cit iee MMS ETL Dh hd dade tid Bd BAUR ae re a av Ree ee Be rh td Pere, ak Me Rat ee dealin ih Me ae OT lB rare Lead hear MPA ee let babar Wen Can Parra aS i Py Or phe reer, lee rret ty td aaah eer BY BAGS CE7 AS CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY me 7 Coral Cinivetatey ivan BX8495.C87 A3 Thin, 1924 029 471 798 olin THE You-Ought=To=Buy=Ography OF AN Ink-Slinger. Kohala, Hawaii, 1915. o POSE. “HES Bx FAQS Cas ft om Ae AP ASIN O thee! # wR ‘i Twice the size of Delaware. (It) So) “PETER RICE EATS FISHES AND CATCHES EELS.” wet One does need to know much to publish a book like this. All I know is that THE MIDGET owed me $100, needed to make its bank book balance, and I got tired of waiting for the élusive dollars to come back to me and decided to ‘‘to take it out in” printing. That’s what it cost me. The writing I did ‘‘just for the fun of it,’’ when I felt kind of bubbling like. It didn’t cost me anything. It won’t cost you anything to read it. If you feel unwilling to make the start, I offer you a reward of $1.00. If at the close you feel that you owe me any part of the $100.00 the pub- lishing cost me, you may send it to The Boys’ Manual Training School. That’s why I have called this book a ‘‘You-ought-to-buy-ography.’’ I could make this preface much longer by using some of the words I have left out of this book to shorten it; but I want space on this page fora key to the jokes that have got in it, in spite of my vigilance. I understand them, but I’m afraid you might trip over them. we x? et First AID To THE JOKEE. De 85 lo ds, nea tutien ek hae sare ON Rene Bano eee s facetious; slipped in itself. De Seated eed io See ees Stmeeeaa alae may be funny. Ts Cy eine) toe eens damimianees oaane lus picarecie aan ee irony, cutting. lig Povaew veces 264 cauNdeS Adee s ieee de oRRO SCS OEU EE pig-iron irony. te Ee Dwi: ha otigctins eho ee bea ae tees one trying to be ‘humorous. BeBe ses esimios nea d ae ails Aaa are AREAS real smart. Ne 5 Ms i. Pidectametacs tees enone Seches no joke meant. £: Mesa ee Mawar sha we awa eee, BG oe Aes feel koltish. Bis aval es ecu eran ae weed soa eal ea ees sublimity. Cial wéinticdiala pant aw aay Garay e ee ee eoeasee 248984 ancient—use chloride of lime. —_——__~+ oo. (111) INDEX wow wW Two or three birthpalces—first ink-slinking. ...............-- vas. » pages 1—6. Gaelic origin of name ‘‘Cowan,’”’ the Browns squelched. ...........+--+++++ 7-11, In Penn’s Woods for a year. ........... 00. c ccc e ene cnet ence eee en nets 12—15. “Peck’s Bad Boy’”’ in Oil Town” ...........0 cece cece eee ene eee ees 16—19. Cuba (N. Y.) sugaring off—swimmin’ holes. ............-.0eseeeee eters 20—27° A young Michigander and his first goose. ........0-.00 cee eee eee eens 28—34. Back to York State—singin’ skewl—a downy-lipped school teacher. ...... 35—42. “Maryland, my Maryland,”? ..........6. 0 cece eee eee cee n ence e teens 43- 48. A West Virginia circuit rider—married. ............00 0c eee eee ener tenes 49—56. In college—ink-slinging—dabbling in printer’s ink. ............++ joan ees 57— 63. Pastor at Fairmont. .......0.0.cce ccc ce cee cent tenet e ence en tn een neeee 64— 68, Sunday-school editor 15 years—Sunnyside Cottage. ..........-..0eeseeees 69—94, Ten. yearsat. the “Hub? ccc cssesdaanes g4hnan sedi sea: wee SURES aoe) we 95—109. Invalided to Jamaica. .. .......... aids bhviseundiatele ate ie aaineGe BRipescaatass a SNES 110—121. My fair Hawaiian Manse. ..............0. eee cece cette eee eens 122 -182. www ILLUSTRATIONS The Hawaiian: palm, -s.s002sicdic) a uee cea esoae adnan ones se aa reoegeees cover page. The Hawaiian banana. ..............:0.000 005 Bh abs ed cn ne Men aS title page. Ini pul pit. @rown, oxd:d.2uesewvadasanciiens Soa eos nalyseie Sed akewam ses frontispiece. Map of Island of Hawaii. ........... 00.0 ee cece eee cence tenet e ene te ee nee eee Il. Portrait of Ink-Slinger, fourteen, dreaming of a silky moustache ............. 34. As a pedagogue, at nineteen—some down ............ ec cee ee cece cece eens nee 42. Just turned twenty-one—more down, ..........-.ee eee e cence cee etme ee eees 46. The lush young ministerial candidate. ............. cc cece eee ene eee een ee 48. The cadaverous Grafton pastor. ........... cece eee cece cee e ee eee neon ees 54. The cocky, black-silky moustached bridegroom. .................0.e:eeeeeeeee 56. Sunnyside: Cottages, 2sccciiescadis com be swereeue ala Pane ae Sowa hecwenseran 72, Office:in: Pittsburgh: cis. oe.Ws, Pec dawned gawe forsee abe pee bees weciie 76, The lecturer’s life-size window lithograph, ....................e sees sete eeee 82. “His: Whiskers?’ a aicGandaces vex er moasa aaa asioenieanineee- ee G4 mation Gay wan aes 94. After ashave. iwaesweccss-sdassesincaawaa eee eoes sinclar deulpn, ox andidelaoa ad 96. Resemblance to Dr. Clark. ............ cece cece cence ene en tenn ee eennee 100. The Hawaiian pineapple. ..... ........ cece eect eee eens 121. "The: Manse, Kohala: ...o.'.<.c5.awaieuaneeuscoiae Mi 8a kab oA asta Aa Read fedene ete 124. A Midget: boy.) ieecoccasivscoptiacde pusauenaaioe Gat pogenpenenaae lemons 1380. The Hawalian: breadtruit,. 2 icospecias Cocoa enc geese ven oete ede ees 182. ——__—_____- 2 _e—_______—_- (IV) Rev. John F. Cowan, D. D., Pastor of Union Church, Kohala, Hawaii. I desire here to acknowledge my great obligation to the Rawsthorne Engraving Company, Pittsburgh, for reproducing most of the cuts in this book, free of charge. It should be said that the earlier ones were made from faded, dim photos, and the wonder is that they reproduce at all. I am also greatly indebted to Miss Ethel Hope Larter, a former member of the Friendly Class, now a book illustrator of Cleveland, O., for the designs of the pineapple, bread-fruit and other tropical fruits. An Ink-Slinger’s You-ought-to-buy-ography. I. is said that I was born when young, in Griffinshire, Erie County, New York: but I did not discover it until I was four or five years old. Griffinshire is not ‘‘on the map,’”’ to me. I don’t remem- ber ever to have seen the place, and never expect to, doubtless to my great loss. One of my earliest recollections is of helping to elect Lincoln President, in 1859, by marching with a file of boys of Alden, N. Y., ina jack-o-lantern procession, wearing a red hatband lettered: “Lincoln & Hamlin.’’ What Lincoln owed to me, subsequent history records. Soon after this the Civil War broke out. How far I was responsible for this I won’t discuss. My oldest brother, George, left school, enlisted and went to capture Richmond. I would say that, prior to this time at which I discovered my- self, various alleged accounts attribute doings and sayings to me. They are entirely unauthentic; they cannot be verified by me. Should you ever pass Alden, on the main line of the Erie Rail- way, as the train crosses the stone culvert you should experience a thrill—that swimmin’ hole below is where my shirt was tied in knots by a bully who loomed up as big as Pike’s Peak; and thence I mean- dered homeward in the dusk, my hair still wet, to explain to my anxious mother, who listened without an appreciative smile, that I had been perspiring freely, as a result of struggling to break away from the boys who held me back. The second evening that this oc- curred I learned that a shingle may have other uses than protecting a house from rain. The monument which will be erected in honor of me by the proud citizens of Alden will bear the inscription: “On a spot near this marble shaft stood the schoolhouse in which the illustrious son of Alden first went to school.’’ I remember the village green which the schoolhouse faced. The Baptist and Presbyterian churches eyed each other across it. I was (1) a foreordained Baptist Sunday-school boy. I learned by heart more verses of Scripture than any boy of my age in the village. I stood in front of the pulpit one Sunday and recited more Scripture than all my children and grandchildren combined will ever know. I ought to have somewhere still a little red book the title of which was ‘‘Ode to an Odd Fellow,’’ which my Sunday-school teacher gave me as a prize. The cover bore a gilt eye surrounded by three gilt links. The idea of uniform, international Sunday-school lessons was still dormant in the brainpan of John H. Vincent, and all we didin my class was to recite verses of Scripture, and sing, ‘‘Little Drops of Water,’”’ ‘Zion, Zion, Beautiful Zion’’ and ‘‘Kind Words Can Never Die.’’ I think it must be the memory of that last song that suggest- ed to me that I write a few kind words about myself. But I was born with a great thirst for secular knowledge as well as for religious; for before I was of school age I ran away from home and went to that school facing the green. [ could not have been on this first day, when I was a visitor, but afterwards, that I handed to a girl a love-letter written by the big boy in the seat behind, which was raised one flat above mine. Suffice it to say I was ‘‘ecaught with the goods on me.”’ The teacher marched me to the centre of the floor, her thumb and finger on either side of the pinna of my right ear (which has ever since been a little lop-sided) and demanded that I read the letter aloud, then and there or more so. Unfortunately I couldn’t even read my own writing (let alone another boy’s) because I had not yet learned to write. At that mo- ment I couldn’t have read Spencerian, had I been Spencer, because I was too much shaken by sobs, my face hidden on my coat-sleeve where I deposited enough brine to pickle a ham. So that flinty-hearted teacher read aloud: ‘‘Dear Mary; I love you. You are sweeter than wintergreen candy.”’ Then she let me go. Tradition in that school has it that as soon as I returned to my seat I picked up an ink-bottle and slung it with all my might at the big boy on the raised seat behind me. My aim was bad, and the stain is still on the schoolhouse wall. I began early (2) to sling ink: I have kept at it all these years. I never raised my face from my coat-sleeve after that bad shot until I reached the red house next to the tannery, that will one day bear a bronze plate, put on by the Historical Society. To this day I dislike the name, Mary. If she had a ‘‘little lamb’’ I am sure it must have been a goat. Across the green near the Baptist Church, lived ‘‘Frederica’”’ and her husband. He had no name as far asI am concerned, but Frederica made doughnuts.and head-cheese, and was generous with them to good little boys. Peace to her soul! The city directory of Alden contained two other names besides those mentioned and those of my own family:— Mary Sanders, my oldest sister Louise’s bosom friend, and Mr. Learned, principal of the Academy, of whose white walls I carry a picture in memory. These, the swimmin’ hole, the green, the railroad and culvert, the tannery of which my father was foreman, the creek, the Lincoln— Hamlin campaign, the Sunday-school, and the ‘‘Mary’’ episode are all that Alden impressed upon my wax tablet sufficiently to hold through fifty-five years, except an incident or two that I will give. I remember sleeping with my Grandmother Cox, and once being saucy to her, and fearing that she would tell my father. I recall catching my first fish on Sunday with a bent pin hook, and telling the fib that I had found it. I have a recollection of gathering acorns to roast for coffee. But one of the most vivid memories is of taking a big red apple from a barrel on a neighhbor’s porch. I had the same feeling about it that I had about trying to rob a bird’s nest—that every one I met knew what a mean, contemptible, horrid wretch I was, and I wished I could shrink enough—and it seemed to me it would need be but little—to hide myself in a pismire’s hole. I was sent back with the apple and apologies. I hadn’t eaten much of it. Stolen fruits weren’t sweet; that one tasted more like quinine. I think it was in Alden that I remember being shut upin a room with my mother for taking some money of her’s from her ta- ble. She read the appropriate commandment from the Bible and prayed. I don’t know whether I repented, but I do remember a (3) glass lamp for burning whale oil, that stood on a table in the room. It had no chimney, but two round holes for wicks. One thing more I remember about Alden—I left it twice. Once I went in a carriage with my father and mother across the western part of New York to McKean County, Pennsylvania, to visit my Uncle ‘‘Lo’”’? (Lorenzo) Langmade. I think the place was Kendall Creek, We stopped over night at Machias and Yorkshire on the way. While at Kendell Creek, ‘‘Riley,’? Uncle Lo’s hired man, stole the team which my father had driven, and went away in the night. My uncle hastened after him with his fast blacks and overtook him at Smethport; but one of our horses was lamed, and on the way home my father had to leave it to recover, and borrow or hire a substitute the finish the trip. The entire family left Alden finally in 1860 or 1861, when I was six or seven years old. We perambulated on to Kendall Creek, Penn- sylvania, where my father, who was something of a rolling stone, realized his ambition to live on his own farm. The farm adjoined that of Uncle Lo. We went by rail to Bradford, Pa., making the last stage of the journey on the construction train of the new railway, some of us in the cab of the locomotive, and our luggage and household goods on a gravel car. That was a wonderful trek to me; I had never seen so much of life before. I can still smell the smoke of that locomotive. I can see the grimy faces of the train men. I can feel the thrill and throb of that wonderful engine, as it snorted through the woods. My Aunt Nancy Ensign a widowed sister of my mother, was a dressmaker in Bradford, and we were her guests until Uncle Lo drove down from Kendall Creek with the team of blacks and took us all out, except mother. We lived in the same house with Uncle Lo and Aunt Salome, and our cousins George and Maggie, until our own home could be put in readiness. Another time I shall throw on the screen my boyish perspective of Kendall Creek. Country life was new and fascinating to me, and I have many sharply outlined pictures in my memory. (4) I want to edgewise in here the fact, with an apology to Alden, that | have been back to it (or through it) but once since the years when it gave me kindly hospitality as a child. In 1902 I attended the World’s Christian Endeavor Convention at Montreal, Quebec, as a Trustee of the United Society of Christian Endeavor, and as one of the speakers on the convention program. Returning to Pittsburg, I had to travel all night on the Grand Trunk Railway, without a Pullman berth. At Hamilton, Ont., a parlor car was attached to the train, and I was allowed to use the sofa. I slept so soundly that I was unconscious that the train had entered’ the Buffalo depot and pulled out again, until the conductor wakened me and demanded my ticket. Glancing at it he said: “You are on the wrong train; you should have changed to the Pittsburg train at Buffalo.’? (The ephemerally popular song: ‘‘Put Me off at Buffalo,’’ may have been founded on this experience—f. ’). ‘‘Where am I now?’’ I gasped. “You are on the Erie Railway New York Flyer, and our first stop is Attica. We’ll put you off there and the first local train will take you back to Buffalo.”’ So I passed through Alden without stopping, and repassed a- gain on the way back from Attica, with a short stop at the station. I wondered if I should see Mary Sanders at the depot, but if she was there, after our forty-two years’ separation I failed to recognize her face and she my whiskers. Frederica I knew must be in heav- en, and the last I heard of Mr. Learned he was a Baptist minister in Cuba, N. Y. I did recognize the culvert and swimmin’ hole, but oh, how shrunken and diminutive! But as the train puffed away, and Alden faded from before my straining eyes, I regretted I was travelling on a limited ticket, and could not stop off and revisit the village green, the Baptist Church, and Mary Sanders. She was a paragon of perfection in my eyes. I wondered if the ink-spot still showed on the schoolhouse wall —no matter, I am still slinging ink. But I feel that already I owe an apology to my father and mother (5) and the older members of the family for the immodest way in which I have thrust myself into the limelight in the centre of the stage. I honestly don’t think I should have amounted to much had I missed knowing (*f., s, i, i,) my father and mother, and I wish next, to tell how we Cowan’s originated; in brief to transplant the family tree to these pages. [*Note: See Key in Preface. ] “Who’s Who” In Scotland. (Bie Cowans were in the Scotch ‘‘Who’s Who.’’ A Boston office friend with the rusty, humdrum name of Brown returned from a trip abroad quite set up because he had discovered Browns across the puddle. He stood by my desk with his chest thrown out and expatiated on his visit to the ancestral home in Scot- land, where he had plucked a bit of heather, and also been initiated into the traditional etymology of his family name. ““D’ye know,’’ he tempted me, ‘‘that ‘Brown’ is from ‘braun,’ or ‘brawn;’ ‘strong, virile’?’’ “‘Let’s talk about something interesting,’’ I edged in. ‘‘The Cowans were originally from Scotland.”’ “‘Yes,’’ he answered in aribald tone; ‘‘I heard of them. A ‘cow- an’ was primarily a sorry sort of a stone-mason, who never served an apprenticeship. The word ‘coward’ is from the same source.”’ Before I could shoot, he flung the Standard Dictionary at me, and pinned me down. Look up the definition yourself. Some time later I was called to make an address at a Christian Endeavor Convention, in a ‘burg’ in Western Maryland that was three-fourths Presbyterian college, the college being nine-tenths Scotch president, who was a worldwide authority on the Gaelic tongue. I was his guest. At the breakfast table I ventured to ask if it occurred to him that my name was of Gaelic origin. “Why certainly; a ‘cowan’ was a smith, a mechanic of any kind. ‘Cowan’ is the Gaelic equivalent of ‘Smith.’ ”’ A little later I addressed a young people’s convention in Massa- chusetts, and as I stepped down from the rostrum a gentleman met me in the aisle, extending his hand with smiling cordiality and sa- luting me: “‘We are relations. My name is Smith; yours is Cowan; same word; one English, the other Gaelic. I have had my ancestry traced back to the gentlemen who crossed the channel in oxhide boats.’’ (7) My father, John Cowan (or Cowen as some contend) came to America with his mother, from the County of Antrim, in the north of Ireland, (I suppose his ancestors crossed to Ireland in an oxhide ferry) when he was a small lad. His father, a Baptist, had been in charge of the parochial schools in the North of Ireland, which placed him, socially, in the professional middle class. No doubt he could erack a Papist skull with a shillalah, as well as the best Orangeman Brown whom the sun ever tanned to sole-leather (that’s my theory of the origin of ‘“‘Brown —i. c.).’? To-day, he would be for Ulster against Home Rule, I am dead certain. He married Caroline Sher- man, the daughter of a Dublin attorney with some French Huguenot blood, an Episcopalian: but she became a Baptist with her husband. The only other member of the family whom I chance to know by name is the one own brother of my father, George Cowan (or Cowen), who was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Oxford, and who went as a Baptist missionary to the Island of Trinidad. My grandfather died when my father was three years old, and grandmother married a gentleman farmer named Cox, who brought her and the children—there was a daughter, Eliza Cox and a son, Francis Cox—to America, where he soon after died, leaving his fam- ily quite unprovided for. The half-brother, Uncle Francis Cox, whom my father helped to educate, died recently in Chicago at the age of ninety-three, hav- ing served for over fifty years as an honored minister of one of the Indiana conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church. His daugh- ter, Dr. Mattie Cox, in whose home he was tenderly cared for in his declining years, is a practicing physician in Chicago. The half-sister of my father took for her married name Wil- liams and bore and reared a family in Ontario, Canada, the only one of whom I ever met personally was William Williams, whose visit to my father’s home in Cuba, N. Y., when I was about fifteen, I well remember by two or three circumstances:— one was his heavy, hand- some whiskers, another his placing his hands on the gate and leap- ing over, and a third his firing his revolver in the air—quite enough (8) to impress a boy. He now lives at Grimsby, Ont., an aged man. My mother was a Strong, decended from General Herkimer the Palatine who settled in the Mohawk Valley, and from the Schuylers. She was much smaller than my father, dark in complexion, with glossy black hair and beautiful brown eyes. It is through the Herki- mers, I think, that we are all heirs of the famous Anneke Jans estate in Holland and the Trinity Church property of New York. I once attended a convention of these heirs, in Cleveland, the purpose of which was to raise a fund and employ a lawyer to prosecute the claim—for the ‘steenth time in the history of this will 0’ the wisp chase. Mother and Aunt Phoebe paid assessments to this fund. None of us have ever handled any of that fortune yet. My mother’s younger sister, Phoebe, who also married a Cow(e)n, prepared with great painstaking and published a genealogy of the Herkimers and Schuylers, which is a very valuable contribution. My father was twice wedded, first to Matilda Foote, by whom he had a son, George, and two daughters, Louise and Sophia. My mother, Mary Catherine Strong, bore him six children, of whom I am the second born. So I am one-half Scotch-Irish, one-fourth Dutch, one-fourth English and the rest Huguenot and Yankee. It must have been the Irish half that slung the first ink, even if my Dutch wit shows more in that which I am slinging now. My father was a grey-eyed man, of medium height, broad- shouldered, straight and lithe as an Indian; grey-haired from my earliest recollection of him. He was a very religious nature, a great lover of hymn-singing. I can see him holding one of the younger children and hear him singing hymns in his clear, beautiful voice. In his later years he was a Methodist class-leader. I cherish in my keeping a cane with a stag-horn handle held by a silver band bear- ing his name. It was presented to him by a class in the Methodist Church in Cuba, N. Y. He was a man of stupendous energy, and all his life a hard worker, seeking to provide a good home and to give his children a better chance than he had; for as I have heard him tell, he was ap- prenticed while quite young, by his stepfather, to a tanner, who was (9) very rigorous with him. Nevertheless he became a tannery manag- er—not ‘‘foreman’’ as is stated in a previous page. Father’s ideals of efficiency and business honor were very high, and his children, grand-children and great-grandchildren may well point with pride to seventy-seven years of life that were unspotted by a single questionable transaction. He was sometimes severe and stern, but always just and true to his obligations, ggd much of his exacting ways with his children grew out of his intense desire that they should be better fitted for life than it had been his fortune to be. He died at my home at Beaver Falls, Pa., and was buried at Yorkshire, N. Y. My mother was much gentler in her disposition, and more com- panionable—for father was naturally somewhat reticent—she was an unfaltering Christian, a congenial neighbor, and a splendid house- keeper who clothed, fed and reared these nine children, usually without the aid of a servant, and in times when there was much more drudgery involved in housekeeping, such as carrying water in- to the house, milking cows, sewing all garments by hand, and even spinning the yarn, weaving the cloth and carpets and knitting stock- ings and mittens. _ Mother was peacemaker between father’s sternness and the children’s faults. She shielded us often. She was ten years younger than my father, and lived ten years longer, passing away at the home of her only daughter, Caroline Sherman Cowan Knight, of Onida, S. D., who was always a devoted and exemplary daughter and who, with her husband, Merritt B. Knight, school-teacher, farmer and merchant, cared assiduously for the aged and failing one. She was buried, at her own request, where she had ended her days. My youngest brother, Harry Herkimer Cowan, who is a bache- lor and hence freer to travel and use his means as he would, went several times to visit mother, and settled a regular monthly allow- ance upon her some years before she died, built an addition to the house fer her and did everything possible to make her declining years comfortable and contented. (10) Her step-children loved her as much as did her own children, for she was a devoted, unselfish mother to us all. Peace to her soul! If this were a history of the family, instead of my personal af- fairs, I should be glad to devote many other pages to a more ade- quate tribute to my parents and to my brothers and sisters. As it is, I shall mention them frequently in the pages yet to come. I want my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to know more about my relatives than I do about those of my father and mother— that is one of my incentives for spreading this ink over these pages. Let me say in closing this part that we have tried to trace lineal connection with others bearing the name of Cowan, but have been unable to establish any blood relationship, even with Uncle William Cowen, whom Aunt Phebe Strong married. My brother Harry once wrote to a George Cowan, who was a Member of the Parliament in England, thinking that he might pos- sibly be a cousin many removes distant, but it proved a futile attempt to find a missing link. Like the Smiths, we know that the Cowans must be one family, but we cannot get the family tree to grow. It may be that the original spelling of my father’s family name was Cowen, and that Cowan is plebeian; but of the Cow(a)ns and Cow(e)ns I have known, shaken in a bag together, just as many honored and distinguished ‘‘ans’’ will come out at the top as ‘‘ens,”’ or vice versa. If the orthography of our name has been tampered with, any Cowan of this or of any successive generation, has my full and free consent and sanction to unscramble the egg. To me, a name is just as sweet if spelled ‘‘S-m-y-t-h-e,’’ or ‘‘C-o-u-g-h-e-n.”’ Wy Ie With Pennsylvania Blackberries and Bears. A picture of Uncle Lo’s old log house chinked with clay, at Kendall Creek, Pa., rises before me now as I Smith-Premier this hunk of ’graphy. Someway the interior is photographed on my mind more sharply than the outside—a large square living-room, with two dining-tables in it. Uncle Lo was building a new frame house across the road, and the cellar was full of water at times, and we boys sailed boats in it. Water in the basement did seem to worry the owner. I remember him as a black-bearded, jolly man with bright eyes and a cheery voice and laugh. Aunt Salome was a buxom brunette, kind-hearted and motherly. Cousin Maggie was a tall dark-eyed girl, very clever. George was a good-hearted boy, with perhaps just a natural touch of superiority because his father owned the team of blacks, and the house, and about everything in sight. I am sure that we children looked longingly across to the other dining table, when there was on it some delicacy ours did not boast. As I remember, those were days of plain living and high thinking. It seems to me that bean soup must have had a strong pull, to get on our bill of fare as often as it did. A favorite dish with all of us was cubes of toast boiled in sweetened buttermilk. I think this was where our Herkimer blood bossed the cuisine. Johnnycake was our breakfast cereal. I went both to Sunday-school and day-school, in a little moun- tain school-house some distance away in the woods. All I recollect about the Sunday-school is being there disgracefully barefooted. To a town boy this was a heavy handicap. Those feet looked bigger than Sambo’s. I tucked them back under the bench, hoping to hide my shame, and may be live it down twenty years hence. I am glad to say that no one ever threw it in my face after I was old enough to vote. At the day-school we spent the noon hour eating Johnnycake etc. (only I can’t remember what the ‘“‘etc.’’ consisted of) and feeding crumbs to the chipmunks. I think we tried to entice them (12) into traps, but they were several grades in advance of us in intel- lectual development, and only chattered and scoffed at us. But I never laid up anything against the chipmunk; from this first intro- duction, I have always liked him better than he has liked me; possi- bly because he had no chance to retaliate by writing about me. The fascination which the woods and brooks have for a boy had just begun to grip me. A boy, like a kitten, has to get his eyes open gradually, and I just began to see Nature. There were big surprises lying in ambush for me. I hadn’t been imbibing anything strong on the day that I saw a two-legged snake. Older eyes than mine detect- ed that it had swallowed a frog as far as its shoulders. We boys fished for the speckled beauties in the mountain brooke, I learned fake fishing early, for one day when I had no luck luring live fish onto my hook I picked up a dead one, as many a fisherman has done with aid of a piece of silver, only its ancient smell called my bluff, One of the brooks meandered quite near the house, and from it all the wash-water had to be carried. Every little tin pail full help- ed. But for backache and sideaches, alarmingly prevalent, we had the consolation of watching horsehairs turn into snakes, in the clear water. Science? pooh! Didn’t we see them wriggle? I suppose there were rattlesnakes, but I never saw one until lat- er. It was rumored there were bears, and once when recent tracks were found, the men went out with their guns after fresh bear steak. Once when my sister Louise was blackberrying she unexpect- edly met Bruin, on the same errand bent, on the other side of a elump of bushes. No cards were exchanged. My worst foe in Pennsylvania was mumps, that reduced me to a diet of milk toast until I loathed the poulticy stuff. I remember one day my Aunt Salome brought me some tea and crackers, and how grateful the change was. One of the biggest events of this sojourn in the Keystone State was the return, in August or September, of mother from Aunt Nan- cy’s, with our baby sister, Caroline Sherman. Uncle Lo drove to Bradford with the blacks and a closed carriage, and we all lined up (13) and watched for his return, flattening our noses against the palings of the front-yard fence. The wee stranger received a royal greeting from four brothers, two sisters and three cousins. I remember how pale and delicate my mother looked, and how glad we were to again have some one to mother us, as George, Mag- gie and Katie Langmade, were ‘‘mothered,’’ even though the share of motherly attention we should get in the division with this helpless little stranger was but the crumbs. But one or two other events fastened themselves on my memo- ry. One was a switching my father gave me. I never could recall it to his memory in the later years, but then he was at the negative end of the switch and I at the positive. A much sweeter memory, and one calculated to stick, was being invited to the home of the Lamb’s, neighbors of ours, toa ‘“‘sugar- ing-off.’’ I can yet taste that warm, sweet, sticky ‘‘wax,’’ as we called it, poured on the snow to cool. Later, the Cowan’s, or one of them, became ‘‘mixed up’”’ with the Lambs in another very sweet affair which you must hold in anticipation. My father, who always wanted to be on a farm when he was off one, and was anxious to be off when he was on, got work in a tan- nery in Olean, N. Y., and sold the farm then or later. As I re- member it vaguely it was a hillside farm—I don’t know how large— with a log house, and a stable in which we kept a cow; woods and hills all around. Even at this time petroleum was being developed at Oil City, Franklin and other fields. I remember hearing men talk about the oil from wells floating down on the waters of Tuna Creek to Brad- ford. Some years after my father and uncle had both disposed of their land on Kendall Creek, oil was ‘‘struck’’ there in such quanti- ties that, had they then owned the land, they would have been wealthy men. In that event these pages would never have been written, as the whole course of my life would have been lubricated in another di- rection. I do not regret having missed connections with fortune No.2. I count it a piece of good luck for any boy to have been the son of an (14) honest poor man, and to have had such experiences in country life as I am to throw on the screen. In those one or two years at Ken- dall Creek I was not yet fully ‘‘onto the job” of being a country boy, but I improved later. I have only to tell of the trip, by wagon to Olean, on top of a high load of furniture, bedding and other household goods. The most vivid recollection is of the start on the second morning—we stopped at some place to break the journey. I can see the snow on the ground, but this was not the vivid memory—my sister Carrie was, by oversight, left behind. My mother must have thought the older girls were looking after her, and they must have thought that she was; but great was the commotion when the loss of the baby was discovered. The caravansary made an abrupt halt and a swift re- turn and found the baby still asleep on the bed. We must have reached Olean, for I have written a chapter on my memories of the place; but I fail to find any tablet of the me- mory recording that the band came out to meet us, or that a public reception was given in the town hall. Ww 3 Pe The “Olive Branch” Takes Root in “Oil Town.” Orean, Cattaraugus Co., N. Y., then small-typed on the time- tables of the main line of the Erie Railway and, sunning itself on the banks of the muddy Genesee Valley Canal, was at that time a distributing depot for oilwell supplies, though later itself a forest of oil derricks that extended all the way up Oil Creek Valley to Cuba and goodness knows where else. In the geography class it is ‘‘at the juncture of Oil Creek with the Allegheny River.’’ Uncle James Walwarth, a brother-in-law of my father, and also a tanner and currier, lived in Olean—accent the ‘‘ann.’’ So we were introduced to him, Aunt Mary and five cousins—two girls and three boys—metaphorically speaking and especially as regards the latter; boys scorn conventional introductions. The youngest, Fred, was at a playable age; William, the eldest, was in the army along with our brother George and Uncle Jackson Foote, a brother of Aunt Mary’s, a “‘little peculiar,’’ but a sort of chum of us boys later. Oblivion is the name of the street on which we lived, but I think we dwelt in two different houses (at different times). The one which I remember best overlooked the grounds of Mr. Barse, a lead- ing business man of the place who was my first mental impersona- tion of Croesus. One of the most coveted privileges was to be allowed to go a- cross the canal, and away down towards the river and tannery, to ‘*Freddie’s house,’’ to play. Fred was a brilliant playwright and plot-hatcher. There was always a battle hetween the ‘‘Unions’’ and “‘Rebels’’ to be fought with alder popguns or squirtguns, or some hostile Indians to be routed out of the currant-bushes. Besides, Aunt Mary usually had a pan of cookies, and she didn’t set them on the highest shelf, The principal of the Olean school that time was a coarse bully, (I’m glad I’ve forgotten his name). He fits into the same class, in my thoughts, with the calaboose architecture of the almost paintless schoolhouse. To wit: on my first day he sent me to the blackboard to subtract in four or five figures and I knew nothing of ‘‘borrowing’’ (16) and “‘carrying,’’ and, left to my unaided ingenuity, when the minu- end was greater than the subtrahend I obligingly subtracted from the bottom upwards, for which acrobatic feat I had my head bumped against the blackboard. But his Nemesis was sleuthing him: one day a lusty young Irish- man who “‘had it in’ for the pedagogic despot laid him out with a stick of four-foot wood. It was the most awful and tragic event that my optics had peeled on. ‘‘Pat’’ was overcome and imprisoned in the woodshed, and my heart quite stopped beating as I sneaked a- round the corner to get a look at the awful monster; yet every boy in the school secretly idolized him. I had a lady (?) teacher, later, who was quite as malicious and crue] as the principal. She stung into us with her tongue sufferings that he inflicted with his fists. I have tried to forgive her for getting the nickname ‘“‘Indian’’ fastened on me. She asked me, in the geo- graphy class, to what race of men I belonged, and I triumphantly answered, ‘“‘American.’’ That made me a target for her sarcasm. It isn’t necessary to know her name, either. The boys henceforth hailed me as ‘‘Indian’’—and my complexion was almost dark enough for one—until I wanted to fight. But the only fight that I remember distinctly, in all my life, was with a boy at recess. Of course he was a larger boy than I—they always are— and when we clinched and I happened to fall on top of him, I was afraid to let him up, and so ‘‘sat on the lid’’ until the school bell rang, and both of us had to hustle to get into our seats. I could never forget a ‘‘War Meeting’’ which I attended, on the green, in front of the Baptist Church. A company of volunteers was enlisted, and a quantity of money for bounties, and hospital supplies, were subscribed. I felt a thrill of awe that vibrates my spine yet, when the first man went forward to enlist as a soldier. Here was the REAL THING! This man was going to face BULLETS! My brother George wrote ‘‘war thrillers’’ from the battlefield, describing how it felt to be under fire and hear the bullets sing, until they made my flesh creep. But the nearest I ever came to see- ing actual war, in those days, was when some drunken volunteers (17) fought in the hotel, and chased one another out of doors with clubbed muskets; and on July 4 the man who was ramming home a charge in the cannon, on the green, had his arm blown off by a premature explosion. One of our favorite playgrounds was an island in the river. The boys waded the “‘riffle,’’” but I was at first afraid to wade. I had heard of alligators in the river, and my cousin George Walrath had to carry me over. Sometimes we went in a boat on the river, with older boys. I can see the grasses growing in the bottom, and small, dark objects that the boys told me were alligators. On one of these boating trips we ate some, ‘‘choke’’ cherries, on another island. Going home, I ate my usual bread-and-milk supper, and my mother was greatly alarmed when she learned that I had eaten choke cher- ries, as they with milk were supposed to be a combination for which no human stomach would stand. This is about all that I recall of life in Olean, except that there float through the picture-gallery of my mind, sometimes, snapshots of the long stone viaduct by which the canal crossed the creek—one of the seven wonders of the world to me then. I also visualize a nine- year-old boy behind Uncle James’ barn, drawing some experimental whiffs from a pipe hollowed out from an acorn, with a currant- bush stem from which we had burned the pith with a red-hot nee-. dle. The vision fades away with an excruciating upheaval of nature, and a limp, dead-to-the-world, greenish-chalky-faced boy. In winter, when the farmers across the river sledded logs and stove-wood to town, we boys hitched our sleds ‘‘on behind” by a slip-knot and rode out until we met a team coming in, when we would unhitch simply by letting go the end of the rope, and change over to the inbound sled and ride back. Once, before I had learned the mystery of this ‘‘let-go’’ hitch, a driver whipped up his horses, when I tried to unhitch, and took me to the river bridge. In those war days paper currency and coin became scarce, and the village merchants issued ‘‘due-bills,’’ in the way of change, while U. S. ‘“‘shinplasters’’ (fractional currency printed on paper, of as low denominations as ten cents) became a familiar sight. Postage (18) stamps, too, we used for small change. I recall my mother sending me to the grocery store with a fifteen-cent postage stamp, and on the way a boy offered me a pair of skates for it, but the bargain we made had to be ‘‘unscrambled’’ when my mother discovered my breach of trust. We boys took turns rocking the cradle of our sister Carrie, and I supplemented this and my errand-boy usefulness by learning to peel potatoes and wipe dishes, avery essential part of every boy’s education. Olean, then a village, has since grown into a young city. Once, in the eighties, I changed cars there and, having an hour to wait, strolled away from the railway to hunt up familiar scenes. The old frame schoolhouse had given way to amodern brick, building. A rail- road had taken possession of the canal bank. The grocery store was gone; the Baptist Church had been rebuilt. The ‘‘familiar haunts’’ weren’t familiar. The straggling, one-storied Olean of. my time was buried as completely out of sight as Pompeii or Babylon, and on top of its ruins was a spruce young city with a street-car line, electric lights, paved streets, uniformed policemen and all the airs of city- dom. Wy, 3E€ Striking My Gait As A Farmer. 66 ie lure of the soil’? took my father away from Olean to Cuba, when I was about ten years old. The little farm of forty acres, which he bought through a second cousin of my mother, Mr. John Fox, whose land adjoined, was about a mile east of Cuba village. The Erie Railroad cut the tract in two, just across the road from the red house and back of the barn. My father worked in Stevens’ tannery, which was on the bank of the Genesee Valley Canal in the village of Cuba, and Uncle Jack- son Foote and we boys did most of the farming, except in the hay- ing season, We had a black mare named Dolly, and a democrat wagon, and one of us boys—often myself—drove father to his work in the morn- ing and brought him home at night. Dolly had one bad failing—once loose in the pasture, she would not be caught if she could say “neigh.’’ Salt, grain, the most cajoling whistle and calls were re- ceived with a snort anda kick of her heels; we (sometimes the entire family) had to drive her into the barnyard and corner her in the barn to get the bit in her mouth. When she had a colt, we could catch the dam by first catching the foal. Uncle Jackson, on the alternate days when he was not shaking with the ague that had disabled him for futher campaigning in the South, was a slow but reliable man. When team work was required, he ‘‘doubled up”? with John Fox. We boys had our stunts of picking up stones, hoeing and other farm work, after school and Saturdays. We went to school in the little red schoolhouse, about half a mile towards Cuba. It had a woodshed built onto one end, and was atypical shabby, unfenced New York state district schoolhouse of its time. It seems to me, now, that life just began to take on zest and edge from the day we moved into our little red farm-house. I could spin out a hundred pages of details that sharply grip my memory, but Iam not rich enough to hire anyone to read them. Not that I care much as to readers—-I am writing this largely for the fun of (20) “‘reminiscing.’’ I suppose my imagination had just begun to get a- wake, and it doesn’t take much to make things rich and fine toa boy at that stage in the game. Two small creeks that ‘‘looped the loops’’ across the meadow, back of the house, were well near the centre of the stage of our youthful activities. They are on the map of my memory respectively as the ‘‘Big Creek’’ and the ‘‘Little Creek.’’ The ‘‘little creek,’’ I think emptied into the ‘‘big creek,’’ when it was in the business; but it dried up in summer. The ‘‘big creek’? meandered across our place to John Fox’s, where were the ruins of an old water-mill that was as chock-full of interest to me as any castle on the Rhine is to a Cook tourist. In the “‘little creek’’ we built our dams that ran our water- wheels, and there was one shallow swimmin’ hole, big enough for slack-water raftsmen to navigate in. In the ‘‘big creek we fished for minnows, horned dace and suckers. Sometimes we would lie down on the banks and thrust our hands under the soday shelf that overhung the water, and pull out red suckers. My diminutive was ‘“‘Johnny,’’ and the other boys used to tease me, when enjoying these toothsome catches, fried to a crisp brown, by reciting: “‘Little fishie in the brook; Johnny catch him with a hook; Mama fry him in a pan; Johnny eat him like a man.’”’ Speaking of rafting, I might tell of an expedition to explore the Mississippi and Gulf of Mexico that ‘‘died a-bornin’ ”’ all because of a shabby piece of rope. This was after the Walrath family moved to Cuba (though I can’t be sure they didn’t move first) and Fred’s alluvial brain thought out and staged the play. We had the raft built; it was to run by steam—ostensibly. We planned to invert an old dishpan on the deck, amidship, and wire a joint of stove-pipe over a hole in the top, with another hole cut in the side of the pan as furnace door. Wouldn’t the smoke pour out of the stack, when a fire was built under the pan? We had built and (21) fired enough miniature sugar arches to know that it would. Be- yond the smoke we did trouble our brains to do any Watt-ing; where there was a good deal of smoke wasn’t there bound to be some steam-engine? As to provisioning, we hadn’t gone as far as Tom Sawyer had when he stole his mother’s spoon; the thing that troubled us most was getting under the division fences of all the forty-acre farms, until we came to the river. The thing that should have troubled us was that we had appropiated Mr. Fox’s horse halter as a landing cable, and he discovered it and told our father———I will draw a veil ov- er the rest; that is not what he drew from us (n. j. m.). After that we had plenty of work, picking stones from the meadow, though recent happenings made it rather painful for us to stoop for them. : Father could sell to the railroad, for track ballast, all the stone of which we could rid the meadows, and so kill two benefits with one stone (c. 1.) So, from morning till night we boys dotted the meadow with piles of stones which Uncle Jackson hauled to the rail- road. It was during this monotonous work that the theological bent of my mind first appeard. The mind-hopper keeps busy, and a great deal depends on the grist put in it. I fell to thinking about my Sun- day-school lessons and snatches of the minister’s sermons that I could understand. I wondered why I was the kind of boy I was—if I had to be, or just wanted to be. I settled the question of free moral agency right there. I was a fatalist before I knew the word for the malady. I was a ‘‘hardshell’’ Baptist; I had heard e- nough of the doctrine of election to make me feel that Adam had to be Adam, and I had to be I. Next to ours was the Williams’ farm, Mr. Williams also presid- ing over ‘‘the village smithy.’’ The Williams’s had an adopted son whose dearest ambition was to be a second Daniel Boone. He wore a coonskin cap, sometimes with rooster’s feathers in it. I suspect it was lanky Jim Williams who initiated us boys into the yellow-back, warpath brand of dime novel. It may have been (22) Fred Walrath, or Mickey Horan; but anyway Charlie McKay, the Cuba newsdealer, kept stacks of them his show windows, and there was no other circulating library. They circulated from one boy’s pocket to another’s, and filled all our veins with the ‘‘wild injun”’ virus. Mike Horan’s brother was the neighborhood cobbler. The Ho- rans lived across the railroad from the school-house, up the hill, but nearer to us across-lots, and many an afternoon and evening we burrowed in Mickey’s hayloft and warmed over the thrills in our In- dian stories. Annie, Mickey’s sister, played with us just like a boy; and I remember one time they walled me up in the den in the hay- mow with her and called out that I couldn’t come out until I kissed her. The score was never published. As a ‘‘Midget’’ newspaper man I believe firmly in advertising, but with discrimination (n. j.). Jim Williams could borrow his father’s shotgun and actually go hunting. There were only woodchucks, squirrels, partridges and hawks in our woods, but what was the odds—our imaginations could easily fill them with bears and Indians’ graves, if not live Indians. Over one of the mounds made by a decaying log, we once scratched the name ‘‘Osceola’’ on a flat stone, and made the gullible Jim be- lieve that live Indians would come back to visit the grave of the Seminole chief. The ‘‘swimmin’ hole’’ was in the big creek in the Williams’ lot, close by the sugar camp. I just paddled around the edge, touching bottom with my fingers; but one day a bigger boy pushed me out be- yond my depth and I SWAM (s.)! This is always an epochal day in a boy’s life. It couldn’t have meant more to Santos-Dumont when his flying-machine first circled around the Kiffel Tower. The proper time to ‘‘go swimmin’’’ was three times a day, re- gularly, and as many extra as could be crowded in:—in the morning before school, at noon recess, and right away after school ‘‘let out.’’ Two facts a boy had to master before he passed the first degree— that a hot stone would draw water out of the ear, and that wrig- gling the toes kept away cramps. Swimming was a social function. No boy ever went in alone, for purposes of cleanliness. And whenever a boy’s mother gave him (23) a basin of water, soap and cloth and told him that there was dirt e- nough behind his ears to grow a hill of potatoes, he instantly resent- ed with a howl the imputation that water was meant to wash in (n. j.). The magic words ‘“‘sugar bush’ let me into a vast and alluring subject. When the first warm, languid spring days set the bees to buzzing, snow forts and skates lost their charm in the preparations for making maple sugar. We cut sumac, sawed, split and ‘‘pithed’’ spiles. Buckets were overhauled and excitement worked up towards the top notch. Uncle Jackson would bore into the maple trees a- round the house and, after several trials, the exulting cry would ring out: “THE SAP RUNS!”’ The sled was loaded with buckets and spiles, and away to the sugar‘bush we hurried to begin tapping the trees. Uncle Jackson hor- ed the holes and drove the spouts (spiles) and we boys put the buck- ets: hung them on the trees by nails, or set them on the snow. Next day came sap gathering. The Williams’ ‘‘flumed’”’ their sap down the hillside to the sugar-house in a line of troughs. We had a more level sugar-bush and hauled our sap in a covered hogshead, ona sled, Uncle Jackson and we boys carrying from the trees along the route to the sled. It was a sweet symphony to hear the sap swash around in the tub. When the sled threatened to upset, and all of us had to throw our weight on the upper side, it was as thrilling as sail- ing a canoe. As soon as the boiling began, one of us settled down to feeding the fire and watching against the pan boiling over. It helped, to grease the upper inside part with a pork-rind tied to a stick. From the storing-tank to the sheet-iron pan the sap ran in a supply spout, with a trickle. While one boiled the others cut wood and gathered sap. Just in front of the arch on which the pans were set was the sugar-house, where we kept dry wood, and where was a pile of straw on which we could recline at night—for when the sap was running fast we had to boil all night. To be allowed to stay after (24) dark and boil sap was the crux of romance. To lie on the straw and watch the red sparks leap from the chimney, to see the hot, steamy liquid swirling and foaming in the pan, to realize with a proud creeping of your spine that you were a mile from the house, in the midst of the dark, deep, mysterious woods, to roast potatoes and ap- ples in the ashes and sizzle ham over the coals—well, there was just one thing more to be desired, and that was to try the thickening sap until it was “‘ropy’’ and would flake off the spoon, and then to ladle out the sweet syrup and take it to the house and “SUGAR OFF,”’ as we did on the kitchen stove, and pour some of the hot, thick waxy stuff on the snow to harden, or to stir some of it in a saucer until it came out dry and granulated, and to fill up on this sweet stuff un- til your appetite was cloyed and you wondered why it did not any longer taste sweet. We molded our sugar in milkpans and set the cakes to drain in a barrel, just at the head of the stairs. We boys slept in that up- stairs room, and we would tiptoe to the barrel, after we were ready for bed, and bite off the thin edges of the cakes and go back to bed with our mouths and hands full of the sweet stuff. After a visit to the barrel, mother would remark that mice were nibbling the sugar, and she guessed it was drained enough. But on cake-baking days, a boy was always wanted to shave sugar off the cakes, and many a time the knife mysteriously found its way to his mouth instead of to the dish. Those were the sweetest days of my life (f?). My prolixity is going to bankrupt me, but I must tell you how we made money and spent it. We picked up scrap-iron and sold it for a half a cent a pound. We picked strawberries, raspberries and blackberries and sold them in Cuba at ten cents a quart. We chewed gum while berry-picking, to keep from eating as fast as we picked. We picked up apples, gathered nuts, and once two of us brought a calf home from up near Friendship, the next town towards Elmira, for John Hubbell, near the schoolhouse. I use the term ‘“‘brought home’”’ in an accomodative sense, for, really, that strong, rollicking (25) calf at the end of the rope brought us most of the way faster than we liked to travel. You have to read ‘‘Ezekiel and the Calf’’ to rea- lize what I mean (n. j.). We spent most of our money on the Fourth of July and circus and fair days in Cuba. I shall never forget that Fourth on which I literally ‘‘blew in” over a dollar on gunpowder for my little cannon Mr. Williams made me, firecrackers, soda water, gingerbread, burnt fingers and stomach-ache (n. j.) and went home at night with a heavy jag of disgust over the fact that my money and I were soon parted. Dan Rice’s one-ring Circus was a live-wire thriller. One means of entertainment that didn’t burn up money was watching train loads of soldiers going by to the war, some in uniforms and armed, and others raw recruits in civilians dress. At other times train loads of immigrants went by, westward bound, as good as a show, in their quaint old-country peasant dress. Sometimes, when it was wet, the trains stalled on the grade just in front of the house, and we could run over and make acloser inspection of ‘‘Lincoln’s boys.’’ Often we would hang on the steps of the caboose for a short ride. Once, when there was a wreck at the Summit, between Cuba and Friendship, Fred Walrath and I climbed on the caboose of the wrecking train and rode to the wreck. I can never forget the pas- senger coaches lying on their sides by the track, with shattered win- dows. I brought away a yellow slat from a window shutter and used it as a school ruler. The passenger coaches were all canary yellow in those days. Of course we went to school, a long term in winter and a short term in summer. My sister Louise, who had attended the academy in Cuba, taught one year. Antoinette Fox, our neighbor was one of my teachers, with whom I was much enamored: I fully resolved to mar- ry her, and a Miss Cornelia Merritt, of Cuba, sister-in-law to Dr. Parker, who brought four or five of us, including myself, through scarlet fever, taught in ‘‘the little red schoolhouse’’ several terms. She was a fine type, sweet, ladylike, wholesome. The biggest event of the three years here was the birth of my (26) youngest brother, Harry. I ceased to be a Calvinist and became a free moral agent when I promised that I would never be cross or quarrelsome with him: we all so promised, so much did we love the baby boy. I must have been ten or eleven when father got the ‘‘Western fever’’ from Uncle James Walrath who had visited his sister in Mich- igan, and we Jeft the Cuba farm with its little red house and went to Michigan via Buffalo and Lake Erie to Detroit. Note.—I am convinced, now, that there is too much humor in these pages to keep track of it by means of the key I started to use. The mistake I made was in not devising a key to indicate the dull passages, as that would have been so much less trouble. However, I shall not coddle the reader any more, but leave him to his own resources, hereafter. Three Years In Michigan. WwW. travelled by the Erie Railway to Buffalo, N. Y., where we spent a few days with my Aunt Nancy Ensign. This was my first introduction to a large city, and it was doubly painful because I had a large boil on my thigh, against which everyone on the street seemed to want to bump, and because I fell and struck my face a- gainst the pavement, getting a swollen and blackened eye. We sailed from Buffalo in a Lake Erie propeller. I remember little of the week’s trip save that all of us were seasick except Father and Brother Harry. Father attributed his exemption to his smoking. I can barely recall him walking on the deck with Harry in his arms. From Detroit we took the Michigan Central Railroad to Wayne, only a short distance. We were cordially received by the Sterlings. Mr. Sterling was owner of a large tract of land. Mrs. Sterling his second wife, formerly Mrs. Sayers, was Uncle James Walrath’s sister. Her two sons, Henry and James Sayers, lived with her and Mr. Sterling and his two sons. He let us have a house for the winter, so that father could have time to look around for a suitable farm. Not willing to be idle, he bought a team of horses and took a contract of cutting and hauling cordwood to the railroad. While he was cutting the wood, the horses were eating their heads off in the stable and growing fat and saucy. Rob, a large, handsome chestnut gelding, we were very proud of, but not more so than he was of himself. Nell was a spirited little sorrel mare witha lively gait. Rob became so frisky from lack of ex- ercise that we boys were afraid to lead him out to water. As soon as he was outside the stable, in the crisp air, he would snort and rear and plunge, and a couple of chips tied to the end of the rope might have controlled him as well. So we carried water to him. The school which we attended was about three miles away, and we walked through the snow. Sometimes our boots, our luncheon of sandwiches, doughnuts and apples, and once a bottle of ink in my pocket, were frozen on the way. I found Jim Sayers a very friendly, companionable boy. He and (28) I sat together in school, and we were very chummy outside. The schoolhouse had three rows of desks, unpainted but much carved, a- round three sides of the room, facing the big box stove in the cen- tre. Each row was raised one step above the one in front of it, so as to give the teacher an unobstructed view of all that was going on at these desks. Nevertheless there were occasions for punishment, and some- times a boy was made to crawl through a small door under the plat- form on which was the teacher’s desk, on the fourth side of the room, into a dark, cramped ‘‘cubby-hole.’’ There was another schoolhouse nearer, but not in our district. My sister Louise taught in that school. I remember it chiefly be- cause the Free Methodists held revival meetings there at night, and almost everyone turned out to them and packed the small room. Then, by the time the big box stove got under full pressure there were several units of caloric to spare. The elder usually took off his coat before he had proceeded far, in his frantic style, and even then his animated gestures and orotund speech brought out the perspiration freely. Indeed, the whole service was of a hysterical, irrational order, often the remarks were coarsely personal. I will cite one instance: as a certain family entered, who had once been members of that connexion but had ‘‘gone over’’ to the the Baptists, the leader start- ed up singing: “‘Backsliders are returning; _ Backsliders are returning!’’ Anyone who chose to do so arose and sang, whenever there was a pause. My voice at this time was just beginning to find its musical register, and I had conceit, or naivete, enough one evening to break out in a hymn; and no one seemed especially astonished at the pre- cocious proceeding. Perhaps the elder thought I was pious beyond my years, and not long for this ‘‘vale of tears.”’ But if he could have seen little me edging up toa girl after the close of the service, and asking her if I could ‘‘see her home,”’ he would have changed his mind. I remember that her name was Celia (29) and that she had a muff and let me put my hand in the muff with hers. But a few nights after she walked away with another boy, and the rest of the boys affirmed that I had ‘‘got the mitten.” I didn’t seem to have a mitten, but I evidently no longer had a share in a muff. We left Wayne in the spring for York, Washtenaw County (the next county north) where father had bought a farm. Our household goods were taken by our team and the Sterlings’, my Brother Will and I taking turns in riding on a load and driving a cow. My sister Louise remained to finish her school, and married George Frain, son of a well-to-do farmer. He, later on, bought a hotel in Deerfield, where he died soon after. She took a course in the State Normal school and resumed teaching. Our farm of fifty acres was two miles south and one mile east of Saline, in what was known as an ‘‘oak opening.’’ The soil was rather light and sandy, with a stretch or two of swamp through which trickled small streams. The house and farm were fairly good, and I look back with liking to this home and the neighbors about us. After starting farming operations, Father worked in Seeley’s tannery, Saline, and we boys ran the farm. I learned to plow, culti- vate and do other kinds of farm work. We grew enough wheat for our own bread, sorghum enough for ‘‘sweetening,’’ apples, of which we dried many; we kept a flock of sheep, and several cows from the calves of which we increased our live stock. It is a fine experience for any boy to help rear colts, calves and lambs. The first time he milks a heifer he has helped to raise, and which as a pet calf with itching horns has helped to raise him, he has a pardonable pride in his achievment that no thousand-dollar toy could ever give him. There’s lots of excitement in teachiny a weaned calf to drink milk or porridge, by putting the tips of your fingers in its mouth and, when it gets to sucking them, lowering its head into the pail. You must watch closely that it doesn’t get its nose too far in and inhale the liquid, for then it will give a snort and besprinkle your clothes. And you must be prepared for a sudden butt, or away goes pail, food, calf and boy! (80) *194NJ937] OY} ‘ssounzjo] siqy For one of our yearling calves we made a harness by which we hitched it to a hand-sled and put it in the public cab service. It was fine fun until, one day, the victim’s two-year-old bull brother ob- jected to such cruelty to animals, lowered his head, bellowed and charged on the occupants of the droshky. Imagine the fence-climb- ing we did! . Those were haleyon days, in spite of the fact that the ten acres of corn had to be dropped, covered, hoed twice, cut shocked and husked before we could start to school, in the fall, and backs would ache and hands chap and crack. Hot mutton tallow rubbed into the cracks, before going to bed, was our specific. The firewood had to be cut and hauled and, after school began, the horses, sheep, cows and pigs must be fed and cared for, sometimes with a lantern before and after daylight, on short winter days. But just the same, we had oceans of fun, There was a mill pond about a mile across lots were we swam, boated, fished for bullheads and skated. Glorious sport, the skating! Then, I remember water- wheels that I made and ran by the power from my own dams in the brook. I filed notches in tin box-lids and made buzz-saws that would BUZZ when geared by a string belt to the water-wheels. I made alder pumps that PUMPED. There was an old blacksmith shop on the place that afforded a dandy rainy-day playhouse. We boys made our own wagons, carts, sleds, balls, bats, kite, tops, etc. The school was about a mile west, and we hada good teacher, Miss Lottie Kelsey, one of our neighbors. I made good progress in the ‘‘three R’ s.”’ At recess we played town ball, and we had horse stables in which we kept our broomstick steeds with which we ran Derby’s. I won’t say that I liked school so well that I never played ‘‘hook- ‘ey.’’ I remember wearing two pairs of trowsers and a coat padded with a sheepskin to school one morning, because I had gone to the mill pond at recess the day before and overstaid. After it was all over, Lassured the boys, with my utmost bravado, that ‘‘it never hurt a mite;’’ I ready believe I got through it with less punishment than Miss Lottie, but she was the kind of a lady to make a boy feel cheap after- (31) wards for having hurt her feelings. I wasn’t such abad chap, though about that time I did come home from Saline one Saturday afternoon with my first cigar—I had paida whole nickel for it. But I was absorbing better ideals from the teach- er and community. There were many fine families, like the Kelseys who lived in a large white house with green window shutters, an ear- mark of the ‘‘400’’ and had a piano in their parlor. There are no better citizens in the United States than some of these southern Michigan farmers. The Cobbs, for whom I worked in wheat harvest the last summer of our stay there, were a solid Presbyterian family. The war had made men scarce, and woman and boys were helping in the har- vest. I received $2 a day for driving the team on the reaper. I worked the last month or two for Henry and Will Kelsey, stalwart big-heart- ed men—nature’s noblemen. For social diversion we had, in winter, sleighing parties. Four horses hitched to a box-sled, the long box filled with straw. Plenty of buffalo-robes and blankets on top,and we packed between like sardines, each lad beside his own lassie. If it was very cold we put heads and all under the robes. Shockingly unsanitary! Yes,and other kinds of shocks—I had ’em myself. I was only eleven, but I got in under my older brother’s and sisters’ coat-tails. I had a ‘‘best girl’”’ —two of ’em while we lived there. Sometimes several sleighloads went together, and those behind would watch for a stop, slip ahead and steal the bells off the horses of the front sleigh. Arriving at some hospitable home we proceeded to have a ‘‘surprise party.’’ We carried a case of tinned oysters, crackers, pickles, cakes, etc., and soon the ‘‘oyster supper’’ was steam- ing on the table. After that, games—copenhagen, drop the handker- chief, postoffice ete. ‘Kissing games ?’’ I rather guess! There were no germs in those days. Far less demoralizing to kiss in good company, in the light, than without spectators in the dark. On our way home we sang. I recall entertaining the whole sleigh-load once with, “‘Just before the battle, mother,’’ and being complimented on my promising voice. I used to take my ‘‘best girl’ (82) out coasting, by moonlight, on my jumper, made of barrel staves, which was as fleet as a reindeer on the crusted snow. Her cheeks and lips were as rosy as the red-cheeked apples I used to carry to her, at school. Best girl No. 1 (York—remember I had one at Wayne) had flaxen hair and blue eyes. No. 2 was dark, tall and dignified. I think she had too much sense to fully sanction such puppy love. I don’t think I ever kissed her, but I adored her, just the same. We attended the Baptist Sunday-school in Saline, walking the three miles, though sometimes we rode the horses. I remember one Sunday driving a pair of mules with my mother and Mrs. Dunning, whose husband owned the mules and the vehicle. My feelings were dreadfully lacerated, for the mule in Michigan lacked social standing and eclat. I believe the ladies tried consoling me with the remark that no one would taunt me-with it in twenty years to come. My Sunday-school teacher was an elderly woman who was very good to us. One Christmas night I walked to the entertainment and received from the tree a handsome blue-and-white checked woolen scarf. It appealed to me far more than a present of a Bible, or an “Ode to an Odd Fellow’”’ would have done. I killed my first rattlesnake here in Michigan—a massaugua. I was gathering hazelnuts, barefooted, when I almost stepped on the sleeping serpent. A swift tactical movement towards the rear put me in possession of a fence stake, without wakening Mr. Rattler, and soon I had his rattles in a bottle,— eight I think—exhibiting them to the boys. I was a HERO! Altogether those years in Michigan were good ones for us boys. I was about fourteen when father sold the farm and we went back to Cuba, N. Y. I had come into possession of my first shot-gun while here. I had become an inveterate reader of The New York Ledger. I was beginning to be fussy about my clothes. Just before we left Father, who believed that a minor’s earnings belonged in the pater- nal pocket, bought me ashort broadcloth jacket, with brass buttons. ~ J could not object to the quality of the yarment, but it was altogeth- er too kiddish for a young man of my calibre. I began to feel the (33) movings of adolescence. I dreamed dreams and saw visions. One vis— ion was of myself when I was grown—a tall, handsome young man with a silky black moustache. (34) ene creer encore The Victim, At the Age of Fourteen. [VES SSeeesessSs sees eeeaSeS DUCUU CCU eee E EEE: on BUCA SEUeeeeeseeeeeese We Hike Back To York State. | was a gawky gossoon of fourteen when Father took us all back to Cuba. It was a fine thing for Cuba—it put it on the map. The palatial ‘‘D. & C.”’ steamer took us across the lake from Detroit. to Cleveland, thence the Atlantic & Great Western Railway (now the N. Y., P. & O),and the familiar old Erie. Father had rented the ‘‘Kirk’’ farm, a mile west of Cuba, in the Oil Creek Valley, which was half a mile wide, with Oil Creek, the Genesee Valley Canal and the Erie Railroad running through the middle of it, and a road on either side of them. His plan was to keep ten or twelve cows and sell the milk at the cheese factory. Our only horse was a blind bay mare that, Father used to say, knew every step of the way to the tannery, the cheese factory and the Baptist Church. Actually, in winter, when the snow was packed into a beat- en track, I have driven her to Stevens’ tannery after father, and back, with loose rein, without her once stepping out of the road. One of the first things Father did was to enter me in a singing- school in town. I was pushed in, as it were. I may have had a voice, but I wasn’t caught young enough; I had now reached the girl-shy age, and there were more girls than boys in this sol-fa class. I went through the course of ‘“do-re-me-fa-ing,’’ clear into the public concert in the town hall, at the end; but solo parts were not my specialty. When we had company, Father always said: ‘‘Come, John- ny, get your singing-book and give us a song.’’ I knew I had to be crucified, and I sang as blithely asI could: “Spring is coming; spring is coming; Don’t you hear it in the rills?’’ There may have been a redbreast lilt in my voice but there was no spring, or rill, or thrill in my soul; there was a lump of ice. The school in our district was made up largely of ‘‘paddies’’ from the ‘‘shanties’’ as we called them, of the Irish railroad section men. There was one fine family of farmers, across the valley from us—the Gordons. Charlie Gordon and I were about the same age, (35) and he became a better chum even than Jim Sayers had been. Gor- don was a clean-cut, manly fellow, quick and strong in all our school sports, courageous and very loveable in disposition—head and should- ers above any other boy in the school, when it came to ideals and character. His sister Mary taught the school at onetime. The Gordon family were good Methodists, and later I attended the Methodist Sunday-school, with Charles. At that time the ‘‘deestrick’’ schools of New York were not graded. The usual method, or unmethod, was for the first class in arithmetic to begin at the front of the book (barring, of course, ‘‘Peter Rice eats fishes and catches eels’’)on the first day of school, “cipher’’ as far through it as possible by spring, and the next fall to begin at the same place and go over the same ground, with as much additional as might be. Few of the older scholars attended the summer term. And this process of iteration and reiteration went on, world without end, or until a scholar was too old to attend school. Many of the larger boys never finished the intermediate arithmetic. In many of the schools, pupils brought blank copy books, or quires of loose foolscap paper, and the teacher “‘set copies’’ in penmanship. No two teachers wrote the same hand, hence it was impossible for a pupil to form a symmetrical style of writing. ‘‘Spen- cerian,’’ and other books with engraved copies, were just beginning to come into use. The spelling exercises were as crude as the rest. Ten minutes before the spelling class, with its ‘‘head’’ and ‘‘foot,’’ was called up to toe a crack in the floor, all over the room, buzzing like swarms of bees might be heard from the lips of studious pupils. We learned to spell ‘‘cat,’’ for instance, by dinning against our own tympanums the sounds of the common names of the letters—not the real phonet- ic values—thus: ‘‘C-a-t—cat; c-a-t—cat; c-a-t—cat,’’ a hundred times or more. If a pupil missed a word, the first one below him who spelled it right took his place. No one told us how to study; most of the teachers knew nothing of pedagogics. There was no written school work except in the copy books and ‘‘sums’’ on the slates; no map-drawing, no singing, no (86) callisthenics, no current-events class, no physiology or hygiene. ; Except for ball and prisoner’s base, the games were usually rough:— knocking off hats or punching, pulliag the post, and rough- and-tumble wrestling; in winter snowballing and skating. More than once I went home with a sleeve torn from my coat. One day Jack Glavin, a big boy from the ‘‘patch’’ (the railroad men’s shantytown) asked permission to go out, and exploded a railroad torpedo under the window. The teacher, a strapping young fellow, whipped him with hickory rods twisted together and seasoned in the stove. Jack resisted by siezing the whip, for which he was struck in the face with a naked fist. Such barbarous scenes as this, little children were compelled to sit through, sometimes the feminine portion of the school in tears or hysterics. From that hour Jack had it in for Berger, the teacher, and the large contingent of ‘‘paddies’’ stood in with Jack. The word was passed around that on the last day of school Berger ‘‘would get”’ his, with interest. Some of us expected that the day before would be the last, but he turned up smiling and confident, in his Sunday suit. When school exercises were over he proposed to teach usa new game, He placed the boys at their goals, Jack Glavin farthest west of any and, last of all, took his own position farthest towards Cuba—east. When all were ready for the word, he picked up his handbag and sprinted towards town. He had taken care to give Jack too heavy a handicap. That was the last we ever saw of Berger. I learned little that was good in this school. I took additional lessons in smoking, en- couraged by Jim Merrill, who lived on the second farm from us, and who went to school with me. Next summer we boys got hold of an old army musket, which my Brother George brought back from the war. We had it bored out as a shot gun. I shot a few squirrels, woodchucks, rabbits, ete. The next winter I attended the graded school in Cuba to which Will had gone the winter before. The village of Cuba had just built a two-story brick building and secured as principal, Mr. W. H. Lewis, a thoroughly qualified man. In addition to the town boys, many of the brightest farmers’ boys were attracted to the school. I had saved (37) enough money, from wages for a day’s work now and then, berries, scrap-iron sold, skins of muskrats etc. for which I trapped, to pay for tuition and books. I had one fox pelt. We had found Reynard dead, probably poisoned. By cutting the winter’s wood in advance, and by one of us com- ing home at noon to let out the cows, we could get the benefit of a town school. Some of the town boys were disposed to call me ‘‘hay- seeds;’’ I could not play ball as well as they; I was painfully shy and had not the assurance of manners, or cut of coat. But I entered the seventh grade, which was a large one, and in a few weeks I was quietly forging ahead of some of these same town boys, towards the top of the class. I had a good memory, mathematics was easy for me, and I appreciated my opportunity, and each monthly examina- tion saw my percentage mounting a little higher, until I reached 99% and I took my seat next to the sweetest girl in the town, with bewitch- ing blue eyes, chestnut curls and a smile that to me seemed angelic. At the next examination my average went up to 100 and hers fell a fraction below, so we exchanged places. After that, for a whole term, my papers were always marked 100%, and my Father was the proudest man in Cuba. He wanted, above all things, to have his children educated. But later on I grew careless and fell back a frac- tion of one per cent and lost my place, and you would have thought, from the serious way Father took it, I had done something to dis- grace the name. Our next principa], Mr. Blakeslee, was just as good a teacher as Mr. Lewis, though different. Mr. Lewis had a very happy way of clinching things with unforgettable stories, or sometimes a Scrip- ture quotation. He could be satirical, and make us laugh at our own foibles. He showed us how to fold our papers correctly, how to walk across the room and turn properly, how to close a door noiselessly, and a number of little things that I never forgot. Mr. Blakeslee was not so much of a talker, but a wonderful drill- master. Thoroughness was his hobby. It was great good-fortune to sit under two such teachers; it exemplified Garfield’s definition of a college—‘‘a log, with Mark Hopkins at the other end.”’ (38) Another teacher to whom I owe much was Miss Lawyer, under whom I had Civil Government. She took us through a most thorough analysis of the Constitution of the United States. It was during this stay in Cuba that the‘‘sweet affair’? to which I before referred, between the Cowans’ and Lambs’ came to a con- summatiom. Horace Lamb figuratively had been making sheep’s-eyes at my Sister Sophia, ever since our residence in Pennsylvania. Mean- time he had gone to California, via Panama, and as it was too long and expensive a return trip for a young man, whose bright prospects of success had not yet materialized into hard cash, to come back for a bride, she went out to him, and they were married at his father’s home, in Oakland. She travelled across the continent soon after the first transcontinental railroad was opened, and wrote back about see- ing antelopes and wild Indians from the car window. Horace Lamb became a successful building contractor. Some of the older buildings of the University of California were erected by him. He was killed by an accident, leaving Sophia with four children. About this time Father became obsessed by the idea of grow- ing fruit in Maryland. He made a trip of investigation to the East- ern Shore, where he bought a forty-acre farm. It was decided best for Will and I to remain for a time behind the rest of the family, who left in February. Father would not need all his boys at once, but he would need what we could earn and we were to try our for- tunes in the big world of men. So we put into the market our best resource—the muscle and training of farmer’s boys, and sold it, or in other words, “‘hired out;’’ Will, to Amasa Fuller, on Keller Hill, a mile or two from Cuba, and I to Leonard Amsden, a brother-in law, about a mile away from Full- er’s. I was to get $18 a month and ‘‘found, ’’ and Will $20. I was al- most nineteen. Maybe I didn’t have an acute attack of ‘‘spring fever’? during those first March days when I was sent alone to the woods to cut firewood! A little later my daily routine was to rise, it seemed to me about ten minutes after I retired, drive the cows from the pasture, (39) milk twelve of the fifty, cows, and work in the field until five, p. m. when we milked again. Shep, the dog went with me for the cows. I opened the bars and let him do the rest. He could count up to fifty as correctly as a Burroughs adding machine, for if one cow was miss- ing when he reached the bars, he would go back and round up the delinquent. So fully did I trust to his arithmetic and faithfulness that once Itook forty-one winks and the ‘‘old man’’ came up to the bars and wakened me in vigorous if not flattering phraseology. I deserved all ITever got from Amsden. Deacon Amsden, Leonard’s father, drove the milk-wagon to the cheese-factory, and he brought up the cows at night. He was a pret- ty fine specimen of a retired New York farmer. I did all kinds of farm work that season:- hauling manure, re- laying rail fences, rolling meadows (on the second day of May and the ground white with snow) plowing, dragging, cultivating, hoe- ing, mowing fence-corners, cradling oats, binding grain; but the item that bulked largest was haying. I cocked up the hay, helped pitch sixty tons onto the loads and mowed it away from the horse fork. I enjoyed most the pitching on. When two men shove the tines of their pitchforks into a well settled cock of hay, heave together and lift it bodily to the top of a load, there is an exhileration about the act that equals that of batting a two-bagger, or jumping an inch over the record running broad-jump. There’s a knack about it, too; you make a fulcrum of your thigh and throw all the muscles of the back into action, as well as the arm and shoulder muscles, and—up she goes! as easy as lifting your hat to a lady. But mowing away hay, in a hot, dusty, stuffy barn, as fast as a horse fork can lift it off the load—say; you may have my place. The ‘‘horse fork’’ was usual- ly operated by Walter Amsden’s blue-ribbon, matched twin yearling steers. Besides this ten-year-old boy, there were in the family two . very nice girls, older then Walter. Some of my earliest wages went to buy a silver watch—my first. I got a lot of satisfaction, holidays, out of target-shooting and hunt- (40) ing, with a double-barreled gun for which Father had traded the old carriage. I never went to church or Sunday-school, it being too far to walk, and the Amsden’s spring wagon being full without the “hired man.’’ They left a lunch for me on the pantry shelf, and maybe the cookie-pan didn’t suffer! But I was not in the “‘hired man’”’ class to stay, as many men were. I had an ambition to teach school, and to get more education. So, I took a day off and attended one of the examinations given by the County Superintendent of Schools. When I went home at night I said nothing to the Amsdens about having a teacher’s certificate in my pocket, but had many a proud look at it, in the attic, just be- fore turning in to bed. Later I took another day off and walked three or four miles to North Cuba to see Elijah Hoag, the trustee of the ‘‘Reservoir (or ‘‘Morgan’’) School.’’ As a result of my personal magnetism I was “‘hired’’ to teach the winter term, at the stagger- ing compensation of one doller a day and ‘‘board the district.”’ I told the Amsdens akout this, without first administering an anesthetic, or having mercifully prepared their minds for the shock of having a hired man who so out-classed the average. It was not generous or nice in me, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to play to the galleries. Probably their dominant feeling was one of commiseration for my future pupils. Snow fell about Nov. 1, and after that I worked in the woods, cross-cutting some big birches the wind had blown down. I wore rub- ber boots, and came home every night with my socks inside them frozen stiff. I worked, in all, nine months and most of the money— over $200 I think —went to help pay for the Maryland farm. The Saturday before it was time to begin my school I went to Uncle James Walrath’s, where I borrowed a hand bell with which to call my school ta order, and on Sunday afternoon sallied out for Elijah Hoag’s, Rawson, Cattaraugus Co., N. Y., which was to be my postoffice address for the next five months. He had a son, about my age, Adelbert, who was to be my pupil. (41) He soon invited me out to the barn and, after we had looked over the stock, suggested that we get up on the hay-mow and wrestle (“‘rassel’’ was the current pronunciation). ‘If you throw me,”’ he laughingly said, ‘‘you can teach the school. Last winter we put the teacher out.’’ We wrestled ‘‘square holt.’’ It was nip and tuck, but by good luck and awkwardness I managed to down him twice out of three times. ‘‘All right;’’ he said, ‘‘you can teach!”’ Adelbert, or ‘‘Dell,’’ as he was known, was my fast friend thenceforth. There were several other boys of my own age or older— one was twenty-two; but they never tried to put me out, though I actually had to pummel one or two. One was the son of a big, blust- ering saw-mill man, whom I had seen passionately throw a stick of wood at his hired man, in his own kitchen. When it came my next turn to board at that house, I knew my death-warrant was signed and sealed; but, instead of annihilating me, he thanked me for subduing his unruly cub, saying the drubbing I had given him was the best thing that ever happened him. Those twenty weeks were the loneliest since creation. While working on a farm, I had checked off the months, but I now check- ed off the weeks and, towards the last, the days, as prisoners in the penitentiary are said to do. I built the schoolhouse fires and swept the room in the morning. I staid in some of the homes a week at a time; in some a day. The Morgans, the Campbells, the Hoags, the Learns and some other homes I found very inviting and cheery. I had been advised to skip some, but I did not. In May, I took the Erie train for Elmira, thence the Northern Central and Pennsylvania for Philadelphia, thence the P. W. & B. Eastern Shore Branch to Harrington, Del., which was ten miles from Burrsville, Md., my new home. I was now quite a travelled man of the world. The long, black silky moustache was not fully in evidence yet, but there was a hope- ful downy appendage on my lip. (42) Se ener The Young Pedagogue, at Nineteen. WES AAAS ee TAOS BEEEESE EEE SSeeee Three Years In The “Sunny South.” A, far south as Caroline County, Eastern Shore of Mary- land, even in May, the days began to be decidedly ‘“‘sunny.’’ Its first effect on me was a languorous droop. I soon decided that, back in New York State, I had never know what real spring fever was. The sun burned and tanned me to leather. I quickly noticed that all the other young farmers protected the backs of their hands by wear- ing, while at work, what were known as leather ‘‘half-hands.”’ I immediately fell in love with the people of Union Corners, or Burrsville, and they took me right into their hearts—the rest of our family being already there, ‘‘Northerners’’ and ‘‘foreigners’’ though we were. Our little farm had a thin, sandy soil, but Father expected to grow Werries and peaches. A part of it was not cleared of the scrub pines that, there, speedily take possession of all untilled land. It was located one-fourth of a mile from Burrsville, where were the Methodist Protestant church and parsonage, stores and postoffice, shoe-shop, wheel-wright and blacksmith-shop, and the doctor’s office, strung along a shoestring village street for half a mile, to the M. E. Church. The community was very religious. I worked on the farm all summer, planting trees and vines, growing corn, sweet potatoes, peanuts, etc. In the fall I took the teachers’ examinations at Denton, the county seat, about seven miles west. There was no vacant school, so I decided to go back and teach my old school in North Cuba. My maternal Grandmother Williams, who had been making her home with us, went back to Uncle Lo’s, at Yorkshire, with me. As I remember. her she was a fine old lady, vigorous and high-minded. 1 never saw her again after our farewell, but she left me a legacy of good ideals and longings. I took back with me a barrel of sweet potatoes and a bag of pea- nuts, both of which were much enjoyed by the Hoags, more espe- cially because ‘‘John’’ had helped grow them. (43) Being too late for the public examinations, I had to go to Angel- ica, the county seat, for a private test. The new school examiner, Mr. Smith, was a recent college graduate with a lot of common sense. He did not put me through the written questions and answers, but conversed with me for an hour, drawing me out on various subjects. When he found that I had been in the Cuba Graded School, and had taken Civil Government under Miss Lawyer, he seemed much pleas- ed. Civil Government was a fad of his. He at once asked me to write a paper on it for the next teachers’ institute. This second term of school passed much more quickly than the first had done. At the suggestion of Examiner Smith, I took up oral teaching of Physiology and Anatomy, though I had never had it in school. The winter was broken by a twenty-mile sleighride to the in- stitute. I thoroughly enjoyed many of the homes of this district, and taught some very delightful children, taking away the photos. of all in analbum which I prized highly. With some of them I correspond- ed for years after. Before returning to Maryland I made another visit to Uncle Lo’s, at Yorkshire, which was my last for about ten years. After another summer’s work on the farm, in which we first enjoyed our own strawberries, I began teaching a new school which had been started at Burrsville, and which was held in a private house of Capt. W. B. Stephens. Meanwhile asubscription was raised for a schoolhouse which was completed, opposite the Methodist Prot- _. estant Church, early in the winter. All Burrsville, myself included, was very proud of the neat, one-room, brown building, with its bel- fry and bell. I taught this school for three years, running the farm during the summer with the assistance of my younger brothers, Charles, Horace and Harry. Brother Will had gone to Michigan after his first winter and spring in Maryland, where he became a hotel-keeper, farmer, and commission-merchant. He now lives in Blissfield, Mich. Father had gone back to Cuba to work in the tannery and finish paying for the farm. Charlie also went to Michigan, later, and (44) thence to Colorado, where he became a railroad engineer, for a while in Mexico, then in Central America, then in Texas. We have never heard from or been able to get trace of him since the Galves— ton flood. The Maryland winters were as mild and bracing as the summers were hot and debilitating. Only once do I recall snow enough for a sleighride. Dr. Lewis made a ‘‘pung’’ of a drygoods box and took me out. There was no such thing as a sleigh proper in Caroline. I ‘‘exchanged farm work’’ with the Stevens boys, Jim and John, both of whom were my pupils in winter. Bates Stephens, the young- est boy, who began school under me, afterwards graduated from Dickinson College, and became the Maryland State School Superin- tendent. It was while 1 was teaching in Maryland (1876) that I made a trip to Philadelphia with Jim Stephens, to see the Centennial Exposition. It was a marvelous eye-opener to me. I have attended half a dozen World’s Fairs since, but none of them stands as sharply outlined in my memory as those wonderful buildings and crowds in Fairmont Park. My Uncle Will and Aunt Phebe Cowen came to the Fair, and on to visitus with the two boys. It was a pleasant surprise to us. Uncle Will represented a large lumber firm on Lake Champlain. My contact with him aroused desires for a business career like his. I think Aunt Phebe rather encouraged it, I took a course in double-entry book-keeping under Charles Cahill, a recent graduate of the Bryant & Stratton Business College, Philadelphia. But it was my sister Carrie instead of me who later went to stay awhile at Uncle Will’s, at Whitehall, N. Y. I continued to teach. For the last two years of my teaching here there was not a case of corporal punishment. There couldn’t have been a better-disposed lot of scholars, big or little. I taught my sister Carrie and three of. my brothers. During the second year the school was graded, and I introduced written work, examinations and a merit system. Mr. Bevan, the country school examiner, was kind enough to say that (45) my school was among the best two or three of the county. I liked teaching so much that I was planning to try to take a course in the State Normal School in Baltimore, and had talked with State Superintendent Newell about it, at a county teachers’ institute. I remember one scheme I had in the back of my head was to supple- ment my savings by getting a set of stencil dies and cutting stencils after study hours. But whether I went to school or no, my bent was to study and improve. I had a local carpenter make a book-case for me out of a cherry tree we cut down. I sent to Baltimore, for a table with a drawer. Our blacksmith made me a wall lamp bracket, and I bought my first instalment of books, and settled down to night work. I in- vested chiefly in Steele’s text-books on astronomy, chemistry, phys- ics and physiology. But I recall one book was a story descriptive of Hawaii—I wish I had that book now as I write this, in Hawaii. I also took lessons in plane geometry of ‘“Tommy’’ Williams, a retired teacher who lived just over the line in Delaware. I passed the examination in it then required by the school board. Having no wall map of Maryland for my school, I bought an at- las of the state through Uncle John Foote, who was in the map- publishing business. I sent to Philadelphia for drawing instruments and muslin-backed paper and enlarged the map to about four feet by six, filled in all the details, colored it with water colors, and maybe the people didn’t think it was a wonder! Even Uncle John Foote did, when he saw it years after. I wanted to have it engraved and pub- lished, but publishers with whom I corresponded frightened me by the large sum demanded. _ I think I should have made an enthusiastic. growing and suc- cessful school teacher, but at this time my naturally religious bent was brought to a decision in a revival meeting in the Methodist Prot- estant Church, under the preaching of Rev. Wm. G. Holmes. I de- termined to be, by the grace of God, what I had all along known I should be—a Christian. So, after kneeling at the alter, I made a public profession and soon after joined The Methodist Protestant Church, of which I have ever since been a member. (46) x6 SLA SBSSOSBsS ssa aeeewaass ee At Twenty-one; Thinking Girlwise, but Bashful. EAE Dee ees 2 PR RUUPCE SCORER EBEEEEEES SESPSEEeeSeeeeeesseesese I should like to speak of Robert Smith and his brother and cou- sin; of ‘“‘Uncle Billy’? Harvey, Isaac Moore, and a score of other good-hearted Christian men in that church. The next year, under the pastorate of Rev, John L. Straughn, I was asked to lead a class meeting, and afterwards Brother Straughn approached me on the subject of becoming a minister. As my feelings had begun to tend strongly in that direction, I was licensed to preach by the quarterly conference. I call both these ministers my ‘‘spiritual fathers,’’ but it was more under the ministry of Rev. W. C. Ames who succeeded them, that I began a course of theological study, and prepared and preach- ed sermons. I owe much to this large-hearted, noble man. The first sermon was in the home church, father and mother in the congregation. I had memorized it and practiced it behind a hay-stack. I forgot never a word of it, but it seemed to me, during the delivery, that I was just a machine going through the motions I was geared to make, or a phonograph, or some other person speaking. I travelled the circuit with Mr. Ames, studied under his instruc- tions, and it was on his advice that that I decided to offer myself to the West Virginia Conference, which he had visited and whose needs were familiar to him, instead of seeking admission to the overcrowd- ed ranks of the Maryland Conference. During my last year in Maryland I made a trip to Baltimore with Capt. Stephens, by the steamer from Denton down the Chop- tank River and across Chesapeake Bay. While in the city I bought some books for a library we had started in the schoolhouse, in con- nection with a debating and literary society, in which I had taken my first lessons in forensic oratory. I also purchased some theologi- cal works, and a clerical suit. The accepted form among Methodists at that time was a black Prince Albert, vest and trowsers to match, and.a white lawn bow. After I returned home I let my chin whiskers grow, to match the coat and white necktie, which gave me a grave and reverend mien. (47) Before I leave the Eastern Shore I must pay a deserved tribute to the overflowing hospitality and good-heartedness of the people. A more simple, democratic, genuinely religious people I have never known. Everybody went to church, and respected the Sabbath. There were great camp-meetings in swing on the peninsula in those days, at Rehobeth, Milton, and our own Chilton’s Woods. The “‘big guns’’ from Baltimore and Wilmington preached in them. A church . that did not have its ‘‘revival,’’ or ‘‘protracted meeting’’ every year was to be pitied. The Eastern Shore people were as hospitable as they were reli- gious. ‘‘Light off, stranger; dinner is ready,’’ was the common salutation to a traveller, and you could no more pay for a meal or a night’s lodging than you could sell your soul. And those people cer- tainly lived! Chickens, oysters, lobsters, shad, crabs, pig, calves, peaches, water-melons—everything good to eat abounded, and the Eastern Shore cooks were surpassed nowhere. Eastern Shore ladies were so beautiful and charming, as I re- member them, that the wonder is I ever got away heart-free. But, to tell the truth, I had kept up correspondence with the girl with the sky-blue eyes and chestnut curls, who sat next to me in the Cuba Graded School. I carried a tintype of her, in which the photographer had touched her lips and cheeks with carmine; but he didn’t need to on my account. I wanted to saddle my horse, buy a cornet, and ride away for West Virginia, stopping at farm-houses on the way, and practicing on my cornet on the lonely roads. But Father put his foot down on that. He thought I was foolish to go at all, let alone taking the best horse on the place. He changed his mind later, but more of that a- non. I bought Mr. Ames’ saddle and bags, said good-bye and left by the more orthodox way—the steamer down the crooked Choptank. (48) [Cosas ees eee eeeeeaaeeaess That Tintype (See p. 49) BASSO BABS OeBeseaasae ®) ®) ® ® ® ® ®) Si &) ®& ® ® &) ® SS ® ® ® i ®) © ae POPC UPU POPUP PERE EBEEBEBBENs A Mountain Circuit-Rider. Tie Baltimore & Ohio Railroad picked me up near where the Choptank River steamer landed me, spun me up the Potomac valley, hoisted me over the Allegheny mountains with many a dizzy swing around seasick reverse curves, puffed me full of villainous sulphurous soft-coal smoke, and dropped me off for the night at Fairmont, W. Va. I had found a most genial and welcome travelling companion in Rev. David Wilson, M. D., president of the Maryland Conference, who was on his way as fraternal messenger to the Pittsburgh and West Virginia conferences. I had met him before, when he preached in Burrsville on his annual visit to Caroline circuit. Next morning as the Morgantown stage rolled out of Fairmont, the bell of the Methodist Protestant church (so very recently the ‘‘Methodist’’—-the two factions of the denomination caused by slavery having been reunited only a few months previously) called the Pitts- burgh conference together. Dr. Wilson continued with:me. The stage dropped us at Laure Point, where a team was to meet us, for Mt. Morris, Pa. (the Pitts- burgh conference meeting in West Virginia and the West Virginia conference in Pennsylvania, criss-cross like). I recall that, while waiting for the team, Dr. Wilson did the itinerant boy the honor of shaving with his razor, by the roadside, the Doctor having left his luggage in Fairmont to which he was to return next day. The ‘‘- tinerant boy was twenty-three, and shaved his upper lip and cheeks. (Aside—he had his tintype taken at Mt. Morris and mailed it to the girl with chestnut curls). J found another young Marylander knocking at the conference door, Rev. E. Oliver Ewing, of Havre de Grace, a large, fine-looking young man. As between us, in a betting crowd, the wagers would have been dollars to doughnuts on Ewing. Our meeting was the be- ginning of a life-long friendship. (49) The Rev’s M. L. Barnett, Wm. Betts, A. L. Mckeever, and J. J. Poynter president of the conference, were on the jury to determine whether, theologically, we deserved to be hung. We were mercifully received on ‘‘suspicion,’’ and placed on the roll of probationers. I was grateful enough to lick any kind hand. I am sure I had no Jofty self-appreciation, or expectation of a star appointment. I distrusted myself, and begged to be sent as assistant to some older minister. But when the appointments were read, Ewing was stationed at Parkersburg, the second city in the state. I found myself assigned to Morgantown circuit. One of the churches, Maidsville, was but a few miles over the hills towards the Monongahela River. Rev. E. J. Wilson, the last year’s pastor of that end of the circuit, was to walk back, and offered me his comradeship and a lift on my suit-case that contained all my earthly possessions except the saddle and some books that had been shipped. We found a haven of rest in the home of Lorenzo Davis, store- keeper-farmer, who had been delegate to conference. It was a home with an ‘‘open door’’ for Methodist Protestant ministers, and in all the years that I kept in touch with the family—Mr. and Mrs. Davis, Sally and Ewing—they were the same genial, warm, true friends. The family of Joshua Davis, and elder brother, were equally con- genial. I divided my time between the two homes until the first and crucial Sunday. I could soon discern that my parishioners were not without some qualms as to the raw recruit whom the conference had assigned them. I was quizzed most tactfully as to how many times I had preached, how many sermons I had ‘‘canned,’’ and if I entertained any miser- able suspicions that I might make a fizzle in the pulpit. I told them frankly that my ‘‘barrel’’ contained only three written sermons, but I had never yet ignominiously flunked, though as to knocking knees and dry lips I was silent. I never retailed how, once, I had awkwardly upset the glass of water that it was then customary to set on the pulpit, to wet the speaker’s whistle, and that I had mispronounced a perfectly familiar Biblical name, had been nearly flabbergasted. by a silly girl who persisted in giggling (50) while I tried to sop up the water and who had exploded when I went out of my way to re-pronounce the name correctly. But after I had preached one of the ‘‘three varieties’”’ in Maids- ville(I later expanded it to ‘57’’)I imagined that I could hear sighs of relief. At Calvary Church, which had been cut off from Palatine circuit against its wishes, and was losing as preacher D. H. Davis, one of the princeliest pulpiteers in the conference (and it had many good preachers) they weren’t satisfied with hearing only one variety, as to whether I was an appointment or a disappointment, so they asked me to go to the nearest Methodist Episcopal church in the afternoon. I don’t say it boastfully—just dog-humble and hoss-thank- ful—that Capt. Jolliffe and Brother Billy Boyd, who went to re- feree, seemed to wear complacent looks on the way home, as if, having heard two of the three, the other one would not likely prove fatal. Maybe they were only trying to ‘‘grin and bear it.’’ One more probe of the tester into my theological butter firkin— one evening I was furnished a horse to ride to Baker’s Ridge, an- other of my appointments where a Baptist brother was holding forth. At the instance of the delegation from my own flock, this Baptist divine asked me to pray. After I mounted my horse to ride home I overhead Lorenzo Davis, in his stage whisper, ask Charley Tapp: “‘How do you think he’ll do?”’ I managed to ‘‘do’’—goodness only knows how—until the quar- terly conference, when the salary was set at $210. I think, now, that they got my measure pretty closely. Out of this sum I was to pay my board and buy a horse. Nicholas Vandervort, one of the most liberal and progressive members, though not the most able financially, took me in and gave the best room in his lovely home—lovely in its spirit and atmosphere, and above the average of the circuit, materially. To make a beautiful home a beautiful mother is necessary, and Mrs. Vandervort was that. A superior woman intellectually, of a very fine family, her cheerful good sense, her good housekeeping and her genuine goodness of heart made it a joy to sit at her table and a benediction to have fel- lowship with her. (51) Virgil and Bruce, the sons, were attending the University, earnest, solid, young men. Both warmed up to me like brothers. Virgil sold me his Blackhawk Morgan mare, Flora, on credit. Good Mrs. Tapp, of Maidsville, made leggings for me and, with nightie, toothbrush, sermons, Bible and book of discipline in saddlebags, I rode over the West Virginia hills, fording the river, staying a day here, two days there at pleasure. The oldest daughter, Rosa, was away at school. When she re- turned I found her as charming and refined as the rest, and she after- wards made a lovely wife to Will Bailey, who was the ‘‘hired man’”’ on the farm when not teaching or in school. When, years after, I visited their snug home in Morgantown, where he was a leading hard- ware merchant, I found his children as dainty and sweet as their mother and her younger sisters, Maidie and Sally, had been. When the ‘‘protracted meetings’’ opened I soon had to whipsaw out a lot of new sermons; but I found that I was leaning too heavily on ‘‘Apple- ton’s Five Hundred Sketches and Skeletons,’’ with which a minis- terial friend had advised me to forefend against the day of need. On the day that I returned home from the first quarterly meeting I thrust that book in the fire and watched it burn toashes. After that I hobbled on my own feet and ‘‘Watson’s Theological Institutes,’’ which I was studying. I preached some heavy doctrinal sermons, one to prove the existence of a God which made one of my hearers re- mark: ‘‘T don’t care what he says; I still believe in a God.”’ It was soon after my arrival in Morgantown that I did my first premeditated ink-slinging ‘‘for the press.’’ I was moved to write an account of my trip to West Virginia, including the first impress- ions made on me by its beautiful blue-grass hills, and a reference to some markings on the sandstone, halfway to Calvary, supposed to be Indian hieroglyphics. IJ sent it to the Denton, Md., Journal for publication. And the earth never tipped! 5 The main object of the conference in patching up this new cir- cuit was to re-establish our church in Morgantown, the seat of the West Virginia University, where it had lapsed, owing to the loss of (52) the church by fire. I hunted up the scattered flock, among them Dr. Johns. One of the encouraging remarks he made to me was to sug- gest that I preached too much through my nose; another, ‘“‘Why do they want to build another church here? They had a good one and burned it.’’ I was to revive this church by preaching in Academy Hall on Sunday nights. I am sure it was not due to anything that I accom- plished that year, but to the loyalty of the true-blues like George W. Reay and his daughter Annie, Sister Kelly and her family, Sister Allender, the Robes Sisters and others, and to the good work of the ministers who followed, that we have in Morgantown today a strong church with a large Sunday-school and a handsome building. Last Easter the Sunday-school numbered 700, and the large new church building is already too small. I tried to open a new appointment in the mountains, where I remember going up pegs in the wall to an unfinished attic to sleep, and waking and finding the bed covered with snow that had sifted through the roof. I think a criticism on my preaching was that I could not ‘“‘holler loud enough.’’ In spite of the kindness of the people to their young minister— and they gave me a watch that I still carry, a suit of clothes, and I don’t know what all—I was taken from them at the next conference and stationed at Grafton, a busy, smoky, forty-five-degree-angle hillside town of four or five thousand, on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. I sold Flora to Mr. Ewing, who became my near neighbor, at Webster. I had the rare good fortune to be received into the home of John Wesley Hull, a leading business man, fine spirited and intensely loy- al. Mrs. Hull, a kind-hearted, motherly woman I learned to appre- ciate and love, and the children seemed like my own children, and do to this day, and their children after them. Brother Hull, as I write this, has passed triumphantly on, at the age of 78, after many severe trials, a man of unshaken faith. The little, struggling church had pluck, to ask to be set aside as a station, but it contained workers, like Marion F. Durbin, cashier of (53) the bank, and his lovely wife, Clark Madera and wife, Senator New- lon and family, Miss Amanda Abbott and others, as good material as any church in town boasted. It labored under the disadvantage of using a discarded M. E. church, a “‘little brown church in the lane.”’ I gave Grafton the best I had for three years; but it was too little for such a herculean task. I am sure they gave me credit for trying, and loved me, and still do. But, as in the case of Morgan- town, better men followed, a new brick church was built, on a main street, and later a parsonage. Lately this church has been enlarg- ed to the extent of $4,500 and a $1,500 pipe organ put in—I am not writing a history of the Grafton Church: I am merely giving pin- hole peeps at my own feeble endeavors there. No one has rejoiced more than I at the growth and spendid prosperity of these two churches—how J should like to see them and serve them again! The second year my home was with Joe Clayton, a railroad en- gineer whose wife kept a boarding-house and put her whole soul in- to making it a restful, sunny home for railroad men. I often rode with Joe on his big camel-back switch engine, about the yards. He was not a Christian then. ‘‘Aunt Maria,’’ as all the men called her, was a beautiful saint in blue gingham. Never was a woman kinder to other mother’s sons than she was to me and to all her ‘‘boys,’’ as she called her boarders. I felt as much at home, in inviting friends, as I did in my own mother’s house. Rev. J. B. Walker stopped off to see me. He set the ‘‘college switch’’ for me as he had a trick of doing with young men. Soon af- ter I made a trip to the Maryland conference at Centreville, with Mr. Ewing, where I met two Big Events.—Alexander Clark, D. D. who, as editor of The Methodist Recorder, had already by corres- pondence encouraged me to ‘“‘sling ink’’ in the way of church news. Now to meet face to face this brilliant, genial personality, and to hear his masterly lectures, was a Big Event. The other Big Event was Prof. D. S. Stephens, of Adrian College, also a visitor at the conference, whose sermon and conversations kindled in me a fire that nothing could quench, It was settled from that time that, someway, I must have a college education. (54) ey SLAMS AaS oe aeasaeesaaaaa ys The Thin Young Grafton Pastor. He parted his hair and his name on one side—- , ‘“*J. Frank Cowan.”’ See seaeeee eae sae seSeas weet OCS See oIoe asec eens {2 DOP OEOO EU OEUEBeEmEmEBe. Soon after my return I began studying Latin under Mr. Dan Rich, a graduate of the West Virginia University who was teaching in Grafton. My brother Horace, who was at that time a student in Western Maryland College, wrote me that, except the languages, I had picked up almost the equivalent of a preparatory course, and I was bound to get the rest. It was during these three years in Grafton that Jennie Smith, the “‘railroad evangelist,’ held her great meeting, with audiences so large that no one church would contain them, so the new court- house was used. Among the hundreds of converts were Joe Clayton and a score of other men who joined our church. Joe had been a hard drinker, but, though the doctors said he could not break off abrupt- ly, he never took another drink and lived a consistent life to his death. According to ‘‘Who’s Who in America,’’ ‘‘Cowan, Rev. John Franklin, D. D.,’’ was ordained to the ministry of the Methodist Protestant Church in 1877. I think that is a couple of years too ear- ly, but my ordination papers were burned, as I shall explain later, and I cannot recal) the exact year. I made a trip as fraternal messenger to the Pittsburgh confer- ence, at Beaver Falls, with Rev. A. T. Cralle of blessed memory. I never dreamed that Beaver Falls was to be my home for ten years. I preached in the Second Church, Pittsburgh, and was entertained by “Uncle Jimmie’’ Robinson, then publishing agent at Pittsburgh. I became acquainted with ‘‘Little’’ Robert Marshall, who remarked to me that men did not goto church to hear literary discussions that they could get in the magazines, but for the comforts and rein- foreements of the gospel of Christ. The older I grow the more I re- alize the truth of this. In the distance, too, the sweetness and Christlikeness of Brother Marshall’s character shines on me with brighter lustre. I remember once, after preaching in Grafton, I called on the Rev. J. B. McCormick, a superannuated minister of the Pittsburgh conference, to pray. Among other things he asked God to bless the (55) essay to which they had just listened. I must have deserved it; but more and more I see the folly of ‘‘nice little perfumed essays, a thousand of which compressed by a hay-baler into a bundle, ten- thousand bundles of which, could not show a groping soul the way to Christ. ’’ One more pinhole peep! The girl with the blue curls and chestnut eyes wrote me that she was engaged and our correspondence must cease; she would be a sister to me, etc. Perhaps the tintype with the chin whiskers did it. Puppy love? Probably. Still another peep! There was a young lady organist in our Graf- ton church, with black hair, soft dark eyes and a very dove-like voice. One Sunday afternoon the young minister took her to a union Sunday-school review, in the Lutheran Church. Rain fell and he raised his umbrella; in order to crowd under its shelter she took his arm, and someway the touch affected his heart with something like palpitation, from which he did not recover. There was in his congregation a certain six-foot, broad-should- ered cornetist with a deep bass voice and big, bulging biceps, who acted as if he would like to form the steady habit of escorting the organist home from church. But had’nt formed it so that anybody could notice it much when, one Sunday night, the young minister marched swiftly down from the pulpit, immediately after the last syllable of the benediction, and offered the organist his arm—the same one through which her touch had started palpitation of the heart—and people looked amazed at the minister’s temerity, as he disappeared through the door, and guessed there ‘‘must be some- thing in the wind.”’ There was, but it ultimately required the services of another minister to settle definitely what was in the wind: he tied one of those knots that ministers know how to make—not a slip-knot, but a double reef knot—and people said: “Oh yes, we see!”’ But a little thing like that wasn’t going to head off the college education that was due him. (58) [COO Bee eee eeeseesewesaeys e S) S i) S&S i) ®§ S) SS (S) (S] Ss) S (SJ S (S) SJ (ss & (S) SS (S) S) (S) B) {S) (S) (s) S) (3) S) (Ss) : : wi Si ‘ When fle was Reef-knotted. (sy © S) SS} iS) QS | S) CNS ABIC Sees eeralelealstrt ate igh “When I Was In College.” One September morning I pulled the door bell of President D. S. Stephens, of Adrian College, Michigan. I remained as his guest un- til the term opened, a few days later. He and Agent James B. Walk- er were the only men connected with the institution with whom I had ever ‘‘chinned.”’ Adrian, the ‘‘Maple City,’’ was (and still is)one of the most at- tractive towns of 10,000 inhabitants or more, that I know. Its clean white residences with their green shutters, broad green lawns and streets densely shaded with maple trees, made it seem like a para- dise, after rocky smoky, grimy but still dear old Grafton. The four (at that time) college buildings of dull weather-stained brick, stood on a spacious campus that was park-like, at the end of the main street, in the western environs of the town. It was a fascinating fairyland to me, the realization of many dreams. I did not enter college as ‘‘Dad’s boy,’’ with a fat purse backing me. One inducement to come had been the representations of Mr. Walker that a theological student could find a vacant pulpit in the vicinity of the college, the compensation for supplying which would prevent his cupboard from becoming like ‘‘Old Mother Hubbard’s.”’ And through the kind offices of John R. Chaplin, a Senior, I was driven to the church which he had been supplying in North Rome, nine miles northwest of town, where I was soon inducted into the pastorate, sans call, sans council, sans installation ceremony. I do not recall now the amount of stipend I was to receive but, with some work in the printing office of The Methodist Protestant Maga- zine and College Repertory, published by Prof. Stephens, or ‘‘prexy,’’ as he now was known, I figured out sufficient assets to bluff the wolf from the door. I was very fortunate to be able to ‘‘chum”’ in the dormitory with W. W. Rymer, a Sophomore from West Virginia, who was studying for the ministry, a whole-hearted, genial fellow, whom tu- berculosis claimed early in his ministerial career. The North Hall (57) rooms were then furnished with corded bedsteads, the crisscross rope of which was the only bed springs, except the ‘‘give-and-take’”’ of a mattress, or bed-tick, filled with oat straw from a near-by farmer’s stack. There was a huge box stove for wood. Rymer had a carpet, table, chairs, and blankets, but only one pillow. I had brought a bookease, arm-chair and student’s lamp. I made shift for a pillow, of a bundle of newspapers until sister Louise, who lived at Deerfield kindly supplied me with one. I visited her and my brother Will, who also resided at Deerfield, and he offered to grub-stake me until my ‘“‘ship came in.”’ My brother Charlie was visiting there at the time, from Colora- do. He had some very interesting stories to tell of his experiences as a railroad engineer in the West and Mexico. In the latter country he had been kept in jail for a number of months, awaiting trial for his life, because his train accidentally killed a Mexican; but the Brother- hood of Engineers had bailed him out, and he never went back to sample Mexican justice. That was the last time I saw him. Rymer already had a messmate, in the student’s kitchen so I went into partnership with a theological student named Howe, son of a minister. We took week about ‘‘serving at tables.’’ My parish- ioners the Taylors, the big-hearted Hawleys, the Hoodo etcetera, kindly brought in little donations of pats of butter, eggs, boiled cider, bowls of apple-sauce, honey, ete. We bought bread, potatoes, cab- bage, and soup-bones. Tea, coffee and and all kind of desserts we tabooed. We really had sufficient nourishment, but the drudgery of cooking and dish washing took all romance out of life. My student work came hard, after so many years out of school. My memory was flabby, and the Greek and Latin conjugations went through it like a seive. In philosophy I did better. I had some pre- paratory work to make up, but the college had the elective system, and some of my work was in the freshman year. In reaching my church on Sunday, ‘‘Shank’s horses’’ served me well, for I had no surplus funds to lavish on the livery stable and the bicycle was not then the poor man’s steed. I recall that the (58) lamp-lighter in our part of town trundled about on the wooden side- walks, with a clattering din, on a wooden velocipede which had no pedals, but was pushed by the feet. Sometimes I got ‘‘a lift ’’ out in a farmer’s wagon homeward bound on Saturday afternoon, and sometimes one of the ‘‘brethren’’ brought me in on Sunday after- noon. But the walking was good for me, and there is no more whole- some climate in the world. I soon picked up in weight and enjoyed fine health. Maybe I did’nt ‘‘feed up’’ at Levi Hawley’s bounteous farmer’s table, ‘‘after being my own purveyor for a week or two.”’ I did not feel that I had really begun college life until I was officially initiated. by a mild type of hazing then known in Adrian as ‘‘wooding up.’’ The “‘bark was worse than the bite.’’ But we new students all dreaded it, and were continually asking each other: “‘What do you think they will do to us ?’ It was wearing on the nerves, and the initiated did not seek especially to allay our fears, but played on our feelings by hints and winks, as a cat plays with a mouse. After anticipating being ‘“‘evilly entreated,’’ pursuant of the shocking stories I had heard of hazing in other colleges, nothing worse befell me than to be seized by a couple of upper classmen, by my arms and legs, and a certain cushioned portion of my anatomy bump- ed against a tree, after which I was deposited on the other side of the campus fence. I was fully matriculated from the moment my feet struck terra firma. I became a member of the Theological Association, one of the three literary societies which gave literary and musical programs on Friday evenings. The greatest innovation in my habits was getting used to shaving on Friday afternoon. instead of Saturday. These society halls were the best-furnished rooms in the college, especially those of the Star and Lamda Phi Societies. Nothing loomed up larger in our lives than these meetings. The college was co-ed., and in no other way do the ‘‘co’’ come in for so much emphasis, not even on the Thursday evenings on which the gentlemen were allowed to call on the ladies, in the presence of ‘‘Lady John,”’’ as the lady principal, Mrs. Sanford, was nicknamed. (59) The most lurid recollections I have of the Theological Association are of the whilom critic, ‘‘Spectacle’’ Williams by name, affirming of me, after I had orated that, when placing my hand over my heart would have been the appropriate gesture, I placed it over my stomach, encouraging the supposition that I might be suffering from cramp colic; and of Sam Thompson. Thompson was an evergreen ‘‘prep’’ stu- dent. He had been trying for five years to get out of the preparatory school, but the door-knob always slipped in his grip. But what he may have lacked in absorbent qualities, he made up inrich, native humor. He was an Artemus Ward out of his habitat. Thompson’s “‘perform- ances’’, in the Theological Association usually consisted of ‘‘Reminis- eences’’ of his vacation toil, grubbing after enough of the filthy lucre to get him back to Adrian, and as he drew grotesque word-pictures of his experiences with wheelbarrow, pick and shovel, he made our sides shake and ache with uncontrolled laughter. I have known him to send to the suburbs, the dignity of the presiding officer, and all the aspiring future D. D’s while they doubled up and roared and shrieked, tears streaming down their convulsed faces. The most gallant deed to my credit was taking a girl to a lecture in the opera house, down town. I don’t recall who the lecturer was, but I do remember how sweet the girl was. The great event of the year was unprogrammed. One Sunday evening in November, as I walked homeward from Rome, when about a mile out of Adrian I noticed a peculiar glow in the sky. As I drew nearer, with wonder and excitement I located this aurora directly over the college. I was soon saying to myself: ‘‘The Dorm. is burn- ing!’ ‘ I quickened my fast walk to a run, and drew up breathless be- fore the house of Champlin(he was married) to knock at his door and sound the tocsin:‘‘North Hall is on fire! Hurry!”’ “Too late to hurry, now,’’ was his cool reply. ‘‘North Hall burn- ed about midday.’’ It seems the alarm of fire had come while they were in Ply- mouth Church, down town (the college church). It is supposed that the fire started in the room of Thompson, which adjoined mine. He (60) ‘SIO AAS Bessa saasnaLe The Young Collegian de lume. MACAO ase U DPOUUUeeUOUA Ae eAaBUUUBBUBBEE: BO AAA AAA AOA AACA CAC) had probably crammed his big box stove with wood and gone to church. The stove door may have been forced open by the settling forward of the wood, and a live coal fallen on the carpet. Anyway, I was minus all my clothing except the one suit on my back, and all of my other earthly goods except the chair, which some one threw out of the window. Many other students lost every thing. But the citizens of Adrian, of whom Judge and Mrs. Geddes, T. H. Fee, the Swifts, the Crittendons, the Gilkeys, the Eddy’s, the Consauls, the Reeders, are examples, and others in the denomina- tion, came to our relief; rooms were offered in private homes, and clothing, furniture and money were sent. I first went into a house near the college, by myself, but later Rymer and I took up our abode in Prof. Stephens’ house. My ‘‘Roman’’ church made an oyster-sup- per for my benefit, and a donation of money, and I soon had a new suit, and furniture. North Hall was rebuilt and a steam-heating plant put in, but I did not move into the new building: I remained with President Stephens. In the college printing-office my work was proof-reading and keeping the subscription list. Sometimes, ‘‘Herb.’’ Stephens, the Doctor’s youngest brother, and the ‘‘main guy”’ in the mechanical work of the office, initiated me in ‘‘sticking type.’’ Later I under- took a little writing; and was so tickled with my maiden efforts at slinging ink for the Repertory that I was seized with a notion to write some children’s stories for the denominational Sunday-school papers published in Pittsburgh. I remember well the first ‘‘plot’’ that my to-be fertile mind conceived—it was of a cat whose tidy little mistress had trimmed his whiskers, with the result that when ‘“Tom- my’’ essayed to catch a mouse in the dark, the loss of his ‘‘feelers’’ embarrassed him, and his nose was severely(not fatally, dear read- er,) bitten by mousie. I remember stopping Dr. John Kost, the professor of biology and geology, on the street to ask him if cats’ whiskers really did aid (61) them in locating mice in the dark. While he maintained that there was no sixth sense of which these hirsute appendages were the or- gan, he did not discourage my proposed ink-slinging, and I ‘‘develop- ed the plot.’’ I fancy my chirography needed attention, worse than my natural history, for when the paper came to me containing the story, what was my chagrin to see that the printer had rendered the ‘‘Tommy,’’ with which I opened the tale, ‘‘Oh me!’’ But the saying that it is impossible to drown a man who was born to be hanged must apply, with some modification, to one born to sling ink—the printer’s devil and the proof-reader can’t squelch him. Another bit of ink-slinging was compiling a Methodist Protes- tant Year Book, which was published by Prof. Stephens. I also wrote notes on the Sunday-school lessons for the North Carolina Methodist Protestant, then published by Rev. J. L. Michaux. I should like to write up many interesting details of my college life, but I dare not open the door into so fascinating a field, for if I set it ajar even a tiny crack, it will fly wide open. It seems as if I must mention many other names—tall, straight, precise Dr.McElroy; broad, discursive pessimistic Prof. McKeever in his class-room rock- er; brisk, enthusiastic, prodding Prof. Walker; and gentle, affable, technical Prof. Howard. I should be drawing word pictures of the analytical McCulloch; the eloquent Gray; the dreamy long-legged Long; the big, genial Lucas; the irrepressible, homespun Chaplin and a host of students—but I must simply stop mentioning people to whose admirable and loveable traits I have not space to do justice. . I spent one summer vacation clerking in the hardware store of Mr. J. W. Hull, Grafton, who was ever astanch friend. I was acting pastor of the church at Grafton, during another vacation. All the Grafton friends were dear to me, but one was dearer. I was married before my college years were over, to Rebecca C. McClaskey, the organist of the church, and we did our first housekeeping, and our first child Elinore Rose Cowan, was born, in the house of J. B. Walk- (62) er, near the college. After the dread of the event that had hung over us, it was a most delightful experience to have this little daugh- ter to hold to our hearts. We were scarcely more interested in her advent, however, than was little Bert Stephens, the Professor’s second son, who came promptly with his toy express wagon to take the baby out for her first ride, on the very day that she was born. During the last year of my work in the Theological School, which was connected with the college, I served as financial secretary of the college under President Stephens. Soon after beginning this work I became possessed of my first typewriter, a Remington all— cap machine. I afterwards traded it, and an ‘‘ad.’’ in the Year Book, for a Caligraph. In connection, also, with advertising in the Year Book I secured, just before leaving Adrian, a Star bicycle— one of the first safety wheels, with the small wheel in front. I cannot close this chapter without speaking of Dr. Stephens’ unfailing and generous kindness to me then, and all through my subsequent life. His brother Herbert and I became fast friends, and his sister Emma, who sometimes worked in the printing office, was one of the kindest, gentlest and most patient women I have ever known. Mrs. Stephens was kind, and the boys I have watched grow into fine men, with keen interest. While I was in Adrian I supplied a Congregational Church in Franklin, north of Adrian, for a time. My mother visited my Bro- ther Will, in Deerfield, on the occasion of the birth of his daughter, and I had the pleasure of seeing her there, and also in Adrian for a day, where Mrs. Stephens kindly entertained her. I also visited my sister Louise once at Flat Rock, where she was then teaching. I was initiated into the Delta Tau Delta Fraternity and the Odd Fellows while in Adrian. The close of my college life was premature, owing to a nervous break-down, and I went back to Grafton, with my wife and daugh- ter, accompanied by my wife’s sister, then Rose McClaskey, who had been visiting us. While financial secretary of the college, I had secured an annual pass over the Wheeling & Lake Erie R. R.,a new road entering Toledo from the south. It then operated the Cleve- (63) land & Marietta R. R., and I secured trip passes for my wife and sister-in-law to Marietta. Here we connected with the B. & O., for Grafton. At the time I was really under appointment by the president of the Maryland Conference to go to a church in Western Maryland, and had my household goods marked for shipment to that place, but an accident which I shall describe later prevented me becoming a member of the Maryland Conference. In later years the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon me by Adrian College, and for a number of years I served on its board of trustees, and helped to make and unmake fac- ulties. It was as chairman of the committee on faculty that I lost one of my most esteemed friends, and a most capable teacher, whose idiosyncrasies of temperament made it advisable that he should be dropped. To soften the blow, as we hoped, the resignations of all the faculty were asked for, and the president and one or two pro- fessors were not reappointed. What made it seem like treachery was the fact that I was the guest of my friend and was in honor bound not to disclose the plans of the committee even to a personal friend, until the coup was ready to spring. I, as chairman bore all the blame because I was the mouthpiece of the committee. It has always been a sore subject with me, but my conscience acquits me of duplicity. I have revisited the college many times, once or twice to deliver baccalaureate sermons, addresses, ete. My youngest brother attend- ed it, and I never lost my love for it. Though one of the smaller, “‘freshwater’’ colleges, no one need be ashamed of the work it has done or the men it has graduated. Wy 3 at (64) COSA Saas sawssaasaaassS The College Financial Secretary. MATA AAAs oeOereeeUODerEEeEUeRESBEEOeH: BESBEBCEESeESeeeeeeeeee A Year On A “Fair Mount.” W. spent the summer with my brother-in-law, Mr. C. F. Han- shaw, in Grafton, W. Va. It was always one of the most hospitable homes. While I was recovering from my nervous trouble Harry, the eldest son, and I tackled learning to ride the Star bicycle, which gave us many a fall. In one of these I sprained my ankle so severely that I was confined to the house for weeks, and walked with a cane for the rest of the year. So I had to notify the president of the Maryland Conference that I could not promptly fill the appointment he had so kindly given me, and relinquished it. I went to the session of the West Virginia Conference in Au- gust, and the stationing committee desired to place me back at Grafton, but Rev. H. P. F. King was pastor there and wished to re- main. He was a good preacher, and a man in whose piety everyone in town had the utmost confidence. I would not consent to my ap- pointment at the cost of his removal. In the meantime the Fairmont church, which belonged to the Pittsburgh Conference but secured its ministers with a good deal of catholicity of action, had asked me to become its pastor. I accepted and was “‘loaned to Fairmont church.’”? In September we took pos- session of the fine, large brick parsonage, adjacent to the church on the hill, opposite the high school and normal school. The church had been left in fine spiritual and financial condition by Rev. George Shaffer, and I was given a most cordial welcome. The edifice was an old, oblong, two-story brick, recently repaired and recarpeted. The tower had been removed as unsafe, and the bell was in the garden behind the church. The interior of the building was quite attractive. This church gave way in later years to the im- posing People’s Temple, down town. The congregations were large; in the evening when many of the normal students attended, the au- ditorium was crowded. It was a wonderful inspiration to a timid young preacher. The families in the church were the best families:- Ex-Gov. F. H. Pierpont, Principal T. C. Miller of the high school, (65) Principal Sipe of the Normal School, the numerous Flemings, (I counted seventy-five of that clan at one funeral) the Barnes’s, the Hamiltons, the Millers, the Dunningtons and more than I have room to mention. The Fairmont Church is today one of the leading churches in what is now a busy city; but I can claim no credit. Per- haps I did it no harm. We had a famous choir led by Max Fleming, and for the first time in my ministry I was pastor of a church that financially, socially, and in every way, was ‘‘on top of the heap,’’ and I felt the reflex influence of it in my pulpit. The Governor, his gifted wife and daughter Anna, (now Mrs. W. H. Siviter) and Prof’s Miller and Fleming were among my greatest inspirations. We had the most delightful neighbors—the family of Gov. Pierpont on one side, and the Hartley’s, Stone’s and Hamilton’s on the other. Never were people kinder. Coal, milk, apples, vegetables, canned fruits, and even bread, pies and cakes found their way to the parsonage, not only in large formal donations, but the latter fre- quently, across the back yards just at dinner time. I got out another issue of The Methodist Protestant Year Book while in Fairmont. I also began to prepare the Sunday-school lessons for the Scholars’ Quarterly and Teachers’ Journal of the Methodist Protestant Church. This line of publications was a new venture by Dr. Drinkhouse, editor of The Methodist Protestant, Baltimore, and the Baltimore Book Directory. It was not yet on a paying basis. For a number of years, Dr. T. H. Lewis had been doing the editorial work, without compensation, while pastor of St. John’s Church, Bal- timore. He was compelled to give it up, and Dr. Drinkhouse, who had taken to me in a very kindly way, asked me to do it. In the last General Conference an effort had been made to con- solidate these publications with the children’s Sunday-school papers published by the Pittsburgh Directory, and the matter had been referred to the Board of Publication, composed of the two Directories. In August this combination was effected and I was elected editor, my work to begin with the 1885 issues, and the publishing to be un- dertaken by the Pittsburgh Directory. (66) I understood that the Pittsburgh Directory had a candidate of its own, and did not favor me. One of its members, at least, cried me down, in the joint meeting. The Baltimore Directory favored me, and Mr. Marion F. Durbin, of the Grafton Church, had been elected a member of the Pittsburgh Directory at the last General Conference and, of course, strongly supported his former pastor and friend. So I was chosen by the slender margin of one vote. How I should have liked to remain in Fairmont! I think one of the very happiest years of my life was spent there. But I was des- tined to be an ink-slinger, not a pastor; and the call was imperative. Some one had to take the venture, at a small salary, and push the thing through to success. A denomination without its own Sunday- school lesson expositions was an anachronism. I may say here that I feel that I was never cut out to be the pastor of a church, and have never measured up to my ideal in any church. By heredity I was very timid, and it has taken long years of rubbing up against men to overcome my, at times, painful shrink- ing from meeting strangers. I am no sort of a ‘‘mixer.’’ In pastoral visitation, naturally I was handicapped. As a speaker, I never rated myself more than ’steenth-rate. If I have any gift it is with my pen, and I am more at home behind an office desk, preaching at long range through the printed page, than in the pulpit, though my orig- inal ‘‘barrel’’ of three sermons had increased considerably. But could I make the Sunday-school periodical department a paying suc- cess? It was a leap in the dark; but I will say this, that something within me told me that I should not fail. I never had the slightest fear of it. In September of 1884 we moved, bag and baggage, baby-carriage and ‘“‘bike,’’ to the ‘‘Smokey City.”’ I sent immediately for samples of all the Sunday-school lesson- helps I could get, and began to make a study of their good and bad points. I also asked Dr. Drinkhouse and a number of leading men in the denomination to write out suggestions as to the improvement of our helps. (67) I visited the West Virginia and Pittsburgh Conferences as edit- or-elect, and discussed the situation privately and from the confer- ence floor. I was now in a fair way to find the “‘ink-slinger’’ within me, and chisel it out. (68) Fifteen Years With Natural Gas. As an ink-slinger I had now joined the ‘‘perfesh.’’ When I wrote the above caption, ‘‘Fifteen Years With Natural Gas,’’ I referred to the kind of gas that was then being supplied for fuel, from wells bored into the earth, not to that kind which isa natural adjunct of ink-slinging. But in spite of a beginning at using natural gas as fuel, in 1884 Pittsburgh was still the ‘‘Smoky City.’’ We first took a detached house on Shetland Street, in the East End. My office was in the same room with Dr. John Scott, editor of The Methodist Recorder, on the first floor, in the rear of the mail- ing-room, the publishing house being the former parsonage of the old First Church which stood just below, on Fifth Avenue. Every morning I took the train on the Pennsylvania, R. R. at East Liberty station where the sun was shining beautifully, and at Lawrenceville a cloud like as a thunder storm loomed up, into which I plunged, never to see the sun again, on some days, until the train bore me that far out again at night. Soon after, the general intro- duction of natural gas as fuel in the iron and steel mills lessened the smoke, and Pittsburgh painted in light tints and brightened up won- derfully. Later, the gas failed and the old murky atmosphere returned, For a change I sometimes rode my bicycle down Fifth Ave., or Forbes street, there being several miles of asphalt pavement. In the office, I set my Caligraph on top of an old one-drawer table worth a dollar, (and I think a pigeon-hole annex stuck on top) and that, with a fifty-cent chair I sat in, was my palatial office outfit. The composing-room for the Sunday-school periodicals was up- stairs, second floor, and that for The Recorder on the third floor. Dr. Scott had a dumb waiter for sending up copy and receiving and re- turning proofs. I hoofed it up and down the stairs, a dozen times a day until, in desperation, I bought some lumber and spent most of one night putting in a copy chute to the second floor, where at first Mr. Charles A. Scott, son of Dr. Scott, was foreman, but soon after Mr. Charles Gullett, who had been with the Recorder from a boy, (69) and who is still foreman there, one of the most efficient, obliging and good-hearted men I have ever known. I am not sure whether ‘‘Tom- my’’ Jones was then ‘‘devil,’’ but he became such early in the game, and is now expert linotype operator. My first copy was typewritten, revised down to a hair line, and put up in envelopes properly labelled. Gullet afterwards declared that it was tied with pink ribbon and perfumed. He chuckled iron- ically when he saw it, and offered to wager that was the last lot they would ever get so near angelic perfection. I worked in that dingy back room, with its linoleum carpet, for nearly four years. The only means of ventilation was a transom, which Dr. Scott kept religiously closed, together with all the windows and doors. But whenever he went out I conscientiously sneaked over and opened that transom, hoping he would not sniff the fresh air on his return. Usually he soon sneezed, then got up and pushed up the transom remarking, ‘‘The janitor forgets to close that transom; he will give me my death cold yet.’’ “Uncle Jimmie’’ Robinson having resigned a short time before, Mr. Wm. McCracken Jr. had been promoted to be publishing agent. He believed that the new publishing arrangement for the Sunday- school periodicals could be made barely to pay expenses; so at the first meeting of the Directory, which consisted of Wm. K. Gillespie, John Munden, Rev. J. S. Thrap, Rev. John Gregory, M. F. Durbin, my salary was set at $900. Mr. Durbin soon: resigned because he felt that his vote against the candidate of the Directory, and for me, had made him non persona grata. The rent of the house in East End was $30 a month, which seemed too large a proportion of our income to pay fora roof over us, so in the spring we moved to Sharpsburg, which was about the same distance north from the office, that the other had been east. We got a good brick house, in a row, for $18. We had as a neighbor, at the end of the street, a steel rolling-mill that ran day and night, with a great clatter and roar and boom. But we soon became accus- tomed to the noise, so that when the mill stopped in the night the (70) unearthly quiet awoke us. We had better neighbors in another direction—the Gibson’s, (Dr. Stephen’s father-in-law,) Mr. H. J. Heinz, Judge Collier, the Dun- ham’s and others. It was here in Sharpsburg that Mr. Heinz and his brother began their business that has since developed into the im- mense concern now better known under the name ‘‘The 57 Varieties.”’ He was Sunday-school superintendent in Grace Methodist Protestant Church. Rev. Mark B. Taylor, who had been my professor of pas- toral theology in Adrian, was pastor of the church. When he left there was a vacant pulpit for a year, which Dr. Stephens and I sup- plied, thus having Mr. Heinz as my parishioner. He was an earnest, whole-souled man to work with, and a friendship grew up between us which is still kept alive by occasional correspondence. Mr. Heinz seldom makes a trip abroad without remembering me with a sou- venir from some far-away part of the earth, or a kindly letter. Below is a copy of his last letter: Bb. J. Beinz, pittsburgh, March 38, 1914. Dr. J. F. Cowan, Kohala, Hawaiian Islands. Dear Mr. Cowan:- In The Christian Endeavor World of Feb. 18, I read your notes on the International Sunday School lesson of Jan. 4,1914.and en- joyed them very much. You made reference to the greatness of simplic- aty and I have been impressed with the truth that greatness is always simple. I have ever found that really great people were simple in their habits and methods and easily approachable. I very often read your notes in the ‘‘World’’ and always enjoy them. I think of you frequently and often wonder if you ever desire to return to the States some time, or whether you intend to make the beautiful Island in mid-Pacific your permanent home. I had occasion to refer to you yesterday when Dr. Stephens was my guest. Dr. Davis, late of Sharpsburg Church, and editor of The (71) Recorder, also dined with me. It is almost one year since our Tour Party had the pleasure of spending a delightful day in Honolulu and I am sure it would be very pleasant if we were to have another visit at this time. I hope that you are very well; that your work is getting along nice- ly and that you are happy in it. Sincerely, H. J. Heinz. I will say here that I once had the pleasure of writing up Mr. Heinz’ wonderful business career for ‘‘Success,’? when Orison Swett Marden was editor of that magazine. At Mr. Heinz’ request I also made a tour of inspection of the ‘‘Home of the 57 Varieties,’’ in Pitts- burgh,and wrote it up for the use of the firm. It was in Sharpsburg that we first burned natural gas as fuel in our fireplaces. We remained there three years, during which time we began to look around for a permanent home. Through the kind- ness of Mr. H. W. Reeves, of Beaver Falls, we were enabled to pur- chase a site on Patterson Heights, overlooking the Beaver River and the twin towns of Beaver Falls and New Brighton, and to build ‘Sunnyside Cottage,’’ which was our home for ten years. Here we not only heated, but also lighted, the house with natural gas. Our eldest son, Pierpont (after Gov. Pierpont) McClaskey, was born in Sharpsburg and the other two—Durbin Hull, and Fran- cis Clark—were born in Sunnyside Cottage, with about two years’ difference in their ages. I think it must have been in about 1887 that I was asked to take the department of ‘‘Personals’’ in the Recorder. It was McCracken’s idea; he wanted to brighten up the paper, which some considered too heavy. Soon after this, a coolness on the part of Dr. Scott was notice- able and, a room upstairs that had been fitted up for the Woman’s Missionary Society becoming vacant, 1 moved my office there. It was carpeted and papered, but very dark, as the two windows looked out upon the walls of First Church. I put in a Rochester lamp which I (72) Sunnyside Cottage. was sometimes compelled to burn most of the day. The room was heated by a fireplace, into which natural gas had been piped. About this time my first paid story was published by The Sun- day-school Times. It planted a new idea in my head—that I might increase my income in this way; and I proceeded to do so with cheer- ful alacrity. Writing children’s stories, with a moral, was easy work, and I soon had them going in all the leading religious papers, the Youth’s Companion, Wideawake, Little Men and Women and other secular young people’s periodicals. I think I realized about $700 from this source the first year. Some years it amounted to over $1,000. T had no difficulty in placing these without the aid of ‘‘Literary Bureaus”? or manuscript brokers. The little money that I did pay to such agencies, by way of experiment, was thrown away. They usu- ally recommended me to publishers who had already rejected the stories. Later, when the condition of my nerves would not permit me to revise and market a book ms., I paid a reputable bureau $200 to revise and market, begging them not to undertake it unless in their judgement the ms. had a good chance of acceptance, as a poor minister could not afford to waste hard-earned money. They assured me they were confident the ms. would find ready market. That was four or five years ago, and the market has never materialized. I re- frain from commenting, further than to advise young aspirants for literary success to steer clear of all such concerns. I found my best critics and friends were the editors to whom I submitted the stories. I once sent to several papers a story of two young Indians who were killed in resisting soldiers driving them back to their reservation. Finally Elverson, of The penned this brief comment on a corner of the ms.: ‘‘We don’t kill good people in this paper.’’ I took the hint brought them back to life, ended the story differently and The Youth’s Companion accept- ed it. I am indebted to other editors for criticisms that were invalu- able. Once a Youth’s Companion editor wrote me that he thought dictating to the phonograph was injuring my style by making me verbose. He made the same criticism on Hudson, of the Dispatch, (73) I soon grew more ambitions and had the nerve to heckle the editors of such magazines as Leslie’s Sunday Magazine, Good House- keeping, Arthur’s Home Magazine, The Ladies World and such dailies as the Pittsburg Dispatch, The Toledo Bee, Boston Globe, Springfield Republican and others. In 1891 my first book, ‘‘The Jo- Boat Boys,’’ was published by the Crowells, of New York. My sister Carrie typed this manuscript for me. I read parts or all of it aloud to my family, as it progressed, and I remember how interested the children were in one of the characters—‘‘Jeems’’—and how they cried over his misfortunes and insisted that I ought not to keep him in such predicaments. They would have written the book differently. I know it is a capital book because I have a scrap-book full of press notices that say so, many of them published exactly as the publishers worded them, though some of the reviewers disguise the fact by mispelling my name. Iam ‘J. H. Cowan’’ ‘‘G. W. Cowan’ ‘“‘T. F. Cowan.”’ One very original reviewer gets it ‘‘McCowan.’’ I have never known this beaten but once, a letter came to me addressed J. F. Coon.’’ I suppose ‘‘all coons looked alike’’ to the writer. I averaged one book a year for the next three years. There seemed to be a feeling in the Directory that I was doing wrong; that I owed it tothem to repress any ink-slinging tendencies, aside from my work on the Sunday-school periodicals, and some pressure was brought to bear on me, through the publishing agent. But I do not think that the intelligent laymen of the church approved of this repressive policy, nor the rank and file. No one complained of the quality or quantity of my work. The periodicals were increas- ing in circulation beyond all expectation. It was the best-paying de- partment in the publishing house, and hardest-work. I had many as- surances that my denomination was rather proud of the fact, than otherwise, that one of its editors could break into the literary world, and so I whistled and kept on my inky way. In justice to the Di- rectory it should be said that my salary was increased from time to time, to above $2,000, and we lived happy together ever after. I attended the Maryland Conference in Alexandria, Va, in 1880, (74) and went with that body to call on and shake hands with President Cleveland. I kept up the preparing of The Methodist Protestant Year Book for five years, eight issues in all, after going to Pittsburgh, until Mr. McCracken was tired of paying the printing bills. My work was en- tively gratuitous. A year or so after going to Pittsburgh I bought a second Cali- graph, using one at home and the other in the office. During my fif- teen years’ work I used up four machines, and the Directory never furnished me with a typewriter, though I repeatedly intimated that I objected to paying for my office equipment out of my own pocket. I did have the brief use of an International, which had been taken on advertising, until a chance came to sell it. I made a visit tomy parents in Cuba, in 1886, while Father had the Maryland farm rented for atime. This was the first time my Father had seen me since I went away as a candidate for the West Virginia Conference. I recall how he threw his arms around me and kissed me saying: ‘‘So this is the John F. Cowan I have been hear- ing so much about!’’ We went to Cuba via Buffalo, visiting my Brother George there. I rode to Buffalo from Adrian on a Michigan Central pass that George had obtained for me. He was then chief car accountant for the road. My wife and our baby girl met me there, and we went to Cuba to- gether; but I soon left them to take a three-weeks’ bicycle tour in Canada, arranged for a party of clergymen and laymen, by Dr. Syl- vanus Stall, then editor of The Lutheran Observer, since author of the world-famed series of ‘‘Purity’’ books. I formed many pleasant acquaintances on this trip, which extended, for me, as far east as Toronto, not least among them that of Dr. Stall, with whom I have since kept up pleasant relations, visiting him once at his home in Philadelphia, and he spending a day with us at Sunnyside Cottage. I made another visit to my parents in Maryland, again attend- ing the Maryland Conference. Elinore, then a child of six or eight years, went with me. 1 remember how much she enjoyed sliding (75) down her grandfather’s strawstack, regardless of Canada thistles. By this time Father was getting too old to be burdened with a farm; his boys were all gone; Horace had become a minister in the Maryland Conference and Harry, after leaving Adrian College, had secured a position with the H. J. Heinz Co., with whom he is still working, now looking after contracts with the farmers in Michigan for growing cucumbers and other vegetables. My sister Carrie went home with us and learned to assist me with the typewriter. I also taught her the use of the Stenograph, a shorthand typewriter that used dashes on a paper ribbon. Carrie soon became able to transcribe matter that I wrote on it, on the — . trains going to and returning from my Pittsburgh office. A part of my second book, “‘The Mother of the King’s Children,’’ was written on and dictated through the Stenograph. It was run as a serial in Our Young People, and afterwards published by Crowell, who had issued the first. I recall a little passage at arms with Crowell’s manuscript editor. He urged that the title was too long, which was true. I suggested, somewhat playfully, that we call it ‘‘God’s Wife,’’ the idea I was trying to work out being that the church is the ‘‘Bride of the Lamb.”’ I think I shocked his sense of propriety, for he made no further sug- gestion. Soon after my visit to Maryland, I built an addition to my house— a sitting-room, bath and bed-room—and asked Father and Mother to come and live with me. They did so and remained there until Father’s death in 1893, at the age of 77 years, when mother went to Chicago to be with her sister Phoebe, and afterwards to live with Carrie, who had married Merritt B. Knight and gone to South Dakota. Later, Mrs. Eva Cole, a sister of my wife, being left a widow with three small children, came to Pittsburgh and made her home with us while she was learning typewriting and shorthand. She also assisted me for a time in office work, but ultimately went back to her home in Grafton, where she got work with the Baltimore and Ohio R. R. I furnished her one of my typewriters and stenographs. (76) My Office In the New Building. My wife, too, became quite proficient in using a typewriter and in transcribing my phonographic dictation, on the machine at home. She was always a better proof-reader than I was, because my nervous temperament made it difficult for me to read slowly enough. She assisted mea great deal in this way. She wrote, for a time, the primary lessons and some capital children’s stories, her name appear- ed for a number of years as associate editor on Our Morning Guide, and Our Children, but without salary, and she doubtless would have done much more but for the care of four children. She completed the Chautauqua Scientific and Literary Course while we lived in Beaver Falls, and went to Chautauqua to receive her diploma. She had been there before, and I had spent a short vacation there. I was very much delighted when the General Conference in Adrian, in 1888, elected Dr. D. S. Stephens editor of The Recorder, which position he held until, I think, in 1896, he was made Chancellor of the Kansas City University, his pet. Part of the time he was our neighbor on Patterson Heights. Presently the old Book Rooms were torn down and a new modern six-story ‘‘Recorder Building’’ erected on the site. It was steam-heated and lighted by electricity. The Kauf- mann’s Department Store leased the church site and extended its stores from Smithfield Street up to us. Doctor and I had adjoining offices in the new building as we had in the old. The same General Conference unanimously relected me Sunday-school editor. It was while we were temporarily in a leased building on Wood Street, during the erection of the new block, that I made another stride ahead in office equipment. I leased a phonograph on which to dictate my literary work and employed a lady from the phonograph agency, Mrs. Ada Palmer, to transcribe for me. It was Dr. Stall who ‘‘put me wise’’ to this use of the phonograph. He was using it in his office, dictating his ‘‘Purity’’ books, since so famous. The in- struments were not sold at that time. Later I bought two phonographs and kept one at my home, dictating enough matter to keep two typewriters busy, my wife transcribing at home and Mrs. Palmer in the office. I also secured donations, through Our Young People, to pay for a phonograph for the use of Missionary Morgan, in Japan. (77) He made and sent me records of his own voice, and songs and re- citations by the children of his school. These I reproduced in various churches with a view to increasing interest in our missions in Japan. I exchanged phonograph records with Dr. Stall, ‘‘Samantha Allen,’’ Gen. Charles King, and a number of other lights who were using Edison’s wonderful invention. Mrs. Palmer staid with me until I left Pittsburg, and always proved a cheerful, obliging, accurate and congenial assistant. She remained a mumber of years longer in the Book Rooms. At the beginning of my ‘‘tripodship’’ the Board had launched a new primary 5S. S. paper, Our Children, which proved a great favor- ite from the start. Soon after, the growing interest in young people’s work seemed to make a field for 4 more mature paper, and Our Young People was started in 1889. I cannot say how many young people’s societies there were at that time, but in May, 1890 there were eighty-one reported. I had been taking the position that baptized children of the church members should be organized into classes, as the Book of Discipline provided, and trained for church membership and useful- ness, and not be neglected in spiritual training, to be reclaimed at the penitent’s altar in revivals. Along came Francis E. Clark with his Christian Endeavor Society he had founded in 1881. We had a number of young people’s societies under various names, before we became acquainted with this movement, but soon after the advent of Our Young People they all became C. E. societies. I ar- ranged for a visit by Dr. Clark to Pittsburgh, and he addressed our young people, in the old First Church in November 1891. About this time, too, I met Mr. John Willis Baer, the new General Secre- tary of the United Society of Christian Endeavor, at a convention in Pittsburg. I attended my first International Convention at Minneapolis, in 1891. While there I called on my cousin Charles Foote, his wife and son. He was a prominent business man of the city, who had been a candidate for the city council, or some municipal office. (78) Soon after I was invited to represent our denomination on the Board of Trustees of the United Society of Christian Endeavor, and this began a most delightful and helpful relationship with the repre- sentative men of all denominations who were on the board. I think these semi-annual meetings with men like Drs. Nehemiah Boynton, Wayland Hoyt, President John Henry Barrows of Oberlin, Bishop Fallows, Prof. Howard B. Grose, and a score of others, to say nothing of the host of representative Christian men of America, Great Brit- ain, Australia, Canada, and other lands, into whose society Christ- ian Endeavor threw me, were among the greatest broadening and educational factors of my life. The first time I met Dr. Francis E. Clark was at the railway station in Grafton, W. Va., where we both had gone to speak at aC. E. gathering. We were entertained together at the delightful home of Marion F. Durbin. While there I received, for revision, the proofs of my third book, ‘‘The Pony Expressman,’’ which was being published by the Pilgrim Press, Boston. It was then that I spoke to Dr. Clark rather timidly about a dialect C. E. story that I had in mind. I had written for The Methodist Recorder a few paragraphs called ‘‘Timothy Straws, by Jonathan Hayseeds,’’ which had opened up what seemed to me a vein of semi-humorous possibilities. Dr. Clark encouraged me to write the story as a serial for The Golden Rule, to which I had already contributed short articles, and hence was born my fourth book, ‘‘Endeavor Doin’s Down to the Corners.’’ I believe it was the most cordially received of all my ef- forts, and certainly I more enjoyed writing none of them. It was republished in England in The C. E. Times. I did not complete it until after I returned from the New York International Conven- tion, in 1892, where I spoke from the platform of Madison Square Garden ‘‘at’’ 18,000 people, in the inter-denominational rally. I think my voice hit only the first row; but it was a big event for me. I should have followed ‘‘Endeavor Doin’s’’ with another dialect story, and intended to; I did write a serial for Our Young People en- titled, ‘‘Workin’ in the Gospel Harness,’’ another for The Endeavor (79) Herald, of Canada, entitled, ‘Saint Commonsense,”’ and ‘‘Farmer John’s Political Backbone,’’ for The Voice. I think the reflection that dialect is very difficult for some readers to follow made me dubious about a second book of it. All together: serials, short stories, ‘‘Farmer John’’ paragraphs, etc., I have two-dozen ‘‘Mark Twain’’ scrap books—about a quarter of acord of ‘‘canned Cowan,’’ the productions of my pen that were published and paid for by periodicals other than those of which I was editor. I wish I could say something as impressive as to the quality of the stuff. Seriously, I think I did too much, and did not make as careful a study of style and finish as I should have done. I should have slung less ink and used more fine sandpaper and chamois skin on what I did sling. I wrote some verse, more in my later years, and hope some time— perhaps next in turn after this—to publish a collection of the jingles and doggeral I consider the best; though, you understand, none of it is real, simon-pure poetry of the Longfellow-Tennyson class, and I would’nt ask a publisher to invest a groat in it. But about this time I had begun to feel the nervous strain of overwork. I was on the ‘‘ragged edge’’ while at the New York Con- vention. Our denominational Young People’s Union, which was or- ganized there, took a lot of starch out of me. J had been looking for- ward with intense interest to the denominational rally, in which I hoped this organization would be effected. I had talked it over and worked sentiment up in favor of it. I had fought strenuously, for the charter for it inthe General Conference, at Westminster, in May of the same year, where I was again unanimously re-elected to my editorial position. There had been considerable suspicion of, and opposition to, a denominational organization of the young people, and especially to having what some of us thought essential, a secretary who should give his whole time to developing the work. I had hoped to see Rev. A. L. Reynolds, or Rev. C. F. Swift put into this field. Dr. T. H. Lewis, president of Western Maryland College, led the opposition in a heated and, atone point, unparliamentary way. He was so carried (80) away by feeling as.to question my veracity, on the floor of the con- ference. But the permission of the conference was given by a good, round majority, and my unopposed re-election, coming on the heels of it all, made me feel satisfied, even without an apology from him. Notwithstanding my keen interest, or rather because of it, when it came to the actual frame-up of the denominational union, I had become so nervous that I could not endure the, what seemed to me, interminable discussion of details, and I had to play the baby act and leave the house, while the yeoman work of shaping up an organiza- tion was done by Revs. A. L. Reynolds, C. F. Swift, J. A. Reichard, R. B. Whitehead, D. S. Stephens, W. W. Lineberry, and other level- headed, earnest men. It is due to the sagacity of these and a host of . others that the child was given a good send-off, and has prospered ever since. Rev. L. W. Bates. D. D., the ‘‘Grand Old Man’’ of the Methodist Protestant Church, was elected president and Rev. A. L. Reynolds secretary. 422 societies were reported at that time. 1 loitered at Far Rockaway Beach, and for a trip up the Hudson, for a little rest, before going back to the office grind. Soon after came the removal into the new building. In 1896 the general Conference met in Kansas City, Kan. It was assured already that Dr. Stephens would retire from the editorship of The Recorder, he having consented to head the new Kansas City University. I had been urged by friends to become a candidate for the position, and was assured that there was no doubt of my being elected. But the work, while easier than mine, did not appeal to me sufficiently. By many it was looked upon as offering a promotion. I could not see it so. My line of publications reached ten times as many readers and earned three times as much revenue. SoI asked my friends not to vote for me for editor of The Recorder. When they in- sisted in doing so, I publicly declined the honor, onthe floor of the conference. As it was, I fidgeted as the final ballot was counted, and the score showed I was in some danger of being elected in spite of myself; but after Dr. M. L. Jennings was chosen I was again, for the third time, (fourth term of four years) unanimously re- elected Sunday-school editor. (81) On my way to this conference I had filled a number of lecture engagements. Like nearly every Methodist minister who has the gift of gab, I had an ambition, at one time, to shine on Chautauqua platforms. I had the chance twice—once at the Chautauqua of Central California at Pacific Grove, and again at the Chautauqua of Northern California, at Shasta, while I was on the Coast attending the famous San Francisco C. E. Convention; but I don’t think I even glow-wormed, much less shone. I’m sure that I was not res- ponsible for any forest fires in those vicinities. I ramped all up and down Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Maryland, Illinois and other ill-starred states, as a lecturer. Sometimes I enjoyed lect- uring, and sometimes I was so nearly scared out of my boots, as in one case when the Fairmont W. C. T. U. sent for me from Pitts- burgh and advertised me as a high-priced ‘‘star,’’ that I would have enjoyed being shot just before beginning. I think I began my lecture, ‘“Young America,’’ while I was in college, and delivered it several times in Southern Michigan, but the Southern tier of counties is still on the map. I repeated it oftener than the others, and there was a time when, it had so become second nature with me to spout that lecture that, had I been wakened in the middle of the night and given the cue: ‘‘Ladies and gentlemen,’’ I could have rattled it off in my nightie. I delivered this lecture before some good houses, in Reading, Pa., Newark, N. J., Birmington, Ala., Mechanicsburg and Delaware, O., Syracuse, N. Y., Kansas City, Kan., Adrian, Mich., ete. I also perpetrated a lecture on my Canadian bicycle trip, ‘‘600 Miles on a Bike, in Canada,’’ which was delivered at a midsummer convention at Adrian college, and printed in the proceedings. I had an alleged humorous lecture entitled ‘‘Things,’’ which I. dictated on phonograph cylinders, just as I was supposed to ‘‘elo- cute’’ it, and I shut my eyes, and listened to myself time and again. When moving-picture cameras are cheap enough I shall get one, and scatter myself over a few thousand feet of film, and then study the effect, at my leisure. (82) I really think my best effort was a stereopticon lecture on ‘‘Bos- ton,’’ to inflict which I dug up a lot of swagger literary stuff a- round the Hub, and pulled out the patriotic tremolo to the limit. I had the usual life-size lithographs in the show windows. I deliver- ed this in benighted places, like Pittsburgh, West Lafayette and other Ohio towns, and once in Kingston, Jamaica. There had been an earthquake the year previous, and I fully expected another im- mediately after; but the ‘‘Gemof the Antilles” kept aa on shim- mering under the tropical sun. My last lecture was to have been on the immigrant question, but I shall refer to that later in its proper place. I defy my heirs to dig up any fortune that I amassed on the platform; but I sure had lots of fun, and aceumulated a scrapbook full of press notices, some hideous wood-cuts, and criticisms that kept me humble. One was that my trousers bagged at the knees. As I said before, I can give only vest-pocket camera snapshots of my years in Pittsburg, and in Beaver Falls where I slept at night and spent my Sundays. And, with Rev’s. W. R. Cowl, J. C. Berrien and J. D. Nixon as pastors, and with all the kind, neighborly peo- ple—the Brierlys and Knotts and Wilsons and Pattersons (after whom Patterson Heights was called) and the Townsends and Reeves’s and Myers’s—it was a most enjoyable ‘‘Saint’s Rest. ’’There were something over three hundred steps leading up to Patterson Heights when we first went there, but later an inclined electric rail- way was built. The view from the Heights was fine. I took a train on the P. & L. E., every morning, at 7.30 at the foot of the bluff, and was in my Pittsburgh office at 8, though the distance was 30 miles. 1 whizzed out again at 5.30 in time to mow my lawn and hoe my potatoes. We kept chickens, and a cow from which we reared a heifer calf that was a playmate of the kiddies. J remember that one day she playfully hoisted one of them by hooking her stubby horns in his kilt. A big, rollicking New Foundland named ‘‘Pomp,’’ was another playmate. I built a cow stable with mine own hands, and it must (88) have observed the first commandment and love its creator, for it leaned towards the house in which I abode. I planted all the trees and shrubbery, with the kindly aid and advice of Rey. J. C. Ber- rien, who was an expert arborculturist and a model neighbor—he owned a lot next to mine, but livedin the parsonage down town. I made the walks and the drives, of broken stone and gravel, dded a back porch to the house, kept the porch roofs and floors vainted, and in many ways found plenty of physical exercise. But one drawback was that I toiled too intensely, as my nervous tem perament prompted me, and usually prostrated myself before I had sense enough to rest. I soon had a beautiful place, and passers-by often stopped to admire my trim lawn and lovely tube-roses, hy- drangeas, astors, roses, lilacs, ete; but I was usually too tired to admire them. I always planned that, by and by, I would keep a horse and carriage, but a wheelbarrow and a bicycle were the near- est I came to realizing the dream. I had an annual pass on the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie R. R., most of the time. I had contracted the free pass disease, you recall, while in Adrian. Soon after coming to Pittsburg, I made the acquaintance of Mr. Bassett, General Passenger Agent of the Pitts- burgh & Western R. R., and so pleased him by writing up a trip to Adrian by that line and the Wheeling & Lake Erie, that he kept me supplied with passes on his line. When I went to the General Con- ference at Kansas City, I managed an excursion of delegates over the Pandandle R. R. that filled several coaches, and received trans- portation for myself and wife. I likewise had transportation over the Burlington from Chicago on the same account. But before I left Pittsburg, the good old days of free editorial passes were over and done. I contracted another weakness, just a little bit pleasanter, than riding free—that was of taking one of my children as a travelling companion. I took Elinore to West Virginia by the Monongahela River ; ceamboat. Itook Pierpont to the Columbus Exposition in Chicago, (84) in 1892, and on as far as Hutchinson, Kan. where I went to speak at the State C. E. Convention. I am sure I enjoyed it more than he did, and that’s saying a great deal. I started with him on another trip to North Carolina, but he was taken ill on the sleeper out of Pittsburgh, and his hot little body lay against mine all that night, like a furnace. There was no physician on board and it was a limit- ed train, and made no stop anywhere long enough to get one. As soon as I debarked at Washington, I inquired for a doctor, was directed to one within a few blocks, and a negro porter carried the sick boy, The doctor said I must take him no further, but as he had a vacant room that was used by Congressman Killgore, of Texas, when the House was in session, he would keep my son, and it would be perfectly safe for me to go on to North Carolina next day, and meet my engagement. The doctor’s daughter, a most charming girl, quickly made friends with Pierpont and promised to take care of him. Mind you, these were perfect strangers! On my return, I found Pierpont well enough to go with me, but so happy in his new surroundings that he didn’t care much whether he went. ‘‘Daisy,’’ had charmed him. She had taken him to see the capitol, and for drives over Washington, and he openly and un-. blushingly called her his ‘‘sweetheart.’’ He was seven or eight. One cannot be grateful enough for such kindness these Good Sam- aritans showed us. These are only samples of many delightful trips that I enjoyed with all my children, sometimes full of eare, but full of compensations. It was while we lived in Sunnyside Cottage that the heaviest cross cf our lives came, in the death of our dear little four-year-old- son, Durbin, of that dreaded disease, scarlet fever. I had gone to Cai- ro, Ill. to speak at a C. E. Convention. It was here I first met Mr. Walter W. Bristol who afterwards married my niece Miss Olive Lamb, of Oakland, Cal. It was while I was addressing the convention, on Sunday, that a telegram came saying: ‘‘Durbin sick. Come home.”’ I started that night, and no one but.an anxious father can imagine how slowly that Illinois Central ‘‘fast express’’ dragged it- (85) self up through the black prairies of ‘“‘Egypt’’ to connect with the Vandalia, and so on to Pittsburgh, over the Panhandle. When I arrived home and went upstairs, it was to find a sheet tacked over the bedroom door, sprinkled with an antiseptic solution, and Durbin was tossing on the bed in delirium. He never recognized me once in all the days that he fought in vain, with us, the doctor and the trained nurse, against that malignant enemy. It was hard! There had been but about two years between his age and Pierpont’s, andthey made a frisky pair. I never went out for a walk with them but they took one end of my cane between them and pranced and pulled like a team of thoroughbreds. Durbin was different in many ways from the other children; he early de- veloped unusually strong will, a marked individuality, and was a most interesting and lovable child. He had been so delighted when his younger brother, Francis, came a few months before. He at once began a collection of pocket treasures for the baby brother. One night, on undressing him, his mother noticed an unusual bulge on each side of his little trousers. An examination of the pockets, after their owner was asleep, re- vealed an aggregation of strings, nails, marbles, bits of chalk and colored glass that would have delighted the junk man. Next morn- ing he protested vigorously against their removal: he was saving them for his ‘‘baby buzzer to play wif.’’ He was the very soul of loyalty to the baby brother God had sent him; he would kneel by the bed and watch him by the hour, almost, talking to him, and singing about him. He was very indignant that the nurse kept him wrapped up in swaddling clothes, instead of putting him into boys’s clothes. The children of course, were just as loyal. And Pierpont, all through the days that Durbin lay ill, gave up all his play and plod- ded uncomplainingly and gladly to the drug-store and on other er- rands with an untiring devotion that was beautiful to see. Durbin’s death, followed by a lighter run of the scarlet fever in Pierpont, added greatly to my nervous strain. I had been for some © time taking treatment of a nerve specialist of Pittsburgh, who re- (86) sided in New Brighton. From now on, it was a fight for myself— whether I should have to give up office and literary work. Insomnia had gripped me, and many a night I did not sleep until long after the cocks had crowed midnight. When I could not sleep, I read. 1 had an incandescent bulb over the head of my bed, and I read all of Prescott’s histories of Mexico and Peru, lulling myself to sleep. I’ read propped up by pillows, and with my coat on, and when slumber came I merely dropped the book and fell asleep, often without co- vering myself further. The trips which I have described above are samples of many that I cannot mention. I was called to speak at Kansas State C. E. Conventions, I think, four times. I went once to Birmingham and Montgomery, Ala. Besides this, C. E. Convention work, which grew out of my trusteeship in the United society and my numerous scribblings on C. E. themes, I did a vast amount of travelling every year in visiting the annual conferences of the Methodist Protestant church, to push the Sunday-school and publishing interests. I at- tended, at different times, the Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, North Missouri, North and South Illinois, Indiana, two Ohio, two Michi- gan, three New York, two Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and North Carolina conferences, besides my own in West Virginia; some of these several times. The long trips, when I had pleasant travelling companions, al- ways rested me, and public speaking, I seemed to thrive on; but single-night stands tired me. I once stumped the Genesee, N. Y., Conference for two weeks, in the interest of Our Young People, speaking every night at a different place, and sleeping in a different bed, and grew fat and saucy on it. I brought back 200 new sub- scriptions, and was told I would better stay at home and attend to my work. I attended the Montreal Convention the next year after the one in New York, spending one of the pleasantest weeks of my life in the Royal Victoria Hotel, which was the headquarters of the United Society of Christian Endeavor. I extended my trip to Quebec by steamer, and on to the falls of Charleroi, in a very pleasant com- (87) pany. I recall distinctly ‘‘Ned’’ Murphy, son of Francis, and Dr. Gilbert Reid, the famous missionary from China. The preacher of the Convention sermon was, at my suggestion to the program committee, Dr. T. H. Lewis, of Western Maryland College, and I never was more proud that I belonged to the same denomination, except once, and that was ten years after, when I heard him sweep the Congregational Ministers’ Association, in Bos- ton, off its feet with his matchless oratory, on the then living ques- tion of church unity. Dr. Lewis and I had some very pleasant conversations together in the hotel lobby. I was invited to Westminister, I am not sure whether before or after this, to address the Seminary students, preach to the College students and I gave a lecture on the phono- graph to Prof. Simpson’s class in physics. I was never treated bet- ter in my life. I wonder if Dr. Lewis recalls the ‘‘horn.’’ I planned to look up my Canadian relatives on this Montreal trip—the Williams’—and wrote my cousin William Williams to that effect but, receiving no reply up to the time of leaving home, I gave it up. I received a letter later explaining that he had moved from Seely’s Bay to Smith’s Falls, and my letter had been delayed in forwarding. He was very sorry, and so was I. The next International Convention of which I will speak—for I can merely hand out samples on toothpicks, as Heinz does at the food fairs—was a memorable one because it was in Boston (1895), and this was my first visit to the Hub. We went in a special Pitts- burgh train, several hundred of us, and on this trip (as well as on the one to San Francisco, where we had 1,200 Pennsylvania dele- gates, in two sections) I made acquaintances that have been kept up ina pleasant way ever since. Pittsburgh had a royal set of En- deavorers, of whom I can mention only a few:—Drs. McCrory and Stauff, Britton, Cassell, Miss Jamieson, and a great host whose names are written up there. Our hotel headquarters in Boston were at the Brunswick, and 1 most thoroughly enjoyed the feast of fellowship, the side-trip to (88) Plymouth with Dr. Mark B. Taylor and a basket of chicken sand- wiches; the stirring convention sessions in Mechanics Hall, and last, but not least, my call at the Christian Endeavor World office, meet: ing Mr. Wells, Mr. Kelley and the rest. I never had a star part in any of these conventions, my voice not being equal to reaching 10,000 people. I read a part of my story *‘Americus Sovereign’s Sceptre,’’ in Shawmut Ave. Church, of which Dr. Wm. E. Barton, now editor of the Advance, was pastor. Grace Livingston Hill read one also. My story was published in serial form in the C. E. World, and afterwards expanded to book size. It revived the dialect of ‘‘Jonathan Hayseeds,’’ in some para- graphs. I submitted it to W. A. Wilde & Co., who reported favorably on it, and asked me to set a price on the copyright, as they prefer- red that to the royalty plan. I would add that my two books pub- lished by Crowell were sold outright, and three of my books were pub- lished on royalty. (In this one I sell the readers.) J have not worn out many Burrough’s adding machines. computing the profits, in either case. It’s the fun of the game, as in the case of this book, that is the uncommercialized author’s chief stimulant. I add again, (at risk of becoming an adding-machine myself) that I could have had twice as many published books to my everlasting credit, or shame, had I been willing, as some aspiring authors are, to dig up part of the price of publishing: but I ‘‘says to myself, says I,’’ like ‘‘Jerushy,”’ “If ! furnish the brains and. ink someone else must fur- nish the lucre.’ ‘But to resoom,’’ Teunnose that a streak ‘ef commercialism must have cropped out in my answer to Wilde, I must have made my de- mand too exorbitant in comparison with the prospective humble sell- ing qualities of the book, for Wilde ‘‘got cold feet’’ and returned the ms. and ‘‘Americus Sovereign, etc.’’ is in cold storage. Later when I was in Boston working among the Italian boys, in the Mer- rimac St. Mission, one of Wilde’s two sons, who were running the busi- ness (the father having died) said to me that he believed I could write a good book for them based on my boy club experiences, I did write the story, and I must say that in my judgement it is the best story (89) I ever wrote. But again the Wildes suffered from an attack of frigid extremities. The ms. was afterwards conditionally accepted by The American Tract Society, the condition being that I give it a religious setting, as their charter restricted them to religious books. While I was engaged in revising the story, my last nervous break-down (I hope so) came, and the revision has never been finished. I have taken it up several times, thinking that I might do it a little at a time, but each time I have been warned by signals in my upper story that I must desist or cease to exist. I think I have rambled on long enough in this field. I could camp down here among the buttercups.and daisies of sweet memory; but there are inviting fields still ahead, (Boston—Jamaica—Hawaii) and there’s a limit to my publishing capacity and your patience. I want to browse a bit yet in two or three spots. I never felt satisfied with the discontinuance of Our Young Peo- ple, although it did not pay expenses. But my dissatisfaction was with myself, chiefly, as I had recommended its abandonment, after I grew weary of being reminded that it was not paying expenses. I see, now, that had I been a little less ‘‘sot,’’ and facile enough to have developed it more in Sunday-School lines it might, perhaps, have gained more friends and filled the place that Our New Guide fills to- day. That’s pretty good hindsight; foresight always comes higher. But I need not beg the question as to the success of the Sunday- school periodicals as a whole. And far beyond mere numerical and financial success, it seems to me, is the fact that I felt around for latent writing ability in the church, and trapped and developed a bunch of unsuspected amateur writers, some of whom have since be- come semi-professionals. It would be immodest in me to say that I had anything decisive in bringing out the literary talent of Mr. W. H. Siviter, Mrs. Anna Pierpont Siviter, Rev. Stokely S. Fisher, Rev. C. W. Stephenson and others whose manuscripts are gladly accepted by some of the leading American periodicals; but it is certain that they had not been using their abilities in behalf of our church perio- dicals, when I got hold of the corner of the napkin that hid their tal- ent and jerked it off. (90) I might namea small army of others whose names became house- hold words in our denomination through the pages of ‘‘Our Children, Our Morning Guide, Our Young People, and the lesson helps. I hope that I have, insome small way, been an inspiration to some of “‘the boys.’’ Men like Paul Moore Strayer, Harlin L. Feeman, J. Carl McCaslin, and others have been good enough to tell me so, though some of them have since far outgrown me. The San Francisco Convention in 1897, took me to the Pacific Coast for the first time. It was a memorable trip. The party that filled our Pullman started largely as strangers but ended ‘‘engaged”’ or as fast friends. There was a tremendous appeal to the imagination in those fifty-five trains of Endeavorers puffing their way over the Rockies, where before but one or two trains a day had been regular- ly scheduled. How we literally ate the country up like grasshoppers; how we enjoyed Denver, Pike’s Peak, Salt Lake City and the rally in the Mormon Tabernacle, the Royal Gorge; how many meals we skip- ped and how we feasted in the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, after our fast was broken would make a book in itself. But I have anticipated some things, soI will add (this time a comptometer) only a word about meeting my mother who came with the South Dakota Endeavorers and, with her, visiting with my two sisters, three nieces and nephew in Oakland. I met again Mr. W. W. Bristol, as secretary of the ’97 Convention Committee. After his gradu- ation from Berkeley he became business manager of Kamehameha Schools, Honolulu, and married my niece, Olive Lamb, and thereby hangs a tale, but it is not a lamb’s tail. After the California Chautauquas, and an address before the Y. W. C. A. convention at Mill’s College, I went up to Seattle and spent a week as the guest of Hon. Dexter Horton, one of the finest Christian laymen I have ever known. My mother met me in Portland, and we returned together as far as Dakota. The next year came the invitation from Dr. Clark to join the editorial staff of the Christian Endeavor World, which I hesitated (91) some time about accepting, although in a way it was welcome. I will explain. I had been plugging away at one thing for almost fifteen years, and believed I had pushed developments as far as I could. I felt that I was getting rutted. Furthermore, I have already hinted at some uncongeniality in my environment, though I have no doubt that I was the uncongenial element. But I will illustrate. I can’t ‘‘pass’’ this over, In arranging for my trip to San Francisco, I thought I would be doing a good thing by getting illustrations from the railroads and writing up a series of articles on my trip. But when the express pack- age containing the cuts came to our office, it seems to have aroused a suspicion that I was disposing of something that was not mine, in exchange for free railroad transportation, and objection was raised by the then publishing agent, Mr. U. S. Fleming, in behalf of the Directory. 1 do not think Mr. Fleming took this attitude on his own initiative. He was a high-minded, courteous Christian gentleman, always, and I wish that his pathway as agent had been made more flowery by all of us. As a matter of fact, I was offered a free pass a part of the way, but found that to accept it, and pay local rates the rest of the way, would be more expensive than to take advantage of the C. E. excur- sion rate, which I did. I argued the matter out with the Directory and was permitted to publish the articles and credit the railroads with the cuts, but the Directory seemed to feel that they had sacrificed some advertising advantage, though I believe transcontinental rail- roads were not wont toexpend money lavishly in Sunday-school per- iodicals like ours. However, I won’t say that such little pinpricks as this had no influence in my final decision. I don’t mean a word of this derogatory to the gentlemen who composed the Directory. They were conscien- tiously fulfilling a responsibility that they had accepted from the church, and they were doing it at a sacrifice. J] wouldn’t want to know finer men then W. K. Gillespie, Captain Herbert, Rev. S. S. Fisher; (all gone on J think) and Mr. W. Siviter. If I have omitted any name I beg pardon—I mean all. (92) At this time I made a request to the Directory for a typewriting machine, an appropriation with which to pay for literary contributions, and some other things that I deemed essential to aggressive work, and the whole budget was politely turned down, on the plea of economy, though a typewriter had been bought for the Recorder office. Per- haps I created the impression that I had a chip on my shoulder. I certainly ‘‘saw blue’ in those days. I had just gone through a second severe attack of the grippe, which left me in an abnormal condition. I was still nervous, though so much improved in that respect that I passed the medical examination for insurance in one of the old line companies, But I felt that I was going stale; if Istaid, my carburet- ter might refuseto spark. I wanted a change. I was looking around for an opening, and then came this cordial letter from Dr. Clark, who knew nothing of conditions in Pittsburgh, breathing such a sweet spirit of sympathetic brotherliness—it was just what I was hungry for, just what I had been getting a taste of ever since I had entered into associations with him. I don’t mean that I had never experienced it where I was; Dr. Stephens was a true and comradely friend. I remember how, when I slept in the same bed with him once, I was awakened in the morn- ing by a vigorous hug of friendship. I remember, once, a similar very grateful demonstration from Rev. W. M. Strayer, who had come to Pittsburgh to attend a meeting of the Board of Home Missions. I met him in the lobby of the Central Hotel, and he siezed me and hugged me ina fatherly way, right before all the people. Bless his sunny heart! It wasn’t the only time. And Paul was just as loving as his fath- er; and the Siviters were so comfy and homey. And the Beaver Falls and New Brighton people—were there ever two such communities of heavenly people side by side? I recall with great pleasure my ‘‘Lay- man’s Bible Class” an interdenominational organization that met from house to house, and the Peerless bicycle they gave me as an ex- pression of appreciation of their teacher. I think I would better fall back on Calvinism and say that I was foredained to go to Boston—that will sound pleasanter. Anyway, I resigned in December, 1897, leaving copy three (93) months ahead, and Mrs. Anna Pierpont Siviter, for a number of years my associate editor on Our Young People, a gifted and charming wo- man and successful authoress, was chosen to fill the place pro tem. The explanation of three-months’ advance copy, salted down in my pigeon-holes, is that I had been invited by the Board of Publication to go to the World’s Sunday-Scnool Convention in London, in 1898, all my expenses paid. This long-anticipated trip went a-glimmering. I mentioned this in the C. E. headquarters on my visit, to talk matters over and it was suggested the C. E. World’s Convention was to meet in London in 1900, and I might consider it a postponed trip. I made the trip to Boston via Tarrytown, lecturing there on the way and helping to marry my friend Louis B. Hull to Katherine, only daughter of another dear and helpful friend, Dr. S. K. Spahr. I arrived home on Christmas day. A conclave of the Cowan Clan soon decided that it should be the Hub for us. (94) ene ee eee “*His Whiskers,’’ As he looked when he went to Boston, calling himself ‘‘John Franklin Cowan.’’ One of his associates in C. E. work wrote quite vigorously to Mr. Wells: ‘‘ ‘John Franklin’ be hanged! ”’ meaning the ‘‘muchness’’ of the name. It was duly executed. LACS at ome TABS OeeOEeeweseEseeeeoweee Ten Years With The Hubbites. W. thought it best not to take the children until the cold win- ter was over, so I went on alone on Jan. 10. I was fortunate to get a room and board with the Walker family in Allston, a suburb four miles west, on the Boston & Albany R. R. Mrs. Walker was a mother- ly widow woman; Harvey the son, a young lawyer, was superintend- ent of the School-School in the Quint Ave., Congregational Church. Minnie, the daughter, was a stenographer in the city. I soon became very much at home there. There being no Methodist Protestant Church in Boston, I attend- ed the Congregational in preference to the Methodist Episcopal, on account of the hostility of the M. E. leaders to Christian Endeavor. I had served on a committee of the Trustees of the United Society, with representatives of the Canadian Methodist and Methodist Epis- copal Churches, in an effort to federate all young people’s societies, and had drawn upon myself the ireful lightning bolts of Dr. (after- wards Bishop) Berry, editor of The Epworth Herald. He sarcastical- ly demanded: “Who is this John F. Cowan to meddle with the affairs of the Methodist Episcopal Church? A very small man in a very small de- nomination, ete.”’ In my reply to him, in Our Young People. I owned the corn, as to the first charge, but challenged him to measure my denomination by progressive ideas, and contrast it, before a jury of enlightened public opinion, with his denomination that had barred the doors of its conference against Frances Willard and had refused ordination to Anna Howard Shaw. Of course I was a very small man, because avery great man had said so, in the choice phraseology that marks a great man. Afterwards when I met Bishop Berry on the prohibition platform we chuckled together over the passage at arms. He could hurl thun- ~ derbolts at the saloon in the same Jovian way. It was during these first winter months that I slipped ¢ on the icy (95) church steps, one Sunday evening, and got a knock on my head against the granite that left me unconscious for a time, and after- wards delirious for the rest of the night. I was out of the office a week, and I am not sure that I fully recovered from this injury for years after. Whether it was this, or whether it was the sequelia of the last attack of grippe, or whether it was that I had just passed the age of forty-five, or whether it was all of these combined, I was conscious of a mental torpor all that winter, and for a year or more after. I wanted anxiously to do my best work and ‘‘make good’’ on the C. E. World, but felt that my powers of invention had failed me. Something held me back; I just dragged along in routine work. In March I went back to Beaver Falls to pack up, and the five of us made a bee line for Boston as the Pennsylvania R. R. flies, pro- vided with passes through the thoughtfulness of Mr. John Willis Baer, then business manager of the Christian Endeavor World. Mr. Baer also gave me $200 for moving expenses, and this open-handed way marked the dealings of the Golden Rule Company with me through ten years. I shall have more to say of it at the last of this chapter. We took half of a double house on Highgate Street, Allston, where we remained a year, when we took a very pleasant detached house on Ashford Street, a maple shaded and popular residence street. We staid here three years, during which time my Mother and Aunt Phebe visited us, and Miss Blanche Van Auken, a niece of Dr. Stephens made her home with us, while she took a course in Sloyd at the Teacher’s Training School. A frequent delightful caller at our house was Newton Swift, of the Onondaga Swifts, a succcessful young piano teacher in Boston, and a royal good fellow. When our daughter completed her work in the Brighton High School and entered Mt. Holyoke College, we did not need so much room and we did need more cash, so we took suite No. 5 ina six- apartment house, The Miriam, across the street from the first house in which we lived. Here we were as ‘‘snug as a bug in a rug’”’ for the remainder of our stay. It was steam-heated and janitor-kept, and was just about the laziest and most hot-housey way of living I ever tried. The janitor brought up coal for the kitchen range (we had both coal (96) SSSA eeessassaassaes SACS ADA AAAS ee Seon sesessS He discovers a streak of gray down each side of his face, and takes a shave. DUCUCUMMERUUBEEBEBECE: ats & SOU OCAAAAe See CSE GASB ASaass My Office In Boston, and gas ranges) took away the ashes, swept the halls, washed the windows and kept every door and window fastening in shape. 1 had no use even for a screw-driver, much less a snow-shovel or ash-sift- er. The rooms were always comfortable on the coldest nights and mornings, and the elevator saved walking. In the other houses, the boys had taken care of the furnace and the little bit of lawn, and lubricated their saving-bank accounts there- by, but here there was nothing to develop a boy in industry and fru- gality, So Imade my boys allowances for street-car fares and lunch- es, and what they saved by walking or using their bicycles was theirs. I rode my own wheel to the office, or walked a great deal. The eight miles a day were a good counterpoise for eight hours of desk work. But to go back to the office; our first offices were on Washington Street, over Pray’s carpet store. It was often commented on that the most conspicuous sight, on approaching the C. E. headquarters, was the big sign that surmounted the building, displaying the one word: PRAY. I was never sorry for a moment that I had made the change from Pittsburgh to Boston. I always enjoyed the companionships of the C. E. office. I enjoyed the privilege of becoming acquainted with the historic old city and its environs to which I could easily walk or cycle. I formed acquaintances with many men and women in C. E. work whom it was a delight to know. I had many opportunities inthe way of lectures, meeting authors and lecturers, and prominent people from all over the world. My Boston life broadened me in many ways; and I cheerfully own my obligation to Mr. Wells, the managing editor, and to the free but kindly round-table conferences with the heads of all the departments, on the policy and composition of the paper, for improvement in my ideals and style of writing, though I am afraid these pages still bear evidence that I might have profited much more. My work comprised the news department of the Christian E'n- deavor World, my share of the editorials (there were four office edi- tors, ) book reviews, the Sunday-School page, the department of glean- ings from other papers and books, and some work on other pages. (97) On the Junior Christian Endeavor World I had the page on prayer- meeting topics, and those of ‘‘Bright Sayings’ and ‘‘Uncle David’s Easy Chair,’’ together with condensations of interest to juvenile read- ers, The volume of work was not so great as it had been in Pitts- burgh; but yet for a couple of years I attempted no outside work, except some editorials which I wrote for the Sunday-School Times, at the solicitation of Mr. Charles Gallaudet Trumbull. Soon after our offices were moved to Tremont Temple, I began writing the Sunday-School page for the Christian Endeavor World, which I have kept up, with an intermission of only a few months when I was in Jamaica, for seventeen years. No ink-slinging that I have done has given me a larger return of appreciation and pleasure. I have received literally hundreds of letters and thousands of verbal, written and printed acknowledgements of helpfulness. Frequently my writings have been reprinted, with credit, by other papers. The only use I made of my phonograph for dictation purposes, after going to Boston, was to dictate some of these lessons to it, at home, my wife transcribing them on the Caligraph. In the office for my copy, I used the Remington, which was furnished me by the Company, dictating correspondence to the editorial stenographer. After a few years, Mr. Charles S, Brown, who had charge of office supplies, gave me a new Remington. Later, I had a Fox. At first, my office on the fifth floor of Tremont Temple adjoined Dr. Clark’s. I faced the entrance from the genera! office to the edi- torial offices, and often Isat with my door open. | never thought, my- self, that I bore even a casual resemblance to Dr. Clark; but others have remarked a likeness, and sometimes visitors who called to see Dr. Clark and were told that he was not in, caught a glimpse of my profile in the light of the window, and insisted: ‘‘Aren’t you mis- taken? Dr. Clark must be in, for I see him now, sitting at his desk.”’ When the World’s C. E. Convention, 1900, in London first began to be talked up, it was assumed that I would be one of the delegates from the office. But when I learned that another editor, who had been on the staff many more years than I, and had never taken a va- cation, wanted very much to go, I felt that the proper thing was for (98) me to again relinquish the trip to Europe. So I staid at home that summer and dreamed voyages to Europe, and ‘‘ran’’ the paper, with the assistance of Mr. Isaac Ogden Rankin, who has had large ex- perience as a ‘‘sub’’ on the Congregationalist and other papers. We worked together very harmoniously. The only difference of opinion that I recall was in reference to my figurative and frolick- some use of the term ‘‘spank.’’ I do not recall in exactly what con- nection; but Mr. Rankin’s New England purist standards were rude- ly shocked at the thought of such a rude provincialism in a Boston paper. I waived ‘“‘spanked,’’ in favor of ‘‘castigated,’’ and peace reigned. Let it be understood nothing can be ‘‘spanked’’ in a Bos- ton publication. I suppose I have a Western tendency towards elementary direct- ness and brutal force in composition, that often mars my literary chastity. I recall once, before Mr. Rankin’s advent, writing a sentence for the C. EF. World something like this: *‘If God had been so minded he could have had Goliath butted to death with one of David’s ram’s: He didn’t need-even the puny human arm of little David.”’ That sentence never was printed. In Boston, you can’t ‘‘butt’’ aman, any more than you can ‘‘spank’’ him. I sent the aphorism to the Sunday School Times, for which I was then contributing edito- rial matter, and it was used. It fell to me, during that summer, to get outa ‘enbelal” on the assassination of President McKinley, whom I had heard speak in Tre- mont Temple, and whose hand I had grasped only a short time be- fore. The news of his death came on Saturday afternoon after Mr. Rankin had left the office, and only Mr. Wm. Shaw, United Society Treasurer, and myself remained. Mr. Shaw was at this time busi- ness manager of the Golden Rule Co., He furnished me with all the afternoon papers, and from them I gleaned the facts, and made my own story, writing likea steam engine, while the compositors sweat- ed and groaned, and the foreman stood at my elbow to seize the last sheet of finished copy. I was complimented on the story, the only “‘break’’ being an allusion to the assassin asa ‘‘Socialist,’’? which (99) brought several remonstrances. The foreman, for most of the time I was in the office, was Mr. Benjamin Keeping, a hustling, nervous man; but a very obliging - and pleasant one; big enough timber for Mayor of Revere, later. He was succeeded, in the last year, by Mr. Ernest Acker, who had grown up in the office from a boy. He was more phlegmatic in tem- perament, but just as efficient. Ernest’s smile was worth a good round silver dollar, any day. He became an alderman in Revere and I am not sure but Mayor. I should like to speak of all the composing-room force by name, I am under so many obligations to the proof-readers, the linotype operators, the job printers, especially to C. R. Preston, for his continued kindness through all these year. Miss Gilman, the heroine of Amos R. Wells’ story ‘‘Foreman Jennie,’’ was a composi- tor in the office when I first went there, a sweet girl; also Mr. John Allen, whom she soon afterwards married. The ‘‘also’’ puts John on the ‘‘sweet’’ list, too. _ The atmosphere was very democratic in the whole office, from shipping-room to president of United Society. ‘‘Charley,’’ who bossed the shipping and mailing, was as much beloved, in a way, as was Dr. Clark. We all mingled together in social affairs, sometimes in the big main office, cleared of desks, and sometimes at Dr. Clark’s home in Auburndale, Dr. J. L. Hill’s in Salem, or Mr. Shaw’s at Ballardvale. We had seashore and other outings together, and there never was a happier family in any set of offices. Another smile that was most heartening and inspiring was that of John Willis Baer. Nature had given him a face that was a sermon, a poem, a song, a gold-mine, a flower-garden; and when he opened an office door and beamed on the immate with that genial, brotherly smile, it was a godsend for the rest of the day. How sorry we all were to have him bid us farewell and go to the Presbyterian Mis- sionary Society in New York! Mr. Shaw was just as cheery. If he had to take exceptions, he used the voice of a turtle-dove. And George W. Coleman was another. He isa great-hearted, (100) ee erence eee eer Rey. Francis E. Clark, D. D., L. L. D. Founder of the Christian Endeavor Movement. JCMS CMCC CCC CCC C cece cea sa Sie ere entenrere tar aersniee tater ae oan ROCCO OUCmEEEBUEBEEES: ee ia Does this Resemble Dr. Clark? WECM + ned a apare aeaaeeeeeeeae SAAB EO SEO Seeeeeeeeeees optimistic, affectionate boy with the brain of a full-grown man. We were glad to see him made Chairmanof the Boston City Council. He ought to be Mayor, and then Governor, Mr. Arthur W. Kelly is so modest that he would not wish me to mention him at all, but he is asolid, gentlemanly, Christian character clear through to the backbone, and no one is more genuinely appre- ciated for his worth and goodness, I had chummier relations with Mr. Amos R. Wells, the manag- ing editor, and Mr. Charles S, Brown, the circulation manager, than any other two. With the former I often lunched at the ‘‘Cafeteria,”’ or some other favorite hashery. Wells would give his order, get out his note-book, and propose: ‘‘Now while we are waiting for things to come, let’s think up some anagrams for the puzzle department.’’ And he did not always put the book away when the corned-beef hash or baked beans came. His stunt, after lunch was to take a hike in some out-of-the-way corner of old Boston. My, how those long legs of his could stride it off! I walked with him, one Saturday afternoon, from the office to Auburndale, twelve miles, at his gait, and I was glad enough to take the trolley car home. Wells was the most insatiable worker I ever knew. If I were writing his ‘‘ought-to-buyography’’ I could tell many interesting and complimentary things. “‘Charlie’’ Brown was one of the ‘‘best loved’’ men in the office An artist by temperament, he was one of the most congenial, love- able fellows I have ever met. We, too, ‘‘hashed’’ together often. We worked together in the Merrimac Street Mission, and we have steadily corresponded since. As they say out here, I havea ‘‘great aloha’”’ for Charles Spurgeon Brown. An earlier chum was Harvey Walker. We frequently tramped into town together, where he had a law office. We cycled together, — swam together, worked in C. E. society and church. He was a fine, clean, ambitious young fellow, He had been elected amember of the city council, and bade fair to rise much higher politically, when cramps, or heart-failure, put an untimely end to his life, as a party (101) of us were swimming together, one night, in the Charles River. We were aiding an inexperienced swimmer across, that night, who had lost his nerve and gone under once or twice and filled his lungs. I got him on my back, and just barely made the Cambridge bank with him, against a strong ebb tide and by the timely help of Roger Wells, a young Harvard student. Walker was the best swimmer in the bunch and we did not think of him while resuscitating the half-drowned man, until the ambulance came, then we missed him. But we search- ed in vain, Half the night the police dragged the river, Wells and 1 directing them over the water in which we had swum. His body was recovered next day, and his poor mother and sister have not to this day rallied from the loss. The nervous strain seemed to age me five years. The year before * T had taken a bicycle tour with Harvey through Massachusetts, down the Hudson and on to Ocean Groveand Manasquan, N. J. Pierpont had ridden with us to Springfield, Mass. and on down to East Com- mons, where he remained, and Paul M. Strayer, who was preaching there, had joined us. It was a strenuous but wholesome vacation for “Judge,’’? ‘‘Doc,’’ and Parson,’’ by the time we rode back again, across Long Island and through Connecticut and Rhode Island. I feel, now, that I was rather too strenuous in some of my re- creations. Often, I ‘‘rode on my nerve,’’ as the saying is until, when I dismounted, I was ready to go to bed. Often in my night rides through the lighted streets of Newton, Cambridge, Brookline and suburbs, the exhileration of swift motion stimulated me to overdo. On Saturday afternoons I took long tramps with my boys, over these same roads—to Waverly Oaks, the Middlesex Fells, Blue Hills, etc. When one has walked far enough he knows it, and he usually has sense enough to board a trolley car, but not so with cycling. Pierpont finished the grammar school, the Boston Latin School and entered Dartmouth College before we left Boston. I would have preferred Harvard, which was only a mile across the river; but his classmates lured him to Dartmouth. It was more his affair than mine, and I let him decide. I have never been sorry. The Dartmouth at- mosphere was a fine one for a yourg fellow. He did take his Junior (102) year at Harvard, so as to be nearer his mother while I came to Ha- waii to recuperate—but that is anticipating. After her graduation, Elinore taught in the Easton, Maryland, high school one year, then entered Emerson College of Oratory, Bos- ton, meanwhile doing some work on one of the Boston dailies, as she had done before during one of her college vacations. It was in 1906 that my fifth book, ‘‘New Life in the Old Prayer Meeting,’’ was brought out by Fleming H. Revell & Co., I had in- tended it, originally, as a help for leaders of young people’s prayer meetings. In fact, it grew out of a Monday night class which I con- ducted for several years in the Boston Y. M. C. A., for leaders of the young people’s meetings. I revised my plans for these meet- ings and incorporated all the good suggestions secured in the class. When I submitted the ms. to Revell, he suggested that it was a pity to publish a book for so limited a constituency, when all the prayer-meetings of the land needed ‘‘new life.’’ Why not enlarge the scope of the book to include church prayer-meetings, missionary meetings, ete. I did so, with the result that the book is still having a steady sale. A book that is a tool for some worker outlasts by far a “‘best seller,’’ My work in the Sunday-School at Allston, for the first few years, was largely that of a substitute teacher. I think it was in 1900 that a lady teacher who had a class of six or eight young women came to me and said that she was tired and wanted me to take the class off her hands and let her in as a pupil. I consented, on condition that I should be at liberty to conduct the class in my own way. Several of the young women were matried, and I at once persuaded them to bring in their husbands. ! decided that the class was still too small to offer me a man’s job, so we all began to work for recruits. Each one had a friend, and blandish- ments of the right kind brought them. This overcrowded our little corner in the main room, and we had to petition for space in the church auditorium, just on the other side of the sliding partition. (103) I was glad of this change, because I had begun to use the black- board and other devices that called for wall space, and it was hard to get a place to pin anything up, in the main Sunday-School room. Soon after moving we effected an organization, and began to look about for asuitable name. A class spirit was commencing to show; | . began to see possibilities. So, it was soon arranged that we should have a large room in the balcony, and here we blossomed out as “The Friendly Class,’’ with a membership committee that hustled among all the un-Sunday-schooled people in the congregation, and in all the lodging-houses and rented houses in which there were new-comers to the community. It had someway got hold of us that it was our mission to create a friendly spirit in the church and com- munity for all such. And the Friendly Class grew, as any truly ‘‘friendly class’’ is bound to, under such circumstances. We had socials and outings and annual suppers. We numbered over a hundred members when I left Allston. A number of the members became members of the church. The class undertook good work in behalf of the church and the com- munity. It won the highest praise of the pastor. And I want to say that, in my ten years of association with Rev. John Haarvig as pastor of the Quint Ave. Congregational Church, he became greatly endeared to me by his loving spirit and earnest Christian heart. The fame of The Friendly Class soon spread beyond the bounds of Allston. Inquiries came concerning it. Our printed constitution and committee plans, with asketch of our work, was sent in response, and soon Malden Congregational Church, Phillips Church, South Bos- ton, Newton, Auburndale, and at least a dozen other Friendly Classes were in existence in and near Boston, while in various parts of the United States others sprang up. At the time I left Boston I think there were over twenty of which I knew. I gave up keeping track of them because I had to drop things, to save myself. I have read, late- ly, of other Friendly classes, but have no means of knowing how many there have been, or are now. Ihave no doubt that, had I been able to follow it up at the opportune time, the name might have been (104) widely spread, but since the organized adult class has grown under other names, it does not matter. The Friendly Class in Eliot Church, Newton, I organized, and conducted myself for the first year. This wealthy old church was in the predicament of having more money than workers, and it em- ployed at least two outside salaried teachers. A professor of the Boston University Theological Seminary was one, and I was the other. While I was starting the Newton class, the Allston class was thriving under teachers from its own ranks. In both these classes, which I taught personally, I used the stereopticon every Sunday morning to illustrate the lessons. I cannot here go into further details but will merely add that the Allston class is still flourishing. It had more than a hundred present at its last annual round-up, had just paid $250 on the debt of the church. They are a choice bunch of live-wire Christians—the Wheelers, the Batsons, Mellen, Thorpe, dear old Deacon Wyllie, the Snow sisters—by gracious, Iam getting myself into hot water by men- tioning any names, for how can I call the whole roll here? What a joy and consolation they have been to me, and still are! Besides office work, and Y. M. C. A. work, and authorship, and several scrapbooks full of short stories, sketches, serials, ete., pub- lished while I was in Boston, I also had a pretty steady grind of convention and local-union rally work—workers’ conferences, society anniversaries, etc. Each of us in the office had a share of this to do. Dr. Clark was, of course in greatest demand, but then he was away so much, and his was such a busy, crowded life, that he often had to persuade local societies and organizations to put up with others, even such a poor substitute as I. I think I must have averaged a night a week in this kind of work, in New England, for the ten years. Then, there were the state conventions, and the larger city un- ions. I remember speaking at the New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Ohio and several other state conven- . tions. Once, when Dr. Clark was called away, after making (105) engagements for Oklahoma, Kansas, Ohio, and maybe some others, he asked me to go. Iwas gone from the office on this trip six or eight weeks and felt quite like a stranger when I pulled into South Station again. I went once to speak for the Philadelphia union, (this was the second time), once for the Providence union, once to New York for a Reformed Church rally; to Portland, Me., to Manchester, N. H., to Stamford, Conn., Albany, N. Y., Schenectady, N. Y., and so on. It was a pleasure to meet the workers of these States and cities, such splendid, devoted men and women they were! It was inspiring to face packed houses of earnest young people who had sacrificed business and gone to the expense of travelling many miles—many hundreds, some of them—to get some new ideas and inspiration for use in their local churches. I think the most enthusiastic conven- tions I ever knew were in Kansas; but it is a mistake, I soon found, to assume that the New England young people are cold and unres- ponsive. In fact, taking New England people as a whole, I could want no warmer-hearted and more cordial friends. One of the most thoroughly enjoyable trips away from Boston was to the General Conference and Christian Endeavor Rally of my own denomination in Washington, D. C. 1 had attended one Gen- eral Conference before, since leaving our Sunday-school work, at Atlantic City, N. J. No, I don’t think I felt quite as much at home as when I used to go as delegate, when I used to serve as secretary as I did at two General Conferences; I don’t think there was quite the same cordiality; but maybe I only imagined it. But, ‘‘La, suds!’’ as Jerushy would say, ‘‘I must snip this thing off.’’ I guess I had too many irons in the fire, all right! 1 see now that I tried to cheat myself, Rip Van Winkle like, into thinking, “This time doesn’t count. I had got back my grip on ideas, and my ambition, and I was going some pace—then came the reckoning! The opening and phenomenal development of the Sagamore Beach Christian Endeavor seaside resort, (where I still own a couple of lots for which I have blue prints for a summer cottage, ) fired my ink-slinging tendencies, and I worked hard to finish up a story, (106) “The Sagamore’s Charm,’’ which has not yet seen the light, but reposes in the vaults of the literary bureau before referred to. One summer we spent our vacation most delightfully at Saga- more, in the camp on Lake Manomet. There I got the conception of the story. The next summer we rented a cottage at the beach it- self, and I toiled all through my two weeks’ vacation, on my Cali- graph, making my final draft of the story. But it was not final; I revised it again in the fall. My brain was tired. That was the first count. I was going to the parish of Rev. G. E. McManiman, somewhere down near New York City, to speak to the Endeavorers of his county. All the way down, on the splendid ‘‘outside route,’”’ tur- bine steamer ‘‘Harvard,’’ I had plugged away at the ms. of ‘‘Nino and Bambino,’’ my Italian boys’ story, until my eyes smarted and my head swam. Once with McManiman, I felt rested and happy, and as I stroll- ed about the little town with him, I remember that 1 laughed when he told me how dead and lacking in mental stimulus it was; nothing to write about. “‘What’s this smoky old rookery?’”’ I said, pointing to a shop we were passing; I smelled ‘‘copy.’’ He enlightened me. It was the forge of an old German who made files by hand; would I care to go in? I would. I did. I talked with the old man and watched his eyes twinkle as he answered my question: ‘‘With all the modern, ma- chine-equipped factories for making files so much cheaper than you can forge them by hand, how do you manage to sell yours?’ He said: “‘T sell my files to the makers of machine-made files, to sharpen their tools with; their own files aren’t hard enough.”’ That was subject Number 1. Later we went to a factory for making briarwood pipes, and the maker loaded me down with samples of his wares in all stages of completion, from the rough block of briarwood, imported from (107) Italy, to the finished pipe. Well, wasn’t that subject number two? And before I left that little, dead, uninspiring town I had six subjects for newspaper and magazine articles—but that was count two against me! Walking the floor in McManiman’s parsonage, I noticed that every time I turned, or that every time I rose from a chair, I had a slight attack of vertigo. When I got home I told my doctor of this vertigo, which took me as I lay down at night, and as I got out of bed in the morning. He at once began a thorough examination, on the principle of elimi- nation: first the eyes by an oculist, then the ears, until it narrowed downto one thing—neurasthenia. There was no medicine for it. Only one hope; to change the mode of life completely; get away from the desk; get out of doors; get onto a farm if possible, or into a parish. To snip the thread of this tiresome narrative at both ends, I went to candidating for a parish. Some of my friends wanted me to sueceed Dr. Dyott, in Brooklyn. Through the kindness of Dr. Marcus B. Taylor, Dr. Ryder of the American Missionary Society, and others, it was arranged for me to preach in Union Church the latter part of December. Meantime I was asked to candidate in the Congregational Church at Saratoga, N. Y. I went; was called; came back to my desk at nine a. m. from the train. At ten I suffered from backache. At eleven I went home with high fever, and I never went back to my position. A severe attack of the grippe, aggravated my nervous condition so that the doctor decided that as soon as it was safe for me to travel I must go for the rest of the winter on a Mediterranean trip, or to Bermuda or the West Indies. He was the kind of a doctor who interested himself in getting the medicine for such prescription. He went to see my employers, and it was quickly arranged that I was to be furnished transportation for myself and wife to Jamaica, on one of the United Fruit Company’s steamers, and not come back until I was well. If a man ever knows what friends count for, it is in such a (108) time as that. I had just $100 in the savings bank, I had ‘‘Golden Rule’’ employers who, in addition to free passage, continued my salary. I had a Friendly Class. I had one of the best and most gen- erous brothers in the world who had stood by me in every time of need, and [had other friendsof the kind that “stick”’—not * ‘closer than a brother,’’—but pretty nearly as close. So, on the 18th of December, we were bundled on board the steamship Admiral Sampson, with flowers and candy and love galore, and were soon plowing our way southward through a raw, chill blizzard that swept over Cape Cod. ae (109) A Winter In The Tropics. Ee successive chapter of this ‘‘ought-to-buy-ography”’ is harder to write, because I have to press down more on the soft pedal to keep the story short of prodigal and shameless prolixity— there’s so much more and more interesting detail that won’t be shut out. Well, by the time we got well over our seasickness, we were shielding ourselves from the warm sun under deck awnings of the Admiral Sampson, the officers were in white duck uniforms and the passengers were wishing that, in their hasty packing, they had not overlooked summer clothes. We landed at Port Antonio a day or two before Christmas, and I thought I had never experienced heat so enervating—the change was so sudden from wintry, blizzardy Boston to this sunny-skied, palm-shaded, humid little town, half hidden in the dense foliage of the green hills. Next morning we took an early train to Mandeville, at 1,200 feet elevation up among the hills. An English village in a tropical setting, we found it a charming bit of ebonized England. The blacks who make over 98% of Jamaica’s population, speak English which one soon learns to understand, though at first it sounds like jargon. Back of the King Edward Hotel was an orange grove laden with golden balls, and we went and helped ourselves every day, even decorating our room with festoons of oranyes. In fact, the Christ- mas decorations of the hotel were chieftly strings of oranges hung along the portico, as we string popcorn in the North. The first thing was a quest for linen clothes. I was directed to Mr. Brooks, the village tailor, who was as black as the ace of spades, but who, when he found I was a minister, wanted to discuss with me the origion of the devil and other tough theological ques- tions. He made the suits skin tight—at least they became so after the first laundering—in the prevailing fashion there. Brooks also bought coffee on the side, and I don’t know what else. I know that (110) the village barber grew oranges and other fruits on the side, and he obligingly closed his shop and took me through his gardens to sample his fruits. When I pulled a tempting tangerine, he reproved me. “‘Always cut the stem with your knife,’’ he said: ‘‘then I can tell whether a friend of mine has taken it, or a thief has been here.”’ “What would you do if you saw a broken stem?” I asked. “T should come out the next night with a gun.”’ Petty thieving of eatables is one of the troublesome problems among these teeming, none-too-well-fed thousands. I went to call on the proprietor of a small coffee plantation (a ‘‘small holding’’ they call it there), a black man (always, or nearly always black), and did not find him in. His wife explained that he had gone through the bush to a neighoring allspice plantation of which he was custodian. ‘Why through the bush?’’ Because if he went by the road everyone could see him go and see him leave. But if he went through the bush, and fired a gun while there, the would-be thieves could not tell when he would leave, and would stay away longer. The hotel was full of nervous wrecks like myself, and the worst sort of company imaginable. I could not read; to write even a postal hurt my head, so I tramped miles over the fine limestone roads, lined with picturesque little shops and villages. I stopped in the carpenters’ shops and talked with the workmen about their native woods. One day as I passed in the morning the carpenter was sawing a half-inch board from a two-inch, for door panels of a wardrobe. He was doing it with a handsaw, and when I passed a- gain in the afternoon, he had not enough panels for his doors, I saw men sawing planks out of trees with a handsaw—one man a- bove the log and one below, and they told me there was but one steam sawmill on the island. When I was not tramping and picking wild flowers, or collect- (111) ing sticks that promised to work.into good canes, I was pressing and mounting the flowers for gifts to the 100 members of my Friendly Class, or whittling, sandpapering and polishing walking sticks for thirty-three of my friends in the States, each stick of a different wood. J carried home sticks of coffee, camphor, pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, palm, bamboo, allspice, begonia, mahogany lig- num vita and other woods, ‘‘too numerous to mention.”’ I hunted up the local Christian Endeavor societies and attended their meetings. They were very cordial and friendly, even before they knew of my connection with the general work (and fora month or two I was not shouting this from the housetop) and I found them much the same, except in complexion, as the Endeavorers at home. For the first few months | had firmly to decline all invitations to speak. You may be sure that when they learned that I was right from headquarters in Boston, and had been sitting next to Dr. Clark for ten years, they wanted to hear me, for Dr. Clark had toured the Island and was much beloved. After a couple of months we left Mandeville to go to a little inn kept by a sister of our first landlady, on another side of the island, at a village called Claremont. It is not a tourist centre, like Mande- ville, and living was cheaper, but just as good. It was a very densely settled district and alive with human interest at every step. Before going here, or rather on the way, we spent a week or so in Kingston. The train from Kingston was made up of coaches of the English pattern. A Kingston paper said of me: “After visiting with the society of the Christian Church, Duke St., he passed quietly on to Claremont. Here he was in cognito, and was only a ‘very fine gentleman.’ But his identity was becoming known, and now he has engagements for Port Maria, Falmouth, Brown’s Town, Montego Bay, Sav.-la-Mar, and with the Upper St. Andrew’s Local Union.”’ After I had been attending the C. E. meetings for a time in the Claremont Primitive Methodist Church, one Sunday evening they had the topic: ‘‘Great Men of the Bible.’’ One of the speakers (112) alluded to Moses, Abraham, David and Paul, and then made me feel like sneaking out of the door by saying: ‘‘And now let me speak of a greater than these, who has been sitting modestly in our meet- ings, taking part with us in a humble way, as though he did not. hail from Boston and have an office in the world’s headquarters of Christian Endeavor.”’ I had enough red blood in my veins by this time to blush a lit- tle, but I needed it all and more on a later occasion, to prevent heart failure when, after Mrs. Cowan had gone back to the child- ren, in February, as I was touring the island to take inachainof C. E. rallies, a flowery address of welcome to me was read at the opening of the meeting, after they had seated me in the most con- spicuous place on the platform. It was a eulogy that no one but a Lincoln or a Livingstone could have deserved, yet it was so kindly meant and so genuinely courteous that I had to smile and bow and accept it. I finally got away from hotel life and spent the remaining months in the homes of the ministers and people. With the excep- tion of three—two of them American missionaries, not one of the dozen who entertained me was a white man in skin, and I shall probably unclass and dehumanize myself with some of my readers by confessing that I ate at their tables, slept in their beds, and played with their children, and never once felt that I was doing any other than Jesus Christ would have done. I was doing only what hundreds of refined Englishmen and women had done; for the English never made the mistake of some Americans, in dealing with their emancipated African slaves by ostracizing and despis- ing them. Certainly I suffered nothing from lack of cleanliness, or good cooking; and I must say that I found the fellowship of these men—half white, three-quarters white, black—as kindly and spiritual and helpful as I find the fellowship of the Hawaiians and Japanese and Chinese and Filipinos here in Hawaii. ‘‘A man’s a man for a’ that.’’ Speaking of food, beef is plentiful and cheap in Jamaica. There are many fine ranches, or ‘‘pens,’’ that make meat low in price. (118) It sells in the village markets (wonderfully interesting places to study the people) at six cents a pound. The island is surrounded by good fisheries. For vegetables, they grow a profusion of various kinds of yams, which I learned to like better than Irish potatoes. Sweet potatoes are abundant, and you will find rice on the table at least once a day. String beans, lima beans, peas, cucumbers, toma- toes, melons, cabbages, lettuce, asparagus, celery (in higher lands) and all kinds of root vegetables grow plentifully. The cassava root grates into a flour which makes the finest, crispest breakfast cakes I ever ate. When it comes to fruits, there is an endless variety:—bananas, plantain (something like bananas) alligator, or avacado pear, all kinds of citrus fruits, star apples, custard apples, sour sop, grana- dilla, pineapple, mango—but what’s the use to write a catalogue; one simply has to eat tropical fruits to know anything about them. Of course the staple crops, and what you see most of are, in order of importance: bananas, cocoanuts, sugar, coffee, cocoa, ging- er, pineapples, and there is one tea plantation. The weeks I spent with Brother Johnson, a Wesleyan Method- ist circuit rider, were most delightful ones. I roamed the beach un- der the cocoanut trees with his sweet little girls, whose mother is an English woman. I snapshotted ‘‘Old Solomon,’’ the pugnacious ram, as he was tied to a tree, threatening in his hot indignation to break the tether at every lunge and pot me. I watched, with a snick- er in my windpipe, the frisky bunch of kids promenade the stone wall, right up to the top of the concrete gate-posts which they used as a spring-board from which to dive into space. The goat and the donkey are two of the big assets in Jamaican life. Goats’ milk is toted on the heads of the milk-ladies from house to house as re- gularly as cows’ milk. And what the women don’t earry to and from market on their heads the donkey (or ‘‘jockoss,’’ as the Jamaican calls him) carries in panniers on his back. There are carts and car- riages, to be sure, and mules and horses; but there are thousands of miles of trails over which only the ass or the human feet can travel. In Mandeville we counted forty-five donkeys going to market (114) in one afternoon. Many were the pleasant hours we spent in Kingston at the hospitable home of John E. Randall and his sister Mrs. Clark with her dear girlies, who remembered the birthday of the stranger from Boston in a most charming way. Mr. Randall is of old English missionary stock, and has been the mainstay of Christian Endeavor in the Island, along with Mr. Reinecke of the Moravian mission, an American with a cultured, gracious American wife who makes the atmosphere of a refined American home with Jamaican trimmings. How I enjoyed them! His church had been shaken down by the earthquake, and a shed for worship had been reared of the debris. Mr. Randall’s church had been racked and cracked, and was held up by heavy timbers. In my trip around the Island I admired the sturdy ageressive- ness of Mr. Brahms, of Savana-le-Mar, president of the Wesleyan conference; the genial courtliness of Mr. Surgeon. of the Bap- tist church at Falmouth; the shrewd, hard sense of Mr. John Yair, of the Baptist church at picturesque Lucea—a ‘‘Redemptionist church’’ it is called. It was built, or rebuilt with what were known as ‘‘redemption’’ brick—a shipload of brick that the British govern- ment sent over to rebuild certain churches that were destroyed by mobs, in which British sailors took part, during the slavery out- breaks, I should like to write pages about my delightful stay with the family of Rev. Mr. Purdy, the missionary at Oberlin, his dear wife and little daughter, and the cunning, soft-eyed, soft-handed monk- ey who did funny stunts for me at the end of his chain, until I nearly split my sides laughing. It was absolutely impossible to be lonely or blue when that monkey was performing. When it was raining, he would rush to his house, drag out all his bedding, dump it in a pool of water, and go through the motions of rubbing and wringing it, then he would hang it up to dry. He and the dog played together like two puppies. Whenever I walked within reach of his chain he would cling with his hands in an almost human way to my trousers’ legs, and caress my hand with his soft, warm (115) tongue. I have known other monkeys that have enjoyed far more liberty and advantages, that tried harder to be funny (sometimes with a pen), but didn’t sueceed half as well. I travelled witn Mr. Purdy about his parish, to his schools and churches—for every Jamaican missionary must have his parish schools—over the narrow roads that follow the razor-edge ridges, until my head almost swam with dizziness. Everywhere bananas, coffee, cocoa, people. Here I saw the ‘‘Panama’’ hats made from the rib of the “‘jippa-jippa’’ (yippa-yappa) palm leaf. Some of Mr. Purdy’s church members braided exceptionally fine hats. I bought one for $1.25 so closely woven that it would hold water, and so pliable that I could tie it in a knot. It would have retailed in Boston for $10 to $15. : When I went back to Kingston I began to feel so much like myself that I invested in a little ‘“‘Blick’’ typewriter, which I car- ried with me the remainder of my trip, and I resumed ink-slinging on Sunday-school lessons for the C. E. World, and also outlined and began work on a Jamaican story, which is still unfinished, but which I am sure would be a ‘‘corker’’ if I could yet it done. I about com- pleted the first draft of it. I must tell you of the interesting book on Jamaica we did com- plete. When we first began writing postcards and letters home, we stipulated that everyone of them should be typed on a uniform pa- per, ready for binding in a loose-leaf binder, with blank pages for the cards and other pictures. I saved my hotel bills, menu cards, programs of meetings, newspaper notices of myself, took snap- shots, cut illustrations from guidebooks and tourists folders, and where I could not get a photo of a hotel or house in which | was en- tertained, I drew the best sketch I could, and all these, with pressed flowers, convention badges, etc., were pasted on the blank leaves of the book. I even borrowed a school map of the island, and reproduced it, laid out all the roads, painted it in water colors, and bound it together as a convenient folder. My energy was coming back to me, even in this lazy clime, and I had to find employment to keep myself busy. (116) ; Coloring my drawings would have required an extremely vivid imagination, anywhere except on the spot. For instance, the “‘Myrtle House’’ at Claremont was painted a canary yellow with red trimmings and green panels between the windows on the low- er story, and narrower green panelsabove. It was quite the most pretentious building of the village. Looking down the street from the upper balcony one’s eye caught, first, a wattle cottage (strips of bamboo plastered with mortar) whitewashed pink. The next cot- tage was whitewashed indigo, and another maroon, and so on. Colors ran riot in house decorations and in dress; in flowers and in birds. It was during my second stay in Kingston that I came to a turning point in my life that seems to me wonderfully providential. For the first few months of my exile I thought little of my future. I did not think at all, in fact—I just existed, rested. Then began to come questionings about the future—when I must go back, what then? I realized that, for years at least, I should not be in condition to fill such positions as those to which I had been providentially called. I could not even take a city church, or a large and respon- sible parish anywhere. My boys were to be educated—what had life in store for us? I didn’t worry. I had just begun to ask these questions won- deringly; but I can truthfully say not afraid, although the future didn’t look especially bright. Just then came a letter from my niece, Mrs. Olive Lamb Bristol who, as I have stated, had been with her husband in the Kamehameha Schools in Honolulu, and had also served one year as principal of Kohala Girls’ School, Hawaii, while Mr. Bristol was taking post-graduate work at the University of California. She wrote that the little ‘‘white’’ church at Kohala, Hawaii, was looking for a pastor; they were a genial, cultured people; the work was very light—only one service a Sunday—and the sub-trop- ical climate was just what I needed. She thougnt I would like the community. Would I consider a call there? (117) I was very favorably impressed. Another niece, Ida Lamb, had spent several years in Hawaii, (and afterwards taught music for a while in Kohala Girls’ School). She came to us, in Boston, from Hawaii and took a course in the New England Conservatory, and my eldest sister, Mrs. Frain had gone from San Francisco to Hono- lulu and had been teaching there several years. I had corresponded with them all, and was somewhat prepared to like the *‘fairest fleet of isles that God Almighty ever moored in tropical seas.”’ I answered that I would favorably consider a call, and there the matter had rested for a month or the amount of time necessary to exchange letters between Jamaica and Hawaii. It was while I was in Kingston this time that the call came, asking me to cable Dr. Rice, of the Congregational Ministerial Bureau, Boston, ‘‘Yes.’? Just before lunch, one day, I walked to the cable office and registered the message, and before night, that day it had travelled to Honolulu, whence it was wirelessed to Kohala, and my destiny was hitched up with the Pacific islands, for at least eight years to come—but I anticipate. I determined not to risk going back to Boston until the bluebirds and crocuses had eliminated danger of blizzards. So I lingered until the last of April. I spent several most delightful days at Port Marie, where ‘‘our’’ John Brown, formerly janitor of the C. E. World head- quarters, Tremont Temple, was now the leading young physician, I should like to write a chapter about this splendid young Jamaican. He had come to Boston to get a medical education, and had unload- ed banana steamers, swept our rooms, worked in a drug store and, during several summers, as a Pulman porter, to get money to pay his bills. He had taken part of his course at Harvard and then gone to King’s College, Canada, because a Canadian diploma would be worth more to him in a British Colony. And here he was, with his offices, his waiting maid to answer the bell, his driver and his nobby horse and carriage, sailing right up to the top of his profession. Yet he was the same simple, modest, genial fellow who had always done his sweeping thoroughly, kept his place sweetly and led our office prayer- (118) meetings with such intelligent and contagious spirituality. He was glad to see some one from Boston, and I was surely glad to see John. No own brother could have been more attentive or kind than he to me. When I left he drove me to the railway, and insisted on buying my ticket to Port Antonio—‘‘That’s the Jamaica way,’’ he said. Afterwards John took a medical course in England, but a few months after his return, in trying to answer a call for medical ser- vices, he was drowned by one of the sudden floods that the tropical cloud-bursts send sweeping down the streams. Ebony though his face, John Brown had as white a soul as I ever knew. I hadswung clear around the Island—some parts of it more than once—and was back at humid, luxuriant Port Antonio, where we had first landed in mid-winter. Here I was the guest of Rev. John Mc Intosh, the Wesleyan pastor, speaking in his church, until the Admi- ral Sampson sailed, April 28. 1 enjoyed those closing days to the full. Port Antonic did not seem hot, now. I had become acclimated, Ja- maica is hotter than Hawaii, being ten degrees nearer the Equator, and the trade winds partially shut off by the windwards do not have the cooling sweep that they do across the 3,000 miles of the Pacific. Kingston has a sea breeze, after ten a.m. thatis called the ‘‘doctor,’’ and that makes it tolerable, in winter, until four p.m. To sumit up, however, the seacoast is hot but the mountains are cool. You can get almost any climate you want, even in Jamaica. Ihave not spoken of my pleasant visit at Montego Bay, the brisk, pretty tourist town at the western end of the island, where I was so delightfully entertained in the home of Mrs. Kingdon asister of John Randall, and where I spoke repeatedly at a district convention of Endeavorers. Never did people treat a stranger more royally than these Ja- maicans treated me. I could mention a score or more of names, like: Mr. John Clark, one of the district C. E. secretaries, and his sister; Mr. and Mrs. Kingdon, of Montego Bay, Mr. Garrick, manager of the Ramble Tea Estate; the Rev. Messrs’ Pratt and Braithwaite, of Kingston——but I should have to compile a directory of all the Ja- maican missionaries and laymen. I never heard meatier, better C. E. (119) addresses than some in the meetings in which I took part. J left Jamaica with regret in 1908; I leave it with regret now. Some day I hope to go East by the Panama Canal, and make a side trip to see again ‘‘The Pearl of the Antilles.’’ I have only grateful, glad memories of it. Early May saw me back in Boston, on a bright, crisp spring day glad to see the familiar faces and sights, but only a week in which to say so much and do somuch, before I was off again on my travels for the isles in the far Pacific. The Kohala Church had been without a pastor for some time, and was anxious to have me begin by June first. It generously agreed to pay my salary for the month of May, while I was traveling toit and $100 on traveling expenses. The Gold- en Rule Company, ina large-hearted way had continued my salary to May 1, and from that time began to pay me liberally for writing the Sunday-school lessons. So, I was most wondrously and generously provided for. In addition to what I owe to those mentioned, and to other kind friends, when I asked Dr. McIntosh, the physician who had sent me on this life-saving trip, for his bill, he only laughed at me and wished me well. He and Mrs. McIntosh, also a physician, were like brother and sister to me. Mrs. McIntosh is of fine Mo- ravian stock, the sister of Mrs. Clarence E. Eberman, wife of the former beloved field secretary of the United Society, whose untime- ly death, in the midst of his usefulness, had occurred at Banff, Bri- tish Columbia, a short time before. I must spare you the journey across the continent, save to say that I was going alone because Elinore was in The Emerson College of Oratory, Boston, Pierpont was in Dartmouth, and Francis was pre- paring for college in The Boston Latin School, and they needed their mother. I enjoyed the Santa Fe route; I visited Mr. and Mrs. Bris- toland my Sister Sophia and Esther May and Ida Lamb in California, and was given a reception at the St. Francis Hotel by the Golden Gate C. E. Union, and kindly accompanied to the steamer by Mr. Paul Brown, then California’s C. E. field secretary. I will spare you the ocean voyage on the Pacific Mail steamer Siberia, and my next and last job of inkslinging in this connection (120) will be to try to introduce you properly to lovely Hawaii, ‘“The Para- dise of the Pacific.’’ I was going to Hawaii in much better health than when I went to Jamaica, ‘‘The Pearl of the Antilles,’’ but still nerve-depleted and unequal to a man’s full work. I can’t say that the days of car riding across the continent built me up: I think they robbed me of strength. The Pacific voyage was more helpful to me. (121) Eight Years In “Paradise.” I wish I might have helda consultation of you ‘‘ought-to-buys”’ over this last chapter of my ‘‘you-ought-to-buy-ography,’’ before I wrote it——there, didn’t I tell you in the beginning that I was Irish! Well the dilemma is just this: there is so much to “‘graphy’’ that is fresh in my mind and fairly sereaming to be told; so much of life in this fascinating, eternal springland to picture to you that I should have to spin out a chapter as long as all the rest of the book, in order to get it told. I can’t bear the thought of boiling it down and giving condensed milk, or evaporated Hawaii, or tabloid “‘Paradise of the Pacific.’’ I must either swell the book and the price thereof, or else I must keep most of my experiences in Hawaii for a separate book. I have abun- dant material for one—by jing, I believe 1’ll do it! and if, in the mean- time, I should get typewriter’s paralysis, or earthquaked out of ex- istence, or my Ford should pitch me into eternity, you ‘‘ought-to-buys”’ would save that second dollar that I mean to charge you for it. So here goes for what Mrs. Partington would call a ‘‘consomme”’ of my life in Hawaii. For full details buy my next! At first sight I was disappointed with Hawaii. Coming, as I had from beautiful, luxuriously tropical Jamaica (ten degrees nearer the equator) I had expected sub-tropical Hawaii to burst upon my vision _with much of the same tropical luxuriance, but the first glimpses I got of it as we sailed past Koko Head and Diamond Head and bare, brown Molokai, were of extinct craters and burnt plains. Honolulu itself, as we landed, was disappointing from the water front. The narrow, New-Englandy down-town streets certainly aren’t tropical. It is true that my first ride into the suburbs showed me the real Honolulu, more beautifnl than Kingston, or Port Antonio. The mountains are not quite as high and rugged as those back of Kings- ton, but their sharp ridges are wonderfully picturesque, in their fleecy caps of mist, and they grow on me in fascination every time I go to ‘‘Town.”’ (122) ; As for the people of Honululu, especially those of the old mis- Sionary families, no hospitaility could be finer than theirs, to all the incoming ministers, teachers, and to missionaries passing through to the Orient, and other strangers. I was met at the wharf by the secretary of the Hawaiian Evan- gelical Association, Rev. W. Brewster Oleson of precious memory— he had lent a hand in getting me out here—and by other ministers. I was not allowed to go to a hotel, but was entertained in the beauti- ful home of Mr. and Mrs. F. J. Lowery, he a leading business man, and a valued layman in Central Union Church. I learned my first Hawaiian word, ‘‘lanai’’; we sat on the spacious lanai, dined on it, and some of the members of the house- hold slept on one. I went first to the ministers’ meeting in Central Union Church, where I was introduced all around. Dr. Scudder, the pastor, I had know before at Woburn, Mass., and to know him a little is to like him, while to know him better is to love him. Next day I sailed for Kohala on the Inter-Island steamer Mauna Kea, first skirting the bare, brown, lee shores of Molokai and Maui, and the rainless slopes of Lanai and Kahoolawe. Let me explain: the ‘prevailing wind being the northeast trades, most of the rain comes ‘from that direction, hence the east, or windward sides of these is- lands are ‘‘wet,’’ and are always green and beautiful, while the west, or lee, sides are rainless and barren for the most part. We landed at Mahukona (what a time I had, to be sure, learn- ing to twist my tongue around that name!) on the ‘‘dry’’ side of Hawaii, about one o’clock a. m., going ashore in boats, as has to be done at all the landings in the islands except three. I was fortunate in having as a room-mate on the steamer Rev. J. W. Gunn, the Episcopal rector of Kohala. I was met on the wharf by Deacon Cornelius Bond, but Mr. Elgin, the agent at the landing, with his Alabama hospitality insisted that I should rest in one of his beds until daylight. It was mistaken kindness, for in the darkness of night I should not have got my first impressions of Kohala District (123) from the stony, dusty, arid, god-forsaken stretches on the ‘‘dry”’ side through which one has to pass to cross over to the green, beau- tiful, smiling Kohala on the ‘‘wet’’ side, which is my real Kohala. The ride of ten miles was broken up by a stop for breakfast at Mr. John Hind’s, manager of Hawi Plantation, a most auspicious be- ginning of a delightful acquaintance with one of the most congenial families of my parish. On to the Manse, which I liked at first sight, and which I love more and more with each passing year—a couple of acres of grass and flowers, a homey, terra-cotta colored, red-roofed cottage, its front French windows opening to the floor on a wide lanai that has been our home more than any other part of the house—sitting-room, my sleeping-room—all embowered among the palms, cypresses, mangoes and other trees—it makes a picture so pleasing that pass- ers-by take a second look as they pass. The house had been newly repaired and painted outside and in, for the new minister. It was comfortably furnished so that what I had brought in my trunks, with a few purchases in San Francisco, made it ‘‘Home, sweet home’’ with little to wish for. While I was exploring its interior the phaeton of Mrs. Dr. Bond drove up, and her housewifely eyes made sure that no finishing touches essential to the minister’s comfort were neglected. Nothing had been omitted. The bed was made, fresh towels laid out, a clock ticked on the shelf, there was even a work-basket with needles, thread, scissors, buttons and a thimble (!). She took the newcomer to her home for luncheon, and there be- gan an intimacy with another of Kohala’s most delightful Christian families that has ever been one of the chief inducements to a long and still longer stay in the parish. Dr. B. D. Bond is the brother of him whom I called ‘‘Deacon’’ Bond, both sons of Rev. Elias Bond, the missionary from Maine whom the American Board sent to Kohala in May, 1841, when his was the only white family here. Now, this is principally a history of one day in Kohala. If I (124) The Manse. Should go into the particulars of every day as fully, you can easily see what a book I might spin out, and yet have something new and interesting to tell every day; but that is just what I must not do—now. I came to Kohala to tide over a crisis in my health—to stay per- haps a couple of years— I am here still after eiyht years. I am here because I am spell-bound, charmed, I cannot bear the thought of leaving my fascinating surroundings. My faithful ‘‘Friendly Class’’ correspondent, Fred W. Dickerman, often asks me: ‘‘Aren’t you about ready to come home?’’ I may go sooner than I think; but just now I am here. After a little I secured a cook, a Hawaiian-born Chinese boy, just through the eighth grade of the government school, His name was En Kong Wung. He spoke excellent English; was a Christian, faithful and companionable. He occupied a little one-roomed cottage in the yard, the other half of which was my carriage house, In ad- dition to cooking and keeping the house, he cut the wood (when I didn’t do it for exercise) cared for the horse, the yard (when I let him) and did a little gardening. Just to give you an idea of the kind of Chinese we have here, after two years with me he entered the county high school at Hilo, from which he graduated and is now as- sistant bookkeeper on a plantation. One of his sisters graduated from the Normal School. A brother graduated from the high school, won a scholarship and is now taking a course in engineering in the College of Hawaii. Another sister is teaching. En Kong’s mother never fails to send me a present at Christmas or Chinese New Year. During my first summer, my sister Louise, who is principal of a school of four rooms on the Island of Maui, just in plain sight across a thirty-five mile channel, but a two or three-days’ trip by steamer via Honolulu, spent her summer vacation with me. It was the first time we had been together since my visit to San Francisco, in 1897. In August my daughter came out to teach Expression in Oahu College, better known here as ‘‘Punahou.’”’ So I had good com- pany that summer, and the next Christmas vacation, and all the vaca- tions for two years. Frequently Elinore brought with her some of the Punahou teachers, once Harold Clark, son of Dr. Francis E. Clark. (125) Even when I was alone in the Manse, I was not allowed to pine. Kohala was lively, socially, in those days. The Musical Society and the Dramatic Club gave concerts and plays which called for frequent rehearsals. I had a ‘‘Friendly’’ Class that met one night a week at the Manse, using the stereopticon that the Friendly Class, Allston, had given me. There were many invitations to dine out and many callers. After two years Mrs. Cowan and Francis, our youngest son, came out. Francis took his last two years of preparatory work at Punahou, before entering Dartmouth. Our eldest son, Pierpont, had in the meantime graduated and gone into business with the Marshall- Wells Co., of Duluth, Minn., a large firm of hardware jobbers and wholesalers, having branch houses in Seattle, Winnepeg, Edmonton and other places. When my wife came, my little sorrel saddle horse ‘“Teddy’’—I call- ed him the ‘‘red-headed Irishman’”’ for his color and his fiery temper— was sold and a second-hand phaeton and a larger horse (‘‘Old Mon- go’’) bought. He belonged to the ‘‘slow-but-sure’’ class. I am glad to say that old tortoise ‘‘Mongo’’ has given way to a Ford touring car ‘‘on the instalment plan’’ with which we can ‘‘give a lift’’ to our friends who are horseless and Fordless. The ‘‘Little Brown Church in the Lane’”’ is about a quarter of a mile from the Manse, up the road towards Kohala Plantation. All around are the hundreds of acres of green cane. Here I preach once a Sunday (twice when the ‘‘moon is full’) to from twenty to sixty people, mostly whites, but with a sprinkling of brown and yellow— Hawaiians, Filipinos, now and then a Portuguese, Porto Rican, or Korean (we used to have one Virginia negro). I must say, in brief, that no minister has ever had a kinder or more appreciative people. They are chiefly the families of the man- agers of three of the five sugar plantations (the other two affiliate with the Episcopal church) :—bookkeepers, engineers, storekeepers, chemists, lunas (foremen), with the doctor’s family, the bank man- ager’s, teachers, clerks, ete. (126) Ihave in my little congregation a larger percentage of people of culture and travel than I have ever had, I preach to people who are familiar with Europe and the Orient. I frequently preach to Parisian gowns and bonnets. I have musicians trained in the New England Conservatory, and graduates of Oberlin, University of California, Amherst, Michigan University, and other leading schools. They have been very thoughtful and generous to me and my family, weighting the Christmas stocking with gold, putting in an oil range, a fireless cooker, a hammock bed and other conveniences. Once a month I hold an evening service at the Kohala Girls’ School, and once a month the fifty to sixty Hawaiian (mostly) Chinese, Japanese, Filipino and other girls attend our church ser- vice, adding much by their beautiful choruses. I am secretary of the Board of Managers of this institution. Once a month I conduct a communion service for the Chinese Church at Kaiopihi, a mile away, baptize their cunning little almond- eyed babies (sometimes the mothers seem reluctant to take off the bright-colored knit caps for the ceremony, and once I understood one to intimate that I might apply the water through the ‘‘puka’’ (hole) in the crown. Once a year I help them eat a New Year’s dinner, of birdsnest soup, dried smoked duck, pork and mushrooms, etc. They are a wonderfully loyal and grateful people, trudging on foot for miles to their church, and always remembering me at Christmas. T also hold communion and baptismal services for the Japanese Church across the way from the Manse. They are not yet able to have individual communion cups but, in great dread of tuberculosis which sends so many back to Japan, at their last communion they took the wine in spoons. They appreciate so much having the American minister with them. Both these, together with the Hawaiian Church a mile ‘‘mauka, (towards the mountains) have native pastors. I have the privilege of being a sort of ‘‘Father’’ to them all, as the early missionaries were called; and to represent in a way the Hawaiian Board, under whose (127) fostering oversight all this work except that of my own, the ‘ ‘Foreign’”’ church as it is best known, is carried on. Once a month I conduct a ministers’ meeting, in one of the Ha- waiian chapels (they have a dozen of these in the district, besides the big stone church—‘‘Iole’’—which is mother of them all) which is attended also by Sunday-school and C, E. workers, candi- dates for the ministry, etc. We have Bible studies, sermon outlines, Sunday-school teaching demonstrated, discussions, reports from all the churches. On every Thanksgiving we have a grand union service in Iole Church, in which four languages are used (once five), and occasional other union meetings, like the temperance rally under the big trees in the courthouse yard, to which all the Boy Scouts marched. Between this, and pastoral calls (many of which take the form of ‘‘afternoon teas’? at which nearly all the ladies of both the ‘‘white’’ churches assemble, and may be I the only man) I fill in the time with my write-up of the Sunday-school lesson sregularly for the C. E. World, The Baptist Teacher, Our New Guide, (for four years The Adult Student of the M. E. Church South) and occasional- ly for The Homiletie Review, The Christian Intelligencer, The Heidel- berg Teacher, etc. My ‘‘pen’’ congregation is considerably over 100, 000 every Sunday. This I call my ‘‘larger pulpit.’”’ On a rainy Sun- day when I have but six hearers in sight, -it isa consolation to re- member that I have this 100,000 out of sight, but they are not all out of touch; I get many a cheering letter from entire strangers who read my write-up of the lessons; also some criticisms. I know that this congregation is not all asleep. Besides these two pulpits I have a third, about which there isa tale I cannot tell ‘‘as quick as the flirt of a lamb’s tail.’’ When I found that I had eight white boys in my congregation, I started a Junior Endeavor Society and, looking about for something to give them to do, they (and I) started a little church bulletin, on my Blickensderfer. The community took to it, and later the Girls’ School mimeograph was used, and then the boys’ folks chipped in $100, and soon came a little second-hand press that Ernest Acker (128) and Charles Preston, of the C. E. World printing office, picked up for us, and sent with the ‘‘trimmin’s,’”’ the latter partly a donation from the C. E. office friends. 1 am going to spare your feelings all I can—I have a little pam- phlet which describes the ‘‘rise and fall of The Kohala Midget,” the little local newspaper which grew out of this, just as “Topsy grow- ed.’’ I will send it free to anyone inclosing 3¢ for postage with a request for it. The pictures might interest you. This little weekly newspaper is my third pulpit. In it I can preach temperance, good roads, civic righteousness, social decency, and the ink that I sling goes clear around this island. 1 whack away at evils clear up to the helve of the axe, and no one can say a word except: ‘‘Please stop my paper.’’ Then they are sure to bor- row their neighbor’s to see what I say about the people who say they “never read THE MIDGET.”’ | It is not egotism that leads me to say that no paper in these is- lands has a higher standing for brightness and pithiness of state- ment, or is more often quoted, than this little insect with its sharp bite. When this little print shop, in a hole dug under the Manse, be- gan to do the job printing of the district, and had built up a business of over a thousand dollars a year, and the Midget ‘‘staff’’ as the boys were styled, became known all over the islands, then AN IDEA WAS BORN! The eight original white boys had all gone away to school and had been followed by Chinese, Hawaiian, Japanese, and other boys, ’cos—’cos we had no more white boys old enough. These alien races were eager to learn printing. The openings for boys in manual arts were very limited. They had to be ‘‘the man with the hoe,’’ or noth- ing. [am not saying a word against agriculture, but every boy is not born to raise sugar cane, and there ought to be some voca- tional sieve in every community to give boys a chance to find out their calling, and choose it—not be knocked into something with a maul. (129) Why not use this demand for printing to develop a manual train- ing school in which at least twenty boys of Kohala might try them- selves out? We have in Kohala a manual training school for girls; why not one for boys? There are three or four in Hawaii, one in Hi- lo, ahundred miles away; but every year boys are sent to the Reform School for truancy from the public schools, and every year juvenile burglars are arrested, right here in Kohala, and we have a growing hoodlum element; because ‘‘book larnin’ ’’ doesn’t appeal to all boys, and we need a vocational school for boys who are ‘‘book-dull’”’ and *‘tool-handy.”’ So the IDEA has been borne in upon me that, using the little printing plant as a nucleus, I might, if God willed and my friends “‘saw a light,’’ develop a place where boys might learn wood-work- ing, metal-working, book-binding, paper-box-making, weaving, etc. The unfolding of the idea has gone thus far:— the business men of the community, and others abroad, because they have faith in me, have taken enough stock to equip a printing plant, with cylinder power press, power job press, paper-cutter, perforaters, stapler, numbering-machines, etc. This book was done by the boys in this shop. The latest addition, not shown in the illustrated booklet we offer as long as the limited supply lasts, is a second-hand ruling machine for commercial tabular work demanded by the plantations, and others. We hope next to add a press and some smaller apparatus for binding. What more? Why, that to develop at all beyond where we are, we must have straightway a building. We are cramped, hampered and blinded in the basement with its corrugated iron lean-to’s, knocking our heads against low beams and seeing stars astronomers have never chart- ed. We have corns and bunions from tramping on one another’s toes. Not another boy can we add to the three ‘“‘steadies,’’ and the one semi-occasional, until we have a building. We have a waiting lis of boys now that would make your heart ache. $1,000 is the minimum sum that will give us a start in building. (130) ee een ee ee ener A Midget Boy at Work (es ee eee seesaw LeBBABOBSBCOCMeEBeweewmeweea- To ceimniieeniieanenalll % 3 I’ll (say frankly that $100,000 wouldn’t be too much to build and endow such a plant, by the time we are through). The land we’ll get here, and deed all to a solid board of trust. Now, I have told you all there is to tell about this old ‘‘Ink-slin- ger,’’ except that he is past sixty (though you would take him to be about forty-five) and this industrial school is probably his last fling. 1 do want to see this boon for boys established in this little out-of-the- way place before they nail mein a narrow box. I probably have working years enough left to do it, if some of those who read this will give me a lift by the way. You must guess, now, my transpar- ent motive behind all this ink-slinging, in this ‘‘You-ought-to-buy- ography.’’ Besides giving my own children these episodes in my life that I have set down, so that they may be able to answer their children and grand-children when they ask: ‘‘What kind of a man was grandpa?’’ I want to help some other men’s children to have a biography worth writing about. You may say: ‘‘There ought to be plenty of money in Hawaii for that,’’ So there is; but also there are older institutions here that have a first claim on it. Our Kohala Girls’ School—a most worthy institution—is just now asking the givers of Hawaii for $50,000 for new dormitories and endowment badly needed. I promised myself when I started out on this idea of a boys’ school that I would not lay a straw in the way of the Girls’ School, founded by Rev. Elias Bond, thirty years ago, and doing such a noble work with inadequate equipment—that I would not divert one red cent (by the way, we have no cents in circulation here) from it. Sol am not asking for anything here, except that I hope to get land; I have to come to my friends and readers who would not be contributors to the Girls’ School. So, if you should send me $1.00 (or more) for this book I shall know that you have read it through. Otherwise I must conclude that you fell out by the way, wearied of the verbose old man. ; And by the way, if you do send me something for the ‘‘You- ought-to-buy-o-graphy, please drop me a hint as to whether you (131) would like that other book: ‘‘Entrancing Hawaii,’”? which I am just dying to print and bind in our own shop (or any book that you may want printed and bound at reasonable rates). FATHER ISADORE NAMES INFANTS SWEETLY. (132) wv rm aie by ‘s a bt ee Bie eth Ta ate oe ete OR aE Reet PEW RCN Noe pact er : RSs rca ; oh ES - Be sete ane hee a oe a 4 Oe ares ie 1 oslo ei fa hes FE if rT rs , on ~ er aA met bon . sattaadeh ry ree ee so ae Sa ee 3 CZ ja: ros es ees a Cre ee aeebeg Onon ry nated SL Wet has ronnnn pectaran Ou no aie rate ern POO NC aot anh aie Nantes