He let his eyes, freed
from their bondage to Lemuel's attentive face, roam at large in
liberal ease over his whole congregation; and when, toward the close
of his sermon, one visage began to grow out upon him from the two or
three hundred others, and to concentrate in itself the facial
expression of all the rest, and become the only countenance there,
it was a perceptible moment before he identified it as that of his
inalienable charge. Then he began to preach at it as usual, but
defiantly, and with yet a haste to be through and to get speech with
it that he felt was ludicrous, and must appear unaccountable to his
hearers. It seemed to him that he could not bring his sermon to a
close; he ended it in a cloudy burst of rhetoric which he feared
would please the nervous, elderly ladies--who sometimes blamed him
for a want of emotionality--and knew must grieve the judicious.
While the choir was singing the closing hymn, he contrived to beckon
the sexton to the pulpit, and described and located Lemuel to him as
well as he could without actually pointing him out; he said that he
wished to see that young man after church, and asked the sexton to
bring him to his room. The sexton did so to the best of his ability,
but the young man whom he brought was not Lemuel, and had to be got
rid of with apologies.
On three or four successive Sundays Lemuel's face dawned upon the
minister from the congregation, and tasked his powers of impersonal
appeal and mental concentration to the utmost.
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