The Project Gutenberg EBook of Esther, by Henry Adams

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Title: Esther

Author: Henry Adams

Release Date: December 21, 2004 [EBook #14409]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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ESTHER

_A Novel_

Published in 1884 by Henry Holt and Company

_Chapter I_

The new church of St. John's, on Fifth Avenue, was thronged the morning
of the last Sunday of October, in the year 1880. Sitting in the gallery,
beneath the unfinished frescoes, and looking down the nave, one caught
an effect of autumn gardens, a suggestion of chrysanthemums and
geraniums, or of October woods, dashed with scarlet oaks and yellow
maples. As a display of austerity the show was a failure, but if
cheerful content and innocent adornment please the Author of the lilies
and roses, there was reason to hope that this first service at St.
John's found favor in his sight, even though it showed no victory over
the world or the flesh in this part of the United States. The sun came
in through the figure of St. John in his crimson and green garments of
glass, and scattered more color where colors already rivaled the flowers
of a prize show; while huge prophets and evangelists in flowing robes
looked down from the red walls on a display of human vanities that would
have called out a vehement Lamentation of Jeremiah or Song of Solomon,
had these poets been present in flesh as they were in figure.

Solomon was a brilliant but not an accurate observer; he looked at the
world from the narrow stand-point of his own temple. Here in New York he
could not have truthfully said that all was vanity, for even a more
ill-natured satirist than he must have confessed that there was in this
new temple to-day a perceptible interest in religion. One might almost
have said that religion seemed to be a matter of concern. The audience
wore a look of interest, and, even after their first gaze of admiration
and whispered criticism at the splendors of their new church, when at
length the clergyman entered to begin the service, a ripple of
ex