Satanstoe; Or, the Littlepage Manuscripts. A Tale of the ColonyCooper, James Fenimore
General
Satanstoe; Or, the Littlepage Manuscripts. A Tale of the Colony
Cooper, James Fenimore
Antirent War, N.Y., 1839-1846 -- Fiction
Here, Guert shook us both by the hand again, most cordially, and left us.
Dirck and I next strolled up the hill, going as high as the English church,
which stood also in the centre of the principal street, an imposing and
massive edifice in stone. With the exception of Mother Trinity, in New
York, this was the largest, and altogether the most important edifice
devoted to the worship of my own church I had ever seen. In Westchester,
there were several of Queen Anne's churches, but none on a scale to compare
with this. Our small edifices were usually without galleries, steeples,
towers, or bells; while St. Peter's, Albany, if not actually St. Peter's,
Rome, was a building of which a man might be proud. A little to our
surprise, we found the Rev. Mr. Worden and Mr. Jason Newcome had met at the
door of this edifice, having sent a boy to the sexton in quest of the key.
In a minute or two, the urchin returned, bringing not only the key of the
church, but the excuses of the sexton for not coming himself. The door was
opened, and we went in.
I have always admired the decorous and spiritual manner in which the Rev.
Mr. Worden entered a building that had been consecrated to the services of
the Deity. I know not how to describe it; but it proved how completely he
had been drilled in the decencies of his profession. Off came his hat, of
course; and his manner, however facetious and easy it may have been the
moment before, changed on the instant to gravity and decorum. Not so with
Jason. He entered St. Peter's, Albany, with exactly the same indifferent
and cynical air with which he had seemed to regard everything but money,
since he entered “York Colony.” Usually, he wore his cocked-hat on the back
of his head, thereby lending himself a lolloping, negligent, and, at the
same time, defying air; but I observed that, as we all uncovered, he
brought his own beaver up over his eye-brows, in a species of military
bravado. To uncover to a church, in his view of the matter, was a sort of
idolatry; there might be images about, for anything he knew; “and a man
could never be enough on his guard ag'in being carried away by such evil
deceptions,” as he had once before answered to a remonstrance of mine, for
wearing his hat in our own parish church.
I found the interior of St. Peter's quite as imposing as its exterior.
Three of the pews were canopied, having coats of arms on their canopies.
These, the boy told us, belonged to the Van Rensselaer and Schuyler
families. All these were covered with black cloth, in mourning for some
death in those ancient families, which were closely allied. I was very much
struck with the dignified air that these patrician seats gave the house of
God. [21]
There were also several hatchments suspended against the walls; some being
placed there in commemoration of officers of rank, from home, who had died
in the king's service in the colony; and others to mark the deaths of some
of the more distinguished of our own people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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