By and by I pluck up courage and pluck him by the sleeve.  So, with a severe air of suppressed indignation, he shows us to a couple of ineligible seats, where the draft disarranges MARGARET’S hair, and the charity children drop books of the op—­, that is to say, prayer-books, and molasses candy in unpleasant proximity to our helpless feet.

Neither MARGARET nor I possess a libret—­, a prayer-book I mean.  However, that is a matter of no consequence, as we are both familiar with the dialog—­, or rather the service.  The organist having ended his overture, the service begins.  Not even the wretched method of the tenor—­I refer of course to the clerk—­and his miserably affected execution of the recitative passages, can mar the beauty of the words.  The audience evidently feels their solemn import.  The young lady and the young male person who sit immediately in front of me clasp surreptitious hands as they bow their heads to repeat the confession that they are miserable sinners, and she whispers by no means softly to him of the “frightful bonnets the SMITH girls have on.”  Presently the recitative of the clerk is succeeded by a contest in chanting—­probably for the championship—­by two rival choruses of shrill-voiced boys, who hurl alternate verses of the Psalms at one another with the fiercest intensity.  MARGARET is betrayed into an inadvertent competition with them, by reading a verse aloud, as had been her custom elsewhere, but the charity children smile aloud at her, and the usher frowns, so she sits down again with reddened cheeks.

I say to her, “that this choir contest is an excellent feature, one that is sure to draw.”  But she answers nothing, and busily reads the libret—­, the psalm, to herself.

Then comes the litany.  And here again MARGARET betrays her rural habits, by repeating audibly the first response, thus encroaching on the province of the choir-boys, who have now united, and form a fine and powerful chorus, less picturesque perhaps than the Druidical chorus in the first act of Norma, but quite as religious in its effect.  After which comes a hymn, executed by a soprano, who is really a deserving little girl, and whom I little expected to find doing the leading business in a first-class church, when I first saw her in the chorus at the Stadt Theatre, seven years ago.  MARGARET, warned by experience, does not venture to interfere with the singing, to the evident disappointment of the usher, who is watching her with the intention, plainly expressed on his face, of peremptorily putting her out, if she sings a single note.  Then comes a recitation of the commandments by the leading male perfor—­, that is to say, by the rector, supported by the double chorus, and the orches—­, the organ, I should say; and then we have the sermon.