The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, April 1885Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Philosophy
The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, April 1885
Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle
Chautauqua Institution -- Periodicals; Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle -- Periodicals
It was the founder and leader of the two missions who gave all this
tone to their services. He was of a medium height and slender, with a
heavy, wiry moustache, keen eyes, a nervous temperament, energetic,
quick-witted, sympathetic; one readily caught good feeling and
confraternity from his presence. He would flash out at a hymn, a text, or
a testimony, with a bit of experience. Before two sentences had passed
his lips he probably would leap down from his place on the platform,
saying, humorously: “I can’t talk up on that stage,” and go down the
aisle as if to hold pleasant converse with his audience. It was a strange
_melange_ of earnestness, experience, humility and wit, with not the
least attempt at eloquence, and apparently no study of effects. He
describes one case of conversion:
“This man had come into the meeting with his head about twice the
usual size, and his eyes as red as a red-hot poker. You could
have squeezed the rum out of him. He asked me to pray with him,
but I hadn’t much faith in the man, but that’s just where God
disappointed me. I was deceived. The man meant business.”
The missions are supported entirely by voluntary contributions left in
the boxes by the door. Sometimes these run low. One night Jerry asked
all who were glad to be there to hold up their hands. All hands up.
“Now,” said he, “when you take your hands down put them way down—down
into your pockets, and fetch something out to put in the boxes by the
door.” He said, that to run a mission successfully required “grace, grit
and greenbacks.” I fancy considerable of his influence was due to his
knowledge of the secret hearts, the personal experiences of his auditors;
he was like a priest at confessional, when out of meeting. There are no
_verbatim_ reports of his talks extant, and if there were they would give
the reader no proper idea of the man, because the grotesqueness of his
language would probably be the most striking feature of them. He must
have been heard to be understood, and even then I think he could not have
been understood save by those whose experience and modes of life gave
them the touchstone.
Sister Maggie is a typical convert. At one of the Cremorne missions a
Sunday-school worker from the East Side told of his class of fifteen
street boys and girls. “I asked them,” he said, “how many of them drank
beer, and all promptly put up their hands. I asked how many thought it a
bad practice, and only four or five responded. I then told them of the
evils that drink led to, and cited them numerous examples within their
knowledge, and finally asked how many of them would resolve never to
drink any more beer. About half of them kept their hands down, and in a
way that showed they meant business.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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