to see the crimson rush from the laceration.

Would I see it acted again? No. I would not risk my nerves again under
the strain of such a horror. One dreams of it nights after.

When Christ carrying His cross falls under it, and you see Him on His
hands and knees, His forehead ensanguined with the twisted brambles, and
Veronica comes to Him offering a handkerchief to wipe away the tears,
and sweat and blood, your own forehead becomes beaded with perspiration.
As the tragedy moves on, solemnity is added to solemnity. Not so much as
a smile in the eight hours, except the slight snicker of some fool, such
as is sure to be found in all audiences, when the cock crew twice after
Peter had denied him thrice.

What may seem strange to some, I was as much impressed with Christ's
mental agony as with his physical pangs. Oh! what a scene when in
Gethsemane He groaned over the sins of the world for which He was making
expiation, until the angelic throngs of heaven were so stirred by His
impassioned utterance that one of their white-winged number came out and
down to comfort the Angel of the New Covenant!

Some of the tableaux or living pictures between the acts of this drama
were graphic and thrilling, such as Adam and Eve expelled from
arborescence into homelessness; Joseph, because of his picturesque
attire sold into serfdom, from which he mounts to the Prime Minister's
chair; the palace gates shut against Queen Vashti because she declines
to be immodest; manna snowing down into the hands of the hungry
Israelites; grapes of Eshcol so enormous that one cluster is carried by
two men on a staff between them; Naboth stoned to death because Ahab
wants his vineyard; blind Samson between the pillars of the Temple of
Dagon, making very destructive sport for his enemies. These tableaux are
chiefly intended as a breathing spell between the acts of the drama. The
music rendered requires seven basses and seven tenors, ten sopranos and
ten contraltos. Edward Lang has worked thirty years educating the
musical talent of the village. The Passion Play itself is beyond
criticism, though it would have been mightier if two hours less in its
performance. The subtraction would be an addition.

The drama progresses from the entering into Jerusalem to the
condemnation by the Sanhedrim, showing all the world that crime may be
committed according to law as certainly as crime against the law.

Oh, the hard-visaged tribunal; countenances as hard as the