minister enters and passes up the aisle, dressed in Geneva cloak, black
skull-cap, and black gloves open at thumb and finger, for the better
handling of his manuscript. He looks round upon his congregation, a few
hundred, recently _seated_ anew for the year, arranged according to rank
and age. There are the old men in the pews beneath the pulpit. There are
the young men in the gallery, or near the door, with ruffs, showy belts,
gold and silver buttons, "points" at the knees, and great boots. There
are the young women, with "silk or tiffany hoods or scarfs,"
"embroidered or needle-worked caps," "immoderate great sleeves," "cut
works,"--a mystery,--"slash apparel,"--another mystery,--"immoderate
great vayles, long wings," etc.,--mystery on mystery, but all recorded
in the statutes, which forbid these splendors to persons of mean estate.
There are the wives of the magistrates in prominent seats, and the
grammar-school master's wife next them; and in each pew, close to the
mother's elbow, is the little wooden cage for the youngest child, still
too young to sit alone. All boys are held too young to sit alone also;
for, though the emigrants left in Holland the aged deaconess who there
presided, birch in hand, to control the rising generation in Sunday
meetings, yet the urchins are now herded on the pulpit- and
gallery-stairs, with four constables to guard them from the allurements
of sin. And there sits Sin itself embodied in the shrinking form of some
humiliated man or woman, placed on a high stool in the principal aisle,
bearing the name of some dark crime written on paper and pinned to the
garments, or perhaps a Scarlet Letter on the breast.

Oh, the silence of this place of worship, after the solemn service sets
in! "People do not sneeze or cough here in public assemblies," says one
writer, triumphantly, "so much as in England." The warning caution, "Be
short," which the minister has inscribed above his study-door, claims no
authority over his pulpit. He may pray his hour, unpausing, and no one