tell my people that I slept in the governor's
house, and it was a stone house, too, and
plastered."

Brother Axley had been "raised in a cane
brake," and had never slept in a stone or
plastered house before—in nothing but a
log cabin.

These itinerant preachers, ignorant enough
themselves, unable to construe a verb or
parse a sentence, "and murdering the king's
English every lick," had to deal with congregations
even more ignorant than themselves,
and oftentimes found themselves in uncomfortable
dilemmas thereby. A Mr. Lee
preached to a large congregation on the
necessity of each man's taking up his cross—
no matter what it was, it must be taken up and
borne. Now, in that congregation were a miserable
little Dutchman and his brawny wife, a
vixen and a notorious scold, who left poor
Mynheer no peace in his life. The discourse
touched them, the "great deep of their hearts
was broken up," and they left the camp
determined to bear their respective crosses
as best they might. Mr. Lee, riding home-wards,
overtook a small man staggering
under a huge, heavy woman, who sat perched
upon his back. It was the Dutchman, carrying
his wife; and, on Mr. Lee asking if the
woman were lame, and what was the matter,
and why did he carry her, the little man
groaned out: "Dish woman is de Greatest
cross I have in de whole world, and I take
her up and pare her, as you told us." The
story ends by the wife being cured of her
scolding, and the Dutchman getting clear of
his cross, of his repeating his experience at
every love-feast he attended, and of it being
evident to the whole world, that "God could
and did convert poor ignorant Dutch people,"
which Peter seems to think a fact infinitely
note-worthy, as demonstrating the exercise
of a special act of mercy, and an unusual
manifestation of divine condescension.

It was in the revival which our boy-preacher
was mainly instrumental in effecting,
that the "jerks" broke out. He calls
it a new exercise, overwhelming in its effects
on the minds and bodies of the people. No
matter whether they were saints or sinners,
they would be taken under a warm song or
sermon, and seized with a convulsive jerking
all over, which they could not resist; for the
more they resisted the more they jerked.
More than five hundred people would be
jerking at once. Proud young ladies and
gentlemen, dressed in silks, jewellery, and
prunella from top to toe, would take the
jerks. At the first jerk you would see their
fine bonnets, caps, and combs fly, while their
long, loose hair would crack like a waggoner's
whip. Two fine-dressed young ladies,
attended by their two brothers with loaded
horsewhips, came to a camp-meeting to hear
the Kentucky boy. The Kentucky boy, being
out of sorts, had a phial of peppermint,
which he drank before the congregation. The
young ladies took the jerks, and the young
gentlemen swore they would whip the boy,
whom they had seen with a bottle which
had some "truck" in it that gave their
sisters the jerks. But Peter scared them by
brandishing his peppermint bottle, which
held the jerks, and which he threatened to
pour out upon them. The fashionable
young men with loaded horsewhips ran
away; the ladies continued jerking, and the
boy-preacher laughed heartily at his ruse.
Before the year was out, all four were
soundly converted, and received into the
church. A very large drinking man, in
William Magee's encampment, heading a
party of rowdies, each with a bottle of
whiskey in his pocket, took the jerks, and
started to run, but could not,—the jerks
were too powerful: he then started to drink,
but could not get the bottle to his mouth,
though he tried very hard; at last, in
one of his jerks, he broke his bottle against
a tree, and then he fell to swearing awfully.
In the midst of all this blasphemy, he fetched
a very violent jerk, broke his neck, and
died.

Peter is famous for his spiritual excitations.
Whenever he holds a camp-meeting,
the mighty deeps of wicked hearts are
broken up. There is an awful shaking
among the dry bones: sinners fall right and
left by hundreds, like men slain in mighty
battle. There are shrieks and cries and
groans, and powerful struggles with the Evil
One; and then there are shouts and
cries of victory, and converted sinners rush
leaping and skipping over the encampment,
crying out they are saved! they are saved!
They are then held to be soundly converted:
for Peter thinks that when once they are
"happy, shouting Christians," "shining,
shouting Christians, "they are all right: for,
no one with a devil can shout, unless, indeed,
he be a Baptist or an Arian, or anything
but an Episcopalian Methodist: and then
he shouts because the devil is in him.
Peter's theory is, that all men who have no
good religion are possessed—bodily or absolutely
possessed; and conversion, therefore,
means exorcism. He has some wonderful
stories of these exorcising conversions. One
was the conquering of a "devil as big as an
alligator," in a woman, who was a violent
opposer of religion; though the wife of a
preacher. "She would not fix her husband's
clothes to go out to preach," and would not
allow grace or prayers to be said in the
house. When he attempted to pray, she
would tear about, upsetting chairs and
tables: and if nothing else would stop him,
she would fling a cat into his face, which one
may suppose was not very conducive to
spiritual concentration. Peter undertook
her. He went to the house of the afflicted
preacher one evening, intending to sleep
there. After supper, said the afflicted
preacher, very kindly: "Come, wife, stop