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No one, to witness my Calm while the Ordeal is in progress, would guess the tumult of my thoughts. From the moment the Voluntary begins and I know I must rise from my pew within the next ten seconds, I feel like a condemned man awaiting sentence. Then as I walk up the aisle and turn the comer to the pulpit, wild thoughts dash through my mind. What if I should stub my toe. Is my waistcoat unbuttoned. Is my necktie over my collar. What if I should want to sneeze 5 and what not other frenzies. Then, as I approach the first pew and hand the plate along and watch it travel to and fio, I think, what if it should drop—what if she should upset it— what if I should let it slip. Then I watch the bills, en- velopes and coin dropping in. Some of the people are just as nervous as I am. Some jab for the plate with a wild pass. Others lay down the bill or the envelope with a timidity that just clears the edge of the box, so that I must give the contribution a nervous poke that it shall not flutter to the floor as I come up the homestretch. I often see the plugged coin just as it as sneaked into the Lord’s hand; I see the nickel, held' tightly in gloved fingers as I ap- proach, refuse to leave the sticky embrace of moist kid, and cleave so persistently to thumb or finger that it must be helped with the other hand. I am winked at by the wicked dentist who knows my discomfiture from intimate knowledge of my frail nerves as evidenced in his chair of torture. I am smiled at by the pretty girl who knows full well I can’t smile back. The small boy who sits 'way at the end of the otherwise vacant pew knows I am rattled—he makes a move as if he had much coin to deposit and then stares vacantly ahead as I enter the narrow space, and back out ungracefully.