"The year of jubilee has come; Return, ye ransom'd sinners, home."
Quizzle.—You speak, governor, of the ruinous effect of prolixity in religious service. How long ought a public service continue?
Wiseman.—There is much discussion in the papers as to how long or short sermons and prayers ought to be. Some say a discourse ought to last thirty minutes, and others forty, and others an hour, and prayers should be three minutes long, or five, or fifteen. You might as well discuss how long a frock-coat ought to be, or how many ounces of food a man ought to eat. In the one case, everything depends upon the man's size; in the other, everything on the capacity of his stomach. A sermon or a prayer ought to go on as long as it is of any profit. If it is doing no good, the sermon is half an hour too long, though it take only thirty minutes. If the audience cough, or fidget, or shuffle their feet, you had better stop praying. There is no excuse, for a man's talking or praying too long if he have good eyesight and hearing.
But suppose a man have his sermon written and before him. You say he must go through with it? Oh no. Let him skip a few leaves. Better sacrifice three or four sheets of sermon-paper than sacrifice the interest of your hearers. But it is a silly thing for a man in a prayer-meeting or pulpit to stop merely because a certain number of minutes have expired while the interest is deepening—absurd as a hunter on the track of a roebuck, and within two minutes of bringing down its antlers, stopping because his wife said that at six o'clock precisely he must be home to supper. Keep on hunting till your ammunition gives out.
Still, we must all admit that the danger is on the side of prolixity. The most interesting prayers we ever hear are by new converts, who say everything they have to say and break down in one minute. There are men who, from the way they begin their supplications, indicate a long siege. They first pray you into a good frame, and then pray you out. They take literally what Paul meant to be figurative: "Pray without ceasing."
Quizzle.—I see there was no lack of interest when the brewers' convention met the other day in Boston, and that in their longest session the attention did not flag.
Wiseman.—Yes; I see that speeches were made on the beneficial use of fermented liquors. The announcement was made that during the year 8,910,823 barrels of the precious stuff had been manufactured. I suppose that while the convention was there Boston must have smelt like one great ale-pitcher. The delegates were invited to visit the suburbs of the city. Strange that nobody thought of inviting them to visit the cemeteries and graveyards, especially the potter's field, where thousands of their victims are buried. Perhaps you are in sympathy with these brewers, and say that if people would take beer instead of alcohol drunkenness would cease. But for the vast majority who drink, beer is only introductory to something stronger. It is only one carriage in the same funeral. Do not spell it b-e-e-r, but spell it b-i-e-r. May the lightnings of heaven strike and consume all the breweries from river Penobscot to the Golden Horn!
Quizzle.—I see, governor, that you were last week in Washington. How do things look there?
Wiseman.—Very well. The general appearance of our national capital never changes. It is always just as far from the Senate-chamber to the White House; indeed, so far that many of our great men have never been able to travel it. There are the usual number of petitioners for governmental patronage hanging around the hotels and the congressional lobbies. They are willing to take almost anything they can get, from minister to Spain to village postmaster. They come in with the same kind of carpet-bags, look stupid and anxious for several days, and having borrowed money enough from the member from their district to pay their fare, take the cars for home, denouncing the administration and the ungratefulness of republics.
I think that the two houses of Congress are the best and most capable of any almost ever assembled. Of course there is a dearth of great men. Only here and there a Senator or Representative you ever before heard of. Indeed, the nuisances of our national council in other days were the great men who took, in making great speeches, the time that ought to have been spent in attending to business. We all know that it was eight or ten "honorable" bloats of the last thirty years who made our chief international troubles.