The middle passage of a meeting-house or a church.
1776.
| And should you offer to repent, | |
| You’d need more fasting days than Lent, | |
| More groans than haunted church-yard vallies, | |
| And more confessions than broad-alleys. | |
John Trumbull, ‘M‘Fingal,’ Canto I. [Note: an ile of the church, called in New-England the broad-alley, Hartford ed., 1820, p. 38.] |
1806. Mr. Deming was sitting in the Pew east of the broad Alley.—Intelligencer (Lancaster, Pa.), Oct. 21.
1807. [For sale:] Another pew at the right hand of the broad aisle, esteemed the pleasantest in said house.—Mass. Spy, March 25.
1809. For sale, a Pew in the broad Isle of the Chapel Church.—The Repertory (Boston), June 16.
1812. [For sale:] Two Pews in the Rev. Dr. Bancroft’s Meeting House [in Worcester, Mass.] on the right hand side of the Broad Aisle.—Mass. Spy, May 20.
1825. Why! don’t you know very well, our Jotty, how’t he lies buried, up there, in the burnt orchard; right under the middle of our new meetin’-house; in the very centre of the broad-aisle?—John Neal, ‘Brother Jonathan,’ ii. 18.
1831. He entered, and walked up the broad-aisle, with the swagger of a tipler.—Northern Watchman (Troy, N.Y.), April 5.
1833. She was already on her way up the broad-aisle, with every eye upon her; and every pulse fluttering at the sight of her cashmere.—John Neal, ‘The Down-Easters,’ i. 143.
1853. A young gentleman who had occupied a vacant slip in the broad aisle.—Oregonian, July 2.
1856. As he stepped out into the broad-aisle, I saw my master put himself by the side of Miss Wiley, and stoop to say something to her.—Knick. Mag., xlvii. 571 (June).
1866.
| No white man sets in airth’s broad aisle | |
| Thet I ain’t willin’ t’ own ez brother. | |
Lowell, ‘Biglow Papers,’ 2nd Series, No. 11. |
1872. To think of her walking up the broad aisle into meeting alongside of such a homely, rusty-looking creatur’ as that!—Holmes, ‘The Poet at the Breakfast-Table,’ chap. xi.
