The family graveyard, especially mentioned, has been removed, and all the bodies that were recovered interred at the Mennonite church in the neighborhood.
Two or three small changes in this neighborhood are the following: Sewing-machines are now found here in great numbers; many houses have large stoves, which heat at least one room up-stairs; and it is not common in this immediate neighborhood to sit up with the dead, in the manner before described.
AN AMISH MEETING.[7]
It was on a Sunday morning in March, when the air was bleak and the roads were execrable, that I obtained a driver to escort me to the farm-house where an Amish meeting was to be held.
It was a little after nine o’clock when I entered, and, although the hour was so early, I found the congregation nearly all gathered, and the preaching begun.
There were forty men present, as many women, and one infant. Had the weather been less inclement, we should probably have had more little ones, for such plain people do not think it necessary to leave the babies at home.
The rooms in which we sat seemed to have been constructed for these great occasions. They were the kitchen and “the room,”—as our people call the sitting-room, or best room,—and were so arranged as to be made into one by means of two doors.
Our neighbors wore the usual costume of the sect, which is a branch of the Mennonite Society, or nearly allied to it, the men having laid off their round-crowned and remarkably wide-brimmed hats. Their hair is usually cut square across the forehead, and hangs long behind; their coats are plainer than those of the plainest Quaker, and are fastened, except the overcoat, with hooks and eyes in place of buttons; whence they are sometimes called Hooker or Hook-and-Eye Mennists. The pantaloons are worn without suspenders. Formerly the Amish were often called “beardy men,” but since beards have become fashionable theirs are not so conspicuous.
The women, whom I have sometimes seen with a bright purple apron, an orange neckerchief, or some other striking bit of color, were now more soberly arrayed in plain white caps without ruffle or border, and white neckerchiefs, though occasionally a cap or kerchief was black. They wear closely fitting waists, with a little basquine behind, which is probably a relic from the times of the short gown and petticoat. Their gowns were of sober woollen stuff, frequently of flannel; and all wore aprons.