The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Dynamiter by Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny Van De Grift Stevenson: men and women. Now they would raise their palms half-closed
to heaven, with a peculiar, passionate gesture of
supplication; now they would bow their heads and spread their
hands before them on the ground. As the double movement
passed and repassed along the line, the heads kept rising and
falling, like waves upon the sea; and still, as if in time to
these gesticulations, the hurried chant continued. I stood
spellbound, knowing that my life depended by a hair, knowing
that I had stumbled on a celebration of the rites of Hoodoo.
Presently, the door of the chapel opened, and there came
forth a tall negro, entirely nude, and bearing in his hand
|