The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1882-04-21


is that you may live another hun
dred years and your eyes will
never be gladdened by another hat
like that" In the course Of time we
reached the church, or rather we
reached a hole in the wall and went
into it and found ourselves as at
first supposed in shoe store. One
shelf on another, ranged around both
sides Of the entrance-all filled with
shoes. Shoes with toes turned up
like the bow of boat, and shoes
without any toes, yellow shoes, and
green shoes and red shoes and brown
and blue shoes, all sizes and varieties
and styles and colors. Suddenly it
came over me that this must be the
church and these shoes belonged to
the congregation inside. l looked
around for place to sit down and
pull mine off, with that painful sort
of suspicion which one always feels
that it would be just my luck to have
hole in my stocking, when Mr.. Lee
said it wasn't necessary. And so we
went in and sat down with our shoes
on and our hats off, while the rest of
the congregation sat with their hats
on and their shoes off. We had
bench reserved for us; the rest sat
on the foor-the men on one side
and the women on the other.
1t happened that a theological
student was preaching that afternoon,
and the congregation, to judge from
their appearance did not relish the
idea of being "practiced upon by
Young Theolog," any more than
other folks do. But l noticed that in
spite of the fact that it was a very hot
day, and dreadfully long sermon,
and as l afterwards learned full of
quotations from foreign languages,
especially the Persian, which nobody
could understand but which were in
tended, like Greek and Latin quota
tons in American pulpits, to impress
the people with an awful weight Of
wisdom. In spite of all this l was
particularly struck with fact, which
filled me So full of admiration that l
was anxious to find my note book and
put it down before l forgot it, SO as to
tell my people when I got home-and
that was that throughout the
entire congregation nobody was
asleep. But unfortunately tor the
lesson which l hoped to inculcate the
reason of it soon became apparent,
when an old man pulled himself along
on his hands and knees until he
reached the wall and then leaned up
against it and closed his eyes and
dropped his chin and it was all over
with him. Others followed his ex.
ample, and it soon developed itself
that the reason why the rest of the
audience did not 60 to sleep also
might be that the wall was too far
away to crawl to with decency and it
was impossible to sleep sitting bolt up
right on the floor without tumbling
over.
At length the sermon came to an
end and the final hymn was an
nounced. What the words were / did
not know, the tune started off like
"Greenlands icy mountains" but at
the end of every line it suddenly
dropped off into "Old Hundred" :"
brought up again all right and kept
the track for about line and half,
and at last went flying off in as many
directions as there were voices, in
about as regular time and with as
much melody as a pack Of frecrack-
ers under barrel. And yet it was
evident that they sang from their
hearts and with all their might, which
is the main thing in church worship
after all. And withal, it was an in
spring thing to see these Armenians,
for so many hundred years a subject
ed slave race, knowing all the at
tendant vices and misery of slave
condition-a people from whom the
oppressive Turks had taken away all
freedom and actually ridden about on
their backs like beasts of burden--to
a