"The Lord giveth the word. The women that publish the tidings are a great host." Does the reader complain that this chapter is already too long? Yet must I not omit the pastor's assistant "at the other end"--William Weaver. I cannot tell how long or in how many edifices, old or new, he served as sexton, but "I knew him well and every truant knew." He had stricter notions on the subject of behavior at any and all times than some of us boys had, and his discipline occasionally was according to seventeenth century spirit and methods. I cannot say that we boys made his life a burden or shortened it untimely, for he lived to a good old age. Honored be his name and green his memory, for he believed in plenty of light, fresh air, comfort, cleanliness and order--the primitive articles of a sexton's creed, and he honored his Master and the house of God by his faithfulness.[9] [Footnote 9: See a fuller and more detailed account in the chapter entitled "Some Sextons I Have Known" in the forthcoming volume, "Sunny Memories of Three Pastorates". Ithaca, 1903.] CHAPTER XIII. CHURCH LIFE. MINOR PERSONALITIES. These were the days, also, "before the war", when expansion was the law of woman's apparel. The hoop skirt had reached its maximum of periphery. Many colors were mingled on the same dress. The ladies wore "shoot-the-moon" bonnets, with small sized flower gardens stuffed inside the brim, between face and frame, and the ribbons necessary for adornment and fastening ran into yard lengths. Besides ribbon on the top of the head gear, there must be great bows on either side of the chin. Many a time I remember seeing the choir singers untie their bonnet strings when they would praise God with the voice and understanding; or, to be more scientific, they unlatched the hook and eye, which really did the business of fastening, the bows being for ornament rather than utility, reminding one of Gothic architecture made of timber in lieu of stone. It was a grand thing, at least one boy thought, to go to a morning or noon wedding within a private house, where at 10 A.M. the windows were shut tight and the gas lighted. The girls were all in voluminous circles of flounced silks. Their bonnets spread out on the bed of the dressing room were veritable parterres, with ribbons half a foot wide and a yard long.