<TITLE>10. Par 73-81</TITLE>L-73   And then sometime about a month after that, I was playing marbles out with my little brothers, out in the front yard. And all at once I had a strange feeling come on me. And I stopped and set down aside of a tree. And we were right up on the bank from the Ohio River. And I looked down towards Jeffersonville, and I seen a bridge rise up and go across that, the river, span the river. And I seen sixteen men (I counted them) that dropped off of there and lost their lives on that bridge. I run in real quick and told my mother, and she thought I went to sleep. But they kept it in mind, and twenty-two years from then the Municipal Bridge now (that many of you cross when you cross there) crossed the river at the same place, and sixteen men lost their life building that bridge across the river.

L-74 It's never failed to be perfectly true. As you see It here in the auditorium, It's been that way all the time.

L-75   Now, they thought I was just nervous. Which, I am a nervous person, that's true. And, if you ever notice, people who are--are inclined to be spiritual are nervous.

L-76 Look at poets and prophets. And look at William Cowper who wrote that famous song, "There is a fountain filled with Blood, drawn from Immanuel's veins." Did you ever... You know the song. I stood by his grave not long ago. Brother Julius, I believe, I don't know, no... yes, that's right, was with us over there at his grave. And--and there, after he had wrote that song, the inspiration left him, he tried to find the--the river to commit suicide. See, the spirit had left him. And people like poets and authors and... or not... I mean prophets.

L-77   Look at Elijah, when he stood on the mountain and called fire out of the heaven and called rain out of the heaven. Then when the Spirit left him, he run at a threat of a woman. And God found him pulled back in a cave, forty days later.

L-78 Look at Jonah, with enough inspiration when the Lord had anointed him to preach there in Nineveh, till a--a city was the size of Saint Louis repented with sackcloth. And then when the Spirit left him, what happened to him? We find him up on the mountain after the Spirit left him, praying to God to take his life. And, you see, it's inspiration. And when these things happen, it--it does something to you.

L-79   Then I remember coming on up. I got to be a young man. (I'll hurry to make it within the next little bit.) When I got to be a young man I had ideas like all young men. I... going to school, I'd found them little girls. You know, I was real bashful, you know. And I--I finally got me a little girlfriend. And like all little boys, about fifteen years old, I guess. And--and so, oh, she was pretty. My, she had eyes like a dove, and she had teeth like pearl, and a neck like a swan, and she--she was really pretty.

L-80   And another little boy, he... we were buddies, so he got his daddy's old model-T Ford, and we got a date with our girls. And we was going to take them out, riding. We got enough to buy two gallons of gasoline. We had to jack the back wheel up to crank it. I don't know whether you ever remember that or not, you know, to crank it. But we--we was going along pretty good.

L-81 And so I had a few nickels in my pocket, and we stopped at a little place and got... you could get a ham sandwich for a nickel. And so, oh, I was rich, I could buy four of them! See? And after we had eat the sandwiches and drank the coke. I started taking the bottles back. And to my surprise, when I come out, (women had just start falling from grace at that time, or from womanhood) my little dove was smoking a cigarette.


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