Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: September 11, 2025
There was a light in the organ-loft; very softly Brockett began his voluntary clatter, clatter, clatter, and the School arrived, the small boys, swallowed by their Eton collars, first, filing into their places to the right of the screen, then the middle boys, a little indifferent and careless, then the Fifth and Sixth in their "stick-up" collars, haughty and indifferent indeed.
The music ceased; the last anthem had been played; a gas-jet flared in the organ-loft; the people began to rise from their seats. The sacristan appeared again from behind the altar, and walked slowly down the side aisle, carrying only his lantern. As he neared my seat the woman stood erect, and passed out of the pew, her hand caressing the child.
One of the tunes sung was "Dundee," and each boy thought of their singing the song of "The Kansas Emigrants," as the warbling measures drifted down to them from the organ-loft, lifting their hearts with thoughts that the strangers about them knew nothing of. The preacher's text was "In my father's house are many mansions."
Westray went down from the organ-loft, and as he walked through the church the very last change was rung. Before the hum and mutter had died out of the air, and while the red-faced ringers in the belfry were quaffing their tankards, the architect had made his way to the scaffolding, and stood face to face with the zigzag crack.
Once in the organ-loft, we saw that the crowd had greatly increased in the church; all the mothers, the sisters, the old grandmothers, the rich, and the poor, were kneeling on the benches in the midst of the deepest silence; they prayed for the absent, offering all only to see them once again.
That his attendance slackened and finally ceased altogether, he tried, in his own mind, to attribute to this difficulty, and not to the fact that his best suit had become so threadbare as to make him ashamed; though the congregation now seldom glanced up, as it used to do, at the organ-loft where he sat separated from the choir by a low green curtain.
Besides, we wanted congregational sing- ing, and if we hired a choir, and hung it up there under the roof, like a cage of birds, we should not have congregational singing. We therefore left the organ-loft vacant, making no further use of it than to satisfy our Gothic cravings.
We have said that a few seconds before the quarryman and his band entered the body of the church, several persons had fled from it. Two of these had taken refuge in the organ-loft, from which retreat they had viewed the preceding scene, themselves remaining invisible. One of these persons was a young man charged with the care of the organ, and quite musician enough to play on it.
Well, we drew a sort of screen over the organ-loft; but the result was not as marked as we had hoped. We next devised a sounding-board, a sort of mammoth clamshell, painted white, and erected it behind the minister. It had a good effect on the minister. It kept him up straight to his work.
Only a taper or two were lit in the shadowy choir; and a light in the organ-loft sent strange shadows, a waving hand or a gigantic arm, across the roof, while the quiet movements of the player were heard from time to time, the passage of his feet across the gallery, or the rustling of the leaves of a book.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking