Basso Buffo, from Royal Italian Opera.
Carl Schneiderine,
First Baritone, of His Majesty's Theatre, Berlin.

If after three months of taking these two prescriptions the congregational
singing is not thoroughly dead, send me a letter directed to my name, with
the title of O.F.M. (Old Fogy in Music), and I will, on the receipt
thereof, write Another prescription, which I am sure will kill it dead as a
door nail, and that is the deadest thing in all history.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE BATTLE OF PEW AND PULPIT.

Two more sermons unloaded, and Monday morning I went sauntering down town,
ready for almost anything. I met several of my clerical friends going to a
ministers' meeting. I do not often go there, for I have found that some of
the clerical meetings are gridirons where they roast clergymen who do not
do things just as we do them. I like a Presbyterian gridiron no better than
a Methodist one, and prefer to either of them an old-fashioned spit, such
as I saw one summer in Oxford, England, where the rabbit is kept turning
round before a slow fire, in blessed state of itinerancy, the rabbit
thinking he is merely taking a ride, while he is actually roasting.

As on the Monday morning I spoke of I was passing down the street, I heard
high words in a church. What could it be? Was it the minister, and the
sexton, and the trustees fighting? I went in to see, when, lo! I found that
the Pew and the Pulpit were bantering each other at a great rate, and
seemed determined to tell each one the other's faults. I stood still as a
mouse that I might hear all that was said, and my presence not be noticed.

The Pew was speaking as I went in, and said to the Pulpit, in anything but
a reverential tone: "Why don't you speak out on other days as well as you
do to-day? The fact is, I never knew a Pulpit that could not be heard when
it was thoroughly mad. But when you give out the hymn on Sabbaths, I cannot
tell whether it is the seventieth or the hundredth. When you read the
chapter, you are half through with it before I know whether it is Exodus or
Deuteronomy. Why do you begin your sermon in so low a key? If the
introduction is not worth hearing, it is not worth delivering. Are you
explaining the text? If so, the Lord's meaning is as important as anything
you will have in your sermon. Throw back your shoulders, open your mouth!
Make your voice strike against the opposite wall! Pray not only for a clean
heart, but for stout lun