Van Dam, on being deprived of his charge, immediately went to sleep, and waked no more, except when his companions roused him to pay the toll, which they did at every gate, until there was no more small change in his pockets than there is gunpowder in a tom-cat, after which they offered to pay every time with a twenty-dollar bill, and as no one would assume the responsibility of changing it, they passed free, and proceeded merrily enough until they reached the encampment of the devout darkeys. There being no taverns immediately adjoining, the horses were made as comfortable as circumstances would admit of, under a beech-tree, in a clover-field, and the human part of the Elephantine delegation marched in an exceedingly irregular procession to the camp ground; the line of march being occasionally thrown into disorder by John Spout, who persisted in making protracted and strenuous efforts to squeeze something wet out of a Schiedam schnapps bottle, which had been dry as a powder-horn ever since Quackenbush had his last pull at it. A description of the sylvan scene which met their metropolitan gaze may not be out of place. It was in a clearing, in a piece of beech and maple woods. Stands were erected for some of the prominent speakers; slabs were laid from stump to stump, for the accommodation of such of the brothers and sisters as desired to sit still and listen to the preaching, and in places straw was laid on the ground, for the special benefit of such as had the "power," and wanted to get down on the ground and have a private tussle with the devil on their own account. Stands were erected under the trees, in the shadiest spots, by enterprising white folks, for the sale of gingerbread and root-beer, and it was rumored that some speculators, distrusting the appearance of the "sperits of just men made perfeck," had supplied their place with other spirits, full as potent and equally reliable. The grass might have been agreeable to look upon at a distance, but a close inspection showed it to be full of pismires; the stumps would have been commodious seats, if they had not been most of them previously appropriated by black-snakes; the sleeping places would have been tents, if they had not been huts, and a poetical fancy might have pictured them as being constructed of canvas, white as the driven snow, but the practical mind instantly discovered that they were made of oak slabs and dirty horse-blankets. Some imaginative people would have set down the speaking of the ministers as eloquence if not inspiration, but a critical individual would have found fault with the bad grammar, and insinuated that the inspiration was all perspiration.