Panky was in the first row of block F, so that my father could not see his face except sometimes when he turned round.  He was sitting on the Mayor’s right hand, while Dr. Downie was on his left; he looked at my father once or twice in a puzzled way, as though he ought to have known him, but my father did not think he recognised him.  Hanky was still with President Gurgoyle and others in the robing-room, N; Yram had already taken her seat:  my father knew her in a moment, though he pretended not to do so when George pointed her out to him.  Their eyes met for a second; Yram turned hers quickly away, and my father could not see a trace of recognition in her face.  At no time during the whole ceremony did he catch her looking at him again.

“Why, you stupid man,” she said to him later on in the day with a quick, kindly smile, “I was looking at you all the time.  As soon as the President or Hanky began to talk about you I knew you would stare at him, and then I could look.  As soon as they left off talking about you I knew you would be looking at me, unless you went to sleep—­and as I did not know which you might be doing, I waited till they began to talk about you again.”

My father had hardly taken note of his surroundings when the choir began singing, accompanied by a few feeble flutes and lutes, or whatever the name of the instrument should be, but with no violins, for he knew nothing of the violin, and had not been able to teach the Erewhonians anything about it.  The voices were all in unison, and the tune they sang was one which my father had taught Yram to sing; but he could not catch the words.

As soon as the singing began, a procession, headed by the venerable Dr. Gurgoyle, President of the Musical Banks of the province, began to issue from the robing-room, and move towards the middle of the apse.  The President was sumptuously dressed, but he wore no mitre, nor anything to suggest an English or European Bishop.  The Vice-President, Head Manager, Vice-Manager, and some Cashiers of the Bank, now ranged themselves on either side of him, and formed an impressive group as they stood, gorgeously arrayed, at the top of the steps leading from the apse to the nave.  Here they waited till the singers left off singing.

When the litany, or hymn, or whatever it should be called, was over, the Head Manager left the President’s side and came down to the lectern in the nave, where he announced himself as about to read some passages from the Sunchild’s Sayings.  Perhaps because it was the first day of the year according to their new calendar, the reading began with the first chapter, the whole of which was read.  My father told me that he quite well remembered having said the last verse, which he still held as true; hardly a word of the rest was ever spoken by him, though he recognised his own influence in almost all of it.  The reader paused, with good effect, for about five seconds between each paragraph, and read slowly and very clearly.  The chapter was as follows:-