Give us this day our daily bread! Yes, give us it (clap, clap, clap). Give us our daily bread, Lord. Feed us! Feed us, Lord!
The congregation also on all hands interjected its remarks and clapped and praised as the Lord’s Prayer went along.
The woman all in black was a famous mover of souls, and her sermon was evidently the most looked-for religious excitement of the morning. She was a plain woman with a powerful will, a great voice, and a rare knowledge of the Bible. She preached from the text, “Saul hid himself among the stuff.” First she told the story in a quiet voice and then began to make the application. It was no use hiding from God, for He would find you out.
So rousing were her simple words, and such was the atmosphere she was begetting in the midst of her congregation, that I had to do everything in my power to avoid breaking down under the influence and sobbing like a child.
I went over in my mind the drama of “Macbeth,” and reconstructed “Richard the Third,” and called to memory the speeches I had listened to at the Bar dinner the night before, and what I had been doing during the past week and month. But all the while I registered also in my brain the whole of what the black priestess was saying.
Next to me a feminine voice kept crying out: “Help her, Lord, help her!” and I back-pedalled for all I was worth. Presently the preacher was lifted out of the ordinary, everyday voice into a barbaric chant, which rose and fell and acclaimed and declaimed in rhythmical grandeur and music. I dared not look at the woman at my side. But she now lisped out, “She’s all right now, Lord; she’s all right now,” and I thought of the relief of the Welsh when their preachers get into the strain they call the hwyl.
I then very cautiously peered round at the woman. What was my astonishment to see a girl of eighteen with a face like a huge, dusky melon. Her jaws were perfectly relaxed, her eyes half shut, and her upper lip, which was raised, exposed her smiling teeth and a layer of sweet chewing gum.
Meanwhile the Reverend Norah up above was urging us all to come out from behind the stuff. We were always hiding behind our business, behind our families, behind our bodies.
“They are hiding behind their bodies, O Lord!