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.
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