Excerpt from Special Services Held at St. Philip's Church, Charleston S. C., On the 12th and 13th of May, 1875: In Commemoration of the Planting of the Church of England in the Province of Carolina

All necessary preparations for the proposed celebration were, in due time, made with diligent care and well directed energy. A wide-spread interest was excited, and the event was awaited with cheerful expectation. The day came and dawned bright and auspicious, warm enough for enthusiasm. Cool enough for comfort. The Church had been dressed with exquisite taste. It was draped with delicate lines of leaves and moss, and brightened with a modest array of dewy flowers. Nowhere had the typical been merged in the orna mental, the emblem lost in the display, the thought obscured by its expression, or devotion misled into admiration. All honour to the devout women who had caught: the true spirit of Greek art, and were careful never to obstruct the perception of the unseen by the accumulation of the seen, who on that day, with leaf and flower, wrote hymns of praise, and with colour and fragrance chaunted a psalm of thanksgiving!

When the hour of 10 A. M. Had come the preparations for the occasion were completed, and the gates of the church yard, with the doors of the Church, were opened to give entrance to the assembling congregation. Every care had been taken to secure order and provide complete ventilation, and the comfort every one felt throughout the lengthened services, was due to this important forethought of the committees andgentlemen ushers. Extra seats were provided in the cross aisle, in the vestibule, and in front of the chancel; and it was estimated that the Church could accommodate about fourteen hundred people; there were, probably, as many who came, and many stayed away through fear of a crowd. A choir, numbering about fifty vocalists, and an orchestra of stringed and wind instruments, had been some weeks rehearsing dili gently, under the direction of Prof. T. D. Ruddock, organist of St. Philip's Church, and were now in place, crowding the organ gallery, and extending in two wings forward on each side of the same, up to the first pair of principal columns which sustain the roof of the building.

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