He enjoyed good preaching, but never liked the sermon to be too long. “The unskilled speaker,” says the Japanese proverb, “is long-winded.” The parson was encouraged not to tire his hearers, or to cultivate the gift of continuance to the wearing of the auditor’s flesh. In flagrant cases, the Commodore usually made it a point to clear his usually healthy throat so audibly that the hint was taken by the chaplain. In his endeavor to be fair to both speaker and hearers, Perry had little patience with either Jack Tar or Shoulder Straps who shirked the duty of punctuality, or shocked propriety by making exit precede benediction. When leave was taken, during sermon, with noise or confusion, the unlucky wight usually heard of it afterwards. While at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Perry had the old chapel refurnished, secured a volunteer choir, and a piano, and so gave his personal encouragement, that the room was on most occasions taxed beyond its capacity with willing worshippers. When in 1842, the ships fitted out at the yard were supplied with bibles at the cost of the government, Perry wrote of his gratification: “The mere cost of these books, fifty cents each, is nothing to the moral effect which such an order will have in advancing the character of the service.” Perry manifested a reverence for the Lord’s Day which was sincere and profound. He habitually kept Sunday as a day of rest and worship, for himself and his men. Only under the dire pressure of necessity, would he allow labor or battle to take place on that day. In the presence of Africans, Mexicans and Japanese, of equals, or of races reckoned inferior to our own, Perry was never ashamed or afraid to exemplify his creed in this matter, or to deviate from the settled customs of his New England ancestry. Japan to-day now owns and honors the day kept sacred by the American commodore and squadron on their entrance in Yedo Bay.