branches far above, from the cool
night air which stirred across the clearing. The change was in the blood
of those who saw and heard him, too. The decorum and half-heartedness
of their devotions by day deepened under the glare of the torches into a
fervent enthusiasm, even before the services began. And if there was in
the rustic pulpit a man whose prayers or exhortations could stir their
pulses, they sang and groaned and bellowed out their praises with an
almost barbarous license, such as befitted the wilderness.

But in the evening not all were worshippers. For a dozen miles round
on the country-side, young farm-workers and their girls regarded the
camp-meeting as perhaps the chief event of the year--no more to be
missed than the country fair or the circus, and offering, from many
points of view, more opportunities for genuine enjoyment than either.
Their behavior when they came was pretty bad--not the less so because
all the rules established by the Presiding Elders for the regulation of
strangers took it for granted that they would act as viciously as
they knew how. These sight-seers sometimes ventured to occupy the back
benches where the light was dim. More often they stood outside, in the
circular space between the tents and the benches, and mingled cat-calls,
drovers' yelps, and all sorts of mocking cries and noises with the
"Amens" of the earnest congregation. Their rough horse-play on the
fringe of the sanctified gathering was grievous enough; everybody knew
that much worse things went on further out in the surrounding darkness.
Indeed, popular report gave to these external phases of the
camp-meeting an even more evil fame than attached to the later moonlight
husking-bees, or the least reputable of the midwinter dances at Dave
Randall's low halfway house.

Cynics said that the Methodists found consolation for this scandal in
the large income they derived from their unruly visitors' gate-money.
This was unfair. No doubt the money played its part, but there was
something else far more important. The pious dwellers in the camp,
intent upon reviving in their poor modern way the character and
environment of the heroic early days, felt the need of just this hostile
and scoffing mob about them to bring out the spirit they sought. Theirs
was pre-eminently a fighting religion, which languished in peaceful
fair weather, but flamed high in the storm. The throng of loafers and
light-minded worldlings of both sexes, with