boiled in lye of wood ashes, spooned steaming into our porringers of milk
by my aunt.

Ah, they were happy times indeed!

Every other Sunday, granted tolerable weather, I crossed the river early
in the morning to attend church with my mother and sisters. It is no
reflection upon my filial respect, I hope, to confess that these are
wearisome memories. We went in solemn procession, the family being
invariably ready and waiting when I arrived. We sat in a long row in a pew
quite in front of the slate-colored pulpit--my mother sitting sternly
upright at the outer end, my tallest sister next, and so on, in regular
progression, down to wretched baby Gertrude and me. The very color of the
pew, a dull Spanish brown, was enough to send one to sleep, and its high,
uncompromising back made all my bones ache.

Yet I was forced to keep awake, and more, to look deeply interested. I was
a clergyman's son, and the ward of an important man; I was the
best-dressed youngster in the congregation, and brought a slave of my own
to church with me. So Dominie Romeyn always fixed his lack-lustre eye on
me, and seemed to develop all his long, prosy arguments one by one to me
personally. Even when he turned the hour-glass in front of him, he seemed
to indicate that it was quite as much my affair as his. I dared not twist
clear around, to see Tulp sitting among the negroes and Indians, on one of
the backless benches under the end gallery; it was scarcely possible even
to steal glances up to the side galleries, where the boys of lower degree
were at their mischief, and where fits of giggling and horse-play rose and
spread from time to time until the tithing-man, old Conrad to wit, burst
in and laid his hickory gad over their irreverent heads.