Unlike a camp-meeting, they had no services at night. When the afternoon meetings were concluded, the people dispersed and spent the night at the cabins within two or three miles around. All the people in these cabins usually kept open house upon such an occasion. They were present, and, after the benediction was pronounced, they mounted the stumps and logs and extended a general invitation to any present to spend the night with them. Not satisfied with giving this general invitation, they jumped down and went among the rapidly dispersing crowd and followed it with private personal solicitations to accept their proffered hospitality. On the Sabbath, they reassembled with augmented numbers, and the services of Saturday were reënacted, with such additions and variations as the circumstances might demand. The first basket-meeting that I ever attended was so new and strange to me in all its incidents, that, though many years have intervened, my recollections of it are as vivid as though it had occurred but yesterday. It was in a very rough, wild region. The country had been settled a long time, so that those in attendance were genuine backwoods people "to the manner born." The place of meeting was in a tall, dense, unbroken forest. The underbrush had been cut and cleared away, a few trees had been so felled that rude planks, made by splitting logs, could be placed across them for seats for the ladies, while the men mostly sat upon the trunks of other fallen trees. The pulpit or "stand" for the preacher was original and truly Gothic in its construction. It was made by cutting horizontal notches immediately opposite to each other, in the sides of two large oak-trees, standing about four feet apart, and inserting into these notches a board about a foot wide, that had been placed across a wagon and used for a seat by some of those present in coming to the meeting. The preacher placed his Bible and hymn-book upon this board, hung the indispensable saddle-bags in which he had brought them across one end of it, and so was ready for the services. I thought I had never seen in any cathedral a pulpit more simple and grand. Those towering, grand old oaks, with their massive, outstretching branches, spoke eloquently of the power and grandeur of the God who made them. And yet, small and puny as the preacher appeared in the contrast, it was a fitting place for him to stand and proclaim his message to the people who worshiped beneath them. Comparatively unlearned and ignorant as he was, he could tell them from that open Bible what they would never learn in the contemplation of grand old forests, or stars, or suns, or all the sublimest works of nature. All these are mute and dumb in regard to the story of the cross. However they may enkindle our rapture, or excite our reverence, they will never tell us how sin may be forgiven--how the soul may be saved.