pulpit of one old, unpainted church retained until the middle of this
century, as its sole decoration, an enormous, carefully painted, staring
eye, a terrible and suggestive illustration to youthful wrong-doers of the
great, all-seeing eye of God.

As the ceiling and rafters were so open and reverberating, it was generally
thought imperative to hang above the pulpit a great sounding-board, which
threatened the minister like a giant extinguisher, and was really as devoid
of utility as it was curious in ornamentation, "reflecting most part an
empty ineffectual sound." This great sound-killer was decorated with carved
and painted rosettes, as in the Shrewsbury meeting-house; with carved ivy
leaves, as in Farmington; with a carved bunch of grapes or pomegranates, as
in the Leicester church; with letters indicating a date, as, "M. R. H." for
March, in the Hadley church; with appropriate mottoes and texts, such as
the words, "Holiness is the Lords," in the Windham church; with cords and
tassels, with hanging fringes, with panels and balls; and thus formed a
great ornament to the church, and a source of honest pride to the church
members. The clumsy sounding-board was usually hung by a slight iron rod,
which looked smaller still as it stretched up to the high, raftered roof,
and always appeared to be entirely insufficient to sustain the great weight
of the heavy machine. In Danvers, one of these useless though ornamental
structures hung within eighteen inches of the preacher's nose, on a slender
bar thirty feet in length; and every Sunday the children gazed with
fascinated anticipation at the slight rod and the great hexagonal
extinguisher, thinking and hoping that on this day the sounding-board would
surely drop, and "put out" the minister. In fact, it was regarded by many
a child, though this idea was hardly formulated in the little brain, as
a visible means of possible punishment for any false doctrine that might
issue from the mouth of the preacher.