tall second growth of woods, deserted and neglected old graveyards--the
most lonely and forlorn of all sad places--by their broken and fallen
headstones, which surround a half-filled-in and uncovered cellar, show
that once a meeting-house for New England Christians had stood there. Tall
grass, and a tangle of blackberry brambles cover the forgotten graves,
and perhaps a spire of orange tiger-lilies, a shrub of southernwood or of
winter-killed and dying box, may struggle feebly for life under the shadow
of the "plumed ranks of tall wild cherry," and prove that once these lonely
graves were cared for and loved for the sake of those who lie buried in
this now waste spot. No traces remain of the old meeting-house save the
cellar and the narrow stone steps, sadly leading nowhere, which once were
pressed by the feet of the children of the Pilgrims, but now are trodden
only by the curious and infrequent passer-by, or the epitaph-seeking
antiquary.

It is difficult often to understand the details in the descriptions of
these early meeting-houses, the colonial spelling is so widely varied,
and so cleverly ingenious. Uniformity of spelling is a strictly modern
accomplishment, a hampering innovation. "A square roofe without Dormans,
with two Lucoms on each side," means, I think, without dormer windows, and
with luthern windows. Another church paid a bill for the meeting-house roof
and the "Suppolidge." They had "turritts" and "turetts" and "turits" and
"turyts" and "feriats" and "tyrryts" and "toryttes" and "turiotts" and
"chyrits," which were one and the same thing; and one church had orders
for "juyces and rayles and nayles and bymes and tymber and gaybels and a
pulpyt, and three payr of stayrs," in its meeting-house,--a liberal supply
of the now fashionable _y_'s. We read of "pinakles" and "pyks" and
"shuthers" and "scaffills" and "bimes" and "lynters" and "bathyns" and
"chymbers" and "bellfers;" and often in one entry the same word will be
spelt in three or four different ways. Here is a portion of a contract in