This absurd and distorted type of the English church beadle, this colonial
sleep banisher, was equipped with a long staff, heavily knobbed at one end,
with which he severely and pitilessly rapped the heads of the too sleepy
men, and the too wide-awake boys. From the other end of this wand of office
depended a long foxtail, or a hare's-foot, which he softly thrust in the
faces of the sleeping Priscillas, Charitys, and Hopestills, and which
gently brushed and tickled them into reverent but startled wakefulness.
One zealous but too impetuous tithingman in his pious ardor of office
inadvertently applied the wrong end, the end with the heavy knob, the
masculine end, to a drowsy matron's head; and for this severely ungallant
mistake he was cautioned by the ruling elders to thereafter use "more
discresing and less heist."
Another over-watchful Newbury "awakener" rapped on the head a nodding man
who protested indignantly that he was wide-awake, and was only bowing in
solemn assent and approval of the minister's arguments. Roger Scott, of
Lynn, in 1643 struck the tithingman who thus roughly and suddenly wakened
him; and poor sleepy and bewildered Roger, who is branded through all time
as "a common sleeper at the publick exercise," was, for this most naturally
resentful act, but also most shockingly grave offence, soundly whipped, as
a warning both to keep awake and not to strike back in meeting.
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