Twice Told Tales | Page 7

soul, might I not
leave all the rest to him?
Hark! the hymn! This, at least, is a portion of the service which I can
enjoy better than if I sat within the walls, where the full choir and the
massive melody of the organ would fall with a weight upon me. At this

distance it thrills through my frame and plays upon my heart-strings
with a pleasure both of the sense and spirit. Heaven be praised! I know
nothing of music as a science, and the most elaborate harmonies, if they
please me, please as simply as a nurse's lullaby. The strain has ceased,
but prolongs itself in my mind with fanciful echoes till I start from my
reverie and find that the sermon has commenced. It is my misfortune
seldom to fructify in a regular way by any but printed sermons. The
first strong idea which the preacher utters gives birth to a train of
thought and leads me onward step by step quite out of hearing of the
good man's voice unless he be indeed a son of thunder. At my open
window, catching now and then a sentence of the "parson's saw," I am
as well situated as at the foot of the pulpit stairs. The broken and
scattered fragments of this one discourse will be the texts of many
sermons preached by those colleague pastors--colleagues, but often
disputants--my Mind and Heart. The former pretends to be a scholar
and perplexes me with doctrinal points; the latter takes me on the score
of feeling; and both, like several other preachers, spend their strength to
very little purpose. I, their sole auditor, cannot always understand them.
Suppose that a few hours have passed, and behold me still behind my
curtain just before the close of the afternoon service. The hour-hand on
the dial has passed beyond four o'clock. The declining sun is hidden
behind the steeple and throws its shadow straight across the street; so
that my chamber is darkened as with a cloud. Around the church door
all is solitude, and an impenetrable obscurity beyond the threshold. A
commotion is heard. The seats are slammed down and the pew doors
thrown back; a multitude of feet are trampling along the unseen aisles,
and the congregation bursts suddenly through the portal. Foremost
scampers a rabble of boys, behind whom moves a dense and dark
phalanx of grown men, and lastly a crowd of females with young
children and a few scattered husbands. This instantaneous outbreak of
life into loneliness is one of the pleasantest scenes of the day. Some of
the good people are rubbing their eyes, thereby intimating that they
have been wrapped, as it were, in a sort of holy trance by the fervor of
their devotion. There is a young man, a third-rate coxcomb, whose first
care is always to flourish a white handkerchief and brush the seat of a
tight pair of black silk pantaloons which shine as if varnished. They
must have been made of the stuff called "everlasting," or perhaps of the

same piece as Christian's garments in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, for he
put them on two summers ago and has not yet worn the gloss off. I
have taken a great liking to those black silk pantaloons. But now, with
nods and greetings among friends, each matron takes her husband's arm
and paces gravely homeward, while the girls also flutter away after
arranging sunset walks with their favored bachelors. The Sabbath eve is
the eve of love. At length the whole congregation is dispersed. No; here,
with faces as glossy as black satin, come two sable ladies and a sable
gentleman, and close in their rear the minister, who softens his severe
visage and bestows a kind word on each. Poor souls! To them the most
captivating picture of bliss in heaven is "There we shall be white!"
All is solitude again. But hark! A broken warbling of voices, and now,
attuning its grandeur to their sweetness, a stately peal of the organ.
Who are the choristers? Let me dream that the angels who came down
from heaven this blessed morn to blend themselves with the worship of
the truly good are playing and singing their farewell to the earth. On the
wings of that rich melody they were borne upward.
This, gentle reader, is merely a flight of poetry. A few of the
singing-men and singing-women had lingered behind their fellows and
raised their voices fitfully and blew a careless note upon the organ. Yet
it lifted my soul higher than all their former strains. They are gone--the
sons and daughters of Music--and the gray sexton is just closing the
portal. For six days more there will be no face of man in the pews and
aisles and galleries, nor a