140 FLORIDA DAYS.

 "What heavenly man, or lovely God,
 Comes marching downward from the skies,
 Arrayed in garments rolled in blood,
 With joy and pity in his eyes ?"

 As the ordinance proceeds, verses appropriate
 to the occasion are lined out from a grimy'
 and battered little leather-covered hyn.-book,
 for most of the congregation cannot read.
 "And dic my Lord and Master say,
 'If I have washed your feet,
 Ye also ought to watch and pray,
 And wash each other's feet' ?"

 There is surely but a step between this mad
excitement and self-mutilation or some mon-
strous orgy. One almost trembles lest the
one protection to decency given by the Sacred
Name, no matter how meaningless its use, the
final reserve of civilization, be broken down,
and the savage leap into the light. Yet who
would deny that the end of it all is religion,
- the swallowing up of the individual in some-
thing greater than himself?
 The result of this excitement is not obvious
upon morals; indeed, the minister remarked