I have been reading about the harvest festivals with which the country has been lately teeming. They are all made on one pattern. The interior of the building is very tastefully adorned with fruit and foliage, supplied by friends connected with the church and others. The subject of one reverend gentleman's discourse in the morning is, "Put in the sickle." In the afternoon another reverend gentleman discourses on "A stroll through a corn-field," and in the evening a third clergyman poses his congregation with the question, "What shall be done with the tares?" Thank-offerings in aid of the church funds are then taken, the choir sings special harvest hymns, and somebody invariably "presides" at the organ.
The temptations of the fruit are sometimes, I am sorry to say, irresistible. I have seen an absent-minded landed proprietor steadily pluck and eat his way through a whole bunch of grapes, while the preacher held forth on the symbolic meaning attached to fruit. The attention of the congregation, I need hardly say, was breathlessly concentrated not on the preacher, but on the devourer of the grapes. At a festival I attended last year, the fruits of the earth were represented by dead rabbits on the window-sills of the church.
By the way, why does one always "preside" at the organ? At the first blush there would not seem to be anything peculiarly presidential about the playing of the instrument, but then I may be dull. For instance, I have never yet understood why young tobacconists are always alluded to as "commencing." Other traders are content to begin or to start, but a tobacconist must apparently "commence" or be eternally disgraced.
Oh, dealer in the latest brand
Of Claro and Maduro,
One question agitates our land,
From Ballater to Truro.