window-curtain, where through the small peephole I half fancy that he
has caught my eye. Now every loiterer has gone in and the street lies
asleep in the quiet sun, while a feeling of loneliness comes over me,
and brings also an uneasy sense of neglected privileges and duties.
Oh, I ought to have gone to church! The bustle of the rising
congregation reaches my ears. They are standing up to pray. Could I
bring my heart into unison with those who are praying in yonder church
and lift it heavenward with a fervor of supplication, but no distinct
request, would not that be the safest kind of prayer?--"Lord, look
down upon me in mercy!" With that sentiment gushing from my soul,
might I not leave all the rest to him?

Hark! the hymn! This, at least, is a portion of the service which I
can enjoy better than if I sat within the walls, where the full choir
and the massive melody of the organ would fall with a weight upon me.
At this distance it thrills through my frame and plays upon my
heart-strings with a pleasure both of the sense and spirit. Heaven be
praised! I know nothing of music as a science, and the most elaborate
harmonies, if they please me, please as simply as a nurse's lullaby.
The strain has ceased, but prolongs itself in my mind with fanciful
echoes till I start from my reverie and find that the sermon has
commenced. It is my misfortune seldom to fructify in a regular way by
any but printed sermons. The first strong idea which the preacher
utters gives birth to a train of thought and leads me onward step by
step quite out of hearing of the good man's voice unless he be indeed
a son of thunder. At my open window, catching now and then a sentence
of the "parson's saw," I am as well situated as at the foot of the
pulpit stairs. The broken and scattered fragments of this one
discourse will be the texts of many sermons preached by those
colleague pastors--colleagues, but often disputants--my Mind and