A few of the singing-men and singing-women had lingered behind their fellows and raised their voices fitfully and blew a careless note upon the organ . Yet it lifted my soul higher than all their former strains . They are gone -- the sons and daughters of Music -- and the gray sexton is just closing the portal . For six days more there will be no face of man in the pews and aisles and galleries , nor a voice in the pulpit , nor music in the choir . Was it worth while to rear this massive edifice to be a desert in the heart of the town and populous only for a few hours of each seventh day ? Oh , but the church is a symbol of religion . May its site , which was consecrated on the day when the first tree was felled , be kept holy for ever , a spot of solitude and peace amid the trouble and vanity of our week-day world ! There is a moral , and a religion too , even in the silent walls . And may the steeple still point heavenward and be decked with the hallowed sunshine of the Sabbath morn ! THE WEDDING-KNELL . There is a certain church , in the city of New York which I have always regarded with peculiar interest on account of a marriage there solemnized under very singular circumstances in my grandmother 's girlhood . That venerable lady chanced to be a spectator of the scene , and ever after made it her favorite narrative . Whether the edifice now standing on the same site be the identical one to which she referred I am not antiquarian enough to know , nor would it be worth while to correct myself , perhaps , of an agreeable error by reading the date of its erection on the tablet over the door . It is a stately church surrounded by an enclosure of the loveliest green , within which appear urns , pillars , obelisks , and other forms of monumental marble , the tributes of private affection or more splendid memorials of historic dust . With such a place , though the tumult of the city rolls beneath its tower , one would be willing to connect some legendary interest . The marriage might be considered as the result of an early engagement , though there had been two intermediate weddings on the lady 's part and forty years of celibacy on that of the gentleman . At sixty-five Mr. Ellenwood was a shy but not quite a secluded man ; selfish , like all men who brood over their own hearts , yet manifesting on rare occasions a vein of generous sentiment ; a scholar throughout life , though always an indolent one , because his studies had no definite object either of public advantage or personal ambition ; a gentleman , high-bred and fastidiously delicate , yet sometimes requiring a considerable relaxation in his behalf of the common rules of society . In truth , there were so many anomalies in his character , and , though shrinking with diseased sensibility from public notice , it had been his fatality so often to become the topic of the day by some wild eccentricity of conduct , that people searched his lineage for a hereditary taint of insanity . But there was no need of this . His caprices had their origin in a mind that lacked the support of an engrossing purpose , and in feelings that preyed upon themselves for want of other food .
If he were mad , it was the consequence , and not the cause , XXXXX an aimless and abortive life .
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