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
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