Female figures, demure in dress and eyes cast
down, flitted noiselessly in, and the awful stillness was only broken
by the heavy boots of the few elders and deacons who constituted the
male portion of the exceedingly slender audience. With difficulty, and
sometimes, only after two or three failures, a hymn was raised, which,
when in fullest tide, was only a dreary wail,--how unmelodious to the
ears of unreverential youth, gifted with a sense of the ludicrous! How
long, how sad, how pointless the prayers! How easy to believe, down in
that dreary cellar, that this world was but a wilderness, and man "a
feeble piece"! Deacon Jones could speak up briskly enough when he was
selling two yards of shilling calico to a farmer's wife sharp at a
bargain; but in that apartment, contiguous to the tombs, it seemed
natural that he should utter dismal views of life in bad grammar
through his nose. Mrs. Jones was cheerful when she gave her little
tea-party the evening before; but now she appeared to assent, without
surprise, to the statement that she was a pilgrim travelling through a
vale of tears.
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