The Old Peabody Pew | Page 5

outside the

feminine domain, but as there were five women to one man in the
church membership, the feminine domain was frequently obliged to
extend its limits into the hitherto unknown. Matters of tarring and
water-proofing were discussed in and out of season, and the very
school-children imbibed knowledge concerning lapping, overlapping,
and cross- lapping, and first and second quality of cedar shingles. Miss
Lobelia Brewster, who had a rooted distrust of anything done by mere
man, created strife by remarking that she could have stopped the leak in
the belfry tower with her red flannel petticoat better than the Milltown
man with his new-fangled rubber sheeting, and that the last shingling
could have been more thoroughly done by a "female infant babe";
whereupon the person criticized retorted that he wished Miss Lobelia
Brewster had a few infant babes to "put on the job--he'd like to see 'em
try." Meantime several male members of the congregation, who at one
time or another had sat on the roof during the hottest of the dog days to
see that shingling operations we're conscientiously and skilfully
performed, were very pessimistic as to any satisfactory result ever
being achieved.
"The angle of the roof--what they call the 'pitch'--they say that that's
always been wrong," announced the secretary of the Dorcas in a
business session.
"Is it that kind of pitch that the Bible says you can't touch without being
defiled? If not, I vote that we unshingle the roof and alter the pitch!"
This proposal came from a sister named Maria Sharp, who had
valiantly offered the year before to move the smoky chimney with her
own hands, if the "men-folks" wouldn't.
But though the incendiary suggestion of altering the pitch was received
with applause at the moment, subsequent study of the situation proved
that such a proceeding was entirely beyond the modest means of the
society. Then there arose an ingenious and militant carpenter in a
neighbouring village, who asserted that he would shingle the
meeting-house roof for such and such a sum, and agree to drink every
drop of water that would leak in afterward. This was felt by all parties
to be a promise attended by extraordinary risks, but it was accepted

nevertheless, Miss Lobelia Brewster remarking that the rash carpenter,
being already married, could not marry a Dorcas anyway, and even if
he died, he was not a resident of Edgewood, and therefore could be
more easily spared, and that it would be rather exciting, just for a
change, to see a man drink himself to death with rain-water. The
expected tragedy never occurred, however, and the inspired shingler
fulfilled his promise to the letter, so that before many months the
Dorcas Society proceeded, with incredible exertion, to earn more
money, and the interior of the church was neatly painted and made as
fresh as a rose. With no smoke, no rain, no snow nor melting ice to
defile it, the good old landmark that had been pointing its finger
Heavenward for over a century would now be clean and fragrant for
years to come, and the weary sisters leaned back in their respective
rocking-chairs and drew deep breaths of satisfaction.
These breaths continued to be drawn throughout an unusually arduous
haying season; until, in fact, a visitor from a neighbouring city was
heard to remark that the Tory Hill Meeting-House would be one of the
best preserved and pleasantest churches in the whole State of Maine, if
only it were suitably carpeted.
This thought had secretly occurred to many a Dorcas in her hours of
pie-making, preserving, or cradle-rocking, but had been promptly
extinguished as flagrantly extravagant and altogether impossible. Now
that it had been openly mentioned, the contagion of the idea spread, and
in a month every sort of honest machinery for the increase of funds had
been set in motion: harvest suppers, pie sociables, old folk's concerts,
apron sales, and, as a last resort, a subscription paper, for the church
floor measured hundreds of square yards, and the carpet committee
announce that a good ingrain could not be purchased, even with the
church discount, for less than ninety-seven cents a yard.
The Dorcases took out their pencils, and when they multiplied the
surface of the floor by the price of the carpet per yard, each Dorcas
attaining a result entirely different from all the others, there was a
shriek of dismay, especially from the secretary, who had included in
her mathematical operation certain figures in her possession

representing the cubical contents of the church and the offending pitch
of the roof, thereby obtaining a product that would have dismayed a
Croesus. Time sped and efforts increased, but the Dorcases were at
length obliged to clip the wings of their desire and content themselves
with carpeting the pulpit and pulpit steps,