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Show ON DEVIL'S TEA TABLE Backwoods Preacher Uses j a Megaphone to Talk !Mo Aufliters. v j ; - ; PARKERSBURO. W. Va, Aug. 13. j The Devil's Tea Table" wa the Queer pulpit from which the Rev. John Joe Co pen preached to- an audience of nearly 5000 persons. From a point 600 feet high j ' he preached to them, taking aa the topic j Paul's sermon on Mars hill, and using a megaphone to carry the sound of his voice to the throng below. As a means of attracting the crowds he advertised for ten days that there would be tight -. rope and trapese performances and .swimming contests before and after the sermons, and a big picnic dinner for the thousands who were fo come. ' I ' Before the morning sermon, while the people were gathering, the trapeze and tight , rope performances were pulled off according to programme, and twenty-five twenty-five small boys engaged in a swimming contest in the Little Kanawha river. The "Devil's Tea Table" is at the mouth of Rock Camp creek, while the preacher lives on Standing Stone creek. Not only ' was the population of the entire -neighborhood out; but people from adjoining counties were there by hundreds. With -a megaphone borrowed from an Ohio river steamboat, the Rev. Mr. Copen talked for an hour in the morning to the multitude below, every word being distinctly dis-tinctly heard by his Immense congregation. congrega-tion. Again in the afternoon he repeated repeat-ed the performance, and no larger congregations con-gregations were ever preached to in West Virginia. |