All rose, and sisters and brethren faced each
other and sang a hymn, with no accompaniment and no melody--a harsh
chant in wild, barbaric measure. Then, after a prayer, they entered
upon the peculiar method of their service. Round and round the room
they trooped in two large circles, sister following sister, brother
brother, keeping time with their hanging hands to the rhythm of the
hymn. Clustered in the centre was a little knot of men and women, the
high dignitaries, who seemed to lead the singing with their clapping
hands.

The circles passed each other and wove in and out, each preserving its
unbroken continuity. I looked for Elder Nebson: could it be that he
was joining in these gyrations? Yes, he was leading one of the lines.
But I noticed that his hands moved mechanically, not with the
spasmodic fervor of the rest, and that his eyes, instead of the dull,
heavy stare of his fellows, sought with faithful yet shy constancy the
women's ranks. And as the women filed past me, wringing their hands, I
scrutinized each face and figure--the sweet-faced portress, the
shrunken little creole ("A mulatto, she is," Hiram whispered--he had
taken his seat beside me--"and very powerful, they say, among 'em"),
and some fair young girls; two or three of these with blooming cheeks
bursting frankly through the stiff bordering of their caps. But I saw
not the face I sought.

"Them children! Ain't it awful?" muttered Hiram as a file of blue-coat
boys shambled past, with hair cut square across their foreheads and
bleached white with the sun. "Ain't got a grain of sense! Look at
'em!--all crowded clean out by the Shaker schools."

And surely they were a most unpromising little crowd. Waifs, snatched
probably from some New York whirlpool of iniquity, and wearing the
brute mark on their faces, which nothing in this school of their
transplanting tended to erase--a sodden little party, like stupid
young beasts of burden, uncouth and awkward.

As the girls came round again, and I had settled it in my mind that
there was certainly no Bessie in the room, I could watch them more
calmly. Eagerly as I sought her face, it was a relief, surely, that it
was not there. Pale to ghastliness, most of them, with high, sharpened
shoulders, and features set like those of a corpse, it was indeed
difficult to realize that these ascetic forms, these swaying devotees,
were women--women who might else have been wives and mothers. Some of
them wore in their h