"Are they here?" inquired Ida, credulously. It was preposterous to conceive such a possibility in this frivolous loud-talking assembly.
"Not now;" answered Charley. "But when they crowd on the steam, you will witness scores."
"Fie! Charley? it is wicked to speak so!"
"I am just as pious as if I did not, Carry. I'll wager my horse—and head too—that by to-night, Miss Ida will agree with me, that these religious frolics are more hurtful to the cause they are intended to advance, than fifty such harmless affairs, as we attended on Thursday night."
"I am not solemnised yet;" said Ida.
"You are as solemn as you are going to be. You may be excited, or frightened into something like gravity. Two, three, four preachers! That's what I call a waste of the raw material. What a flutter of ribbons and fans! The congregation reminds me of a clover field, with the butterflies hovering over its gaily-colored, bobbing heads. Handsome ladies by dozens! This county is famed for its beauty, and but one tolerable-looking man in its length and breadth!"
"Why, there is Mr. Euston—what fault have you to find in him?"
"He is the honorable exception. Whom did you think I meant?" smiling mischievously at Carry's unguarded query. "Art. here, is passable. Modesty prevents my saying more, as we are daily mistaken for each other. The music strikes up;—rather quavering; they are not in the 'spirit' yet. They never get to the 'understanding.' I must decamp. Those fair ones are too bashful to look this way, while I am here."
He was on the outside of the rail, sedate and deacon-like, in a minute. Unsuited as his remarks were to the time and place, they were less objectionable than the whispers of the ladies who dispossessed him;—critiques upon Susan's beaux and Joseph's sweethearts; upon faces, dress and deportment; a quantity of reprobation, and very sparse praises.
The preacher was an unremarkable man, who delivered, in a sing-song tone, an unremarkable discourse; opposing no impediment to the sociability of the aforementioned damsels, except that they lowered their shrill staccato to a piano. The gentlemen whispered behind their hats, notched switches, and whittled sticks. The hearers from Poplar-grove, albeit they were gay, youthful, and non-professors, were the most decorous auditors in their part of the congregation. Another minister arose; a man not yet in his thirtieth year, his form stooped, as beneath the weight of sixty winters. The crowd stilled instantly. He leaned, as for support, upon the primitive desk; his attenuated hands clasped, his eyes moving slowly in their cavernous recesses, over the vast assemblage. "And what come ye out into the wilderness for to see?" he said, in a voice of preternatural sweetness and strength. "Aye! ye are come as to a holiday pageant, bedecked in tinsel and costly raiment. I see before me the pride of beauty and youth; the middle-aged, in the strength of manliness and honor, the hoary hairs and decrepid limbs of age;—all trampling—hustling each other in your haste—in one beaten road—the way to death and judgment! Oh! fools and blind! slow-worms, battening upon the damps and filth of this vile earth! hugging your muck rakes while the glorious One proffers you the crown of Life!" The bent figure straightened; the thin hands were endowed with a language of power, as they pointed, and shook, and glanced through the air. His clarion tones thrilled upon every ear, their alarms and threatenings and denunciations; in crashing peals, the awful names of the Most High, and His condemnations of the wicked, descended among the throng; and those fearful eyes were fiery and wrathful. At the climax he stopped;—with arms still upraised, and the words of woe and doom yet upon his lips, he sank upon the arm of a brother beside him, and was led to his seat, ghastly as a corpse, and nearly as helpless.