In 1867 there no patriotic societies like the Colonial Dames and Colonial Wars__Founders and Patriots__Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, but we had our Historical Society, and then our grandmothers and grandfathers were alive and they were (many of them) the children of the men and the women who had helped to establish the freedom of the thirteen English colonies and create the United States of America through and by the War of Independence.

Then in 1867 our Civil War was just over and we children had personal knowledge of the sorrow and desolation that Gettysburg and Malvern Hill had meant to many of our relatives and friends, so this old battlefield on Harlem Heights never failed to remind us of that 15th day of September, 1776, when Reed and Knowlton led the attack and gave up their lives with many unnamed heroes to gain the Liberty that was our heritage, so we trod quietly through the long grass and stopped beside the ruins of the rude fort, as before some altar where reverence is due, and then we walked down the hill to St. Mary's.

Our church stood in the middle of a square, the rectory on one side, the graveyard on the other, and just beyond was the new "Sheltering Arms." The "Sheltering Arms" was a home very recently built and now occupied by little boys and girls who had become fatherless and destitute through and by the Civil War.

Through all the warm weather the grass in our churchyard grew up and was unmolested, but in the autumn our sexton cut it down with his scythe, and then we could wander among the gray lichen-covered tombstones and read the many quaint inscriptions, the favorite and predominating declaration being an adverse compliment to the medical profession, the epitaphs announcing
that: "Afflictions sore, long time she (or he) bore and physicians were in vain."

St. Mary's was white and severely plain on the outside and square and bare within. The altar was unlike those one sees today, in fact, it looked more like an old-fashioned parlor with its table, horsehair sofa and chairs. The communion table was near the altar rail and, of course, there was the reading desk, and our pulpit had winding stairs that led up to it, and there was a top over the pulpit that looked like an opened motherly umbrella, but this pulpit was not used in 1867. Our rector, who had served the parish for many years, had rheumatism and so did not like the climb.

Our dear rector had a grandson, and the boy's father was a missionary, either by "Afric's sunny fountains or India's coral strands" (I have forgotten which), so the boy lived at the rectory with his grandfather and grandmother. It was terribly hard for this boy to keep still during service. His grandmother, who adored him, said he was always an angel up to the Litany, but after that he had to "act up."

Perhaps what I am going to tell you about this boy and his greatest chum will be more interesting fi I mention that in after years these two boys became, each in his individual way, very distinguished and honored citizens of the United States.

Well, the rector's grandson never could keep his mind on the sermon and so he would drop his prayer book and whittle a stick with his pocket knife, and on desperate occasions he would scrape the toes of his shoes up and down on the lower back of the pew in front of him. (The boys in New York in 1867 wore shoes with brass across the tips of the toes. I think they called them Ned School House Shoes, But I am not quite sure.)

One Sunday the rector's grandson outdid himself in all these mentioned particulars, so his grandfather told him that he was going to take him up in the altar with him on the following Sabbath and that he was to sit in the middle of the horsehair sofa and face the entire congregation. We all knew about it and the service was largely attended.

This grandson had a beautiful face and he really did look angelic that day. He was not a bit flustered and he acted just as if he had been in the habit of sitting there every Sunday since he could walk. He made all the responses very soberly, and when the sermon began, he folded his hands and looked so resigned.

After a while he got restless, then suddenly he became strangely quiet and he leaned away forward, for his best friend was talking to him on his fingers. The boy in the congregation had decided that he could do this with perfect safety, as his father was taking a polite, silent nap and his dear mother was evidently wrapped in the consideration of how she could best turn her solferino poplin and have it remade into a gown like that which the doctor's wife was wearing this morning. (The doctor's wife was the arbiter of fashion in Bloomingdale society.)

So the boy in the congregation spelled on his fingers to the rector's grandson in the altar: "What is the Text? I have to tell father or get no dinner." And the rector's grandson spelled back: "It is something about making preserves and redeeming us, but I don't know what kind."

It is needless to say that by this time the congregation was taking notice. Then the rector's grandson spelled: "What are you going to use for bait?" and the boy in the congregation spelled slowly and recklessly: "Oh! won't they? Say!! you hire a hall!! Vote for Horace Greeley and move your family west!!!"

I don't pretend to know what there was in this remark to cause such intense indignation in the rector's grandson's mind, but at all events the boy rose from the sofa and spelled into the very face of the congregation: "You say that again and I'll lick you after service behind the church."

Our dear old rector felt the unusual indifference of his flock and he knew that the boy was the cause. He stopped his sermon, took off his spectacles, laid them on his desk and turned around just in time to witness the challenge. Not a suggestion of anything out of the ordinary was indicated as he walked quietly over to the sofa, took the young hopeful by both shoulders and gave him such a vigorous shaking that he bounced up and down on the seat.

Having fulfilled this duty, the old gentleman returned to the reading desk, put on his spectacles and resumed his sermon as if nothing had happened more unusual than his stopping to take a swallow of water.

Away up at the front end of the church, over the front door, was the gallery, where the little organ lived and where the choir sang. Perhaps it was because Miss Audubon, the daughter of the great ornithologist, was the organist, but it seemed to me, as a little girl, a birdlike harmony of notes and voices. I am sure that we children all believed that our music was quite as acceptable to heaven as a great cathedral choir.

The church faded into insignificance beside our Sunday School, which convened after the morning service, and its memories are many.

I recall the little old Englishman in the grown-up people's Bible class, who, when we sang "Chide Mildly the Erring," always rendered it, "Chide Mildly the Herring," which was particularly amusing, because he kept a fish shop in Manhattanville on week days.

Miss Mary was the teacher of the younger children. She had been the one teacher in the Bloomingdale village school since she was fifteen, and when we were children her hair was quite white, but no one thought of Miss Mary as old, because she understood boys' ways and girls' fancies.

The old church has gone its way into memory land. It was not needed anymore. Manhattanville has become a congested part of a great city and in place of the fragrance of flowers and the songs of birds, old Bloomingdale has lost itself in the roar of machinery and the ceaseless tread of hurrying feet.

The old families whose summer homes were in Bloomingdale in 1867 have long since answered "Adsum" to death's roll call and for many years they have been "far beyond the twilight judgment of this world and all its mists and obscurities," but there are many of the yesterday's children left, white-haired men and women now, and although scattered far and wide. I am sure that now and then they wander back to old St. Mary's and recall how the yesterday boys sang:

"Whither, pilgrim, are you going,
going each with staff in hand?"

and how the yesterday girls answered:

"We are going on a journey.
Going at the King's command;"

and then how the boys and girls made the room jubilant with the chorus:

"Over hill and plain and valley
We are going to His Palace.
We are going to His Palace,
Going to that Better Land."

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