But this is
something entirely different and still more curious and mysterious.
Those people down yonder keep this up by themselves when they are
alone--it attacks some of them before they have ever seen one of the
meetings. It is certainly the strangest phenomenon of its kind that the
world ever saw. It never loses its painful fascination for me. I can't
pass it by. How is it with you?"
The priest hesitated before replying. "Any form of faith--the crudest,
the most absurd that any soul ever staked its salvation upon--must
always be the most interesting subject in the world to every thinking
mind."
"It seems so to me," the doctor replied. "And I assure you that there is
no irreverence in the scientific curiosity which I feel in this
extraordinary epidemic of religious frenzy; for it is certainly
something of that sort. It is unmistakably contagious. I have become
more and more certain of that as I have watched the poor wretches who
are shrieking down yonder. It is a mental and moral epidemic, and so
highly contagious that it has swept the whole state, till it now sweeps
the remotest corner of the wilderness.
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