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Show OLD FOLK FESTIVAL IS BIG QUARTERLY But Religious Pilgrimage Has Greatly Changed. Toduy is Elg Quarterly. An undersized, un-dersized, dimmed and sophisticated Big Quarterly, true, but' one of the few real folk festivals still celebrated cele-brated in our country. For 121 years on the last Sunday in August a throng of negroes, once tumultuous-ly tumultuous-ly devout and intensely emotional, has streamed in to Wilmington, Del., by many roads, in commemoration of the establishment there of the African Union Free Colored Methodist Metho-dist Protestant church (the AUMP), formed by free negroes iri 1S11. It is an occasion unique to the Delmarva peninsula. Thousands came in other days. Many hundreds came today. They gather all down the eastern sho', all up through Pennsylvania and New Jersey, from Virginia and Delaware, in a religious pilgrimage that used to be comparable to the "romerias" of Spanish America. In the beginning begin-ning Big Quarterly was strictly a church festival and its spiritual character was obvious in the decorum decor-um of the celebrants,- who arrived on foot or muleback or in ox carts, but with the years It became a general gen-eral homecoming for colored people of this large region a huge, gay outing and reunion. Special trains were run from many points to accommodate ac-commodate the devotees. Hackmen grew rich. Watermelons, fried fish and roastin' ears disappeared by the ton. One custard maker, as in "The Green Pastures," would never have been adequate. There were bare feet and slat sunbonnets; gentlemen of any importance wore high silk hats. It was a gorgeous, vivid crowd that promenaded French street forty years ago. Just about then the change, the falling away, began. This Sunday tan face powder and rosewood rouge; plus fours and Antibes shirts instead of ceremonial toppers; plenty of motorbusses and private cars to save the pilgrims' time. The original animating religious religi-ous fervor has departed ; observance Is perfunctory, not exalting; youth does not look wonderstruck nor is age renewed. The waning was inevitable in-evitable after the younger colored folk lost their strong devotion to church practice and turned to worldly world-ly emotional outlets. A century ago Big Quarterly was for many of them the drop of honey in the tasteless comb. Now they share with all of us a surfeit of diversions, of human contacts, of omniscience. New York Herald Tribune. |