Stopped to take in wood and water.  A crusty old man crawled out of a depot, and said to the engineer, “Jim, what on earth is the matter?” “Don’t know,” said Jim; “that fellow in the car yonder is bound to get to Dayton, and we are putting things through.”  Brakes lifted, bell rung, and off again.  Amid the rush and pitch of the train there was no chance to prepare our toilet, and no looking-glass, and it was quite certain that we would have to step from the train immediately into the lecturing hall.  We were unfit to be seen.  We were sure our hair was parted in five or six different places, and that the cinders had put our face in mourning, and that something must be done.  What time we could spare from holding on to the bouncing seat we gave to our toilet, and the arrangements we made, though far from satisfactory, satisfied our conscience that we had done what we could.  A button broke as we were fastening our collar—­indeed, a button always does break when you are in a hurry and nobody to sew it on.  “How long before we get there?” we anxiously asked.  “I have miscalculated,” said the conductor; “we cannot get there till five minutes of ten o’clock.”  “My dear man,” I cried, “you might as well turn round and go back; the audience will be gone long before ten o’clock.”  “No!” said the conductor; “at the last depot I got a telegram saying they are waiting patiently, and telling us to hurry on.”  The locomotive seemed to feel it was on the home stretch.  At times, what with the whirling smoke and the showering sparks, and the din, and rush, and bang, it seemed as if we were on our last ride, and that the brakes would not fall till we stopped for ever.

At five minutes of ten o’clock we rolled into the Dayton depot, and before the train came to a halt we were in a carriage with the lecturing committee, going at the horse’s full run toward the opera house.  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