The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 71, September, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Religion
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 71, September, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
We approach nearer still, and come among the civic institutions. This is
the pillory, yonder the stocks, and there is a large wooden cage, a
terror to evil-doers, but let us hope empty now. Round the meeting-house
is a high wooden paling, to which the law permits citizens to tie their
horses, provided it be not done too near the passage-way. For at that
opening stands a sentry, clothed in a suit of armor which is painted
black, and cost the town twenty-four shillings by the bill. He bears
also a heavy matchlock musket; his rest, or iron fork, is stuck in the
ground, ready to support the weapon; and he is girded with his
bandoleer, or broad leather belt, which sustains a sword and a dozen tin
cartridge-boxes.
The meeting-house is the second to which the town has treated itself,
the first having been "a timber fort, both strong and comely, with flat
roof and battlements,"--a cannon on top, and the cannonade of the gospel
down below. But this one cost the town sixty-three pounds, hard-earned
pounds, and carefully expended. It is built of brick, smeared outside
with clay, and finished with clay-boards, larger than our clapboards,
outside of all. It is about twenty-five feet square, with a chimney half
the width of the building, and projecting four feet above the thatched
roof. The steeple is in the centre, and the bell-rope, if they have one,
hangs in the middle of the broad aisle. There are six windows, two on
each of the two sides, and two more at the end, part being covered with
oiled paper only, part glazed in numerous small panes. And between the
windows, on the outside, hang the heads of all the wolves that have been
killed in the township within the year. But the Quakers think that the
wolves have cheated the parish and got inside, in sheep's clothing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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