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