and the envied position of certain little children who had an extensive prospect through the open pew-top within doors, and a view of the hay-scales and the town-pump through the window besides.  Those windows, in a double row, with the gallery between,—­how regularly I counted the small panes, always forgetting the number, to make the same weary task necessary every Sunday!  The singing-seats, projecting from the central portion of the gallery, furnished me with another hebdomadal study, in large gilt letters of antique awkwardness, which so impressed themselves on my mind that I see them now.  This was the golden legend:  “BUILT, 1770.  ENLARGED, 1795.”  I remember hearing a wag propose to add as another remarkable fact, “SCOURED, 1818.”

Opposite to the singing-seats towered the pulpit, from which the clergyman looked down upon us like a sparrow upon the house-top.  He seemed in perpetual danger of being extinguished by a huge sounding-board.  Very earnestly I used to gaze at the slender point by which it hung suspended, and wished, if it must come down, that I might make the gilt ornament at the apex, resembling a vase turned upside down, my prize.  Under the pulpit was a closet, which some one veraciously assured me was the place where the tithingman imprisoned incautiously playful urchins.  The terrors of that dark, mysterious cell had little effect on my conduct, however, as I was not entirely convinced of the existence of any such lynx-eyed functionary.

The largest church in the county, it was, however, well filled, many of the congregation coming five and some even six miles, and remaining there through the noon intermission, which, on their account, was made as short as possible.  But in winter the vast airy space had a peculiar and searching chill.  No barn could be colder, except that the numerous footstoves made some little change in the air during service.  The minister stood upon a heated slab of soap-stone.  I used to watch this in its progress up the broad aisle and the pulpit stairs, under the arm of the boy from the parsonage, and the irreverent way in which he made his descent, in view of the assembly, after depositing his burden, was thus rebuked by an old lady who was always droll and quaint.  “Why, Matthew, when you come down the pulpit stairs of a Sunday, you throw up your heels like a horse coming out of a stable-door.”

Older grew the church, and colder; and if people then staid at home on Sunday afternoons, they had a better excuse for doing so than their successors can muster.  The chorister, even, was frequently among the missing, but was charitably supposed to be subject to the ague.  Efforts were made to prevail upon the elderly part of the parish to permit the introduction of stoves with long funnels.  They scorned the enervating luxury!  Their fathers had worshipped in the cold, and their sons might.  But ah! how degenerate were the descendants of the noble old Puritan church-goers!