This impression lasted
only for a moment, for there was such an artless and modest manner in
the young girl, that I could not fail on the whole to give her the
fullest credit for sincerity, and was angry only with her black male
friends for requiring from her such a display of herself and her
feelings in a public congregation; which made me feel much for the young
girl throughout. After various warnings that she would meet with
difficulties, that she was joining a "plain set of old Baptist saints,"
&c., she said she wished and desired to do so. The preacher then asked,
almost in the words of the Liturgy, "Wilt thou be baptized?" and she
answered, "I will." Whereupon he asked the congregation to show by their
hands if they approved of her being baptized; and there being a
sufficient show of hands, she was told she was duly elected as a
candidate for baptism; when another hymn being struck up in the same
vociferous style as before, we rose and left the assembly, not liking to
be longer absent from papa. We came out upon the lovely, calm, moonlight
night, so sweet, so exquisitely heavenly; and I felt how differently
nature looked without, to those distressing sights of bodily agitation
and contortion we had witnessed within. I thought of the poor young
negro girl's quiet testimony, and gentle voice and manner, and wondered
if _she_, too, would learn in time to become uproarious, and shout,
"Glory! Glory!" The probability is, that she will become like her
neighbours; for I can tell you later other stories about the necessity
these poor nigger women seem to be under to shout "Glory!" I was glad to
have seen this specimen of the camp-meeting style.
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