quickly then
The seats came down with heavy rattle,
Like musketry in fiercest battle."

A few of the old-time meeting-houses, with high pulpit, square pews, and
deacons' seats, still remain in New England. The interior of the Rocky
Hill meeting-house at Salisbury, Massachusetts, is here shown. It fully
illustrates the words of the poet:--

"Old house of Puritanic wood
Through whose unpainted windows streamed
On seats as primitive and rude
As Jacob's pillow when he dreamed,
The white and undiluted day--"

The seats were carefully and thoughtfully assigned by a church committee
called the Seating Committee, the best seats being given to older
persons of wealth and dignity who attended the church. Whittier wrote of
this custom:--

"In the goodly house of worship, where in order due and fit,
As by public vote directed, classed and ranked the people sit.
Mistress first and good wife after, clerkly squire before the clown,
From the brave coat lace-embroidered to the gray coat shading down."

Many of the plans for "seating the meeting-house" have been preserved;
the pews and their assigned occupants are clearly designated. A copy is
shown of one now in Deerfield Memorial Hall.

In the early meeting-houses men and women sat on separate sides of the
meeting-house, as in Quaker meetings till our own time. Sometimes a
group of young women or of young men were permitted to sit in the
gallery together. Little girls sat beside their mothers or on footstools
at their feet, or sometimes on the gallery stairs; and I have heard of a
little cage or frame to hold Puritan babies in meeting. Boys did not sit
with their families, but were in groups by themselves, usually on the
pulpit and gallery stairs, where tithing-men watched over them. In
Salem, in 1676, it was ordered by the town that "all ye boyes of ye
towne are appointed to sitt upon ye three paire of stairs in ye
meeting-house, and Wm. Lord is appointed to look after ye boys upon ye
pulpitt stairs."

In Stratford the tithing-man was ordered to "watch over youths of
disorderly carriage, and see they behave themselves comelie, and use
such raps and blows as is in his discretion meet." In Durham any
misbehaving boy was punished publicly after the service was over. We
would nowadays scarcely seat twenty or thirty active boys together in
church if we wished them to be models of attention and dignified
behavior; but after the boy