ends, Dow lit them; then, muttering some unintelligible words, he set fire to the flax under which the wife's friend was hidden, and cried, "Come forth, thou evil one, and begone for ever!" Out jumped the fellow covered in flames, and with an unearthly yell disappeared through the open door. To his dying day the sobered husband maintained that Lorenzo Dow could raise the Devil, for he had seen him do it, and had seen and smelt Satan himself.
[Lorenzo Dow was born at Coventry, Conn., U.S.A., in 1777, and died in Washington City in 1834. He joined the Methodists at an early age, and became an itinerant preacher. In 1799 he came over to Ireland on a preaching mission, returning to America in 1801. In 1805 he made a journey to England with the object of introducing the camp-meeting into this country. He made a great impression in the north of England, and visited our island again in 1818–19; but from his published journals, which are very extensive, I cannot gather that he ever visited Oxfordshire, or was even in its vicinity.[1] The practical joke above attributed to him by T. J. Carter occurs in Hans Andersen's Big Klaus and Little Klaus. Mr. R. L. Garner[2] compares the procedure of Yassi, the mysterious crime-detector of the Ogowe tribes, to that of "old Lorenzo Dow," and tells the following stories of him. "On one
- ↑ The Dealings of God, Man, and the Devil, as exemplified in the Life, Experience, and Travels of Lorenzo Dow, &c., &c., with portraits of Dow and his wife. (New York, 2 vols. 8vo, 1850.) From these Journals we gain a vivid picture of the man. His enthusiasm was boundless. At one meeting "my labours were equal to seven sermons, which gave me a fine sweat that was very refreshing." He describes with great gusto how an unhappy girl came to a meeting against her father's wish, and "continued shrieking for mercy for eight hours" until she "found peace." At another meeting he converted a sea-captain "whom I happened to lay hold on by the hair." For a whole night he would "wrestle with mourners." But he was no friend to conscious hypocrisy. He cared "as well to hear a dog bark" as to listen to empty "amens" and "hallelujahs." His Yankee sharpness was generally equal to a repartee. To a drunken attorney who mockingly asked if he had had a good meeting, he replied, "Yes, but thy master's servants did not like it." His appearance, with his long womanish hair, flowing patriarchal beard, and sallow emaciated face, clad in threadbare garments crowned by an old white hat, doubtless added to the impression of the singular personality which has left so many traces of itself in popular tradition.
- ↑ Native Institutions of the Ogowe Tribes of West Central Africa, in the Journal of the African Society, No. III. (April, 1902), p. 378.
