Page:Hold the Fort! (Scheips 1971) low resolution.pdf/30

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The meetings in Boston, which went on for weeks, were a great success. There was, however, a somewhat profane Boston journalist—I. A. M. Cumming, as he styled himself—who covered the revival meetings for "the spiciest paper in New England," the Boston Sunday Times (circulation 60,000), and then published a collection of his revival pieces under the title Tabernacle Sketches, with illustrations by an equally irreverent artist named Haskell. Cumming claimed that Sankey had first realized his powers of song one night on the western prairies when he frightened off a band of Apaches, who were about to attack his party, by striking up "What Shall the Harvest Be?" According to Cumming, the braves "thought they had been surprised by at least five thousand Sioux warriors."

"Hold the Fort," of course, was more than Cumming and Haskell could resist. Early in the meetings, commenting upon the choir's rendition of "Hold the Fort," Cumming thought he ought not speak of Bliss's earthly melodies since the author was now departed, but Haskell nevertheless sketched some of the choir members in the front row, mouths open,