been seen so much as in Grove Street on a Sunday, far less in the
chapel. Greengrocers, dealers in cheese and bacon, milkmen, with some
dressmakers of inferior pretensions, and teachers of day-schools of
similar humble character, formed the _élite_ of the congregation. It is
not to be supposed, however, on this account, that a prevailing aspect
of shabbiness was upon this little community; on the contrary, the grim
pews of Salem Chapel blushed with bright colours, and contained both
dresses and faces on the summer Sundays which the Church itself could
scarcely have surpassed. Nor did those unadorned walls form a centre of
asceticism and gloomy religiousness in the cheerful little town.
Tea-meetings were not uncommon occurrences in Salem--tea-meetings which
made the little tabernacle festive, in which cakes and oranges were
diffused among the pews, and funny speeches made from the little
platform underneath the pulpit, which woke the unconsecrated echoes with
hearty outbreaks of laughter. Then the young people had their
singing-class, at which they practised hymns, and did not despise a
little flirtation; and charitable societies and missionary auxiliaries
diversified the congregational routine, and kept up a brisk succession
of "Chapel business," mightily like the Church business which occupied
Mr. Wentworth and his Sisters of Mercy at St. Roque's. To name the two
communities, however, in the same breath, would have been accounted
little short of sacrilege in Carlingford. The names which figured
highest in the benevolent lists of Salem Chapel, were known to society
only as appearing, in gold letters, upon the backs of those mystic
tradesmen's books, which were deposited every Monday in little heaps at
every house in Grange Lane. The Dissenters, on their part, aspired to no
conquests in the unattainable territory of high life, as it existed in
Carlingford. They were content to keep their privileges among
themselves, and to enjoy their superior preaching and purity with a
compassionate complacence. While Mr. Proctor was rector, indeed, Mr.
Tozer, the butterman, who was senior deacon, found it difficult to
refrain from an audible expression of pity for the "Church folks" who
knew no better; but, as a general rule, the congregation of Salem kept
by itself, gleaning new adherents by times at an "anniversary" or the
coming of a new minister, but knowing and keeping "its own place" in a
manner edifying to behold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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