The unmarried members wear our usual dress, and none are strictly recluse.
Formerly a large room or chapel was connected with the brother-house. It was furnished with galleries, where sat the sisters, while the brethren occupied the floor below. (This building, I am told, is not standing.) In the smaller room or chapel (saal) connected with the sister-house, about twenty people now meet on the Seventh day for public worship. But among all these changes the German language still remains! All the services that I heard, while attending here in February of 1872, were in that tongue, except two hymns at the close. We must not suppose that this language is employed because the members are natives of Germany. One or two may be, but the preacher’s father or grandfather came to this country when a boy.
Around the meeting-room are hung charts or sheets of grayish paper, containing German verses in ornamental writing, the ancient labors of the celibates, or perhaps of the sisters alone. One small chart here is said to represent the three heavens, and to contain three hundred figures in Capuchin dress, with harps in their hands, and two hundred archangels. Perhaps this and their celibate doctrine are drawn, at least in part, from the opening of chapter xiv. of the book called the Revelation of John.
But for these old labors in pen and ink, the chapel is as plain as a Quaker meeting-house. It is kept beautifully clean.[82] Opening out of it is a kitchen, furnished with the apparatus for cooking and serving the simple repasts of the love-feasts. Among these Baptists, love-feasts are held not only, as I understand, in a similar manner to the other Dunkers, but upon funeral occasions,—a short period after the interment of a brother or sister. Rupp speaks of their eating lamb and mutton at their paschal feasts. In the old monastic time, it was only at love-feasts that the celibate brothers and sisters met.
Here I was shown a wooden goblet made by the brethren for the Communion. It has been said that they preferred to use such, even after more costly ones had been given to them.
After attending the religions services in the chapel, three or four of us—strangers—were supplied with dinner in the brother-house, at a neat and well-filled table.[83]
I afterward sat for an hour in the neat and comfortable apartment of Sister Sarah in the sister-house. Here she has lived twenty-two years, and, though now much advanced in life, has not that appearance. She seemed lovely, and, I was told, had not been unsought. One of her brothers has been thirty-three years at the Snow Hill community.
Sister Sarah produced for me a white cotton over-dress, such as was formerly worn by the sisters. It was a cap or cowl, with long pieces hanging down in front and behind nearly to the feet; and, if I remember it right, not of the pattern described in the Chronicle. But fashions change in fifty to a hundred years.
She also showed me some verses recently written by one of the brethren at Snow Hill. They were in German, of which I offer an unrhymed version: