My second cousin by the mother’s side, Benjamin Blackletter, A.M., who was born and lived all his lifetime in the ancient town of Pigwacket, has compiled, with scrupulous accuracy, the annals of that venerable town, in three volumes folio, which he proposes to publish as soon as he can find a Boston bookseller who will undertake the job. I hope this will be accomplished before long, for Pigwacket is a very interesting spot, though not very widely known. It is astonishing what important events are going on every day, in odd corners of this country, which the world knows nothing about. When I read over these trusty folios, which bear the title, “The General History of the Town of Pigwacket, from its first settlement until the present day, comprising an authentic relation of all its civil, military, ecclesiastical, financial and statistical concerns, compiled from original records, &c.” and see the great deeds that have been done in that respectable town, and the great men that have figured therein, and reflect that the fame thereof, so far from extending to the four corners of the earth, has hardly penetrated as far as Boston, I heave a sigh for mortal glory.
Knowing that my readers must be impatient for the appearance of the three folios of the History of Pigwacket, and as they cannot be put to press for some months, I avail myself of this chance to feed their curiosity by an extract, as the cook at Camancho’s wedding gave Sancho a couple of pullets to stay his stomach till dinner-time. Take then the portion contained in Chapter CLXXXVIII., which begins as follows:
It becomes my lot at this period of the narrative, to chronicle an event that formed quite an epoch in the history of the town, or rather of that part which constituted our parish. This occurrence may not be deemed by the world quite so momentous as the Declaration of Independence, or the French Revolution, but the reader may believe me, it was a great affair in our community. This was no less than a mighty feud in church matters about psalm-singing. The whole parish went by the ears about it, and the affair gave the community such a rouse, that many people feared we should never fairly recover the shock. The particulars were these:
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.
Deacon Grizzle, therefore, partly from conscience and partly from spite, placed himself at the head of the innovators, and took every occasion to annoy his associate with all sorts of ingenious reasons why the singing should be performed without any intermixture of recitation. The younger part of the congregation were chiefly ranged under his banner, but the older people mustered strong on the opposite side. To hear the disputes that were carried on upon this point, and the pertinacity with which each one maintained his opinion, an uninformed spectator would have imagined the interests of the whole Christian world were at stake. In truth, a great many of the good old souls really looked upon the act of altering the mode of singing as a departure from the faith given unto the saints. It was a very nice and difficult thing to come to a conclusion where all parties were so hotly interested, but an incident which fell out not long afterward, contributed to hasten the revolution.
Deacon Dogskin, as I have already remarked, was the individual on whom devolved, by prescriptive right, the duty of giving out the psalm. The Deacon was in all things a stickler for ancient usages; not only was he against giving up a hair’s breadth of the old custom, but his attachment to the antique forms went so far as to embrace all the circumstances of immaterial moment connected with them. His predilection for the old tone of voice was not to be overcome by any entreaty, and we continued to hear the same nasal, snuffling drawl, which, nobody knows how, he had contracted in the early part of his deaconship, although on common occasions he could speak well enough. But the tone was a part of his vocation; long use had consecrated it, and the Deacon would have his way. His psalm-book, too, by constant use had become to such a degree thumbed and blurred and torn and worn, that it was a puzzle how, with his old eyes, he could make anything of one half the pages. However, a new psalm-book was a thing he would never hear spoken of, for, although the thing could not be styled an innovation, inasmuch as it contained precisely the same collocation of words and syllables, yet it was the removal of an old familiar object from his sight, and his faith seemed to be bound up in the greasy covers and dingy leaves of the volume. So the Deacon stuck to his old psalm-book, and, by the help of his memory where the letter-press failed him, he made a shift to keep up with the singers, who, to tell the truth, were not remarkable for the briskness of their notes, and dealt more in semibreves than in demi-semi-quavers.
But, on a certain day, it happened that the Deacon, in the performance of his office, stumbled on a line which happened to be more than usually thumbed, and defied all his attempts to puzzle it out. In vain he wiped his spectacles, brought the book close to his nose, then held it as far off as possible, then brought his nose to the book, then took it away again, then held it up to the light, then turned it this way and that, winked and snuffled and hemmed and coughed—the page was too deeply grimed by the application of his own thumb, to be deciphered by any ocular power. The congregation were at a dead stand. They waited and waited, but the Deacon could not give out the line; every one stared, and the greatest impatience began to be manifested. At last Elder Darby, who commonly took the lead in singing, called out: