The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII

It is not that I'm jealous, nor that,
Of either Dolores or Jane,
Of some girl in an opposite flat,
Or in one of his castles in Spain,

But it is that salable prose
Put aside for this profitless strain,
I sit the day darning his hose—
And he sings of Dolores and Jane.

Though the winged-horse must caracole free—
With the pretty, when "spurning the plain,"
Should the team-work fall wholly on me
While he soars with Dolores and Jane?

I am neither Dolores nor Jane,
But to lighten a little my life
Might the Poet not spare me a strain—
Although I am only his wife!

AN EDUCATIONAL PROJECT

BY ROY FARRELL GREENE

Since schools to teach one this or that
Are being started every day,
I have the plan, a notion pat,
Of one which I am sure would pay.
'Twould be a venture strictly new,
No shaking up of dusty bones;
How does the scheme appeal to you?
A regular school for chaperones!

One course would be to dull the ear,
And one would be to dim the eye,
So whispered love they'd never hear,
And glance coquettish never spy;
They'd be taught somnolence, and how
Ofttimes closed eye for sleep atones;
Had I a million, I'd endow
A regular school for chaperones!

There's crying need in West and East
For graduates, and not a source
Supplying it. Some one at least
Should start a correspondence course;
But joy will scarce o'errun the cup
Of maidenhood, my candor owns,
Till some skilled Mentor opens up
A regular school for chaperones!

THE CAMP-MEETING

BY BAYNARD RUST HALL

The camp was furnished with several stands for preaching, exhorting, jumping and jerking; but still one place was the pulpit, above all others. This was a large scaffold, secured between two noble sugar trees, and railed in to prevent from falling over in a swoon, or springing over in an ecstasy; its cover the dense foliage of the trees, whose trunks formed the graceful and massive columns. Here was said to be also the altar, but I could not see its horns or any sacrifice; and the pen, which I did see—a place full of clean straw, where were put into fold stray sheep willing to return. It was at this pulpit, with its altar and pen, the regular preaching was done; around here the congregation assembled; hence orders were issued; here, happened the hardest fights, and were gained the greatest victories, being the spot where it was understood Satan fought in person; and here could be seen gestures the most frantic, and heard noises the most unimaginable, and often the most appalling. It was the place, in short, where most crowded either with praiseworthy intentions of getting some religion, or with unholy purposes of being amused; we, of course, designing neither one nor the other, but only to see philosophically and make up an opinion. At every grand outcry a simultaneous rush would, however, take place from all parts of the camp, proper and improper, towards the pulpit, altar, and pen; till the crowding, by increasing the suffocation and the fainting, would increase the tumult and the uproar; but this, in the estimation of many devotees, only rendered the meeting more lively and interesting.

By considering what was done at this central station one may approximate the amount of spiritual labor done in a day, and then a week in the whole camp:

1. About day-break on Sabbath a horn blasted us up for public prayer and exhortation, the exercises continuing nearly two hours.

2. Before breakfast, another blast for family and private prayer; and then every tent became, in camp language, "a bethel of struggling Jacobs and prevailing Israels," every tree "an altar;" and every grove "a secret closet;" till the air all became religious words and phrases, and vocal with "Amens."

3. After a proper interval came a horn for the forenoon service; then was delivered the sermon, and that followed by an appendix of some half dozen exhortations let off right and left, and even behind the pulpit, that all might have a portion in due season.

4. We had private and secret prayer again before dinner;—some clambering into thick trees to be hid, but forgetting in their simplicity, that they were heard and betrayed. But religious devotion excuses all errors and mistakes.

5. The afternoon sermon with its bob-tail string of exhortations.

6. Private and family prayer about tea time.

7. But lastly, we had what was termed "a precious season," in the third regular service at the principia of the camp. This season began not long after tea and was kept up long after I left the ground; which was about midnight. And now sermon after sermon and exhortation after exhortation followed like shallow, foaming, roaring waters; till the speakers were exhausted and the assembly became an uneasy and billowy mass, now hushing to a sobbing quiescence, and now rousing by the groans of sinners and the triumphant cries of folks that had "jist got religion"; and then again subsiding to a buzzy state, occasioned by the whimpering and whining voices of persons giving spiritual advice and comfort! How like a volcanic crater after the evomition of its lava in a fit of burning cholic, and striving to resettle its angry and tumultuating stomach!

It is time, however, to speak of the three grand services and their concomitants, and to introduce several master spirits of the camp.

Our first character, is the Reverend Elder Sprightly. This gentleman was of good natural parts; and in a better school of intellectual discipline and more fortunate circumstances, he must have become a worthy minister of some more tasteful, literary and evangelical sect. As it was, he had only become what he never got beyond—"a very smart man;" and his aim had become one—to enlarge his own people. And in this work, so great was his success, that, to use his own modest boastfulness in his sermon to-day,—"although folks said when he came to the Purchase that a single corn-crib would hold his people, yet, bless the Lord, they had kept spreading and spreading till all the corn-cribs in Egypt weren't big enough to hold them!"

He was very happy at repartee, as Robert Dale Owen well knows; and not "slow" (inexpert) in the arts of "taking off"—and—"giving them their own." This trait we shall illustrate by an instance.

Mr. Sprightly was, by accident, once present where a Campbellite Baptist, that had recently taken out a right for administering six doses of lobelia, red pepper and steam to men's bodies, and a plunge into cold water for the good of their souls, was holding forth against all Doctors, secular and sacred, and very fiercely against Sprightly's brotherhood. Doctor Lobelia's text was found somewhere in Pope Campbell's New Testament; as it suited the following discourse introduced with the usual inspired preface:

DOCTOR LOBELIA'S SERMON

"Well, I never rub'd my back agin a collige, nor git no sheepskin, and allow the Apostuls didn't nither. Did anybody ever hear of Peter and Poll a-goin' to them new-fangled places and gitten skins to preach by? No, sirs, I allow not; no, sirs, we don't pretend to loguk—this here new testament's sheepskin enough for me. And don't Prisbeteruns and tother baby sprinklurs have reskorse to loguk and skins to show how them what's emerz'd didn't go down into the water and come up agin? And as to Sprightly's preachurs, don't they dress like big-bugs, and go ridin about the Purchis on hunder-dollur hossis, a-spunginin on poor priest-riden folks and a-eatin fried chickin fixins so powerful fast that chickins has got skerse in these diggins; and then what ain't fried makes tracks and hides when they sees them a-comin?

"But, dear bruthrun, we don't want store cloth and yaller buttins, and fat hossis and chickin fixins, and the like doins—no, sirs! we only wants your souls—we only wants beleevur's baptism—we wants prim—prim—yes, Apostul's Christianity, the Christianity of Christ and them times, when Christians was Christians, and tuk up thare cross and went down into the water, and was buried in the gineine sort of baptism by emerzhin. That's all we wants; and I hope all's convinced that's the true way—and so let all come right out from among them and git beleevur's baptism; and so now if any brothur wants to say a word I'm done, and I'll make way for him to preach."

Anticipating this common invitation, our friend Sprightly, indignant at this unprovoked attack of Doctor Lobelia, had, in order to disguise himself, exchanged his clerical garb for a friend's blue coatee bedizzened with metal buttons; and also had erected a very tasteful and sharp coxcomb on his head, out of hair usually reposing sleek and quiet in the most saint-like decorum; and then, at the bid from the pulpit-stump, out stepped Mr. Sprightly from the opposite spice-wood grove, and advanced with a step so smirky and dandyish as to create universal amazement and whispered demands—"Why! who's that?" And some of his very people, who were present, as they told me, did not know their preacher till his clear, sharp voice came upon the hearing, when they showed, by the sudden lifting of hands and eyebrows, how near they were to exclaiming: "Well! I never!"

Stepping on to the consecrated stump, our friend, without either preliminary hymn or prayer, commenced thus:

"My friends, I only intend to say a few words in answer to the pious brother that's just sat down, and shall not detain but a few minutes. The pious brother took a good deal of time to tell what we soon found out ourselves—that he never went to college and don't understand logic. He boasts, too, of having no sheepskin to preach by; but I allow any sensible buck-sheep would have died powerful sorry, if he'd ever thought his hide would come to be handled by some preachers. The skin of the knowingest old buck couldn't do some folks any good—some things salt won't save.

"I rather allow Johnny Calvin's boys and 'tother baby sprinklers,' ain't likely to have they idees physicked out of them by steam logic, and doses of No. 6. They can't be steamed up so high as to want cooling by a cold water plunge. But I want to say a word about Sprightly's preachers, because I have some slight acquaintance with that there gentleman, and don't choose to have them all run down for nothing.

"The pious brother brings several grave charges; first, they ride good horses. Now don't every man, woman and child in the Purchase know that Sprightly and his preachers have hardly any home, and that they live on horseback? The money most folks spend in land these men spend for a good horse; and don't they need a good horse to stand mud and swim floods? And is it any sin for a horse to be kept fat that does so much work? The book says 'a merciful man is merciful to his beast,' and that we mustn't 'muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.' Step round that fence corner, and take a peep, dear friends, at a horse hung on the stake; what's he like? A wooden frame with a dry hide stretched over it. What's he live on? Ay! that's the pint! Well, what's them buzzards after?—look at them sailing up there. Now who owns that live carrion?—the pious brother that's just preached to us just now. And I want to know if it wouldn't be better for him to give that dumb brute something to cover his bones, before he talks against 'hunder-dollur hossis' and the like?

"The next charge is, wearing good clothes. Friends, don't all folks when they come to meeting put on their best clothes? and wouldn't it be wrong if preachers came in old torn coats and dirty shirts? It wouldn't do no how. Well, Sprightly and his preachers preach near about every day; and oughtn't they always to look decent? Take, then, a peep at the pious brother that makes this charge; his coat is out at the elbow, and has only three or four buttons left, and his arm, where he wipes his nose and mouth, is shiny as a looking glass—his trousers are crawling up to show he's got no stockings on; and his face has got a crop of beard two weeks old and couldn't be cleaned by 'baby sprinklin''; yes, look at them there matters, and say if Sprightly's preachers ain't more like the apostles in decency than the pious brother is.

"A word now about chickin-fixins and doins. And I say it would be a charity to give the pious brother sich a feed now and then, for he looks half-starved, and savage as a meat-ax; and I advise that old hen out thare clucking up her brood not to come this way just now, if she don't want all to disappear. But I say that Sprightly's preachers are so much beliked in the Purchase, that folks are always glad to see them, and make a pint of giving them the best out of love; an' that's more than can be said for some folks here.