This seemed to be attacking the very foundations of their church; for the Puritans in England had, in 1557, expressly declared "concerning singing of psalms we allow of the people joining with one voice in a plain tune, but not in tossing the psalms from one side to the other with mingling of organs." The Round-heads had, in 1664, gone through England destroying the noble organs in the churches and cathedrals. They tore the pipes from the organ in Westminster Abbey, shouting, "Hark! how the organs go!" and, "Mark what musick that is, that is lawful for a Puritan to dance," and they sold the metal for pots of ale. Only four or five organs were left uninjured in all England. 'Twas not likely, then, that New England Puritans would take kindly to any musical instruments. Cotton Mather declared that there was not a word in the New Testament that authorized the use of such aids to devotion. The ministers preached often and long on the text from the prophecy of Amos, "I will not hear the melody of thy viols;" while, Puritan-fashion, they ignored the other half of the verse, "Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs." Disparaging comparisons were made with Nebuchadnezzar's idolatrous concert of cornet, flute, dulcimer, sackbut, and psaltery; and the ministers, from their overwhelming store of Biblical knowledge, hurled text after text at the "fiddle-players." Some of the first pitch-pipes were comical little apple-wood instruments that looked like mouse-traps, and great pains was taken to conceal them as they were passed surreptitiously from hand to hand in the choir. I have seen one which was carefully concealed in a box that had a leather binding like a book, and which was ostentatiously labelled in large gilt letters "Holy Bible;" a piece of barefaced and unnecessary deception on the part of some pious New England deacon or chorister. Little wooden fifes were also used, and then metal tuning-forks. A canny Scotchman, who abhorred the thought of all musical instruments anywhere, managed to have one fling at the pitch-pipe. The pitch had been given but was much too high, and before the first verse was ended the choir had to cease singing. The Scotchman stood up and pointed his long finger to the leader, saying in broad accents of scorn, "Ah, Johnny Smuth, now ye can have a chance to blaw yer braw whustle agaen." At a similar catastrophe owing to the mistake of the leader in Medford, old General Brooks rose in his pew and roared in an irritated voice of command, "Halt! Take another pitch, Bailey, take another pitch."