Occasionally one long, low foot-rest stretched
quite across one side of the pew-floor. I have seen these long benches
with a tier of three shelves; the lower and broader shelf was used as a
foot-rest, the second one was to hold the hats of the men, and the third
and narrower shelf was for the hymn-books and Bibles. Such comfortable and
luxurious pew-furnishings could never have been found in many churches.
An old New Englander relates a funny story of his youth, in which one of
these triple-tiered foot-benches played an important part. When he was
a boy a travelling show visited his native town, and though he was not
permitted to go within the mystic and alluring tent, he stood longingly at
the gate, and was prodigiously diverted and astonished by an exhibition of
tight-rope walking, which was given outside the tent-door as a bait to
lure pleasure-loving and frivolous townspeople within, and also as a
tantalization to the children of the saints who were not allowed to enter
the tent of the wicked. Fired by that bewildering and amazing performance,
he daily, after the wonderful sight, practised walking on rails, on fences,
on fallen trees, and on every narrow foothold which he could find, as a
careful preparation for a final feat and triumph of skill on his mother's
clothes-line. In an evil hour, as he sat one Sunday in the corner of his
father's pew, his eyes rested on the narrow ledge which formed the top of
the long foot-bench.
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