American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' by Julian Street
page 313 of 607 (51%)
page 313 of 607 (51%)
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pause after the prayer one voice from the congregation was at last
injected. It was the voice of old Ralph Izard, saying heartily, not "Amen," but "Good Lord, deliver us!" There is a tablet in the church to the memory of this worthy. The story is told, also, of an old gentleman, a member of the congregation in Revolutionary times, who informed the minister that if he again read the prayer for the King he would throw his prayer-book at his head. The minister took this for a jest, but when he began to read the prayer on the following Sunday, he found that it was not, for sure enough the prayer-book came hurtling through the air. Prayer-books were heavier then than they are now, and it is said that as a result of this episode, the minister refused to hold service thereafter. The church is not now used regularly, an occasional memorial service only being held there. * * * * * Charleston is a hard place to leave. Wherever one may be going from there, the change is likely to be for the worse. Nevertheless, it is impossible to stay forever; so at last you muster up your resignation and your resources, buy tickets, and reluctantly prepare to leave. If you depart as we did, you go by rail, driving to the station in the venerable bus of the Charleston Transfer Company--a conveyance which, one judges, may be coeval with the city's oldest mansions. Little as we wished to leave Charleston we did not wish to defer our departure through any such banality as the unnecessary missing of a train. Therefore as we waited for the bus, on the night of leaving, and as train time drew nearer and nearer, with no sign of the lumbering old |
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