" Rev. Mr. Phillips, of Andover, in
1755, openly rebuked his congregation for "sleeping away a great part of
the sermon;" and on the Sunday following an earthquake shock which was felt
throughout New England, he said he hoped the "Glorious Lord of the Sabbath
had given them such a shaking as would keep them awake through one
sermon-time." Other and more autocratic parsons did not hesitate to call
out their sleeping parishioners plainly by name, sternly telling them also
to "Wake up!" A minister in Brunswick, Maine, thus pointedly wakened one of
his sweet-sleeping church-attendants, a man of some dignity and standing
in the community, and received the shocking and tautological answer, "Mind
your own business, and go on with your sermon."
The women would sometimes nap a little without being discovered. "Ye women
may sometimes sleepe and none know by reason of their enormous bonnets. Mr.
Whiting doth pleasantlie say from ye pulpit hee doth seeme to be preaching
to stacks of straw with men among them."
From this seventeenth-century comment upon the size of the women's bonnets,
it may be seen that objections to women's overwhelming and obscuring
headgear in public assemblies are not entirely complaining protests of
modern growth. Other records refer to the annoyance from the exaggerated
size of bonnets. In 1769 the church in Andover openly "put to vote whether
the parish Disapprove of the Female sex sitting with their Hats on in the
Meeting-house in time of Divine Service as being Indecent.
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