, it is too apt to be
on tiptoe, following with admiring look the flight of its own rhetoric.
The essentially intellectual character of an extemporaneous composition
spoken to the Creator with the consciousness that many of his creatures
are listening to criticise or to admire, is the great argument for set
forms of prayer.

The congregation on this particular Sunday was made up chiefly of women
and old men. The young men were hunting after Myrtle Hazard. Mr. Byles
Gridley was in his place, wondering why the minister did not read his
notice before the prayer. This prayer, was never reported, as is the
questionable custom with regard to some of these performances, but it was
wrought up with a good deal of rasping force and broad pathos. When he
came to pray for "our youthful sister, missing from her pious home,
perhaps nevermore to return to her afflicted relatives," and the women
and old men began crying, Byles Gridley was on the very point of getting
up and cutting short the whole matter by stating the simple fact that she
had got back, all right, and suggesting that he had better pray for some
of the older and tougher sinners before him. But on the whole it would
be more decorous to wait, and perhaps he was willing to hear what the
object of his favorite antipathy had to say about it. So he waited
through the prayer. He waited through the hymn, "Life is the time"--He
waited to hear the sermon.

The minister gave out his text from the Book of Esther, second chapter,
seventh verse: "For she had neither father nor mother, and the maid was
fair and beautiful." It was to be expected that the reverend gentleman,
who loved to produce a sensation, would avail himself of the excitable
state of his audience to sweep the key-board of their emotions, while, as
we may, say, all the stops were drawn out. His sermon was from notes;
for, though absolutely extemporaneous composition may be acceptable to
one's Maker, it is not considered quite the thing in speaking to one's
fellow-mortals. He discoursed for a time on the loss of parents, and on
the dangers to which the unfortunate orphan is exposed. Then he spoke of
the peculiar risks of the tender female child, left without its natural
guardians. Warming with his subject, he dilated with wonderful unction
on the temptations springing from personal attractions. He pictured the
"fair and beautiful" women of Holy Writ, lingering over their names with
lover-like devotion. He