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308 the main, worth listening to. In fact, something from the diaphragm, sonorous.

For a little while he would take off the well-worn mask of humility and bask in the fulgent rays of his own light.

But, to repeat, he was sorely disappointed. Instead of beaming upon an assemblage of the elect, he found himself confronted by a company that caused him to question his own good taste in shaving especially for the occasion and in wearing gold-rimmed nose-glasses instead of the "over the ears" he usually wore when in haste.

He saw, with shocked and incredulous eyes, sparsely planted about the dim church as if separated by the order of one who realized that closer contact would result in something worse than passive antagonism, a strange and motley company.

For a moment he trembled. Had he, by some horrible mischance, set two weddings for the same hour? He cudgelled his brain as he peeped through the vestry door. A sickening blank! He could recall no other ceremony for that particular hour,—and yet as he struggled for a solution the conviction became stronger that he had committed a most egregious error. Then and there, in a perspiring panic, he solemnly resolved to give these weddings a little more thought. He had been getting a bit slack,—really quite haphazard in checking off the daily grist.

What was he to do when the noble English pair and their friends put in an appearance? Despite the fact that the young American sailor-chap who came to see him about the service had casually remarked that it