The stirring events of those few days constituted my industrial education, and so well have I improved my advantages that I am now Chief of Misrule to the Dukes of Disorder, an organization numbering thirteen million American workingmen.

THE BAPTISM OF DOBSHO

It was a wicked thing to do, certainly.  I have often regretted it since, and if the opportunity of doing so again were presented I should hesitate a long time before embracing it.  But I was young then, and cherished a species of humor which I have since abjured.  Still, when I remember the character of the people who were burlesquing and bringing into disrepute the letter and spirit of our holy religion I feel a certain satisfaction in having contributed one feeble effort toward making them ridiculous.  In consideration of the little good I may have done in that way, I beg the reader to judge my conceded error as leniently as possible.  This is the story.

Some years ago the town of Harding, in Illinois, experienced “a revival of religion,” as the people called it.  It would have been more accurate and less profane to term it a revival of Rampageanism, for the craze originated in, and was disseminated by, the sect which I will call the Rampagean communion; and most of the leaping and howling was done in that interest.  Amongst those who yielded to the influence was my friend Thomas Dobsho.  Tom had been a pretty bad sinner in a small way, but he went into this new thing heart and soul.  At one of the meetings he made a public confession of more sins than he ever was, or ever could have been guilty of; stopping just short of statutory crimes, and even hinting, significantly, that he could tell a good deal more if he were pressed.  He wanted to join the absurd communion the very evening of his conversion.  He wanted to join two or three communions.  In fact, he was so carried away with his zeal that some of the brethren gave me a hint to take him home; he and I occupied adjoining apartments in the Elephant Hotel.

Tom’s fervor, as it happened, came near defeating its own purpose; instead of taking him at once into the fold without reference or “character,” which was their usual way, the brethren remembered against him his awful confessions and put him on probation.  But after a few weeks, during which he conducted himself like a decent lunatic, it was decided to baptise him along with a dozen other pretty hard cases who had been converted more recently.  This sacrilegious ceremony I persuaded myself it was my duty to prevent, though I think now I erred as to the means adopted.  It was to take place on a Sunday, and on the preceding Saturday I called on the head revivalist, the Rev. Mr. Swin, and craved an interview.