It was found that if we put up the organ in the loft, it would hide the
beautiful rose window. Besides, we wanted congregational singing, and
if we hired a choir, and hung it up there under the roof, like a cage of
birds, we should not have congregational singing. We therefore left
the organ-loft vacant, making no further use of it than to satisfy our
Gothic cravings. As for choir,--several of the singers of the church
volunteered to sit together in the front side-seats, and as there was no
place for an organ, they gallantly rallied round a melodeon,--or perhaps
it is a cabinet organ,--a charming instrument, and, as everybody knows,
entirely in keeping with the pillars, arches, and great spaces of a real
Gothic edifice. It is the union of simplicity with grandeur, for which
we have all been looking. I need not say to those who have ever heard a
melodeon, that there is nothing like it. It is rare, even in the finest
churches on the Continent. And we had congregational singing. And it
went very well indeed. One of the advantages of pure congregational
singing, is that you can join in the singing whether you have a voice
or not. The disadvantage is, that your neighbor can do the same. It is
strange what an uncommonly poor lot of voices there is, even among good
people. But we enjoy it. If you do not enjoy it, you can change your
seat until you get among a good lot.
So far, everything went well. But it was next discovered that it was
difficult to hear the minister, who had a very handsome little desk in
the apse, somewhat distant from the bulk of the congregation; still, we
could most of us see him on a clear day. The church was admirably built
for echoes, and the centre of the house was very favorable to them. When
you sat in the centre of the house, it sometimes seemed as if three or
four ministers were speaking.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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