In the early meeting-houses men and women sat on separate sides of the meeting-house, as in Quaker meetings till our own time. Sometimes a group of young women or of young men were permitted to sit in the gallery together. Little girls sat beside their mothers or on footstools at their feet, or sometimes on the gallery stairs; and I have heard of a little cage or frame to hold Puritan babies in meeting. Boys did not sit with their families, but were in groups by themselves, usually on the pulpit and gallery stairs, where tithing-men watched over them. In Salem, in 1676, it was ordered by the town that "all ye boyes of ye towne are appointed to sitt upon ye three paire of stairs in ye meeting-house, and Wm. Lord is appointed to look after ye boys upon ye pulpitt stairs." In Stratford the tithing-man was ordered to "watch over youths of disorderly carriage, and see they behave themselves comelie, and use such raps and blows as is in his discretion meet." In Durham any misbehaving boy was punished publicly after the service was over. We would nowadays scarcely seat twenty or thirty active boys together in church if we wished them to be models of attention and dignified behavior; but after the boys' seats were removed from the pulpit stairs they were all turned in together in a "boys' pew" in the gallery. There was a boys' pew in Windsor, Connecticut, as late as 1845, and pretty noisy it usually was. A certain small boy in Connecticut misbehaved himself on Sunday, and his wickedness was specified by the justice of peace as follows:-- "A Rude and Idel Behaver in the meeting hous. Such as Smiling and Larfing and Intiseing others to the Same Evil. Such as Larfing or Smiling or puling the hair of his nayber Benoni Simkins in the time of Publick Worship. Such as throwing Sister Penticost Perkins on the Ice, it being Saboth day, between the meeting hous and his plaes of abode." I can picture well the wicked scene; poor, meek little Benoni Simpkins trying to behave well in meeting, and not cry out when the young "wanton gospeller" pulled her hair, and unfortunate Sister Perkins tripped up on the ice by the young rascal. Another vain youth in Andover, Massachusetts, was brought up before the magistrate, and it was charged that he "sported and played, and by Indecent gestures and wry faces caused laughter and misbehavior in the beholders." The girls were just as wicked; they slammed down the pew-seats. Tabatha Morgus of Norwich "prophaned the Lord's daye" by her "rude and indecent behavior in Laughing and playing in ye tyme of service." On Long Island godless boys "ran raesses" on the Sabbath and "talked of vane things," and as for Albany children, they played hookey and coasted down hill on Sunday to the scandal of every one evidently, except their parents. When the boys were separated and families sat in pews together, all became orderly in meeting.