Esther
The new church of St. John's, on Fifth Avenue, was thronged the morning of the last Sunday of October, in the year 1880. Sitting in the gallery, beneath the unfinished frescoes, and looking down the nave, one caught an effect of autumn gardens, a suggestion of chrysanthemums and geraniums, or of October woods, dashed with scarlet oaks and yellow maples. As a display of austerity the show was a failure, but if cheerful content and innocent adornment please the Author of the lilies and roses, there was reason to hope that this first service at St. John's found favor in his sight, even though it showed no victory over the world or the flesh in this part of the United States. The sun came in through the figure of St. John in his crimson and green garments of glass, and scattered more color where colors already rivaled the flowers of a prize show; while huge prophets and evangelists in flowing robes looked down from the red walls on a display of human vanities that would have called out a vehement Lamentation of Jeremiah or Song of Solomon, had these poets been present in flesh as they were in figure. Solomon was a brilliant but not an accurate observer; he looked at the world from the narrow stand-point of his own temple. Here in New York he could not have truthfully said that all was vanity, for even a more ill-natured satirist than he must have confessed that there was in this
the city. Caesar immediately laid siege to the place, and he commenced
some works to block up the mouth of the harbor. He built piers on each
side, extending out as far into the sea as the depth of the water would
allow them to be built. He then constructed a series of rafts, which he
anchored on the deep water, in a line extending from one pier to the
other. He built towers upon these rafts, and garrisoned them with
soldiers, in hopes by this means to prevent all egress from the fort. He
thought that, when this work was completed, Pompey would be entirely
shut in, beyond all possibility of escape.
[Sidenote: He besieges Pompey.]
[Sidenote: Pompey's plan of escape.]
The transports, however, returned before the work was completed. Its
progress was, of course, slow, as the constructions were the scene of a
continued conflict; for Pompey sent out rafts and galleys against them
every day, and the workmen had thus to build in the midst of continual
interruptions, sometimes from showers of darts, arrows, and javelins,
sometimes from the conflagrations of fireships, and sometimes from the
terrible concussions of great vessels of war, impelled with prodigious
force against them. The transports returned, therefore, before the
defenses were complete, and contrived to get into the harbor. Pompey
immediately formed his plan for embarking the remainder of his army.
[Sidenote: It is made known to Caesar.]
[Sidenote: Success of Pompey's plan.]
The new church of St. John's, on Fifth Avenue, was thronged the morning of the last Sunday of October, in the year 1880. Sitting in the gallery, beneath the unfinished frescoes, and looking down the nave, one caught an effect of autumn gardens, a suggestion of chrysanthemums and geraniums, or of October woods, dashed with scarlet oaks and yellow maples. As a display of austerity the show was a failure, but if cheerful content and innocent adornment please the Author of the lilies and roses, there was reason to hope that this first service at St. John's found favor in his sight, even though it showed no victory over the world or the flesh in this part of the United States. The sun came in through the figure of St. John in his crimson and green garments of glass, and scattered more color where colors already rivaled the flowers of a prize show; while huge prophets and evangelists in flowing robes looked down from the red walls on a display of human vanities that would have called out a vehement Lamentation of Jeremiah or Song of Solomon, had these poets been present in flesh as they were in figure. Solomon was a brilliant but not an accurate observer; he looked at the world from the narrow stand-point of his own temple. Here in New York he could not have truthfully said that all was vanity, for even a more ill-natured satirist than he must have confessed that there was in this