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is an institution up to the present day in the few thickly wooded districts that remain. A load of wood was usually given by each male church-member, and he was expected to deliver the gift at the door of the parsonage. Sixty loads a year were a fair allowance, but the number sometimes ran up to one hundred, as was furnished to Parson Chauncey, of Durham. Rev. Mr. Parsons, of East Hadley, was the greatest wood-consumer among the old ministers of whom I have chanced to read. Good, cheerful, roaring fires must the Parsons family have kept; for in 1774 he had eighty loads of wood supplied to him; in 1751 he was furnished with one hundred loads; in 1763 the amount had increased to one hundred and twenty loads, when the parish was glad to make a compromise with their extravagant shepherd and pay him instead £13 6s 8d annually in addition to his regular salary, and let him buy or cut his own wood. Firewood at that time in that town was worth only the expense of cutting and hauling to the house. A
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of wood contained about three quarters of a cord, and until after the Revolutionary War was worth in the vicinity of Hadley only three shillings a load. The minister's loads were expected to be always of good
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One thrifty parson, while watching a farmer unload his yearly contribution, remarked,
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Isn't that pretty soft wood?
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And don't we sometimes have pretty soft preaching? was the answer. It was well that the witty retort was not made a century earlier; for the speaker would have been punished by a fine, since they fined so sharply anything that savored of
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In some towns a day was appointed which was called a
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when it was ordered that all the wood be delivered at the parson's door; and thus the farmers formed a cheerful gathering, at which the minister furnished plentiful flip, or grog, to the wood-givers. Rev. Stephen Williams, of Longmeadow, never failed to make a note of the
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in his diary. He wrote on Jan. 25, 1757,
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Neighbors sledded wood for me and shewed a Good Humour. I rejoice at it. The Lord bless them that are out of humour and brot no wood. In other towns the wood did not always come in when it was wanted or needed, and winter found the parsonage woodshed empty. Rev. Mr. French, of Andover, gave out this notice in his pulpit one Sunday in November:
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I will write two discourses and deliver them in this meeting-house on Thanksgiving Day, _provided I can manage to write them without a fire_.
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On his way home his sleigh, unfortunately, upset, and the gathering darkness could not conceal from the eyes of the astonished townspeople, who ran to