The Pillar of Fire; A Profane Baccalaureate (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: It didn't happen in my county. My reply is, Very well, then; it happened in my county. Thus it is that I, a Nobody, am moved to speak, and utter certain things which Baccalaureate Sermons habitually omit. Vigil at Arm Over lawn and grove, on weather-mellowed wall and marble portico all gloriously streams the sunshine of young summer. It is June on the campus. Under elms and maples the greenswards, smooth as satin, are quartered to 'scutcheons of shadow and shields of golden blazonry. The brick walls of the old dormitories glow a rich, warm red amid greenery, and high above the masses of billowy foliage turret and spire stand gleaming white at proud salute to the sun. Stilled are the shouts from the playing fields; empty is the lecture room. The book is closed, the paper written. There has been pealing of bells across the slumbering peace of the morning?grave voices in throats of bronze to call you hither. Their tongues, too, are stilled. Only from the ivies, close-clustering about these mullioned windows, and .filtering the sunlight through their leaves of golden green, the robin and the thrush make melody, hymning the blithe morning and weather of gladness. Light and song enter this place, like us, sobered and hushed. Here, enshadowed among holy glooms, keep vigil at arms. Solemn jubilation of choir in prayer and praise: deep-thrilling surf-note of organ flooding nave and vaulting with a music like warm wind blowing from flower-starred meadows. . . . It has ceased. The voices are stilled? but there is not silence. Other sounds are abroad; vague, confused, ominous. Voices that curse; voices that pray; shrieks, groans, shots. They defile the Sabbath peace; they violate this holy place with profane clamor and make of our worship a mockery. They grow louder, d..