Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. I.djvu/426

Rh much as they amuse me, and we sit under the piazza in the delicious night air often till midnight.

One evening which I spent at Mr. G.'s, I was present at the evening-worship of the negroes, in a hall which that good right-thinking minister had allowed them to use for that purpose. The first speaker, an old negro, was obliged to give place to another, who said he was so full of the power of the word, that he could not possibly keep silence, and he poured forth of his eloquence for a good hour, but said the same thing over and over again. These negro preachers were far inferior to those which I heard in Savannah.

Finally he admonished one of the sisters “to pray.” On this, an elderly, sickly woman began immediately to pray aloud, and her evident fervour in thanksgiving for the consolation of the Gospel of Christ, and her testimony on behalf of its powers, in her own long and suffering life, was really affecting. But the prayer was too long; the same thing was repeated too often, with an incessant thumping on the bench with her fists, as an accompaniment to every groan of prayer. At the close of this, and when another sister was admonished to pray, the speaker added, “But make it short, if you please!”

This sister, however, did not make it short, but longer even than the first, with still more circumlocution and still more thumping on the bench.

A third sister, who was admonished to pray, received the short, definite injunction, “But short.” And, when she lost herself in the long bewilderment of prayer, she was interrupted without ceremony by the wordy preacher, who could no longer keep silence, but must hear himself talk on for another good hour. Nor was it until the singing of one of the hymns composed by the negroes themselves, such as they sing in their canoes, and in which the name “Jerusalem” is often repeated, that the congregation became really alive. They sang so that it was