Within the meeting-house all was simple enough: raftered walls, puncheon and sanded or earthen floors, rows of benches, a few pews, all of unpainted wood, and a pulpit which was usually a high desk overhung by a heavy sounding-board, which was fastened to the roof by a slender metal rod. The pulpit was sometimes called a scaffold. When pews were built they were square, with high partition walls, and had narrow, uncomfortable seats round three sides. The word was always spelled "pue"; and they were sometimes called "pits." A little girl in the middle of this century attended a service in an old church which still retained the old-fashioned square pews; she exclaimed, in a loud voice, "What! must I be shut in a closet and sit on a shelf?" These narrow, shelf-like seats were usually hung on hinges and could be turned up against the pew-walls during the long psalm-tunes and prayers; so the members of the congregation could lean against the pew-walls for support as they stood. When the seats were let down, they fell with a heavy slam that could be heard half a mile away in the summer time, when the windows of the meeting-house were open. Lines from an old poem read:-- "And when at last the loud Amen Fell from aloft, how quickly then The seats came down with heavy rattle, Like musketry in fiercest battle." A few of the old-time meeting-houses, with high pulpit, square pews, and deacons' seats, still remain in New England. The interior of the Rocky Hill meeting-house at Salisbury, Massachusetts, is here shown. It fully illustrates the words of the poet:-- "Old house of Puritanic wood Through whose unpainted windows streamed On seats as primitive and rude As Jacob's pillow when he dreamed, The white and undiluted day--" The seats were carefully and thoughtfully assigned by a church committee called the Seating Committee, the best seats being given to older persons of wealth and dignity who attended the church. Whittier wrote of this custom:-- "In the goodly house of worship, where in order due and fit, As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the people sit. Mistress first and good wife after, clerkly squire before the clown, From the brave coat lace-embroidered to the gray coat shading down." Many of the plans for "seating the meeting-house" have been preserved; the pews and their assigned occupants are clearly designated. A copy is shown of one now in Deerfield Memorial Hall.