On the Church Steps

"Are they all hypocrites, do you think, Charlie?" she said suddenly, looking up into my face.

"They? who? Bessie, what have I done to make you angry?"

"You? Nothing, dear goose! I am angry at myself and at everybody else. Did it flash upon you, Charlie, what we were singing?"

Then she quoted the lines, which I will not repeat here, but they expressed, as the sole aspiration of the singer, a desire to pass eternity in singing hymns of joy and praise--an impatience for the time to come, a disregard of earth, a turning away from temporal things, and again the desire for an eternity of sacred song.

"Suppose I confess to you," said I, astonished at her earnestness, "that I did not at all know what I was singing?"

"That's just it! just what makes it so dreadful! Nobody was thinking about it--no