buildings, with their white pillars, green blinds, and neat
enclosures, are very different affairs from those great, uncouth
mountains of windows and doors that stood in the same place years
before. To my childish eye, however, our old meeting house was an
awe-inspiring thing. To me it seemed fashioned very nearly on the model
of Noah's ark and Solomon's temple, as set forth in the pictures in my
Scripture Catechism--pictures which I did not doubt were authentic
copies; and what more respectable and venerable architectural precedent
could any one desire? Its double rows of windows, of which I knew the
number by heart, its doors with great wooden quirls over them, its
belfry projecting out at the east end, its steeple and bell, all
inspired as much sense of the sublime in me as Strasbourg Cathedral
itself; and the inside was not a whit less imposing.

How magnificent, to my eye, seemed the turnip-like canopy that hung over
the minister's head, hooked by a long iron rod to the wall above! and
how apprehensively did I consider the question, what would become of him
if it should fall! How did I wonder at the panels on either side of the
pulpit, in each of which was carved and painted a flaming red tulip,
bolt upright, with its leaves projecting out at right angles! and then
at the grape vine, bass relieved on the front, with its exactly
triangular bunches of grapes, alternating at exact intervals with
exactly triangular leaves. To me it was an indisputable representation
of how grape vines ought to look, if they would only be straight and
regular, instead of curling and scrambling, and twisting themselves into
all sorts of slovenly shapes. The area of the house was divided into
large square pews, boxed up with stout boards, and surmounted with a
kind of baluster work, which I supposed to be provided for the special
accommodation of us youngsters, being the "loopholes of retreat" through
which we gazed on the "remarkabilia" of the scene. It was especially
interesting to me to notice the coming in to meeting of the
congregation. The doors were so contrived that on entering you stepped
_down_ instead of _up_--a construction that has more than once led to
unlucky results in the case of strangers. I remember once when an
unlucky Frenchman, entirely unsuspicious of the danger that awaited him,
made entrance by pitching devoutly upon his nose in the middle of the
broad aisle; that it took three bunches of my grandmother's fennel to