Some of them had made sacrifices to come, enduring even the agony (next to hair-cutting in suffering) of having their ears washed.

Conscious of parental eyes, they fronted the public with boyhood's professional expressionlessness, though they communicated with each other aside in a cipher-language of their own, and each group was a hot-bed of furtive gossip and sarcastic comment.
Seated in the windows, they kept out what small breath of air might otherwise have stolen in to comfort the audience.
Their elders sat patiently dripping with perspiration, most of the gentlemen undergoing the unusual garniture of stiffly-starched collars, those who had not cultivated chin beards to obviate such arduous necessities of pomp and state, hardly bearing up under the added anxiety of cravats.

However, they sat outwardly meek under the yoke; nearly all of them seeking a quiet solace of tobacco--not that they smoked; Heaven and the gallantry of Carlow County forbid--nor were there anywhere visible tokens of the comforting ministrations of nicotine to violate the eye of etiquette.

It is an art of Plattville.
Suddenly there was a hum and a stir and a buzz of whispering in the room.

Two gray old men and two pretty young women passed up the aisle to the platform.