Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 February 1908 — Long-Winded Preachers. [ARTICLE]

Long-Winded Preachers.

The seventeenth-century puritan preachers talked for two hours or more, not “by the clock,” but by the hour-glass. At least one of them tilrned the glass to humorous account. He found himself no further than the middle of the sermon when the sand* had run out. "Drunkenness” was his subject, and, reversing the horologe, “Let’s have another glass,” said he. Sir Roger L’Estrange tells of a parish clerk who sat patiently until the preacher was three-quarters through his second glass, and the majority of his hearers had quietly left the church. Rising at a convenient pause, he asked the minister to close the church door when he had done, “and push the key under it, as he and the few that remained were about to retire.”