and monotony about his articulation; indeed, it grew
plain and plainer to Harry that he must have "come over"
from some franker and more emotional denomination.
It seemed quite out of keeping with his homely manner and
crumpled surplice that this particular reader should intone.
Intone, nevertheless, he did; and as badly as mortal man well could!
It was not so much that his voice or his ear went wrong;
he would have had a musical voice of the heavy sort,
had he not bellowed; neither did his ear betray him;
the trouble seemed to be that he could not decide when to begin;
now he began too early, and again, with a startled air,
he began too late, as if he had forgotten.

"I hope he will not preach," thought Harry, who was absorbed
in a rapt contemplation of his sweetheart's back hair.
He came back from a tender revery (by way of a little detour into
the furniture business and the establishment that a man of his income
could afford) to the church and the preacher and his own sins,
to find the strange clergyman in the pulpit, plainly frightened,
and bawling more loudly than ever under the influence of fear.
He preached a sermon of wearisome platitudes; making up for lack
of thought by repetition, and shouting himself red in the face
to express earnestness. "Fourth-class Methodist effort,"
thought the listener in the Lossing pew, stroking his fair mustache,
"with Episcopal decorations! That man used to be a Methodist minister,
and he was brought into the fold by a high-churchman. Poor fellow,
the Methodist church polity has a place for such fellows as he;
but he is a stray sheep with us. He doesn't half catch on
to the motions; yet I'll warrant he is proud of that sermon,
and his wife thinks it one of the great efforts of the century."