VARNISH on the CHURCH PEWS

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 926, 16 March 1881, Page 2

VARNISH on the CHURCH PEWS

Thebe was the queerest scene at one of the churches last Sunday. It seems that during the vacation, the seats had been newly varnished, and somehow the varnish was not right, as it was terribly sticky. You know when you pull anything off sticky varnish that it cracks. Well, the audience had all got seated, when the minister got up to give out the hymn, and as the basement of his trowsers let loose of the varnish of his chair there was a noise like killing a fly on the wall with a palm leaf fan. The minister looked around at the chair to see if he was all present, and that no guilty man’s pants had escaped, and read the hymn. The choir rose with a sound of revelry, and after the tenor had swallowed a lozenge, and the bass had coughed up a piece of a frog, and the alto had hemmed, and the soprano had shook out her polonaise to see if the varnish showed on the south side, the audience began to rise, One or two deacons got up first, with sounds like picket firing in the distance on the eve of battle, and then a few more got up, and the rattling of the unyielding varnish sounded as though the fight was becoming more animated, and then the whole audience got on its feet at once with a sound of rattling musketry. The choir sang, “ Hold the Fort.” When the orchestra had concluded the people sat down gingerly, the services were short, and all went home praying for the man that varnished the seats.