Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 August 1876 — The Rites of the Shakers a Score of Years Ago. [ARTICLE]

The Rites of the Shakers a Score of Years Ago.

The mountain meetings of twenty years ago were wild gatherings. The revelation ordering these was received in 1841. and the place divinely pointed out for the Hdncock Shakers was on the top of a hill which you have passed many a time unaware of its sacred character. It was named Mount Sinai, and is in sight of the mountain called Mount Lebanon, which was chosen for the New Lebanon Society. Twice in the year, or oftener, thes ; meetings were held, the place being p» epared by the erection of the stone as above mentioned. There stood near the stone a building with separate apartments for the brethren and sisters. They went up clothed in their Sunday clothes, and in addition a “ heavenly dress.” This latter cold not be seen by mortal eyes, but those who had the “gift” to see “spiritual things described it as a “ coat or tank with gold buttons and trimmings.” After arriving at the meeting place, seven times the worshippers bowed, and then marched to the sacred enclosure, where the ceremonies began. These meetings were tne occasion of special outpourings of spiritual gifts. A leading member would say, “the breth ren are required to go the fountain and bathe They will find sponges and towels by the fountain side.” There were no fountains, nor sponges, nor towels, except

in a spiritual form, but the members would ail approach and go through tut motions as if actually bathing. They, even scrubbed one another. Then one of the “ seers” would have another “gift.” “There is at the fountain,” he says, “some pock, et handkerchiefs for the brethren and sisters/ ’ at which each one makes the -'-motion of taking up a pocket hankerchief. The next revelation is. “ the word is to leap,” and so every one, old and young, male and female, frisk and leap, as high as they can. By and by refreshments are suggested, and the crazy company would actually go through all the motions of propacmg a feast and eating it. Imaginaiy trees would be shaken, invisible apples and oranges gathered and carried iu imper ceptible baskets to non existent tables. This Is only a partial list of the performances at one of these meetings. Now they are held no more, and those who remember the occasion I have referred to will smite, no doubt, over the fanatical follies of those days. Then, to shake hands w’ith or in any way come in contact . with the sisters, was a sin to be confessed; to sit cross-legged in meeting or without the right thumb folded over the left, or not to lie straight in bed were crimes to be repented of. But Shakerism’s centennial finds it like everything else, a better tiling in many ways than it was a hundred years ago, and we saw the plainest proof of it in the luxury and library of friend Wetherell’s “ office.” On one side a fine cabinet organ; on the table a great acecrdeon, an instrument of music that anywhere else would be suggestive of rural serenades to rustic Dulcineas; in the corner a library of two hundred or three hundred volumes —history, poetry, biography, fiction, travel. Eliza Cook, the English poetess, who was a schoolmate of Mr. Wetherell’s mother, has sent him a splendidly gotten-up copy of her poems, with an affectionate autograph on the flyleaf. The furniture an easy sofa, comfortable chairs, and a rich black walnut writing desk; on the walls a picture or two. The most worldly-minded bachelor on earth could desire nothing more cozy or attractive. — Letter to Pittsfield (Mass.) Eagle.