Tabor City tribune. (Tabor City, N.C.) 1946-1991, 1957-08-28
Arthur
Says
By-Billy Arthur

oA6S ehos ehSJ
used to.
Maybe the proper invita-
Maybe the proper invitation
Is no longer issued. For in
stance, Athens Chapel in
Beaufort County took to the
Washington Gazette in 1892 for
its. annual call:
The first Sunday IN the month
Is the time for our union
meeting
AT Athens Chapel. and
We Want the people Of your
town
To be sure and ,ome down.
II we have no stables,
There are plenty Of trees.
II no grub,
Well feed you on May peas
Who could turn down an in
vitation like that? Evidently
not many did at any Beaufort
meeting. because th0 Gs.stts
reported The same year that
lat White Plains on the first
Sunday a hard rain came I'D
disturbing the services, and
numbers of people who had not
been inside the church in years,
went in"
The weather, warm as it was
and Is during the summer. af-
fected the preacher The Will
son Mirror reported in 1891 of
a local minister telling his
August congregation:
My dear brc hem. in this
excessively warm and oppres-
Slvc weather, l can excuse
drowZinesS during the sermon,
but | do wish you'd try to stay
awake while the collection is
being taken up"
Earlier tn. Marlborough
Southerner complained that
the revival fever is spreading,
but it hasn't yet gone down
deep enough to affect arrear-
age on country newspaper
books"
Jim Cook of Cabarrus Coun-
ty took a different view. These
camp meetings" ne was quot
ed as saying, "ail remind us
we can feast on tater pones and
departing leave behind us bas-
kets full of chicken bones"
The Rev. r. II. Whitaker. a
Methodist minister of Raleigh,
wrote lengthily of the meetings
in his "reminiscences for the
Raleigh papers, because. as he
said, he attended lots of them
for reason that everyone. else
went-to see the people" He
particularly liked the baptiz-
ings.
He recalled attending one
where the person To be bap-
tized backed too far into the
pond and went out of sight
Presently he plopped up splut-
tering and blowing, and had he
not been a good swimmer
would have drowned. The SOL
emnity of the occasion was
broken when one of the con-
gregation was heard to remark:
We got a good duckins before
he was baptized.
Everybody has heard of the
fellow who climbed tree right
over the baptizing place, when
the limb broke and he fell into
the creek right on top of the
candidate that was TO be bap-
tized, knocking hin down, and
how the preacher in his con-
fusion grabbed the man who
fell out Of the Tree and pro-
ceeded to march out of the
water. when the Iea. candidate
cried out. Hold on. parson.
you've baptized the wrong
man
Il have had parties interest
ed IN the candidates to be bap-
tized, to whisper 70 me just be-
lore going into the water: BE
sure that you put him clean
out OF sight" One man said of
his brother whom I was going
to immense: Mothers going TO
watch you. She's Baptist, and
she has her doubts as to wheth-
er you will bury Tom like he
ought to be buried. Put him in
deep and hold bin until the
bubbles rise He told me aft
erwards his mother said I
buried him all tight"
The most celei rated baptism
the Rev. Mr.. Whitaker recalled
was that of Governor w. w
Holden.
Aunt Abby House was a
well-known woman around Ra-
leigh in those days and fully
believed in the efficacy of wat
er, but though that in the case
OF very bad sinners, the water
ought to be hit. Il is we'll
known that at that time she
hated Governor Holden and
could not find anything too bad
to say about him.
Hearing that lie was 20 be
immersed, she went TO see DIR
Pritchard TO enter protest
against II. But when told by the
doctor that the baptism would