“Of course I went to many other corn shucking frolics, but this one was the biggest I ever attended, not only this, but they had the best order I ever noticed.
“Well I’ve told you about a corn shucking before the war, and the next time I come back I’ll tell you of when the stars fell.”
“Tell me now,” I said, “something may happen that you will not come again soon; its not late, and you will have time to tell part of it any way.”
He looked serious and said, “Well I was not to say skeered, but it was certainly a solemn time! I was twenty-one years old when it happened, and was sleeping up stairs in a cabin on Miss Nancy Carr’s farm. A pitiful noise waked me, and I bounced up and run down, and the wood-pile in front of the cabin door was full of stars!
“I said, ‘signs and wonders in the heavens’
“Mr. Bob Bellamy, from Kentucky, was working at Miss Nancy’s, and he seemed to think it was funny, the way the colored people prayed and shouted, thinking judgment day was at hand. We could hear them praying at Mr. Riah Grant’s home, as plain as if they were in our yard.
“Brother Martin Grant was a colored preacher, and a mighty good man; he tried to reason with them, and told them they were in the hands of the Lord, and He would deal right with them.
“The white folks did not seem to be much excited. The very religious ones prayed in secret, but they made no great noise; the excitement was mostly among the colored people, and the ignorant white folks.
“After daybreak, and it began to get light, the stars on the ground grew dim, and got dimmer, and dimmer, till the sun came up and they could not be seen at all. An old colored man living down on the Clarksville road rejoiced when he saw the sun rise, and said, ‘Thank God, I know the world is all right now, for the sun is rising in the same place!’
“I think Brother Robin Northington (at that time a young man belonging to Mr. David Northington) made more noise than any colored person in the neighborhood. In his young days he was inclined to be wild, and when he thought judgment day had found him unprepared, it was time to make a noise.