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"I was having a most lovely little doze during the Second Lesson, or whatever they call it, when a most officious young woman three or four pews away took up an enormous Bible, found the place, squeaked down the aisle, and thrust it under my nose. I had to hold it up for fifty-seven verses," she concluded pathetically. "Did you go and speak to Sir James after the service?" I inquired. "No.
So by many a byway I went northward to Minstead in Malwood, where I found a most curious church, rather indeed a house than a church, with dormer windows in the roof, an enormous three-decker pulpit within, galleries, and two great pews, one with a fireplace, and I know not what other quaint rubbish of the eighteenth century.
She had never seen the church so crowded: on the communion table and on the pulpit steps sat people; they stood in the aisles, they thronged in the pews, and outside the whole road was packed with people who could not enter. The sisters, however, found places; for them the crowd moved aside. "Fredrika," said her sister, "look at the people!" And Mamsell Fredrika looked and looked.
Gabriel Street Presbyterian Church and he personally subscribed £3 a year towards the minister's stipend; he occupied pews No. 6 and No. 47. He was one of a committee of three formed to purchase the land on which the General Hospital now stands; he was chairman of the committee which superintended the construction of the Hospital and was later chosen as its first president.
Lancaster supported Virginia's suspicions by memories of young men who had suddenly and mysteriously appeared, to ask her to accept them as boarders, and young attorneys who had their places in church changed to the pews that surrounded the Lancaster pew.
All the pews are rented to members of the congregation by the year, except the outer row of seats along the three walls; but these are generally all occupied in one or several minutes after the doors open. The choir files in at 10:25. A "voluntary" by the organist at 10:30, and by the choir at 10:32, during which time Mr. Beecher comes in, jerks his hat behind a boquet stand, and takes his seat.
There is at present a demand for seats worth from 7s. to 10s. each; but those which can be obtained for 1s. are not much thought of, and nobody will look on one side at the pews which are offered for nothing.
Down the centre of the kirk ran a long table, covered with pure white linen, bleached in the June showers and wonderfully ironed, whereon a stain must not be found, for along that table would pass the holy bread and wine. Across the aisle on either side, the pews were filled with stalwart men, solemn beyond their wonted gravity, and kindly women in simple finery, and rosy-cheeked bairns.
Each of the fifteen women present selected a block of seats, preferably one in which her own was situated, and all fell busily to work. "There is nobody here to clean the right-wing pews," said Nancy Wentworth, "so I will take those for my share." "You're not making a very wise choice, Nancy," and the minister's wife smiled as she spoke.
A few unconscious children "played at party" in the pews, setting out on leaves or bits of bark their luncheon, broken into fragments, and serving in acorn cups cold water for tea.
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