personal feelings and sentiments, which, if actual, can only be among a man's dearest, most interior and secret, stillest, and most uncommunicable experiences. Men talk in public places, in the churches, and in bar-rooms, in the stage-coach, and at the fireside, of their personal communions with the Deity, and of the mutations of their harmony with His Spirit, just as they do about their family and business matters. The familar use of Scripture expressions by the negroes, I have already indicated. This is not confined to them. A dram-seller advertises thus:—
"'FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS DEAD.'
IN order to engage in a more 'honorable' business, I offer for sale, cheap for cash, my stock of
LIQUORS, BAR-FIXTURES, BILLIARD TABLE, &c., &c.
If not sold privately, by the 20th day of May, I will sell the same at public auction. 'Shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.'
E. KEYSER."
At a Sunday dinner-table, at a village inn in Virginia, two
or three men had taken seats with me, who had, as they said,
"been to the preachin'." A child had been baptized, and the
discourse had been a defence of infant baptism.
"I'm damned," said one, "ef he teched on the primary significance of baptism, at all—buryin' with Jesus."
"They wus the weakest arguments for sprinklin' that ever I heerd," said another—a hot, red-faced, corpulent man—"and his sermon was two hours long, for when he stopped I looked at my watch. I thought it should be a lesson to me, for I couldn't help going to sleep. Says I to Uncle John, says I—he sot next to me, and I whispered to him—says I, 'When he gits to Bunker Hill, you wake me up,' for I see he was bound to go clean back to the beginnin' of things."
"Uncle John is an Episcopalian, aint he?"
"Yes."
