Ah!--it was not two hundred and forty years ago; when I read the
quaint words my Puritan blood stirs my drowsy brain, and I remember it all
well, just as I saw it last summer in June.
Another catastrophe from too fierce zeal on the part of the tithingman
is recorded. An old farmer, worn out with a hard Saturday's work at
sheep-washing, fell asleep ere the hour-glass had once been turned. Though
he was a man of dignity, for he sat in his own pew, he could not escape the
rod of the pragmatical tithingman. Being rudely disturbed, but not wholly
wakened, the bewildered sheep-farmer sprung to his feet, seized his
astonished and mortified wife by the shoulders and shook her violently,
shouting at the top of his voice, "Haw back! haw back! Stand still, will
ye?" Poor goodman and goodwife! many years elapsed ere they recovered from
that keen disgrace.
The ministers encouraged and urged the tithingmen to faithfully perform
their allotted work. One early minister "did not love sleepers in ye
meeting-house, and would stop short in ye exercise and call pleasantlie to
wake ye sleepers, and once of a warm Summer afternoon he did take hys hat
off from ye pegg in ye beam, and put it on, saying he would go home and
feed his fowles and come back again, and maybe their sleepe would be ended,
and they readie to hear ye remainder of hys discourse." Another time he
suggested that they might like better the Church of England service of
sitting down and standing up, and we can be sure that this "was competent
to keepe their eyes open for a twelvemonth.
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