independent paces as suited their individual scholarship, spectacles,
and notions of reverence.

It crowned my satisfaction when I found that there was to be a
collection. The hymn to which the churchwardens moved about, gathering
the pence, whose numbers and noisiness seemed in keeping with the rest
of the service, was a well-known one to us all. It was the favourite
evening hymn of the district. I knew every syllable of it, for Jem and I
always sang hymns (and invariably this one) with my dear mother, on
Sunday evening after supper. When we were good, we liked it, and,
picking one favourite after another, we often sang nearly through the
hymn-book. When we were naughty, we displayed a good deal of skill in
making derisive faces behind my mother's back, as she sat at the piano,
without betraying ourselves, and in getting our tongues out and in again
during the natural pauses and convolutions of the tune. But these
occasional fits of boyish profanity did not hinder me from having an
equally boyish fund of reverence and enthusiasm at the bottom of my
heart, and it was with proud and pleasurable emotions that I heard the
old clerk give forth the familiar first lines,

"Soon shall the evening star with silver ray
Shed its mild lustre o'er this sacred day,"

and got my threepenny-bit ready between my finger and thumb.

Away went the organ, which was played by the vicar's eldest
daughter--away went the vicar's second daughter, who "led the singing"
from the vicarage pew with a voice like a bird--away went the choir,
which, in spite of surplices, could not be cured of waiting half a beat
for her--and away went the congregation--young men and maidens, old men