boston, in
December, 1740, says: "His visit here will
be esteemed a distinguished mercy of heaven

2l6 SIDE GLIMPSES.

by many. A small set of gentlemen amongst
US| when they saw the affections of the peo-
ple so moved under his preaching, would
attribute it only to his force of voice and ges-
ture. But the impressions on many are so
lasting and have been so transforming as to
carry plain signatures of a divine hand going
along with them." A letter from a country
minister, printed in March, 1744, says that
in consequence of Whitefield's preaching,
''the Bible hath appeared to some to be a
new book and the Catechism of the Assem-
bly of Divines to be a new and most excellent
Composure, though before they saw no great
Excellency to be in the one or the other."
A convention of hard-shell ministers, at Bos-
ton, spoke of the result as " The late Errors
in Doctrine and Disorders in Practice," and
they printed a pamphlet condemning it ; while
another convention of ministers spoke of it
as "The late happy Revival of Religion."

Whitefield returned to England, where he
preached as he had preached in the colonies.
On a second visit to New England, in the
year 1744, he found that some ministers had
changed their attitude towards him. He
had done what they could not do. There-

THE SIMPLE EVANGELIST. 217

fore they sympathized with the Faculty of
Harvard College, which issued what was
called a Testimony against him as an enthu-
siast, or "one that acts either according to
dreams or some sudden impulses and impres-
sions upon his mind, which he fondly im«
agines to be from the Spirit of God, . . .
We think it our duty," said the Faculty, " to
bear our strongest testimony against that
itinerant way of preaching which this gen-
tleman was the first promoter of amongst
us, and still delights to continue in." Yale
College, by its Faculty, acted in the same
manner.

Thaddeus Maccarty, minister of Kings-
ton^ near Plymouth, accepted Whitefield's
teaching and was compelled to quit his pul-
pit. As soon as he had gone, the town
appointed a committee of eight men "to
prevent itinerant preachers from disturbing
the peace of the town." The selectmen of
Duxbury were directed to take " care of the
meeting house to keep out itinerant preach-
ers," who, like Whitefield, were preachers
of the simple gospel. At Worcester, where
Whitefield preached to crowds gathered by
the acre under the open sky, it was voted to

2i8 SIDE GL/AfPSES.

be an offense if any member of the church

'' shall hereafter countenance itinerant preach*

* >i
mg.

After Whitefield had gone, James Daven-
port, the minister of Southold, on Long
Island, started on a hunt for unconverted
ministers, and he went through county par-
ishes warning people of their danger in fol-
lowing the guidance of such shepherds. In
reaching Boston he was arrested and tried
for uttering " many slanderous and reviling
speeches against godly and faithful minis-
ters." The verdict was "Not guilty," but
a result of all these matters was a deep com-
motion in the minds of the people on the
question, Who is and who is not converted.
There were reasons for believing that some
preachers in the colonial meeting-house were
not converted men, before the Great Awak-
ening of the year 1740 began its course.
Whitefield wrote in his diary : " I insisted on
the doctrine of the new birth, and also on
the necessity of a minister being converted
before he could preach aright. . . . The
Spirit of the Lord enabled me to speak
with such vigor against sending unconverted
men into the ministry, that two ministers,

THE SIMPLE EVANGELIST, 219

with tears in their eyes, publicly confessed
that they had lain hands on two young men
without so much as asking them whether
they were born again of God or not."

When Whitefield was preaching at New-
buryport, a stone was thrown at him as he
stood on the meeting-house steps, before an
audience that filled High Street. It struck
the Bible which he held in his hand. Lifting
up the book, he said: "I have a warrant
from God to preach the Gospel ; his seal is
in my hand, and I stand in the King's high-
way." He died suddenly in that town, in the
year 1770. On the 2d day of October, at
one o'clock of the afternoon, all the bells of
Newburyport were tolled, and the flags of
all vessels in the harbor were flying at half-
mast. At two o'clock, the bells were tolled
again ; at three o'clock, the solemn knell
was rung, and the procession of mourners, a
mile in length, walked to the meeting-house.
There the funeral services were conducted in
presence of a thronged assembly, and many
persons stood in mournful silence without.
They sang the hymn by Dr. Watts, " Why
do we mourn departing friends ? " then they
buried him under the pulpit, and his memory

220 SIDE GLIMPSES,

now hallows the ancient town. Whittiei
says : —

" Under the church of Federal Street,
Under the tread of its Sabbath feet.
Walled about by its basement stones.
Lie the marvellous preacher's bones.
No saintly honors to them are shown, )
No sign nor miracle have they known ;
But he who passes the ancient church
Stops in the shade of its belfry-porch.
And ponders the wonderful life of him
Who lies at rest in that chamel dim.
Long shall the traveller strain his eye
From the railroad car, as it plunges by,
And the vanishing town behind him search
For the slender spire of the Whitefield Church,
And feel for one moment the ghosts of trade,
And fashion, and folly, and pleasure laid,
By the thought of that life of pure intent,
That voice of warning yet eloquent,
Of one on the errands of angels sent.
And if where he labored the flood of sin
Like a tide from the harbor-bar sets in,
And over a life of time and sense
The church-spires lift their vain defence,
As if to scatter the bolts of God
With the points of Calvin's thunder-rod, ^-
Still, as the gem of its civic crown,
Precious beyond the world's renown,
His memory hallows the ancient town I **

XIV.

THE MUSE OF CHORAL SONG.

EORGE Herbert's reading desk and
pulpit were, made of equal height,
so that, as he said, " Prayer and
Preaching, being equally useful, might
agree like brethren and have an equal
honor." These two were esteemed as the
essential parts of divine worship in the colo-
nial meeting-house; the service was called
"The publick ordinances of praying and
preaching." Singing was not specified as
a part of the service, although it was prac-
ticed, and so badly practiced that the *' speak-
ing contemptuously of singing psalms " was
notorious.

A treatise, called " Singing of Psalms a
Gospel Ordinance," was published by John
Cotton, of Boston, in the year 1647. The
necessity for such a publication seems to
imply that psalm-singing was not a general

222 SIDB GLIMPSES,

custom in the meeting-houses. After all
that was printed on the subject, there was,
in the first century of New England, nothing
that could be called a service of song ; no
harmonious band of singers "to make one
sound to be heard in praising and thanking
the Lord, saying : ' For he is good ; for his
mercy endureth forever/ " The Bay Psalm
Book, "imprinted 1640/' which was used in
some parts of New England, was prepared
by three ministers, iJeiiner of whom had a
strand of music or poetry in his soul. It
asks us to sing : —

** Lift up thy foot on hye,
Unto the desolations

of perpetuity :
Thy foe within the Sanctuary

hath done all lewd designs.
Amid the Church thy foes doe roare :

their Banners set for signes."

The best specimen of versification in the
book is "Psalme 137." Yet it must have
bewildered the rustics who launched them-
selves " The rivers on of Babilon," to learn
where they were going to land : —

" The rivers on of Babilon

there when wee did sit downe :
Yea even then wee mourned, when
wee remembered Sion.

THE MUSE OP CHORAL SONG. 223

Our harps wee did hang it amid,

upon the willow tree.
Because there they that us away

led in captivitee,
Required of us a song, thus

askt mirth : us waste who laid,
Sing us among a Sions song,

unto us then they said.'*

A much needed apology appears in the
preface of this book, which reassures the
stumbling singer in these words : " If the
Verses are not alwayes so smooth and ele-
gant as some may desire or expect let them
consider that God's altar needs not our pol-
lishings. Exodus, 20."

Other hymn books known in New Eng-
land were Ainsworth's "Book of Psalms
englished both in prose and metre," printed
at Amsterdam in the year 161 2. Older than
this was the Stemhold and Hopkins hym-
nody which, during the reign of Queen Eliz-
abeth, had been "permitted rather than al-
lowed " in the Church of England ; it was
bound in the covers of the Book of Common
Prayer, and was rated as a work of superior
excellence until the hymnal of Tate and
Brady appeared in the year 1696. Then
came hymns composed by Isaac Watts,

224 ^^^^ GLIMPSES,

which, in the course of time, crowded out
all others. Up to the year 1781, forty edi-
tions of bis psalms and hymns had been pub-
lished in New England. The author was a
non-conformist theologian, and a preacher
to the Mark Lane congregation in London.
His religious opinions were more liberal than
those of his times ; he did not scowl at all
Sunday recreations ; he said, in one of his
hymns, —

" Religion never was designed
To make our pleasures less.*'

He rejected Calvin's doctrine that a certain
number of the human race have been predes-
tined, as reprobates, to condemnation and
punishment ; be imagined heaven to be the
culmination of all good tastes and habits
formed on earth. His hymns, coming to
the cheerless and shivering services of wor-
ship in the colonial meeting-house, were like
the coming of a bright and hopeful guest to
a disconsolate fireside. Some of them have
been acknowledged to be the hymns of a
true poet ; and these are still said to be more
suitable for the service of divine worship
than those of any other English composer.
Who has forgotten the hymns of Dr. Watts

THE MUSE OP CHORAL SONG. 225

that were sung in the meeting-house of his
childhood ?

" When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride."

Or this : —

" There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign.
Infinite day excludes the night.
And pleasures banish pain.^

Or this : —

"Joy to the world ! the Lord is come : ,

Let earth receive her King ;
Let every heart prepare Him room.
And heaven and nature sing."

Or this : —

" Jesus shall reign where'er the sun
Does his successive journeys run ;
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore.
Till moons shall wax and wane no more."

It may be said that Watts has written the
songs of the church. For nearly two cen-
turies his lyric poems have been sung, and
are sung to-day wherever the English lan-
guage is spoken. The reason for this must
be that no other poet has so well expressed
the devotional spirit, or has so closely sym-

226 SIDE GLIMPSES,

pathized with the experiences of a religious
life.
Are you penitent ? There is the hymn : —

'' Show pity, Lord I O Lord, forgive;
Let a repenting rebel live ;
Are not Thy mercies large and free ?
May not a sinner trust in Thee ? "

Are you truthful ? There is the hymn : —

" Thus far the Lord hath led me on ;
Thus far His power prolongs my days :
And every evening shall make known
Some fresh memorials of His grace."

Are you desirous of rendering a tribute of
homage to the Divine Being ? There is the
hymn : —

'* From all that dwell below the skies,
Let the Creator's praise arise ;
Let the Redeemer's name be sung
Thro' every land, by every tongue."

And yet when the hymns of Dr. Watts
appeared, many theologians of New England
who had been laboriously singing from the
Bay Psalm Book, or from the Sternhold and
Hopkins version, stood still, not knowing, as
they said, what hymns of Dr. Watts should
be sung as sacred, and what should be sung
as profane. Some of them thought that car-
nal men should not sing at all. In the year

THE MUSE OF CHORAL SONG. 22 J

1736, ministers of Boston were discussing
and doubting the propriety of singing any
"hymns of mere human composure," and
they objected to singing those which were
not paraphrases of the Psalms of David.

There appears to have been no scientific
knowledge of music in New England until
the early part of the last century. It is said
that but five or six tunes were in use, and
the only identity which these had, as used in
different towns, was in the names. St. Mary's
sung in Boston was a different St. Mary's
from that which vibrated harshly in the
meeting-houses on the banks of the Con-
necticut River ; and neither of them resem-
bled that which frightened the babes in " ye
Government of New Haven with ye Planta-
tions in combination therewith." All tunes
were like traditions handed down by ear, and
so changed were they in the transmission that
their original form was lost. In Old Eng-
land the tunes had been left to the mercy of
every parish clerk. Records of archdeacons'
courts show that the clerk was punished
for singing the psalms in church service
" with such a jesticulous tone anc^altitonant
voyce, viz. squeaking like a pigg which doth

228 SIDE GLIMPSES.

not only interrupt the other voyces but is
altogether dissonant and disagreeing unto
any musicall harmonie."

A letter printed in "The Spectator/' at
London, October 25, 171 1, tells us how psalm-
singing produced discords in the congrega-
tions of old England: —

"Sir; — I am a country clergyman, and, hope
you will lend me your assistance in ridiculing
some little indecencies which cannot so properly
be exposed from the pulpit.

"A widow lady who straggled this summer
from London into my parish for the benefit of
the air, as she says, appears every Sunday at
church with many fashionable extravagancies, to
the great astonbhment of my congregation.

" But what gives us most offense is her theat-
rical manner of singing the psalms. She intro-
duces about fifty Italian airs into the hundredth
psalm ; and whilst we begin ' All people ' in the
old solemn tune of our forefathers, she in a quite
different key runs divisions on the vowels and
adorns them with the graces of Nicolini. If she
meets with an * eke/ or * aye,' which are frequent
in the metre of Hopkins and Sternhold, we are
certain to hear her quavering them half a min-
ute after us to some sprightly airs of the opera.
I know her principles and that she will plead

THE MUSE OP CHORAL SONG, 229

toleration, which allows her non-conformity in this
particular; but I beg you to acquaint her that
singing of psalms in a different tune from the
rest of the congregation is a sort of schism not
tolerated by that act."

The first efforts to teach a choir to sing " by
rule " instead of " by rote," in the colonial
meeting-house, were opposed as opening a
door to popery ; it being declared by some
of the old-fashioned singers that " fa, sol, la "
was the voice of the Pope in disguise. Each
party accused the other of disturbing public
worship ; the opponents of the new way of
singing claimed that the old way was more
solemn, and that the new way was wrong
because young people readily fell into it.
"Last week," says the "New England Cou-
rant" of September 16, 1723, "a Council of
Churches was held at the South Part of
J^rantrey to regulate the Disorders occasioned
by Regular Singing in that place, Mr. Niles
the minister having suspended seven or eight
of the Church for persisting in their Singing
by Rule contrary (as he apprehended) to the
result of a former Council ; but by this Coun-
cil the suspended Brethren are restored to
Communion, their suspension declared unjust.

230 SIDB GLIMPSES,

and the Congregation ordered to sing by Rote
and Rule alternately for the satisfaction of
both parties."

Some congregations did not understand
the merits of the controversy well enough
to have any opinion about it. I find on the
Stamford records the following amiable de-
cision, dated "genewary y« 28, 1747 — Voted.
y\ Mr. Jona Bell, or any other man agreed
upon to sing or tune y« salm in his absence
in times of publickt worship may tune it in y*
old way or new way, which suits you best."
The new way of singing did suit them best
in many meeting-houses; and it gradually
broke up the custom of reading aloud the
hymns, line by line, to the singers, — a custom
first introduced at Plymouth for the benefit
of worshipers who could not read. This cus-
tom prevailed in all parts of New England
for a long period, because it removed, as is
stated in Lincoln's " History of Worcester,"
"the embarrassment resulting from the ig-
norance of those who were more skillful in
giving sound to notes, than in deciphering
letters."

The fierceness of the controversy, caused
by the change in methods of psalm-singing

THE MUSE OP CHORAL SONG. 23 1

may be seen in a petition sent by Joseph
Hawley, of Farmington, to the legislature at
Hartford, in May, 1725, which

"humbly sheweth " that "Deacon hart ye Chor-
ister one Sabbath day In setting ye psalm at-
tempted to sing Bella tune — and your memorial-
ist being used to ye old way supposed ye deacon
had aimed at Cambridge short tune and set it
wrong, whereupon your petitioner Raised his
Voice in ye sd short tune and ye people followed
him, & so there was an unhappy Discord in ye
Singing, and ye Blame was all imputed to your
poor petitioner, and John Hooker Esq' sent for
him & fined him for breach of Sabbath, and so
your poor petitioner is Layed under a very heavie
Scandal & Reproach & Rendered vile & pro-
phane fir what he did in ye fear of God."

Palfrey, in his centennial discourse at
Barnstable, quotes from the town records
that the peace of the parish was invaded in
the year 1726 by a quarrel about the new style
of singing, and the civil power was called
upon " to detect and bear testimony against
such iniquity." The ancient town of Wind-
sor, in Connecticut, did not regard the new
fashion as an iniquity ; for there it was ad-
mitted to an equal footing with the old fash-

232 SIDE GLIMPSBS,

ion by a decision to sing *' in the old way "

•

in the morning and " in the new way " in the
afternoon. Duxbury voted, in the year 1780,
that the psalms should ''be sung without
being read line by line." At Worcester,
about the same time, it was voted '' that the
mode of singing be without reading the
psalms line by line." Such is the tenacity
of life in religious customs that, on the next
Sunday, when a hymn had been announced
by the minister. Deacon Chamberlain, deter-
mined to follow the custom of his life, arose
and read aloud the first line as he had al-
ways done. The singers, whose bold array
stretched along the front of the gallery, sang
the first line, and immediately passed on to
the second line, without pausing for the
deacon ; while he, with all the strength of
his voice, read the lines one after another,
and so continued to read until the progress
of the choir overpowered him. Then he
left the meeting-house, mortified and weep-
ing. But the church, not satisfied with this
triumph over the venerable man, publicly
censured him and deprived him of commun-
ion, because he had absented himself " from
the public ordinances on the Lord's Day."

THE MUSE OF CHORAL SONG. 233

The jiggery muse of choral song was not
contented with upsetting the musical prac-
tices in New England meeting-houses ; she'
skipped over the border and shocked, by her
antics, English congregations in Canada and
Nova Scotia. In the year 1770, she entered
St. Paul's, the Episcopal meeting-house at
Halifax, where she caused the organist " to
indulge in artistic Musick too freely ; " so
that, as was written at the time, " the Major
part of the Congregation do not understand
the Words or the Musick and cannot join in
them." The vestry met, and ordered that
thereafter the organist shall play only ** such
Tunes as are solemn, and that he Play the
Psalm Tunes in a Familiar manner without
unnecessary Graces." There may have been
something the matter with the organ ; for
tradition says that a Spanish ship was
brought into Halifax as a prize, and in her
cargo was found the organ on its way to a
Roman Catholic chapel in the West Indies.
It was removed from the prize ship to the
choir of St. Paul's, where it practiced those
"unnecessary Graces" which offended the
congregation.

THE BIBLE AND THE CONFESSIONAL.

IN the year 1541, "Payed for a By-
ble for ye towns part, four shillings."
So runs an item in the churchwar-
den's accounts of the parish of North Elm-
ham in Old England. Two years previous,
the Bible had been printed at London, in
folio size, under the direction of Coverdale
and the patronage of Cranmer. Another
edition appeared in the year 1540, for which
Cranmer wrote a preface teaching that
"Scripture should be read of the lay and
vulgar people ; " and in the same year a royal
proclamation required every parish in Eng-
land to procure, for public use, a Bible of the
largest size, under penalty of forty shillings
monthly for a delay. This Bible was to be
set up in the churches where it might be
read by the people, although it was not as
yet used in the public services of worship.

THE BIBLE AND THE CONFESSIONAL, 235

There was no Bible set up in the colonial
meeting-house to " be read of the lay and
vulgar people ; " nor was there any reading
from the Bible by the minister in the pulpit
during the first century of New England.
When the Brattle Street meeting-house was
erected at Boston, the society formed to
worship in it, which included many of the
best families living in the town, startled
the orthodox community by proposing sev-
eral innovations upon the church customs of
the times. The chief of these were that the
minister should read from the Bible to the
congregation; that baptism should be ad-
ministered to parents and children on lighter
terms than a personal profession of religion ;
that the public confession of sins by com-
municants should be abolished; that the
right to vote for election of a minister should
not be confined alone to men. These plans
were set forth in a " Manifesto or Declara-
tion," which attracted so much attention
that the church was called, in ridicule, the
manifesto church.

In regard to a public reading of the Bible,
its declaration was: "We design only the
true and pure Worship of God, according to

236 SIDE GLIMPSES,

the Rules appearing plainly to us in His
Word. . . . We judge it therefore most
suitable and convenient, that in our Publick
Worship some part of the Holy Scripture be
read by the Minister at his discretion." As
to public confessions, it said : " We assume
not to our selves to impose upon any a Pub-
lick Relation of their Experiences ; however
if any one think himself bound in Conscience
to make such a Relation, let him do it"
And the letter of the society inviting Ben-
jamin Coleman to come the seas over and be
their minister said : " We propose that the
Holy Scripture be publicly read every Sab-
bath in the Worship of God which is not
practiced in the other Churches of New
England at the present time, and that we
may lay aside the Relation of Experiences
which are imposed in other Churches in
order to the admission of persons to the
Lord's Table."

The manifesto called forth impertinent re-
bukes from the leading ministers of Boston
and its vicinity, including one from that
minister at Salem who had excommunicated
Rebecca Nourse. When the news reached
Cotton Mather, minister in the North meet-

THE BIBLE AND THE CONFESSIONAL, 237

ing-house, he goes to his diary and writes :
" A company of headstrong men in the town,
the chief of whom are full of malignity to
the holy ways of our churches, have built
in the town another meeting-house. And
without the advice or knowledge of the min-
isters in the vicinity they have published
under the title of a Manifesto, certain arti-
cles that utterly subvert our churches."

The churches which this diarist repre-
sented stood on a very insecure foundation,
if they were to be turned bottom side up
by the declaration that the Holy Scriptures
should be read in the services of public
worship, and that the disgraceful confessional
should be abolished ! His malignity is kept
at the boiling point for four or five months,
when it runs over into his diary again. He
writes, using capital letters more profusely
than usual : " I see Satan beginning a terri-
ble Shake unto the Churches of New Eng-
land and the Innovators that have sett up a
New Church in Boston (a New one indeed ! )
have made a Day of Temptation among us.
The men are Ignorant, Arrogant, Obstinate
and full of malice and slander, and they fill
the Land with Lyes, in the misrepresenta-

238 SIDE GLIMPSES.

tions thereof I am a very singular sufferer.
Wherefore I set apart this day again for
prayer in my study to cry mightily unto
God."

How different was the spirit of this man,
whose habit it was "to cry mightily unto
God" whenever the course of events did
not suit his purposes^ from that of Samuel
Sewall ; who, after receiving a visit from the
minister of the new church, wrote in his
diary : " I told him If God should please by
them to hold forth any Light that had not
been seen or entertained before, I should be
so far from envying it that I should rejoice
m It.

Reading the Holy Scriptures as part of
the services of public worship was a novelty
that won its way to favor slowly. It was
not until the year 1737 that the Old South
Church of Boston voted that they " be read
in Public after the first Prayer in the morn-
ing and Afternoon." Medford town voted,
in the year 1759, "^^ ^^^^ ^^^ Holy Scrip-
tures in the congregation ; " Duxbury voted,
in the year 1790, that they " should be read
every Lord's day by the minister ; " and at
Framingham, in the year 1792, the Scrip-

THE BIBLE AND THE CONFESSIONAL. 239

tures were ordered " to be read in public on
the Sabbath, and a Bible procured for that
purpose."

Some editions of the Bible which were to
be obtained in colonial times had not been
published by approved authority ; as an edi-
tion of the year 1653, which represented St
Paul as saying : " Know ye not that the
unrighteous shall inherit the Kingdom of
Heaven ? " Other editions were spotted by
translator's and printer's errors. The most
notorious of these was an edition published
in the year 163 1, by Robert Barker, a Lon-
don printer enjoying the highest favor of
King Charles the First ; in which the nega-
tive was omitted from the Seventh Com-
mandment. A formal complaint was made
against the printer by Archbishop Laud
before that rigorous body of censors known
as The Star Chamber, and by them the edi-
tion of one thousand copies was condemned
to be burned in public ; Barker and his as-
sociate, Martin Lucas, were fined three hun-
dred pounds each, and were locked in prison
for one year. But all the copies were not
burned. One appeared in the book market
in the year 1855, which was examined by

240 SIDE GLIMPSES,

the Society of Antiquaries in London and
was then called the '* Wicked Bible," as their
records say, "from the circumstance of its
being filled with gross and scandalous typo-
graphical errors not the least remarkable
of which is the omission of the important
word 'not' in the Seventh Commandment."
Other copies have been found, imperfect by
missing leaves ; and there are known to be
six perfect copies of the "Wicked Bible"
now in existence. One of these, which fell
into my hands, has three religious publica-
tions bound with it. The first is a cate-
chism of eighty-six pages on the doctrines of
the Bible, having this quaint title : " The
Way to trve happines leading to the .Gate
of knowledge ; " the second is The Book of
Common Prayer; the third publication is
" The Whole Book of Psalmes Collected into
English Meeter by Thomas Sternhold, John
Hopkins, and others, conferred with the He-
brew, with apt notes to sing them withall.
London, i6i6." In a blank space on a page
of the catechism I found these words, writ-
ten distinctly in an ink which had become
brown with age : —

THE BIBLE AND THE CONFESSIONAL, 241

** ffrancis Chamberling
her Book god give her
grais on It to Look/'

And, whether she lived in New England or
in Old England, it is to be hoped that she
received a full measure of the grace which
she needed when she studied the command-
ments, and for which she so modestly asked
more than two hundred years ago.

The public confession, commonly called
the relation of experiences, was a custom
brought from Old England; it appeared in
the first church organized by John Win-
throp's company in New England, and it
continued to be a custom of the churches for
two hundred years. The sinner made confes-
sion before the whole congregation. When
it was propounded to the Old South Church
of Boston, in the year 17 17, "whether Cap-
tain Nathaniel Oliver's Confession should be
before the Church or before the Congrega-
tion," Judge Sewall said : " I opposed the
former as not agreeing with the universal
practice. Not fit that the penitent should
prescribe before what auditory his confes-
sion should be." Authority for this custom
was claimed to rest in certain verses of the

242 SIDE GLIMPSES,

eighteenth chapter of the Gospel by St.
Matthew ; it ignored the responsibility of an
individual for his sins, making the church
responsible for them, and it assumed that
the minister and the church as a body had
the power to forgive them by restoring the
sinner to fellowship, on his making a peni-
tent confession of his sinful acts. The style
of preaching tended to keep alive the con-
fessional. Those were days when fear ruled
the common mind. Fear of eternal perdition
caused skeletons, that were locked up in the
cupboard of conscience, to stir and rattle,
and to come out and stand up in the great
alley of the meeting-house, where confes-
sions were made of sins which, even in the
time of the Apostle Paul, were not to be
named publicly. The repentance of the
penitents was, to quote the maxim of La
Rochefoucauld, "not so much a regret for
the ill we have done, as a fear of the ill
that may come to us in consequence of our
doing."

With the Presbyterians of Scotland, in the
seventeenth century, church discipline was
more severe than it was with the Congre-
gationalists of New England. The Scotch

THE BIBLE AND THE CONFESSIONAL, 243

minister could put his sinning parishioners
in the town stocks ; he could compel them to
stand up during the entire service, as a school-
master orders naughty children to stand up
until the school is dismissed. The penitents,
clad in linen robes and standing in the alley
of the meeting-house, were doomed not only
to hear their sins denounced from the pulpit,
but also to pay a fine for the sinning.^

The reverend Mr. Huntington, when plead-
ing against the inquisitive forms of church
discipline before an ecclesiastical council
sitting in the meeting-house at Stockbridge,
Massachusetts, said : " My impleaders claim
that the church have that right committed
to them. But where do they find it ? Not
in the word of God ; not in the reason and
nature of things. Nor is it possible, gentle-
men, that the church should be able to judge
in such cases with any propriety. Persons
many times have a clear, decisive reason why

* Waddell, History of Auldhame^ Tyninghame^ and
IVhitekirk in East Lothian,

It is recorded in the Acts of the Privy Council, of the
year 1554, that "Robert Wendham of the parish of St.
Giles in the Field, tdlor, for shaving a dog was appointed
to repair on Sunday next to the parish church and there
openly confess his folly, according to the order prescribed."

244 ^^^^ GLIMPSES,

they should marry each other, and they know
it is their duty to do so ; and yet it is a very
unlawful, wicked thing for them to make
their reasons public by communicating them
to a whole church. Many church members
— I speak it with great detestation — have
laid themselves under clear, inviolable obli-
gation to marry, by means of an antecedent
criminal commerce, which never ought to be
known to the world, and never can be unless
they tell of it. A man has no liglit to pub
lish his own sins ; his duty is to confess them
to God and forsake them.''

It may be nuid that (here was then moro
identity between the minister und his pco>
ply Uiaii thure U now. \\\ colonial \\\\\v,\k
hU ptmllliMi mill liilliioiMO woio F^luMif^lhciiitHl
by what was called " the coniinuiildii ol thi:

the power of church discipline of which he
was the dispenser for harm as well as for
good. Let me give an example of the harm.
In the year 1723, at Durham, New Hamp-
shire, James Davis and his wife, being about
to join the church, their former minister,
who had been dismissed in a quarrel, sent a
protest against their admission, "by virtue

THE BIBLE AND THE CONFESSIONAL, 245

of ye communion of churches." By such
virtue he stigmatized Davis as a "sacrile-
gious fraud ; " he called him and his wife
"unbaptised heathen man and woman."
Here is a part of what he wrote to their
minister in Durham : —

" Rev«n<* Hon. & beloved

" Understanding Col Davis & his wife are ab* to
Joyn in full communion with your church this is
by virtue of ye communion of churches to enter
my objection against them for scandalous crimes,
untill their publick confession & reformation.

" I?* crime against him is his hipocrisy in pre-
tending he could not unite with our church on
ace" of Capt Jones who (as he said) had taken
a false oath.

" 24 crime is his Sacrilegious fraud in his being
The ringleader of the peoples rase of my first
years sallary — retaining 16 pounds thereof now
almost sixteen years.

" 3"? crime is his Sacrilegious covetousness of
the parsonage land for his son Daniel, acting
thereby like Ahab coveting & forceable entry
upon Naboths Vineyard.

" Besides his the s<* Jas Davis being so desper-
ately & notoriously wise in his own conceit his
pretending to have so much religious discourse
in his mouth & yet live so long (40 years) in

246 SIDB GLIMPSES,

hatred unto contempt of & stand neuter from
our crucified Saviour."

We may not believe that there were many
ministers of this stripe in the rural parishes
of New England. And yet, as late as the
year 1777, Stephen West, minister at Stock-
bridge, used the whip of church discipline
in a manner that was suited to the temper
of religionists in the Middle Ages. This
is the story: John Fisk, who had been an
officer in the military service, was employed
to keep a school, in the vicinity of which
lived Mrs. Levina Deane, a young widow of
an amiable character and a member of the
church. Mr. Fisk prevailed with Mrs. Deane
to take him into her house as a boarder,
where he performed the religious exercises of
the family, morning and evening and at table,
as a religious and gifted man. And being
a gentleman of fine address he was attentive
to recommend himself to the favor of Mrs.
Deane; and was successful. The church,
being apprised that there was a purpose of
marriage between them, warned Mrs. Deane,
on motion of the minister, against proceed-
ing; inasmuch as they judged that Mr. Fisk,
not being a member of the church, was " an

THE BIBLE AND THE CONFESSIONAL, 247

immoral and profane person." Mrs. Deane,
finding that the marriage would be offensive
to the church, made all eflforts in her power
to conquer her passion for Mr. Fisk, but was
unable to do so. They were married, and she
was excommunicated by vote of the church,
which the minister formulated in these words :
"That Levina Fisk be excluded from the
communion of this church till she manifest
a sense of her wickedness in marrying to
Mr. Fisk, and repentance of it."

Was her " repentance of it " to be a di-
vorce.? She called for an ecclesiastical
council, and West allowed her to have one
on condition that he select its members.
He summoned eleven ministers from par-
ishes in Massachusetts and Connecticut, who
sat with him in the meeting-house, and de-
liberated on the matter, and approved the
excommunication of Mrs. Fisk. This act
of persecution by ecclesiastics of the estab-
lished church of New England reminds me
of an incident described in the "Ingoldsby
Legends : " the great Lord Cardinal had lost
a valuable turquoise ring ; he summoned into
his presence all the clergy, the monks, and

mP j^^ d r

XVI.

THE HOUR-GLASS.

"Turning the accomplishments of many years
Into an hour-glass."

Henry V,

|HE hour-glass ended the services in
the colonial meeting-house. It was
an inheritance from Old England,
where it was to be seen in every parish
church ; and that it might be distinctly seen,
a candle was burning behind it whose light
passed through the running sands. "Payd
to the Smithe for mendinge the houreglas
Candlesticke 2<^.," say the records of St.
Mary's in Reading of the year 1603. It was
necessary to renew the hour-glass frequently,
for accidents made brief its life. In the
year 1570, the churchwardens of the parish
of St. Matthew, in London, "paide for an
ower glasse 4^. ; " and in the year 1579
they " paide for a nowere glasse '^d, ; " and
in the year 1584, they "paide for an owar

2SO SIDE GLIMPSES.

glasse I2d** At that time the glass stood,
not on the pulpit, but on a bracket, or a
frame ; or it was hung on a wall facing the
congregation. In the churchwarden's ac-
counts of St. Mary's, Lambeth, of the year
1579, is written: "Payde for the frame on
which the hower standeth, is. 4^. ; " and in
the accounts of St. Mary's, Shrewsbury, of
the year 1597, is a charge "for makeinge a
thing for the hower glasse, 9^."

The purpose of the hour-glass is stated in
the parish records of St. Katherine's, Aldgate,
London ; wherein is mentioned a payment
for "one hour-glass hanging by the pulpit
where the preacher doth make his sermon
that he may know how the hour passeth."
A legend sometimes engraved on the bands
that held it in place said : —

" As this sand runneth
So your life fadeth."

Sometimes the legend was in Latin; as,
" Pereunt et imputantus," which is to be
translated as expressing a thought of the
preacher, " I am accountable for the hours
that perish under my sermon." As the
hour-gla^s was a measure of the time, and

THE HOUR-GLASS, 25 1

a sign of its passing, a suitable inscription
would have been that which was given to the
sun-dial: —

'' I marke the Time I Saye, Gossip, dost thou soe ? "

The gossips did mark it; they watched
the hour-glass, not because they enjoyed a
right godly admonition of an hour's length
any more than people do now ; but they
must see that they were getting all the
preaching that they were paying for. That
the long sermons of those colonial days — in
the forenoon and in the afternoon of every
Sunday — were wearisome to the hearers is
shown by the methods in vogue to keep
men and women awake and wretched boys
quiet, and by the eagerness of all to get
out of doors as soon as the sermon was
ended.

It was indeed a severe exercise to listen
to hour-glass sermons in which the mys-
teries of fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge
absolute, were expounded. The preacher
told the story of Adam's transgression ; and
how all mankind, sinning with him, fell with
him, and rested thenceforth under the wrath
of God; —

252 SIDB GLIMPSBS.

''And how, of His will and pleasure,
All souls, save a chosen few.
Were doomed to the quenchless burning;
And held in the way thereto."

As if to make the sermon more attrac-
tive to the listeners, it was sometimes aimed
at one or two conspicuous families in the con-
gregation. These were held up by name ;
and exhortations, applications, and conclu-
sions were ejected at them from the pulpit,
firstly to the husband, secondly to the wife,
thirdly to the children. Meanwhile curi-
osity was craning its neck in all parts of
the meeting-house to get a sight of the
culprits, until the hour-glass sands had run
down.

As the preacher became a man of much
importance during the Puritan period of
English history, a sermon of two hours'
length was sometimes inflicted upon a con-
gregation ; and with an air of authority not
to be disputed the preacher turned the hour-
glass for a second run of the sands of time.
A story is told of an incident at Hadleigh, in
Old England, where an independent lecturer
had taken the place of an ejected vicar. The
lecturer had got through the first glass of

THE HOUR-GLASS. 253

his sermon and half through the second
glass, when, showing no signs of being on
the home-stretch, the audience one by one
began to creep out. Suddenly, in a pause
of the discourse, the old parish clerk arose,
and said : "Honored Sir ! When your rever-
ence hath finished, be pleased to close the
church and put the key under the door."
And he went out also.

A preacher of eccentric manners was Hugh
Peters, of Salem ; he was also a politician.
He went to England and became chaplain to
Cromwell, and a regicide, for which occupa-
tions he was beheaded at London in the year
1660. In those days people spelled their
names as the fancy took them ; they had no
rule to go by ; nothing beyond an approxi-
mation of the sound of a name as spoken
was regarded when writing it. When this
minister wrote himself as Hu Peter, he prob-
ably rejoiced in this orthographical license.
A painting represents him in the pulpit re-
versing an hour-glass and saying to the
congregation : " I know you are good fel-
lows ; stay and take another glass ! " This
anecdote was rated so well, that it was sent
over the ocean and given to several preachers.

254 ^l^^ GLIMPSES,

One of these was Daniel Burgess, who was
preaching to Londoners against the sin of
drunkenness. The sands of the hour-glass
had run down. "Brethren," said he, "of
this damnable sin of drinking there is more
to be said ; nay, much more ; let us have
another glass I "

The preacher with his hour-glass had his
own way in the colonial meeting-house. He
could go on forever and then begin again ;
and when he came to " finally, lastly, and to
conclude/* he might be a long way from the
end, even if the hour-glass had stopped its
running sands. At Boston, one day, John
Winthrop went to hear Mr. Hooker preach.
The fame of the preacher was great in the
little community, and therefore the governor
must go to hear him. In one of his letters
he tells what occurred. The preacher, he
says, " having gone on with much strength of
voice and intention of spirit about a quarter
of an hour, he was at a stand, and told the
people that God had deprived him both of his
strength and matter, etc., and so went forth.**
This probably means that he started so vehe-
mently that he forgot what he was preaching
about, and broke down, and went out of the

THE HOUR-GLASS. 255

meeting-house to recover himself. Not rec-
ognizing the purpose for which he had been
divinely "deprived both of his strength and
matter," he did not stay out, but came back
to the pulpit after an absence of half an
hour; as Winthrop tells it, the preacher
" about half an hour after returned again and
went on to very good purpose about two
hours ! "

Here were two hours and a quarter of ser-
monizing with an interval of half an hour of
cold silence. Did the governor and the con-
gregation fall asleep in that interval ? If not,
they neglected an opportunity which had
been mercifully put in their way. The inci-
dent, as Winthrop relates it, indicates that
the preacher felt himself to be put on show,
and that the audience desired to see the show
to its end.

"If I had my time to live over again,"
said Martin Luther, " my sermons would be
shorter. I would not have preachers tor-
ment their hearers with long and tedious
preaching." Perhaps the colonial preacher
would say the same words, could he reappear
and summon before him the men and women
to whom he preached "while the years and

256 SIDE GLIMPSES,

the hours were." The hour-glass that stands
on the pulpit in Hogarth's picture has the
legend, " Omnia fumus erunt/' — they all are
dust. And the colonial preacher, he, too, is

— *'dead and gone;
You can see his leaning slate
In the graveyard, and thereon
Read his name and date.*'

THE OLD COLONY TOWN,
AND OTHER SKETCHES.

BY WILLIAM ROOT BLISS.

Crown 8vo, gilt top, price, $1.25.

From tkt *' Boston TratfeUtr.'**

. . . Mr. Bliss has a word to say about the forefathers. In the
" Old Cobny Town, and Other Sketches '' he revisits the scene
of his former study. ** Colonial Times on Buzzard's Bay/' and
gathers new material in the same spirit as before. A quaint and
vivid style, a mildly humorous temperament, and antiquarian zeal,
combine to give hu pictures of old-fashioned New England life a
flavor of their own. Though in love with his subject he is the
most truthful of eulogists. He is too practical to let himself be
seduced by the allurements of the light, peripatetic essay. But
facts — the lore, solid and comforting, which he has unearthed
for our entertainment — are the meat and the savor of this author's
work.

From the '* Boiton Transcripts^

. . . The second paper, relating to Buzzard's Bay, is rich in
descriptive coloring and in quaint historical allusions. The life
of the past and the life of the present are broujght before the
reader with almost equal distinctness. We look from the shore
upon the water, and from the water to the shore. The history
and the romance of the past gather as a halo about the present
The atmosphere is salt with the breath of the sea. '' Life on
Matinicus Rock " is lonely and sad to a degree ; but it is lighted
up with a spirit of devotion on the part of those whose duty it is
to keep the lamps trimmed and burning. The paper on this sub-
ject is peculiarly sympathetic It contains much of the romance
of life. So, too, do the <'01d Roads near Buzzard's Bay."
These lead to strange persons and places in the i)resent and in
the past. The remaining papers have less to do with New Eng-
land life ; but through them all runs the same rich vein of humor
and the same sympathetic feeling which pervade the Old Colony
studies throughout. The manner of the author is most engaging,
and it is a pleasure to accompany him on the sea or on the land
in his strolls through the realms of fancy and of fact

From the *^ Boston yournal."

. . . It would seem almost impossible to say anything new about
old Plymouth ; but Mr. Bliss succeeds in makins^ an old subject
seem new, — a certain test of originality. He brings tradition
into the light of reason, and though he has the daring to express
doubts upon such sacred objects as Plymouth Rock. Burial Hill
as the resting place of the rilgrims, and even upon the quality of
tiie immierants in the Mayflower themselveSj except the well-
indorsed eleven, his doubts are so interesting and his reflections
brin^ in the results of such careful research that his essay, writ-
ten m a clear light, gives undoubted satisfaction. There are six
sketches inspir^ by colonial days. The subjects are of old life
and places ; but the essays are not in the least musty : on the
contrary, they are full of vivacity and liveliness, being character-
ized by numor as well as by senous thought. It is such literary
work that vitalizes history and makes noted places more notable.

From tho ** Boston HtraldV

. . . Mr. Bliss is equally good as an observer of nature and as
a story-teller, and his chapters are all the better because they
have tne chann of a man who b contented to be simply himself.
. . . Not everything in this book relates to Plymouth ; but Mr.
Bliss is so agreeable in his stories, and says so many good things,
that his book will be read and enjoyed by a great many peojue,
who will feel as if they had enjoyed a visit to Plymouth without
going there. '' Days on the North Atlantic '' is a delightful
sketoi. and so is the account of A Thanksgiving.'' Mr. Bliss
is to be congratulated upon the charming simplicity and fine
natural touches which characterize this volume. It is an admira-
ble piece of literary work.

From tho ** Christian Leader^" Boston,

. . . Mr. Bliss has somehow got the life of hb observations, —
they have become constituents of hb intellectual being, — and
hence an unbroken charm in hb sketches. Of course the princi-
pal sketch is his reproduction of Old Plymouth, — not a gazetteer
enumeration of particulars, but a vital reproduction. The aroma
of the past and the smell of the heath are in hb sentences. The
same holds of " Old Roads near Buzzard's Bay," and of " Life
on Matinicus Rock." The ^ Other Sketches " include papers of
a different character, such as '' A Thanksgiving," '* The Mind of
My Dog," — not a concession, but a very strong and tender
affirmation that a dog has a mind, and is something of a linguist
too.

From the '* Congregational ist^^^ Boston.

. . . Mr. Bliss writes very entertainingly, and the student of
Pilgrim history will be especblly interested in what he says. He
corrects some popular misapprehensions, and draws clear and
lively pictures of colonial society.

From the " Old Colony Mlemorialf''^ PlymoiUh,

. . . Mr. Bliss's papers are interesting and entertaining, through
their easy style and excellent description. It is a book of variety,
such as a person without time to devote likes to have where it
can be taken in hand for half an hour and laid by for another
reading snatch with the feeling that no thread is lost

From ike ** ITew York Independent,'^

The author of that very charmine book, '^ Colonial Times on
Buzzard's Bay," has given us another, composed, for the pstrti
and in the best part, oi Old Colony sketches as it now is. They
are done with great spirit and humor, and the closest jMssiUe
observation. Mr. Bliss delights in the antiquarian relations of
his subject as much as in the people whose portraits he draws
and the landscape of which he ^ves us such sketches. He has a
mirth-compelling pen. and knows how to mix the colors of his
chapters to the very snade of the scene before him.

From ike ** New York Evangelist,^

There is a peculiar charm in the style of this volume, a style
that is modem, and yet without that vice of modem authorship,
— self-consciousness ; simple and direct, yet thoroughly cultured.
In his delijghtful talk about Plymouth, the << Old Colony '' town,
Mr. Bliss IS not afraid to prick, now and then, a bubble of tradi-
tion. . . . Besides Plymouth, Mr. Bliss describes the coasts of
Buzzard's Bay, Matinicus Rock oflf the coast of Maine, and other
New England places, with a breath of the salt air in his style, a
freshness and vigor, which are as tonic as a dash over the water
in a stiff breeze, or a woodsy drive on an autumn day. Not all
the " sketches '* arc of New England or of out-of-doors even. One
of the best is on " Society in the Menagerie," and that on '' The
Mhid of My Dog " is full of thought.

From ike ** Kew York MaU and ExpreuV

Mr. William Root Bliss has written a notable book In << The
Old Colony Town, and Other Sketches." He presents, in the
second of his thirteen sketches, ^' The Ambit of Buzzard's Bay,"
a vivid picture of seashore places^ Cuttyhunk, Penikese Island,
Pasque island, Naushon, Mattapoisett, where so many whalers
were builded in former times, and Sippecan, which is now mod-
ernized into ^* Marion." Mr. Bliss's love of fact does not blind
him to the fancy of early New England life, which comes out
humorously in his *^ Old Colony Witch Stories."

From the " New York Eveniftg Post.^^

. . . The book deserves the patronage of all such health and
pleasure seekers. It gives them what they both need and lack, —
an excellent topograpnical description of all the natural features
they will encounter m their walks, drives, and water parties, be-
sides mention of the old landmarks with something of their history
and legends.

From ikt ** Book Buytr,** New York.

. . . These thirteen brief (all too brief) sketches chiefly deal
with Plymouthi Buzzard's Bay, and other historic places alons
the New England coast ; but all of them evince that delichtfiu
talent with which Mr. Bliss contrived to bring back to life the
ancient worthies of the Cape Cod shore, and re-create for us the
colonial stage of action on which they were 'once so important
and resolute figures. The book is delicious reading.

Prom the *« Outlook** New York.

. . . The old colon V town is Plymouth, to the history of which
Mr. Bliss has added a very entertaining chapter. Buzzard's
Bay is not far from Plymouth, and its picturesque outlooks and
historic associations find in Mr. Bliss a sympathetic and affec-
tionate reporter. '*Life on Matinicus Rock'' takes the reader
farther away from Plymouth, but does not take him out of the
boundaries of New England ; for the rock stands in the Atlantic,
thirty miles from the entrance to the Penobscot River, and is
given over to the three families who take care of the sea-lights,
and to an innumerable throng of sea-birds. Mr. Bliss's love ot
the sea is evidenced in many ways ; but it is not greater than his
affection for old^ime New England characterizations and New
England humor. The other chapters in this volume furnish the
reader with a kind of background aeainst which the New Eng-
land studies are more sharply outlined.

From tko *' PkOadtl/kia Ledger.**

. . . Faithful descriptions of Plymouth and many anecdotes of
her past are i>resented m ^ The Old Colony Town." Mr. WiUiam
Root Bliss gives a quaint, old-time air to his narrative. He col-
lects old colony witch stories, and tells with peculiar zest the tale
of Witch's Hollow, '< always green, in winter or summer, where,
on moonlit nights, witches have been seen dancing to the music
of a fiddle, played by an old black man." . . . The book is bright,
entertaining, and possesses well-defined literary merits. The
descriptions of colonial customs have been written con amore, ^ |

From ike " Ckkago Tribune:*

People who know their New England, and know it to love it,
will like to read the pleasantly written seaboard sketches which
William Root Bliss has presented the public under tlie title of
" The Old Colony Town." The book is unpretentious, but Mr.
Bliss has caught in his easy prose the spirit of the country which
looks out over the Atlantic from its time-honored port on the
Massachusetts coast. To those whose acquaintance with it is of
long standing, the book serves as a welcome spur to laggard
memory, while they who know it only through such pages as
these of Mr. Bliss can scarcely fail to feel the charm of the low
sandhiUs, the quaint houses gray with age, winding wood roads,
and the ever-present sea, as he sketches them.

From iJke " Detroit Free Press.**

Mr. William Root Bliss has written charmingly of New Enff-
land. . . . From Plymouth he goes to descriptions of Buzzard"s
Bay and some of its roads. The whole coast along Massachu-
setts is dotted with the most picturesque and quaint seaport
towns, and they have the distinction of being olaer than most
anythmg else in the United States. Perhaps that is the reason
there is so much legendary lore connected with them. Certain it
is that every vicinity has its particular witch, possessed of her
own unique power of doing harm, through one wnt or another.
Mr. Bliss has made a very charming book of ** The Old Colony
Town."

From the "Atlantic Monthly.^*

. . . Mr. Bliss visits Plymouth with his mind well furnished
with the historical incidents which have made the place famous,
and in a simple, direct way, all the more effective that it does not
seem to imply any deliberate intention, he proceeds to touch one
fabric after another of merely traditional structure, with the result
that they crumble into dust, and in a few easy sentences to recon-
struct the ordinary life of the town. In this reconstruction he
also effects a dissipation of illusions, and turns the hard, dry,
rather unlovely, but clearly truthful side of that early life to the
eye of the reader. Mr. Bliss's picture, one instinctively feels, is
accurate in details so far as oroinary life goes. Its value lies in
its correction of false notions, its insistence upon actualities, its
calling back the mind from vain imaginations. In another paper,
" The Ambit of Buzzard's Bay," he is equally successful in mak-
ing the reader share with him the illustrative knowledge of history
which comes from a familiarity with localities identified with his-
toric life, and such a vivid acquaintance with that life that his eve
scarcely sees the overlying growth of modern days. It is as if he
swept the ground clear of whatever obstructed the view of a New
England antiquity. Such contributions as these by Mr. Bliss
suggest how much may be done by the historic imagination under
guidance of a well-trained memory.

PUnLISIIED BY

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

Boston and New York.

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