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99 14 The Church Between our house and the church was but one dwelling, a large frame building, then, for awhile, occupied by the Slocum family. Behind it was another dwelling that fronted on Church Street. Our lot had a back gate, so that my brothers and sisters might go through by that way to the public schoolhouse at a little distance. By the way, the Syracuse public institutions were now attaining a degree of excellence of which our citizens were justly proud and which rendered private educational enterprises of less account. My older sister, Julia, had now become a young woman [of] whose loveliness of character I could not say too much. She was of a gentle, affectionate nature, with a bright intellect which was expanding well under the direction of my mother. She was away at her boarding school much of her time and her vacations at home were special treats to us all. The meetinghouse was as yet unfinished and only the ample “conference meetingroom,” in the rear, was available. It was really a well-finished and handsome room and the church was in a prosperous condition. The pastor who had ruled in the old affair, a Rev. Mr. Taggart, had left us and we had succeeded in replacing him with Rev. Robert R. Raymond, a gentleman of exceptional ability and culture. He was an eloquent preacher, a fine elocutionist, and his social qualities were of a high order. It was our good fortune that he was not at first prepared to bring on his family, no proper residence having been secured for them, and during nearly six months he was an inmate of our own family. Among his accomplishments was vocal music, for which he possessed a rich tenor voice, and it was our delight, and his, to get him seated at the piano. His repertoire included all of Moore’s Melodies, a long list of old English songs, Jacobite and other, and 100 the church I then heard a great many grand old songs which have somehow been left behind, nowadays. There was much music in them. Of course, the church had a Sunday school and it had a library and I was installed as librarian. Was I not a clerk in a bookstore and did I not know just what to do with books? At all events, I discovered that a certain line of fiction, including Edwards on the Mill, and Baxter’s Saint’s Rest, appeared to be as fresh and new as when, years before, they had first made their interesting way into that library, while another kind of literature was sufficiently thumbed to call for new copies at an early day. The cost of completing the church edifice appeared to grow from day to day and my father’s responsibilities were increasing upon his hands, for there were church promissory notes out upon which his name appeared as an endorser and it was hurting his credit at the banks. He was a good manager of such things, however, and all seemed to be going along pretty well. It may be that one of the early difficulties of that meetinghouse was pigeons. I had undertaken to add them to my stock of feathered curiosities and had taken a little back loft over the woodhouse as my dovecote. It should have been enough to satisfy any reasonable birds, but the perverse creatures had religious tendencies. Moreover, they had explored the steeple and had found the small, unglazed apertures at the foot of the upper needle. In they had gone and all the upper part of our proud spire, before long, all the steeple above the belfry, was little better than a pigeon roost. So was the roof of the building, and so were the roofs of other houses nearby and I was commanded to make an end of my enterprise. I did so with regret, but I shot forty-four of my own birds as they flew over our yard, every one of them falling within our fence. More help than mine was required to finish the work of finally obliterating them from the steeple but the task was fully accomplished and I gave up the pigeon business. The garden, from the outset, was a special field of enterprise. There had been a good one behind the old house in Homer, and this was to be made the equal of that. It soon became, for its size, greatly superior...

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