the records of the Roxbury church: "Sayd John is to fence in the Buring
Plas with a Fesy ston wall, sefighiattly don for Strenk and workmanship
as also to mark a Doball gatt 6 or 8 fote wid and to hing it."
_Sefighiattly_ is "sufficiently;" but who can translate "Fesy"? can it
mean "facy" or faced smoothly?

The church-raising was always a great event in the town. Each citizen was
forced by law to take part in or contribute to "raring the Meeting hows."
In early days nails were scarce,--so scarce that unprincipled persons set
fire to any buildings which chanced to be temporarily empty, for the sake
of obtaining the nails from the ruins; so each male inhabitant supplied
to the new church a certain "amount of nayles." Not only were logs, and
lumber, and the use of horses' and men's labor given, but a contribution
was also levied for the inevitable barrel of rum and its unintoxicating
accompaniments. "Rhum and Cacks" are frequent entries in the account books
of early churches. No wonder that accidents were frequent, and that men
fell from the scaffolding and were killed, as at the raising of the
Dunstable meeting-house. When the Medford people built their second
meeting-house, they provided for the workmen and bystanders, five barrels
of rum, one barrel of good brown sugar, a box of fine lemons, and two
loaves of sugar. As a natural consequence, two thirds of the frame fell,
and many were injured. In Northampton, in 1738, ten gallons of rum were
bought for L8 "to raise the meeting-house"--and the village doctor got "L3
for setting his bone Jonathan Strong, and L3 10s. for setting Ebenezer
Burt's thy" which had somehow through the rum or the raising, both gotten
broken. Sometimes, as in Pittsfield in 1671, the sum of four shillings was
raised on every acre of land in the town, and three shillings a day were
paid to every man who came early to work, while one shilling a day was
apportioned to each worker for his rum and sugar. At last no liquor was
allowed to the workmen until after the day's work was over, and thus fatal