sometimes very much a

Ck of Ages, Cleft for Me!" till the organist stamps the
pedal with indignation, and the leader of the tune gets

red in the face and swears. Certainly
anything that makes a man swear is wrong--ergo,
congregational singing is wrong.
"Quod erat demonstrandum;" which, being translated, means
"Plain as the nose on a man's face." What right have people to sing who
know nothing about rhythmics, melodies, dynamics?
The old tunes ought to be ashamed
of themselves when compared with our modern beauties.
Let Dundee, and Portuguese Hymn, and Silver Street
hide their heads beside what we
heard not long ago in a church--just where I shall

not tell. The minister read the hymn beautifully. The organ
began, and
the choir sang, as near as I could understand, as follows:
Oo--aw--gee--bah Ah--me--la--he O--pah--sah--dah Wo--haw--gee-e-e-e. My
wife, seated beside me, did not like the music.

But I said: "What beautiful sentiment! My dear, it is a pastoral. You
might have known that from 'Wo-haw-gee!' You have had your taste ruined
by attending the Brooklyn Tabernacle." The choir repeated the last line
of
the hymn four times. Then the prima donna leaped on to the first
line, and slipped, and fell on to the second, and that broke and let
her through into the third. The
other voices came in to pick her up, and
got into a grand wrangle,
and the bass and the soprano had it for about