he shadiest spots, by enterprising white folks, for the sale
of gingerbread and root-beer, and it was rumored that some speculators,
distrusting the appearance of the "sperits of just men made perfeck,"
had supplied their place with other spirits, full as potent and equally
reliable.

The grass might have been agreeable to look upon at a distance, but a
close inspection showed it to be full of pismires; the stumps would have
been commodious seats, if they had not been most of them previously
appropriated by black-snakes; the sleeping places would have been tents,
if they had not been huts, and a poetical fancy might have pictured them
as being constructed of canvas, white as the driven snow, but the
practical mind instantly discovered that they were made of oak slabs and
dirty horse-blankets. Some imaginative people would have set down the
speaking of the ministers as eloquence if not inspiration, but a
critical individual would have found fault with the bad grammar, and
insinuated that the inspiration was all perspiration.

At the north end of the ground, a big darkey in his shirt-sleeves was
mounted on a platform, preaching to a crowd, who seemed, by their
vermicular contortions, to be possessed of a legion of eely devils. On
the west side, a fat wench was stirring up the fire under a big kettle
of soup, seemingly composed principally of onions and ham; in a sly
corner a red-shirt b'hoy was displaying the mysterious evolutions of
the "little joker," and two small specimens of ebony juvenility were
playing euchre on a basswood log; opposite to these, mounted on a cider
barrel, a molasses-colored gentleman was going through a rather
extraordinary performance; he had preached till his audience had all
left him; then shouted "Hallelujah," and "Glory," till he was hoarse;
had sung hymns in a spasmodic whisper till his voice gave entirely out,
and now, in despair at being unable to speak, yet compelled to work off
his superabundant religion, as if he were a locomotive with too big a
head of steam on, he was dancing on one leg, and kicking the other about
in a kind of perpetual pigeon-wing, and tossing his arms upwards in a
wild and original manner, as if he was using his utmost endeavors to
climb to heaven on an invisible tarred rope.

To the shouts of the men, and the screams of the women who had got too
much religion, was added the laughter of the outsiders, who hadn't got
enough religion, and the swearing of the gamble