"I have seen a meeting-house, and worshipped in it," says I.
"Are you really in earnest?" says he.
"Would I, the member of a church, trifle on a sacred subject?" says I.
"Oh!" says Cousin Dempster, a-leaning his back against the marble wall—"oh! hold me, or I shall laugh myself to death."
I wish he had. There!
XLVII.
EASTER.
MY DEAR SISTERS:—Christmas isn't a New England institution, and High Churches are not indigenous to the Down East soil. The Pilgrim Fathers took a notion against that species of holidays, and their descendants were forbidden by law to make mince-pies and such like, in celebration of that particular day. In fact, Christmas was turned out of meeting, and Thanksgiving adopted in its place. As for High Churches, in the good old times there wasn't a steeple to be seen. The meeting-houses were spread out on the ground, roofed in like barns, and quartered off inside into square pews, like a cake of gingerbread. The only thing that looked like a steeple in those days was the minister, when he stood up to pray. Sometimes he leaned a trifle backward to let the congregation see that there was no chance that he would ever bow down to that old English Church, against which the dust from his feet had been shaken.
The deacons ranged in that long seat under the pulpit, with iron-clad faces and hearts, that had grown rocky in their uprightness, were such men as you don't meet often nowadays. They not only shook the dust from their feet against the Church of England, but scattered a good deal on the Quakers and other sects that crept in from the Old World, with an idea that they might have a sneaking notion of their own where trees were so thick and men so upright; but you and I know they found out their mistake.