'... The "shout" takes place on Sundays, or on "praise" nights throughout the week, and either in the praise-house or in some cabin in which a regular religious meeting has been held. Very likely more than half the population of a plantation is gathered together. Let it be the evening, and a light fire burns red before the door of the house and on the hearth. For sometime one hears, though at a good distance, a vociferous exhortation or prayer of the presiding elder or of the brother who has a gift that way and is not "on the back seat"--a phrase the interpretation of which is "under the censure of the church authorities for bad behavior"--and at regular intervals one hears the elder "deaconing" a hymn-book hymn, which is sung two lines at a time and whose wailing cadences, borne on the night air, are indescribably melancholy. 'But the benches are pushed back to the wall when the formal meeting is over, and old and young, men and women, sprucely dressed young men, grotesquely half-clad field hands--the women generally with gay handkerchiefs twisted about their heads and with short skirts--boys with tattered shirts and men's trousers, young girls barefooted, all stand up in the middle of the floor, and when the "sperichil" is struck up begin first walking and by and by shuffling around, one after the other, in a ring. The foot is hardly taken from the floor, and the progression is mainly due to a jerking, twitching motion which agitates the entire shouter and soon brings out streams of perspiration. Sometimes they dance silently, sometimes as they shuffle they sing the chorus of the spiritual, and sometimes the song itself is sung by the dancers. But more frequently a band, composed of some of the best singers and of tired shouters, stand at the side of the room to "base" the others, singing the body of the song and clapping their hands together on the knees. Song and dance are alike extremely energetic, and often, when the shout lasts into the middle of the night, the monotonous thud, thud of the feet prevents sleep within half a mile of the praise house.'