Long tables were set in the aisles, as at Londonderry. In
practice, belief, and origin, the New Hampshire and Pennsylvania churches
were sisters.
The deacons had many minor duties to perform in the different parishes.
Some of these duties they shared with the tithingman. They visited the
homes of the church-members to hear the children say the catechism, they
visited and prayed with the sick, and they also reported petty offences,
though they were not accorded quite so powerful legal authority as the
tithingmen and constables.
It was much desired by several of the first-settled ministers that there
should be deaconesses in the New England Puritan church, and many good
reasons were given for making such appointments. It was believed that
for the special duty of visiting the sick and afflicted in the community
deaconesses would be more useful than deacons. There had been an aged
deaconess in the Puritan church in Holland, who with a "little birchen
rod" had kept the children in awe and order in meeting, and who had also
exercised "her guifts" in speaking; but when she died no New England
successor was appointed to fill her place.
XI.
The Psalm-Book of the Pilgrims.
We read in "The Courtship of Miles Standish," of the fair Priscilla, when
John Alden came to woo her for his friend, the warlike little captain, that
"Open wide on her lap lay the well-worn psalm-book of Ainsworth,
Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music together; Rough-hewn,
angular notes, like stones in the wall of a churchyard, Darkened and
overhung by the running vine of the verses.
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