There
had in fact been _no fire in the stove_, the day being too warm.
We were too much upon the broad grin to be very devotional, and smiled
rather loudly at the funny things we saw. But when the editor of the
village paper, Mr. Bunce, came in (who was a believer in stoves in
churches) and with a most satisfactory air warmed his hands by the
stove, keeping the skirts of his great-coat carefully between his
knees, we could stand it no longer but dropped invisible behind the
breastwork. But the climax of the whole was (as the Cleveland man says)
when Mrs. Peck went out in the middle of the service. It was, however,
the means of reconciling the whole society; for after that first day we
heard no more opposition to the warm stove in the meeting-house."
With all this corroborative evidence I think it is fully proved that the
event really happened in Litchfield, and that the honor was stolen for
other towns by unveracious chroniclers; otherwise we must believe in an
amazing unanimity of church-joking and sham-fainting all over New England.
The very nature, the stern, pleasure-hating and trial-glorying Puritan
nature, which made our forefathers leave their English homes to come, for
the love of God and the freedom of conscience, to these wild, barren, and
unwelcoming shores, made them also endure with fortitude and almost with
satisfaction all personal discomforts, and caused them to cling with
persistent firmness to such outward symbols of austere contempt of
luxury, and such narrow-minded signs of love of simplicity as the lack of
comfortable warmth during the time of public worship.
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