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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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There were others, which made incessant mention of “Jordan’s banks,” and “Canaan’s fields,” and the “New Jerusalem;” for the negro-mind, impassioned and imaginative, always attaches itself to hymns and expressions of a vivid and pictorial nature; and, as they sang, some laughed, and some cried, and some clapped hands, or shook hands rejoicingly with each other, as if they had fairly gained the other side of the river. Various exhortations, or relations of experience, followed, and intermingled with the singing. One old gray-headed woman, long past work, but much revered as a sort of chronicle of the past, rose, and leaning on her staff, said- “Well, chil’en! Well, I’m mighty glad to hear ye all and see ye all once more, ‘cause I don’t know when I’ll be gone to glory; but I’ve done got ready, chil’en; ‘pears like I’d got my little bundle all tied up, and my bonnet on, jest a-waitin’ for the stage to come along and take me home; sometimes, in the night, I think I hear the wheels a-rattlin’, and I’m lookin’ out all the time; now, you jest be ready too, for I tell ye all, chil’en,” she said, striking her staff hard on the floor, “dat ar glory is a mighty thing! It’s a mighty thing, chil’en,- you don’ no nothing about it,- it’s wonderful.” And the old creature sat down, with streaming tears, as wholly over- come, while the whole circle struck up- “O Canaan, bright Canaan, I’m bound for the land of Canaan." |
