Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 129, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1909 — “Oh, Yon Kid” Ditty Breaks Up a Church Prayer Meeting. [ARTICLE]

“Oh, Yon Kid” Ditty Breaks Up a Church Prayer Meeting.

The Record-Herald of Friday published the following from Geneva, Ill.: “Oh, you kid!” the stale ditty of the 5-cent theaters and the vaudeville houses, was hashed into a sacred anthem in Geneva last night with disastrous results to a prayer meeting at one of the churches. Today the pastor and the deacons were searching for the irreverent member of the choir who annexed the phrase to the hymn with a lead pencil. With much indignation they asserted that he is a fit subject for conversion —of a musclar kind. The quotation made its fatal entrance into the prayer meeting during a solo that was rendered by a soprano during the hush which followed a solemn exhortation by the preacher. The services had been fervent. The pastor had preached a stirring little sermon and ten or twenty of the lay* men had given their testimony. From the sober looks of several young men and women on the back benches it looked as if converts were soon to be gathered in, when the spell and spirit of the meeting were broken by the words of the frivolous song. The pastor had closed his exordium and had announced the solo. The young woman lifted her voice in song. She put so much fervor into the music itself that she followed the words blindly and sang the anthem exactly as it had been revised with pencil by a practical joker. “I love my God,” sang the soprano in swelling note. “I love my God,” the singer repeated, putting on the crescendo for a climax, “I love my God, but, oh, you kid!” The choir and congregation went into hysterics, the prospective converts gasped and then guffawed, and before order could be restored the shocked and scandalized pastor dismissed the meeting without waiting for the benediction.