Little wooden fifes were also used, and then metal tuning-forks. A canny
Scotchman, who abhorred the thought of all musical instruments anywhere,
managed to have one fling at the pitch-pipe. The pitch had been given but
was much too high, and before the first verse was ended the choir had to
cease singing. The Scotchman stood up and pointed his long finger to the
leader, saying in broad accents of scorn, "Ah, Johnny Smuth, now ye can
have a chance to blaw yer braw whustle agaen." At a similar catastrophe
owing to the mistake of the leader in Medford, old General Brooks rose in
his pew and roared in an irritated voice of command, "Halt! Take another
pitch, Bailey, take another pitch."
In 1713 there was sent to America an English organ, "a pair of organs" it
was called, which had chanced, by being at the manufacturers instead of in
a church, to have escaped the general destruction by the Round-heads. It
was given by Thomas Brattle to the Brattle Street Church in Boston. The
congregation voted to refuse the gift, and it was then sent to King's
Chapel, where it remained unpacked for several months for fear of hostile
demonstrations, but was finally set up and used. In 1740 a Bostonian named
Bromfield made an organ, and it was placed in a meeting-house and used
weekly. In 1794 the church in Newbury obtained an organ, and many
unpleasant and disparaging references were made by clergymen of other
parishes to "our neighbor's box of whistles," "the tooting tub.
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