At one of his week night lectures, Beecher was speaking about the
building and equipping of new churches. After a few satirical touches
about church architects and their work, he went on to ridicule the usual
style of pulpit--the "sacred mahogany tub"--"plastered up against some
pillar like a barn-swallow's nest." Then he passed on to the erection of
the organ, and to the opening recital.

"The organ long expected has arrived, been unpacked, set up, and gloried
over. The great players of the region round about, or of distant
celebrity, have had the grand organ exhibition; and this magnificent
instrument has been put through all its paces in a manner which has
surprised every one, and, if it had had a conscious existence, must have
surprised the organ itself most of all. It has piped, fluted, trumpeted,
brayed, thundered. It has played so loud that everybody was deafened,
and so soft that nobody could hear. The pedals played for thunder, the
flutes languished and coquetted, and the swell died away in delicious
suffocation, like one singing a sweet song under the bed-clothes. Now it
leads down a stupendous waltz with full brass, sounding very much as if,
in summer, a thunderstorm should play, 'Come, Haste to the Wedding,' or
'Moneymusk.' Then come marches, galops, and hornpipes. An organ playing
hornpipes ought to have elephants as dancers.

"At length a fugue is rendered to show the whole scope and power of the
instrument. The theme, like a cautious rat, peeps out to see if the
coast is clear; and, after a few hesitations, comes forth and begins to
frisk a little, and run up and down to see what it can find. It finds
just what it did not want, a purring tenor lying in ambush and waiting
for a spring; and as the theme comes incautiously near, the savage cat
of a tenor springs at it, misses its hold, and then takes after it with