at twilight, when all the multitude were summoned to the grand central stand in the square of the encampment by sounding a tin trumpet or ox-horn.  My childish imagination was fired at the sight of this assemblage.  My wonder was, whence come all these people? as converging from the radius around came the crowding multitude, without order and without confusion—­the farmer and his brusque wife side by side, leading their flock and friends:  he with an ample chair of home manufacture slung by his side for the wife’s comfort as she devoutly listened to the pious brother’s comforting sermon—­the guests and the young of the family following in respectful silence, and at a respectful distance, all tending to the great arbor of bushes covering the place of worship.  Over all the space of the encampment the under-brush had been carefully removed; but the great forest-trees (for these encampments were always in a forest) were left to shade as well as they might the pulpit-stand and grounds.  All around was dense forest, wild and beautiful as nature made it.

How well the scene and the worship accorded!  There was congruity in all—­the woods, the tents, the people, and the worship.  The impressions made that day upon my young mind were renewed at many a camp-meeting in after years; and so indelibly impressed as only to pass away with existence.

The preacher rose upon his elevated platform, and, advancing to the front, where a simple plank extending from tree to tree, before him, formed a substitute for a table or desk, where rested the hymn-book and Bible, commenced the service by reading a hymn, and then, line by line, repeating it, to be sung by all his congregation.

Whoever has listened, in such a place, amidst a great multitude, to the singing of that beautiful hymn commencing, “Come, thou fount of every blessing,” by a thousand voices, all in accord, and not felt the spirit of devotion burning in his heart, could scarcely be moved should an angel host rend the blue above him, and, floating through the ether, praise God in song.  In that early day of Methodism, very few of those licensed to preach were educated men.  They read the Bible, and expounded its great moral truths as they understood them.  Few of these even knew that it had been in part originally written in the Hebrew tongue, and the other portion in that of the Greeks; but he knew it contained the promise of salvation, and felt that it was his mission to preach and teach this way to his people, relying solely for his power to impress these wonderful truths upon the heart by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  For this reason the sermons of the sect were never studied or written, and their excellence was their fervor and impassioned appeals to the heart and the wild imaginations of the enthusiastic and unlearned of the land.  Genius, undisciplined and untutored by education, is fetterless, and its spontaneous suggestions are naturally and powerfully effective, when burning from lips proclaiming the heart’s enthusiasm.  Thus extemporizing orations almost daily, stimulated the mind to active thought, and very many of these illiterate young Methodist preachers became in time splendid orators.