or a mere tornado of talk. Not long ago “praying bands” and “flying artillery of Heaven” patrolled the street of New York. There were “business prayer-meetings,” “boys’ prayer-meetings,” “people’s prayer-meetings.” But New York after the revival, intelligent Americans say, looked very much like New York before that event. In the city, however, a revival is comparatively “cabinned, cribbed, confined.” It is only down South or down West that the “raal grit” is to be obtained.
In the woods of Virginia, for instance, there is plenty of space for a revival. There is plenty of southern light, too, to give it a beauty and character of its own. Passing along cedar swamps and pine barrens, and picking our way over stumps and by mouldering moss-covered trees, warning us to move warily, we at length come to a cleared open space and a style of wooden architecture that usually implies, if it implies anything, a hard rum store, or groggery. It is closed, however—“Off to camp” is chalked up. On therefore under miles of oak and hickory, under glowing lights from beech and maple, passing now and then a solitary horseman, now a family party in a waggon, until we emerge upon a transatlantic Feast of Tabernacles. There are tilted waggons and horses under the trees; there are groups of bandanaed niggers exceedingly excited; there are backwoodsmen, some whittling, others expectorating, others apparently listening to what is going on in the front; there the trees have been cut down so as to form a semi-circle of seats. A rude platform, or stand, has been made for the preachers, in front of which is set what is called an “anxious bench,” the central space making a series of leafy aisles, under which are assembled the motley congregation. The preacher is a massy bison-like man, with a terrible voice and a Backwoods manner. He rolls his eyes fiercely; he rocks himself to and fro; he puts on a tragic or humorous aspect, according as the matter of his discourse requires it. Sometimes he howls like a racoon or a jackal; now he lifts his hands, and attempts emblematically to soar like the eagle; then he is plaintive as a whip-poor-will, or mournful and anguished as a bear. At one time he convulses his flock with laughter, at another he melts them to tears. Sometimes, even in an excess of zeal, a preacher has been known to descend from the stand and convert a border ruffian by grasping him round the neck, and forcing him to utter a prayer.
At sunrise a loud horn sounds a religious réveil, and summons the unawakened or half-awakened from their slumbers on pine-needles, or the soft side of a fir board, to meeting. Ministers turn out of the tents, where they have passed the night on inclined shelves, and have silenced the locusts and katy-deds, if not effectually driven away sleep from their brethren, by singing most melancholy, most unmusical. Hundreds of men and women, looking pale and cold, come out of the tents or the waggons, and fill the seats. Then brother Banks throws his head back, makes a terrible chasm in his face, and begins with an opening prayer—brother Whabcoat having declined on the ground of want of rest and the assaults of mosquitos. Central groans and Amens interrupt him, but few sink down or are stricken, no strong appeal having been made, and evening being, on the whole, more favourable to conversion than the morning. If a shower falls, backwoodsmen are apt to think of their waggons and cattle, and drop away from the meeting. Coloured people, too, not being allowed to sit so that they can hear, sometimes creep away, and choose a preacher of their own. The anxious benches are seldom filled in a morning. During the day the preachers go from tent to tent to stir up the weary, or with staves of hymns and prayers to alarm backsliders. As far as human strength will permit, they endeavour to get as much singing and exclamation as possible into the day. At sun-down the horn sounds again, hoarsely and sadly. Who can forget the sundown splendour of the American woods?
The thousands of mosses and lichens then drop down from the boughs, spires and waves, and feathers of light. The maple is a blaze of crimson; the hemlock and gum-tree drop transparent gold. There is nothing that betokens death and decay; as an American authoress prettily says, “The leaves never say die,” in America. As soon as the sun goes down the woods and the trees are dark; then the horn sounds for prayer. Rude lamps hanging from the boughs throw out the preachers’ faces into lurid relief, and pinewood-fires cracking and spattering from the tents cast a weird light on the congregation. Now and then the gust blows the embers into the air, or a little company of fireflies scintillates along the darkness. There needs no preacher to gesticulate a congregation into religion. But Revivalists go in for something extra, and both white and coloured congregations like it.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! bursts out continually from the excited multitude; women swoon, and even become suddenly prostrate. Glory, glory! shout the negroes. “Lord, Lord, I feel do blessing! Lord, thrust out the giggling devils; make ’em feel hotterer and hotterer.”
“The devil and me, we don’t agree,
I don’t like him, and he don’t like me.”
Such are the actual interjections common at these meetings—and such is a Revival in the United States.
DEER-STALKING EXTRAORDINARY.
In these days, and at this particular season, when the above manly and bracing exercise is carried on with such unflinching energy, in the wild woods and mountains of Scotland, it may not be out of place to give the general reader an idea of the way in which it is sometimes managed in the far West.
In Central America, that is, the isthmus which connects North and South America, somewhere on the borders of Nicaragua, and some miles from Leon, its capital, they have a custom of sending the ox a deer-stalking, and they actually force the brute to undergo a preliminary education to make him up to his work.
He is tied to a tree by the horns; and is frequently beaten on the head near the roots of his horns, till the latter are loosened, and, of course,