Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 December 1892 — Shady Churches. [ARTICLE]

Shady Churches.

The early meeting-houses of New England were destitute of shade. The trees in the vicinity had been cut down for fear of forest fires, and curtains and window-blinds were unknown. There was no “dim religious light’'* within the church, but in summer “the white and undiluted day,” and in winter an atmosphere so cold that, as Judge Sewell pathetically records in his diary, “the communion bread was frozen pretty hard, and rattled inlo the plates.” As years passed on, trees were planted to protect the congregation from the garish sunlight. Sometimes the growth was dense, and cast a soml er shalow over the meetinghouse that made it so dark within as to annoy the minister. Two anecdotes, told m “The Sabbath in Puritan New England,” illustrate how the clergy protested against these gloomy meeting houses. A neighboring pastor, preaching in a church thickly shaded by a large tree, gave out the text, “Why do the wicked live?” Peering in the dim light at his manuscript, he exclaimed: “I hope they will live loDg enough to cut down this great hemlock tree behind the pulpit window!” Doctor Storrs preached by invitation in a meeting house overshadowed with trees. His struggles to read his manuscript temped him to affirm that he would never preach in that house again while it was so'ill-lighted and gloomy. A few years later he was invited to preach in the same old meetinghouse. He rode up to it on the Sunday morning, and seeing the trees still standing, rode away leaving the people to sit in darkness, without a sermon.—Youth’s Companion.

There are many curious trades in the world, but the most strange must be the “artificial manufacture of wild men.” Yet a well-known English doctor in. China has just certified from his own personal experience that this art is regularly practiced in the Flowery Kingdom. Ant vessel causing a disaster at her launch is regarded by the Japanese as doomed to ill-fortune for her whole career. At Osaka lately a vessel capsized while being launched, several persons being drowned. - She was destroyed bj night with much ceremony. In regard to modern languages, it is said that the Chinese is the most difficult. We find this out when we try to explain to our Chinese laundrymen thal a pair of socks are missing.—Texas Siftings. The Mikado of Japan has no mere floricultural little country to rule over He is the sovereign of 40,001 people who live in 13,000 towns ant village!.