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were often built on sidehills so there would be easy entrances on different
levels. This enabled loads of hay to be driven in and dumped, instead of
having to be lifted up into a haymow. It also enabled the brethren, when
feeding the stock, to toss the hay down--also a labor-saving method. The
largest Shaker barn was at New Lebanon and measured 296 ft. x 50 ft. and
was five stories high. A handsome circular stone barn is preserved at
Hancock, N, Y.
Their meeting-room--where the family worship services were held--
had movable benches, but no other furniture. It was also so constructed that
there were no supporting posts on the main floor to interfere with their
worship dances. Pegboards lined the walls which, along with the doors and
windowframes, were painted blue--considered to be a "virgin" color. The
outside of the meeting house was white, the only white building in the com-
munity.
as
As the Shakers became more well-known,/their membership grew,
they attracted many visitors. Some came to see if it was a way of life that
they wanted to follow; many American men-of letters and others came just
to observe the "queer" worship practices of this group. Emerson, Cooper,
Greeley, Hawthorne and Whitman all were guests of the Shakers and wrote
about it. Any foreign author visiting America always had a visit to a Shaker
community on his itinerary. "Nearly everyone of these visitors, American
and foreign both, admired the well-ordered little communities they saw,
where crime and poverty and the distempers of everyday life were absent,