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Little Zoar, the square, weather-tinged wooden church at the head of the valley, built upon land donated to the denomination in times long past by an impenitent but generous Major Dabney, stood a little way back from the pike in a grove of young pines. By half-past six of the June evening the revivalist's congregation had begun to assemble.
But I knew that the book was not really true. It forefronted the brutality of slavery, it minimized the benevolent aspects of the institution, which I had myself seen. It was written with intensity of feeling, with the revivalist's method and emotion. It was like her brother's sermons, and equally unauthentic. Yet how strangely was this book received.
This anthromorphic deity of Abel Ah Yo thundering the modern Hawaiian-English slang of welakahao at the end of the world, is a fair sample of the revivalist's speech-tools of discourse. Welakahao means literally "hot iron."
The tears coursed down his long cheeks, and he forgot to care, but sat entranced by the revivalist's marvellous voice. Suddenly, with an awful sob, he bent and hid his face in his hands. The spectacle of the old, proud man helpless in the grasp of profound emotion was a sight to rend the heart-strings. 'Brother, be of good cheer, said a tremulous and benign voice above him.
The exhortation to sinners to declare themselves, to come to the altar, was not only on the revivalist's lips: it seemed to quiver in the very air, to be borne on every inarticulate exclamation in the clamor of the brethren.
"What is this I see before me?" cries Macbeth, the murderer, and he shrieks and shakes from head to foot he draws his sword and rushes upon Banquo's ghost, which he sees coldly staring at him. But is that any proof that what he saw we could see also? Yes, we could, if we were in the same frenzy! And it is the revivalist's aim, by creating a general excitement, to make everybody see things.
That night he went to the revival, and sat upon the back seat alone, muttering his imprecations at the preacher until the singing began, when the heat of the room and the emotional music mellowed his pride, and he drowned out the revivalist's singing partner with a clear, sweet tenor that made the congregation turn to look at him.
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