"I call this frivolous assemblage to order," cried the youth, turning around to his companions. "If any one of our number has ever attended a prayer-meeting, let him hold up his right hand. I use the masculine pronoun, because the man always embraces the woman--when he gets a chance." No hands were held up. "Heathen, every mother's son of us," cried the first speaker. "The daughters are angels, of course, and don't need to go to prayer-meetin', as he of the cowhide sandals just termed it. But for the novelty of the thing, and for the want of something better to do, I move that we all go to-night. If it should be borous, why, we can come out." The proposition pleased the fancy of the party, and with gay words and laughter that scarcely ceased at the vestibule, they entered the place of prayer and lighted down among the sober-visaged, soberly-dressed worshippers like a flock of tropical birds. Ida reluctantly followed them. At first she half decided to walk home alone, but feared to do so. She who had resolved on facing the "King of Terrors" shrank, with a woman's instinct, from a lonely walk in the starlight. She sat in dreary preoccupation a little apart from the others and paid no more heed to the opening services than to their ill-concealed merriment. the minister was away on his August vacation. Prayer-meetings were out of season, and very few were present. The plain farmer was trying to conduct the service as well as he could, but it was evident he would have been much more at ease holding the handle of a plow or the reins of his rattling team, than a hymn-book. Dr. Watts and John Wesley might have lost some of their heavenly serenity could they have heard him read their verses, and certainly only a long-suffering and merciful God could listen to his prayer. And yet rarely on the battle-field is there more moral courage displayed than plain Thomas Smith put forth that night in his conscientious effort to perform an unwonted task; and when at last he sat down and said, "Bruthren, the meetin' is now open," he was more exhausted than he than he would have been from a long day of toil. "The Lord looketh at the heart" is a truth that chills many with dread, but it was a precious thought to Farmer Smith as he saw that his fellow church members did not look very appreciative, and that the gay young city-people often giggled outright at his uncouth words and manner. Ida would have been as greatly amused as any of them a few weeks since, but now she scarcely heard the poor man's stumblings, or the wailing of the hymns that were mangled anew by the people. She sat with her eyes fixed on vacancy, thinking how dreary and empty the world had become; and it seemed to her that religion was the most dreary and empty thing in it. "What good can this wretched little meeting do any one?" she thought, more than once. She was answered.