“Now, my little friends,” said Mr. Notext, “I wish you all to keep perfectly silent while I am talking to you. This first meeting is especially for you.”
There was considerable buzzing among the little ones.
“I must have silence, if I am to do anything with these children,” said Mr. Notext rather testily, and in a tone which showed that he would not scruple to apply the birch to his little friends if they did not keep quiet. “The slightest noise distracts their attention. There are some boys to the right there who are still talking! I wish some one would stop them.”
A softly-stepping gentleman with long hair and green goggles went to the designated group, remonstrated with, and finally succeeded in silencing, them. Then Mr. Notext began his sermon to the children. He told the story of the Passion in a manner which, though it inexpressibly shocked Christians of the old-fashioned kind who happened to be present, was exceedingly dramatic—“realistic” in the highest degree, to borrow a word from the modern play-bill. Suddenly he broke off and said rather excitedly:
“There is a boy on the fourth bench who persists in talking. I must have absolute silence, or I cannot hold the attention of these children. The slightest noise distracts them and takes their minds away from the picture I am endeavoring to present to them. It is that red-haired boy! Will somebody please to take him away?” Several pious gentlemen bore down on the poor little red-haired urchin, and all chance of “getting religion” was taken away from him for the nonce by his summary removal. When silence was restored, Mr. Notext resumed the story. When describing how the divine Victim was buffeted and spat upon, he administered to himself sounding slaps on the face, now with the left hand, now with the right. He placed an imaginary crown of thorns on his head, pressed the sharp points into his forehead, and, passing the open fingers of both hands over his closed eyes and down his face, traced the streams of blood trickling from the cruel wounds. Tears already rolled down the cheeks of the little ones. When he reached the nailing to the cross, he produced a large spike, exhibited it to the children, and went through the semblance of driving it into his flesh. An outburst of sobs interrupted him. Some of the children screamed in very terror. The desired effect was produced. Many fathers and mothers, touched by the emotion and terror of their children, wept in sympathy with them.
“Now the music!” shouted Mr. Notext, stamping with impatience, as if he wanted a tardy patient to swallow a Sedlitz-powder in the proper moment of effervescence. “Now the music!” And he led off with
“Oh! you must be a lover of the Lord,
Or you won’t go to heaven when you die!”
He shouted to the “workers” to go among the people and ask them to “come to Jesus.” A crowd of “workers,” some professional, some enthusiastic volunteers, broke loose upon the audience. They seized people by the hands. They embraced them. They inquired: “How do you feel now? Do you not feel that Jesus is calling you?” They begged them to come to Jesus at once. They asked them if they were “Ker-istians.”
One of the workers met two gentlemen who entered together and were evidently present through curiosity. Of the first, who seemed to be a cool, keen, self-poised business man, the worker asked the stereotyped question: