the time of service,
to secure a seat, or content if too late for this to occupy, as many
did, standing room--this was, indeed, a novel and strange sight. Nor was
it once merely, or twice, but month after month the day was calculated
when his turn to preach again was to come round, and anticipated, with
even impatient longing, by multitudes.

"Suppose the congregation thus assembled--pews filled with sitters, and
aisles, to a great extent, with standers. They wait in eager
expectation. The preacher appears. The devotional exercises of praise
and prayer having been gone through with unaffected simplicity and
earnestness, the entire assembly set themselves for the _treat_, with
feelings very diverse in kind, but all eager and intent. There is a hush
of dead silence. The text is announced, and he begins. Every countenance
is up--every eye bent, with fixed intentness, on the speaker. As he
kindles the interest grows. Every breath is held--every cough is
suppressed--every fidgety movement is settled--every one, riveted
himself by the spell of the impassioned and entrancing eloquence, knows
how sensitively his neighbor will resent the very slightest disturbance.
Then, by-and-by, there is a pause. The speaker stops--to gather
breath--to wipe his forehead--to adjust his gown, and purposely too, and
wisely, to give the audience, as well as himself, a moment or two of
relaxation. The moment is embraced--there is free breathing--suppressed
coughs get vent--postures are changed--there is a universal stir, as of
persons who could not have endured the constraint much longer--the
preacher bends forward--his hand is raised--all is again hushed. The
same stillness and strain of unrelaxed attention is repeated, more
intent still, it may be, than before, as the interest of the subject and
of the speaker advance. And so, for perhaps four or five times in the
course of a sermon, there is the _relaxation_ and the '_at it again_'
till the final winding up.

"And _then_, the moment the last word was uttered, and followed by
the--'_let us pray_,' there was a scene for which no excuse or
palliation can be pleaded but the fact of its having been to many a
matter of difficulty, in the morning of a week-day, to accomplish the
abstraction of even so much of their time from business--the closing
prayer completely drowned by the hurried rush of large numbers from the
aisles and pews to the door; an unseemly scene, without doubt, as if so
many had co