Stephen Crane

New York Tribune/July 2, 1892

Ocean Grove, N.J., July 1.—The sombre-hued gentlemen who congregate at this place in summer are arriving in solemn procession, with black valises in their hands and rebukes to frivolity in their eyes. They greet each other with quiet enthusiasm and immediately set about holding meetings. The cool, shaded Auditorium will soon begin to palpitate with the efforts of famous preachers delivering doctrines to thousands of worshippers. The tents, of which there are hundreds, are beginning to rear their white heads under the trees.

The clergymen of the New Brunswick district of the New Jersey Methodist Episcopal Conference held their regular meeting this week in the lecture-room of St. Paul’s Church. Most of the morning was pent in the rendering of informal pastoral reports, after which the Rev. Dr. J.A. MacCauley, ex-president of Dickinson College, delivered an address on “The Results of Higher Criticism.” At noon the minsters and their wives sat down to a banquet in the dining room of the Howland House. The Rev. D.B. Harris, of Ocean Grove, toasted “The Older Members of the New Jersey Conference.” The rev. John Handley, of Asbury Park, gave a toast to “The Younger Members.” “The New Brunswick District” was responded to by Presiding Elder W.C.P. Strickland; “The Ocean Grove Association,” by its president, the Rev. Dr. Elwood H. Stokes; “The Women of Methodism,” by Mrs. C.F. Garrison, of Cranbury, and “Our Deceased Members,” by Professor John Wilson, D.D., of Ocean Grove.