The experiment was a success, so far as appearances went, but when the screen went back, the minister’s voice went back with it.  We could not hear him very well, though we could hear the choir as plain as day.  We have thought of remedying this last defect by putting the high screen in front of the singers, and close to the minister, as it was before.  This would make the singers invisible,—­“though lost to sight, to memory dear,”—­what is sometimes called an “angel choir,” when the singers (and the melodeon) are concealed, with the most subdued and religious effect.  It is often so in cathedrals.

This plan would have another advantage.  The singers on the platform, all handsome and well dressed, distract our attention from the minister, and what he is saying.  We cannot help looking at them, studying all the faces and all the dresses.  If one of them sits up very straight, he is a rebuke to us; if he “lops” over, we wonder why he does n’t sit up; if his hair is white, we wonder whether it is age or family peculiarity; if he yawns, we want to yawn; if he takes up a hymn-book, we wonder if he is uninterested in the sermon; we look at the bonnets, and query if that is the latest spring style, or whether we are to look for another; if he shaves close, we wonder why he doesn’t let his beard grow; if he has long whiskers, we wonder why he does n’t trim ’em; if she sighs, we feel sorry; if she smiles, we would like to know what it is about.  And, then, suppose any of the singers should ever want to eat fennel, or peppermints, or Brown’s troches, and pass them round!  Suppose the singers, more or less of them, should sneeze!

Suppose one or two of them, as the handsomest people sometimes will, should go to sleep!  In short, the singers there take away all our attention from the minister, and would do so if they were the homeliest people in the world.  We must try something else.

It is needless to explain that a Gothic religious life is not an idle one.

EIGHTH STUDY

I

Perhaps the clothes question is exhausted, philosophically.  I cannot but regret that the Poet of the Breakfast-Table, who appears to have an uncontrollable penchant for saying the things you would like to say yourself, has alluded to the anachronism of “Sir Coeur de Lion Plantagenet in the mutton-chop whiskers and the plain gray suit.”

A great many scribblers have felt the disadvantage of writing after Montaigne; and it is impossible to tell how much originality in others Dr. Holmes has destroyed in this country.  In whist there are some men you always prefer to have on your left hand, and I take it that this intuitive essayist, who is so alert to seize the few remaining unappropriated ideas and analogies in the world, is one of them.