AFTER the preaching was done, the crowd broke up into sections and had a half-dozen prayer-meetings and spontaneous love-feasts, where men and women, and sometimes little children, got up and told all the strangers within hearing how wicked they had been—with tears, and sobs, and groans, that made one's heart ache. Still one and all of them seemed to enjoy their own depravity and put themselves down as such horrible sinners, that any amount of praying could not have dug them out of the degradation into which they dived headforemost and seemed to revel in, for a thousand years at least.

Everybody told his experience.

Among the rest, a young man from the Hub, slim as a beanpole and fiery as a race-horse, prayed and shouted, and sung, and blazed away at the crowd, like all possessed. His straight, black hair was parted down the middle of his forehead, and his mustache rose and fell like fury as the words of warning came like red-hot shot through his lips.

"Who is that?" says I to Cousin Dempster, who was listening with all his heart.

"That," says he, "is Corbett, the young fellow who shot Wilkes Booth through the crevices of the old barn in which he had taken shelter."

I shuddered all over, and I'm afraid the spirit of prayer had a shock.

That young man was about the last person I should have expected to see praying, storming, and exhorting at a camp-meeting. He told us all how he had become so sanctified by the Lord, that small-pox could not touch him, though he went into the midst of it and nursed people down with the deadly disease, right straight through.

In fact, he seemed to think sanctification a certain preventative against small-pox, only I suppose you must be sure to get the genuine thing, just as he had got it.

Then another little fellow got up and told us that he had been an awful bad boy in his early days, and learned to chew tobacco and drink cider-brandy when he wasn't more than knee-high to a grasshopper. That the cider-brandy and tobacco had stuck in and defiled him through and through, till nothing but saving grace could have washed him clean and made his soul white as a lamb, which it then was, Glory hallelujah.

All the congregation chimed in here and struck up a solemn chorus of Glory, Glory, Glory, Glory, which ended in a rejoicing "Amen," when the young man informed us that religion had reformed all his depraved tastes, and now he both hated and despised cider-brandy, tobacco, and all the abominations he had formerly hankered after.

Before the young man sat down, another was on his feet, brimming over with sympathy.

"I too," says he, "have got an experience which urges me to bear testimony that what our precious brother says is true. I know it. I feel it in my own soul, for I, too, have met with regeneration, whereby all things with me have become new. Why, brethren, before I got religion I couldn't bear the sight of tomatoes, cooked or raw. They were an abomination to my unconverted mind; but now that I have got religion, there isn't a wigitable that grows, which I set store by as I do tomatoeses. So I can testify that old things pass away, and everything becomes new."

After bearing this testimony, the man wiped his mouth with one hand, and sat down, his head meekly bowed.

"Cousin," says I to E. E., "as camp-meetings do not belong to our special persuasion, and as I do not feel the regenerating spirit grow strong in my bosom just at present, supposing you and I go back to the tent? Don't you see it is getting to be after dark now, and we have had an awfully warm day in all respects."

Cousin E. E. arose, looking heavy-eyed and worn out.

"Yes, Phoemie," says she, "I have gone through a good deal, and feel the nothingness of everything but religion. Oh, cousin, if one could always feel as we do here."

I shook my head, but only answered:

"Come, cousin, we can hear the still, small voice better alone in our tent."

She yielded, and we started to make the best of our way out of the crowd, but five or six thousand persons swarmed around that regenerating camp-ground, and it was some time before we got safely into our own tent. Then I sat down by Cousin E. E., drew a deep, long breath, and said, "Thank goodness," with all my heart.