ome time previous to our arrival at the church-door, for
the preacher was shouting at the top of his lungs. He evidently thought
the good Lord either a long way off, or very hard of hearing. Not
wishing to disturb the congregation at their devotions, we loitered near
the doorway until the prayer was over, and in the mean time I glanced
around the premises.

The 'meeting-house,' of large unhewed logs, was a story and a half in
hight, and about large enough to seat comfortably a congregation of two
hundred persons. It was covered with shingles, with a roof projecting
some four feet over the wall, and was surmounted at the front gable by a
tower, about twelve feet square. This also was built of logs, and
contained a bell 'to call the erring to the house of prayer,' though,
unfortunately, all of that character thereabouts dwelt beyond the sound
of its voice. The building was located at a cross-roads about equally
distant from two little hamlets, (the nearest nine miles off,) neither
of which was populous enough to singly support a church and a preacher.
The trees in the vicinity had been thinned out, so that carriages could
drive into the woods, and find under the branches shelter from the rain
and the sun, and at the time of my visit, about twenty vehicles of all
sorts and descriptions, from the Colonel's magnificent barouche to the
rude cart drawn by a single two-horned quadruped, filled the openings.
There was a rustic simplicity about the whole scene that charmed me. The
low, rude church, the grand old pines that towered in leafy magnificence
around it, and the soft, low wind, that sung a morning hymn in the
green, wavy woods, seemed to lift the soul up to Him who inhabiteth
eternity, but who also visits the erring children of men.

The preacher was about to 'line out' one of Watts' psalms, when we
entered the church, but he stopped short on perceiving us, and, bowing
low, waited till we had taken our seats. This action, and the
sycophantic air which accompanied it, disgusted me, and turning to the
Colonel, I asked jocosely:

'Do the chivalry exact so much obsequiousness from the country clergy'?
Do you require to be bowed up to heaven?'

In a low voice, but high enough, I thought, for the preacher to hear,
for we sat very near, the Colonel replied:

'He's a renegade Yankee--the meanest thing on earth.'

I said no more, but entered into the services as seriously as the
strange gymnastic performances of the preache