Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 24, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 September 1901 — THREE COLLECT FOR CHURCH. [ARTICLE]

THREE COLLECT FOR CHURCH.

Curious Proceedings by Primitive Holland Village Congregation. A Sunday among the staid burghers of Holland gave Clifton Johnson an opportunity to see three church collections taken up in rapid succession. He had asked to be directed to a characteristic country church in arf outlying village. As a result, he went by train from Leyden to a little place where there was a church as severe in its -simplicity as the meeting-houses of co- ' lonial New England. It resembles them, too, in its chilliness, for there was no attempt at warmihg it, and the people were dependent upon foot stoves of the old-fashioned type that was beginning to go out of vogue in American 100 years ago. Several scores of these little boxes stood in the church empty, neatly piled against the wall, ready to be filled with smoldering peat and supplied to the worshipers as they came in. When the time for the collection arrived a man started out from the ralledoff space before the pulpit, which space was occupied by the.elders, and with a black pocket at the end of an eight-foot pole proceeded to his tank. With this accessory he could reach to the end of a pew, only he had to be careful not to hit some worshiper with the butt end while making his short reaches. Everybody In the congregation put In something and the collector made a little bow every time a coin jingled in the pocket. He had gone about halfway round when another elder started out with another bag and pole. The writer wondered he had not started before. His purpose, however, was not to help his fellow collector finish his work. Indeed he started just where the other had begun and passed the bag to the same people, and everyone dropped in a coin as faithfully as he had done the first time. Nor -was this the end, for the second collector had no sooner got a good start than a third stepped out from the pulpit front with bag and pole and went as industriously over the ground as the two others had done. He was just as successful as his predecessors. Things were getting serious. The stranger had put silver in the first bag, but fearing that the collection might continue indefinitely he dropped copper coins in the second and third bags, and was not a little relieved when he saw that the rest of the men in the elders’ seats kept their places.

Later he learned the secret of the process. The first man collected for the minister, the second for the church and the third for the poor. As each member of the congregation contributed one Holland cent to each bag it seemed as if a little calculation might have saved much collecting. The sum of the three deposits would, in our money, be about 1 1-5 cents for each person. At the moment when the bags began to pass the minister gave out a hymn, but the congregation finished singing it long before the collection was over. There did not, however, ensue one of those silences during which you can hear pins drop and flies buzz, for the minister ignored the collectors, who were still making their halting progress through the aisles, and promptly began his sermon.—Youth's Companion.