But in succeeding years they were not always gloomy and not always staid, as we know from the stories of the cheerful parties at ordination-times; and I doubt not the reverend Assembly of Elders at Cambridge enjoyed to the full degree the twelve gallons of sack and six gallons of white wine sent to them by the Court as a testimony of deep respect. And the group of clergymen who were painted over the mantelpiece of Parson Lowell, of Newbury, must have been far from gloom, as the punch-bowl and drinking-cups and tobacco and pipes would testify, and their cheerful motto likewise: "In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity." And the Rev. Mr. ---- no, I will not tell his name--kept an account with one Jerome Ripley, a storekeeper, and on one page of this account-book, containing thirty-nine entries, twenty-one were for New England rum. It somewhat lessens in our notions the personal responsibility, or the personal potatory capability of the parson, to discover that there was an ordination in town during that rum-paged week, and that the visiting ministers probably drank the greater portion of Jerome Ripley's liquor. But I wish the store-keeper had--to save this parson's reputation among succeeding generations--called and entered the rum as hay, or tea, or nails, or anything innocent and virtuous and clerical. When we read of all these doings and drinkings of the old New England ministers,--"if ancient tales say true, nor wrong these ancient men"--we feel that we cannot so fiercely resent nor wonder at the degrading coupling in Byron's sneering lines:-- "There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms, As rum and true religion." All the cider made by the New England elders did not tend to gloom, and they were celebrated for their fine cider. The best cider in Massachusetts--that which brought the highest price--was known as the Arminian cider, because the minister who furnished it to the market was suspected of having Arminian tendencies. A very telling compliment to the cider of one of the first New England ministers is thus recorded: "Mr. Whiting had a score of appill-trees from which he made delicious cyder. And it hath been said yt an Indyan once coming to hys house and Mistress Whiting giving him a drink of ye cyder, he did sett down ye pot and smaking his lips say yt Adam and Eve were rightlie damned for eating ye appills in ye garden of Eden, they should have made them into cyder." This perverse application of good John Eliot's teaching would have vexed the apostle sorely. Of so much account were the barrels of cider, and so highly were they prized by the ministers, that one honest soul did not hesitate to thank the Lord in the pulpit for the "many barrels of cider vouchsafed to us this year."