Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. II.djvu/177

Rh to look at it. We saw some pale yellow, two-storied wooden houses, built in good proportion, and with tiled roofs, standing on green slopes, surrounded at some distance by yet higher hills, all covered with wood. It was a very lovely and romantically Idyllian scene. The views from the houses were extensive, and the glass panes in the windows were large. Life at New Lebanon did not look to me so gloomy or so contracted as I had imagined. We saw some of the Shaker brothers out in the fields making hay, and others again reaping, as I supposed.

Yesterday, Sunday, we were present at divine service in the Shaker church together with many other strangers. The church is a large hall which would easily accommodate from two to three thousand persons; it has very large windows, but not the slightest ornament; it is very lofty and light. I was, on entering it, astonished by the sight of a number of corpse-like female figures, attired almost like shrouded-corpses, sitting on benches placed along the wall, rigid and immovable as mummies; they were the Shaker women. The sight of them was really sad, and would have been much more so had not there been a certain refreshment in the very novelty of the scene. Where all ladies are dressed according to the same mode, any who may vary from it become interesting from that very cause.

The Shaker sisters were however all dressed alike, in white or grey striped petticoats, high-heeled shoes, white handkerchiefs so pinned over the bosom as to conceal its natural form, and indeed the style of the attire seemed intended to make the whole body look like a tree-stem, without any curved outlines. They wore on their heads a little cap like that of the Quaker women, the plain border of which sat close to the face. I observed that these caps were very much blued, which still more increased the death-like hue of the countenance. The costume, at least the head-gear, was not unlike that of the