ORANGE CONG. CHURCH 59
as they always did, could turn them up against the wall of the pew, and thus the more easily rest the elbow or the forehead on the rail. … At the moment of the Amen there was an astonishing clatter and bang as the uncushioned pine seats were suddenly let fall to their places throughout the house. It was a horrid din… But this was the fashion in the old meeting-houses, and the more aristocratic the family, the more noise they were expected to make." The pews being thus high, and walled in, it was necessary that the pulpit should also be high ; otherwise the preacher could not have seen the separate groups into which his flock was divided. It has been described as "a sort of box against the wall, fifteen or twenty feet above the floor" ; so that the people, whether they would or not, must ''receive the minister's teachings as coming from above." It was overhung, as you have often heard, "by an august canopy, called a sounding-board--study general, of course, and first lesson of mystery," as Bushnell expresses it, "to the eyes of the children, until what time their ears are opened to understand the spoken mysteries." The ungraceful height of the meeting-house, to which I have referred, is explained in part by the presence of galleries. These were almost universal, or at least were introduced whenever a church was able to provide them. In the Records of Waterbury, for example, we find a series of votes in reference to this important matter. In 1708, "the town granted to several of the young men liberty to build a small seat or gallery in the meeting-house for themselves to sit in-not to prejudice the town or house." Five years later-in 1713-the town "agreed that there should be a gallery built at one end of the meeting-house" and again, in 1716, it was "acted by vote to lay the foundation of the galleries of the meeting-house, that is, all three sides of the said house." There are edifices which by their grandeur belittle the congregations that gather in them ; but in the times I am describing the congregation glorified the edifice. The "fathers" had a