Two other edifices succeeded each other on the ground where the first one stood, and from the tower of the last the Holland bell, imported in 1794 from Amsterdam, used formerly to ring three times a day to notify the good people of their meal hours. In those far-off days sober and respectable people did things in an orderly and customary way. It required unheard-of temerity to break away from the honoured traditions of a neighbourhood, and breakfast, dine, or sup at unheardof hours. The church sanctioned the established order and lent its bell for the promotion of sobriety and regular habits. A writer in 1826 notes a modern innovation when he says that "at present the town clock regulates the kitchen." A custom observed among the fathers of the church

448 The Hudson River

deserves to be kept in remembrance, like a quaint Dutch picture. Between the sounding of the first and last bell for church service the grey-haired sexton hobbled from door to door, carrying an ivory-headed cane, with which he rapped loudly three times and cried, "Church time!" For this he was paid by each householder a yearly fee of two shillings. Notices of all kinds, whether of funerals, weddings, or christenings, were given to the sexton, who took them to the clerk ; and the latter, having a bamboo rod with a split end kej^t for that very purpose, stuck the paper in the slit and jjassed it up to the domine, who was perched overhead in a half-globe pulpit, canopied by a sounding board. "The minister wore (out of the pulpit) a black silk mantle, cocked hat, and a neckband with linen cambrick bcffy on his breast; for cravats were then uncanonical/' The first psalm, we are informed, "used to be set with moveable figures, suspended on three sides of the pulpit, so that all, as they entered, might prepare for the lofty notes.