The original interior was truly an odd picture. There were high pews painted
white, with doors fastened securely by a brass button; affording something of
a sense of tribal ownership and comfort in one's sentiment of worship. They
were too often carelessly slammed, but that only set off the noise made by Mr
Armstrong, the sexton, just as the sermon ended, when it was his habit to throw
open the doors of the two cast-iron box stoves ^{that stood near the doors} with violence, and hurl in some
strange looking geometrical wood called "felly wood", to ^into the Satanic depths, so that
the farmers and their families who remained for afternoon service at one oclock,
might warm their half frozen members and re-fill their foot stoves.
As they sat about on the circular seats round the red hot stove, neighborly
visiting was indulged in, in low sad tones. A meagre chilling lunch was drawn
from the large yellow muffs to stay them up for the long afternoon service, while
small soap-stones, drawn from the same capacious quarter, were re-heated for the
cold drive home in the early Winter dusk.

The light, weather-stained walls, patched and cracked, were brought into bold re-
lief by the heavy mahogany pulpit and the really immense red damask curtain
draped for a background. Whoever conceived and executed the plan of that end
of the meeting house, must have been fresh from a mince-pie-dream of Solomon's
temple!

The pulpit was so high, the minister was obliged to chiefly infer the effect of
his sermon, from the tops of the heads and bonnets before him, to the exclsion [sic] of
the more normal and favorable angles for sympathetic observation of human ex-
pression. I have often wondered what became of all those ramparts of rich old
mahogany, forming the sides of the pulpit. The chairs I think are in the pulpit
of the present college church.

What became of that pulpit? I am not an idol worshipper, but that or any other
pulpit must be a sacred thing, from which was preached a certain sermon by Dr


H bMS Am 1118.95, Box 9