A Book of Burlesques | Page 8

this fine morning, however, it is full of heavy, mortuary perfumes,
for a couple of florist's men have just finished decorating the chancel
with flowers and potted palms. Just behind the chancel rail, facing the
center aisle, there is a prie-dieu, and to either side of it are great banks
of lilies, carnations, gardenias and roses. Three or four feet behind the
prie-dieu and completely concealing the high altar, there is a dense
jungle of palms. Those in the front rank are authentically growing in
pots, but behind them the florist's men have artfully placed some more
durable, and hence more profitable, sophistications. Anon the rev.
clergyman, emerging from the vestry-room to the right, will pass along
the front of this jungle to the prie-dieu, and so, framed in flowers, face
the congregation with his saponaceous smile.
The florist's men, having completed their labors, are preparing to

depart. The older of the two, a man in the fifties, shows the ease of an
experienced hand by taking out a large plug of tobacco and gnawing
off a substantial chew. The desire to spit seizing him shortly, he
proceeds to gratify it by a trick long practised by gasfitters, musicians,
caterer's helpers, piano movers and other such alien invaders of the
domestic hearth. That is to say, he hunts for a place where the carpet is
loose along the chancel rail, finds it where two lengths join, deftly turns
up a flap, spits upon the bare floor, and then lets the flap fall back,
finally giving it a pat with the sole of his foot. This done, he and his
assistant leave the church to the sexton, who has been sweeping the
vestibule, and, after passing the time of day with the two men who are
putting up a striped awning from the door to the curb, disappear into a
nearby speak-easy, there to wait and refresh themselves until the
wedding is over, and it is time to take away their lilies, their carnations
and their synthetic palms.
It is now a quarter past eleven, and two flappers of the neighborhood,
giggling and arm-in-arm, approach the sexton and inquire of him if
they may enter. He asks them if they have tickets and when they say
they haven't, he tells them that he ain't got no right to let them in, and
don't know nothing about what the rule is going to be. At some
weddings, he goes on, hardly nobody ain't allowed in, but then again,
sometimes they don't scarcely look at the tickets at all. The two flappers
retire abashed, and as the sexton finishes his sweeping, there enters the
organist.
The organist is a tall, thin man of melancholy, uræmic aspect, wearing
a black slouch hat with a wide brim and a yellow overcoat that barely
reaches to his knees. A pupil, in his youth, of a man who had once
studied (irregularly and briefly) with Charles-Marie Widor, he
acquired thereby the artistic temperament, and with it a vast fondness
for malt liquor. His mood this morning is acidulous and depressed, for
he spent yesterday evening in a Pilsner ausschank with two former
members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and it was 3 A. M. before
they finally agreed that Johann Sebastian Bach, all things considered,
was a greater man than Beethoven, and so parted amicably. Sourness
is the precise sensation that wells within him. He feels vinegary; his

blood runs cold; he wishes he could immerse himself in bicarbonate of
soda. But the call of his art is more potent than the protest of his
poisoned and quaking liver, and so he manfully climbs the spiral
stairway to his organ-loft.
Once there, he takes off his hat and overcoat, stoops down to blow the
dust off the organ keys, throws the electrical switch which sets the
bellows going, and then proceeds to take off his shoes. This done, he
takes his seat, reaches for the pedals with his stockinged feet, tries an
experimental 32-foot CCC, and then wanders gently into a Bach
toccata. It is his limbering-up piece: he always plays it as a prelude to
a wedding job. It thus goes very smoothly and even brilliantly, but
when he comes to the end of it and tackles the ensuing fugue he is
quickly in difficulties, and after four or five stumbling repetitions of the
subject he hurriedly improvises a crude coda and has done. Peering
down into the church to see if his flounderings have had an audience,
he sees two old maids enter, the one very tall and thin and the other
somewhat brisk and bunchy.
They constitute the vanguard of the nuptial throng, and as they proceed
hesitatingly up the center aisle, eager for good seats but afraid to go
too far, the organist wipes his