The children of Boston used to follow Sam Adams in the street in the latter’s benign old age, and the white children and red tumbled over their dogs to meet Brother Jonathan, when he appeared in his three-cornered hat, ruffles and knee-breeches, and all, in the snug village green around which the orioles sung in the great trees.
He had some kind word for them all. When his face lighted up, all was happiness.
Among his neighbors was William Williams, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and a man of beautiful soul.
The old church gleamed in air over the green. On the country roads they held meetings in smaller churches and in schoolhouses.
A queer story is told of one of these churches at the time of foot-stoves; how a good woman took a foot-stove to church and hid it under her cloak. The stove smoked, and the warm smoke rose up under her cloak, which was spread around her like a tent, and caused her to go to sleep. As she bent over the smoke came out of her cloak at the back of her neck and ascended into the sunlight of a window. Now smoke is likely to form a circle as it ascends, and the good people, who did not know of the foot-stove, thought that they saw a crown of glory hanging over her head, and that a miracle was being performed.
Brother Jonathan and his good wife and children were always in their pew on Sunday. Probably there was a sounding-board in the primitive church and an hour-glass. Possibly, a tithing man went about with a feather to tickle sleepy old women on the nose, who lost consciousness between the 7thlys and the 10thlys, and so made them jump and say, “O Lud, massy sakes alive!” or something equally surprising and improper.
CHAPTER IV
“OUT YOU GO”
Old Peter Wetmore, of Lebanon, was suspected of being a Tory, but he kept shut lips. “Don’t open the doors of your soul,” he used to say, “and people will never know who you are. They can’t imprison your soul without the body, nor the body unless the soul opens its gates,” by which he meant the lips. “What I say is nothing to nobody. I chop wood!”