"No irony, please! It didn't begin that way at all. I suppose you know that in our little town there is a very well attended Calvinist church?"
"I know it pretty well."
"And I am a very zealous church goer?"
"That I did not know."
"With us the laudable custom prevails of going to church every Sunday for the purpose of devotion."
"And to show off your new bonnets."
"Don't make fun of me, please. Esaias is not only the schoolmaster, but the cantor and the organist as well. He has a splendid bass voice. When he intones the verse—
'How blest the man whose walk in life ...'
the whole podium trembles. It was that wondrously beautiful voice which first enthralled me."
"But I should have thought that the organ would have drowned the sound of the hymn?"