re's a cross for me."

A colored boy got up; he wuz tall and gant with big soft eyes full of
the pathetic wisdom and ignorance of his race. He spoke kinder slow
and sez, "I wuz sick once and I felt alone. I wuz afraid to die. Now
if I wuz sick I shouldn't be alone, nor afraid, I've got somebody with
me. Jesus Christ is with me all the time. I hain't lonesome no more,
nor 'fraid."

"Tell your experience, Joe, tell it here!" shouted an old man. Joe
stepped forward, took the Bible offen the rustic stand, turned over
the leaves to the first page, and slowly and laboriously read,
"Darkness was on the face of the earth--and God said, let there be
light--and there wuz light."

He closed the book and looked round with rapt luminous eyes. "That is
me," sez he, "that is my experience."

"Amen! amen!" shouted the brethren. The little refined lookin' woman
in the blue dress started this verse and sung it through almost alone,
in a clear sweet voice:

"I am but a traveller here, Heaven is my home.
Earth's but a desert drear, Heaven is my home.
Time's cold and chilling blast, soon will be over past,
I shall reach home at last, Heaven is my home."

"Amen! amen! Now let us hear from another." And one after another rose
and told of the goodness of God and what He had done for them. The
sweet earnest hims floated out ever and anon and over the place seemed
to brood a Presence that boyed our sperits up as on wings, and I felt
that we wuz there with one accord, and my soul seemed lifted up fur
above Jonesville and Josiah, and all earthly troubles.

All to once a woman rose with a light on her face as if she wuz
lookin' on sunthin' fur above this earth. She delivered a eloquent
exhortation in words of praise and ecstasy. More and more earnest and
eloquent she grew and lifted up from earthly influences. At last she
lifted her hands and stepped out with a swayin' motion of her body, as
if keepin' step to some onhearn melody that ears stuffed with the
cotton of worldliness and onbelief wuzn't fine enough to ketch, and
finally her feet begun to keep step with that mysterious music, that
for all I know might have been soundin' down from the ramparts of the
New Jerusalem. Round and round she slowly swayed and stepped. Wuz it
to the rythm of that invisible music?

There wuz a look on her pure face as if she wuz hearin' sunthin' we
didn't. I wuz riz up and carried away some distance from myself. When
still loo