ereof, he had long since taken unto himself a wife,
and was now the father of a large family of large children. In further
proof, he had long since left off fighting and gone to preaching, there
being now in the Paradise more black sinners to be mended than red
heathen to be demolished; more friends to be led across the Jordan than
foes to be driven across the Ohio.

Preaching, in a general way, is a good thing, and, in a particular way,
to him who loves to hear himself talk, a pleasant thing, and if he talks
well, rather pleasant to others. Now, the Fighting Nigger loved to hear
himself talk, but unlike many--too many--inflicted with that infirmity
he talked well, as we have had frequent occasion to notice; while again,
unlike the majority of the few who talk well, he listened well, which,
also, we have once or twice remarked. As his walks through life should
lead him no more upon the war-path, and as his color and condition
forbade his taking the stump, or appearing at the bar, or sitting in the
senate-house, he needs must take to preaching, as the only shift by
which he could hope to retain that preeminence among his fellows which
his prowess in arms had won for him. Such a calling would give his
oratorical powers full scope--a desperate revival among the ebony
brotherhood, from time to time, with two or three funeral-sermons to
each lay brother or lay sister of peculiar sanctity, being just the
thing to set them off to the highest advantage. Nor would this be all.
While making the great display, he would be doing a little good--casting
bread upon the waters, to be found many days hence; _i.e._, spreading
the glad tidings of damnation to nearly everybody born to die, and of
salvation to a select few--just enough to keep the angels from getting
lonesome--conspicuous among whom were our good old Abram, John Calvin,
and Burlman Reynolds.

The lucky sect thus reenforced was that once known as the
Anti-missionary Baptists, sometimes called the "Ironside Baptists,"
sometimes the "Hard-shell Baptists," having, as is usually the case with
hard cases, hard names. I use the expression "once known," since, if I
mistake not, the order has, in these latter days, deceased; dying of
sheer decrepitude, with no weeping mourners around it, being intestate
and insolvent, and is now to be numbered with the things that were--an
old man's tale, the blunder of an hour.[3] That so broad and warm and
genial a nature as that of our hero shou