HARVARD KNABE FIFTY YEARS BEFORE THE PUBLIC upon their excellence alone have attained an UNPURCHASED PREEMINENCE, which establishes them as unequalled in TONE, TOUCH, WORKMANSHIP, AND DURABILITY. Warerooms: 112 Fifth Avenue, New York 204 & 208 Baltimore St.. Baltimore. Gold and Silver Production-The Newark Bank Failure-The Assassin Guiteau-Commercial SpeculationThe Spelling Reform. Literature and Art: Sabine's Falsehood-No Gentleman-Barbarine-The Story of Four Acorns-Bertha's Baby-Country Byways-Water-Lilies, and other Poems-Garfield's Words-Home Ballads-Martin Luther and his WorkKing's Mountain and its Heroes-The Fate of Madam La Tour-The Bivouac of the Dead-Campaigns of the Civil War Home and Society: Deluded Mothers-Training the Child-Failure-Family Courtesy Pot-Pourri: Incidents of Camp and Field Life-Fish Yarns-An Anecdote of the American Stage-A Judicial Decision Extraordinary-Day and Martin's-Miscarried Notes. 562 . 565 570 - 575 VOL. XVII. DECEMBER, 1881. A FAMOUS OLD CHURCH. By H. W. FRENCH. CHRIST CHURCH, on Salem street, Boston, is the famous old North church of Paul Revere. It is the oldest ecclesiastical and, with the exception of the old State House, the oldest public building in the city. And now it is going to decay, they say, spiritually, bodily, and financially-those who are really more ready to have it die than live. They are not an unimportant element, these destructionists, in the great provincial city called the Hub, but are almost a physical necessity, to counterbalance that other persistent passion for the preservation of antiquities. Were it not for this contra mania, Boston of a century or more ago would long since have been pickled and laid upon the shelf, to remain just as it was, for centuries and centuries yet to come. It is much the same feeling that a few years ago declared that the Old South must go. But while the Old South has indeed been dismantled till the bare shell and the angular spire are really all that remain,that illustrious pile of brick for which the illustrious ladies of Boston are still vigorously fighting,-Christ church, though older by several years, has changed very little since the spirited communicants of '76 turned out their too Tory pastor and locked the church doors, suspending worship for the time in order to keep him out; since the British officers held that famous council of war under its shadow; since Lafayette stood before the altar, and the signal-lights shone in the belfry. The little colonial grass-plot is still green before it, and the famous colonial cemetery is on Copp's Hill, just beyond. In fashionable carnivals of authors, sacred fairs, dignified mask balls, and various other solemn and gilt-edged entertainments, such as the exhibition of the divine discoveries of Edison, the friends o VOL. XVII.-31. AMONG THE BELLS. No. 120. the Old South have struggled to redeem it from destruction; but in the act they have surely reft it of every vestige of sacerdotal dignity; while with the other the historic chime still cheers the heart, the historic organ still lifts the soul, the old chancel still echoes to the voice of prayer from the same altar, and still the belfry arch of the North church spire is a signal-light over a living and active house of God. Chronic grumblers said that the Old South must go, because it stood too near the busy bustle of the modern world. The North church they communicants. To-day there are over one hundoom because it stands too far away from it. But what friends have so eagerly done for the Old South, circumstances are doing better for her elder sister. The class of residents has been perceptibly improving about the church that a THE COLONIAL BELL-RINGER. few years ago had reached a very low standard, offering little support to the congregation, and making the ways of access exceedingly disagreeable. In 1874 the church had already begun its rejuvenation, and it was then announced with pride that the parish numbered one hundred families, and the church one hundred and twenty dred and twenty families in the parish and more than one hundred and sixty communicants. There have been one hundred and sixty-two confirmations during the eleven years' rectorship of the Rev. Dr. Burroughs. And as for the external church, with its solid old walls of colonial brick, two and a half feet thick, laid in that durable style called "English bond," with the north wall carefully protected by a clapboard sheathing, it is as young to-day as a century and a half ago. The time to visit this ecclesiastical veteran is when it is completely caparisoned in its reliquiæ and traditive habiliments and the altar is garnished with that famous service of plate that alone is worth a visit to Christ church to see. The gray brick walls and the angular tower surmounted by its woodwork spire stretching one hundred feet upward will attract your attention long before you reach the spot. Unfortunately, the woodwork about the belfry tower is not the same as when Robert Newman held the lanterns as directed by Paul Revere, for in the terrific gale of 1804 the spire was blown down and went through the roof of a low house standing beside it. It is precisely the same in its model, however. The doorway is not broad, for it was built in those days when narrow was the gate and straight the way that led to life. It was almost too narrow, indeed, to meet the demands of fashion in the period of immense hoop-skirts that has intervened between that time and this. A Boston wag, well-known in his day and generation, was sitting on the curb by the church, one Sunday morning, looking toward the old cemetery, and thinking, perhaps, of the rhyme of the sexton, when his eyes were directed to a lady who was evidently suffering a specific mental doubt as to her ability to enter the church. Thereupon he prepared a revised version of the old song, beginning "Nigh to a church, in her robes arrayed, Too narrow! too narrow, alas! for me.' |