'clock." "My dear man," I cried, "you
might as well turn round and go back; the audience will be gone long before
ten o'clock." "No!" said the conductor; "at the last depot I got a telegram
saying they are waiting patiently, and telling us to hurry on." The
locomotive seemed to feel it was on the home stretch. At times, what with
the whirling smoke and the showering sparks, and the din, and rush, and
bang, it seemed as if we were on our last ride, and that the brakes would
not fall till we stopped for ever.

At five minutes of ten o'clock we rolled into the Dayton depot, and before
the train came to a halt we were in a carriage with the lecturing
committee, going at the horse's full run toward the opera house. Without an
instant in which to slacken our pulses, the chairman rushed in upon the
stage, and introduced the lecturer of the evening. After in the quickest
way shedding overcoat and shawl, we confronted the audience, and with our
head yet swimming from the motion of the rail-train, we accosted the
people--many of whom had been waiting since seven o'clock'--with the words,
"Long-suffering but patient ladies and gentlemen, you are the best-natured
audience I ever saw." When we concluded what we had to say, it was about
midnight, and hence the title of this little sketch.

We would have felt it more worthy of the railroad chase if it had been a
sermon rather than a lecture. Why do not the Young Men's Christian
Associations of the country intersperse religious discourses with the
secular, the secular demanding an admission fee, the religious without
money or price? If such associations would take as fine a hall, and pay as
much for advertising, the audience to hear the sermon would be as large as
the audience to hear the lecture. What consecrated minister would not
rather tell the story of Christ and heaven free of charge than to get five
hundred dollars for a secular address? Wake up, Young Men's Christian
Associations, to your glorious opportunity, it would afford a pleasing
change. Let Wendell Phillips give in the course his great lecture on "The
Lost Arts;" and A.A. Willitts speak on "Sunshine," himself the best
illustration of his subject; and Mr. Milburn, by "What a Blind Man Saw in
England," almost prove that eyes are a superfluity; and W.H.H. Murray talk
of the "Adirondacks," till you can hear the rifle crack and the fall of the
antlers on the rock. But in the very midst of all this have a religious
discourse