Creative Books

Very inconveniently the opponent
sometimes dealt his blows, withal. Surely it could not be a pleasant
thing to a sound divine, just launched upon his seventeen-headed
discourse, to have a girl with wild eyes and her hair about her ears
start up and exclaim, "Parson, your text is too long,"--or worse yet,
"Parson, your sermon is too long,"--or most embarrassing of all,
"There's a great yellow bird sitting on the parson's hat in the pulpit."
But these formidable interruptions veritably happened, and received the
stern discipline in such cases made and provided.
But beside Quakers and witches, the ministers had other female
tormentors to deal with. There was the perpetual anxiety of the
unregenerated toilet. "Immodest apparel, laying out of hair, borders,
naked necks and arms, or, as it were, pinioned with superfluous
ribbons,"--these were the things which tried men's souls in those days,
and the statute-books and private journals are full of such plaintive
inventories of the implements of sin.


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