After waiting for a reasonable time, until all who were expected to attend were supposed to be in the house, the minister rose from his seat, in the high, wine-glass shaped pulpit, over which hung, like the sword of Damocles, by a cord, an immense sounding-board, considered indispensable, duly to scatter round that each might have his appropriate portion, the crumbs of salvation he dispensed, and "gave out" an appropriate hymn, in which the Supreme Being was acknowledged as the Ruler of the Seasons. This was sung, it must be confessed, by a sadly shrunken choir, stoutly supported, however, by the congregation in the body of the meeting-house, without the sound of tabret, or harp, or other musical instruments; for in those days not even the flute or grave bass-viol, those pioneers of the organ, were permitted in the Sanctuary. To the hymn succeeded a long and fervent prayer, in which Mr. Robinson, the minister (the term Reverend had then a slight papistical twang), after bewailing with ingenious particularity the sins and back-slidings of himself and people, and the ingratitude of the whole land, and recounting the innumerable blessings that had crowned their basket and their store, entreated that notwithstanding their manifold sins, iniquities and transgressions, the divine favor might not be withdrawn from a land where the Lord had planted his own vine, and where the precious seeds of heavenly grace deposited in the soil and nurtured and cultured by men "of whom the world was not worthy," had sprung up and borne the inestimable fruit of civil and religious freedom. Upon the conclusion of the prayer followed another hymn, and after these "exercises," the sermon.