12 Dosing. [JcLY, 



the doze never was there such a dozing blessedness before. A poodle 

 snapped ray little finger and I was startled. I do not mean the least 

 intentional* disrespect to the clergy, in saying that there are among them some 

 occasional most respectable soporific preachers. The sectarians are too 

 rigidly inclined to boisterons declamation to allow us a nap when seated 

 beneath their echoing rostrum ; they are, for the most part, supplied with 

 the THUNDERING-VOCATIVENESS, and are determined nobody shall go to hell 

 without having their ears split first. But to return. 



Nothing can be more ungodly than to enter the church with an express 

 purpose of dozing there. Arm-chairs, sofas, and beds are the legitimate 

 places for dozers. But there is no accounting for that conquering spirit of 

 all-besetting drowsiness that attacks us at sundry times and places. It is 

 in vain that we lengthen our limbs into an awakening stretch that we 

 yawn with the expressive suavity of yawning no more that we dislocate 

 our knuckle -bones, and ruffle the symmetry of our visage, with a manual 

 application : like the cleft blaze of a candle, drowsiness returns again. 

 Well, then, what manner of reader is he that hath never sinned by drows- 

 ing in church time ? Let him read on ; and I'll realize by description 

 what he has realized by endurance. 



It is after the embodying of a good dinner with ourselves, that doziness 

 is most tempting. You have dined at four o'clock to-day. Well, that's a 

 decent Sabbatical hour. After due potations of wine, coffee, &c., your 

 gratitude is awakened ; and, like a good Christian, you arrange your 

 beaver, and walk off steadily to church. Now, remember, I give you 

 full credit for your wish to exhibit your external holiness that you are 

 indeed conscious of the reverence that should accompany all your engage- 

 ments in the fane of the deity ; and yet I prognosticate that if the Rev. 

 Nabob Narcotic happen to preach this evening, you will, of a surety, 

 doze infallibly doze in the midst of his sermon ! 



'Tis a summer month, and the very church windows seem labouring 

 with a fit perspiration. Horribly boring isn't it ? How your hat clings 

 to your moistened forehead, and the warm gloves droop from your fingers, 

 like roasting chicken ! Get as much room as possible ; tenderly pass little 

 miss there, and her unbreeched brother, over to their smiling mamma. 

 Now you have the balmy corner to yourself! " Psalms," first lesson 

 second ditto prayers thanksgivings all reverently attended to : there is 

 a little dreaminess settling on your lids your lips begin to close with 

 languor ; but you have not dozed. Let's hear the sermon. You are 

 seated with tolerable erectness; and. judging from the steady determination 

 of your eyebrows, one would imagine that your eyes would be open for 

 the whole of the discourse. But, alas! 'tis Mr. Narcotic, whose spectacled 

 nose is just verging above the crimson horizon of his pulpit. " Awake, 

 tbou that sleepest!" Why, the text is quite opposed to DOZINESS ! But 

 what of this, if the preacher be addicted to drawling, the weather unob- 

 ligingly sultry, and you yourself have gradually been dwindling from 

 an uncongenial state of wakefulness into a sleepy calm ? 'Tis too much 

 for beldame Nature, believe me ! 



I perceive that you have rubbed the bridge of your nose several times 

 that you have tried to swell forth your eyes with a full round stare at the 

 parson ; but your stoicism " profiteth nothing." The sermon is irreligiously 

 long; and you are nodding in a doze ! Whether there be much pleasure 

 in a church doze, I am not presuming enough to determine. For myself, 



