contrived always in their salute of welcome to the Amen to give vent in
a most tremendous bang to a little of their pent up and ill-repressed
energies. In old church-orders such entries as this (of the Haverhill
church) are frequently seen: "The people are to Let their Seats down
without Such Nois." "The boyes are not to wickedly noise down there
pew-seats." A gentleman attending the old church in Leicester heard at
the beginning of the prayer, for the first time in his life, the noise of
slamming pew-seats, as the seats were thrust up against the pew-walls. He
jumped into the aisle at the first clatter, thinking instinctively that the
gallery was cracking and falling. Another stranger, a Southerner, entering
rather late at a morning service in an old church in New England, was
greeted with the rattle of falling seats, and exclaimed in amazement, "Do
you Northern people applaud in church?"

In many meeting-houses the tops of the pews and of the high gallery
railings were ornamented with little balustrades of turned wood, which were
often worn quite bare of paint by childish fingers that had tried them all
"to find which ones would turn," and which, alas! would also squeak. This
fascinating occupation whiled away many a tedious hour in the dreary
church, and in spite of weekly forbidding frowns and whispered reproofs for
the shrill, ear-piercing squeaks elicited by turning the spindle-shaped
balusters, was entirely too alluring a time-killer to be abandoned, and
consequently descended, an hereditary church pastime, from generation to
generation of the children of the Puritans; and indeed it remained so
strong an instinct that many a grown person, visiting in after life a
church whose pews bore balustrades like the ones of his childhood, could
scarce keep his itching fingers from trying them each in succession "to see
which ones would turn."

These open balustrades also afforded fine peep-holes through which, by