I use the word welcome, because I had not only discerned in these gatherings an admirable vehicle of elocutionary progress, but I had quickly discovered in them a crying need that it was plainly my duty to supply. Familiar to every frequenter of the average prayer-meeting, whether Church of England or Non-conformist, this was nothing less than the presence of a gap-filler, especially in the earlier stages of the proceedings. Few can have failed, for example, to notice the pause that almost invariably takes place after the Chairman has delivered his own petition and invited the efforts of further supplicants. Painful in itself, in that it so often accentuates the respiratory difficulties of those present, how often is it broken, alas, by the simultaneous commencement of two or more separate competitors? Nor is that all. For, each realizing that he is too late, a disheartened silence generally ensues, only to be broken perhaps by a second neck-to-neck effort on the part of all the previous starters that abortively collapses again on some such unfortunate phrase as “Oh dear, oh Lord.” It was here then that I descried, and at once began to work, an almost virgin field, never allowing an instant to elapse after the right to supplicate had been declared general. Indeed on many occasions I filled the subsequent gaps also, and at one particularly reluctant gathering, I can well remember, in less than an hour, offering a dozen full-length petitions. That I soon had rivals goes without saying. Who, in such a position, could have escaped them? But once started, I allowed no second petitioner to deflect or abbreviate my entreaties. Perhaps the work, however, in which I was most interested was that of the Anti-Dramatic and Saltatory[6] Union founded by Ezekiel Stool, the son of Abraham Stool, the inventor and proprietor of Stool’s Adult Gripe Water. Probably the most persistent and unflinching opponent that the theatre and dancing saloon have ever known, he was then some twenty-six years of age and of a very remarkable and beautiful character. Indeed all that he lacked of these two qualities in his actual physical appearance seemed to have been concentrated with additional force in his spiritual personality. No taller than myself, and weighing considerably less, he had suffered all his life from an inherent dread of shaving, and the greater portion of his face was in consequence obliterated by a profuse but gentle growth of hair. His voice too, owing to some developmental defect, had only partially broken; and indeed his father Abraham (afterwards removed to an asylum) had on more than one occasion attempted to sacrifice him, under the mistaken impression that he was some sort of animal that would be suitable as a burnt offering. Footnote 6: Appertaining to dancing.