real
Boston brown-bread or a crock-baked bean--and a Boston Sunday breakfast
was to be the educational feature of the visit. Everything was lovely,
until the Ninth suddenly felt a desire to pray, as well as to eat, and
I'll be switched on to a side-track if the minister of that big church
didn't begin to kick like a steer, and finally refuse to let us pray in
his shop. Now, if there's anything that will make a man hot as blazes in
a minute, it's choking him off when he wants to pray. Some sharply
pointed and peppery words were exchanged on the subject. I suppose our
numbers rather muddled up his schedule, but if he'd said so quietly I
could have straightened out his heavenly time-table so that there would
have been no collision between trains of prayer. But no, instead of
that, he slams the doors of his church in our visiting faces, and, in
act at least, tells us to go to--what's that polite word now that means
h--? What--what do you call it _sheol_? Shucks! that word won't become
popular--hasn't got any snap to it! Well, the boys were mighty blue,
they thought the visit was off. But I got 'em into the armory, and I
said, what amounted to this, I says: 'This visit ain't off; Boston is
right as a trivet, and wants us! We ain't bucking against the city, but
against that sanctified stingyike who don't want anyone in heaven but
his own gang; but you see here, when the Ninth Regiment wants to pray,
I'm d----d if it don't do it. Who cares for that church, anyway, where
you'd be crowded like sardines and have your corns crushed to agony!
We'll go to Boston, boys, and we'll praise the Lord on the Common, if
they'll let us, and if they won't, we'll march out to the suburbs and
have a perfect jubilee of prayer!' And what do you think," he cried,
grinning like a mischievous boy, as he twisted the long, waxed ends of
his mustache to needle-like points, "what do you think--we prayed out of
doors, with all female Boston and her attendants looking on and saying
_amen_; and, oh, by George! I sent a man to see, and 'stingyike's'
church was nearly empty! Ha! ha! I tell you what it is, when a New York
soldier wants to pray, he prays, or something gives!" After that he was
Jubilee Jim.

His growing stoutness annoyed him greatly, yet he was the first to poke
fun at what he called his "unmilitary figure." One evening I said: "Mr.
Fisk, I'm afraid you have cast too much bread upon the waters; it's said
to be very fattening food when it return