Not long before leaving London she attended a Sunday evening service for the people in Westminster Abbey, which interested her deeply.  It suggested—­or rather was the original of—­the scene in The Story Lizzie Told: 

When we first got into that grand place, I was scared, and thought they would drive us poor folks out.  But when I looked round, most everybody was poor too.  At last I saw some of them get down on their knees, and some shut their eyes, and some took off their hats and held them over their faces.  Father couldn’t, because he had me in his arms; and so I took it off, and held it for him.

“What’s it for?” says I.

“Hush,” says father, “the parson’s praying.”

When I showed IT to God, the room seemed full of Him.  But that’s a small room.  The church is a million and a billion times as big, isn’t it, ma’am?  But when the minister prayed, that big church seemed just as full as it could hold.  Then, all of a sudden, they burst out a-singing.  Father showed me the card with large letters on it, and says he, “Sing, Lizzie, Sing!”

And so I did.  It was the first time in my life.  The hymn said,

  Jesus, lover of my soul,
  Let me to Thy bosom fly,

and I whispered to father, “Is Jesus God?” “Yes, yes,” said he, “Sing, Lizzie, sing!”

After the praying and the singing, came the preaching, I heard every word.  It was a beautiful story.  It told how sorry Jesus was for us when we did wrong, bad things, and how glad He was when we were good and happy.  It said we must tell Him all our troubles and all our joys, and feel sure that He knew just how to pity us, because He had been a poor man three and thirty years, on purpose to see how it seemed.

The most stirring sight by far which she witnessed while in London, was a review of 20,000 volunteers by the Queen in Hyde Park, on the 23d of June.  She waited for it several hours, standing much of the time upon a camp-stool.  As her Majesty appeared, accompanied by Prince Albert, the curiosity of the immense crowd “rose to such a pitch that every conceivable method was resorted to, to catch a glimpse of the field.  Men climbed on each other’s shoulders, gave ‘fabulous prices’ for chairs, boxes, and baskets, raised their wives and sweethearts high in the air, and so by degrees our view was quite obstructed.” [10] The scene did not, perhaps, in numbers or in the brilliant array of fashion, rank, and beauty surpass, nor in military pomp and circumstance did it equal, a grand review she had witnessed not long before in the Champ de Mars; but in other respects it was far more impressive.  Among the volunteers were thousands of young men in whose veins ran the best and most precious blood in England.  And then to an American wife and mother, Queen Victoria was a million times more interesting than Louis Napoleon.  She stood then, as happily she still stands, at the head of the Christian womanhood of the world; and