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We sit on what is known as the "Amen side," with our thumb in our button-hole, and watch the process of the chief steward, who is unlimbering his tuning-fork. He obtains the pitch of the tune by rapping the pew with this, or, if his teeth be sound, which is rare, touches the prongs with his incisors.
He took a tuning-fork from his pocket. "It is tuned in fifths," he said. "The open strings are A, D, G, C. You can remember them, because they stand for 'Allowable Delights Grow Commonplace'; or, read the other way up: 'Courage Gains Desired Aims."
Gathering a few young people around him, and displaying a tuning-fork, he was ready for the services to begin. I gave the hymn commencing, "Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove." When I had finished the reading, the chorister arose with superlative dignity, and gave the key. Unfortunately, the choir dropped a tone or two too low, and the first verse was sung at that disadvantage.
And this is what I sang, with a heart that knocked to the notes of the old madrigal like the precentor's tuning-fork to a meeting-house psalm: "Lady, when I behold the roses sprouting, Which, clad in damask mantles, deck the arbours, And then behold your lips where sweet love harbours, My eyes perplex me with a double doubting, Whether the roses be your lips, or your lips the roses."
But our young knight of the tuning-fork was not to be vanquished. With a dash he brought the fork down upon the desk, and gave the key again. But alas! for all human expectations! The choir dropped down to a dead monotone, as they went on with the next verse: "In vain we tune our formal songs, In vain we strive to rise; Hosannas languish on our tongues, And our devotion dies."
Sulpice: his plain old father at the old border home, close and hard-handed, who went afield with his own negroes, and made his sons take the plough-handles, and marched them all before him every Sunday to the plank church, and led the singing himself with an ancient tuning-fork, and took up the collection in a black velvet bag fastened to a pole.
About the time that we feel sleepy an anecdote arouses us: then the iteration of expletives from the membership succeeds; we see that the owner of the tuning-fork has fallen to sleep in so ingenious an attitude that he would never have been detected but for his snore, and are amused by the fashion one good lady has of slowly wagging her head as she drinks in the discourse.
He then hummed the tuning-fork note, and the octave below, the double bass screwed up and responded, the leader with the tuning-fork boldly struck out, everybody following, including the orchestra, and those of the congregation who had bass or tenor voices sang the air. Each of the instruments demanded a fair share of solos. The institution strangest to me now was the Lord's Supper.
The ether stress is differently distributed for every change in the relative positions of the poles. A common U-magnet, if struck, will vibrate like a tuning-fork, and gives out a definite pitch. Its poles swing towards and away from each other at uniform rates, and the pitch of the magnet will depend upon its size, thickness, and the material it is made of.
In such elastic bodies as vibrate to and fro like the prongs of a tuning-fork, or give sounds of a definite pitch, the rate of vibration is determined by the size and shape of the body as well as by their elementary composition. The smaller a body is, the higher its vibratory rate, if it be made of the same material and the form remains the same.
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