The great change that gave to the blacks fairly trained ministers from the schools had not at this time succeeded their recently accomplished emancipation. And the sermon of Elder Smith was full of all the fervour, common-sense, and rude eloquence of the old plantation exhorter. He spoke to his hearers in the language that they understood, because he himself knew no other. He drew his symbols and illustrations from the things which he saw most commonly about him,—things which he and his congregation understood equally well. He spent no time in dallying about the edge of his subject, but plunged immediately into the middle of things, and soon had about him a shouting, hallooing throng of frantic people. Of course it was the Williams faction who shouted. The spiritual impulse did not seem to reach those who favoured Brother Sneedon’s candidate. They sat silent and undemonstrative. That earnest disciple himself still sat with his head bent upon his cane, and still at intervals sighed audibly. He had only raised his head once, and that was when some especially powerful period in the sermon had drawn from the partner of his joys and sorrows an appreciative “Oomph!” Then the look that he shot forth from his eyes, so full of injury, reproach, and menace, repressed her noble rage and settled her back into a quietude more consonant with her husband’s ideas. Meanwhile, Sister Hannah Williams and her sylph-like daughters “Do” and “Ca’line” were in an excess of religious frenzy. Whenever any of the other women in the congregation seemed to be working their way too far forward, those enthusiastic sisters shouted their way directly across the approach to the pulpit, and held place there with such impressive and menacing demonstrativeness that all comers were warned back. There had been times when, actuated by great religious fervour, women had ascended the rostrum and embraced the minister. Rest assured, nothing of that kind happened in this case, though the preacher waxed more and more eloquent as he proceeded,—an eloquence more of tone, look, and gesture than of words. He played upon the emotions of his willing hearers, except those who had steeled themselves against his power, as a skilful musician upon the strings of his harp. At one time they were boisterously exultant, at another they were weeping and moaning, as if in the realisation of many sins. The minister himself lowered his voice to a soft rhythmical moan, almost a chant, as he said,—