nd the rostrum could faintly be seen, by the light of smoldering
campfires, the long, ghostly line of tents and wagons, and here and
there the fitful gleam of torches, like giant fireflies in the
surrounding gloom. Enclosing all this was a black and seemingly
illimitable expanse, from which could be heard the occasional hoot of
an owl or the baying of a hound, mingled with the unceasing voice of
the trees, now rising almost to a scream, now softly sighing, now
wailing as in a dying agony.

In an environment of such great natural solemnity, and under the spell
of tense religious fervor, it was not strange that the very atmosphere
seemed surcharged with a mystical and awful force, and that many of the
campers were soon the victims of those singular "manifestations"
called, in the parlance of the times, "the falling exercise," "the
jerks," "the trance," and "the ecstasy." The various phases of this
strange disorder attacked indiscriminately the credulous and the
critical, the fervid and the frivolous, the religious and the
reprobate. A strong man, while quietly attending to the exposition of
some text; a young girl, while listening with blanching lips and
quickening pulses to the impassioned appeal of the exhorter; or a
careless onlooker, while laughing and jesting, might suddenly be
affected by this terrifying malady. Some scoffer might perhaps at one
moment be sneering or denouncing the demonstrations as demoniac, and
the next be attacked with great violence. Nor were the campers alone
affected. New arrivals, while yet upon the outskirts of the encampment,
were sometimes seized with violent and inexplicable sensations. The air
seemed charged with an irresistible electrical force.

Many farmers of the neighborhood attended the meeting, taking advantage
of the comparatively leisure season between summer harvesting and fall
wheat-sowing. Mason Rogers was among this number, his wife declaring
that "the hull thing would likely fall through ef Mason warn't thar to
holp lead the singin'. Ez fer me," she said cheerfully to her children,
"I'll stay to home most o' the time to cook things fer you-all ter eat
up thar et the camp. Some day when I kin spar' time, I'll be ovah to
heah the preachin', an' ter see whut's goin' on. You kin go, too,
Susan, ef you want to, seein' ez you air 'titled to a leetle
play-spaill arter wuckin' so spry all summah. You kin find a place to
sleep with Betsy in Gilcrest's tent, or with Molly an' Ann Tr