148 STRAY-AWAYS 



of their presences, the building was undevotional and 

 gloomy, a species of modern Greek temple coloured 

 drab, yet impressive in largeness and due proportion, 

 a firm idea carried out Avithout feebleness or excres- 

 cence. The red-lined stage-boxes that were fitted in 

 between the side pillars were tenanted only by velvet 

 footstools and the sumptuous Prayer Books of State 

 officials, a sparse congregation speckled the free seats, 

 and during the period of waiting for the service 

 to begin, conversation went briskly on among semi- 

 detached groups of acquaintances. 



Without ostentation, a pastor in ordinary dress 

 took his place at the gate of the altar rails, and was 

 there joined by two gentlemen in morning clothes, 

 who laid upon his shoulders a black robe, and de- 

 spatched him to his place before the altar. The 

 congregation regarded the proceeding with calm 

 no less unbroken than that of the graven apostles 

 above them, and the old ladies opened their Prayer 

 Books and spoke in somewhat less assertive whispers. 

 A solitary voice was uplifted, and laboured on to 

 its own echo, responseless otherwise throughout the 

 dreary loftiness and length ; then an organ rumbled 

 and crashed up high among the columns at the end 

 of the church, preliminary, one might imagine, to 

 some mellow harmony of skilled voices moving in 

 temperate concert. But a dozen female sopranos, 

 albeit escorted by the solitary tenor of the organist, 

 had little of the expected effect. They sang with 

 deliberate and dogmatic vigour one of the profomidly 

 wearying hymns that are so uncharacteristic of the 

 nmsic of Denmark, and are so inevitable in Danish 

 churches. The choir ladies uttered slow, firm screams, 

 the lonely tenor clave to them unflaggingly; it 

 became a stupefying procession of noise, and a 

 tendency on the part of our next-door neighbour to 



