At five minutes of ten o'clock we rolled into the Dayton depot, and before the train came to a halt we were in a carriage with the lecturing committee, going at the horse's full run toward the opera house. Without an instant in which to slacken our pulses, the chairman rushed in upon the stage, and introduced the lecturer of the evening. After in the quickest way shedding overcoat and shawl, we confronted the audience, and with our head yet swimming from the motion of the rail-train, we accosted the people—many of whom had been waiting since seven o'clock'—with the words, "Long-suffering but patient ladies and gentlemen, you are the best-natured audience I ever saw." When we concluded what we had to say, it was about midnight, and hence the title of this little sketch.
We would have felt it more worthy of the railroad chase if it had been a sermon rather than a lecture. Why do not the Young Men's Christian Associations of the country intersperse religious discourses with the secular, the secular demanding an admission fee, the religious without money or price? If such associations would take as fine a hall, and pay as much for advertising, the audience to hear the sermon would be as large as the audience to hear the lecture. What consecrated minister would not rather tell the story of Christ and heaven free of charge than to get five hundred dollars for a secular address? Wake up, Young Men's Christian Associations, to your glorious opportunity, it would afford a pleasing change. Let Wendell Phillips give in the course his great lecture on "The Lost Arts;" and A.A. Willitts speak on "Sunshine," himself the best illustration of his subject; and Mr. Milburn, by "What a Blind Man Saw in England," almost prove that eyes are a superfluity; and W.H.H. Murray talk of the "Adirondacks," till you can hear the rifle crack and the fall of the antlers on the rock. But in the very midst of all this have a religious discourse that shall show that holiness is the lost art, and that Christ is the sunshine, and that the gospel helps a blind man to see, and that from Pisgah and Mount Zion there is a better prospect than from the top of fifty Adirondacks.
As for ourselves, save in rare and peculiar circumstances, good-bye to the lecturing platform, while we try for the rest of our life to imitate the minister who said, "This one thing I do!" There are exhilarations about lecturing that one finds it hard to break from, and many a minister who thought himself reformed of lecturing has, over-tempted, gone up to the American Library or Boston Lyceum Bureau, and drank down raw, a hundred lecturing engagements. Still, a man once in a while finds a new pair of spectacles to look through.
Between Indianapolis and Dayton, on that wild, swift ride, we found a moral which we close with—for the printer-boy with inky fingers is waiting for this paragraph—Never take the last train when you can help it. Much of the trouble in life is caused by the fact that people, in their engagements, wait til' the last minute. The seven-o'clock train will take them to the right place if everything goes straight, but in this world things are very apt to go crooked. So you had better take the train that starts an hour earlier. In everything we undertake let us leave a little margin. We tried, jokingly, to persuade Captain Berry, when off Cape Hatteras, to go down and get his breakfast, while we took his place and watched the course of the steamer. He intimated to us that we were running too near the bar to allow a greenhorn to manage matters just there. There is always danger in sailing near a coast, whether in ship or in plans and morals. Do not calculate too closely on possibilities. Better have room and time to spare. Do not take the last train. Not heeding this counsel makes bad work for this world and the next. There are many lines of communication between earth and heaven. Men say they can start at any time. After a while, in great excitement, they rush into the depot of mercy and find that the final opportunity has left, and, behold! it is the last train!
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SEXTON.
King David, it is evident, once thought something of becoming a church sexton, for he said, "I had rather be a doorkeeper," and so on. But he never carried out the plan, perhaps because he had not the qualification. It requires more talent in some respects to be sexton than to be king. A sexton, like a poet, is born. A church, in order to peace and success, needs the right kind of man at the prow, and the right kind at the stern—that is, a good minister and a good sexton. So far as we have observed, there are four kinds of janitors.
THE FIDGETY SEXTON.
He is never still. His being in any one place proves to him that he ought to be in some other. In the most intense part of the service, every ear alert to the truth, the minister at the very climax of his subject, the fidgety official starts up the aisle. The whole congregation instantly turn from the consideration of judgment and eternity to see what the sexton wants. The minister looks, the elders look, the people in the gallery get up to look. It is left in universal doubt as to why the sexton frisked about at just that moment. He must have seen a fly on the opposite side of the church wall that needed to be driven off before it spoiled the fresco, or he may have suspicion that a rat terrier is in one of the pews by the pulpit, from the fact that he saw two or three children laughing. Now, there is nothing more perplexing than a dog chase during religious services. At a prayer meeting once in my house, a snarling poodle came in, looked around, and then went and sat under the chair of its owner. We had no objection to its being there (dogs should not be shut out from all advantages), but the intruder would not keep quiet. A brother of dolorous whine was engaged in prayer, when poodle evidently thought that the time for response had come, and gave a loud yawn that had no tendency to solemnize the occasion. I resolved to endure it no longer. I started to extirpate the nuisance. I made a fearful pass of my hand in the direction of the dog, but missed him. A lady arose to give me a better chance at the vile pup, but I discovered that he had changed position. I felt by that time obstinately determined to eject him. He had got under a rocking chair, at a point beyond our reach, unless we got on our knees; and it being a prayer meeting, we felt no inappropriateness in taking that position. Of course the exercise had meanwhile been suspended, and the eyes of all were upon my undertaking. The elders wished me all success in this police duty, but the mischievous lads by the door were hoping for my failure. Knowing this I resolved that if the exercises were never resumed, I would consummate the work and eject the disturber. While in this mood I gave a lunge for the dog, not looking to my feet, and fell over a rocker; but there were sympathetic hands to help me up, and I kept on until by the back of the neck I grasped the grizzly-headed pup, as he commenced kicking, scratching, barking, yelping, howling, and carried him to the door in triumph, and, without any care as to where he landed, hurled him out into the darkness.