The magazine of history with notes and queries, Vol. II, No. 4, October 1905Various
History
The magazine of history with notes and queries, Vol. II, No. 4, October 1905
Various
History -- Periodicals; United States -- History -- Periodicals
the night of the 12th and 13th of November, 1833, was still fresh in
the memory of almost every adult, and was well calculated to prepare
the mind to believe the proofs and prophecies of such a catastrophe.
That never-to-be-forgotten rain of fire must have been frightfully
impressive even to the most scientific man who could best understand
the causes which produced it. It has no parallel in recorded history,
and one can quite readily understand how such an interpretation of the
holy prophecies, following immediately such a fiery manifestation in
the heavens, should find easy believers.
Converts were frequently baptized that winter by immersion through
holes cut in the ice, and in one instance, I am credibly informed, when
a parent only succeeded in converting a doubting daughter on the night
before the supposed fatal day, he took her himself on that bitter cold
night to the nearest mill-pond, cut a hole in the ice and baptized her
by immersion. The man was personally well known to me, and to the day
of his death, which occurred only within the last decade, he remained
firm in his faith in similar interpretations of the prophecies, and
continued calculating and fixing new dates in the future for the coming
of the end of all things. He was never disconcerted by any failures,
but seriously accounted for it by saying that he had made a little
error in his calculation, and gave you a new and corrected date further
on. This man was Christopher Snyder.
An anecdote is told of Harris in connection with the meteoric shower
above referred to, illustrating the common belief that the stars had
actually fallen from the heavens. On the evening following the shower,
Mr. Harris said he could see a great diminution of the number of
stars in the heavens, and ventured the belief that a few more showers
like the one of the evening before would use up the rest of them. So
common was this belief that the stars had actually fallen, so great
and memorable was the event, that to this day, among the older men
about Dallas, you will occasionally hear men trying to fix the date or
year of some long past occurrence, and not infrequently one will say
something like this: “Well, I know it happened then because the stars
fell in thirty-three, and this happened just so many years after” (or
before, just as the case may be)--“now figure it up yourself.”
SOCIAL THINGS
Of “apple cuts” I can speak in lighter vein. They were generally
occasions of great merriment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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