Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/155

 the daf and the tomtoms of the dancing dervishes are innocuous, because of the fundamental absurdity of their scheme of salvation; the music in a modern restaurant, and though it interferes with digestion and promotes dyspepsia and profanity, has no real spiritual after-effects: but when I hear a Miserere in a Church—and all Church music to me is a variation more or less of the same theme—and think that the salvation of my soul depends upon it, I can not go on and pray. The sepulchral notes seem to dance before my eyes in their winding sheets, and the invisible choir, alas, becomes a lugubrious joke. Judge if I was sacrilegious in the Church of the Rich. Instead of praying, or following in the wake of devotion, I was counting the 'thousand-dollar' stained glass masterpieces, or marvelling at the amazing sounding board that hung above the minister's head as by a spider's thread. One day in the nick of service—Allah forgive me for the wanton vision! But the precariousness of the situation held me for