well," and other unpleasant, though perhaps truthful personalities. It is
hard to believe that the poor, excited, screaming visionaries of those
early days belonged to the same religious sect as do the serene,
low-voiced, sweet-faced, and retiring Quakeresses of to-day. And there is
no doubt that the astounding and meaningless freaks of these half-crazed
fanatics were provoked by the cruel persecutions which they endured from
our much loved and revered, but alas, intolerant and far from perfect
Puritan Fathers. These poor Quakers were arrested, fined, robbed, stripped
naked, imprisoned, laid neck and heels, chained to logs of wood, branded,
maimed, whipped, pilloried, caged, set in the stocks, exiled, sold
into slavery and hanged by our stern and cruel ancestors. Perhaps some
gentle-hearted but timid Puritan souls may have inwardly felt that the
Indian wars, and the destructive fires, and the earthquakes, and the dead
cattle, blasted wheat, and wormy peas, were not judgments of God for small
ministerial pay and periwig-wearing, but punishments for the heartrending
woes of the persecuted Quakers.
Others than the poor Quakers spoke out in colonial meetings. In Salem
village and in other witch-hunting towns the crafty "victims" of the
witches were frequently visited with their mock pains and sham fits in the
meeting-houses, and they called out and interrupted the ministers most
vexingly. Ann Putnam, the best and boldest actress among those cunning
young Puritan witch-accusers, the protagonist of that New England tragedy
known as the Salem Witchcraft, shouted out most embarrassingly, "There is
a yellow-bird sitting on the minister's hat, as it hangs on the pin in the
pulpit." Mr. Lawson, the minister, wrote with much simplicity that "these
things occurring in the time of public worship did something interrupt me
in my first prayer, being so unusual." But he braced himself up in spite
of Ann and the demoniacal yellow-bird, and finished the service. These
disorderly interruptions occurred on every Lord's Day, growing weekly
more constant and more universal, and must have been unbearable. Some few
disgusted members withdrew from the church, giving as reason that "the
distracting and disturbing tumults and noises made by persons under
diabolical power and delusions, preventing sometimes our hearing and
understanding and profiting of the word preached; we having after many
trials and experiences found no redress in this case, accounted ourselves
under a necessity to go where we might hear the word in quiet." These
withdrawing church-members were all of families that contained at least
one person that had been accused of practising witchcraft. They were thus
severely intolerant of the sacrilegious and lawless interruptions of the
shy young "victims," who received in general only sympathy, pity, and even
stimulating encouragement from their deluded and excited neighbors.
One very pleasing interruption,--no, I cannot call it by so severe a
name,--one very pleasing diversion of the attention of the congregation
from the parson was caused by an innocent custom that prevailed in many a
country community. Just fancy the flurry on a June Sabbath in Killingly, in
1785, when Joseph Gay, clad in velvet coat, lace-frilled shirt, and white
broadcloth knee-breeches, with his fair bride of a few days, gorgeous in a
peach-colored silk gown and a bonnet trimmed "with sixteen yards of white
ribbon," rose, in the middle of the sermon, from their front seat in the
gallery and stood for several minutes, slowly turning around in order to
show from every point of view their bridal finery to the eagerly gazing
congregation of friends and neighbors. Such was the really delightful and
thoughtful custom, in those fashion-plateless days, among persons of
wealth in that and other churches; it was, in fact, part of the wedding
celebration. Even in midwinter, in the icy church, the blushing bride would
throw aside her broadcloth cape or camblet roquelo and stand up clad in a
sprigged India muslin gown with only a thin lace tucker over her neck, warm