Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1910 — THE MINISTER’S WOOD-PILE. [ARTICLE]

THE MINISTER’S WOOD-PILE.

The old New England preacher, says Mrs. Alice Morse Earle in the SundaySchool Times, could not afford to- use candles. In the home of one wellknown minister the wife always knitted, the children ciphered and studied, and the husband wrote his sermons by the flickering light of pine-knots, with his scraps of sermon paper placed on the side of the great leathern bellows as it lay in his lap. Generally the minister had plenty of wood—it was part of his salary—and his loads were expected to be always of good hard wood. One thrifty parson, while watching a farmer unload hi? yearly contribution, remarked: “Isn’t that pretty soft wood?;’ “And don’t we sometimes have pretty soft sermons?” was the sharp retort. In some towns a day was appointed which was called a “woodspell,” when it was ordered that all the wood be delivered at the parson’s door; and thus the farmers had a cheerful midwinter gathering. The Rev. Stephen Williams, of Longmeadow, made a note of the “woodsleddings” in his diary in 1757: “Neighbors sledded wood for me and shewed a Good Humour. I rejoice at it. The Lord bless them that are out of humour and bro? no wood.” The wood did not always come in when needed. One November Sunday the Rev. Mr. French, of Andover, gave out this notice in his pulpit: “I will write two discourses and deliver them in this meeting-house on Thanksgiving day provided I can manage to write them without a fire.”