A ROAMING-MEETING-HOUSE.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2115, 14 October 1875, Page 4

A ROAMING-MEETING-HOUSE.

Max Adeler writes as follows :—" Some of our Methodist brethren down here are a good deal bothered. They sold the site on which they had their meeting-house and bought a better one up the street. The building was a large frame edifice, and they determined to move it. So they put rollers under it and worked it out.in to the street, and as soon as it was off the ground the purchaser of the lot be^an to build a dwelling-house on the site. It was slow working pushing the church along the street, and before they got far somebody discovered that the title of the new site was not good, and so the bargain was annulled. The next day the brethren went plunging around town trying to buy another site", but no one would sell them one, and on the following morning the supervisors got an order from the Court requiring the meeting-house to be removed fr< m the public street within twenty-four hours. The brethren were nearly wild about it, and they begged old Brindley to let them run the concern in on his vacant lot temporarily until they could look round. But Brindley is a Baptist, and he said he felt it would be wrong for him to do anything to promote a church that believed in sprinkling. Then they ran the meeting house out on the turnpike beyond the town, whereupon the turnpike company notified them that its charges would be £8 a day for toll. So they hauled it back again, and while going down the hill it broke loose, plunged through the fence of DrMackey's garden, and brought up on top of his asparagus bed. He is an Episcopalian, and he sued the meeting-house for damages, and the sheriff levied upon the meetinghouse. The brethren paid the bill and dragged the building out again. They wanted to put it in the.courthduse yard, but the judge, who is Presbyterian, said that, after examining the statutes carefully, he could find no law allowing a Methodist meeting-house to be located in that place. In despair the brethren ran the building down to the river shaw, and fitted it on a huge raft of logs, concluding to tic it to the wharf until they could buy a lot. But as the owner of the wharf handed them, on the third day, a bill of 25 dollars for wharfage, they ran the building oat and anchored it in the stream. That night a tug-boat coming up the river in th; Jark ran half way through the Sunday school . room; and a Dutch brig came into collision with it, and was drawn out with the pulpit and three of the front pews dangling from the bowsprit. The owners of both vessels sued for damages, and the United States authorities talked of confiscating the meeting house as an obstruction to navigation. But a few days afterwards the ice-gorge sent a flood down the river and broke the building loose from its anchor. It was subsequently washed ashore on Keyser's farm, and he said he was willing to let it stay there at 1. 4 dols. a day rent until he was ready to plough for corn. And there it is yet. ' The brethren are very uncertain what they will do in the future. There is some talk of hitching, the meet-ing-house to several large balloons and floating it above the town, but the plan l ias not been decided on positively. It occurs-to the brethren, however, that the gospel is having pretty hard times of it in Newcastle county, and nothing but a desire to reform the morals of such an immoral community prevents them from taking that meeting-house apart in sections and shipping it. to the heathen of terra del Fuego, or some place where ''they are not so ridiculously particular about a fow square feet of laud when religious interests lire at slake. •