* * * * *

THE PLAYS AND SHOWS

Pretty _Fraeulein_ Margarat asks me to go to church with her. She is not
a New Yorker--or, as Webster would probably say,--a New Yorkeress. She
is rural in her ways and thoughts, a daisy of the fields. Never having
seen the interior of a city church, she asks me to go with her to any
Protestant church that I may select. So we go to the shrine of St.
APOLLOS, which, I am told, is regarded as one of the most fashionable
houses in the city.

It is a matinee service that we elect to attend. A long procession of
carriages is drawn up beside the building as we enter, and I recognize
in the coachmen the familiar faces that wait outside the ACADEMY on
opera nights. The organ overture is already begun, and the audience is
rapidly assembling. We enter the parquette--I should say, the body of
the church--and, standing in picturesque attitudes against the wall,
wait for the coming of the usher. We continue to wait. Evidently the
usher, in common with his kind, despises those who are not holders of
reserved seats. He welcomes with a smile the owners of private
boxes--pews, I mean--and shows them politely up the aisle; but for us,
who have not even an order from the mana--, sexton, I should say--he
has neither smile nor glance.

By and by I pluck up courage and pluck him by the sleeve. So, with a
severe air of suppressed indignation, he shows us to a couple of
ineligible seats, where the draft disarranges MARGARET'S hair, and the
charity children drop books of the op--, that is to say, prayer-books,
and molasses candy in unpleasant proximity to our helpless feet.

Neither MARGARET nor I possess a libret--, a prayer-book I mean.
However, that is a matter of no consequence, as we are both familiar
with the dialog--, or rather the service. The organist having ended his
overture, the service begins. Not even the wretched method of the
tenor--I refer of course to the clerk--and his miserably affected
execution of the recitative passages, can mar the beauty of the words.
The audience evidently feels their solemn import. The young lady and the
young male person who sit immediately in front of me clasp surreptitious
hands as they bow their heads to repeat the confession that they are
miserable sinners, and she whispers by no means softly to him of the
"frightful bonnets the SMITH girls have on." Presently the recitative of
the clerk is succeeded by a contest in chanting--probably