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ckle toward the conventional meeting grounds. Those who had been delinquent at the morning services were at least tonight devout. There is a sort of life of affairs, a sort of business life, of any church in any community. Thus, there may be many meetings beside that of the Sabbath day, in each church in any community. There must fall the practice of the choir, weekly, usually of Wednesday, sometimes of Saturday evenings as well, if the anthem prove especially difficult of mastery. As to the choir proper, there must of course be the soprano--not always elocutionist, as was the soprano in this church of Spring Valley--but always well-clad, most frequently with long and glossy curls of chestnut and the most modish hat of any in the church. Most tenors are bank clerks or cashiers. It is the function of the tenor in any such choir to escort the soprano to her home. The contralto is for the most part married, beginning to show _embonpoint_. She is brunette, with wide and pleasant mouth; is able to make excellent currant jelly, of which she gives her neighbors generously. Her attire is apt to be not quite so well-appointed as that of the soprano, which indeed should not be expected of the mother of three, the arrangement of those white starched collars in a part of each Sunday's task. The basso may sometimes be a school teacher, yet some of the best have been owners of livery barns, no more; modest folk withal, and covetous of the back seat in the choir. To this essential personnel of the church choir there may be added others, supplements or understudies for this or that musical part, young men with large cameo pins in their cravats, young women with spectacles. All these who sing soprano or contralto, at least all who still are young, must be taken home after services--not only the regular services of the church, but those of the choir practice midway of the week or at the week's close. And thereto, one must count the weekly prayer meetings, mostly for the old, but for the young in part. It is, therefore, easy to be seen that the vestibule of any Spring Valley church of a Wednesday evening, sometimes of a Thursday evening, quite often a Saturday evening, and always of a Sunday evening, must hold a certain lay representation of the community. It is, or once was, one of the proper functions of the village church to act as social meeting ground. Practically all of the respectable marriages in Spring Valley actually wer
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