Brother McConnell was an extraordinarily agile man. Throughout his service, and particularly after the collection had been taken up and found to be good, he bounded back and forth about the pulpit, chasing the Devil hither and yon, shaking his hair from his eyes, sweating at every pore and roaring charges about dens of evil that I, for one, was never able to find in Farmington, although I headed several exploring parties. He dealt largely in that sort of goods; to him, and to most of the other preachers that I recall, morality and goodness were nothing but chastity, and they never let an opportunity pass to insinuate that the finest men in our town whiled away their idle hours with scarlet women. Their insinuations, of course, had no basis in fact; to my knowledge there was but one professional scarlet woman in town, and there simply was not time. However, there were, to be sure, amateurs.
The church was crowded on the night I was told that Jesus had taken possession of my soul. I sat about the middle of the center section with my elder brother, a phlegmatic boy who was also converted but who would never talk much about it, while across the aisle were my sister and my younger brother. Every few moments the evangelist would stop shouting and sink back into his chair, gasping, wiping his brow and breaking into sobs as he bowed his head in a prayer that came in a throaty mumble from his lips. Here and there throughout the house was an echoing gasp and a strangled sob, utterances of tortured and frightened souls about to be swirled into a great wave of religious frenzy. And standing in the aisle and about the pulpit were Brothers and Sisters, experienced revival workers, eager retrievers for the Lord, their faces flushed with emotion and their eagle eyes roving the congregation in quest of just such persons.
The instant the evangelist sat down, his band leader popped up like a trained seal, and from the band and the augmented choir poured the lilting measures of a hymn.
Oh, that will be
Glory for me!
Glory for me,
Yes, glory for me!
When by His grace
I shall look on His face,
That will be glory,