These
pale-green bayberry tallow candles, when lighted in the early winter
evening, sent forth a faint spicy fragrance--a true New England
incense--that fairly perfumed and Orientalized the atmosphere of the
parsonage kitchen. They were very saving, however, even of these home-made
candles, blowing them out during the long family prayers.
Some parsons could not afford always to use candles. In the home of one
well-known minister the wife always knitted, the children ciphered and
studied, and the husband wrote his sermon by the flickering fire-light (for
they always had wood in plenty), with his scraps of sermon paper placed on
the side of the great leathern bellows as it lay in his lap; a pretty home
scene that was more picturesque to behold than comfortable to take part in.
Country ministers could scarcely afford paper to write on, as it was taxed
and was high priced. They bought their sermon paper by the pound; but they
made the first drafts of their addresses, in a fine, closely written hand,
on wrapping-paper, on the backs of letters, on the margins of their few
newspapers, and copied them when finished in their sermon-books with a
keen regard for economy of space and paper. The manuscript sermons of New
England divines are models of careful penmanship, and may be examined with
interest by a student of chirography. The letters are cramped and crabbed,
like the lives of many of the writers, but the penmanship is methodical,
clear, and distinct, without wavering lines or uncertain touch.
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