A COWBOY EVANGELIST.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2221, 2 October 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

A COWBOY EVANGELIST.

" Lampasas Jake," the cowboy evangelist, who is holding revivals in New Mexico, can beat Sam Jones as a vernacular preacher. Here i.s an extract from one of his .sermons : ' How many of you's ready to die now with your boots on ? Where'd you be to breakfast ? Don't any of you drunken, swearing, fighting, blaspheming 1 , gambling, thieving, tin-horn, coffin-paint, exterminating galoots look at mo ugly, because I know ye, I've been through the drive. You're all in your sins. You know a iat well-fed, well caved for, thoroughly-branded .steer when you see one, and you cm tell whose it 1 , i.sands and whore it belongs. There's a man that owiih it. Thero\ .1 place fork to go. There's a law to protect it. But the maverick—"who is that ? You're all mavericks and worse. The maverick has no brand on him. He goes hollering 1 about until somebody takes him in and cl.ipn the brandiuy-iron on him. But you whulp*, you've got the devil'n brand on you You've got his lariat about, you. Helot's you have rope now, but he'll haul you in when he want'- fpp>vo'd '

Thi: mind of man loved to substitute something intelligible for that which is unintelligible, just a,-. English sailor-, changed JJellerophon, which had for them no meanir£,into Bully Ruffiui, which conveyed a delinito idea. So an English boy, remarks a writer in a monthly contemporary, seeing no sense in the word "ycloped," makes Milton state that "in Heaven yelped Euphrosyne." The same tendency urged another boy to s iy, "Find out some uncouth swell,'' in place of the usual reading "cell." A third described someone as " a man thiec feet high." It appeared, upon inquiry, that thin person had been called by the master a " fteebooter;"' this word, convoying no idea, had been altered by the boy to " three-footer," and thus had by him be i )n expressed more elegantly in words quoted above Painful recollections must h.ivp l<;d a>7iof"hrr to describe a "weeping birch" as " ji buch that makes you weep ;"' whilo experiences of another kind made his friend define "eatinar cares" as " troubles because you aro tired of eating," the irnunvirate bamg completed by one who said that " spoiler's hand" meant "father's hand," because he apoilb you.