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:
"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
Prev.
Back
Top