I Found About Two Thousand People Gathered Together In A Field Near
The Railroad Station; A Waggon Stood Under Some
Green elms at one
end of the field, in which were ten or a dozen men with the look of
Methodist preachers; one of these was holding forth to the
multitude when I arrived, but he presently sat down, I having, as I
suppose, only come in time to hear the fag-end of his sermon.
Another succeeded him, who, after speaking for about half an hour,
was succeeded by another. All the discourses were vulgar and
fanatical, and in some instances unintelligible at least to my
ears. There was plenty of vociferation, but not one single burst
of eloquence. Some of the assembly appeared to take considerable
interest in what was said, and every now and then showed they did
by devout hums and groans; but the generality evidently took little
or none, staring about listlessly, or talking to one another.
Sometimes, when anything particularly low escaped from the mouth of
the speaker, I heard exclamations of "how low! well, I think I
could preach better than that," and the like. At length a man of
about fifty, pock-broken and somewhat bald, began to speak: unlike
the others who screamed, shouted, and seemed in earnest, he spoke
in a dry, waggish style, which had all the coarseness and nothing
of the cleverness of that of old Rowland Hill, whom I once heard.
After a great many jokes, some of them very poor, and others
exceedingly thread-bare, on the folly of those who sell themselves
to the Devil for a little temporary enjoyment, he introduced the
subject of drunkenness, or rather drinking fermented liquors, which
he seemed to consider the same thing; and many a sorry joke on the
folly of drinking them did he crack, which some half-dozen amidst
the concourse applauded. At length he said:-
"After all, brethren, such drinking is no joking matter, for it is
the root of all evil. Now, brethren, if you would all get to
heaven, and cheat the enemy of your souls, never go into a public-
house to drink, and never fetch any drink from a public-house. Let
nothing pass your lips, in the shape of drink, stronger than water
or tea. Brethren, if you would cheat the Devil, take the pledge
and become teetotalers. I am a teetotaller myself, thank God -
though once I was a regular lushington."
Here ensued a burst of laughter in which I joined, though not at
the wretched joke, but at the absurdity of the argument; for,
according to that argument, I thought my old friends the Spaniards
and Portuguese must be the most moral people in the world, being
almost all water-drinkers. As the speaker was proceeding with his
nonsense, I heard some one say behind me - "a pretty fellow that,
to speak against drinking and public-houses: he pretends to be
reformed, but he is still as fond of the lush as ever.
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