Page:Modern literature (1804 Volume 2).djvu/80

quaker rendezvous for that night. This preacher was deemed the best singer of martial songs in the whole regiment; upon the faith of that perfection he acted also as precentor. He got very well through the performance, bating that he once fell into the tune of "The top sail shivers in the wind," and in endeavouring to get out of it, he got hold of "The black joke." He however succeeded in pitching his voice for the next stave by humming the serious and melancholy ditty, "There came a ghost to Margaret's door," and got at last into a proper strain of psalmody. The discourse had nothing particular in it to distinguish it from any other methodist sermon, consisting merely of cant, mysticism, soft love imagery, melodious inanity, chequered with the terrible pictures of the punishment of unbelievers, when in possession of the devil. The sermon included