The Episcopalians gave us our first shock when they built their little church--spireless, indeed, so that their bell had to be set on a scaffold in the back yard--but with a pipe organ actually built into the church. We figured that seven, at least, of our congregation went over to the Episcopalians on account of the pipe organ. The Methodists were but a year or two later. I do not remember whether the Congregationalists were a year before or a year after the Methodists, but the net result was that we Presbyterians and the United Brethren were the last to lag along, and the United Brethren had neither our size nor wealth. Not that our wealth was much to brag of. After her typhoid Ellen Hardcome's voice broke--the disease “settled in her throat,” as we said then--and she stepped out of the choir to make way for little Mollie Mitchell, who sang like a bird and had a disposition like one of Satan's imps. Hardly had Lucille Hardcome taken charge of our church music than she began her campaign for a pipe organ. By that time the “new” organ was the “old” organ and actually worse than the old “old” organ had ever been. It was in the habit of emitting occasional uncalled-for groans and squeaks and at times all its efforts were accompanied by a growl like the drone of a bagpipe. The blind piano tuner had long since refused to have anything more to do with it, and Merkle, the local gun and lock smith, tinkered it nearly every week. It was comical to see old Schwerl roll his eyes in agony as he played his violin beside it. As Merkle said, repairing musical instruments was not his business, and he had to “study her up from the ground.” He did his best, but probably the logic of his repair work was based on a wrong premise. We never knew, when Merkle entered the church on a Saturday to correct the trouble that evolved during Friday night's choir practice, what the old black walnut monstrosity would do on Sunday. All through this period, as through her struggles with the old “old” organ, Miss Hurley labored patiently. “I couldn't do so and so,” old Merkle used to tell her, “so you want to look out and not do so and so.” Perhaps it meant she must pump with one foot, or not touch some three or four of the “stops.” She did her best and, but for the rankling thought that the other churches were listening to glorious pipe organ strains, I dare say we would have been satisfied well enough. I always loved to see the gentle little lady seat herself on the narrow bench, arrange her skirts, place her music on the rack and then look up to catch the back of Dominie Dean's curly-haired head in her little mirror. When Lucille Hardcome announced that she just couldn't stand the squeaky old organ any longer and that the church must have a pipe organ if she had to work night and day for it, we knew the church would have a pipe organ, for Lucille--as a rule--got whatever she set her heart on.