The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1886-05-27
The Two Sans.

last Sunday night, to hear Sam Jones
and Sam Small. The vast establishment
was illuminated by electric lamps. On
the walls were all kinds of strange de-
vices, such as one sees in theatrical side
scenes. The ceiling was decorated with
a thousand Chinese parasols of various
colors. About 1000 persons of both
| sexes, the women being slightly in ma
jority, were seated comfortably. Police
men at the door prevented anyjam. Just
as contrived to slip in, my old friend
Sam Small was telling how he felt and
did when he was a drunkard. He was
dressed in an elegant suit of broadcloth,
with spotless linen trimmings at the neck
and cuffs. He paced to and fro on a
large platform, his most frequent gesture
being to mop his neck and forehead with
pocket handkerchief. His discourse
came in snatches. He walked little
bit and then talked little bit, pausing
for moment between times. He was
serious and rhetorical. The only ap-
proach to grim wit was when he declared
that the most damnable liquor he ever
drank had been called temperance bit
tiers. His peroration was labored one,
painfully mixed with metaphor and alle-
CORY of a confusing stupendousness.
The applause that greeted him OCCASION
ally was feeble and only half-hearted.
He was too much like the regulation
preacher and therefore no novelty. But
when Sam Jones rose at the far end of
the building there was an instantaneous
change, like the ripple that comes over a
becalmed sea when breeze begins to
stir. His presence and voice were at
once magnetic. felt the difference my
self in twinkling, aud listened to him
with an JUNCTION that Small had not in
spired. You instinctiyely discerned, by
some subtle psychologist process, that q
strange being was before you. He cap.
tured his hearers from the jump, and
made them laugh and applauded bolster
ously. His humor is his great faculty,
aided and abetted by a mimicry all his
own. The audience expected treat, and
they we're not disappointed, except when
he closed bis remarks. He is the supe.
rior attraction beyond all comparison.
Without that queer Georgia wonder,
Small would not be a pronounced success.
A great many persons in Baltimore will
not hear Sam Jones and thousands detest
him and his methods, just as DIR. Kirkus
does, but, since the Woman's Convention,
1 have not been so singularly entertained,
and he may be doing good in quarters
little suspected. do not altogether
fancy his peculiar style and repudiate
some of his doctrines and expressions,
but there is no question of his power and
talents, which have not failed to rouse
extremes of friendship and hostility,
Behind the whole evaugelizing move
ment, suspect that these men are push
ing prohibition politically. When asked
to promise the observance of total absti.
nence, about one.half the congregation
stood ur acquiescence. I thought at
the moment, however, that if Sam Jones
had asked them to pledge themselves not
to eat any more meat, there would have
been the same automatic obedience. He
had mesmerized large number of the
audience and they were instruments of
his will. He is beginning to get some OF
the preachers by the ears, the Rev. DR..
Young, Methodist prohibi,ionist, hav-
ing entered the ring against the Rev. Dr.
Kirkus, who protests that man may
drink wine in moderation and woman
play progressive euchre without necessa:
rily being on the road to hell. If the
Sam.Sam combination were here, in
Washington to-day, they would have
serious competition with the flying steeds,
the promenading miustrels and the
alleged greatest moral show on earth"
u. r. Randall, in augusta Chronicle.