dom called the "meeting-house," but is known as the First Congregational Church. The slips are sold annually, at auction, the proceeds being applied to the payment of the pastor's salary.
In 1870 a commodious chapel, harmonizing in style and communicating with the church, was built in its rear. It is here that we must look, if we would mark the evolution of church life, and ask if it corresponds to the growth and expansion of these successive temples. There are two large Sunday-school rooms and a church parlor used on Sundays for the infant class. Much of the energy and activity of the church is given to the early "bending of the twig" in the right way. An astute woman, born early in this century, was wont to say, "I was born in the wrong time. When I was young everything was for the parents; children were not allowed to sit down, no matter how long they stood, till after the parents, etc., etc. Now I have a daughter, and everything is for the children." Certainly there is a contrast between shutting the children up in "high, square play-houses," out of sight and hearing of parents, and having them carefully taught by the most intelligent members of the church. But the innovation which would astonish our great-grandmothers most, and very likely be thought a desecration by them, is the church kitchen, a most important auxiliary to the social life of the church. There are several active missionary societies, and societies for various forms of Christian work. The young people hold their social meetings in the parlor, and there is an active corps of the younger members of the church, who make it a duty to seek out those who need a kindly word or a cheerful influence to brighten their lives, and draw them in where they can feel that they are indeed brothers and sisters in Christ.
Such are the changes in the hundred and thirty years since Rev. Thomas Allen came to preach in the little old first meeting-house at Pittsfield. It is a history not less interesting, but more, because it has its like in the history of a hundred of our old New England churches.
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