The Church Gets a Stove
Created | Updated Mar 14, 2021
Now tell us that PT Barnum wasn't the original Tom Sawyer.
The Church Gets a Stove
Like most people in Connecticut in those days, I was brought up to attend church regularly on Sunday, and long before I could read I was a prominent scholar in the Sunday School. My good mother taught me my lessons in the New Testament and the Catechism, and my every effort was directed to win one of those 'Rewards of Merit,' which promised to pay the bearer one mill, so that ten of those prizes amounted to one cent, and one hundred of them, which might be won by faithful assiduity every Sunday for two years, would buy a Sunday School book worth ten cents. Such were the magnificent rewards held out to the religious ambition of youth in those days.
There was but one church, or 'meeting-house,' in Bethel, which all attended, sinking all differences of creed in the Presbyterian faith. The old meeting-house had neither steeple nor bell, and was a plain edifice, comfortable enough in summer, but my teeth chatter even now when I think of the dreary, cold, freezing hours we passed in that place in winter. A stove in a meeting-house in those days would have been a sacrilegious innovation. The sermons were from an hour and a half to two hours long, and through these the congregation would sit and shiver till they really merited the title the profane gave them of 'blue skins.' Some of the women carried a 'foot-stove,' consisting of a small square tin box in a wooden frame, the sides perforated, and in the interior there was a small square iron dish, which contained a few live coals covered with ashes. These stoves were usually replenished just before meeting-time at some neighbour's, near the meeting-house.
After many years of shivering and suffering, one of the brethren had the temerity to propose that the church should be warmed with a stove. His impious proposition was voted down by an overwhelming majority. Another year came around, and in November the stove question was again brought up. The excitement was immense. The subject was discussed in the village stores and in the juvenile debating club; it was prayed over in conference ; and, finally, in general 'society's meeting,' in December, the stove was carried by a majority of one, and was introduced into the meeting-house. On the first Sunday thereafter, two ancient maiden ladies were so oppressed by the dry and heated atmosphere occasioned by the wicked innovation, that they fainted away and were carried out into the cool air, where they speedily returned to consciousness, especially when they were informed that owing to the lack of two lengths of pipe, no fire had yet been made in the stove. The next Sunday was a bitter cold day, and the stove, filled with well seasoned hickory, was a great gratification to the many, and displeased only a few.
From Struggles and Triumphs, or, The Recollections of P.T. Barnum, 1882.
