December, 1910 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



467 



there is a good South Salem guide 

 there is time for anecdote on the 

 way to the old Presbyterian 

 church. For instance, the person 

 who planted the elms along the 

 village street had, what everybody 

 needs to be agreeable, a favorite 

 vice among his many virtues. It 

 was not a very criminal vice, 

 being merelv a great love for 

 tobacco, bvit it seemed considerable 

 to him. At least he could not 

 bring himself to face the fatal word 

 in the book of his expenses and 

 wrote it backward as ' ' occabot. 



Several of the parsons were 

 characters, and one of the wives 

 too. She longed for a new coat of 

 paint for the parsonage and so told 

 the trustees, who gravely pointed 

 out that paint was a worldly vanity, 

 beneath the notice of the pious. 

 "Why," retorted the lady, "do you 



wear two buttons on the back of your coat?" The trustee 

 thus addressed could find no better reason than that the 

 coat "looked better" so. The minister's wife drew the 

 deadly parallel and had her house painted forthwith. 



The Presbyterian church is like many other country 

 churches, white and steepled. But few can show a grave- 

 yard so quaint, or a collection of deceased virtues so varied 

 and impressive. From one of the earliest settlers who 



Sign of the Horse and Hound Tavern 



died in 178 1 at the age of 83, 

 and was "a person very Emenant 

 to promote the gospel and 

 the Publick good" down through 

 generations, the admirable qualities 

 of the villagers and their ghostly 

 warnings to posterity stand arrayed 

 to interest the antiquarian and the 

 moralist. 



St. John's, the Episcopal Church, 

 is graveyardless, but it is so pretty a 

 little stone building that it may be 

 forgiven the omission. And it had 

 a hard struggle through the years, for 

 only within sixty or so has the service 

 been read at South Salem since it was 

 discontinued during the Revolution. 

 And that, by the way, was an event 

 that was dramatic and tragic. Mr. 

 Epenetus Townsend was the priest 

 when the revolution burst, and 

 though he was on the wrong 

 side he stood with a sturdiness that 

 commands admiration. Although a detachment of Conti- 

 nental soldiers, known to hate the church as well as the 

 king of England, entered the little building one Sunday 

 armed, the priest rose and began to read the collect for 

 the sovereign as usual. Instantly the soldiers were on their 

 feet with pointed bayonets, their officer bidding him to 

 stop. He turned and left the reading desk, never to enter 

 again. He was for some time a prisoner at Fishkill, and 



The Horse and Hound Tavern 



