Page:Anne Bradstreet and her time.djvu/203

vate and purely personal experience too common; the other, resenting the least encroachment on the Christian liberty they had sought and proposed to hold. By October, the messengers had decided to compromise, some form of temporary church was decided upon, and the permanent one went up swiftly as hands could work. It had a bell, though nobody knows from whence obtained, and it owned two galleries, one above another, the whole standing till 1711, when a new and larger one became necessary, the town records describing, what must have been a building of some pretension, "50 feet long, 45 feet wide, and 24 feet between joints"; and undoubtedly a source of great pride to builders and congregation. No trace of it at present remains, save the old graveyard at the side, "an irregular lot, sparsely covered with ancient moss-grown stones, in all positions, straggling, broken and neglected, and overrun with tall grass and weeds." But in May, as the writer stood within the crumbling wall, the ground was thick with violets and "innocents," the grass sprung green and soft and thick, and the blue sky bent over it, as full of hope and promise as it seemed to the eyes that two hundred years before, had looked through tears, upon its beauty. From her window Mistress Bradstreet could count every slab, for the home she came to is directly opposite, and when detained there by the many illnesses she suffered in later days, she could, with opened windows, hear the psalm lined out, and even, perhaps, follow the argument of the preacher. But before this ample and generous home arose among the elms, there was the usual period of discomfort and even hardship. Simon Bradstreet was