Spirit of the age. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1849-1865, 1853-09-28
Cbuire Iitrraturr.
PAUL DENTON:
Or the Texas Camp Meeting.
RY CHARLEs sUMMEKFIELp.

During the last week OF September 1880,
the first successful Camp Meeting was held /
in Eastern Texas. | employ the epithct
successful" because several previous fail
ures had apparently rendered all efforts of
n like kind perfectly hopeless. Indeed,
this meridian, at that period, was most un-
congenial to religious and moral enterprise.
The country bordering on the Sabine, had
been occupied, rather than settled, by
class of adyenturers almost as wild as the
savages whom they had scarcely expelled,
and the beasts of prey which still disputed
their domain of the primeval forests. Pro-
fessional gamblers, refugees from the Jail,
absconded debtors, outlaws from every land, |
forgers of false coin, thieves, robbers, muir
derers, interspersed among a race of un-
educated hunters and herdsmen, made up
the strange social miscellany; without
courts, or prisons, or churches, or schools,
or even the shadow of civil authority or
subordination-a sort of unprincipled pan
deD,oniuD, where the fierce passions sat
enthroned, waving its bloody sceptre the
naked bowie knife. Let no one accuse me
Of exaggeration, for the sake of dramatic eff
feet; am speaking now of Shelby sounty
that home of the Lynchers-the terri
bic locate, where ten years later, forty per-
sons were poisoned to death at a marriage
supper?
It will be obvious that, in such a COM
munity, very few would be disposed to pat
ronize camp-meetings and accordingly
dozen different trials, at various times, had
never collected hundred hearers, on any
single occasion. But even these were not
allowed to worship in peace uniformly,
the first day or night, band of armed des-
peradoes, headed by the notorious Watt
Foeman, chief judge and executioner of the
Shelby Lynchers, broke into the altar and
scattered the mourners, or assembled the pull
pit and treated the preachers to gratuit-
Gus robe of tar and feathers Hence, all
prudent evangelists soon learned to shun
the left bank of the Sabine, as if it had been
infested by cohort Of demons and two
whole years elapsed without any new at
tempt to erect the cross in so perilous q
field.
At length, however, an advertisement
appeared promising another effort in behalf
of the Gospel. The notice was unique, a
perfect backwoods curiosity, both as to its
tenor and mode of publication. Let me
give II. VerbutiIn ct iteraIira. -
"Barbecue Camp Meeting.
"There will be Camp-meeting, to COM
mence the last Monday of this month, at
the Double Spring Grove, near Peter Brin-
sons, in the county of Shelby
"The exercises will open with a splen-
did barbecue Preparations are being made
to suit all tastes; there will be good bar
becue, better liquor, and the best of Cos
pei "PAUL DENTON,
This singular document was nailed to
the door of every public house and groce.
ry it was attached to the largest trees at
the intersections of all crossroads and prin
cipal trails; and even the wandering hun
ters themselves found it in the remote dellS
of the mountain, miles away from the
Smoke of human habitation.
At first many regarded the matter as
hoax played off by some wicked wag il
ridicule of popular credulity. But this by
pothesis was negatived by the statement
of Peter Brinson, proprietor of the Dou
bic Spring Grove, who informed all inqui
rers, &" that he had been employed and paid
by stranger calling himself Methods
missionary, to provide an ample barbecue
at the period and place advertised"
But the liquor-the better Gquor-ar
you to furnish the liquor too?" was tn
inyariable question of each visitor.
"The missionary said he would atten
to that himself" replied Brinson.
He must be precious original" wa
the hegeneral rejoinder. A proposition whic
most Of them afterwards had an opportun
ty to verify experimentally.
l need hardly add that an intense excite
ment resulted. The rumor took wings
flew on the wind turned to storm
storm Of exaggeration-every echo increas
edits sound, till nothing else could be hear
but the Barbecue Camp Meeting !" it b.
came the focus of thought, the staple
dreams And thus the unknown preache
had insured one thing in advance, cor
gregation embracing the entire populatio
of the country, which was, it is likely, th
sole purpose of his stratagem.
| was travelling in that part of Tex;
at the time, and my imagination being il
hamed by the common curiosity, l too
some trouble and attended. But althoug
my eyes witnessed the extraordinary seem
L may we'll despair of the undertaking
print 1.-THE pen of Homer, or the penc
OF HOgarth, were alone inadequate to Il
sublimity and burlesque of the complicate
task. l may only sketch the angular ou
lines
A space had been cleared away imm
diately around the magnificent @Doub
Spring" which boiled up with force suf
cient to turn IA mill-wheel, in the very co
tire OF the evergreen grove. Here a apulr
had beon raised and before it was the
separable altar for mourners. Beyond the
at the distance Of fifty PAGES, successi
Of plank tables extended in the form of
great circle, or the perimeter of polygc
completely enclosing the area about t
spring. An odoriferous steam, of most ,
licious SAVIOR, diffused itself through I
air; this was from the pits in the adiact
prairie, where the fifty slaves Of Peter Br
son were engaged in cooking the prou