About this time the Superintendent in a very loud voice cried out—"Let him alone, brothers! let him alone sisters! keep on praying!—it's a hard fight—the devil's got a tight grip yet! He don't want to lose poor Bill—but he'll let go soon—Bill's gittin the better on him fast!—Pray away!"
Rowdy Bill, be it known, was famous as a gouger, and so expert was he in his antioptical vocation, that in a few moments he usually bored out an antagonist's eyes, or made him cry peccavi. Indeed, could he, on the present occasion, have laid hold of his unseen foe's head—spiritually we mean—he would—figuratively, of course—soon have caused him to ease off or let go entirely his metaphorical grip. So, however, thought one friend in the assembly—Bill's wife. For Bill was a man after her own heart; and she often said that "with fair play she sentimentally allowed her Bill could lick ary a man in the 'varsal world, and his weight in wild cats to boot." Hence, the kind-hearted creature, hearing that Bill was actually fighting with the evil one, had pressed in from the outskirts to see fair play; but now hearing Bill was in reality down, and apparently undermost, and above all, the words of the Superintendent, declaring that the fiend had a tight grip of the poor fellow, her excitement would no longer be controlled; and, collecting her vocal energies, she screamed out her common exhortation to Bill, and which, when heeded, had heretofore secured him immediate victories—"Gouge him, Billy!—gouge him, Billy!—gouge him!"
This spirited exclamation was instantly shouted by Bill's cronies and partizans—mischievously, maybe, for we have no right to judge of men's motives, in meetings:—but a few—friends, doubtless, of the old fellow—cried out in very irreverent tone—"Bite him! devil—bite him!" Upon which the faithful wife, in a tone of voice that beggars description, reiterated her—"Gouge him," etc.—in which she was again joined by her husband's allies, and that to the alarm of his invisible foe; for Bill now rose to his knees, and on uttering some mystic jargon symptomatic of conversion, he was said to have "got religion";—and then all his new friends and spiritual guides united in fresh prayers and shouts of thanksgiving.
It was now very late at night; and joining a few other citizens of Woodville, we were soon in our saddles and buried in the darkness of the forest. For a long time, however, the uproar of the spiritual elements at the camp continued at intervals to swell and diminish on the hearing; and, often came a yell that rose far above the united din of other screams and outcries. Nay, at the distance of nearly two miles, could be distinguished a remarkable and sonorous oh!—like the faintly heard explosion of a mighty elocutional class, practising under a master. And yet my comrades, who had heard this peculiar cry more than once, all declared that this wonderful oh-ing was performed by the separate voice of our townsman, Eolus Letherlung, Esq.!
CONCLUSION
A camp-meeting of this sort is, all things considered, the very best contrivance for making the largest number of converts in the shortest possible time; and also for enlarging most speedily the bounds of a Church Visible and Militant.