"What can be done? There are women standing on the rails of the side altars." "My Ottilie, it is a matter of life or death. I must see." "But how?" "Hold--the pulpit!" Now the pulpit was a gorgeous affair of marble and gilding, and was accessible only by means of a little door in the wall. It was very high. At once Nottburg and Ottilie, clinging to each other, worked a way for themselves with their elbows, using them like fins, through the crowd towards this particular door. I watched them. No one else had thought of invading the pulpit. Through the door they went, and they bolted it behind them, and in another moment there they were, bonnets and feathers and smiles, in the pulpit, and no one could dislodge them, as they had secured the door behind. I have said there is a fashion in pulpits, and there is caprice as well. A very eloquent preacher I know entertains the idea of having space in which to stride about. Accordingly he set up in his new church an oblong platform, measuring 10 ft. by 5 ft., and he enclosed it with a plain deal railing, 3 ft. 6 in. high. He himself being a very tall man, this suited him admirably. He would place both his hands on the rail, and swing the upper portion of his body over when he sought to be impressive. Unhappily, for a great festival, he invited by letter a stranger, whom he had never seen, to preach for him. On the arrival of the strange preacher, he proved to be a very small man indeed. Still, I do not think it occurred to the incumbent to make provision, nor did he realize what the result would be, till the _Preacher of the Day_ ascended the pulpit, when, at once, by rector, by choir, by the entire congregation, it was seen that the sermon could, would, must be nothing but a farce. The preacher was visible in the pulpit--and looked for all the world like a white rabbit hopping about in a cage, his head could hardly be seen over the top. At once vergers were sent with hassocks, and two of these were placed in the pulpit, one balanced on top of the other, and on this the little man had to maintain his equilibrium--or seek to maintain it, not always successfully, as at intervals one hassock would slip away, whereupon the preacher's head disappeared, and the sermon was interrupted while he chased the evading hassock and replaced it as a footstool. When I was an undergraduate at Cambridge there was a very little man incumbent of a certain church, and not only was he little, but there was something indescribably comical in his appearance. The only occasion on which I went to service there this odd little man mounted the pulpit with great solemnity and gave out as his text: "I am fearfully and wonderfully made." I can remember nothing of his sermon, but the sight of the droll little object in the pulpit giving out this text is ineffaceable in my memory.