“Glory be to God!”
“Go on, brother!” and other similar exclamations.
About noon the services terminated, pro tem., and the audience dispersed themselves to their respective tents through the grove, where there was an abundance of chatting, visiting, eating, and drinking, as if the vehement denunciations and passionate appeals of the morning had been things of another state of existence. Uncle John, in the most cheery possible frame of mind, escorted his party into the woods, and assisted them in unpacking a hamper containing wine, cold fowls, cakes, pies, and other delicacies which Aunt Katy had packed for the occasion.
Old Tiff had set up his tent in a snug little nook on the banks of the stream, where he informed passers-by that it was his young mas’r and missis’s establishment, and that he, Tiff, had come to wait on them. With a good-natured view of doing him a pleasure, Nina selected a spot for their nooning at no great distance, and spoke in the most gracious and encouraging manner to them, from time to time.
“See, now, can’t you, how real quality behaves demselves!” he said grimly to Old Hundred, who came up bringing the carriage-cushions for the party to sit down upon. “Real quality sees into things! I tell ye what, blood sees into blood. Miss Nina sees dese yer chil’en ain’t de common sort — dat’s what she does!”
“Umph!” said Old Hundred, “such a muss as ye keep up about yer chil’en! Tell you what, dey ain’t no better dan oder white trash!”
“Now, you talk dat ar way, I’ll knock you down!” said Old Tiff, who, though a peaceable and law-abiding creature, in general, was driven, in desperation, to the last resort of force.
“John, what are you saying to Tiff?” said Nina, who had overheard some of the last words. “Go back to your own tent, and don’t you trouble him! I have taken him under my protection.”
The party enjoyed their dinner with infinite relish, and Nina amused herself in watching Tiff’s cooking preparations. Before departing to the preaching-ground, he had arranged a slow fire, on which a savory stew had been all the morning simmering, and which, on the taking off of the pot-lid, diffused an agreeable odor through the place.
“I say, Tiff, how delightfully that smells!” said Nina, getting up, and looking into the pot. “Wouldn’t Miss Fanny be so kind as to favor us with a taste of it?”
Fanny, to whom Tiff punctiliously referred the question, gave a bashful consent. But who shall describe the pride and glory that swelled the heart of Tiff as he saw a bowl of his stew smoking among the Gordon viands, praised and patronized by the party? And when Nina placed on their simple board — literally a board, and nothing more — a small loaf of frosted cake, in exchange, it certainly required all the grace of the morning exercises to keep Tiff within due bounds of humility. He really seemed to dilate with satisfaction.
“Tiff, how did you like the sermon?” said Nina.
“Dey’s pretty far, Miss Nina. Dere’s a good deal o’ quality preaching.”
“What do you mean by quality preaching, Tiff?”
“Why, dat ar kind dat’s good for quality — full of long words, you know. I spects it’s very good; but poor nigger like me can’t see his way through it. You see, Miss Nina, what I’s studdin’ on, lately, is, how to get dese yer chil’en to Canaan; and I hars fus with one ear, and den with t’oder, but ‘pears like ain’t clar ‘bout it, yet. Dere’s a heap about mose everything else, and it’s all very good; but ‘pears like I ain’t clar, arter all, about dat ar. Dey says, ‘Come to Christ;’ and I says, ‘Whar is he, anyhow?’ Bress you, I want to come! Dey talks ‘bout going in de gate, and knocking at de do’, and ‘bout marching on de road, and ‘bout fighting and being soldiers of de cross; and de Lord knows, now, I’d be glad to get de chil’en through any gate; and I could take ’em on my back and travel all day, if dere was any road; and if dere was a do’, bless me, if dey wouldn’t hear Old Tiff a-rapping! I spects de Lord would have fur to open it — would so. But, arter all, when de preaching is done, dere don’t ‘pear to be nothing to it. Dere ain’t no gate, dere ain’t no do’, nor no way; and dere ain’t no fighting, ‘cept when Ben Dakin and Jim Stokes get jawing about der dogs; and everybody comes back eating der dinner quite comf’table, and ‘pears like dere wa’n’t no such ting dey’s been preaching ‘bout. Dat ar troubles me — does so—’cause I wants fur to get dese yer chil’en in de kingdom, some way or oder. I didn’t know but some of de quality would know more ‘bout it.”
“Hang me, if I haven’t felt just so!” said Uncle John. “When they were singing that hymn about enlisting and being a soldier, if there had been any fighting doing anywhere, I should have certainly gone right into it; and the preaching always stirs me up terribly. But then, as Tiff says, after it’s all over, why, there’s dinner to be eaten, and I can’t see anything better than to eat it; and then, by the time I have drank two or three glasses of wine, it’s all gone. Now, that’s just the way with me!”
“Dey says,” said Tiff, “dat we must wait for de blessing to come down upon us, and Aunt Bose says it’s dem dat shouts dat gets de blessing; and I’s been shouting till I’s most beat out, but I hasn’t got it. Den, one of dem said none of dem could get it but de ‘lect; but den, t’oder one, he seemed to tink different; and in de meeting dey tells about de scales falling from der eyes, — and I wished dey fall from mine — I do so! Perhaps, Miss Nina, now, you could tell me something.”
“Oh, don’t ask me!” said Nina; “I don’t know anything about these things. I think I feel a little like Uncle John,” she said, turning to Clayton. “There are two kinds of sermons and hymns; one gets me to sleep, and the other excites and stirs me up in a general kind of way; but they don’t either seem to do me real good.”
“For my part, I am such an enemy to stagnation,” said Clayton, “that I think there is advantage in everything that stirs up the soul, even though we see no immediate results. I listen to music, see pictures, as far as I can, uncritically. I say, ‘Here I am; see what you can do with me.’ So I present myself to almost all religious exercises. It is the most mysterious part of our nature. I do not pretend to understand it, therefore never criticise.”
“For my part,” said Anne, “there is so much in the wild freedom of these meetings that shocks my taste and sense of propriety, that I am annoyed more than I am benefited.”
“There spoke the true, well-trained conventionalist,” said Clayton. “But look around you. See, in this wood, among these flowers, and festoons of vine, and arches of green, how many shocking, unsightly growths! You would not have had all this underbrush, these dead limbs, these briers running riot over trees, and sometimes choking and killing them. You would have well-trimmed trees and velvet turf. But I love briers, dead limbs, and all, for their very savage freedom. Every once in a while you see in a wood a jessamine, or a sweet-brier, or a grapevine, that throws itself into a gracefulness of growth which a landscape gardener would go down on his knees for, but cannot get. Nature resolutely denies it to him. She says, ‘No! I keep this for my own. You won’t have my wildness — my freedom; very well, then you shall not have the graces that spring from it.’ Just so it is with men. Unite any assembly of common men in a great enthusiasm, — work them up into an abandon, and let every one ‘let go,’ and speak as nature prompts, — and you will have brush, underwood, briers, and all grotesque growths; but, now and then, some thought or sentiment will be struck out with a freedom or power such as you cannot get in any other way. You cultivated people are much mistaken when you despise the enthusiasms of the masses. There is more truth than you think in the old Vox populi, vox Dei.”
“What’s that?” said Nina.
“‘The voice of the people is the voice of God.’ There is truth in it. I never repent my share in a popular excitement, provided it be of the higher sentiments; and I do not ask too strictly whether it has produced any tangible result. I reverence the people, as I do the woods, for the wild, grand freedom with which their humanity develops itself.”
�
�I’m afraid, Nina,” said Aunt Nesbit, in a low tone, to the latter, “I’m afraid he isn’t orthodox.”
“What makes you think so, aunt?”
“Oh, I don’t know; his talk hasn’t the real sound.”
“You want something that ends in ‘ation,’ don’t you, aunt? — justification, sanctification, or something of that kind.”
Meanwhile, the department of Abijah Skinflint exhibited a decided activity. This was a long, low booth, made of poles, and roofed with newly cut green boughs. Here the whiskey-barrel was continually pouring forth its supplies to customers who crowded around it. Abijah sat on the middle of a sort of rude counter, dangling his legs, and chewing a straw, while his negro was busy in helping his various customers. Abijah, as we said, being a particularly high Calvinist, was recreating himself by carrying on a discussion with a fat, little, turnipy brother of the Methodist persuasion.
“I say,” he said, “Stringfellow put it into you Methodists this morning! Hit the nail on the head, I thought!”
“Not a bit of it!” said the other contemptuously.
“Why, Elder Baskum chawed him up completely! There wa’n’t nothin’ left of him!”
“Well,” said Abijah, “strange how folks will see things! Why, it’s just as clar to me that all things is decreed! Why, that ar nails everything up tight and handsome. It gives a fellow a kind of comfort to think on it. Things is just as they have got to be. All this free-grace stuff is drefful loose talk. If things is been decreed ‘fore the world was made, well, there seems to be some sense in their coming to pass. But if everything kind of turns up whenever folks think on ‘t, it’s a kind of shaky business.”
“I don’t like this tying up things so tight,” said the other, who evidently was one of the free, jovial order. “I go in for the freedom of the will. Free gospel, and free grace.”
“For my part,” said Abijah, rather grimly, “if things was managed my way, I shouldn’t commune with nobody that didn’t believe in election, up to the hub.”
“You strong electioners think you’s among the elect!” said one of the bystanders. “You wouldn’t be so crank about it, if you didn’t! Now, see here: if everything is decreed, how am I going to help myself?”
“That ar is none of my lookout,” said Abijah. “But there’s a pint my mind rests upon — everything is fixed as it can be, and it makes a man mighty easy.”
In another part of the camp-ground Ben Dakin was sitting in his tent-door, caressing one of his favorite dogs, and partaking his noontide repast with his wife and child.
“I declar,” said Ben, wiping his mouth, “wife, I intend to go into it, and sarve the Lord, now, full chisel! If I catch the next lot of niggers, I intend to give half the money towards keeping up preaching somewhere round here. I’m going to enlist, now, and be a soldier.”
“And,” said his wife, “Ben, just keep clear of Abijah Skinflint’s counter, won’t you?”
“Well, I will, durned if I won’t!” said Ben. “I’ll be moderate. A fellow wants a glass or two, to strike up the hymn on, you know; but I’ll be moderate.”
The Georgia trader, who had encamped in the neighborhood, now came up.
“Do you believe, stranger,” said he, “one of them durned niggers of mine broke loose and got in the swamps, while I was at meeting this morning! Couldn’t you take your dog, here, and give ’em a run? I just gave nine hundred dollars for that fellow, cash down.”
“Ho! what you going to him for?” said Jim Stokes, a short, pursy, vulgar-looking individual, dressed in a hunting-shirt of blue Kentucky jean, who just then came up. “Why, durn ye, his dogs ain’t no breed ‘t all! Mine’s the true grit, I can tell you; they’s the true Florida bloodhounds! I’s seen one of them ar dogs shake a nigger in his mouth like he’d been a sponge.”
Poor Ben’s new-found religion could not withstand this sudden attack of his spiritual enemy; and rousing himself, notwithstanding the appealing glances of his wife, he stripped up his sleeves, and squaring off, challenged his rival to a fight.
A crowd gathered round, laughing and betting, and cheering on the combatants with slang oaths and expressions such as we will not repeat, when the concourse was routed by the approach of Father Bonnie on the outside of the ring.
“Look here, boys, what works of the devil have you got round here? None of this on the camp-ground! This is the Lord’s ground, here; so shut up your swearing, and don’t fight.”
A confused murmur of voices now began to explain to Father Bonnie the cause of the trouble.
“Ho, ho!” said he, “let the nigger run; you can catch him fast enough when the meetings are over. You come here to ‘tend to your salvation. Ah, don’t you be swearing and blustering round! Come, boys, join in a hymn with me.” So saying he struck up a well-known air: —
“When Israel went to Jericho,
O good Lord, in my soul!”
in which one after another joined, and the rising tumult was soon assuaged.
“I say,” said Father Bonnie, to the trader, in an undertone, as he was walking away, “you got a good cook in your lot, hey?”
“Got a prime one,” said the trader; “an A number one cook, and no mistake! Picked her up real cheap, and I’ll let you have her for eight hundred dollars, being as you are a minister.”
“You must think the gospel a better trade than it is,” said Father Bonnie, “if you think a minister can afford to pay at that figure!”
“Why,” said the trader, “you haven’t seen her; it’s dirt cheap for her, I can tell you! A sound, strong, hearty woman; a prudent, careful housekeeper; a real pious Methodist, a member of a class-meeting! Why, eight hundred dollars ain’t anything! I ought to get a thousand for her; but I don’t hear preaching for nothing, —— always think right to make a discount to ministers!”
“Why couldn’t you bring her in?” said Father Bonnie. “Maybe I’ll give you seven hundred and fifty for her.”
“Couldn’t do that, noway!” said the trader. “Couldn’t, indeed!”
“Well, after the meetings are over I’ll talk about it.”
“She’s got a child, four years old,” said the trader, with a little cough; “healthy, likely child; I suppose I shall want a hundred dollars for him!”
“Oh, that won’t do!” said Father Bonnie. “I don’t want any more children round my place than I’ve got now!”
“But I tell you,” said the trader, “it’s a likely hoy. Why, the keeping of him won’t cost you anything, and before you think of it you’ll have a thousand-dollar hand grown on your own place.”
“Well,” said Father Bonnie, “I’ll think of it!”
In the evening the scene on the camp-ground was still more picturesque and impressive. Those who conduct camp-meetings are generally men who, without much reasoning upon the subject, fall into a sort of tact in influencing masses of mind, and pressing into the service all the great life forces and influences of nature. A kind of rude poetry pervades their minds, colors their dialect, and influences their arrangements. The solemn and harmonious grandeur of night, with all its mysterious power of exalting the passions and intensifying the emotions, has ever been appreciated, and used by them with even poetic skill. The day had been a glorious one in June; the sky of that firm, clear blue, the atmosphere of that crystalline clearness, which often gives to the American landscape such a sharply defined outline, and to the human system such an intense consciousness of life. The evening sun went down in a broad sea of light, and even after it had sunk below the purple horizon, flashed back a flood of tremulous rose-colored radiance, which, taken up by a thousand filmy clouds, made the whole sky above like a glowing tent of the most ethereal brightness. The shadows of the forest aisles were pierced by the rose-colored rays; and as they gradually faded, star after star twinkled out, and a broad moon, ample and round, rose in the purple zone of the sky. When she had risen above the horizon but a short space, her light was so resplendent and so profuse, that it was decided to conduct th
e evening service by that alone; and when, at the sound of the hymn, the assembly poured in and arranged themselves before the preaching-stand, it is probable that the rudest heart present was somewhat impressed with the silent magnificence by which God was speaking to them through his works. As the hymn closed, Father Bonnie, advancing to the front of the stage, lifted his hands, and pointing to the purple sky, and in a deep and not unmelodious voice, repeated the words of the Psalmist: —
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handy-work; day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.”
“Oh, ye sinners!” he exclaimed, “lookup at the moon, there, walking in her brightness, and think over your oaths, and your cursings, and your drinkings! Think over your backbitings, and your cheatings! think over your quarrelings and your fightings! How do they look to you now, with that blessed moon shining down upon you? Don’t you see the beauty of our Lord God upon her? Don’t you see how the saints walk in white with the Lord, like her? I dare say some of you, now, have had a pious mother, or a pious wife, or a pious sister, that’s gone to glory? and there they are walking with the Lord! — walking with the Lord, through the sky, and looking down on you, sinners, just as that moon looks down! And what does she see you doing, your wife, or your mother, or sister, that’s in glory? Does she see all your swearings, and your drinkings, and your fightings, and your hankerings after money, and your horse-racings, and your cock-fightings? Oh, sinners, but you are a bad set! I tell you the Lord is looking now down on you, out of that moon! He is looking down in mercy! But, I tell you, he’ll look down quite another way, one of these days! Oh, there’ll be a time of wrath, by and by, if you don’t repent! Oh, what a time there was at Sinai, years ago, when the voice of the trumpet waxed louder and louder, and the mountain was all of a smoke, and there were thunderings and lightnings, and the Lord descended on Sinai! That’s nothing to what you’ll see, by and by! No more moon looking down on you! No more stars, but the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat! Ah! did you ever see a fire in the woods? I have; and I’ve seen the fire on the prairies, and it rolled like a tempest, and men and horses and everything had to run before it. I have seen it roaring and crackling through the woods, and great trees shriveled in a minute like tinder! I have seen it flash over trees seventy-five and a hundred feet high, and in a minute they’d be standing pillars of fire, and the heavens were all ablaze, and the crackling and roaring was like the sea in a storm. There’s a judgment-day for you! Oh, sinner, what will become of you in that day? Never cry, Lord, Lord! Too late — too late, man! You wouldn’t take mercy when it was offered, and now you shall have wrath! No place to hide! The heavens and earth are passing away, and there shall be no more sea! There’s no place for you now in God’s universe.”
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 92