she laughed to try to keep warm. Those who laughed at the misdemeanors of
others were fined as well. Deborah Bangs, a young girl, in 1755 paid a fine
of five shillings for "Larfing in the Wareham Meeting House in time of
Public Worship," and a boy at the same time, for the same offence, paid a
fine of ten shillings. He may have laughed louder and longer. In a law-book
in which Jonathan Trumbull recorded the minor cases which he tried as
justice of the peace, was found this entry: "His Majesties Tithing man
entered complaint against Jona. and Susan Smith, that on the Lords Day
during Divine Service, they did _smile_." They were found guilty, and
each was fined five shillings and costs,--poor smiling Susan and Jonathan.

Those wretched Puritan boys, those "sons of Belial," whittled, too, and cut
the woodwork and benches of the meeting-house in those early days, just as
their descendants have ever since hacked and cut the benches and desks in
country schoolhouses,--though how they ever eluded the vigilant eye and ear
of the ubiquitous tithingman long enough to whittle will ever remain an
unsolved mystery of the past. This early forerunning evidence of what
has become a characteristic Yankee trait and habit was so annoyingly and
extensively exhibited in Medford, in 1729, that an order was passed to
prosecute and punish "all who cut the seats in the meeting-house."

Few towns were content to have one tithingman and one staff, but ordered
that there should be a guardian set over the boys in every corner of the
meeting-house. In Hanover it was ordered "That there be some sticks set up
in various places in the meeting-house, and fit persons by them and _to
use them_." I doubt not that the sticks were well used, and Hanover boys
were well rapped in meeting.

The Norwalk people come down through history shining with a halo of gentle
lenity, for their tithingman was ordered to bear a short, small stick only,