464 LIFE ON TSE MISSISSIPPI.
wnere they could learn something 1 dont no much myself, but as these Mda
cant read i get on nicely with them, i make sure of them by going after
them every Sunday £ hour before school time, I also got 4 girls to come,
tell Mack and Harry about me, if they will come out here when their time
is up i will get them jobs at once, i hope you will excuse this long letter
& all mistakes, i wish i could see you for i cant write as i would talk—ihope
the warm weather is doing your lungs good—i was afraid when you was
bleeding you would die—give my respects to all the boys and tell them how
i am doing—i am doing well and every one here treats me as kind as they can
—MX. Brown is going to write to you sometime—i hope some day you wDl
write to me, this letter is from your very true friend
who you know as Jack Hunt,
I send you Mr. Brown's card. Send my letter to him.
Here was tru6 eloquence; irresistible eloquence; and without a
angle grace or ornament to help it out. I have seldom been so deeply
stirred by any piece of writing. The reader of it halted, all the way
through, on a lame and broken voice; yet he had. tried to fortify ha
feelings by several private readings of the letter before venturing into
company with it. He was practising upon me to see if there was
any hope of his being able to read the document to his prayer-meeting
with anything like a decent command over his feelings. The result
was not promising. However, he determined to risk it j and did.
He got through tolerably well; but his audience broke down early,
and stayed in that condition to the end.
The fame of the letter spread through the town. A brother
minister came and borrowed the manuscript, put it bodily into a
sermon, preached the sermon to twelve hundred people on a Sunday
morning, aaxd the letter drowned them in their own tears. Then my
friend put it into a sermon and went before his Sunday morning con-
gregation with. it. It scored another triumph. The house wept as
one individual.
My friend went on summer vacation up into the fishing regions
of our northern British neighbours, and carried this sermon with
him, since he might possibly chance to need a sermon. He wat
asked to preach, one day. The little church was full. Among the
people present were the late Dr. J. 0. Holland, the late Mr. Seymoor