One man give five hundred dollars, and
another give three hundred; then they collected four or five hundred
amongst the other members, and give a lawn party and a strawberry
festival and raised another hundred. It set me to thinkin' o' the time
us women got the organ for Goshen church. It wasn't any light matter,
for, besides the money it took us nearly three years to raise, there
was the opposition. Come to think of it, we raised more opposition
than we did money."

And Aunt Jane laughed a blithe laugh and tossed another peeling to
the yellow rooster, who had dropped the role of harbinger of evil and
was posing as a humble suppliant.

"An organ in them days, honey, was jest a wedge to split the church
half in two. It was the new cyarpet that brought on the organ. You
know how it is with yourself; you git a new dress, and then you've got
to have a new bonnet, and then you can't wear your old shoes and
gloves with a new dress and a new bonnet, and the first thing you know
you've spent five times as much as you set out to spend. That's the
way it was with us about the cyarpet and the organ and the pulpit
chairs and the communion set.

"Most o' the men folks was against the organ from the start, and Silas
Petty was the foremost. Silas made a p'int of goin' against everything
that women favored. Sally Ann used to say that if a woman was to come
up to him and say, 'Le's go to heaven,' Silas would start off towards
the other place right at once; he was jest that mulish and contrairy.
He met Sally Ann one day, and says he, 'Jest give you women rope
enough and you'll turn the house o' the Lord into a reg'lar toy-shop.'
And Sally Ann she says, 'You'd better go home, Silas, and read the
book of Exodus. If the Lord told Moses how to build the Tabernicle
with the goats' skins and rams' skins and blue and purple and scarlet
and fine linen and candlesticks with six branches, I reckon he won't
object to a few yards o' cyarpetin' and a little organ in Goshen
church.'

"Sally Ann always had an answer ready, and I used to think she knew
more about the Bible than Parson Page did himself.

"Of course Uncle Jim Matthews didn't want the organ; he was afraid it
might interfere with his singin'. Job Taylor always stood up for
Silas, so he didn't want it; and Parson Page never opened his mouth
one way or the other. He was one o' those men that tries to set on
both sides o' the fence at once, and he'd set that way so long he was
a mighty