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by her grandmother, watching, with large, hopeful, languid eye, for a smile from the good man whom she knew she should not hear many times more; nor how young bumpkins, with buxom girls on their arms, pulled their front locks with their big fists, and blushed stupidly; nor, when he entered the sacred building and the service commenced, how the church was decorated with evergreens; nor how the ambitious choir, consisting of a bass viol, two fiddles, (neither of them being a Straduarius nor a Cremona,) a reedy sounding clarinet, (it had been bought at a great bargain at a pawn shop in the neighboring town,) a bassoon, and a fife, executed "Awake my soul, and with the sun," in a very extraordinary style and manner; nor how all the little charity children in the gallery bawled prodigiously, nor how the cracked voices of the alms-house people quavered at the end of every verse, long after the other people had done singing, to the great indignation of the red-nosed beadle, who looked at the poor old creatures as if they had not souls worthy of singing at all when the Squire was present. We merely supply the outlines, the reader's imagination will readily fill them up.

One of the psalms of the day was written in a peculiarly "peculiar metre," or "perculer," as the Clerk pronounced it; and, unfortunately, neither the fiddles, nor the bassoon, nor the clarinet, nor the fife, could for the life of them fit a tune to it; but we will do them the justice to say, that they did the best in their power to suit it, by mixing "long, short, and common metre"

tunes together very ingeniously. They tried many ways, and very often-sometimes they would proceed pleasantly through a few bars; first the bassoon would grumble discordantly, then the fife would stop playing, although the violins fiddled away most perseveringly. In a little time the clarinet would wander away into a wilderness of sounds, lose itself and die in the distance with a feeble quaver, and lastly, a crash of discord would end the matter; and then came a new trial. But all would not do, and so, as a last resource, the old clerk got up, and to our utter astonishment, whistled a tune, which the choir caught cleverly; and then the fiddles rejoiced, the clarinet went into ecstasies, the fife flourished wonderfully, the bass viol solemnly sounded, and the churchwarden's face brightened up-so did the beadle's; the boys also bawled lustily; and from that time to this, Palm Sunday and Whistling Sunday have ever been with us synonymous terms.

But to come back to Dr. Magoon.

Of

His personal appearance was striking enough. rather tall proportions, he seemed to assume a commanding position in the pulpit, and this air of-I scarcely know what to call it-suppose I say of indifference to what anybody thought or said, seemed to sit easily upon his shoulders. His face was full of character, and indicative, I fancied, of a mind that scorned all trammels, and thought and expressed those thoughts in any manner that seemed to him best, heedless of the praise or blame of the hearers. Iron gray hair was carelessly tossed

about over a high but narrow forehead; the eyes were large and liquid; the nose prominent, but not large; and the mouth somewhat retracted—apparently because the "grinders were few." This, also, may have affected his speech, which was rather thick, and at times indistinct; but generally it was loud and sonorous, especially when the fire of his oratory burned briskly, as it frequently did during the discourse that followed.

Mr. Magoon's style of preaching is rather of the erratic order. To a great extent he is extemporaneous, and frequently when you are anxiously awaiting the completion of a chain of original thought, (for he is at times truly original) he flies off at a tangent, and you become bewildered in a cloud of metaphor. His imagination is remarkably developed, but the ratiocinative power he makes little use of, if, indeed, he possesses it to any degree. Logic, argument, pure reasoning, he seems never to have studied, and, as a consequence, his discourses, though filled with striking passages, are deficient in solidity. Now and then you are startled by bursts of eloquence, which come up surging like a heavy sea over a barrier beach of fine words. Quaint, too, is he, and sometimes you cannot avoid smiling at his odd sayings. Yet, withal, he is no humorist. His opinions evidently are of a liberal character, and I should opine that folly, hypocrisy and fanaticism would find little mercy at his hands. Altogether he is a striking preacher, and the number who flock to hear his ministrations proves that he is an attractive one.

Mr. Magoon is known as an author, but with him in

that capacity I have nothing to do. I may, however, say that his books have been popular, and no work can float on the tide of success without having some elements of vitality in its pages.

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SAILOR PREACHERS. Yes, we will for a time leave the handsome church with its well cushioned pews-its elegantly attired congregation, and its refined observances, for the purpose of visiting a place of worship where sailors "most do congregate." Sanctuaries for seamen are generally selected in strange, out-of-the-way places; in the neighborhood of wharves, and along side docks, and in dingy streets; so, reader, if you be overfastidious, we had better separate for a season; and you, fair lady, if you care not to follow in the steps of Mrs. Fry or Miss Dix, pray take your piety and patchouli somewhere else, for I warn you that the latter will be little heeded in the places to which I am going. But I have a better opinion of you; so, on this bright Sabbath morning, let us wander to one of the mariners' churches,

and on future occasions we will visit the other seamen's Bethels, of which there are no less than five in Boston. We are bound for North Square.

"Ah!" observes some reader, it may be, "we shall now have something funny, for Father Taylor is to be there. His eccentricity will afford the CHURCH-GOER a fine opportunity for indulging in grotesque descriptions or serio-comic remarks. So let us hear what he has to say of the minister of the Bethel church."

You were never more mistaken in your life, friend. I don't mean to be "funny." Pulpit sketching is a serious business, and I, for one, am not inclined to jest with sacred things, - if you are otherwise minded, I pray you let us part company. Let me not, however, be misapprehended. Fun and humor are very different things; -the latter, I by no means object to, even in a place of worship, and many an eminent divine has not scrupled to avail himself of it.

"But humor in the pulpit?" I think I hear one of my antique friends exclaim. "Bless me, how exceedingly incorrect; how notoriously improper and wrong; how wholly out of keeping with the character of the time and place; humor in the pulpit surely cannot be tolerated by any rightly discriminating congregation." Ah! good friends, I am quite at issue with you; I think, or venture to think, that wit and humor, duly reined and guided, as they will always be by a refined and truly pious mind, may be eminently serviceable in the pulpit as well as on the platform. They can utter a truth at a stroke

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