Inside, the exhortations were kept up to fever heat. In a little gallery above the pit, not more than four feet from the dirty ceiling, there were half a dozen faded and antiquated women, who kept chorus to the music of the Heavenly Jerusalem, as follows:
'To God, the mighty Lord
Your joyful thanks repeat;
To him due praise afford,
As good as he is great.
For God does prove
Our constant friend;
His boundless love
Shall never end-a-a-h.'
'That's what I call singing the bloody gospil. The man that wrote that ballad was no slouch,' cried out George Leese, alias 'Snatchem,' one of the worst scoundrels in New York, who is now in the saving path of grace. As a beastly, obscene ruffian, 'Snatchem' never had his equal in America, according to his own account. The writer has seen this fellow at prize fights, with a couple of revolvers in his belt, engaged in the disgusting office of sucking blood from the wild beasts who had ceased to pummel each other for a few seconds. This man, with his bulging, bulbous, watery-blue eyes, bloated red face, and coarse swaggering gait, has been notorious for years in New York. The police are well acquainted with him, and he is proud of his notoriety.
'Snatchem' asked our reporter if he ever saw such 'a-rough and-tumble- stand-up-to-be knocked-down son of a gun as he in his life.'
Did you ever see such a kicking-in-the-head-knife-in-a dark-room fellow as I am, eh?'
Our reporter meekly answered 'no.'
I want a quarter-stretch ticket to go to glory, I do. I can go in harness preaching the bloody gospil against any minister in New York. I know all Watts' Hymns and Fistiana, and I'd like to be an angel and bite Gabriel's ear off.'
A man got upon one of the benches in the pit and commenced to preach in a frenzy to the crowd. He related his experience as a gambler at several gambling houses in Ann street and on Broadway. He told very affecting stories about young men who bought stacks of chips and were afterwards reduced to their bottom dollar and misery.
The minister asked 'if any one present was in need of his prayer, or of water from the Jordan to wash out his sins, to let him hold up his hand.'
George Leese did so. 'He wanted all the water he could get from the
Jordan or any other river.'