They were in an icy-cold atmosphere in winter, and in glaring, unshaded
heat in summer, and upon most uncomfortable, narrow, uncushioned seats at
all seasons; but in every record and journal which I have read, throughout
which ministers and laymen recorded all the annoyances and opposition which
the preachers encountered, I have never seen one entry of any complaint or
ill-criticism of too long praying or preaching. Indeed, when Rev. Samuel
Torrey, of Weymouth, Massachusetts, prayed two hours without stopping, upon
a public Fast Day in 1696, it is recorded that his audience only wished
that the prayer had been much longer.
When we consider the training and exercise in prayer that the New England
parsons had in their pulpits on Sundays, in their own homes on Saturday
nights, on Lecture Days and Fast Days and Training Days, and indeed upon
all times and occasions, can we wonder at Parson Boardman's prowess in New
Milford in 1735? He visited a "praying" Indian's home wherein lay a sick
papoose over whom a "pow-wow" was being held by a medicine-man at the
request of the squaw-mother, who was still a heathen. The Christian warrior
determined to fight the Indian witch-doctor on his own grounds, and while
the medicine-man was screaming and yelling and dancing in order to cast the
devil out ol the child, the parson began to pray with equal vigor and power
of lungs to cast out the devil of a medicine-man.
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