on a slightly
higher level than the one in front of it, so that everybody saw
everything that was going on. No dimness or mystery was wanted there;
everything was bright daylight, bright paint, red cushions, comfort and
respectability. It might not be a place very well adapted for saying
your prayers in, but then you could say your prayers at home--and it was
a place admirably adapted for hearing sermons in, which you could not do
at home; and all the arrangements were such that you could hear in the
greatest comfort, not to say luxury. I wonder, for my own part, that the
poor folk about did not seize upon the Crescent Chapel on the cold
Sunday mornings, and make themselves happy in those warm and ruddy pews.
It would be a little amusing to speculate what all the well-dressed
pew-holders would have done had this unexpected answer to the appeal
which Mr. Beecham believed himself to make every Sunday to the world in
general, been literally given. It would have been extremely embarrassing
to the Managing Committee and all the office-bearers, and would have, I
fear, deeply exasperated and offended the occupants of those family
pews; but fortunately this difficulty never did occur. The proletariat
of Marylebone had not the sense or the courage, or the profanity, which
you will, to hit upon this mode of warming themselves. The real
congregation embraced none of the unwashed multitude. Its value in mere
velvet, silk, lace, trinkets, and furs was something amazing, and the
amount these comfortable people represented in the way of income would
have amounted to a most princely revenue. The little Salems and
Bethesdas, with their humble flocks, could not be supposed to belong to
the same species; and the difference was almost equally marked between
such a place of worship as the Crescent Chapel and the parish churches,
which are like the nets in the Gospel, and take in all kinds of fish,
bad and good. The pew-holders in the Crescent Chapel were universally
well off; they subscribed liberally to missionary societies, far mor