Is it so in _this_ church? What means
all this tawdriness of color, the crimson, the blue, the gold; what
signify these fantastic designs and figures, these monkey-like
genuflexions; this wilderness of sign and symbol, this elaborate
abasement, this theatrical show of exaltation? This an improvement on
the old dignified simplicity? Do you tell me that childishness, and
prettiness, and pettiness, are valid substitutes for a genuine, manly
modesty and simplicity?
_D._ (Oh, dear! he's been drinking again! How bitter the Bitters do make
him!) Look! Father, come, quick! Here is a Railroad Accident, such as
you have often wished to see. Two trains have collided, and both have
rolled down an embankment at least seventy feet high! into a river, I do
declare! They are all lost!
_F._ Do let me see at once, HELENE I [_Looks eagerly._] Ah, yes; all
gone; nothing visible but one smoke-pipe, three stove-pipe hats, four
bits of orange-peel, some pea-nut shells, and thirteen copies of the
_New-York Ledger_. Sad fate! But see! Some dry-goods-no, a young lady
flounders along toward the shore! The bystanders rush up; she is nearly
exhausted; pants rapidly; they congratulate her. A well-dressed young
man approaches. She instantly begins to think of her looks; her hand
flies to her back hair. Heavens! there is so much gone there that she
shrieks in alarm! Her fall in the water has detached her Waterfall!
_That_ gone, every thing is gone! She springs to her feet! Glancing
hurriedly over the watery waste, now plentifully strewn with fans,
little canes, and certain objects which are either mail-bags or
_chignons_, she descries her better part, and with a wild cry, (as when
a mother rescues her babe from tigers,) dashes in and seizes the darling
object! She presses it to her lips, and impetuously breaks for the
shore! Alas! too late, by about ten and a half seconds! "Save it!" she
seems to cry; tosses the wad ashore, and down she goes, with her hand on
the back of her head, her last thoughts, evidently, more or less,
connected with that sympathizing young man on the bank above.
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