It was found that if we put up the organ in the loft, it would hide the beautiful rose window.  Besides, we wanted congregational singing, and if we hired a choir, and hung it up there under the roof, like a cage of birds, we should not have congregational singing.  We therefore left the organ-loft vacant, making no further use of it than to satisfy our Gothic cravings.  As for choir,—­several of the singers of the church volunteered to sit together in the front side-seats, and as there was no place for an organ, they gallantly rallied round a melodeon,—­or perhaps it is a cabinet organ,—­a charming instrument, and, as everybody knows, entirely in keeping with the pillars, arches, and great spaces of a real Gothic edifice.  It is the union of simplicity with grandeur, for which we have all been looking.  I need not say to those who have ever heard a melodeon, that there is nothing like it.  It is rare, even in the finest churches on the Continent.  And we had congregational singing.  And it went very well indeed.  One of the advantages of pure congregational singing, is that you can join in the singing whether you have a voice or not.  The disadvantage is, that your neighbor can do the same.  It is strange what an uncommonly poor lot of voices there is, even among good people.  But we enjoy it.  If you do not enjoy it, you can change your seat until you get among a good lot.

So far, everything went well.  But it was next discovered that it was difficult to hear the minister, who had a very handsome little desk in the apse, somewhat distant from the bulk of the congregation; still, we could most of us see him on a clear day.  The church was admirably built for echoes, and the centre of the house was very favorable to them.  When you sat in the centre of the house, it sometimes seemed as if three or four ministers were speaking.

It is usually so in cathedrals; the Right Reverend So-and-So is assisted by the very Reverend Such-and-Such, and the good deal Reverend Thus-and-Thus, and so on.  But a good deal of the minister’s voice appeared to go up into the groined arches, and, as there was no one up there, some of his best things were lost.  We also had a notion that some of it went into the cavernous organ-loft.  It would have been all right if there had been a choir there, for choirs usually need more preaching, and pay less heed to it, than any other part of the congregation.  Well, we drew a sort of screen over the organ-loft; but the result was not as marked as we had hoped.  We next devised a sounding-board,—­a sort of mammoth clamshell, painted white,—­and erected it behind the minister.  It had a good effect on the minister.  It kept him up straight to his work.  So long as he kept his head exactly in the focus, his voice went out and did not return to him; but if he moved either way, he was assailed by a Babel of clamoring echoes.  There was no opportunity for him to splurge about from side to side of the pulpit, as some do.  And if he raised his voice much, or attempted any extra flights, he was liable to be drowned in a refluent sea of his own eloquence.  And he could hear the congregation as well as they could hear him.  All the coughs, whispers, noises, were gathered in the wooden tympanum behind him, and poured into his ears.