66

he was cross-eyed. Having gazed at Mr. Gurley a few moments with reverential awe, Paul worked his way around and sidled" up to Mr. Shore, as if sure of a friend there. Being such a little fellow down among the skirts and trousers, he was not noticed at once; and so he took hold of one of the big warm hands and said in a voice just loud enough for Mr. Shore to hear:

He would as soon have thought of calling his father 'Mister" as of addressing Mr. Shore by that title or by any other except "Brother."

66

Why, how do you do, Paul?" responded the minister at once, bending down and giving Paul's small hand a warm pressure. "How are you to-night?"

Purty well, thank ye," replied Paul.

And then somebody else spoke to Mr. Shore, and he had no time for further talk with Paul. But the boy was happy and satisfied. He had had that recognition of his personality which his childish heart craved; and so, although lost again among the skirts and coattails, he was content to stand there clinging to Mr. Shore's left hand with both his own, leaving the big right hand free for the hearty grasp that seemed to carry quite as much pleasure to the older folks as to Paul. A few minutes later Paul picked his way toward the rear of the room and squeezed in beside Ned Gardner, the stalwart young schoolmaster, who received him very kindly.

Clearly, Mr. Shore had a deeper hold on these simple, sincere, outspoken people than mere respect for the cloth. They not only reverenced the minister but they loved the man. Indeed, so much did the man overtop the minister in their feeling that, except when he stood before them in his strictly clerical capacity, the ministerial function was almost lost sight of. One of the hardened sinners had been heard to remark that when Mr. Shore spoke to them from behind the desk in the schoolhouse it "didn't giner'lly seem like preachin', but jes' like some good feller gittin' up there an' talkin' to ye in sich a way 't instid 'o wantin' to go down on yer knees 'n' waller, it made ye feel like goin' home 'n' tryin' to live a leetle better'n ye'd b'en doin'."

It was this characteristic of Mr. Shore's preaching and influence that had led some of his brother ministers, Jason

HIGLEY DOOM AND HIS "CALL "

13

Gurley among them, to conclude that he was not "stirring" enough for back-country revival work.

66

There were few arrivals after the Willett party.

One of the late comers, however, Higley Doom, was a notable figure. He lived over on Mud Run, at the head of the mash," as the large marsh was called, five miles from Sugar Hill. He was a big, raw-boned, ungainly man of uncertain age, with a frowzy shock of coarse, reddish hair and a long, straggly, unkempt beard of the same texture and hue. His eyes, small, dull, expressionless as a glass bead, peered out from under thick, shaggy eyebrows. His clothing, of the coarsest and roughest, hung slouchy and loose upon him, one side of each trouser leg tucked up from the bottom over the corresponding bootstrap. One of his cheeks was always distended with a huge "chaw of terbacker" on which he ruminated steadily when not talking. His voice was loud, harsh, and rasping. When engaged in religious exhortation his head continually rolled and turned from side to side, his huge body swayed and weaved, and his long arms and hairy, blotched hands swung wildly and aimlessly in all directions. He was invariably untidy even to uncleanness. Altogether he looked like a great hairy animal, and gave one the impression that in his case the process of evolution had been cut short at a critical point. This appearance had gained for him sundry nicknames, like “goriller" and "missin' link." He had been converted two years before, and had felt called to preach from the first. Some of the brethren doubted the genuineness of his call, but all agreed that that was a matter to be settled between him and God; and as God had not yet interfered and expressly disavowed the call, Brother Doom went on improving every opportunity to "slash the Devil" with all the fury and ferocity of his untamed animal nature.

It was common talk that in his dealings with his fellowmen Higley Doom paid small heed to the maxim about rendering to every man his own. However, any little shortage in honesty he always tried to make good by a surplus of piety and thus preserve the balance. Besides, he despised the things of earth and held the treasures of the heavenly world as the only vital concern; then what mattered a dollar or two more or less, whether he had it or somebody else?

Joshua Granger never lost or laid aside his self-control,

but always kept within what were generally regarded as the bounds of moderation; although even he could not have told how much of his self-restraint was due to the fact that he usually preached under the keen eye and into the sharp ear of Aunt Sue, for whose two-edged tongue he entertained a most wholesome respect.

Not so Higley Doom. To him religion offered a warrant, and preaching an opportunity, for indulging an inclination by no means peculiar to Higley Doom or even to persons of his small mental and moral bore-an inclination to throw off all self-restraint at times, give free play to the pent-up animal forces, and let body and mind run riot. With Higley Doom preaching was essentially dissipation. He always worked himself into a frenzy, "got the power an' the blessin'"; and until he had reached that boiling, raging state of mind he never felt that he could get at the unregenerate heart. The profane called him a hummer" and a "reg'ler rip snorter." He had preached a couple of times at the Sugar Hill schoolhouse. He had also tried to work up a revival in the Mud Run district the winter before; but no converts could he make; and so, after six meetings, during which the audiences had gradually dwindled to a half-dozen wicked youths who went "jes' to see the circus," he had concluded that the Mud Run sinners were past redemption. He had finally been reduced in his ministerial work to the necessity of "vis'tin' roun"" among other districts and putting in a word here and there as chance offered. Although Mr. Shore and Mr. Granger were by no means glad to see him on this occasion, yet they treated him with the customary cordiality of rural religious courtesy.

CHAPTER 3

THE REVIVAL SERMON

THE time having arrived for opening the meeting, Mr. Gurley seated himself on the solitary chair, while Joshua Granger and Higley Doom ranged themselves on the bench back of the teacher's desk. Higley Doom took his seat on the platform uninvited, by virtue of his self-assumed status

THE REVIVAL SERMON

15

as a quasi, if unlicensed, exhorter. Mr. Shore opened the services by starting a hymn, in which all joined. Then he knelt on the platform, at the end of the desk and prayed a prayer whose fervor and pathos even more than its words touched the hearts of the listeners, and made them feel that the kneeling man would gladly take on himself all their burden of sin and earn for them Godly forgiveness and favor. Throughout the prayer a stream of interjected responses went up from the brethren and sisters. At last the voice of the minister dropped to a lower tone, "and to thy name we will give all glory and praise, now and evermore. Amen." The kneelers resumed their seats, and when they joined in the hymn that Mr. Shore started, there was a depth of feeling in their voices not heard in the singing of the former hymn.

The hymn finished, Mr. Shore introduced Mr. Gurley: "In the mercy and goodness of God we have our beloved Brother Jason Gurley with us to-night; and though worn with revival work in other parts of the State during the winter now closing, he is nevertheless determined, with God's assisting grace, to speak to you and point the way of salvation to these precious souls."

"Brothers and sisters," Mr. Gurley began, "it rejoices my heart to find this glorious work going on amongst you. As Brother Shore has said, I am weary with traveling and preaching-"

66

66

"Be not weary in well doin'!" broke in the rasping voice of Higley Doom; and one of the thoughtless brethren followed with a well-rounded "amen!" Higley Doom prided himself on his ability to fin' a fittin' verse for almost any occasion. The word weary" struck a chord in his memory, and it was quite beyond his dull comprehension that any Scriptural quotation could ever be amiss. No notice was taken of the interruption, other than a few sidelong glances among the assembly. Mr. Gurley went on as though nothing had happened.

"I will first read a chapter from the Word of God," he said; and taking up the small Bible that Joshua Granger had brought, he turned to the third chapter of Habakkuk. Joshua stood at one end of the desk and held one of the lamps shoulder-high, while Higley Doom performed a like service at the other end. Thus assisted, Mr. Gurley read the chapter through, and then proceeded:

"It's the last four words of the second verse that I want to call your attention to.. 'In wrath remember mercy.' That's the cry that ought to go up from every sinner's heart here to-night. God is a God of wrath as well as mercyinfinite wrath and infinite mercy. Let's look a little closer at this mighty prayer of the prophet and see what lessons it's got for us.

So saying, Mr. Gurley proceeded to give a sketch of the circumstances under which the prayer was uttered, with quotations of other passages of Scripture bearing on the subject. He also reread and commented on other portions of the chapter:

"Thou didst march forth through the land in indignation. Thou didst thresh the heathen in anger. Thou woundest the head out of the house of the wicked. My lips quivered at thy voice; rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble."

66

Now, it so happened that Joshua Granger had preached from a text out of the same chapter but a few nights before, and there were two persons among Mr. Gurley's hearers who observed that his opening remarks were much like Joshua's. Those two persons were Joshua himself and Aunt Sue Willett. Joshua was not a little puffed up to discover that he could handle a theme as well, for all he could see, as this itinerant revivalist; and visions of a charge "-with a salary and a donation-burst upon his enraptured sight. Not even the thought of the heavenly reward had ever thrilled him with such emotions. True, he was at no loss to tell how it happened that he and Brother Gurley thought and spoke so nearly alike. But that made no difference, and lessened not a whit his estimate of his own ability. Why should it? If he could do as well as other ministers, even traveling evangelists, and knew as well as they where to go for his material, and how to use it, wherein was their work better than his, or how were they, in their ministerial capacity, superior to him? He felt the ground growing firm under his feet.

Aunt Sue readily divined that the resemblance of Mr. Gurley's discourse to that of Joshua Granger was not a mere coincidence, or the result of a similar endowment by the Holy Ghost. She shrewdly guessed that there was some common earthly source from which they drew their