Many a wig-hating minister must, in the Arctic
meeting-house, have longed secretly for the grateful warmth to his head and
neck of one of those "horrid Bushes of Vanity," a full-bottomed flowing
wig.
On bitter winter days Dr. Stevens of Kittery used to send a servant to the
meeting-house to find out how many of his flock had braved the piercing
blasts. If only seven persons were present, the servant asked them to
return with him to the parsonage to listen to the sermon; but if there were
eight members in the meeting-house he so reported to the Doctor, who then
donned his long worsted cloak, tied it around his waist with a great
handkerchief, and attired thus, with a fur cap pulled down over his ears,
and with heavy mittens on his hands, ploughed through the deep snow to
the church, and in the same dress preached his long, knotty sermon in
his pulpit, while fierce wintry blasts rattled the windows and shook the
turret, and the eight godly, shivering souls wished profoundly that one of
their number had "lain at home in a slothfull, lazey, prophane way," and
thus permitted the seven others and the minister to have the sermon in
comfort in the parsonage kitchen before the great blazing logs in the open
fireplace.
Ah, it makes one shiver even to think of those gloomy churches, growing
colder, and more congealed through weeks of heavy frost and fierce
northwesters until they bore the chill of death itself.
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