en the news went abroad that such a meeting was to take
place, people flocked to the scene from far and near, in wagons,
on horseback, and on foot. Pious men and women came for the sake of
religious fellowship and inspiration; others not so pious came from
motives of curiosity, or even to share in the rough sport for which the
scoffers always found opportunity. The meeting lasted days, and even
weeks; and preaching, praying, singing, "testifying," and "exhorting"
went on almost without intermission. "The preachers became frantic
in their exhortations; men, women, and children, falling as if in
catalepsy, were laid out in rows. Shouts, incoherent singing, sometimes
barking as of an unreasoning beast, rent the air. Convulsive leaps and
dancing were common; so, too, 'jerking,' stakes being driven into the
ground to jerk by, the subjects of the fit grasping them as they writhed
and grimaced in their contortions. The world, indeed, seemed demented."
* Whole communities sometimes professed conversion; and it was
considered a particularly good day's work when notorious disbelievers or
wrong-doers--"hard bats," in the phraseology of the frontier--or gangs
of young rowdies whose only object in coming was to commit acts of
deviltry, succumbed to the peculiarly compelling influences of the
occasion.

* Hosmer, "Short History of the Mississippi Valley," p. 116.

In this sort of religion there was, of course, much wild emotionalism
and sheer hysteria; and there were always people to whom it was
repellent. Backsliders were numerous, and the person who "fell from
grace" was more than likely to revert to his earlier wickedness in its
grossest forms. None the less, in a rough, unlearned, and materialistic
society such spiritual shakings-up were bound to yield much permanent
good. Most western people, at one time or another, came under the
influence of the Methodist and Baptist revivals; and from the men and
women who were drawn by them to a new and larger view of life were
recruited the hundreds of little congregations whose meeting-houses in
the course of time dotted the hills and plains from the Alleghanies
to the Mississippi. As for the hard-working, honest-minded frontier
preachers who braved every sort of danger in the performance of their
great task, the West owes them an eternal debt of gratitude. In the
words of Roosevelt, "their prejudices and narrow dislikes, their raw
vanity and sullen distrust of all who were better sc