Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BEWILDERED AMONG CHURCHES, AND CONVERSATION WITH A "CHARACTER." lu passing through life's busy street, What various minds we charts' to meet ! One afternoon, as carelessly I strolled Through Stirling, ancient and romantic town, Pondering on days when Fortha's waters rolled Above the rock's now castellated crown, And merry mermaids would their gambols hold Whence cannons look so sulkily adowu And pretty little whales took mammy's drop, Smacking their lips, upon Deiuyat's(") top. Ah! those were times, the good old times said I, Which all our efforts never can remand, I felt at once as if about to cry, (An onion garden was perhaps at hand,) When bump my precious beaver went awry, For, lo! a church had ordered me to " stand," But not "deliver," though, we know that they, The churches namely, do so evci-y day. Of course, obliged to take another route, I got along some twenty yards or so, And studious still, again when looking out, Egad! I found no farther I could go In that direction, almost led to doubt My senses, looked a second time, and lo! Another church : I muttered, there has been A shower of these things hereabouts, I ween. Then west away with pace of postman sped, And strange to tell, had scarce been blessed with time To bid my vagrant thoughts with measured tread Return their faces to the land of rhyme. When entering a gate whose pathway led Through flowers, (those handmaids of the " blue'' sublime), ' A sexton-looking soul, with bow polite, Said, " Sir. there is no sermon here to-night." Another church again! I cried aloud, And wheeled as sudden as a ghost I'd seen, And, sallying to the street, beheld a crowd Of boys run off, as frantic as they had been— Like star half shaded by a snowy cl...