The words were not inspiring, the tune and tone and manner of the fat leader was a call to penitence, anguish, and tears.
Vinegar sprang to his feet.
“Dat’s won’t do, sister!” he interrupted. “Less sing dis toon!”
He began a song in a bellow which shook the rafters of the house and rattled the windows and threatened to crumble the foundations of the building. The song was a jay-bird affair, waltz-music to the stanza and jig-time to the chorus. The song might as well have been totally unfamiliar to the congregation. It was really one of their favorites—but, in spite of that, they let Vinegar sing it through as a solo.
Verily, the hoodoo was working.
Vinegar was appalled at the unresponsiveness of his congregation, and when the crowd had listened without objection or commendation to a solo prayer and to a reading from the old, worn Bible upon the desk, the preacher was almost in hysterics. He had never seen anything like that before.
Vinegar turned to Ginny Babe Chew a second time and said desperately:
“Now, sister Ginny, less hab anodder song—a lively toon whut eve’ybody knows!”
Ginny Babe Chew rose to her feet, her hand started the gestures of an old-fashioned singing-master, her body “weaved,” her voice arose in a high, drawling falsetto, utterly unlike her natural tone:
“Blow—ye—de—trumpet—blow—”