a split hair, to have some
blundering elder to come in with a "Praise ye the Lord!" Total abstinence,
I say! Let all the churches take the pledge even against the milder musical
beverages; for they who tamper with champagne cider soon get to Hock and
old Burgundy.

Now, if all the tunes are new, there will be no temptation to the people.
They will not keep humming along, hoping they will find some bars down
where they can break into the clover pasture. They will take the tune as an
inextricable conundrum, and give it up. Besides that, Pisgah, Ortonville
and Brattle Street are old fashioned. They did very well in their day. Our
fathers were simple-minded people, and the tunes fitted them. But our
fathers are gone, and they ought to have taken their baggage with them. It
is a nuisance to have those old tunes floating around the church, and
sometime, just as we have got the music as fine as an opera, to have a
revival of religion come, and some new-born soul break out in "Rock of
Ages, Cleft for Me!" till the organist stamps the pedal with indignation,
and the leader of the tune gets red in the face and swears. Certainly
anything that makes a man swear is wrong--ergo, congregational singing is
wrong. "Quod erat demonstrandum;" which, being translated, means "Plain as
the nose on a man's face."

What right have people to sing who know nothing about rhythmics, melodies,
dynamics? The old tunes ought to be ashamed of themselves when compared
with our modern beauties. Let Dundee, and Portuguese Hymn, and Silver
Street hide their heads beside what we heard not long ago in a church--just
where I shall not tell. The minister read the hymn beautifully. The organ
began, and the choir sang, as near as I could understand, as follows:

Oo--aw--gee--bah
Ah--me--la--he
O--pah--sah--dah
Wo--haw--gee-e-e-e.

My wife, seated beside me, did not like the music. But I said: "What
beautiful sentiment! My dear, it is a pastoral. You might have known that
from 'Wo-haw-gee!' You have had your taste ruined by attending the Brooklyn
Tabernacle." The choir repeated the last line of the hymn four times. Then
the prima donna leaped on to the first line, and slipped, and fell on to
the second, and that broke and let her through into the third. The other
voices came in to pick her up, and got into a grand wrangle, and the bass
and the soprano had it for about ten seconds; but the soprano beat (women
always do), and the bass rolled down