made his descent, in view of the assembly, after depositing his
burden, was thus rebuked by an old lady who was always droll and
quaint. "Why, Matthew, when you come down the pulpit stairs of a
Sunday, you throw up your heels like a horse coming out of a
stable-door."

Older grew the church, and colder; and if people then staid at home on
Sunday afternoons, they had a better excuse for doing so than their
successors can muster. The chorister, even, was frequently among the
missing, but was charitably supposed to be subject to the ague.
Efforts were made to prevail upon the elderly part of the parish to
permit the introduction of stoves with long funnels. They scorned the
enervating luxury! Their fathers had worshipped in the cold, and their
sons might. But ah! how degenerate were the descendants of the noble
old Puritan church-goers! The services curtailed to half their proper
length, yet finding the patience of the listeners all too short! The
degenerate descendants carried the day, however, the most bigoted of
their opposers becoming disabled by rheumatism. The old sexton,
resignation to inevitable evils being a lesson he had had much
opportunity to learn, submitted with a good grace, though very much of
opinion that fires in a church were an absurdity and a waste. The
stoves were provided, and an uncommonly full attendance the next
Sabbath showed the very general interest the matter had excited. How
would it seem? Would any one faint?

There was by no means a superabundance of heat; there was something
wrong, but the lack of warmth was a hundred-fold made up in smoke. No
one could see across the church, and the minister loomed up, as if in
a dense fog; all eyes were fountains of tears. At last the old sexton
went with a slow and subdued step up to the pulpit, and, wiping his