GIPSY SMITH'S CONFESSIONS.

Colonist, Volume LI, Issue 12490, 17 March 1909, Page 4

GIPSY SMITH'S CONFESSIONS.

Gipsy Smith, who is profoundly impressing the people of Pittsburg. U.S.A., has just led a midnight procession, in which several thousand people paraded, tells in the February "Home Messenger" the story of how lie became an evangelist/ He tells of his earliest efforts as a gipsy- boy evangelist, of his first reading lesson given him by a Leytonstone lady with . a signboard as text book, and of his struggle to educate himself while he tramped East Anglia selling clothes pegs. "In the clay time," ho says, "the green fields were my Alma Mater, and the blue sky my university, St. Francis of'Asissi preached one sermon to the birds, it is said ; but I preached sermons . miles long as I tramped from village to village. I did warm up the hedges and cows and sheep and birds as I preached to them. Those first sermons of mine weire so easily preached. I was a gipsy lad, with all a gipsy's nature lore and Nature love, and my congregations were the natural things I knew and loved as only gipsies can. But it was quite a different thing when I faced a human congregation, and had to~"talk to real people." In his early days Gipsy Smith's great trouble was to conduct a meeting without a chairman. ' 'Ischose hymns the .first verse of which I knew by heart, and I gave out the verse I remembered and asked the people to sing it through. Then I chose the Scripture lesson that I could get on best with— passages of the simplest kind. Even then there would be words in almost every verso that I could not pronounce. I used to read on slowly until I came to a big word, and then instead of having a shot aft it, Iwould pause and make a little comment, taking care to resume my reading on. the other side of the big word. ' I do noV know if any one ever found me out, though "I should not have teen ashamed. if . 'my ignorance had been discovered. I never posed and never disguised my.ignorance. ■...•■■■• ...