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Alas, The Poor Whiffletit!
by
Prior to the preliminary exercise of song on this night, the Rev. Wickliffe outlined the amplified plans for the great moral jubilation on the evening of the Eighth and invited suggestions from the assemblage to the end that naught be overlooked which might add to its splendors. At this invitation, almost as though he had been awaiting some such favorable opening, there stood up promptly Tecumseh Sherman Glass, and Tecumseh made a certain motion which on being put to the vote of the house carried unanimously amid sounds of a general approval. Some applauded, no doubt, because of the popularity of the idea embodied in the motion and some perhaps because the brother, in offering it, was deemed to have displayed a most generous, a most becoming, and a totally unexpected spirit of magnanimity toward a fellow professional occupying a place which Cump Glass or any other saxophonist might well envy him.
If at this Jeff’s heart gave a joyous jump inside of him, his face remained a mask to hide his real feelings. If, privily, by day he labored to gather up all the loose ends of his shaping design, publicly by night he patronized the tabernacle. He was present on Thursday night and on Friday and on Saturday, and three times on Sunday he was present, maintaining still his outward bearing of interest and sympathy. He was like a tree which bends before the compelling blast yet refuses for a little while longer to topple headlong. This brings us up to Monday, the Glorious Eighth.
With the morning of that day or with its nooning or with its afternooning we need have no concern, replete though they were in variety of entertainment and abounding in pleasurable incident. For us the interest chiefly centers in the early evening and especially in that part of the evening falling between seven o’clock and forty minutes past seven. At seven, prompt on the clock’s stroke and as guaranteed in the announcements, the parade fathered by the Rev. Wickliffe, started from the corner of Tennessee and Front Streets, down by the river, and wended, as the saying goes, its way due westward into the sunset’s painted afterglow.
This was a parade! A great man had sired it; a tried organizer had fostered it; proved executives had worked out the problems of its divisions and its groupings. At its head, suitably mounted upon a white steed, rode a grand marshal who was more than a grand marshal. For in his one person this dignitary combined two parts: not only was he the grand marshal with a broad sash draped diagonally across his torso to prove it, but likewise he was the official trumpeter. At intervals he raised his horn to his lips and sounded forth inspiring notes. That his horn was neither a trumpet nor yet a bugle but a long, goose-necked thing might be regarded as merely a detail. Only one who was overly technical would have noted the circumstance at all. Behind him, sixteen abreast, appeared the special tabernacle choristers with large fluttering badges of royal purple. They came on magnificently, filling the street from curb-line to curb-line, and the sound of their singing was as a great wind gathering. The second one on the left, counting from the end, in the front row, was Ophelia Stubblefield, tawny and splendid as a lithesome tiger-lily. She wore white with long white kid gloves and a beflowered hat which represented the hoarded total of six weeks’ wages. You would have said it was worth the money. Anybody would.
In the second section rode the Rev. Wickliffe and the Rev. Shine; they were in a touring-car with its top flattened back. You might say they composed the second section. Carriages and automobiles rolling along immediately behind them bore the members of the official board of Emmanuel Chapel in sets of fours, and the chief financial contributors to the revival which this night would reach its climax. Flanking the carriages and following after them marched the living garnerings of the campaign–the converts to date, a veritable Gideon’s Band of them, in number amounting to a host, and all afoot as befitting the palmer and the pilgrim. Established members of the congregation, in hired hacks, in jitneys, in rented and privately owned equipages, and also afoot came next.