A chair had been placed in the front door of the log house, for Kike, that he might preach to the congregation indoors and the much larger one outdoors. Mr. Magruder, much battered up, sat on a wooden bench just outside. Kike crept into the empty chair in the doorway with the feeling of one who intrudes where he does not belong. The brethren were singing, as a congregational voluntary, to the solemn tune of "Kentucky," the hymn which begins:
"A charge to keep I have,
A God to glorify;
A never-dying soul to save
And fit it for the sky."
Magruder saw Kike's fright, and, leaning over to him, said: "If you get confused, tell your own experience." The early preacher's universal refuge was his own experience. It was a sure key to the sympathies of the audience.
Kike got through the opening exercises very well. He could pray, for in praying he shut his eyes and uttered the cry of his trembling soul for help. He had been beating about among two or three texts, either of which would do for a head-piece to the remarks he intended to make; but now one fixed itself in his mind as he stood appalled by his situation in the presence of such a throng. He rose and read, with a tremulous voice:
"There is a lad here which hath five barley loaves and two small fishes; but what are they among so many?"
The text arrested the attention of all. Magruder, though unable to speak without pain, could not refrain from saying aloud, after the free old Methodist fashion: "The Lord multiply the loaves! Bless and break to the multitude!" "Amen!" responded an old brother from another settlement, "and the Lord help the lad!" But Kike felt that the advantage which the text had given him would be of short duration. The novelty of his position bewildered him. His face flushed; his thoughts became confused; he turned his back on the audience out of doors, and talked rapidly to the few friends in the house: the old brethren leaned their heads upon their hands and began to pray. Whatever spiritual help their prayers may have brought him, their lugubrious groaning, and their doleful, audible prayers of "Lord, help!" depressed Kike immeasurably, and kept the precipice on which he stood constantly present to him. He tried in succession each division that he had sketched on the fly-leaf of the Bible, and found little to say on any of them. At last, he could not see the audience distinctly for confusion—there was a dim vision of heads swimming before him. He stopped still, and Magruder, expecting him to sit down, resolved to "exhort" if the pain should kill him. The Philistines meanwhile were laughing at Kike's evident discomfiture.
But Kike had no notion of sitting down. The laughter awakened his combativeness, and his combativeness restored his self-control. Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure. He was through with the sermon, and it had occupied just six minutes. The lad's scanty provisions had not been multiplied. But he felt relieved. The sermon over, there was no longer necessity for trying to speak against time, nor for observing the outward manner of a preacher.
"Now," he said, doggedly, "you have all seen that I cannot preach worth a cent. When David went out to fight, he had the good sense not to put on Saul's armor. I was fool enough to try to wear Brother Magruder's. Now, I'm done with that. The text and sermon are gone. But I'm not ashamed of Jesus Christ. And before I sit down, I am going to tell you all what he has done for a poor lost sinner like me."
Kike told the story with sincere directness. His recital of his own sins was a rebuke to others; with a trembling voice and a simple earnestness absolutely electrical, he told of his revengefulness, and of the effect of Magruder's preaching on him. And now that the flood-gates of emotion were opened, all trepidation departed, and there came instead the fine glow of martial courage. He could have faced the universe. From his own life the transition to the lives of those around him was easy. He hit right and left. The excitable crowd swayed with consternation as, in a rapid and vehement utterance, he denounced their sins with the particularity of one who had been familiar with them all his life. Magruder forgot to respond; he only leaned back and looked in bewilderment, with open eyes and mouth, at the fiery boy whose contagious excitement was fast setting the whole audience ablaze. Slowly the people pressed forward off the fences. All at once there was a loud bellowing cry from some one who had fallen prostrate outside the fence, and who began to cry aloud as if the portals of an endless perdition were yawning in his face. Magruder pressed through the crowd to find that the fallen man was his antagonist of the morning—Bill McConkey! Bill had concealed his bruised nose behind a tree, but had been drawn forth by the fascination of Kike's earnestness, and had finally fallen under the effect of his own terror. This outburst of agony from McConkey was fuel to the flames, and the excitement now spread to all parts of the audience. Kike went from man to man, and exhorted and rebuked each one in particular. Brady, not wishing to hear a public commentary on his own life, waddled away when he saw Kike coming; his mother wept bitterly under his exhortation; and Morton sat stock still on the fence listening, half in anguish and half in anger, to Kike's public recital of his sins.
At last Kike approached his uncle; for Captain Lumsden had come on purpose to enjoy Morton's proposed interruption. He listened a minute to Kike's exhortation, and the contrary emotions of alarm at the thought of God's judgment and anger at Kike's impudence contended within him until he started for his horse and was seized with that curious nervous affection which originated in these religious excitements and disappeared with them.* He jerked violently—his jerking only adding to his excitement, which in turn increased the severity of his contortions. This nervous affection was doubtless a natural physical result of violent excitement; but the people of that day imagined that it was produced by some supernatural agency, some attributing it to God, others to the devil, and yet others to some subtle charm voluntarily exercised by the preachers. Lumsden went home jerking all the way, and cursing the Methodists more bitterly than ever.