62 CENTENNIAL HISTORY
The meeting-house has been described ; let us look, now, at the assembled congregation-the minister in his lofty and canopied pulpit, the elders and deacons in a long pew in front of the desk, facing the people, the men and women sitting apart on opposite sides of the house, the children seated wherever they can find a place or crowded into the gallery. In appearance, as well as in other respects, the assembly is strangely in contrast with a modern Sunday congregation. In the early days, in Plymouth colony, the men are described as dressed in "sad-colored mantles, and armed to the teeth, the women in sober gowns, kerchiefs and hoods." These sombre fashions did not last always, for at some periods bright colors and odd shapes prevailed ; but on the average the dress of the forefathers was, in comparison with that of the present day, very plain and cheap and poor. We must remember that the first two centuries of New England history belonged to what has been appropriately termed "the age of homespun." If you could look in upon these people, what a motley assemblage they would seem to you ; but not more strange than you would seem to them, could they see you to-day. The old-time congregations having so much dignity and so much piety, we should naturally suppose them to have been perfect models of deportment-examples of what Christians should be in the sanctuary. But they had their faults : the children were too "wide awake," and the adults sometimes not enough so ; and between the two classes the "tithing-man" had about all he could do. In some places, this functionary was armed with a staff of office, tipped at one end with the foot and at the other with the tail of a hare, or with a knob at one end and a small feather brush at the other. With the knob he knocked the heads of the men who fell asleep, and with the feathers he tickled the faces of sleeping women. In one place the officer got himself into serious difficulty on a certain Lord's day, "by rapping the head of a man who seemed to be nodding with sleep, while in fact he was only signifying his assent to the