see it without turning around, wherein the audience has an advantage of
him, which it makes full use of. Indeed, so closely is the general
attention concentrated upon the time-piece, that a stranger might draw
the mistaken inference that this was the object for whose worship the
little company had gathered. Finally, making a slight concession of
etiquette to curiosity, Mr. Lewis turns and looks up at the clock, and,
again facing the people, observes, with the air of communicating a piece
of intelligence, "There are yet a few moments."

In fact, and not to put too fine a point upon it, there are five minutes
left, and the young men on the back seats, who attend prayer-meetings to
go home with the girls, are experiencing increasing qualms of alternate
hope and fear as the moment draws near when they shall put their fortune
to the test, and win or lose it all. As they furtively glance over at the
girls, how formidable they look, how superior to common affections, how
serenely and icily indifferent, as if the existence of youth of the other
sex in their vicinity at that moment was the thought furthest from their
minds! How presumptuous, how audacious, to those youth themselves now
appears the design, a little while ago so jauntily entertained, of
accompanying these dainty beings home, how weak and inadequate the
phrases of request which they had framed wherewith to accost them!
Madeline Brand is looking particularly grave, as becomes a young lady who
knows that she has three would-be escorts waiting for her just outside
the church door, not to count one or two within, between whose
conflicting claims she has only five minutes more to make up her mind.

The minister had taken up his hymn-book, and was turning over the leaves
to select the closing hymn, when some one rose in the back part of the
room. Every head turned as if pulled by one wire to see who it was, and
Deacon Tuttle put on his spectacles to inspect more closely this dilatory