[9] See a fuller and more detailed account in the chapter entitled "Some Sextons I Have Known" in the forthcoming volume, "Sunny Memories of Three Pastorates". Ithaca, 1903.
CHAPTER XIII.
CHURCH LIFE. MINOR PERSONALITIES.
These were the days, also, "before the war", when expansion was the law of woman's apparel. The hoop skirt had reached its maximum of periphery. Many colors were mingled on the same dress. The ladies wore "shoot-the-moon" bonnets, with small sized flower gardens stuffed inside the brim, between face and frame, and the ribbons necessary for adornment and fastening ran into yard lengths. Besides ribbon on the top of the head gear, there must be great bows on either side of the chin. Many a time I remember seeing the choir singers untie their bonnet strings when they would praise God with the voice and understanding; or, to be more scientific, they unlatched the hook and eye, which really did the business of fastening, the bows being for ornament rather than utility, reminding one of Gothic architecture made of timber in lieu of stone. It was a grand thing, at least one boy thought, to go to a morning or noon wedding within a private house, where at 10 A.M. the windows were shut tight and the gas lighted. The girls were all in voluminous circles of flounced silks. Their bonnets spread out on the bed of the dressing room were veritable parterres, with ribbons half a foot wide and a yard long.
Inside the house of God the fripperies of fashion were as rampant then as now. In one stylish family, albeit, according to common rumor of humble origin, whose pew was near ours, but further to the east, there was the father, who was a dandy in his dress. He always sat during the sermon and those parts of the service not calling for a bowed head or the grasping of a hymn book, holding his ridiculous little cane, which had for its handle a lady's foot carved in ivory. Her toes were always in his mouth, and the diligence with which he sucked that cane impressed a certain boy, who passes over further description, of oiled and perfumed ringlets, amazing necktie or diamond-studded cravat and other vanities of life. I never frankly accepted the statement of Ecclesiastes, until I saw this gentleman's cane and neck gear. It must be confessed that the amount of time sometimes spent by young men on their neckties, then often three or four inches wide and made to stick out so that the ends were continuous with the shoulders, is a secret not to be told to the present generation lest we corrupt the youth.
But the psychical moment to the small boy was when the very stylish daughter of the family aforesaid with her sublunar bonnet, her gorgeous mantilla, her mighty collar of lace and resplendent brooch sailed up the aisle, sending many a black silk hat spinning on its richochetting way before her. When about two fathom's distance from the pew door, which stood at right angles to the long aisle, she would seize a handful of the various concentric steel circles of her dress, and slightly tilting the metal bands would sail into her pew with as little collision against the wooden sides as possible. Within a busy period, of possibly less than five minutes, she was able to accommodate her crinoline to the dimensions allowed and get her spirit in tune with the sacredness of the hour and place.
Nevertheless when in later days, sorrow came to that same daughter, now bereaved and fatherless, she rose by divine grace into a very transfiguration of character, through sisterly and filial devotion.
Life is too short to tell of all the oddities and curious situations into which the hoop skirt led its wearer, and one must read Edward Everett Hale's amusing story of "The Skeleton in the Closet", to see what dire mischief these inventions of the evil one were capable of wreaking, even when discarded. They did indeed seem to be indestructible.