Marshall Pinckney Wilder - The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII

"Let me in! let me in! Quick! quick!" he exclaimed, almost breathless from terror and fatigue.

"Who are you, that come to disturb a lone woman at this hour of the night?" cried a sharp voice from above. "Begone about your business, and let quiet people sleep."

"Come down and let me in! I am your husband! Don't you know my voice? Quick, I beseech you; for I am dying here in the street!"

After a few moments of delay and a few more words of parley, the door was opened, and the notary stalked into his domicile, pale and haggard in aspect, and as stiff and straight as a ghost. Cased from head to heel in an armor of ice, as the glare of the lamp fell upon him, he looked like a knight-errant mailed in steel. But in one place his armor was broken. On his right side was a circular spot, as large as the crown of your hat, and about as black!

"My dear wife!" he exclaimed with more tenderness than he had exhibited for many years, "Reach me a chair. My hours are numbered. I am a dead man!"

Alarmed at these exclamations, his wife stripped off his overcoat. Something fell from beneath it, and was dashed to pieces on the hearth. It was the notary's pipe! He placed his hand upon his side, and, lo! it was bare to the skin! Coat, waistcoat, and linen were burnt through and through, and there was a blister on his side as large as your hand!

The mystery was soon explained, symptom and all. The notary had put his pipe into his pocket without knocking out the ashes! And so my story ends.

"Is that all?" asked the radical, when the story-teller had finished.

"That is all."

"Well, what does your story prove?"

"That is more than I can tell. All I know is that the story is true."

"And did he die?" said the nice little man in gosling-green.

"Yes; he died afterwards," replied the story-teller, rather annoyed by the question.

"And what did he die of?" continued gosling-green, following him up.

"What did he die of? why, he died—of a sudden!"

The camp was furnished with several stands for preaching, exhorting, jumping and jerking; but still one place was the pulpit, above all others. This was a large scaffold, secured between two noble sugar trees, and railed in to prevent from falling over in a swoon, or springing over in an ecstasy; its cover the dense foliage of the trees, whose trunks formed the graceful and massive columns. Here was said to be also the altar , but I could not see its horns or any sacrifice ; and the pen, which I did see—a place full of clean straw, where were put into fold stray sheep willing to return. It was at this pulpit, with its altar and pen, the regular preaching was done; around here the congregation assembled; hence orders were issued; here, happened the hardest fights, and were gained the greatest victories, being the spot where it was understood Satan fought in person; and here could be seen gestures the most frantic, and heard noises the most unimaginable, and often the most appalling. It was the place, in short, where most crowded either with praiseworthy intentions of getting some religion, or with unholy purposes of being amused; we, of course, designing neither one nor the other, but only to see philosophically and make up an opinion. At every grand outcry a simultaneous rush would, however, take place from all parts of the camp, proper and improper, towards the pulpit, altar, and pen; till the crowding, by increasing the suffocation and the fainting, would increase the tumult and the uproar; but this, in the estimation of many devotees, only rendered the meeting more lively and interesting.