might find a way of
escape altogether, and yet, when once started, talked on as though they
had forgotten how to arrange a suitable closing, and must therefore go
on. Then the prayers seemed to our new-comers and new-beginners in
prayer very strange and unnatural.

"Do you suppose Mr. Helm really feels such a deep interest in everything
under the sun?" queried Eurie. "Or did he pray for all the world in
detail because that is the proper way to do? Someway, I don't feel as if
I could ever learn to pray in that way. I believe I shall have to ask
for just what I want and then stop."

"If you succeed in keeping to the latter part of your determination you
will do better than the most of them," Marion said. "I can't help
thinking that the worst feature of it is the keeping on, long after the
person wants to stop. Now, I tell you, girls, that is not the way they
prayed at Chautauqua, is it?"

"Well," said Flossy, "it is not the way Dr. Dennis prays, either; but
then, he has a theological education; that makes a difference, I
suppose."

"No it doesn't, you mouse, make a speck of difference. That old Uncle
Billy, as they call him, who sat down by the door in the corner, hasn't
a theological education, nor any other sort of education. Did he speak
one single sentence according to rule? Yet, didn't you notice his
prayer? Different from most of the others. He meant it."

"But you wouldn't say that none of the others meant it?" Ruth said,
speaking hesitatingly and questioningly.

"No," Marion answered, slowly. "I suppose not, of course; yet there is
something the matter with them. It may be that the ones who make them,
may feel them, but they don't succeed in making me feel."

"Well, honestly," said Eurie, "I'm disappointed. I have heard that
people who were really Christians liked to go to prayer-meeting better
than anywhere else, but I feel awfully wicked about it. But, as true as
I live, I have been in places that I thought were ever so much
pleasanter than it was there this evening. Now, to tell the plain truth,
some of the time I was dreadfully bored. I'm specially disappointed,
too, for I had a plan to trying to coax Nellis into going with me, but
I really don't know whether I want him to go or not."

But this talk was when they were on their way homeward. Before that, as
they went down the steps, Eurie said:

"What plans have you for the evening, girls? Won't you go with me?"

And then she went back to that torme