390 SUNDRY JOURNEYS AND EXPERIENCES-I 



pious families of the place were disporting themselves. 

 Dancing was not allowed them, and so, with their arms 

 around each other s waists, they were executing various 

 gyrations on roller-skates to the sound of this music. 

 Presently, as I sat rather listlessly looking on, I was struck 

 by a peculiar change in the tune. Oilman, too, seemed in a 

 way paralyzed by it ; and, turning to him, I said, Tell me 

 what that music is.&quot; Then he came out of his daze and 

 said, &quot; Great heavens! it is Nearer, my God, to Thee 

 played as a waltz !&quot; So it was. The whole thing, to any 

 proper religious, moral, or esthetic sense, was ghastly. 

 These pious young men and women, who, on no account, 

 were allowed to dance, were going through something far 

 more indecent than any dancing I had ever seen, and to 

 music which was a travesty of one of the most sacred 

 of Christian compositions. I have long regarded camp- 

 meetings as among the worst influences to which our 

 rural youth are subjected Joe Miller jokes in the pul 

 pit, hysterics in the pews, with an atmosphere often blas 

 phemous and sometimes erotic. A devoted country 

 clergyman doing his simple duty trying to lift his con 

 gregation to better views of life, partaking their joys and 

 alleviating their sorrows, often a martyr to meddlesome 

 deacons or to pompous trustees, and his wife a prey to 

 the whimsical wives of opinionated pew-owners such a 

 man I deeply revere; but the longer I live the more I 

 am convinced that the professional revivalist and the sen 

 sation preacher are necessarily and normally foes both to 

 religion and to civilization. 



