Although the choir was quite large, containing some of the sweetest voices in the world, yet the whole audience joined in the singing. The preacher was the celebrated " Old Marshall" and was then upwards of eighty years old. He was brought from Gambia with his mother when quite a child, and had been nearly seventy years a slave, but by industry and frugality had saved enough of his little earnings to purchase his freedom. He was an early convert to the Christian faith, and for many years had been a preacher, had picked up his own education by close and assiduous application. He had been free about ten years when I heard him; but the poor fellow, notwithstanding his age, had only a few months before been tied up and whipped with a cowhide for buying from a slave a few bricks which he told Marshall were his own property; but the law strictly forbade a colored man from buying anything from a slave under a penalty of a certain number of lashes.
His text was, I think, the whole of the fourteenth chapter of John. His readin <t was clear and distinct and his enunciation excellent, excepting the negro pronunciation of " brederen," for " brethren." He went through the chapter with much spiritual feeling and simplicity, during most of the time seemed much affected. At the close of the sermon the communion was celebrated. Very few went away, they merely retiring from the body of the house, leaving that for the communicants, whom I should think numbered about three hundred. This was the most interesting scene of the whole. After singing a hvmn in perfect time, and in most solemn melody, another colored preacher engaged in prayer, after which Marshall commenced breaking the bread.
All was still as death; my eye was steadily fixed upon him, watching every emotion, and when the bread was broken, he raised his venerable head, the tears stealing down the furrows that grief had ploughed for them. " My dear beloved brederen and sisters, dis is de broken bod// of our blessed Lord and Master. He hwiv what it is to have de cow-skin on his blessed back; but he was whipped for our transgression, dot we might be happy and go where he is, ivhere dar is no more slave" At this last sentence, his watery eyes beamed with a heavenly lustre. Neither the pen of a ready writer, nor the most eloquent speaker, could have done justice to describe this communion season in all its pathos.
After having finished my business in Savannah, I took the steamer for Charleston, on my return homeward. On arriving there, ascertained that Henry Clay had left the city only the day before for Wilmington, N. C, having been South on an electioneering tour. There had been great times in Charleston on his account, and probably the excitement would be great all through to Washington. Not having any business to detain me in Charleston, 1 proceeded to Wilmington. AA