Page:The Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924).pdf/121

Rh same capacious quarter small soapstones were drawn to be re-heated for the cold drive home in the early winter dusk.

The light, much weather-stained walls, patched and cracked, were brought into bold relief by the heavy mahogany pulpit and the really immense red damask curtain dropped for a background. Whoever conceived and executed the plan of that end of the meeting-house must have been fresh from a mince-pie dream of Solomon's temple. The pulpit was so high the minister was obliged to infer the effect of his sermon chiefly from the tops of the heads and bonnets before him, to the exclusion of more normal and favorable angles for sympathetic observation of human expression. Dr. Dwight, a nephew of President Dwight, of Yale College, held those ramparts of mahogany, accepting the call in 1850, on condition of a few practical changes to the reverend old building.

The concessions he begged were that the tin kettles hung from the long stovepipes that ran from the stoves down the side aisles to the chimneys in the opposite walls—kettles set to catch the black creosote that dripped from the pipe joints—might be abolished by some ingenuity; and that the big iron catches on the front doors be replaced by some design compelling less racket in the opening and closing. Also that there be some green baize doors, to be drawn when "the house," as everybody called it, was filling. Most people were on the whole not displeased by the changes, but one or two prominent persons exclaimed against such iconoclasms; remarking that we "were getting too refined." Dr. Dwight also influenced the congregation to remain seated during the last hymn, instead of rising and facing the choir. It was an old habit