As the weeks passed by, the history of the Friday nights presented the appearance of continuous "protracted meeting." Rarely, if ever, did a week pass without the application and acceptance of from one to twenty members. Nor did those who joined the one body, the church, enter upon the crest of an excitement-wave, or with a superficial notion of what it meant to be a Christian. The following note will show that converts were not to be obtained with undue haste:
"The following was passed at the Business Meeting of 23rd March, 1869: 'That this Meeting considers it inexpedient for our Evangelists to invite public confessions, seeing they regard it desirable to have conversation before baptism.'"
"Church Secretary."
Besides the work already indicated, there was an "Improvement Class" each week, composed of young members of the church, who read essays, and made short talks, to be criticised by the minister. From this class were selected those who addressed the congregation on Sunday morning. These young men were closely bound by affection to their leader, Mr. Carr. There was something perennially young in his own bosom, that responded to their youth.
His health was delicate, as it had been in Lexington, and the never-relaxing labors of every night in the week, might have made another prematurely old and solemn. But his boarders, Alex. and Vaney Magarey, could have told of many a time when he slipped to the attic with them for a hasty game of marbles. Such innocent, though clandestine sport, heartened him up, no doubt, to deal the more telling blows against ecclesiastical foes. Who in reading his trenchant arguments on the subject of Baptism, would have suspected that at that very moment the marbles might be clinking in his pocket![10]
No wonder the young men felt his spirit akin to their own! After prayer-meeting they would walk with him "part of the way,—" which usually extended quite across the fifty acres of Fitzroy Gardens, and up to his very door. And as they walked they talked, talked with all the earnestness of youth, when youth is in earnest.
Waiting in Melbourne alone. Will go to Hobart