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This great sound-killer was decorated with carved and painted rosettes, as in the Shrewsbury meeting-house; with carved ivy leaves, as in Farmington; with a carved bunch of grapes or pomegranates, as in the Leicester church; with letters indicating a date, as,
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M. R. H. for March, in the Hadley church; with appropriate mottoes and texts, such as the words,
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Holiness is the Lords, in the Windham church; with cords and tassels, with hanging fringes, with panels and balls; and thus formed a great ornament to the church, and a source of honest pride to the church members. The clumsy sounding-board was usually hung by a slight iron rod, which looked smaller still as it stretched up to the high, raftered roof, and always appeared to be entirely insufficient to sustain the great weight of the heavy machine. In Danvers, one of these useless though ornamental structures hung within eighteen inches of the preacher's nose, on a slender bar thirty feet in length; and every Sunday the children gazed with fascinated anticipation at the slight rod and the great hexagonal extinguisher, thinking and hoping that on this day the sounding-board would surely drop, and