The doctor's pew had a pink and blue Brussels on it; the lawyer's, striped stair-carpeting; the Browns from Deerwander sported straw matting and were not abashed; while the Greens, the Whites, the Blacks and the Greys displayed floor coverings as dissimilar as their names.
"I never noticed it before!" exclaimed Maria Sharp, "but it ain't Christian, that floor! it's heathenish and ungodly!" "For mercy's sake, don't swear, Maria," said Mrs.Miller nervously.
"We've done our best, and let's hope that folks will look up and not down.

It isn't as if they were going to set in the chandelier; they'll have something else to think about when Nancy gets her hemlock branches and white carnations in the pulpit vases.

This morning my Abner picked off two pinks from the plant I've been nursing in my dining-room for weeks, trying to make it bloom for Christmas.

I slapped his hands good, and it's been haunting me ever since to think I had to correct him the day before Christmas--Come, Lobelia, we must be hurrying!" "One thing comforts me," exclaimed the Widow Buzzell, as she took her hammer and tacks preparatory to leaving; "and that is that the Methodist meetin'-house ain't got any carpet at all." "Mrs.Buzzell, Mrs.Buzzell!" interrupted the minister's wife, with a smile that took the sting from her speech.

"It will be like punishing little Abner Miller; if we think those thoughts on Christmas Eve, we shall surely be haunted afterward." "And anyway," interjected Maria Sharp, who always saved the situation, "you just wait and see if the Methodists don't say they'd rather have no carpet at all than have one that don't go all over the floor.