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waxed powerful, thrust many a sly dig in the ribs and back of the luckless wight who chanced to sit in front of and below him on the pulpit stairs. Many a dried kernel of Indian corn was surreptitiously snapped at the head of an unwary neighbor, and many a sly word was whispered and many a furtive but audible
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elicited when the dread tithingman was
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and administering
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Sported and played and by Indecent Gestures and Wry Faces caused laughter and misbehavior in the Beholders. The girls were not one whit better behaved. One of
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reported that
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Tabatha Morgus of s'd Norwich Did on ye 24th day February it being Sabbath on ye Lordes Day, prophane ye Lordes Day in ye meeting house of ye west society in ye time of ye forenoone service on s'd Day by her rude and Indecent Behaviour in Laughing and Playing in ye time of ye s'd Service which Doinges of ye s'd Tabatha is against ye peace of our Sovereign Lord ye King, his Crown and Dignity. Wanton Tabatha had to pay three shilings sixpence for her ill-timed mid-winter frolic. Perhaps she laughed to try to keep warm. Those who laughed at the misdemeanors of others were fined as well. Deborah Bangs, a young girl, in 1755 paid a fine of five shillings for
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Larfing in the Wareham Meeting House in time of Public Worship, and a boy at the same time, for the same offence, paid a fine of ten shillings. He may have laughed louder and longer. In a law-book in which Jonathan Trumbull recorded the minor cases which he tried as justice of the peace, was found this entry:
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His Majesties Tithing man entered complaint against Jona. and Susan Smith, that on the Lords Day during Divine Service, they did _smile_.
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whittled, too, and cut the woodwork and benches of the meeting-house in those early days, just as their descendants have ever since hacked and cut the benches and desks in country schoolhouses,--though how they ever eluded the vigilant eye and ear of the ubiquitous tithingman long enough to whittle will ever remain an unsolved mystery of the past. This early forerunning evidence of what has become a characteristic Yankee trait and habit was so annoyingly and extensively exhibited in Medford, in 1729, that an order was passed to prosecute and punish
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That there be some sticks set up in various places in the meeting-house, and fit persons by them and _to use them_.
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Desired to use it with clemency. However, if any boy proved
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he could be
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before the elders; and perhaps he would rather have been treated as were Hartford boys by cruel Hartford church folk, who ordered that if
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Parson Chauncey, of Durham, when a boy misbehaved in meeting, and was
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by the tithingman, often stopped in his sermon, called the godless young offender by name, and asked him to come to the parsonage the next day. Some very tender and beautiful lessons were taught to these Durham boys at these Monday morning interviews, and have descended to us in tradition; and the good Mr. Chauncey stands out a shining light of Christian patience and forbearance at a time when every other New England minister, from John Cotton down, preached and practised the stern repression and sharp correction of all children, and chanted together in solemn chorus,
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Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.