In the brush : $b or, Old-time social, political, and religious life in the southwestPierson, Hamilton W. (Hamilton Wilcox)
History
In the brush : $b or, Old-time social, political, and religious life in the southwest
Pierson, Hamilton W. (Hamilton Wilcox)
Missions -- Southwest, Old; Southwest, Old -- Social life and customs
As the rain continued to pour in torrents and the night was fearfully
dark, the meeting was continued to a late hour, and I was gratified in
hearing them sing and pray a long time. Their hymns were mostly those
that they had learned by hearing them sung by others, and their prayers
were the simple, earnest utterances of those who seemed evidently to
have been taught of God. At length the meeting closed, and though
the rain still poured without abatement, and the night was fearfully
dark, several of the company, who had left young children at home,
started out in the storm to make their way home through the woods and
across swollen streams by following, without torchlight, their winding
neighborhood paths. But the most of the congregation remained until
near midnight, when the rain abated and it became lighter. Others now
started for home, some on foot and some on horseback, to find their
way through the forest for two or three miles, up and down hills and
across streams, where I had found it a difficult matter to make my way
by daylight. With a number so large that I did not undertake to count
them, I spent the night in their cabin, and received from the family
the kindest treatment it was in their power to bestow.
First of all, at the close of the meeting, the cob, clay, and all
other pipes were brought out, and family and guests sat down to enjoy
a social smoke and chat. Though I have spent so many years where
tobacco is grown and almost universally used, though I have enjoyed the
hospitality of a great many families where the mothers and daughters
both chewed and "dipped," I have never learned to use the weed. Though
I do not smoke, I have very often been most thoroughly smoked. In this
company of social smokers, composed of old men and young men, old women
and young women, I was more favored than I have often been in the most
elegant apartments of the most magnificent dwellings. The fireplace,
several feet long, filled with ashes, made an ample spittoon, and
the large "stick" chimney, aided by the winds that circulated freely
through the cabin, afforded what I have so often wished for--an
ample funnel for the escape of the smoke and fumes of the tobacco.
Uncultivated as this company was, it was evident that they were gifted
with capacities for enjoying the weed equal to those of the most
refined circles I have ever met.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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