few tunes to which they sang all the
psalms and hymns. The proper mode of rendering these was through the
nose. With the lapse of time and the advent of a new generation, these
tunes became jangled together in inextricable confusion. The practice
was for a deacon as leader to read a line of the psalm or hymn, and the
congregation sang at it as best they could, each one using such tune as
he chose, and often sliding from one tune to another in the same line or
improvising as he went on. Finally, in 1721, the Rev. Thomas Walter of
Roxbury, Mass., published a treatise, upon the grounds or rules of music
or an introduction to the art of singing by rote, containing twenty-four
tunes harmonized into three parts. The attempt to supersede the old
Puritan tunes and restrict the liberty of the individual singers met
with the greatest opposition and was long successfully resisted in all
the churches in New England, so tenacious were they of the rights of the
individual singer. It caused great dissension in the church at this
place. Finally, in February, 1740, the church voted to half the time for
the next year, singing the old way one Sabbath and the new way the next,
and in 1741, at a meeting specially called to settle the matter, it was
voted thirty to sixteen to sing thereafter after the new way.

No musical instruments were allowed in the meetinghouse. They had
never seen or heard a church organ. But they knew that their fathers
likened its sound to the bellowing of a bull, the grunting of a pig, and
the barking of a dog, and had resisted its use in religious services
even to the shedding of blood. Nor were flowers allowed in the church.

In those days in New England women were not thought to have minds worth
educating, and they were brought up in extreme illiteracy. Nevertheless,
their natural wit, brightness, and good sense made them very agreeable
companions of the superior sex. And their influence over their husbands,
sons and brothers, was quite as great as that of their more cultivated
daughters of the present day. The refining, educating, stimulating
influence of the women had much to do in withstanding the tendency back
to barbarism, which life in an isolated and new community led to. The
debt which is owed to them is incalculable.

As the descendants of those people assemble here to-day after the lapse
of two hundred years, to commemorate their work and rejoice in all the
strength, beauty and order, now smiling arou