CHAPTER XII.
HEROIC CHRISTIAN WORKERS IN THE SOUTHWEST.
It was a bright, dreamy, autumnal day, that I was making my way among the bayous of one of the most sluggish of the rivers that enter and swell the volume of the Mississippi. My ride since morning had been very long and very lonely. It is a strange sort of life to ride on horseback, week after week and month after month, over a new and sparsely settled country. The most of such journeys are alone. One but rarely meets with company, and then they usually travel together but a short distance before their paths diverge and they separate. In these long, solitary rides, any unusual scene or incident startles one as from a dreamy reverie, and makes a lasting, an almost ineffaceable, impression upon the memory.
A circuit rider in the Brush.
I have very often recalled, and shall hardly forget while I live, a most pleasing incident in this day's ride. I had recently traveled over a wide scope of country including a half a dozen counties, where the land was nearly as level as the numerous streams that flowed through it. The soil was entirely alluvial, and very rich. Occasionally, gentle elevations of a very few feet swelled above the surrounding level, which were crowned with large oaks having short trunks and heavy tops with wide-spreading branches. These oaks were usually interspersed with smaller trees and underbrush. As I floundered through a wet, marshy road, and struck a sandy path leading up one of these elevations, I saw a number of horses hitched to the limbs of the trees, and soon came up to a plain unpainted church or chapel. Its only foundation was the few wooden blocks upon which it stood, and the windows were without sash or glass, the shutters made of boards, being thrown open to admit the light, and closed when the services were ended. I rode under a tree, hitched my horse to a limb, and entered the church as quietly as possible. The preacher had closed his sermon, and was about concluding the services. It was the close of a meeting which had continued several days, in which a number of hardened and very hopeless sinners had been led to Christ. It was his last appointment before leaving them for conference. The labors of the year had left their impress upon his whole frame. He looked wan and worn. He had breathed the malaria of the rivers, bayous, and marshes, along which he had sought out these people in their homes, and near which he had preached to them, until it had changed the color of his flesh to a bloodless saffron hue. I never before or since saw such a human face. It bespoke a body, soul, and spirit, heartily, wholly, and irrevocably consecrated to his noble work. There was over it that perfect calmness that succeeds long and intense anxiety and excitement, when their end has been fully attained. As he spoke to them of the labors of the year, and of his departure for conference, he was the only one that seemed unmoved. His voice was low and calm amid the weeping that was all around him. Among the most noted of the converts was a woman who for years had done more than any other person in the neighborhood to counteract the influence of the preachers who had labored on that circuit, and to injure the little church. She was famous as a fiddler, and the leader in getting up all the neighborhood dances, and it was difficult for the young converts to withstand the fascinations of her bow. In former years she had fiddled a great many of them out of the class before their six months' probation had expired. Now that she had at last been brought down, there was general rejoicing. It was like the fall of some tall oak of the forest that brings down many smaller trees with it. They could now sing, as I have often heard them in their log-cabins:
"Shout! shout, we're gaining ground,
Oh, glory Halleluyah!
We'll shout old Satan's kingdom down,
Oh, glory Halleluyah!"
This woman sat in a chair near the pulpit (with her little babe lying, smiling and playful, upon her lap), participating with the deepest interest in all the services, and weeping among those most deeply moved. At the conclusion of his remarks the preacher baptized this little child, the mother giving to it the double name of himself and his colleague on the circuit. His work thus ended, he sang alone, in a clear, firm voice, a simple and beautiful parting hymn, that I can not now repeat, with the refrain,
"Brothers, fare ye well,"
passing at the same time through the congregation and shaking hands with the weeping class-leaders, stewards, local preachers, and other brethren present. He then moved to the other side of the room, and sang on in the same manner, changing the refrain to,