Interesting as was John Brown to me, the other man, "Singing Johnson," was more so. He was a small, dark-brown, one-eyed man, with a clear, strong, high-pitched voice, a leader of singing, a maker of songs, a man who could improvise at the moment lines to fit the occasion. Not so striking a figure as John Brown, but, at "big meetings," equally important. It is indispensable to the success of the singing, when the congregation is a large one made up of people from different communities, to have someone with a strong voice who knows just what hymn to sing and when to sing it, who can pitch it in the right key, and who has all the leading lines committed to memory. Sometimes it devolves upon the leader to "sing down" a long-winded or uninteresting speaker. Committing to memory the leading lines of all the Negro spiritual songs is no easy task, for they run up into the hundreds. But the accomplished leader must know them all, because the congregation sings only the refrains and repeats; every ear in the church is fixed upon him, and if he becomes mixed in his lines or forgets them, the responsibility falls directly on his shoulders. For example, most of these hymns are constructed to be sung in the following manner: Leader. _Swing low, sweet chariot._ Congregation. _Coming for to carry me home._ Leader. _Swing low, sweet chariot._ Congregation. _Coming for to carry me home._ Leader. _I look over yonder, what do I see?_ Congregation. _Coming for to carry me home._ Leader. _Two little angels coming after me._ Congregation. _Coming for to carry me home...._ The solitary and plaintive voice of the leader is answered by a sound like the roll of the sea, producing a most curious effect. In only a few of these songs do the leader and the congregation start off together. Such a song is the well-known "Steal away to Jesus." The leader and the congregation begin with part-singing: _Steal away, steal away, Steal away to Jesus; Steal away, steal away home, I ain't got long to stay here._ Then the leader alone or the congregation in unison: _My Lord he calls me, He calls me by the thunder, The trumpet sounds within-a my soul._ Then all together: _I ain't got long to stay here._ The leader and the congregation again take up the opening refrain; then the leader sings three more leading lines alone, and so on almost _ad infinitum_. It will be seen that even here most of the work falls upon the leader, for the congregation sings the same lines over and over, while his memory and ingenuity are taxed to keep the songs going.