country
boy for looking with wonder at a man hanging head downward from a
trapeze in a circus tent. No other church, not even the Quaker, ever
laid its hand more entirely upon the whole life of its members. The
dead hand of Wesley has been stronger than the living hand of any pope.

Upon the hard, open-backed, unpainted and unvarnished oak benches,
which seemed devised to produce discomfort, sat the Sunday-school
classes, and upon one of these, near the door, D'Entremont sat down. He
looked at the bare walls, at the white pulpit, at the carpetless
floors, at the general ugliness of things, the box stove, which stood
in the only aisle, the tin chandeliers with their half-burned candles,
the eight-by-ten lights of glass in the windows, and he was favorably
impressed. With a quick conscience he had often felt the frivolous
emptiness of a worldly life, and had turned toward the religion of his
uncle the _abbe_ only to turn away again antagonized by what seemed to
him frivolity in the religions pomp that he saw. But here was a
religion not only without the attractions of sensuous surrounding, but
a religion that maintained its vitality despite a repelling plainness,
not to say a repulsive ugliness, in its external forms. For could he
doubt the force of a religious principle that had divested every woman
in the little church of every ornament? Doubtless he felt the
narrowness that could read the scriptural injunction so literally, but
none could doubt the strength of a religious conviction that submitted
to such self-denial. And then there was Priscilla, with all her gifts,
sitting in the midst of her boys, gathered from that part of the
village known as "Slabtown." Yes, there must be something genuine in
this religious life, and its entire contrast to all that the marquis
had known and grown weary of attracted him.

As eleven o'clock drew on, the little church filled with people. The
men sat on one side of the aisle and the women on the other. The old
brethren and sisters, and generally those who prayed in prayer meeting
and spoke in love feast, sat near the front, many of them on the cross
seats near the pulpit, which were thence said by scoffers to be the
"Amen corners." Any one other than a leader of the hosts of Israel
would as soon have thought of taking a seat in the pulpit as on one of
these chief seats in the synagogue. The marquis sat still and watched
the audience gather, while one of the good brethren led the
co