“Delia,” said David Prince to his wife, one afternoon, “Calvin Green has bought four tickets to that stereopticon show that's going to be in the West Church to-night, and he gave me two, for you and me.”
“I don't want his tickets,” she replied, ironing away at the sunny window.
“Now, what's the use of talking that way?” said her husband, “as much as to say—”
“I have my opinion,” she said.
“Well,” said her husband, “I think it's a hard way to use a man, just because he happened to be by when I lost my money.”
“I 'll tell you,” said Delia, stopping her work; “we will go, and all I 'll say is this—you see if after the lecture's over he does n't find a text in it to talk about our money. Now, you just wait and see—that's all.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the lecturer, standing by a great circle of light thrown on the wall, behind the pulpit, “I have now, with a feeling of awe befitting this sacred place, thus given you, in the first part of my lecture, a succinct view of the origin, rise, and growth of the globe on which, as the poet has justly said, 'we dwell.' I have shown you—corroborating Scripture—the earth, without form and void, the awful monsters of the Silurian age, and Man in the Garden of Eden.
“I now invite you to journey with me—as one has said—'across the continent.'
“Travelling has ever been viewed as a means of education. Thus Athenian sages sought the learning of the Orient. Thus may we this evening, without toil or peril, or expense beyond the fifteen cents already incurred for the admission-fee, journey in spirit from the wild Atlantic to the sunset coast. In the words of the sacred lyrist, Edgar A. Poe, 'My country, 't is of thee,' that I shall now display some views.