Some, more docile than the rest; were permitted to rove at
large, cropping the young herbage and tender grass; occasionally, it is
true, during the service, overleaping their limits in a literal sense;
neighing, whinnying and kicking up their heels to the manifest confusion
of the pious and the discomfiture of the preacher.
The hour at length arrived. The audience was numerous if not select. All
persuasions--for even in that remote region sectarianism had done much
toward banishing religion--assembled promiscuously together and without
show of discord, excepting that here and there a high stickler for
church aristocracy, in a better coat than his neighbor, thrust him
aside; or, in another and not less offensive form of pride, in the
externals of humility and rotten with innate malignity, groaned audibly
through his clenched teeth; and with shut eyes and crossed hands, as in
prayer, sought to pass a practical rebuke upon the less devout
exhibitions of those around him. The cant and the clatter, as it
prevails in the crowded mart, were here in miniature; and Charity would
have needed something more than a Kamschatka covering to have shut out
from her eyes the enormous hypocrisy of many among the clamorous
professors of that faith of which they felt little and knew less.
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