he valley at the edge of a grove of
forest trees. It is a frame structure, built by the Methodists during
the past century. The board walls of the interior are unplastered and
unpainted, and the pews are movable benches. The pulpit is slightly
elevated with a railing in front, ending in two pillars upon which rest
the preacher's Bible, song books and lamps. Along the entire front of
the pulpit runs the mourners' bench. In the rear of the church a ladder
rests against the wall and down toward it swings a rope from the open
belfry.

Everyone in the valley attends church and there are but few who do not
go to every service without regard to the denomination conducting it.
They come on horse- and mule-back, on foot, in wagons in the beds of
which are chairs for the entire family. In summer many of the men wear
their overalls, and all, excepting the young men acting as escorts, come
in their shirt-sleeves. Some of the women are in silks, but more of them
are in ginghams, and many sunbonnets are to be seen. At the door of the
church the men and women part and they sit in separate pews.

I attended a service at the end of a revival that was being conducted by
the Rev. Melvin Herbert Russell, of the Church of Christ in Christian
Union, the frail and eager evangelist who three years before had brought
Sergeant York to his knees before the altar of that church.

It was an August day and the sun's rays fell into the valley without a
single cloud for a screen. The little church was filled with worshipers,
while many sat in the shade of the trees that sheltered it, within the
sound of the minister's voice. Down through the grove the hitched horses
"stomped" and switched, but this was the only evidence of restlessness.

The minister conducted the services in his shirt-sleeves, without
collar, and with the sleeves rolled up. There is no organ in the church
and he played a guitar as he led the earnest singing.

The mountain evangelist had but few of the pulpit arts of the minister,
but he had the soul of a great preacher. His life, to him, was a mission
to the unconverted to point out the imminence of death and its meaning.
His belief had carried him beyond and above the pleading of the
uncertainty of death to arouse fear in the hearts of his congregation.
Instead, to him, the great clock of time was actually ticking off an
opportunity which the unconverted could not permit to pass. In his
earnest pleading his voice would rise from