standing or kneeling upon "the shelf," a child might gaze at his neighbor;
and also through which sly missiles--little balls of twisted paper--could
be snapped, to the annoyance of some meek girl or retaliating boy, until
the young marksman was ignominiously pulled down by his mother from his
post of attack. And through these balustrades the same boy a few years
later could thrust sly missives, also of twisted paper, to the girl whom he
had once assailed and bombarded with his annoying paper bullets.

Through the pillared top-rail a restless child in olden days often
received, on a hot summer Sabbath from a farmer's wife or daughter in an
adjoining pew, friendly and quieting gifts of sprigs of dill, or fennel,
or caraway, famous anti-soporifics; and on this herbivorous food he would
contentedly browse as long as it lasted. An uneasy, sermon-tired little
girl was once given through the pew-rail several stalks of caraway, and
with them a large bunch of aromatic southernwood, or "lad's-love" which had
been brought to meeting by the matron in the next pew, with a crudely and
unconsciously aesthetic sense that where eye and ear found so little to
delight them, there the pungent and spicy fragrance of the southernwood
would be doubly grateful to the nostrils. Little Missy sat down delightedly
to nibble the caraway-seed, and her mother seeing her so quietly and
absorbingly occupied, at once fell contentedly and placidly asleep in her
corner of the pew. But five heads of caraway, though each contain many
score of seeds, and the whole number be slowly nibbled and eaten one seed
at a time, will not last through the child's eternity of a long doctrinal
sermon; and when the umbels were all devoured, the young experimentalist
began upon the stalks and stems, and they, too, slowly disappeared. She
then attacked the sprays of southernwood, and in spite of its bitter,
wormwoody flavor, having nothing else to do, she finished it, all but the
tough stems, just as the long sermon was brought to a close. Her waking
mother, discovering no signs of green verdure in the pew, quickly drew