ible, said:

'Dear bred'rin, leff us begin de worship ob de Lord by singin':

'From all dat dwell below de skies
Leff de Creator's praise arise.''

A half dozen darky fiddlers at the left of the pulpit tuned their
strings, and then the whole assemblage rose and burst into that grand
old hymn. As its last echoes were dying away, Joe got up, and opening
the large Bible, read, in a clear, mellow voice, a portion of the one
hundred and nineteenth Psalm. When he had concluded, the old darky again
came forward.

Gazing complacently around on the audience for a moment, he drawled out:
'My bred'rin, leff us raise our hearts to de Lord.' The whole
congregation then kneeled, and Jack, closing his eyes, clenching his
hands together, and throwing his head back, until his nose came nearly
on a line with the roof of the building, 'lifted up his voice' and
prayed.

After the fashion of very many white preachers, he began by telling the
Lord all about Himself; all He had ever done, and all He is going to do;
how long He had lived, and how long He is going to live; how great He
is--'taller dan de mountin's, and bigger dan de seas.' How He made the
world in six days, and then, 'gittin' tired, rested on de sevenfh;' How
He formed man out of the dust of the ground, and then out of his rib
formed woman; how the woman tempted the man, and he fell, and how woman
has 'raised Cain' on the earth ever since. How He sent the flood, and
how Noah builded the ark; how Noah axed all the wild 'critters' into it,
and how they all came in two by two, and how Noah and the wild beasts
lay down lovingly together, till the 'wet spell' was over. How He chose
the Jews--a meaner race than the 'pore whites'--to be his peculiar
people; and how that proves His boundless love and unlimited goodness;
'fur no oder man in all creashun would hab taken _dem_ folks up, no
how.' How Moses, when he came down from the Mount, 'stumbled and broke
de law; and how 'ebery one of us dat hab come inter de worle sense, hab
stumbled and broke de law, 'case he did,' How Noah, though he was a
white man, and had a white wife, begat a black son; and how that black
son was a great sinner, and how all his descendants have taken after
him, and been mighty big sinners ever since.

Then he described the sinners, particularly the black sinners present;
and if half of what he said was true, every one of them deserved to be
sold 'down Soufh,' and kept on cold hominy and hoecake all