Then another little fellow got up and told us that he had been an awful bad boy in his early days, and learned to chew tobacco and drink cider-brandy when he wasn"t more than knee-high to a gra.s.shopper. That the cider-brandy and tobacco had stuck in and defiled him through and through, till nothing but saving grace could have washed him clean and made his soul white as a lamb, which it then was, Glory hallelujah.
All the congregation chimed in here and struck up a solemn chorus of Glory, Glory, Glory, Glory, which ended in a rejoicing "Amen," when the young man informed us that religion had reformed all his depraved tastes, and now he both hated and despised cider-brandy, tobacco, and all the abominations he had formerly hankered after.
Before the young man sat down, another was on his feet, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with sympathy.
"I too," says he, "have got an experience which urges me to bear testimony that what our precious brother says is true. I know it. I feel it in my own soul, for I, too, have met with regeneration, whereby all things with me have become new. Why, brethren, before I got religion I couldn"t bear the sight of tomatoes, cooked or raw. They were an abomination to my unconverted mind; but now that I have got religion, there isn"t a wigitable that grows, which I set store by as I do tomatoeses. So I can testify that old things pa.s.s away, and everything becomes new."
After bearing this testimony, the man wiped his mouth with one hand, and sat down, his head meekly bowed.
"Cousin," says I to E. E., "as camp-meetings do not belong to our special persuasion, and as I do not feel the regenerating spirit grow strong in my bosom just at present, supposing you and I go back to the tent? Don"t you see it is getting to be after dark now, and we have had an awfully warm day in all respects."
Cousin E. E. arose, looking heavy-eyed and worn out.
"Yes, Phmie," says she, "I have gone through a good deal, and feel the nothingness of everything but religion. Oh, cousin, if one could always feel as we do here."
I shook my head, but only answered:
"Come, cousin, we can hear the still, small voice better alone in our tent."
She yielded, and we started to make the best of our way out of the crowd, but five or six thousand persons swarmed around that regenerating camp-ground, and it was some time before we got safely into our own tent. Then I sat down by Cousin E. E., drew a deep, long breath, and said, "Thank goodness," with all my heart.
Lx.x.xV.
THE SECOND DAY.
Dear sisters:--I have been two days at this camp-meeting, fasting, because I have given up the fight about something to eat, and awake all night because the hot weather almost drove me into the anxious seat, from dread of a hotter place.
I hope you are satisfied with the way I have been walking this straight and narrow path of missionary duty. I wish I could say quiet path, but, being of an honest turn of mind, I must say it is both steep and noisy.
Just at this minute a prayer-meeting and revival is going on in the next tent to ours and the groaning and shouting is enough to drive one crazy.
The tent is crowded full of women and children, and I don"t know which jump the highest or make the most noise.
Well, I am not a wife--which you know is not my fault; neither am I a mother, which, under the circ.u.mstances, I am grateful for; but why little boys and girls should be brought here, and put in the way of a second birth, puzzles me. One event of that kind ought to be enough for any family of moderate ambition. In fact, I know of people who would do without any, with Christian fort.i.tude. But here we are--men, women, and children--trying to save each other with all our might, and doing it in a way that brings strangers together with a jerk sometimes.
Just as we were coming into the camping-ground this morning, where the whole road was beginning to swarm again, a nice old lady, in a gray dress, and with a little, white muslin shawl pinned over her bosom, came up to me, and, lifting her meek eyes from under her sugar-scoop bonnet, informed me that the Spirit was upon her. She was exercised with a sense of duty regarding my sinful condition, which was miserably apparent in the white feather that curlecued itself around my hat, and the cut of my gaiter boots that had heels enough to send a dozen souls to everlasting ruin.
I looked down at my boot, which is a scrumptious one, and said, with thankfulness, that I couldn"t see anything in them that should carry the souls off; besides, they could be heeled again.
The woman shook her sugar-scoop bonnet at me, mournfully, and said something about a wicked and perverse generation, as if all mankind were standing in my gaiter boots, and she was rebuking it in a lump.
"Oh, sister!" says she, "if I could only make you see with my eyes, and hear with my ears! Why will you be so perverse? Have you no fear of the eternal flame that burneth and burneth forever?"
"Fear!" says I, a-looking up at the hot sun, and wiping my forehead. "I should think so! If all creation has a hotter place than this, I"m too big a coward to hurry that way. If there is an ice-house in the neighborhood, I should prefer that by all manner of means, by way of a punishment, if I deserve any."
"Ice!" says she, solemnly. "Ice! have you never read the Scriptures?"
"Several times," says I, with sarcastic forbearance. "My father had a book of that kind, which he sometimes opened."
She could not understand the delicate irony of this answer; but pressed forward like an old camp-meetinger as she was.
"Did that good father never read of a place where a drop of water could not be found to cool a certain person"s tongue?" says she. "If not, your paternal ancestor fell short of his duty. It is no wonder his child should have gone half through life without a ray of saving grace, and with a white feather in her hat."
Sisters, I was riled. "Half through life," says I. "Madam, do you know how old I am?"
She looked at me half a minute, with all the eyes in her head; then, with the cool air of a woman counting money, said, "about for--"
Sisters, I _cannot_ repeat the audacious falsehood of that creature"s calculation. It was enough to rile up venom in the heart of a born cherubim. If ever a fiend took the disguise of a sugar-scoop bonnet, I have encountered one. A heart of stone lay under the innocent folds of that muslin half-shawl.
"Madam," said I, with a look of overpowering indignation, "you must have begun and ended your arithmetic in multiplication. Take off half of the years you have mentioned."
The woman smiled so knowingly, that I longed to-- Well, no matter, she smiled, and says she:
"At any rate, you are not too old for the mercy-seat."
"I should think not," says I.
"Look yonder."
I looked at half a dozen children jumping, kneeling, praying, and singing before the revival tent, which had been so full of worrying noises all night long, that none of us had got a wink of sleep.
"Look," says she; "unless you are born again, and become like one of these, there will be no chance that you will ever enter the kingdom of Heaven."
I looked at the lovely children, and I looked at her.
"Excuse me," says I, "the object don"t seem quite equal to the trouble.
I have no notion of going backward in my life. In the first place I was too handsome a baby in the beginning to hanker after a change, and since then--I say nothing; but really, I have seen a good many people that claim to have been born again, and, so far as I can judge, they don"t look a mite better, or a day younger, after taking all the trouble, which is discouraging."
"Discouraging!" said the woman; "why, you are talking of regeneration!
Come--come with me to the anxious-seat--hundreds are flocking there now."
"Excuse me," says I, "if you please. Crabs may change their sh.e.l.ls, and snakes creep out of their skins--I rather think they do sometimes--but born-again females look so much like the old pattern, that it don"t seem to me worth trying after one is grown up."
"Many an older person than you are has been born again," says she.
"You don"t say so," says I, a-fanning myself with a palm-leaf, for every drop of blood in my body grew hot when she talked about my age, and I was mad enough to bite a tenpenny nail in two with my front teeth.
"Yes, I do say so, humble as I am," says Sugar-scoop. "Look out there.
See those women in Israel--three precious souls, just gathered into the fold. For two days they have been constantly at the redemption-seat. The spirit is upon them now. Their souls are struggling to be free. Before another morning they will be born again."
I looked at a group of women she pointed out, and the human nature within me yeasted over. They were three of the homeliest creatures I ever set eyes on--long and lank, with faces like sour baked-apples.
"Oh, my beloved sister," says Sugar-scoop, a-laying her cotton-gloved hand on mine; "can you look on that heavenly sight and not pray to be like unto them?"
I shook the cotton glove from my arm, and the hand that was in it, just as St. Paul shook off the viper.