Songs and Other Verse | Page 5

heard
coming up the winding stairs unseen, and, yet more truly, as his head at
length appeared through the open trap-doorway, I thought him Satan,
and, but for friend Poole, I had cried out lustily in fear. Terror fled me
when I considered that none might do any harm there. For was not the
church militant now assembled? Besides, had they not obeyed the law
of the General Court that each congregation should carry a 'competent
number of pieces, fixed and complete with powder and shot and swords,
every Lord's-day at the meeting-house?' And, right well equipped 'with
psalm-book, shot and powder-horn' sat that doughty man, Shear
Yashub Millard along with Hezekiah Bristol and four others whose
issue I have known pleasantly in the flesh here; and those of us who
had no pieces wore 'coats basted with cotton-wool, and thus made
defensive against Indian arrows.' Yet it bethought me that there was no
defence against what I had devoured on Christmas day. I had rather
been the least of these,--even he who 'blew the Kunk'--than to be thus
seated there and afeared that the brethren in the 'pitts' doubted I had
true religion. That I had found a proper seat--even this I wot not; and I
quaked, for had not two of my kin been fined near unto poverty for
'disorderly going and setting in seats not theirs by any means,' so great
was their sin. It had not yet come upon the day when there was a
'dignifying of the meeting.' Did not even the pious Judge Sewall's
second spouse once sit in the foreseat when he thought to have taken
her into 'his own pue?' and, she having died in a few months, did not
that godly man exclaim: 'God in his holy Sovereignity put my wife out
of the Foreseat'? Was I not also in recollection by many as one who
once 'prophaned the Lord's Day in ye meeting-house, in ye times of ye
forenoone service, by my rude and Indecent acting in Laughing and
other Doings by my face with Tabatha Morgus, against ye peace of our
Sovereign Lord ye King, His crown and Dignity?'"
At this, it appears that I groaned in my sleep, for I was not only asleep
here and now, but I was dreaming that I was asleep there and then, in
the meeting-house. It was in this latter sleep that I groaned so heavily in
spirit and in body that the tithing-man, or awakener, did approach me
from behind, without stopping to brush me to awakening by the
fox-taile which was fixed to the end of his long staffe, or even without

painfully sticking into my body his sharp and pricking staffe which he
did sometimes use. He led me out bodily to the noone-house, where I
found myself fully awakened, but much broken in spirit. Then and
there did I write these verses, which I send to you:
"Mother," says I, "is that a pie?" in tones akin to scorning; "It is, my
son," quoth she, "and one full ripe for Christmas morning! It's fat with
plums as big as your thumbs, reeking with sapid juices, And you'll find
within all kinds of sin our grocery store produces!"
"O, well," says I,
"Seein' it's _pie_
And is guaranteed to please, ma'am,
By your advice,
I'll take a slice,

If you'll kindly pass the cheese, ma'am!"
But once a year comes Christmas cheer, and one should then be merry,
But as for me, as you can see, I'm disconcerted, very;
For that pesky
pie sticks grimly by my organs of digestion, And that 't will stay by me
till May or June I make no question.
So unto you,
Good friends and true,
I'll tip this solemn warning: