its unintoxicating accompaniments. "Rhum and Cacks" are frequent entries in the account books of early churches. No wonder that accidents were frequent, and that men fell from the scaffolding and were killed, as at the raising of the Dunstable meeting-house. When the Medford people built their second meeting-house, they provided for the workmen and bystanders, five barrels of rum, one barrel of good brown sugar, a box of fine lemons, and two loaves of sugar. As a natural consequence, two thirds of the frame fell, and many were injured. In Northampton, in 1738, ten gallons of rum were bought for £8 "to raise the meeting-house"--and the village doctor got "£3 for setting his bone Jonathan Strong, and £3 10s. for setting Ebenezer Burt's thy" which had somehow through the rum or the raising, both gotten broken. Sometimes, as in Pittsfield in 1671, the sum of four shillings was raised on every acre of land in the town, and three shillings a day were paid to every man who came early to work, while one shilling a day was apportioned to each worker for his rum and sugar. At last no liquor was allowed to the workmen until after the day's work was over, and thus fatal accidents were prevented.
The earliest meeting-houses had oiled paper in the windows to admit the light. A Pilgrim colonist wrote to an English friend about to emigrate, "Bring oiled paper for your windows." Higginson, however, writing in 1629, asks for "glasse for windowes." When glass was used it was not set in the windows as now. We find frequent entries of "glasse and nayles for it," and in Newbury, in 1665, the church ordered that the "Glasse in the windows be … look't to if any should happen to be loosed with winde to be nailed close again." The glass was in lozenge-shaped panes, set in lead in the form of two long narrow sashes opening in the middle from top to bottom, and it was many years before oblong or square panes came into common use.
These early churches were destitute of shade, for the trees in the immediate vicinity were always cut down on account of dread of the fierce fires which swept often through the forests and overwhelmed and destroyed the towns. The heat and blazing light in summer were as hard to bear in these unscreened meeting-houses as was the cold in winter.
"Old house of Puritanic wood,
Through whose unpainted windows streamed,
On seats as primitive and rude
As Jacob's pillow when he dreamed,
The white and undiluted day."
We have all heard the theory advanced that it is impossible there should be any true religious feeling, any sense of sanctity, in a garish and bright light,--"the white and undiluted day,"--but I think no one can doubt that to the Puritans these seething, glaring, pine-smelling hothouses were truly God's dwelling-place, though there was no "dim, religious light" within.
Curtains and window-blinds were unknown, and the sunlight streamed in with unobstructed and unbroken rays. Heavy shutters for protection were often used, but to close them at time of service would have been to plunge the church into utter darkness. Permission was sometimes given, as in Haverhill, to "sett up a shed outside of the window to keep out the heat of the sun there,"--a very roundabout way to accomplish a very simple end. As years passed on, trees sprang up and grew apace, and too often the churches became overhung and heavily shadowed by dense, sombre spruce, cedar, and fir trees. A New England parson was preaching in a neighboring church which was thus gloomily surrounded. He gave out as his text, "Why do the wicked live?" and as he peered in the dim light at his manuscript, he exclaimed abruptly, "I hope they will live long enough to cut down this great hemlock-tree back of the pulpit window." Another minister, Dr. Storrs, having struggled to read his sermon in an ill-lighted, gloomy church, said he would never speak in that building again while it was so overshadowed with trees. A few years later he was invited to preach to the same congregation; but when he approached the church, and saw the great umbrageous tree still standing, he rode away, and left the people sermonless in their darkness. The chill of these sunless, unheated buildings in winter can well be imagined.
Strange and grotesque decorations did the outside of the earliest meeting-houses bear,--grinning wolves' heads nailed under the windows and by the side of the door, while splashes of blood, which had dripped from the severed neck, reddened the logs beneath. The wolf, for his destructiveness, was much more dreaded by the settlers than the bear, which did not so frequently attack the flocks. Bears were plentiful enough. The history of Roxbury states that in 1725, in one week in September, twenty bears were killed within two miles of Boston. This bear story requires unlimited faith in Puritan probity, and confidence in Puritan records to credit it, but believe it, ye who can, as I do! In Salem and in Ipswich, in 1640, any man who brought a living wolf to the meeting-house was paid fifteen shillings by the town; if the wolf were dead, ten shillings. In 1664, if the wolf-killer wished to obtain the reward, he was ordered to bring the wolf's head and "nayle it to the meeting-house and give notis thereof." In Hampton, the inhabitants were ordered to "nayle the same to a little red oake tree at northeast end of the meeting-house." One man in Newbury, in 1665, killed seven wolves, and was paid the reward for so doing. This was a great number, for the wary wolf was not easily destroyed either by musket or wolf-hook. In 1723 wolves were so abundant in Ipswich that parents would not suffer their children to go to and from church and school without the attendance of some grown person. As late as 1746 wolves made sad havoc in Woodbury, Connecticut; and a reward of five dollars for each wolf's head was offered by law in that township in 1853.
In 1718 the last public reward was paid in Salem for a wolf's head, but so late as the year 1779 the howls of wolves were heard every night in Newbury, though trophies of shrivelled wolves' heads no longer graced the walls of the meeting-house.
All kinds of notices and orders and regulations and "bills" were posted on the meeting-house, often on the door, where they would greet the eye of all who entered: prohibitions from selling guns and powder to the Indians, notices of town meetings, intentions of marriage, copies of the laws against Sabbath-breaking, messages from the Quakers, warnings of "vandoos" and sales, lists of the town officers, and sometimes scandalous and insulting libels, and libels in verse, which is worse, for our forefathers dearly loved to rhyme on all occasions. On the meeting-house green stood those Puritanical instruments of punishment, the stocks, whipping-post, pillory, and cage; and on lecture days the stocks and pillory were often occupied by wicked or careless colonists, or those everlasting pillory-replenishers, the Quakers. It is one of the unintentionally comic features of absurd colonial laws and punishments in which the early legal records so delightfully abound, that the first man who was sentenced to and occupied the stocks in Boston was the carpenter who made them. He was thus fitly punished for his extortionate charge to the town for the lumber he used in their manufacture. This was rather better than "making the punishment fit the crime," since the Boston magistrates managed to force the criminal to furnish his own punishment. In Shrewsbury, also, the unhappy man who first tested the wearisome capacity and endured the public mortication of the town's stocks was the man who made them. He "builded better than he knew." Pillories were used as a means of punishment until a comparatively recent date,--in Salem until the year 1801, and in Boston till 1803.
Great horse-blocks, rows of stepping-stones, or hewn logs further graced the meeting-house green; and occasionally one fine horse-block, such as the Concord women proudly erected, and paid for by a contribution of a pound of butter from each house-wife.
The meeting-house not only was employed for the worship of God and for town meetings, but it was a storehouse as well. Until after the Revolutionary War it was universally used as a powder magazine; and indeed, as no fire in stove or fireplace was ever allowed within, it was a safe enough place for the explosive material. In Hanover, the powder room was in the steeple, while in Quincy the "powder-closite" was in the beams of the roof. Whenever there chanced to be a thunderstorm during the time of public worship, the people of Beverly ran out under the trees, and in other towns they left the meeting-house if the storm seemed severe or near; still they built no powder houses. Grain, too, was stored in the loft of the meeting-house for safety; hatches were built, and often the corn paid to the minister was placed there. "Leantos," or "linters," were sometimes built by the side of the building for use for storage. In Springfield, Mr. Pyncheon was allowed to place his corn in the roof chamber of the meeting-house; but as the people were afraid that the great weight might burst the floor, he was forbidden to store more than four hundred bushels at a time, unless he "underpropped the floor."
In one church