ABOUT JAY BIRDS.
Dr. Walker relates with great pleasure that, when he was a boy, he made it his business to kill every jay bird he saw. He said that the old folks had told him that he would never see any jay birds around on Fridays, because on Fridays all the jay birds went to carry sand to hell. So he made up his mind to kill every one he could, in order that the number of jay birds engaged in the sand-carrying business would be decreased. He was a man nearly grown before he found out that his ardor in attempting to kill off all the jay birds was prompted by an “old wife’s fable,” a myth, one of the many hundred superstitious notions that prevailed among the old-time colored people.
REV. CHARLES T. WALKER AT FORTY YEARS OF AGE.
EARLY RELIGIOUS IMPRESSIONS.
Dr. Walker’s first recollection of any religious emotions run back to the period of his early childhood. He remembers how every Sunday night all the servants would gather in the hall of the “Big House,” and hold a prayer-meeting with the “old master,” a Dr. Samuel Clark, leading the service. He used to go with his mother to these meetings. The first hymn he ever heard “lined” and sung, i. e., the first hymn that he remembers, was the good, old-fashioned hymn beginning,
“When I can read my title clear.”
He remembers well the edition then used had these words:
“And hellish darts be hurled,”
Instead of the present rendition, which has these words: