"Tiff, how did you like the sermon?" said Nina.
"Dey's pretty far, Miss Nina. Der's a good deal o' quality preaching."
"What do you mean by quality preaching, Tiff?"
"Why, dat ar kind dat's good for quality—full of long words, you know. I spects it's very good; but poor nigger like me can't see his way through it. You see, Miss Nina, what I's studdin' on, lately, is, how to get dese yer chil'en to Canaan; and I hars fus with one ear, and den with t'oder, but 'pears like an't clar 'bout it, yet. Dere's a heap about mose everything else, and it's all very good; but 'pears like I an't clar, arter all, about dat ar. Dey says, 'Come to Christ;' and I says, 'Whar is he, any how?' Bress you, I want to come! Dey talks 'bout going in de gate, and knocking at de do', and 'bout marching on de road, and 'bout fighting and being soldiers of de cross; and de Lord knows, now, I'd be glad to get de chil'en through any gate; and I could take 'em on my back and travel all day, if dere was any road; and if dere was a do', bless me, if dey wouldn't hear Old Tiff a rapping! I spects de Lord would have fur to open it—would so. But, arter all, when de preaching is done, dere don't 'pear to be nothing to it. Dere an't no gate, dere an't no do', nor no way; and dere an't no fighting, 'cept when Ben Dakin and Jim Stokes get jawing about der dogs; and everybody comes back eating der dinner quite comf'table, and 'pears like dere wan't no such ting dey's been preaching 'bout. Dat ar troubles me—does so—'cause I wants fur to get dese yer chil'en in de kingdom, some way or oder. I didn't know but some of de quality would know more 'bout it."
"Hang me, if I haven't felt just so!" said Uncle John. "When they were singing that hymn about enlisting and being a soldier, if there had been any fighting doing anywhere, I should have certainly gone right into it; and the preaching always stirs me up terribly. But, then, as Tiff says, after it's all over, why, there's dinner to be eaten, and I can't see anything better than to eat it; and then, by the time I have drank two or three glasses of wine, it's all gone. Now, that's just the way with me!"
"Dey says," said Tiff, "dat we must wait for de blessing to come down upon us, and Aunt Rose says it's dem dat shouts dat gets de blessing; and I's been shouting till I's most beat out, but I hasn't got it. Den, one of dem said none of dem could get it but de 'lect; but, den, t'oder one, he seemed to tink different; and in de meeting dey tells about de scales falling from der eyes,—and I wished dey fall from mine—I do so! Perhaps, Miss Nina, now, you could tell me something."
"Oh, don't ask me!" said Nina; "I don't know anything about these things. I think I feel a little like Uncle John," she said, turning to Clayton. "There are two kinds of sermons and hymns; one gets me to sleep, and the other excites and stirs me up in a general kind of way; but they don't either seem to do me real good."
"For my part, I am such an enemy to stagnation," said Clayton, "that I think there is advantage in everything that stirs up the soul, even though we see no immediate results. I listen to music, see pictures, as far as I can, uncritically. I say, 'Here I am; see what you can do with me.' So I present myself to almost all religious exercises. It is the most mysterious part of our nature. I do not pretend to understand it, therefore never criticise."
"For my part," said Anne, "there is so much in the wild freedom of these meetings that shocks my taste and sense of propriety, that I am annoyed more than I am benefited."
"There spoke the true, well-trained conventionalist," said Clayton. "But look around you. See, in this wood, among these flowers, and festoons of vine, and arches of green, how many shocking, unsightly growths! You would not have had all this underbrush, these dead limbs, these briers running riot over trees, and sometimes choking and killing them. You would have well-trimmed trees and velvet turf. But I love briers, dead limbs, and all, for their very savage freedom. Every once in a while you see in a wood a jessamine, or a sweet-brier, or a grape-vine, that throws itself into a gracefulness of growth which a landscape gardener would go down on his knees for, but cannot get. Nature resolutely denies it to him. She says, 'No! I keep this for my own. You won't have my wildness—my freedom; very well, then you shall not have the graces that spring from it.' Just so it is with men. Unite any assembly of common men in a great enthusiasm,—work them up into an abandon, and let every one 'let go,' and speak as nature prompts,—and you will have brush, underwood, briers, and all grotesque growths; but, now and then, some thought or sentiment will be struck out with a freedom or power such as you cannot get in any other way. You cultivated people are much mistaken when you despise the enthusiasms of the masses. There is more truth than you think in the old 'Vox populi, vox Dei.'"