after was a fellow with a good heart in him, a fellow who’d help me, or leastways cheer me up with poetry and tales, and not look down on me for being so poor. So I walked up and down them streets and lanes and back alleys till my wits got addled. But then I reckoned I’d ask directions; and pretty soon I was in a big open place packed with people crying fit to bust.
1.2I pushed and shoved and got up there to the front to see what all the fuss was about. There in the middle of the circle was a dried-up cretur dressed in rags with a bundle on a stick over his shoulder, like a hermit from the woods, and a voice ever so sweet and saddish. He’d begun to preach, and begun in earnest too, and it was kind of grand to hear it, he done it in such a rousing way, scolding his crowd and warning them that if they didn’t repent they’d go straight to perdition. Well, them folks closed up around him as thick as they could jam together, their necks stretched, trying to see; and I wormed through the crowd to get a good place so’s I wouldn’t miss a word. By and by the preacher began to rip and rave and swell up his chest, and just knocked the spots out of any preaching ever I see before.
1.3The first thing he done was tell us we was a gaudy sight, capering in silk and lace and ruffles, but we had no business prancing around with our noses in the air, because we warn’t nothing but low-down humbugs and frauds. Did we intend to march on looking mighty proud and satisfied, while the path we was going down didn’t lead nowheres but shame and misery? Did we s’pose that God, who could hoist us up by a lock of hair, and knew what we was thinking before we did, couldn’t see how wicked and low-down and ornery we was?
It was funny, he said, how particular we was about keeping secrets from our families and our slaves; but how we didn’t care a cent that God could see every one of our trans-creshuns clean and clear. Maybe we reckoned them airs we was putting on would help us when the undertaker came a-knocking, or the money we’d saved could buy us a ticket out of hell, or we’d have our relations there to comfort us when the last trump blew. Well, it was all hogwash! That day we’d be sorry, but it would be too late.
1.4Then he told us what to do: “Oh, come to the straight path! come, sick and sore! come with a broken spirit! come with a contrite heart!” And so on. Then he told us that we was all going to die; there warn’t no doubt about it; if we didn’t believe it, why, all we had to do was look at our white hairs, or think about all our relations that was already buried. Was we prepared to die? Was we ready to face God and explain why we’d been so wicked? Warn’t nobody else going to explain it, that was for certain.
Then he said he didn’t understand why folks never took no notice of the signs. Why, anywheres we looked was the plain hand of Providence slapping us in the face and letting us know that our wickedness was being watched all the time from up there in Heaven. Besides, he said, him and his brother preachers had worn their throats sore trying to get that same notion in our heads. But it warn’t no good: folks just rolled over and went on sleeping, or allowed they couldn’t see what was plain as anything. One thing he knew, being too scared to look Death in the eye warn’t a-going to make Death knock off; and if we was planning to get some good works to our credit, we better do it now, because we was all goners.
1.5He warn’t done yet. Instead of living right, he said, and going to worship and giving alms and saving up rewards in Heaven, he saw folks chasing up profit, and eating dainty grub, and building palaces forty miles long, and dressing up in clothes that cost heaps of drachms. Blamed if they didn’t take more stock in silks and julery, and silver plate, and fancy gifts, and merry tales, than they ever did in prayer, or charity, or reading the Scripture out loud! It’s because their hearts weren’t right; it was because they warn’t square; it was because they was playing double. Why, they was scared of each other, but it was God they ought to be scared of, leastways if they’d got any sense. Then he lined out a hymn:
You captives once to sin and shame,
By dire intemperance led,
Whose thirst was as the fiery flame,
With burning spirits fed:
Oh, pause ere yet the cup you drain,
The hand that lifts it, stay;
Resolve forever to abstain,
And cast the bowl away!
1.6Then he brushed off the dust, and wiped off his mouth, and slung his water-skin under one arm, and tucked his stick under the other. When the crowd seen him get ready to leave, somebody sang out, “Take up a collection for him, take up a collection!” So everybody fished up some money out of their pockets. “Take it,” they said, “and spend it any way you want to, or give it away.” He looked kind of humble, and tucked down his head, and scooped in the money, and began to slip away ever so slow. Whenever anybody tried to walk along with him, or follow him, the preacher shook his hand and said “Good-bye,” so they had to leave him alone, so couldn’t nobody see where he was shoving off to.
1.7Well, I go sneaking after him (the A-rab feller continued). Every now and then I stop a second and hide so he won’t see me. By and by we come to a cavern in the rock, and he slips inside. I wait a tolerable long time for him to take off his shoes and wash his feet. Then I spring up and make a rush for him. There he is, with a ’prentice sitting over opposite, and baker’s bread—none of your low-down corn-pone—in front of him, and a whole roast goat, and a jug of date-wine.
“Why, you cheap old humbug!” I shout.
1.8He got mad then, and looked huffy and bothered both, and I was afraid he was going to go for me. But he swallowed two or three times and quieted himself down. Then he sung:
I got up and put on a preacher’s gown
I spoke the good word to all the folks in town
I took their fews n’ two and I bought a steak
And I got me some wine and a honey cake
Hi-dee hi-dee hi-dee hi!
Hi-dee hi-dee hi-dee ho!
I’ve had some luck but it’s all been lousy
I’ve had to live by the bowsy-wowsy
Ain’t nobody better at foolin’ men
Or snatchin’ his supper from the lion’s den
Hi-dee etc.
Well that lion he was tough and strong
But I talked to him the whole night long
He had a heart as big as a whale
And he fed me his supper right out of a pail
Hi-dee etc.
I’ve seen hard times to beat the devil
But this hep cat is on the level.
And if life was fair you wouldn’t see
No cut-rate Jeff high-hattin’ me
Hi-dee etc.
1.9Then he says to me, “Come in to supper, or give me up, if it suits you better.”
