A SUNDAY IDYL.

YOU see, the tenor had got kind of abstracted, or restless, or something during the long prayer, and was thinking about the European war, or the wheat corner last week, or something, and so when the minister gave out hymn 231, on page 67, and the chorister whispered them to sing the music on page 117, it all came in on the tenor like a volley, and as he had only the playing of the symphony in which to make the necessary combination of time, hymn and page, he came to the front just a little bit disorganized, and his fingers sticking between every leaf in the book. And the choir hadn’t faced the footlights half a minute before the congregation more than half suspected something was wrong. For you see, the soprano, in attempting to answer the frenzied whisper of the tenor in regard to the page, lost the first two or three words of the opening line herself, and that left the alto to start off alone, for the basso was so profoundly engaged in watching the tenor and wondering what ailed him, that he forgot to sing. The music wasn’t written for an alto solo, and consequently there wasn’t very much variety to that part, and after singing nearly through the first line alone, and receiving neither applause nor bouquets for one of the finest contralto efforts a Burlington or any other audience ever listened to, the alto stopped and looked reproachfully at the soprano, who had just plunged the tenor’s soul into a gulf of dark despair by leaving him to find his way out of the labyrinth of tunes and pages and hymns into which his own heedlessness had led him, by giving him a frantic shake of her head, which unsettled the new spring bonnet (just the sweetest duck of a Normandy), to that extent that every woman in the congregation noticed it. All this time the organist was doing nobly, and the alto, recovering her spirits, sang another bar, which, for sweetness and tenacious adherence to the same note, all the way through, couldn’t be beat in America. By this time the bass had risen to the emergency and sang two deep guttural notes, with profound expression, but as those of the congregation sitting nearest the choir could distinctly hear him sing “Ho, ho!” to the proper music, it was painfully evident that the basso had the correct tune, but was running wild on the words. At this point the soprano got her time and started off with a couple of confident notes, high and clear as a bird song, and the congregation, inspired with an over-ready confidence, broke out on the last word of the verse with a discordant roar that rattled the globes on the big chandelier, and as the verse closed with this triumphant outbreak, an expression of calm, restful satisfaction was observed to steal over the top of the pastor’s head, which was all that could be seen of him, as he bowed himself behind the pulpit.

The organist played an intricate and beautiful interlude without a tremor or a false note; not an uncertain touch to indicate that there was a particle of excitement in the choir, or that anything had gone wrong.

The choir didn’t exactly appear to catch the organist’s reassuring steadiness, for the basso led off the second verse by himself, and his deep-toned “Ho, ho!” was so perceptible throughout the sanctuary that several people started, and looked down under the seats for a man, and one irreverent sinner, near the door, thrust a felt hat into his mouth and slid out. The soprano got orders and started out only three or four words behind time, but she hadn’t reached the first siding before she collided with a woman in the audience, running wild and trying to carry a new tune to the old words. And then, to make it worse, the soprano handed her book to the tenor, and pointed him to the tune on page 117 and the words on page 67, and if that unhappy man didn’t get his orders mixed, and struck out on schedule time, with the tune on page 67 and the words on page 117, and in less than ten words ditched himself so badly that he was laid out for the rest of the verse, and then he lost his place, handed the book back to the soprano, took the one she had, and held it upside down, and no living man could tell from his face what he was thinking of or trying to say. Meanwhile the soprano, when the books were so abruptly changed on her, did just what might have been expected, and telescoped two tunes and sets of words into each other with disastrous effect. The alto was running smoothly along, passenger time, for the several wrecks gave her the track, so far as it was clear, all to herself. The basso, who had slipped an eccentric and was only working one side, was rumbling cautiously along, clear off his own time, flagging himself every mile of the way, and asking for orders every time he got a chance. The pastor’s head was observed to tremble with emotion, and the people sitting nearest the pulpit say they could indistinctly hear sounds from behind it that resembled the syllables “Te, he!” As the organist pulled and crowded and encouraged them along toward the closing line, it looked as though public confidence might soon be restored and the panic abated, but alas, as even the demoralized tenor rallied, and came in with the full quartette on the last line, a misguided man in the audience suddenly thought he recognized in the distracted tune an old, familiar acquaintance, and broke out in a joyous howl on something entirely different that inspired every singing man and woman in the congregation with the same idea, and the hymn was finished in a terrific discord of sixty-nine different tunes, and the rent and mangled melody flapped and fluttered around the sacred edifice like a new kind of delirium tremens, and all the wrecking cars on the line were started for the scene at once.

The pastor deserves more praise than can be crowded into these pages for pronouncing the benediction in clear, even tones, without even the ghost of a smile on his placid countenance.