Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/128



LL this alarm had been caused in this way.

At Vespers on the eve of one of the twelve great festivals, there are always immense crowds in the churches of the provincial but important industrial town in which Katerina Lvovna lived, and in the church that was celebrating its special festival such numbers of people would collect that not even an apple could have fallen to the ground. It was the custom for choirs, composed of young men belonging to the merchant classes, led by a special precentor, also a lover of the vocal art, to sing in the church on such occasions.

Our people are godly, assiduous churchgoers, and artistic as well. Ecclesiastical magnificence and harmonious singing constitute one of their chief and purest enjoyments. Wherever the choirs sing, nearly half the town assembles to hear them, especially the youth of the merchant classes: the clerks, the boys, the youths, the hands from the factories and workshops, and even the manufacturers themselves with their better halves; all crowd together in the same church; everybody