Part 2 (2/2)
In Stratford, in 1668, a t.i.thingman was ”appointed to watch over the youths of disorderly carriage, and see that they behave themselves comelie, and use such raps and blows as in his discretion meet.”
I like to think of those rows of sober-faced Puritan boys seated on the narrow, steep pulpit stairs, clad in knee-breeches and homespun flapped coats, and with round, cropped heads, miniature likenesses in dress and countenance (if not in deportment) of their grave, stern, G.o.d-fearing fathers. Though they were of the sedate Puritan blood, they were boys, and they wriggled and twisted, and sc.r.a.ped their feet noisily on the sanded floor; and I know full well that the square-toed shoes of one in whom ”original sin” waxed powerful, thrust many a sly dig in the ribs and back of the luckless wight who chanced to sit in front of and below him on the pulpit stairs. Many a dried kernel of Indian corn was surrept.i.tiously snapped at the head of an unwary neighbor, and many a sly word was whispered and many a furtive but audible ”snicker” elicited when the dread t.i.thingman was ”having an eye-out” and administering ”discreet raps and blows” elsewhere.
One of these wicked youths in Andover was brought before the magistrate, and it was charged that he ”Sported and played and by Indecent Gestures and Wry Faces caused laughter and misbehavior in the Beholders.” The girls were not one whit better behaved. One of ”ye tything men chosen of ye town of Norwich” reported that ”Tabatha Morgus of s'd Norwich Did on ye 24th day February it being Sabbath on ye Lordes Day, prophane ye Lordes Day in ye meeting house of ye west society in ye time of ye forenoone service on s'd Day by her rude and Indecent Behaviour in Laughing and Playing in ye time of ye s'd Service which Doinges of ye s'd Tabatha is against ye peace of our Sovereign Lord ye King, his Crown and Dignity.” Wanton Tabatha had to pay three s.h.i.+lings sixpence for her ill-timed mid-winter frolic. Perhaps she laughed to try to keep warm. Those who laughed at the misdemeanors of others were fined as well. Deborah Bangs, a young girl, in 1755 paid a fine of five s.h.i.+llings for ”Larfing in the Wareham Meeting House in time of Public Wors.h.i.+p,” and a boy at the same time, for the same offence, paid a fine of ten s.h.i.+llings. He may have laughed louder and longer. In a law-book in which Jonathan Trumbull recorded the minor cases which he tried as justice of the peace, was found this entry: ”His Majesties t.i.thing man entered complaint against Jona. and Susan Smith, that on the Lords Day during Divine Service, they did _smile_.” They were found guilty, and each was fined five s.h.i.+llings and costs,--poor smiling Susan and Jonathan.
Those wretched Puritan boys, those ”sons of Belial,” whittled, too, and cut the woodwork and benches of the meeting-house in those early days, just as their descendants have ever since hacked and cut the benches and desks in country schoolhouses,--though how they ever eluded the vigilant eye and ear of the ubiquitous t.i.thingman long enough to whittle will ever remain an unsolved mystery of the past. This early forerunning evidence of what has become a characteristic Yankee trait and habit was so annoyingly and extensively exhibited in Medford, in 1729, that an order was pa.s.sed to prosecute and punish ”all who cut the seats in the meeting-house.”
Few towns were content to have one t.i.thingman and one staff, but ordered that there should be a guardian set over the boys in every corner of the meeting-house. In Hanover it was ordered ”That there be some sticks set up in various places in the meeting-house, and fit persons by them and _to use them_.” I doubt not that the sticks were well used, and Hanover boys were well rapped in meeting.
The Norwalk people come down through history s.h.i.+ning with a halo of gentle lenity, for their t.i.thingman was ordered to bear a short, small stick only, and he was ”Desired to use it with clemency.” However, if any boy proved ”incoridgable,” he could be ”presented” before the elders; and perhaps he would rather have been treated as were Hartford boys by cruel Hartford church folk, who ordered that if ”any boye shall be taken playing or misbehaving himself in the time of publick wors.h.i.+p whether in the meeting-house or about the walls he shall be examined and punished at the present publickly before the a.s.sembly depart.” Parson Chauncey, of Durham, when a boy misbehaved in meeting, and was ”punched up” by the t.i.thingman, often stopped in his sermon, called the G.o.dless young offender by name, and asked him to come to the parsonage the next day. Some very tender and beautiful lessons were taught to these Durham boys at these Monday morning interviews, and have descended to us in tradition; and the good Mr.
Chauncey stands out a s.h.i.+ning light of Christian patience and forbearance at a time when every other New England minister, from John Cotton down, preached and practised the stern repression and sharp correction of all children, and chanted together in solemn chorus, ”Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.”
One vicious t.i.thingman invented, and was allowed to exercise on the boys, a punishment which was the refinement of cruelty. He walked up to the laughing, sporting, or whittling boy, took him by the collar or the arm, led him ostentatiously across the meeting-house, and seated him by his shamefaced mother on the women's side. It was as if one grandly proud in kneebreeches should be forced to walk abroad in petticoats. Far rather would the disgraced boy have been whacked soundly with the heavy k.n.o.b of the t.i.thingman's staff; for bodily pain is soon forgotten, while mortifying abas.e.m.e.nt lingers long.
The t.i.thingman could also take any older youth who misbehaved or ”acted unsivill” in meeting from his manly seat with the grown men, and force him to sit again with the boys; ”if any over sixteen are disorderly, they shall be ordered to said seats.” Not only could these men of authority keep the boys in order during meeting, but they also had full control during the nooning, and repressed and restrained and vigorously corrected the luckless boys during the midday hours. When seats in the galleries grew to be regarded as inferior to seats and pews on the ground floor, the boys, who of course must have the worst place in the house, were relegated from the pulpit stairs to pews in the gallery, and these square, shut-off pews grew to be what Dr. Porter called ”the Devil's play-houses,” and turbulent outbursts were frequent enough.
The little boys still sat downstairs under their parents' watchful eyes.
”No child under 10 alowed to go up Gailary.” In the Sutherland church, if the big boys (who ought to have known better) ”behaved unseemly,” one of the t.i.thing-men who ”took turns to set in the Galary” was ordered ”to bring Such Bois out of the Galary & set them before the Deacon's Seat” with the small boys. In Plainfield, Connecticut, the ”pestigeous” boys managed to invent a new form of annoyance,--they ”d.a.m.nified the gla.s.s;” and a church regulation had to be pa.s.sed to prevent, or rather to try to prevent them from ”opening the windows or in any way d.a.m.nifying the gla.s.s.” It was doubtless hot work scuffling and wrestling in the close, shut-in pews high up under the roof, and they naturally wished to cool down by opening or breaking the windows. Grown persons could not inconsiderately open the church windows either. ”The Constables are desired to _take notic_ of the persons that open the windows in the tyme of publick wors.h.i.+p.” No rheumatic-y draughts, no bronchitis-y damps, no pure air was allowed to enter the New England meeting-house. The church doubtless took a vote before it allowed a single window to be opened.
In Westfield, Ma.s.sachusetts, the boys became so abominably rampant that the church formally decided ”that if there is not a Reformation Respecting the Disorders in the Pews built on the Great Beam in the time of Publick Wors.h.i.+p the comite can pul it down.”
The fas.h.i.+on of seating the boys in pews by themselves was slow of abolishment in many of the churches. In Windsor, Connecticut, ”boys' pews”
were a feature of the church until 1845. As years rolled on, the t.i.thingmen became restricted in their authority: they could no longer administer ”raps and blows;” they were forced to content themselves with loud rappings on the floor, and pointing with a staff or with a condemning finger at the misdemeanant. At last the deacons usurped these functions, and if rapping and pointing did not answer the purpose of establis.h.i.+ng order (if the boy ”psisted”), led the stubborn offender out of meeting; and they had full authority soundly to thrash the ”wretched boy” on the horse-block. Rev. Dr.
Dakin tells the story that, hearing a terrible noise and disturbance while he was praying in a church in Quincy, he felt constrained to open his eyes to ascertain the cause thereof; and he beheld a red-haired boy firmly clutching the railing on the front edge of the gallery, while a venerable deacon as firmly clutched the boy. The young rebel held fast, and the correcting deacon held fast also, until at last the bal.u.s.trade gave way, and boy, deacon, and railing fell together with a resounding crash.
Then, rising from the wooden debris, the thoroughly subdued boy and the triumphant deacon left the meeting-house to finish their little affair; and unmistakable swis.h.i.+ng sounds, accompanied by loud wails and whining protestations, were soon heard from the region of the horse-sheds. Parents never resented such chastisings; it was expected, and even desired, that boys should be whipped freely by every school-master and person of authority who chose so to do.
In some old church-orders for seating, boys were cla.s.sed with negroes, and seated with them; but in nearly all towns the negroes had seats by themselves. The black women were all seated on a long bench or in an inclosed pew labelled ”B.W.,” and the negro men in one labelled ”B.M.” One William Mills, a jesting soul, being asked by a pompous stranger where he could sit in meeting, told the visitor that he was welcome to sit in Bill Mills's pew, and that it was marked ”B.M.” The man, who chanced to be ignorant of the local custom of marking the negro seats, accepted the kind invitation, and seated himself in the black men's pew, to the delight of Bill Mills, the amus.e.m.e.nt of the boys, the scandal of the elders, and his own disgust.
Sometimes a little pew or short gallery was built high up among the beams and joists over the staircase which led to the first gallery, and was called the ”swallows' nest,” or the ”roof pue,” or the ”second gallery.” It was reached by a steep, ladder-like staircase, and was often a.s.signed to the negroes and Indians of the congregation.
Often ”ye seat between ye Deacons seat and ye pulpit is for persons hard of hearing to sett in.” In nearly every meeting a bench or pew full of aged men might be seen near the pulpit, and this seat was called, with Puritan plainness of speech, the ”Deaf Pew.” Some very deaf church members (when the boys were herded elsewhere) sat on the pulpit stairs, and even in the pulpit, alongside the preacher, where they disconcertingly upturned their great tin ear-trumpets directly in his face. The persistent joining in the psalm-singing by these deaf old soldiers and farmers was one of the bitter trials which the leader of the choir had to endure.
The singers' seats were usually in the galleries; sometimes upon the ground floor, in the ”hind-row on either side.” Occasionally the choir sat in two rows of seats that extended quite across the floor of the house, in front of the deacons' seat and the pulpit. The men singers then sat facing the congregation, while the women singers faced the pulpit. Between them ran a long rack for the psalm-books. When they sang they stood up, and bawled and fugued in each other's faces. Often a square pew was built for the singers, and in the centre of this enclosure was a table, on which were laid, when at rest, the psalm-books. When they sang, the choir thus formed a hollow square, as does any determined band, for strength.
One other seat in the old Puritan meeting-house, a seat of gloom, still throws its darksome shadow down through the years,--the stool of repentance. ”Barbarous and cruel punishments” were forbidden by the statutes of the new colony, but on this terrible soul-rack the shrinking, sullen, or defiant form of some painfully humiliated man or woman sat, crushed, stunned, stupefied by overwhelming disgrace, through the long Christian sermon; cowering before the hard, pitiless gaze of the a.s.sembled and G.o.dly congregation, and the cold rebuke of the pious minister's averted face; bearing on the poor sinful head a deep-branding paper inscribed in ”Capitall Letters” with the name of some dark or mysterious crime, or wearing on the sleeve some strange and dread symbol, or on the breast a scarlet letter.
Let us thank G.o.d that these soul-blasting and hope-killing exposures--so degrading to the criminal, so demoralizing to the community,--these foul, in-human blots on our fair and dearly loved Puritan Lord's Day, were never frequent, nor did the form of punishment obtain for a long time. In 1681 two women were sentenced to sit during service on a high stool in the middle alley of the Salem meeting-house, having on their heads a paper bearing the name of their crime; and a woman in Agamenticus at about the same date was ordered ”to stand in a white sheet publicly two several Sabbath-Days with the mark of her offence on her forehead.” These are the latest records of this punishment that I have chanced to see.
Thus, from old church and town records, we plainly discover that each laic, deacon, elder, criminal, singer, and even the unG.o.dly boy had his alloted place as absolutely a.s.signed to him in the old meeting-house as was the pulpit to the parson. Much has been said in semi-ridicule of this old custom of ”seating” and ”dignifying,” yet it did not in reality differ much from our modern way of selling the best pews to whoever will pay the most.
Perhaps the old way was the better, since, in the early churches, age, education, dignity, and reputation were considered as well as wealth.
VI.
The t.i.thingman and the Sleepers.
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