From time immemorial we had continued to sing psalms at meeting, as became good Christians and lovers of harmony. But my readers, accustomed to the improvements of modern days, have need to be informed that up to this period, our congregation had practised this accomplishment according to that old method of psalmody, known by the designation of “read-a-line-and-sing-a-line.” This primitive practice, which had first come into use when hymn-books were scarce, was still persisted in, though the necessity for its continuance no longer existed. Our church music, therefore, exhibited the quaint and patriarchal alternation of recitation and melody, if melody it might be called, while some towns in the neighbourhood had adopted the new fashion, and surprised us by the superiority of their performances over the rude and homely chants of old. But it was not long ere the wish to improve our style of singing began to show itself among us. At the first announcement of such a design, the piety of many of the old members took the alarm, and the new method was denounced as heathenish and profane. The chief personage who figured in the troubles which arose upon this matter was Deacon Dogskin, a man of scrupulous orthodoxy, highly dogmatical on theological points, and a leader of powerful influence in the church. This dignitary, whose office it had been to give out the several lines of the psalm as they were sung, was one of the sturdiest opponents of the new-fangled psalmody, and set his face against the innovation with all the zeal and devotion of a primitive Christian. Unfortunately for him, Deacon Grizzle, his colleague, took the opposite side of the question, exemplifying the vulgar saying, “Two of a trade can never agree.” The discordancy, to tell the whole truth, between these two worthies lay in more interests than one, and it is to be doubted whether they would have come to a rupture in church affairs, had not their mutual animosities been quickened by certain temporal janglings; for so it happened that the two deacons kept each a grocery store, and neither of them ever let a chance slip of getting away the other’s custom. Sorry I am to record the frailties of two such reputable personages, who looked upon themselves as burning and shining lights in our community; but I am afraid that the fact cannot be concealed, that the petty bickerings which arose between them on these little matters of filthy lucre were suffered to intrude within the walls of the sanctuary, and stir up the flame of discord in the great psalm-singing feud; whereby, as our neighbour Hopper Paul sagely remarked, the world may learn wisdom, and lay it down as a maxim, that church affairs can never thrive when the deacons are grocers.