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The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Damnation of Theron Ware
by Harold Frederic

CHAPTER I
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PART I
CHAPTER I
No such throng had ever before been seen in the building during all its
eight years of existence. People were wedged together most
uncomfortably upon the seats; they stood packed in the aisles and
overflowed the galleries; at the back, in the shadows underneath these
galleries, they formed broad, dense masses about the doors, through
which it would be hopeless to attempt a passage.
The light, given out from numerous tin-lined circles of flaring gas-jets
arranged on the ceiling, fell full upon a thousand uplifted faces--some
framed in bonnets or juvenile curls, others bearded or crowned with
shining baldness--but all alike under the spell of a dominant emotion
which held features in abstracted suspense and focussed every eye upon

a common objective point.
The excitement of expectancy reigned upon each row of countenances,
was visible in every attitude-- nay, seemed a part of the close,
overheated atmosphere itself.
An observer, looking over these compact lines of faces and noting the
uniform concentration of eagerness they exhibited, might have guessed
that they were watching for either the jury's verdict in some peculiarly
absorbing criminal trial, or the announcement of the lucky numbers in a
great lottery. These two expressions seemed to alternate, and even to
mingle vaguely, upon the upturned lineaments of the waiting
throng--the hope of some unnamed stroke of fortune and the dread of
some adverse decree.
But a glance forward at the object of this universal gaze would have
sufficed to shatter both hypotheses. Here was neither a court of justice
nor a tombola. It was instead the closing session of the annual
Nedahma Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the
Bishop was about to read out the list of ministerial appointments for the
coming year. This list was evidently written in a hand strange to him,
and the slow, near-sighted old gentleman, having at last sufficiently
rubbed the glasses of his spectacles, and then adjusted them over his
nose with annoying deliberation, was now silently rehearsing his task
to himself-- the while the clergymen round about ground their teeth and
restlessly shuffled their feet in impatience.
Upon a closer inspection of the assemblage, there were a great many of
these clergymen. A dozen or more dignified, and for the most part
elderly, brethren sat grouped about the Bishop in the pulpit. As many
others, not quite so staid in mien, and indeed with here and there almost
a suggestion of frivolity in their postures, were seated on the steps
leading down from this platform. A score of their fellows sat facing the
audience, on chairs tightly wedged into the space railed off round the
pulpit; and then came five or six rows of pews, stretching across the
whole breadth of the church, and almost solidly filled with preachers of
the Word.

There were very old men among these--bent and decrepit veterans who
had known Lorenzo Dow, and had been ordained by elders who
remembered Francis Asbury and even Whitefield. They sat now in
front places, leaning forward with trembling and misshapen hands
behind their hairy ears, waiting to hear their names read out on the
superannuated list, it might be for the last time.
The sight of these venerable Fathers in Israel was good to the eyes,
conjuring up, as it did, pictures of a time when a plain and homely
people had been served by a fervent and devoted clergy--by preachers
who lacked in learning and polish, no doubt, but who gave their lives
without dream of earthly reward to poverty and to the danger and
wearing toil of itinerant missions through the rude frontier settlements.
These pictures had for their primitive accessories log-huts, rough
household implements, coarse clothes, and patched old saddles which
told of weary years of journeying; but to even the least sympathetic
vision there shone upon them the glorified light of the Cross and Crown.
Reverend survivors of the heroic times, their very presence
there--sitting meekly at the altar-rail to hear again the published record
of their uselessness and of their dependence upon church charity--was
in the nature of a benediction.
The large majority of those surrounding these patriarchs were
middle-aged men, generally of a robust type, with burly shoulders, and
bushing beards framing shaven upper lips, and who looked for the most
part like honest and prosperous farmers attired in their Sunday clothes.
As exceptions to this rule, there were scattered