Without an instant in which to slacken our pulses, the chairman rushed in upon the stage, and introduced the lecturer of the evening.

After in the quickest way shedding overcoat and shawl, we confronted the audience, and with our head yet swimming from the motion of the rail-train, we accosted the people--many of whom had been waiting since seven o'clock'-- with the words, "Long-suffering but patient ladies and gentlemen, you are the best-natured audience I ever saw." When we concluded what we had to say, it was about midnight, and hence the title of this little sketch.
We would have felt it more worthy of the railroad chase if it had been a sermon rather than a lecture.

Why do not the Young Men's Christian Associations of the country intersperse religious discourses with the secular, the secular demanding an admission fee, the religious without money or price?
If such associations would take as fine a hall, and pay as much for advertising, the audience to hear the sermon would be as large as the audience to hear the lecture.

What consecrated minister would not rather tell the story of Christ and heaven free of charge than to get five hundred dollars for a secular address?
Wake up, Young Men's Christian Associations, to your glorious opportunity, it would afford a pleasing change.

Let Wendell Phillips give in the course his great lecture on "The Lost Arts;" and A.A.Willitts speak on "Sunshine," himself the best illustration of his subject; and Mr.Milburn, by "What a Blind Man Saw in England," almost prove that eyes are a superfluity; and W.H.H.Murray talk of the "Adirondacks," till you can hear the rifle crack and the fall of the antlers on the rock.