V ♦ '^^ *^T7r»' A » ^^^^<^ * '^ ► o ^^.A' ^ :^^^^. 5>% % ^ ^'^^irt:* ^OV^ ^>^ *^ ^°-^^. ^- - r^^.^ * <^ "^ •©lira* AT *%^ '^JU,>^ oV^^^Pl"-' ^»V<-'^ .'. °o ^oV^ '^^o^ ■^v-^^^' ^0 v^^ . t ^0^ . . . ' ■ 0*- \. . . . ST. LUKE'S GARDEN BY ALBERT S. STEWART BOSTON SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 1911 Copyright, 19 11 Sherman, French & Company GI.A283384 o TO THEODORE ROOSEVELT CONSERVATOR FOREWORD While this volume claims no guide-book office as to scenery nor scientific accuracy in allusion, the writer trusts that nothing found within will mislead the wandering foot nor offend the in- genuous. "Old West Point," indeed, has been trans- formed almost past recognition, the white walls of "The Church of St. Nicholas The Con- queror" have been frescoed, and the city that you saw yesterday you hardly know to-day; but heaven's radiance falls unfailingly on field and forest, mountain and stream, and the swift tides surge in the sunlight by North Brother's shore where a thousand souls perished when the "General Slocum" was burnt. ("A Morn- ing Ride" was written June 16th, 1904.) In some of the chapters, justification will be found for the dedication to the best known champion of conservation, and no "this fable teaches" may be necessary to indicate a casual moral here and there in other lines; but after all, you, gentle reader, perusing these pages with fondness for impressionistic flavor, may say, as did the little maid to him who gave to her the sagittate sorrel leaf, as she for the first time essayed its taste, "Isn't that sweet".? A. S. S. Newburgh-on-the-Hudson. CONTENTS Chapter I. St. Luke's Garden Page 1 II. An Afternoon in the Fields 6 III. A Mission Field in West Virgij flA 10 IV. Huckleberries . 15 V. A Roundabout Ramble 20 VI. A Study in Green 24 VII. The Poplars of Horse Creek 28 VIII. Scenes Unsung . 34> IX. The Top of the World . 37 X. Branching Waters . 39 XI. From Forest to Lake 42 XII. Notes of Passage 45 XIII. The Hudson 48 XIV. A Rural Road . 54 XV. Down East . 57 XVI. A Ride to Denmark . 62 XVII. The Land of Snow . 66 XVIII. Orange and Sussex . 69 XIX. A Hill Country . 75 XX. Out the Erie . 78 XXI. Going to Presbytery . 81 XXII. The Hudson Highlands 85 CONTENTS Chapter Page XXIII. From Passaic to Paterson . . 95 XXIV. Memories of the Meadows . . 97 XXV. Prohibition Park . 100 XXVI. Lest We Forget . 103 XXVII. The Church of St. Nicholas the Conqueror . 106 XXVIII. A Morning Ride 111 XXIX. A Pauper Funeral 114 XXX. The Irish Shoemaker 117 XXXI. An Appreciation 119 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN ST. LUKE'S GARDEN A tradesman, who had acquired a modest competence in the metropolis, sought a more leisurely life in a fair city on the Hudson. He built a fine house in a sightly location. He pre- pared a lawn and planted shrubbery; and then, as time hung heavy on his hands, he did some amateur gardening. It happened, how- ever, that the house, set well back in the lot to secure the fine view thus afforded, left no great space in the rear; so the good man brought forward his kitchen-garden planting on a strip at one side of the dwelling. Alas, for the simple-minded soul: his cab- bages grew great and bewrayed him. The passersby said in their hearts: "This new neighbor lacks sense of the fit- ting." Certain sojourners, attending an an- cient school in the city, scoffed at what seemed to them too sordid a motive; themselves but now absolved from like labors on the farms of the prairies. No doubt there is a place for everything, and roses may seem to have more right than radishes about a mansion's portals; while the duty of the gardener who serves wealth is rather to provide flowers than fruit. But 1 2 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN the king himself is served by the field, and it is of good omen that now, more and more, charitable and penal institutions devote a large share of* their domain to vegetable cul- ture. So it has come about that over against the home of the friend of whom this parable began to speak, is now St. Luke's Garden, where beets and beans, corn and cabbage, po- tatoes and onions, grow, in parallel files, straight and comely. This garden is an ex- ample of careful and skilful culture, and its healthy growth may well claim admiration from the passing citizen or divide the attrac- tions of the fine view spread out before the eyes of the patients who resort to the build- ing's balconies. St. Luke's, indeed, has a fair green lawn, sloping from its western portal, and the steep descent on the east bears full-grown maples and beech trees, with elms and basswoods mingled, while here and there is some tangle of shrubbery, whose untrained wildness is not un- grateful to the eye that looks lovingly on Na- ture's own license. But you have guessed already that "St. Luke's" is a hospital, and may ask yourself or me, what relation can be between a pharmaco- peia and a gardener's hand-book? Our parable may not be too much pressed to present an answer; but to prevent is better ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 8 than to cure, and to nourish life than to mend the broken body with ever so skilful surgery. True, man does not live by bread alone; but in the plane on which we are now moving, with- out bread, in a very literal sense, he dies. The Great Physician Himself showed alike His kindness and His saneness when He directed that to the little maiden whom He had called back to life something to eat should be given. The relation, indeed, between the gardens of our grandmothers and the "materia medica" of druggists' shelves or hospital stores seems obvious enough, as these gardens furnished the herbs for old wives' decoctions. The pres- ent purpose, however, is not to present such parallel, but to show by the example of the garden where vegetables grow on the grounds of St. Luke's, that its medical management does not ignore the commonplace necessities of life, and that the exigencies of healing the sick do not forbid provision for the comfort of the convalescent. It is even suggested that the sight of this healthy life of the garden may be restful to wearied eyes and soothing to tired nerves. Here, then, is potent protest against the gibes of the thoughtless or the disdain of the high-minded. The disciples of plain living and high thinking may hold themselves superior to much concern for the garden's green growth 4 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN or the golden grain of the harvest field. But let us trust that a day of saner sentiment has come, and wholesome, if homely, ideals in the transformation of noisesome vacant lots and reclamation of suburban wastes. To teach the artisan how to hide the hideousness of his own back-yard may be more to him than medicine. So St. Luke's garden may serve as an example of the growing appreciation of the worth and beauty of olericulture; — the name may not be familiar, the thing is as old as Eden, which our great-first-father was to "dress and keep." Happily, in standard books on our library shelves and in current issues of the periodical press, you may read at length of gardens ancient and modern. Many of these publica- tions no doubt give most space and illustration to floriculture or landscape gardening, but in them there is usually some note taken of the kitchen-garden of the amateur. One writer says, in lighter vein, "There is poetry in po- tatoes, and lots of sentiment in Brussels sprouts and carrots." Another says of ama- teur gardening: "It is increasing to the no small advantage of the community, the nation, and the world." In all this, the thought is not of base use or servile utility. It is rather of the healthful in- spiration of the gardener's occupation. As compared with agriculture, horticulture savors ST. LUKE'S GARDEN 5 less of need or compulsion. The garden sup- plies not bare necessities, so much as articles of beauty and enjoyment. True, avocation may shade into vocation here: the diversion of the well-to-do may be the poor man's serious occupation, as he delves with daily diligence, earning his bread in the sweat of his face. But when the Angelus sounds, at morning, noon, or evening hour, the peasant leaning on the implement of his hard toil, lifts eye and heart to the bending heavens ; and for him as for no other, it may be, the still voice whis- pers: "To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God." Surely for the whole world round, the curse shall be turned into a bless- ing; and the word of assurance abides, whether in lower and literal sense or of higher, heav- enly, consummation: "He hath made her wil- derness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of Jehovah." n AN AFTERNOON IN THE FIELDS A half-dozen cedars stand in picturesque distribution in a fair field on the borders of the city. Except for a few suburban villas in the distance half hidden in the foliage, there is the seclusion of rural peacefulness. A little way northward stands a tenant's house, in outline and color conforming well with the general ap- pearance, and beside it the great Powellton- farm barn. All the horizon round is wooded, with clumps and groves, in the nearer or farther distance. Most graceful of all are the elms in the fore- ground, or where, at a short distance apart two fine springs flow, one from the foot of the swelling hills, the other from the base of the triangular plain. Over the last a single elm stands guard, in an almost motherly way spreading its green, graceful canopy over the fountain whose face seems like that of a child that looks out on a new world in timid yet fas- cinated wonder. Then, as if impelled by mys- terious forces, the limpid waters flow quietly through a field where the green grass grows rank while bordering hills were here white with daisies, there reddish brown with the sorrel's AFTERNOON IN THE FIELDS 7 bloom — fair enough to the painter's eye, but hateful to the husbandman. The flocks and herds which so often appear in such a picture are wanting, though a bunch of horses are grazing near, and rural sounds are heard — bird-song and insects' hum. Here it might seem that one could commune alone with Nature or Nature's God. But in such seclusion, hidden here in this natural amphi- theater lies a baseball "diamond" on which a game was played on a Saturday in Summer between the nine of the Union Church and rep- resentatives of the First Presbyterian. As I sat at the foot of one of the cedars I wished for Old Homer's powers to paint the scene before me, for it was such a combination of Nature's loveliness and human movement as none but he could picture in words. He would call the roll of the eighteen players — this fair-haired catcher of giant bulk, a lawyer by profession, or this first-baseman, long and lithe — a clergyman he, whose blue-eyed elder in the left field catches a swift ball "on the fly." His, too, is the wary pitcher whose wily ways sometimes win victory where hateful de- feat impends. For livelihood he holds an ac- countant's pen. This other colossus whose bat sends the white ball far afield belongs to the craftsmen who are named from their work in lead. And this stocky man, who neither 8 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN catches, pitches nor bats, with feet firmly planted and hands on knees, looking alertly over the field, surely Homer would paint him for his marked figure as well as for his import- ance in the game — the umpire, who deals in coal. He would tell with joy of this swift run- ner or of the short-stop's athletic pose, in what winged words you can imagine. So the mimic battle is waged on the arena- like plain. Innings follow innings like the change of scene in some old-time open-air the- atricals, and now and then a murmur rises for a favorite's defeat; or a shout of applause for a victory won, goes up from spectators perched on overlooking hill-tops or reclined along the grassy level. Breeze there was little or none behind the circling hills, but the long-continued, all-per- vading haze, far borne from Adirondack's forest fires, seemed to absorb most of the June day's heat, and effectually screened visitors and players from the sun hanging like a bra- zen ball in the smoky sky. Perhaps the strange effect of the scene was due in part to these at- mospheric conditions. Even more dream-like is another play close by, on the golf-links beyond the narrow by- way that divides the fields. Here, in 'the dis- tant quiet, white-robed maidens pass in twos and threes with caddies at proper distance. AFTERNOON IN THE FIELDS 9 over the grassy swells, while now and then a man or two, belted and canvas-shod, paused in their own leisurely play to observe the contest on the plain at the foot of the cedar trees. So afternoon passes to evening, golfers go their ways, the "diamond" is deserted, and long before the darkness falls the fields are left to the creeping things and the bird in the ce- dars who sings his love song to his mate, while the fountain under the elm flows silently on through the twiHght in likeness of His mercy that fails not day nor night. Ill A MISSION FIELD IN WEST VIRGINIA The field lies on Ten Mile Creek, from its junction with Cabin Creek at Leewood to Kay- ford, where two mountain brooks unite to form this brawling branch, nearly five miles in length. Close and steep on either side, the hills rise a thousand feet. These were once heavily covered with hardwoods and a scattering of hemlock and scrub pine. The finest timber has found its way to the company's sawmill, but enough remains to furnish pit posts and give forest character to all the view except for a few garden patches along the base. Between the hills, highway and railroad and stream dispute possession of the straitened space. The glory of autumn foliage seems doubled by this close setting of the painted mountain wall over against its fellow, and the pencil only can present the picturesque effect of Acme's mile of red miners' cottages, between spring's hills of green, while leafless winter discloses the summit's rocky escarpment and castle-like crags. The Cabin Creek branch of the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad runs from the mouth of the creek at Coalburg to Kayford, sixteen miles, with a spur to Dacota from Leewood, about 10 WEST VIRGINIA MISSION FIELD 11 five miles. On the forty miles of freight track- age, there are fifty mine openings. A dozen of these, operated by the Cabin Creek Consoli- dated Coal Company, lie in the field. They are in upward order the Cherokee, the Caledo- nia, the Red Warrior, the Buckeye, the Em- pire, the Keystone, the Acme, the Thistle, the Rose, the Shamrock, the Raccoon, the Cabin Creek. A new railroad has been hewn out along the face of the mountain from Caledonia, a mile below Acme, to reach coal and timber lands on the fork of Coal River in Raleigh County. The grade is very steep, with a tunnel at the sum- mit nearly a mile long. The railroad cuttings disclose geological features interesting even to the lay observer, and numerous coal seams be- tray the riches for which the miner delves in the darkness of the mountain's depths. Truly the treasures of Pluto are hidden in these high hills. Scarcely a score of years ago these glens so> near the capital itself (Acme is thirty miles, from Charleston) were in a state of almost primeval wildness. Only trails led betweeni the scattered cabins of these mountaineers,, whose mode of life was most primitive. But now two passenger trains daily make connec- tion with the main line (Chesapeake & Ohio) at Cabin Creek Junction, and the people take 12 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN frequent trips to Charleston and other points, on business or pleasure. The little city of Charleston, like the young state, is beginning "to find itself" and impresses the visitor with its air of enterprise and wealth. Even on the "creeks" the company-stores make a brave show of up-to-date wares, including the green- grocer's line. Here lies temptation indeed for the always prodigal miner to spend all he makes for food and clothing. Happily on the field there are few saloons, though upon the border "The Black Cat" lures many a simple soul to waste his substance and debauch his manhood. The typical house at Acme is a cottage of four rooms and sometimes a shed kitchen at- tached. There are a few more commodious dwellings supplied with modern improvements and furnished with taste, while the luxuries of life are enjoyed in some managers' homes. Religious services are held in the school- house at Leewood and at Red Warrior and in a hall at Kayford. The Stevens Coal Com- pany built and maintains at Acme a respect- able church building and allows the use of a cottage to the minister, and one also for the two women "missionaries." The miner can hardly be called religious. Even here, where open temptations are not much in evidence, he is beguiled into drinking and gambling, and a WEST VIRGINIA MISSION FIELD 13 mule-driver's oaths might shame a sailor. There are some, however, who truly fear the Lord. The mountaineer indeed is by nature religious, but his simple soul has too often been beguiled by the sophistries of some wandering "Elder," Mormon or otherwise. Before the strike of 1904-5 laborers were largely of native birth, but now Negro and ItaHan are employed along with Slav and Greek, and the Syrian merchant bids for trade. The "strike" also brought in machines to take the place of miners who left. Still, consid- erable "pick-work" is done. The men prefer this, and an average workman can earn from three to four dollars in a nine-hour day, the draw-back being idle days, sometimes self-im- posed. The work is not unhealthful, though hazard- ous enough. Fatalities are not infrequent, while minor injuries by falling slate or from contact with mules or mine cars are of common occurrence. Two seams of coal are worked. One of these lies high up in the mountain, the steep inclined plane of the Acme mine being eleven hundred and sixty feet long. This is locally known as "hard coal." It is furnished for fuel at Acme, and as it is comparatively clean, smoke and soot are less in evidence here than in most bituminous regions. Nevertheless, the 14 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN workman who goes into the mine in the morn- ing with face of the fairest comes out sadly begrimed at the close of the day. The cleanliness next to godliness is often wanting in mining towns, though it is but just to say that in personal appearance the inhab- itants of Ten-Mile Branch of Cabin Creek are behind no other community, the children espe- cially being winsome. IV HUCKLEBERRIES He who gathers the luscious fruit must climb the steep hillside with toil and care. If he goes in the earliest morning, the dews of the night still clinging to the close set herbage will saturate all his garments. To avoid this, he may choose the western slope, where the early sun has partially dispelled the moisture, but those same rays will smite him hotly till he reaches the timber line (artificial), and es- caping the shining arrows he will but find the copse about him breathless, as, panting, he pushes his way upward. Still steeper is the face of the mountain. His footing is unstable on the shelving shale as he walks half blindly, seeking a way around the abrupt cliffs that rise before him. If for aid he grasps at the young growth up-springing about him, he may feel more disappointing than broken reed the treacherous help offered by the spiny green- brier or the honey-locust stinging with its thorns. Has he any reward when he reaches at last the summit? Yes, he may find delicious fruit, and as he patiently picks the tiny globules, he will doubtless recall that hymn's true word: "Little drops of water," etc. 15 16 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN And is this the reward of his labors — huck- leberries ? All the trees of the forest are here, the herbs that Solomon knew, and hundreds more be- sides. Animal life of higher forms is not abundant, but he may hear the scream of the hawk circling above him or the sweet note of some hidden warbler calling to its mate across the valley. He may even hear on occa- sion the rattlesnake's warning whir. He treads, it may be, a carpet softer than any from the looms of Brussels or Wilton, while outcropping ledge and weatherworn cliff give token of the earth's vast frame beneath him. But some one says : "Alas ! What is all this to me? I am but a classical! I profited above many mine equals in old Homer's story and Virgil's song; but I hardly know a beech from a birch tree, and my children ask in vain for the names of flower or shrub or bright- winged bird. Woe is me, that I did not choose the 'scientific' course. Had I done so, I would not gather 'huckleberries,' but the Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum ! Why did I barter scientific attainments for humanistic endowment .f^" With such like remorseful reflections, when the sun is high, the gatherer descends with con- stant care lest the beautiful blue-berries " be scattered as food for creeping things, as he stumbles, hot and breathless, downward. HUCKLEBERRIES 17 Months later, when the face of the mountain is bare and the winter wind sweeps through the naked trees on the crest, as he sits at his evening meal, he remarks to the good-wife that by her homely process she has produced a very palatable huckleberry jam. Is this the meaning of it all? This purple pottage? What else? This, if he had learned to look on nature through the pagan poet's eyes, or listen to the rhythm of the mountain's heart-beats with an ear that classical measures had trained to hear true, there alone on the forest heights, he had gained without guile the birthright of the sons of God. No Pisgah view, indeed, is here, nor, let us be sure, are many mountain visions so wide as some have supposed. But standing on the nar- row summit, the eastward scene reaches to the bounding hills of Cabin Creek, over a broken land clothed with living green. A thousand feet below him lies Ten-Mile Creek, ever flow- ing from the springs of the mountain to the far-away sea. Facing round and looking over the mighty furrows plowed by primeval forces, where some woodman's ax has cleared away the mantling forest, the hills beyond Charles- ton, thirty miles away, rise into the silent blue. Here is a vision of eternal times. So once be- fore in Michigan's level land, where other ber- ries grow a few miles from its shore, when sud- 18 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN denly Huron's calm blue expanse was revealed, it seemed that light and strength eternal, at once, were there, and he who saw went all his years as one who had looked on the face of God, alone. Haec fabula docet: "Art is long and time is fleeting," therefore, let us, for our limita- tions, choose well between appreciative power and labeled knowledge. The scientific course may give the last, but still there will be scien- tists and scientists ; and some of these, success- ful in material lines, are sorely tempted, in these days of practical progress, to barter the better fo;r the worse. Even Chancellor Mc- Cormick's well-chosen words and eloquent pe- riods touching Practical Education* may leave in your heretic heart a question how far applied science about Pittsburgh has wrought to "the glory of the great King over all," and how far to the fame of Carnegie and the for- tune of Westinghouse. Fortunes have failed in Pittsburgh, and men of great practical abil- ity have fallen low in the scale of righteousness there. Where fishers spread their nets was once a city, whose men were worldly-wise, of which God's prophet said: "By thy great wisdom and by thy traffic hast thou increased thy riches, and thy heart is lifted up because of thy riches ! therefore — " *See Presbyterian Banner, July 2, 1908. HUCKLEBERRIES 19 The Chancellor's words, indeed, are weighty ; his plea for combination more than plausible, and pity it is that so few can answer the ques- tions of the Professor's children. (A small boy at the foot of the mountain, just now, said: "Mary, how do lightning bugs make lightning?" Who can tell him?) Let us not, then, love science less, but prize more the old humanities, and hold still the heritage of the simple sons of that earlier, no less real world, when the immortals walked among the children of men, whether the story be conned on classic scroll or in the pages of Holy Writ. A ROUNDABOUT RAMBLE The Coal River train was an hour late at Acme, because the trainmen had waited for the "pay car" at Leewood. When it arrived its one "combination" coach was mostly filled with a motley crew of Coal River boys well supplied with stimulants from Leewood's "Black Cat." It was a grateful relief indeed to turn from the scene within to note the outline of the vast hills and view the branching streams at Kay- ford, as the locomotive panted up the two miles to the summit in the long tunnel. Then, as the train went gliding down the steep grade, with Sang Creek tumbling clear along its rapid course below, the unspoiled beauty of the for- est-clad hills in the still bright hues of Autumn, was presented in ever varying aspect. Soon a sharp curve disclosed the clear green waters of Coal River washing the base of the cliffs in whose face the road is hewn. A few miles further is Jarrold's Valley, where Clear Fork and Marsh Fork unite to form the main stream. From this point the visiting minister went his way, on foot, to the home of John Jarrold on Little Marsh Fork. Here he found the log house with its wood fire brightly burning in the rough-built chimney- 20 A ROUNDABOUT RAMBLE 21 place, and for three days and nights shared the hospitality of this "mountain" home. Shared is the right word; for on the Sabbath other guests are at the board ; by name, on the right hand Jacob, on the left Esau, in hunter-like garb, the other mild in manner and voice and in garments of the world's present fashion. To all the welcome was sincere, and the plain fare was dispensed with the royal grace of simple good will. With the night came the gray mists wrap- ping the mountains round while men slept, but in the morning these drifted from the face of cliif and forest, and the beauty of the new day beckoned to a walk up Clear Fork, six miles, to Lawson Home School. At first the way is hemmed close between the mountains, with only here and there an acre of arable soil by the bank of the stream, where stands some pioneer's cabin or "logger's" shack. The cliffs here are curiously honey- combed; and, though the glen is wild enough, the soft gray tone of these rocks, half clothed with lichen and fern, and quiet reaches of the river itself combine in an air of restful repose that might lure the city's careworn toiler to build his hermit's cell here. Where Rock House Creek comes in further on, the prospect opens a little, and here in the intervale stands an ancient house, its well sweep tottering to its 22 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN fall, while up the gorge of the smaller stream may be seen a recently-built home of primitive pattern. Then the path leads past a construc- tion camp, untenanted now save by some squat- ter, whose children roam about with their dogs in a half wild fashion, and next comes an aban- doned modern cottage, built for the engineers who laid out the line of railroad up this fork. Four miles from Jarrold's Valley is Doro- thy, a new mining village partly built. The houses already occupied are of comfortable construction and tasteful appearance. The characteristic buildings, of course, are the com- pany store and office, "power-house," and "tipple." It would have been interesting to climb or be drawn up to the top of the incline, near three thousand feet, but the way still led to Lawson. The two miles between Dorothy and Law- son disclose still wider views. The intervale affords room for broad cornfields, whose ser- ried shocks gave promise of prosaic plenty, in contrast with the insistent beauty of the un- fruitful hills, which till now had usurped all attention. With the corn-fields came home- steads of comfortable construction and fa- miliar outline. This change in natural fea- tures, along with reports already borne to him, partly prepared the visitor to find the new brick boarding-school, set in a fair domain of A ROUNDABOUT RAMBLE 23 lawn and garden and orchard, on a gentle slope between river and hill. Others, however, have written and will again write of the fine features of missionary work at Lawson; swifter pens will tell the tale of material development by Clear Fork's stream, and these reminiscences might have passed without record had not the quiet walk from Dorothy to Lawson stirred memories of an earlier day and a far land. Here the way be- gan to disclose features in the landscape, at once of home life and natural beauty, like those of that mountain country far to the north, where a laughing-eyed daughter was born, where "the hands of the presbytery" set apart the young minister to his work, and where, in his evening walk, he saw the hills of Stannard and Wheelock rising beyond the Lamoille's dark stream, forest-crowned, crystal-sown with frost-work ; and when the pencil of the sinking sun's beam smote them, lo ! all the colors of the palette, wondrous in silent, heavenly beauty, were painted on the mighty canvas. So, when life's sun sets, may pictures of "that better land" fall bright on the passing soul's vision, whether the last hour come at the foot of West Virginia hills or on the Green Mountains of Vermont. VI A STUDY IN GREEN The foreman was wont to point a moral, on occasion, by telling of the debate touching the painting of Uniontown's new fire-engine. A German-American made the final speech, say- ing with true Teutonic bluntness, "We paint him mit red and we stripe him mit red." So a simple "color scheme" may be justified if skill be given to paint the glory of the green hill that parts Sycamore's stream from Clear Fork Water. Looking from Lawson School, on a June morning, over the emerald meadow that lies between, it rises before the eye in graceful coni- cal outline, its depths of color shot through with living light. With its companion heights, it walls round the little valley with ramparts of forest foliage, at whose feet glide swift, bright streams, while through the school glebe flows a quiet brook, bordered with its alders and willows. From what loom ever came such wondrous arras, with its single color — so soft, so restful to the eye — hiding the rough-hewn mountain's frame, while the yearning of the Genius" of the woodland to join in old earth's tribute of praise to Him whose strength sets fast the 24 A STUDY IN GREEN 25 mountains, breathes out through all, as though the green hills were sentient souls. The gran- deur of "cloud-capped summits" may be want- ing here — the awe of "dizzy heights" or "yawning chasms"; but if you are a soul sus- ceptible to nature's subtle power these green hills will hold your gaze with a quiet fascina- tion in the fresh forenoon, or if you have waked to look forth with the dawn, the moun- tains will stand like altars to the Highest as the mists of the morning rise like incense — sometimes, it may be, like the smoke of the holocaust — and when the sun has gone down the aroma of the wild grape's bloom and elder flowers, mingled with the spicy odors of the mountain herbage, will float on all the evening air like "the scent of the wine of Lebanon." Surely it is a land well watered like the garden of the Lord, and on it the dews fall as the dew of Hermon of Zion's hills, producing a verdure of indescribable effect. True, no ancient cedar like those on Syrian heights is nourished here, nor pine tree tall; but Bashan's oaks have rivals on these hills, and from the giant tulips, standing within the green veil before you, might be hewn a hun- dred hollow viking ships. All the "hard- woods," indeed, are here, and the dense shade of oak and birch and buckeye tree is dashed, at this season, with the chestnut's yellow-green 26 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN inflorescence, while the sycamore's leaf of lighter hue, easily moving with every breeze, flecks the piebald trunks with light and shade. There are times, too, when the dark sheen of massed foliage is stirred by softly-moving up- ward currents and wave after wave of the olive tint of the leaf's under surface moves along the forest heights. So this master color dominates forest and field. It hides the gray cliif; it spreads a canopy of beauty over the face of the stream. But, while on mountain side and by the river's brink one hue appears, the eye is satisfied, and there is no sense of monotony, though Spring's bright flowers have passed and the golden glory of the Autumn has not blown. But here, as before on hills further north, the feller of the forest has come, and the mighty monarch of the mountain that had braved the storms of half a thousand winters is laid along under the ringing strokes of the woodman's ax or goes crashing down the steep hillside to crown the great log pile at Colcord siding. If you penetrate the veil of green and climb the steep, you will find the face of the mountain gashed and seamed by the great boles' downward plunge. The luxuriant growth of herbage and shrub may soon hide this havoc from alien sight as charity's mantle covers many sins ; but if fire breaks out in the A STUDY IN GREEN 27 "slashing" when the green leaf has turned to brown, its hungry flame will leave all the land- scape scathed and naked. So it is well that from high place a note of warning has been sounded lest "the rivers be turned into a wil- derness and the water springs into a thirsty ground," for our sins of carelessness if for no others. True, the great band-saw that cuts like a knife through hearts of oak and maple and walnut sings a song of cities built and the equipment of great works. So for the present, he may be held a harmless sentimentalist who would stay the lumberman's hand from its heedless hewing; but when the earth has been robbed of its God-given garments of green, leaving the hillside bare and the springs for long months empty; when the lowland is wasted with flood or tormented by drought, then that cynical, careless statesmanship that has hitherto posed as the friend of "business interests" may begin to learn what the very first line of political economy should teach, that governments were instituted as trustees of that domain which God waters with rain and makes fruitful with sunlight, so that from generation to generation the children of men might know how blest His promise is: "I will be as the dew unto Israel; he shall blossom as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon." VII THE POPLARS OF HORSE CREEK The tulip tree, high up, Opened, in airs of June, her multitude Of golden chalices to humming birds And silken- winged insects of the sky." — Bryant. Till the middle of last century houses in the Ohio Valley in the region beyond reach of Pennsylvania's pine were largely built of pop- lar lumber. The name, indeed, may be mis- leading because applied to trees of different species in various localities. A lover of trees has suggested that the first member of the bo- tanical name, Liriodendron (lily-tree) would be appropriate and beautiful; but, while less mellifluous, the specific designation, Tulipifera (tulip-bearing) would be more exact. In fact, we find the tree in our parks marked Tulip- Tree ; and this name may sometimes lead lovers of beauty to view with some appreciation its flowers, so seldom seen, even while their gentle fragance is meekly manifest. This tree is widely distributed in America, but in Europe is known only as an exotic. Alas ! like the stately pine, the poplar has^ been almost exterminated in our own land. No more do the boys of the village play about the 28 THE POPLARS OF HORSE CREEK 29 great logs in the mill yard, carelessly conscious of these as the source of the spicy odors so de- lightfully diffused around them; and, in all the region where childhood's eyes gazed in wonder at the giant boles in the forest, this noble tree is now seldom seen. But because they have been less accessible, there are even now places where God's great gardens bear the trees of His planting, and the once familiar growth of northeastern Ohio, I found on the mountains of West Virginia. Just above the junction of the Sycamore and the Clear Fork, in Raleigh County, there is a great "band mill" ; and on the landing I saw again immense poplar logs ; and within the mill broad boards were shot in swift suc- cession over the rolls like plates of yellow gold, while through the constant quiver came throb- bing moans, as the great toothed band cut with a razor's keenness through the heart of the forest's fallen pride. Then there came a day in late summer when the "Missionary" made a trip on the "minis- ter's" horse from Lawson to Dry Creek. The view as far as Colcord "Y" was comparatively extensive and varied, though mountain bounded. On the right hand were meadows and maize fields ; on the left Clear Fork's softly rippling water, half hidden by copse-wood. The ascent was hardly perceptible. Then the 30 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN hills began to crowd and the grade grew steeper. The Sycamore is here a large brook^ but a mile or more from Colcord there is a fork, and the right hand branch is of dimin- ished size, and the space between the hills still more contracted. This narrow space is occu- pied by a tramway, which crosses and recrosses the stream by rather rude and shaky bridges. To the head of this tramway, men and teams were "snaking" logs from the mountain sides, to be sent down for shipment on a spur of the Chesapeake & Ohio railway, which runs up the Sycamore. Here the real ascent of the mountain may be said to begin, and it was a pleasure at this point to fall in with another horseman bound for Dry Creek. For a time, though in single file, we rode close enough for conversation, and my companion pointed out where on the day before, a fellow lumberman had been crushed to death by a log which he had dislodged un- warily. It was not long, however, till poor "Pet," being undersized and overfed, gave token that the steep was taxing her strength beyond endurance, and to dismount was mercy's quiet dictate. For the time the more powerful animal of the other traveler had car- ried him out of sight; but when a curve in the path disclosed their progress it showed another "righteous" man who regarded the life of his beast enough to walk. THE POPLARS OF HORSE CREEK 31 The direct distance from Lawson to the watershed between the branches of Big Coal River is only a few miles. Some of these miles we found of easy grade, and the route is on the line of a "county road" over which the mail is carried; but the road here is only a bridle-path, traced in zig-zags along the mountain's flanks, while the climb from our starting point is over two thousand feet. When I reached the summit, my new acquaint- ance had finally passed out of sight. The de- scent began at once. My own safety, if not re- gard for my horse's lack of strength, counseled me to continue on foot. The downward grade was very steep, and there was some question whether safety was promoted by walking in front of an animal liable any minute to stumble in the shelving stones and roll over me. I was now out of reach of recent lumbering opera- tions, and some miles from human habitations ; and, as there were divergent paths, all often indistinct, I became somewhat concerned about finding my way. The day, too, was declining, and I wished that I could make more rapid progress over the unknown miles before me; but I was soon to see what would revive inter- est in my immediate surroundings. Years before, woodsmen had culled the finest of the timber to make "gunnels" for flat boat building, — an industry that in former times S2 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN flourished on the Great Kanawha. So, though there was an air of forest seclusion remaining, there was no growth of proportions sufficient to claim attention; and scanning the forward way, I was pleased to note the appearance of more open ground and level footing. In fact, I was nearing the sought-for upper waters of Horse Creek. Thus it seemed that I might mount and hasten; and then, with my foot in the stirrup, my eyes were lifted to see towering beside me a hundred feet heavenward, a ma- jestic poplar, left like a landmark on this mountain path. Standing there in the dim- ness of the forest, this lone tree inspired a feeling akin to awe, while at the same time this unexpected vision was like meeting an old friend in a far land. There was little time, however, to indulge in sentiment, and I rode on, thinking on my re- turn, in the clearer light of the morning, to re- new acquaintance with the noble poplar. I had heard that the way was rather rugged and wild, but no one had spoken of this beautiful tree or others of its kind, — it may be that wood- land worship forbids loquacity, — so further surprise was in store for me. For, as I rode on, speculating as to when I should reach my destination and what welcome I might 'meet, the first sign that I was to get away from the forest was a "clearing" on the steep hillside to THE POPLARS OF HORSE CREEK 33 the left. But the ax that had gleaned this mountain field had spared a half score poplars, and a little beyond the deserted buildings of this small farm was another place on the right of wider acres over which were scattered, it may be, two score of these noble trees. No doubt they had been kept with a view to future profit; but there they rose, clear and straight, like fluted pillars of the firmament that bent above them, whose outer rim the bounding mountains bore aloft. Familiar though I had been with the forest from childhood, the poplars of Horse Creek were a revelation to me ; and I went on my way with a feeling like to his to whom God has given to discover fair islands in some far sea. When I returned the next day, my friend, the care-taker of the Lawson Home School, met my enthusiasm for the giant "tulips" with his own for these great trees, while both fore- saw that when the railroad up Marsh Fork shall be finished the poplars of Horse Creek will feed the maw of some monster mill, ever crying, give, give. Then, too, the oaks of Peach Tree, standing like the oaks of Bashan, will yield their strength to the biting steel. VIII SCENES UNSUNG At first the road runs from the Kiskiminitas to the Tionesta, crossing Crooked Creek, and Cowanshannoc, the Pine Creeks, the Mahoning, the Redbank, the Clarion, crooked and swift as the Jordan. Then our way turns eastward from the dark flow of the Allegheny to where the wide, sweeping waters of the Susquehanna go softly down to the far sea by Havre de Grace. The journey is never by palace car, seldom by rail; often the rider walks, for the horse that draws is flesh and blood. So through winter's cold and summer's heat he goes past the fountains of oil and the wells of flame, the mines of coal and the banks of ore, through the oak woods and the forests of pine — on past fair homes and beautiful fields— by untidy dooryards and the barns of unthrift— down the wild gorges, up the long hills. Sometimes for many consecutive weeks he passes from place to place, and then for awhile he sits by his home fireside and ministers to the flock that he calls his own. Is the service hard.? He who has tried it knows. Are there no compensations in the very hour of toil.? He who turned in his jour- 34 SCENES UNSUNG 35 ney where Atlantic waters part from those that go far south to the gulf, and looked out over the dark sea of the hemlocks with the blue mists of the mountains hanging above, saw such a picture as seemed to repay the weari- ness of years. But is this the work and reward of the mis- sionary? Nay! But that he may preach to the scattered flocks the Word of Life and see the good seed grow. So he is welcomed and en- tertained as God's messenger, and trusts that by such a ministry some are gathered into the kingdom of his Lord or recalled from back- sliding, not unmindful of that which is writ- ten, 'He who converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins." But a hundred others labor in the same field, bearing different names indeed, but serving a common Master, preaching the same Gospel, administering the same sacraments, and it is no Judas heart that questions. To what pur- pose is this waste? The toil and time of many dissipated in gathering struggling congrega- tions to crowd each other in the same village or country side, where one might reap the field, and the others be free to answer the Macedonian cry from the regions beyond. However it may have been in other days, here is not the "scattering that increaseth." 36 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN Very pleasant, indeed, it is to see the taste- ful churches of the Lutherans and Reformed standing side by side, where before was the "Union" Church occupied by both, as still the dead lie in the same inclosure. But as one graveyard suffices for the dead, so might one church accommodate the worshippers and one pastor feed the flock from Sabbath to Sabbath. True, there may be a generous rivalry be- tween people and people, and friendly stimulus of pastor by pastor — the days of strife are past — but, as parallel railroads increase the cost of travel and carriage, so competition in spiritual lines is not always followed by fruits unto eternal life. The facts indicated in the region considered are easily traced to the circumstances of early settlement and are recited in no despite to preachers or people, present or past, of this name or that; but it is to be feared that such like history is repeating itself, even now in sections of our land where there is less excuse for it and the problem of prevention is still unsolved. I IX THE TOP OF THE WORLD The roof rather it seems, with many a hip and curb though level above as of gravel or tin. The "Narrow Gauge" climbs to the heights by zig-zags and follows the ridge as a man walks the roof's crest, while the Erie leaps from hill to hill by the Kinzua Bridge three hundred feet from the bottom of the gorge, and before we reach Mt. Jewett the Rochester and Pittsburg comes into view from one hardly knows where. There are broad highways too through the lonely land, but in all the plateau few towns well built — the most but make-shift hamlets of lumberman or oil producer. The saw-mill in- deed has for the most part finished its work, and oil-rigs too are decayed, though some are renewed here and there. There is neither meadow nor marsh land, fertile field nor fair farm, neither spring nor stream, corn field or pasture land; but fire-swept, desolate stretches, or patches long ago cleared, now too poor to grow bramble. Much of it seems a land that no man cared for. But here was the home of the hemlock, and here even yet are the hardwoods — the beech and the birch and the basswood; the 37 38 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN maple-sugar, the cherry, and white ash, whose leaves strew the ground under the dull autumn sky for many a mile, while the fern leaf shows green here and there through the waste. Dreary enough is the picture, and the scene uninviting you say. But are there not possi- bilities in this "highland" worth the attention of the least sentimental? Its winter snows feed the rivers that nourish great cities and bear the fleets of commerce back and forth. Its sum- mer winds bring health again to lungs grown sickly in the city's stifling air, or to systems poisoned by the miasmata of fairer regions. Shall ax and saw never rest and the fire sweep on unchecked till all is as barren as much of it begins to be? And when lumberman and oil man and tanner have gone, and fierce floods drown your cities, and the summer's drought makes your commerce a mockery, then shall the generation to come charge us with wasting the heritage that was theirs as well as ours, and Spain that now spills the blood of the poor as once she felled the fair forests of her broad plateau shall say: "You have become as I am," while woodman's ignorance or miner's greed makes void alike a President's wise res- ervation of western forests or a great state's effort to keep open the fountains of ij:s own lordly Hudson. X BRANCHING WATERS He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills. He watereth the hills from His chambers : the earth is satisfied with the fruit of Thy works." The hour was early. The clouds were dark above, and the heavens black with the smoke of half a dozen tall chimneys, while the heavy air echoed the slow cough of mighty engines pull- ing long trains of coal up the grade. AH the mountains round have been fire-swept once and again. Great rocks, half calcined and frost- riven, lie scattered on their sides as though cast there by the Jotuns in their giant play. And now comes the train for the west, to which passengers pass with pleasant thoughts of new-found friends at Johnsonburg. Even here the waters divide and the train takes the left hand way and moves with some speed to Wil- cox. Here the stream branches again and the view widens, showing the irregular but pleas- ing outlines of the village. Near at hand is the great tannery and beyond the church spires rising above the cottages. Still keeping the left hand way beside the slenderer stream the train climbs steadily, slowly, on in the fresh- ness of the May morning. Close by the track 39 40 BRANCHING WATERS the grass grows green, and the fresh young leaves of birch, and cherry and the scarlet bloom of the maple give promise of the coming summer, and the pendulous catkins of the al- ders wave in the wind. The pine forest, in- deed, has passed away for the most part, and even the remaining hardwoods are falling fast to feed the retorts of chemical works here and there by the roadside. Now leaving the last slender stream there is a climb to the broad plateau, where the air is pure and meadows green, two thousand feet above the sea. Leav- ing Kane on this highland, the train soon rolls down to Sheffield where the gleaming waters of the Tionesta meet us for a moment and then by easier upward grades Clarendon is reached, where old time wells of oil produce again. Then, while you note the marshes on either hand, the train has passed another water-shed, and now to your right rolls the Allegheny in its strength, and there, where the Connewango brings down the waters of high Chautauqua is Warren the elegant. In a few moments the train reaches Irvineton where roads diverge and bottom lands are wide. A little later where hills rise high is Tidioute the picturesque; while the stream rolls on, now in a narrow, deep channel, now bearing-' green islands on its broad bosom, sometimes with deep, swift current and then in quiet reaches BRANCHING WATERS 41 reflecting mirror-like steep and rugged hills on this side, and on that — sloping plough or pasture land, all the picture framed by gray- brown mountains on whose now naked sides lie great rocks half clad with moss or lichen. Next comes Hickory with its gentle westward slope, while on the further side lie the dun hills deep cleft by the two streams that give an un- romantic name to a spot that for its beauty well deserves a place in song or story. The journey ends at Tionesta the fair, where for ages long the meeting stream has heaped the silt from the mountains to make the broad islands at its mouth. XI FROM FOREST TO LAKE Out of the hemlock forest — away from the beeches, the birches, the maples — away through the fields where once grew the pine trees — down the steep hill by the zig-zag — over the swift Allegheny our light train flies. Then we climb the wild gorge of Bear Creek, and speed over the Butler hills ; catch a glimpse of the Beaver below us, and now our way lies up the Mahoning, to memory dear, as fair to the sight. Then on to west and north- ward our train moves as a bird moves or a boat, through the level land, by orchard and garden and grainfield, gold in the sunlight, through the fat pastures where cattle are graz- ing, by meadows mown and fields of corn, past homes and schools, asylums and churches, till the spires of Cleveland, the fair "Forest City" rise to view. The walls were gay with bunting and the balconies bright with the garments of ladies fair, for it is the nation's birthday and the County of Cuyahoga dedicates to her soldiers and sailors who fell for the land they loved and the homes of their dear ones, its column of glory above the hall of memorial in dark Quincy granite. 42 FROM FOREST TO LAKE 43 When the sun rose there was a sound of booming cannon, and all day long of strident fife and blaring trumpet, thundering drum and clashing cymbals, whose mighty music led a brave array of marching squadrons bearing sword and musket, battle-ax and bayonet, with helm and plume and mighty shako, horsemen and footmen and seamen marched the living walls between. Some were Highland clad, with bonnet and stocking and philibeg, and some wore the "old army blue," bearing battle flag and guidon stained with the tempest or torn by the breath of war's fierce blast. After these passed in endless procession, civic societies, merchants, mechanics, all repre- sented under heaven's high vault, while the breeze from the blue lake tempered the air at mid-day when the forty-four guns on the ar- mory grounds told of a nation still "many in one," and when the sun went down the naval salute answered back from the west-side. All this is but framing or background to "the dedicatory exercises" held on the square where thousands were gathered — soldiers^ civilians, plebeians, patricians, born in this land or others, yet all joining without distinc- tion to honor the day that made us a people and to consecrate the stately memorial of those who offered themselves to death on battlefield or in prison pen, on land or sea, that such her- 44 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN itage as our fathers gave might pass without division to our children. Surely this picture has a more than local interest. "Soldiers' Monuments" indeed, fair and costly had risen over all the land, but this was unique in de- sign, a very volume of patriotism — not of the city or county or state, but of the broad Union for which the thousands gave their lives, and to preserve which true statesmen gave their noblest efforts, led by Lincoln, who sat as chief among them. It was fit that their names should find place on patriotism's memorial, "That lives of great men may remind us, we can make our lives sublime." Nor indeed were they for- gotten — that great army of women who gave themselves in every form of true and tender ministry in camp or hospital. Of all these may we not sing. On fame's eternal camping ground. Their silent tents are spread, While glory guards with solemn round The bivouac of the dead. ' ' XII NOTES OF PASSAGE The journey from Tionesta by the Alle- gheny to Newburgh on the Hudson brings to view in panoramic movement, forest and moun- tain and stream, in this spring-time of beauty in a way to delight the soul of him who has eyes to see. A part of the way, indeed, was passed in the darkness which fell as we left Warren, and full day did not come until we had reached Harrisburg; but as we moved up the Allegheny the sunlight fell bright on the face of the waters flowing like a living thing between the high hills of hemlock and oak and pine with the islands of green in the midst, and the moon shone clear on the flow of the broad Susquehanna, willow-fringed, and lone in the weird light of the midnight. We left Harrisburg in the freshness of the early morning, and as we swept on through the fertile fields of Lancaster County and the hill country of Chester we saw the smaller streams turbid with the red wash of the soil, while all the air was sweet with the perfume of locusts and the spice-like aroma of nameless shrubs on the hillsides. Then came Philadelphia's suburban homes 45 46 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN clustered here and there by the roadside, at which we paused not, but passed steadily on into the great station at Broad Street, and out again as the vast city seemed just fairly wak- ing, and with the single stop at Germantown Junction we sped up the beautiful Delaware to Trenton, then in a diagonal line across the level lands of New Jersey, sodden with the late fallen rains. And now on the right appear the wooden heights of Staten Island and then> beyond Newark, the great salt meadows of the Hackensack through which we moved as though we sailed a sea of green; and when we had pierced the basalt dike that with almost the sharpness of a knife edge separates the close-lying waters, over ninety miles from Philadelphia was run, and the ferry boat "Princeton" of the Pennsylvania Lines, bore us across the great North River to Desbrosses Street in the Borough of Manhattan. A walk down West Street, crowded with traffic, takes you to the Battery with its bath houses and boat landings, its green park and idle loungers and the old Castle Garden where so many a few years ago received their first welcome to American shores. Then you may climb to the station of the elevated railroad and ride to the banks of the Harlem with glimpses of the East River with its great bridges, its shipping, its islands with their hos- pitals, prisons, and houses of refuge. NOTES OF PASSAGE 4T The trip down town next morning is by the same Hne, looking into the second story front windows of the homes of thousands, middle- class or poor, for the rich love not the East- Side, though in rare places its low shores are as green as in the days of Peter Stuyvesant. This time the stop is at Fourteenth Street, and the walk west past Tammany Hall with its Indian Effigies and unsavory reputation. Hard by is Tony Pastor's theater and the old Academy of Music, and then comes Union Square with its patriotic monuments and tall business houses skirted on the west by Broad- way, the great artery of our western world's traffic and travel. Turn to the south and you may read for miles on either hand the names of merchants known all the land over. Even in this summer time at noon the sidewalks are filled with a moving stream of humanity. But you are tired of your walk and the roar hurts the ear that would rather listen to the wind in the hemlock woods by Clarion's Stream, and you are weary with gazing up- ward at the great office buildings as you count story on story almost without limit, so we will re-cross the Hudson (North River) to lodge in the quiet home, whose children remind you of those who play beside the far forest. XIII THE HUDSON FROM NEW YORK TO NEWBURGH At quarter past three, one midsummer day, "The Mary Powell" moved gracefully out from her berth and sped northward past the great steamships, which from day to day weave At- lantic's east and west shores together. All the river's broad bosom is cut with the barge's slow wake or swift yacht's track; or the great Iron Steamboats are seen bearing excursions to resorts of river or seaside, and other craft, steam driven or sail borne, nameless in num- ber and kind, appear. Thus while the boat's engines beat rhythmic time to the band's sweet music, we leave behind the great city with its joys and sorrows. Time fails and words to tell of the countless buildings of commerce, dwelling, or worship, of Grant's tomb in Riverside Park, or the homes for the helpless, reared in the name of sweet charity, and all the suburban shores, as we went onward past Spuyten Duyvel and Mt. Saint Vincent, Yonkers and Dobb's Ferry, Irv- ington and Tarrytown, Piermont and -Nyack, plowing now the broad bosom of Tappan Zee, with a glimpse of Sing Sing's gray prison cells 48 THE HUDSON 49 in the distance, while the Ramapo Hills rise bold on the west. Here in Haverstraw bay the width is nearly five miles, and the eastern shore shows but dimly, unless a glass aids the eye. Then comes historic Stony Point with its light-house and fog-bell, and a little beyond on the east side Peekskill, at the southern gate of the High- lands. Now we are in the "Race" but half a mile wide as the boat passes lona Island, once fa- mous for vineyards and picnics, now a Gov- ernment Naval Stores station. But what can be said of Anthony's Nose, tunnel-pierced, of Dunderberg and Sugar Loaf, of Cro' Nest and Storm King, of Garri- son's the sleepy, and West Point, known to all men, though its plain and buildings are largely hidden from our view, of Constitution Island, the home of Miss Warner, and over against it the foundries at Cold Spring, where the great "Columbiads" were cast in our bitter war time. Thus rounding the point and island, we see, away across the shining miles of its own broad bay, Newburgh like a picture on some great master's canvas ; and, gliding swiftly to the "long dock," now note last of all the Mecca of many pilgrimages, the low stone house which was Washington's headquarters during the closing years of the Revolutionary War. 60 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN FKOM NEWBURGH TO KINGSTON At the dock where the "Martin" is lying there is some hurry of heavy trucks and handling of freight, but promptly at seven- thirty the lines were cast off and the boat moves steadily up the great river. A glance backward shows the fast receding city rising in picturesque, terraced lines, while away to the south the broad water lies like a mountain-girt lake. Northward all the watery way seems empty except for the shad boats rocking on the waves, while again and again the long, sinuous line of their seines is crossed. Along either shore pass long freight, or swift passenger trains, bearing travellers from earth's end to earth's end; while by the river's brink, as long since by the Nile, toiling hun- dreds pile vast kilns of brick. At Chelsea the slope is easy to the eastward, presenting a fair view of field, farm and forest, while the western bank by Roseton is bright with locust bloom. Just above is Jova's, then Danskammer Rock with its light, and beyond. Cedar Cliff well named. A little further the rock rises sheer from the water and the "West Shore" has carved a path in its almost per- pendicular face. The first landing is New Hamburgh, tree embowered, just above the mouth of Wappin- ger's Creek. Almost opposite is Marlborough THE HUDSON 61 on the west bank, and Milton Landing where the third stop is made, is on the same side a few miles above. Both these villages lie back on the hillside surrounded by vineyards and berry fields which are beginning to take on the hue of springtime, while the bursting buds of the hardwoods mingling with the darker green of cedar and hemlock produce a color effect as in- describable as inimitable. Here an abandoned lime-kiln looks like some ancient fortress, while present day prose is presented on the east side by the quarry of the '''Hudson River Stone Supply Co." like a great amphitheatre hewn in the hillside. Along the way, too, have appeared the mansions of wealth and culture, fair for situation on this side or that. And now on the left hand the hills rise in wooded wildness almost unbroken, in striking contrast to Poughkeepsie the city of homes, churches and schools, lying opposite. Here at a dizzy height crosses the long, long bridge, its structure so light that the great creeping train, as it crosses, seems sup- ported rather by magic than anything more substantial. The steamer goes steadily on beneath the spidery steel tracery of the bridge, leaving be- hind the quiet beauty of the city of schools, 52 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN and on past the stately buildings of many a country seat of Vanderbilt or Astor merchant prince. There are a few rocky islands in the wide expanse and many a bold headland appears, with here and there a shallow cove where water lilies grow and fishes play. Orchards too were there, and fields of ripen- ing grain and vineyards clinging to rocky ter- races, and everywhere was seen the handiwork of Him who set the mountains fast and bade the river run from Adirondacks to the sea. Sailing vessels are seen on the way, from tiny canoe to four-masted schooner, passing sometimes swiftly, sometimes slowly, with white wings spread to catch the breeze. Now and then great tows of boats and barges are met — some- times as many as forty following the lead of from one to four tugs or tow boats. So lum- ber, coal, grain, and ice and other products pass down our watery way; while the brick or stone yards along almost its whole course send abroad barges deep laden with the materials that build the city at the river's mouth. Not all the landings made by the "Martin" have been noted, for sometimes her passengers wearied of the rumbling of trucks and rolling of beer barrels while they waited. Neverthe- less, thousands have made the excursion to Kingston Point by this line of boats, and THE HUDSON 53 richly enjoyed the experience. The Day Line also lands at Kingston Point, where cars may be taken to Catskill Mountain resorts, or elec- tric cars to Kingston on the hill. A trip to this old colonial city will well repay the visitor. The tourist may have noted the breadth of the river and guessed at its depth, in places very great — his guide-book will tell him that from New York to Albany the difference of level is only five feet, and from his geography rather than from observation he may learn that it has no affluents of considerable volume from the Mohawk to the sea, so that it well deserves, in its natural characteristics alone, the name of the Lordly Hudson. XIV A RURAL ROAD The Isles of Quiet lie beyond the years. Hoar Prophets say it ; yet, for all the tears, I doubt the saying of the seers. I think that whoso seeks them here shall find. That all with open patient hearts and mind Shall drink their peace from sun and wind." The August sun was tempered by an air like October's, the road was in fine condition, and though a trolley car went whirling by oc- casionally, and though so near one of the world's greatest lines of travel by boat or rail, the old highway had an air of quiet that was good to the soul. While most are of the mod- ern way, an occasional house, stone built, low roofed, dormer windowed, brought a sense of the long ago, and the peace of past days seemed to linger in field and forest. The view was seldom wide, though just here you catch a glimpse of Milton clinging to the hillside across the Hudson and beyond it see the mountains. But to any son of the soil — 'We are all of the dust — there is interest enough mear at hand in the scenes of rural life — of or- chard and meadow and farmstead — and the lover of nature finds joy as he rides under over-arching maples or through an avenue of 54 A RURAL ROAD 55 elms, while he notes in the woodland familiar trees, and where the road crosses a wide ravine there comes the aroma of hemlocks and the scent of many a nameless herb, while further on the wild cherry drops its black fruit in the road dust. Except the herds of mild-eyed kine, whose product is basis of industry here, animate life is not much in evidence. But if you rest here a little when you have climbed the slope, you may hear the quail quietly calling her covey to cover in the brake by the roadside, and the woodchuck is watching when you pass on your noiseless way. In due time come Wappingers Falls where, beneath the great bridge of stone, the water goes dashing and foaming, torn and shredded by the rocks' rough ridges, for the "falls" are cascades rather, yet none the less beautiful, and sometimes in flood their rush is awful with the voice of great waters. The way now lies to the quiet village of Hughsonville. From here the road holds the heights between the Fishkill and the Hudson, and affords frequent views of the Highland* trending eastward in the blue distance, and all the broken landscape westward as far as the Shawangunk. The road is a thoroughfare, but not crowded with travel, and the farms are less fer- 56 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN tile than those seen an hour ago. In nooks and corners, indeed, the bramble grows, and grape vines bind tree to tree by the roadside, while the golden rod begins to glow in the pas- tures and the old stone walls are kindly cov- ered by the clambering creepers whose green even now is splashed with the scarlet of aut- umn, while the scent of late harvest is "as the smell of a field which the Lord hath blest." XV DOWN EAST The Itinerary; Sixty miles down the Hud- son; a mile across Manhattan; fifteen on East River; a hundred on Long Island Sound; three score and a hundred on the Atlantic; thirty-seven miles by rail; these mark the stages in a journey from Newburgh-on-the- Hudson to Hiram by the Saco. The trip down the Hudson never loses its charm for the traveler, sitting close to the water, on the main deck of the "Mary Powell" as she speeds on in the fresh morning, past scenes of unrivalled natural beauty and points of great historic interest, while the soft strains of the orchestra float down to mingle with the swift swish of the cloven flood. At noon the boat made fast to the Day Line dock at Desbrosses Street. The walk across to the East River and about the water front was full of varied interest. With commendable punctuality, the stanch steamer "North Star" moved from her moor- ings and, after some maneuvering, turned her prow to its northward course on the East River. Though the hurricane deck was still damp from the recent rain, most of the passengers 57 58 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN found their way there to view the changing panorama presented on either shore, and the movements of all sorts of craft on the narrow estuary. It seemed to not a few passengers, as the boat swung round to course under the Brooklyn Bridge, that the tall smoke-stack or lofty masts must strike; but the bridge's eleva- tion gave ample way, while the same experi- ence was repeated as we swept beneath the Manhattan Bridge, the Williamsburgh Bridge, and finally cleared the Queensboro, longest of all. In the meantime, we had passed the Navy Yard on the right and the buildings of Bellevue Hospital on the left, and all the varied con- tour and broken horizon-lines of the boroughs on this shore and that; and then those new to the scene began to ask about the buildings on "The Island" (Blackwell's) ; Insane Asylum, City Hospital, Penitentiary, Almshouse, Workhouse, and the Metropolitan Hospital. But now our stout ship passes the old stone light-house at the Island's northern point and moves into the troubled waters of Hell Gate. Here we begin to leave the city and its islands, behind, and very soon we have passed the forts that guard the eastern gateway to the metropo- lis and enter Long Island Sound. This part of the course was passefl in a golden sunlight which made the vessel's broad wake gleam like a pathway of orient pearl, DOWN EAST 59 till the gleaming disk, slow descending through barred and changing cloud effects, sank from sight beneath the purple waves. Many kinds of vessels, from tiniest launch to majestic steamer, and from sprit-sailed skiff to many masted schooner, appeared on the broad bosom of the sound, but now the water has grown so wide that even by day the distant shores fade from sight, and the witch- ing gleam of moon-lit waves was not proof against nature's call to sleep. When I waked and looked out of the open port as I lay in an upper berth, I saw in the early dawn only a wild waste of heaving water breaking into white-caps, and the darkling waves had a half-melancholy, half-menacing look as though I had been "alone on a wide, wide sea." Just then, however, we passed close to "Shovelful" Light-ship; and so it trans- pired that, combining this outgoing with my late incoming voyage, I was to see by day the whole course from New York to Portland, ex- cept the seventeen miles between Shovelful Light-ship, 218 miles from New York, and "Crossrip" Light-ship, 201 miles from that city, at which point I had begun to look about me on the inward passage. It was not long before we sighted Cape Cod Peninsula, running so close in as to give a fair view of its low, partly wooded or grass- 60 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN grown shores, with breakers running along its white beach-sands. A village with its white church spire, and farm-houses here and there, had a homelike look to us sea-farers, and many a friendly light-house told of a nation's care for "those who go down to the sea in ships." And now we are abreast of the far-famed Highland Light, and the masts of the Marconi Wireless Station stand on the shore like the tall chimneys of some modern power-house. Though fewer vessels appear in this wider way than when we entered Long Island Sound, the evening before, we passed some lines of barges towed back light after discharging cargoes of Pennsylvania or West Virginia coal at New England ports ; and occasionally we had fine views of graceful, six-masted schooners, with all sails set, moving in silent majesty on the broad bosom of the deep. Surely "a life on the ocean wave" has a charm all its own. Again we lose sight of land, sailing the lonely, unfruitful sea, till, near 2 P. M., we ap- proach the light-ship "Cape Elizabeth" on the starboard — 13 1-2 miles from Portland and to port is the cape itself with its two lights ; and next, S 1-2 miles from destination, is rocky Portland Head with its surging surf and tall lighthouse standing where the first warning light on the Atlantic coast was lit, January 10th, 1791. DOWN EAST 61 First impressions may be lasting, but I should wish for more than even a second sail- ing to the broken shores of hundred-harbored Maine before essaying to describe the charm of island-dotted Casco Bay or the beauty of Portland, which rose before our eyes in pictur- esque loveliness as we rounded the break- water and moved over the placid bosom of the harbor to our moorings at Frankhn Wharf. At 5 :40 P. M. our train left Union Station. The rain had ceased, but the low hanging clouds and dull light gave a rather depressing appearance to the naturally pleasing scenery between Portland and Hiram, and through in- advertance I missed the sight of Hiram Falls from the train. Here, in a furlong's distance, the Saco goes plunging and seething down a descent of near a hundred feet between riven rocks of granite and basalt. I had seen this cataract, indeed, when in fuller flood it hurled madly on the thousands of logs which a dozen "drivers" watched with wary care, guiding with pike pole, or now and then breaking a jam with dynamite. But here is Hiram and the end of a journey of near four hundred miles of travel from the lordly Hudson to the brown, winding waters of Saco's mountain-born stream. XVI A RIDE TO DENMARK Not the low-lying land between the North> Sea and the Baltic, but a village of that name six miles from Hiram, Maine. Near by are towns and villages named Sweden, Norway, Poland, etc. Four counties in the southwest corner of the state bear names borrowed from the shires of Old England, while most of these divisions are called by the names which the Redman gave to mountain, lake, or streamo. Denmark is in Oxford County of which the county seat is Paris, the early home of Hanni- bal Hamlin. The time was a bright morning in the early fall, keen with the coolness that brought un- timely frost to blight gardens and cornfields when the next day dawned. For near three miles the road is bordered by woodland, and here there are no buildings, except one house long tenantless and a barn tottering to ruin. All saleable trees in this wood were felled years- ago, but now there is a dense growth of hard- wood and evergreen trees, in size, approaching the dignity of a forest. The breath of the fringing pines and rarer spruces and hemlocks combined with the forest herbage to produce an aroma gratefully exhilarating; and the 62 A RIDE TO DENMARK 6^ bloom of goldenrod and purple aster bright- ened the gray greenness of the foliage, while now and then a birch tree flitted by in its ghostly white. In this region the roads are often too sandy for comfortable bicycle travel, but the Den- mark road presented a fair surface, compara- tively level, and emerging from the forest, the wheel sped on past the pleasant homes of a thrifty people. Much of the land, indeed, is rocky, and the soil may not be fertile ; but even on the score of comfort, to say nothing of the grandeur of the mountains and the beauty of lake and stream, there are compensations here that might well discount the lure of the West. Surely the dullest denizen of Denmark must gain some uplift of soul as his eye sweeps over the wide panorama of forest and field on this side and that of the Saco, bounded by the White Mountain "Presidential Range," or as he gazes over the forest crowned hills toward the east among which lie many lovely lakes. The gliding wheel allows just a glimpse of some of these miniature seas on the right hand, a short distance from the village. Denmark, locally known as the "Corners,"* is even more picturesquely irregular than the average New England village, as it straggles down the hillside and beyond Moose Brook, while above the surface of the stream Pleasant 64 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN Mountain rises more than a thousand feet. The road back from the bridge to the post office was too steep for riding, so there was opportunity to observe in passing pleasant homes and some dwellings of fair dimensions and appearance. Midway on the return, the "Bull Ring" road lures the wheel by various turns up and over "Tear Cap" hill. Tradition says that here long ago quarreling women tore each other's caps — hence the name. However this may be, this is a point of vantage to him for whom a wide and wonderful landscape has any charm; for, standing on this rocky summit, a thousand feet above the not distant sea, he may behold in every direction scenery of rare attractive- ness. Westward the course of the winding Saco may be traced for many a mile towards its springs in the mountains, while to the east- ward, a chain of beautiful lakes in the valley of Hancock Brook lie far down beneath his feet, and on the distant horizon is island-dotted Sebago Lake in which great ships might sail. This view embraces more than nature's un- tamed beauty; for though your feet rest on old earth's foundation of naked granite, some of Hiram's best farms lie on this high plateau or along the hill's northward and eastern slopes, while to the southward, six hundred feet below, are the twin villages of Hiram and East A RIDE TO DENMARK 65 Hiram. There is a market garden within these limits, and fertile farms by the banks of the Saco. Mount Cutler rises a thousand feet above the stream, and to the rear horizon west- ward the cleft summit of Burnt Meadow Mountain with the long flanks of Hiram Hill between. XVII THE LAND OF SNOW Stainless as Truth, or Purity's white face, Behold the snow fall! Never came a dream On lighter pinions from the courts of Sleep." It is not a land where snow falls every day, nor in heavy masses many days, but where it is constant all the winter long. It is not a land of blizzards, though sometimes there are days together of driven snow, when eddying gusts pile it in mounds and ridges rapidly. It is true that the people speak of a "storm," but this means only a fall of snow. So some morn- ing, after days of bright sunshine, you rise, and, looking eastward through the blue-gray air, see a light cloud resting on the summit of the Stannard hills. In a few minutes, torn by the mountain, it drifts toward the valley, and when you look again all the view is filled with snow falling slowly through the silent air, as salt from an unshaken sieve. There is a gray pall over all the landscape — the world shut out in the persistent twilight, which gives way to darkness when the sun goes down, and re- mains when he rises again. But on the third morning, it may be, his beams shine bright over the untrodden, stainless snow lying on mount- ain and in valley; even the leafless forests 66 THE LAND OF SNOW 67 clothed in white robes, and the clumps of pointed firs stand like fairy fabrics, or Chinese pagodas in grotesque groups, in the fields. Cold, is it? Sometimes the mercury falls far below the zero point, but the white fleece is warm as wool over all the land, the ground remains unfrozen and forest brooks go mur- muring on their way, free of prisoning ice, yet with hushed voices ; for though the increas- ing warmth of the sun may soften the snow on house-roofs, so that great icicles depend from low eaves to the ground, the housewife mourns her empty cistern, where no rain falls for months. In earlier winter, there is little hindrance to travel or labor; but toward spring the in- creasing depth of snow makes forest and field impassable except with snowshoes, and the trav- eled road becomes a "highway" indeed, ris- ing slowly from week to week, notwithstand- ing the passing rollers' ponderous weight or horses' beating feet. To miss the narrow road is likely to bring to driver and steed a snowy baptism. Toward spring, indeed, there may come such snow storms as are known in lower latitudes and lesser altitudes, when the feathery flakes fall fast through the murky air, and in a few hours' time block all the ways of travel; but these are not characteristic of the land of snow. 68 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN Between the snow and the sunshine there may be days of silent blue, when morning mists veil the mountain's crest, rising slowly by-and-by to show its long line, forest crowned, crystal sown, a dream of beauty; and, when the sun goes down, the blue cloud curtain lifts for a moment, and his last glorious beams con- verge through the gates of the river's course through the western ridge, and paint on Wheelock's walls pictures, as though angels' wings had winnowed down the light of rain- bows there. XVIII ORANGE AND SUSSEX A wheelman left Newburgh as the late Sep- tember sun showed his bright face over the Bea- con Hills. He passed out Broadway to the city limits, and then turned to gain the old New Windson and Goshen road. Late labors on this line have made it fine for cycle or auto, but the west wind retarded in a way that only a wheelman knows. And now the gardens of Pochuck are passed ; the forest-clad bulk of Muchattoes Hill looms on the left, and on the right lies Washington Lake in the sunlight. Late rains have clothed pasture and meadow with a verdure unwonted at this season, but even now the creeper that climbs tree or wall is brilliant in scarlet, and the crimson-leafed sumach lends color to the copse here and there. All the hardwoods may be seen in the forests, and an occasional birch or tapering evergreen cedar by the roadside. Above the wood the crow caws to his mate, and meadow larks rise from the marshlands, while the scavenger-buzzard flings his dark shadow in wide, sweeping circles over valley and hillside. The saucy chatter of the red squirrel sounds from walnut or hickory, and 69 70 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN the little striped chipmunk, whose pouches, dis- tended with his winter store, give him a comi- cal look, peeps timidly forth from the wall. The view now widens, and the gently flow- ing waters of Silver Stream and Beaver Dam Creek lend added charm to the varied aspect of this rolling upland. There are pleasant homesteads by the way or gleaming fair on dis- tant heights. Not a few of these are solidly built, fourequare in the style of the fathers, whose characters were honest and strong like their masonry, which still appears in founda- tion and walls. But here is a hamlet with store, school, and church, in whose commodious manse dwells the ready scribe of the Presbytery — King, of Little Britain. Then gradually rising, the road reaches a crest at Beacon View Farm. The view. Indeed, sweeps far to the Catskills over Shanangunk's gray cliffs, and then by the left to the Highlands with Schunnemunk's rough ridge between. At Rock Tavern the Ontario & Western crosses the highway. For half a mile beyond, the wheelman walks, greeted now and then with a nod or bright word from the Italians, whose finished labors will leave a smooth surfaced road. Here in the grove by the brookside these sons of the South have built themselves booths or curious conical huts of sod. ORANGE AND SUSSEX 71 At Burnside the winding Otter Kill is crossed, and again at Campbell Hall. A lit- tle further on, the way turns sharp to the south, and still the wheel speeds on by slope or level, till near its geographic centre, the county seat is reached at Goshen. Then still onward after the cranky pedal has been re- placed by a new one, and the tale would be long fully told, of the ever-changing scenes of rural beauty and nature's loveliness. Those who travel for business or pleasure are met or passed by, and the hideous "honk" and moving pillar of dust warn all of the automobile's swift flight. It is a relief to walk and catch the breath up the slope through the quiet village of Dun- ton ; and then, a few miles beyond, turning in swift flight from a glimpse of Middletown's spires, the way leads south-westward to Slate Hill with its ancient Baptist meeting-house, and Susquehanna Railroad. One short stage more and the wheel gains its first goal at Centreville. ****** The wheel moved onward early on Monday. The road is too steep for wheeling for the first long mile, but the enforced walk was wel- come in the cool air, vital with the breath of the ripening forest's foliage and the scent of mountain herbage. For just here nature still 72 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN asserts herself, and there is more of scenic worth, than profit to the husbandman ap- parent to the traveler's eye on either hand. He, often turning in his leisurely ascent, looks over a widening panorama of field and forest, mountain and valley, as he marks the winding way of the Rutledge through the town of Wawayanda. Though quiet now reigns in the village street, this road, leading from Port Jervis-on- the-Delaware to points on the Hudson, was once a highway of traffic, and Centreville and other places along the route were busy and prosperous. Even yet the road is by no means grass-grown, and surely, except as noted, there is no fairer farming country found than on this vast slope, arable to the crest, whose disintegrating rocks still add to the fertility of pasture-land or corn field. But the score of miles to be covered before the sun grows hot call the wheel to movement, and the southwestward way is held past the homes of thrift across the ridges and through the straths that stretch between. One of these is watered by Bondinot's stream, and here are alluvial deposits where once the pine tree grew. Two names appear on maps, but the wheel- man was aware of nothing like village or ham- let till he arrived at Greenville with its grace- ful white church. In his swift flight, indeed. ORANGE AND SUSSEX 75 he had caught a glimpse on his right of an- other place to which men are gathered close, where the gleam of clustered marbles marked a city of the dead. A mile beyond Greenville, and as far from the summit, the wheel turns due south on "the mountain road." This road holds its way mile after mile along the mountain's flank. Indian trail it doubtless was at the first, and like many another, sometimes avoided the more level path which the glacier's mighty share has here plowed straight with almost imperceptible grades as though to mock the engineer's slow toil. So the rider moving over the smooth sur- face, swift or slow, saw near at hand by the way the happy homes of taste and comfort, and on the left, to the bordering mountains in the far east, a land as goodly as that which Moses saw from Pisgah's top. Somewhere here, the line is passed that sepa- rates state from state, but not only do natural features remain the same, and the grazing herds, and the cornfields' goodly shocks, but the men who greet you in passing or who gather the fruits of garden or orchard on either hand, are like those of the first day's travel, America's yeomen, true and free. Here caste has not come, and though their toil, in part may be homely as that of our first-father, no "brother to the ox" is here, nor "union" 74 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN bondman of an imperium in imperio which, even as other such like things, seems evil — "necessary" only for lack of the just heart or clear vision among the "promoters'* of the world's work, and for failure of our states- men here to follow the better way. XIX A HILL COUNTRY (( But the land, whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven." In the good old days the Cochecton turnpike made connections between Newburgh on the Hudson and Honesdale on the Lackawaxen. The distance is one hundred and fifty miles. From Newburgh the road runs across Orange County in a nearly straight line west. There are no millionaires' mansions out the pike, nor is the scenery remarkable for this part of the country, but for some reason the journey recalled certain scenes and homes in Pennsylvania. The fact that the road leads to the Keystone State and passes through an ancient Scotch-Irish settlement may have awak- ened the thought. It may be hard to point out any decided re- semblance, for stone walls are the rule here,, and many old houses are of the same material laid in strong white mortar holding the unhewn stones firmly in place. The county historian describes the surface as "rolling upland," but while there is no lack of drainage, the road is bordered at points by stretches where the soil seems damp and sour 75 76 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN and sometimes so full of angular stones of con- siderable size as to make tillage out of the question. The timber remaining in this section is more picturesque than profitable, and just now stub- ble fields are rank with rag-weed, while mead- ows are snow white with the wild carrot and pastures aglow with goldenrod. Let no one sneeze, or take hay fever on reading this line. Many of the buildings are old, though new roofs with projecting eaves and gables on some of them relieve the primness of outline; while as to others, shrubbery or climbing vine re- deems from the prevailing plainness of struc- ture. To the north are the Catskills, to the west Shawangunk's well defined range running par- allel with the Walkill, to the south the clus- tered or scattered ranges and summits of the Highlands, and to the east beyond the Hud- son, the Beacon Hills. Within this mountain- ringed horizon lie cities, villages and hamlets, fields, forests and streams whose beauty is yet to be sung. History says that the section was largely settled near two hundred years ago, by Scotch- Irish, and though changes have come and though many sleep in the graveyard beside the meeting-house, here are still a faithful few who hold to the way of the fathers in worship ; and A HILL COUNTRY 77 there is something in the air of the place which reveals of what manner of spirit were the men who felled the forest and who laid the walls and built the houses whose foundations are firm as the faith of the builders. But as here and there more beautiful and more comfortable homes appear, built by the sons of such sires, so have some in measure modified the worship which they oifer as sin- cerely and, let us believe, as acceptably to that covenant-keeping God whose almighty hand set solid on their vast foundations the eternal hills, bathed in the beauty of the evening sun- light. XX OUT THE ERIE The train leaving Newburgh was crowded and very hot. Its movement up the steep grade brought only partial relief, while it passed out of the yard and above the West Shore tracks, leaving the terraced city on one hand and the great river with its ever fascin- ating view on the other, and moved on up the gorge of the Quassaic even now with its wild beauty unsuspected by the thousands who dwell so near. Then there is a turn to the left by the foot of Snake Hill with its bold, rocky face on whose western slope the army of Wash- ington lay encamped many months. Rounding its base, the mountain valley of the Moodna comes into view. Here, too, other points of historic interest as well as of pictur- esque beauty may be seen. Far away, beyond towering Storm King, is West Point, and here and there still standing the "Headquarters" occupied by the Revolutionary leaders, while some may remember the story of the Stacey family, in the old McGuffey's reader. The tragedy occurred on the banks of this beautiful stream, which thus became known as "Mur- derer's Creek," but N. P. Willis it was, who, disliking such gruesome suggestion, rechris- 78 OUT THE ERIE 79 tened the flowing water, Moodna, though in its upper course it still bears its ancient name of Otter Kill. Beyond VaiPs Gate the land is more level, with well-cultivated farms, though some fields are stony enough, and there are stretches of sour marsh land. Still further on, the road itself has been cut through rough ridges of the natural rock, everywhere in view with its ver- tical strata. So passing village and hamlet and farm in nineteen miles, the connection with the main line at Greycourt is reached. It is Saturday, and the train from New York is vastly long, crowded with husbands and brothers and sons coming from the city to spend their Sabbath with their families who make all this region a resort for the summer. Soon after leaving Greycourt, the course crosses one of the great marshes now drained, and planted, acre on acre, in onions, and then comes Goshen, the county seat of Orange County. From here to Middletown the way runs through a pleasant country of well-kept farms and tasteful homes. Just below the city stand the beautiful buildings of a state asylum in the midst of park-like grounds. Four miles further is Howells on the hill, where the road turns to the south to find its way through the broken land to Port Jervis on the Delaware, seventeen miles away. 80 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN Howells Depot stands on a rocky ridge crowned by the white meeting house, with its square tower, which can be seen for many miles. Standing in front of this building the view swept over a land of green fields and forests of second growth, framed by blue mountains, the nearer slopes of which he like a map traced with the lines of farm walls with varied contour of grove or water course. Here with the dusk comes welcome rest. XXI GOING TO PRESBYTERY A teachers' meeting had been held in the study of a minister in Western Pennsylvania, whose daughter was one of the band. He was an aged man, and by the young people held in some awe for his seemingly austere character. The Superintendent, too, was advanced in years, — an elder of the Puritanic cast. All were the more surprised, therefore, when, in the social half -hour following the study of the lesson, these ancient men began to tell stories of "Going to Presbytery." The mode of travel was by private convey- ance, which gave fuller opportunity for seeing the country than the whirling train ; but at the same time there was some tendency to tedium on the long country roads. It seems, however, that our reverend father and grave elder had, in their day, known how to secure a little vari- ety by speeding horses, sometimes to the point of "racing by" each other, leaving the losers to digest defeat in a cloud of Butler County dust. Even aside from such incidents of travel, "going to presbytery" was in those days an event in the lives of country pastors and elders who, except for these meetings and maybe an 81 S2 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN annual outing at the county fair, dwelt in the isolation of country homes. But times have changed, especially in the Presbytery of North River, which occupies a narrow strip lying on both banks of the Hud- son from Kingston on the north to Highland Falls on the south, almost every church being ^conveniently reached by boat or rail. The train left the West Shore station. New- burgh, in the late afternoon when all the ter- raced eastern front of the city lay in the shadow, but across the broad river the level sunbeams burnished the windows of Fishkill- on-the Hudson as with gleaming gold, while the changing violet hues clothed all the background of the mountains. Just then the wide bay was scarcely vexed by prow or paddle-wheel, though here and there a light boat moved with a white sail, like a bird's wing in the breeze, and the great transport "Hart" plowed her way through the shimmering water bearing to the further shore a whole train of loaded freight cars to supply fuel and food to New England's busy cities. Then the train rolled down through ancient New Windsor, with its brickyards and Italian inhabitants, on past Plum Point and over the Moodna, beyond which is Cornwall, once famous for writers. Then under the sheer lieights of Storm King, and, with swift flight GOING TO PRESBYTERY 83 past Cro' Nest, the train plunges into the tun- nel near a mile long that pierces West Point, and a mile below, the journey was all but ended at Highland Falls Station. Here there was about us a view famous the world over — mountain and stream and forest combined in a picture whose memory abides as a dream of beauty. Here in the heart of the hills the river's expanse seemed like a lake hemmed in by the mountains, and when the "day boat" "Albany," came round West Point and quickly glided out of sight between the ramparts that rise beyond Fort Montgomery it seemed as though the mountain wall had opened to let her come and go, and her thou- sands of tourists, and those that watched seemed like men of a phantom world. Space will not permit to tell of the towering cliffs, creeper covered, with purple flowers m clefts and crannies, of vine and fern and palm- like sumac, nor of the forest's growth of locust and cedar and linwood with oaks and chestnuts everywhere hiding the stark frame of the mountain — a single detail is all that may be noted. A guy wire had been stretched taut from a telegraph pole to a tree whose gnarled roots held firmly to the moss-covered rocks. A vine springing there had climbed the tree to the wire on which it had run out half a hundred feet, and hung its purple clusters fair to the 84 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN eye, but so inaccessible that like the fox of old the modern small boy will tell you of "sour grapes." Is my story even so to you, 0, Son of the western land, dreaming of such scenes amid the rustling corn in the glad October sunshine.'^ Look about you! For your quiet farm-house home lies perchance in regions scarcely less romantic, if less sung, than those here pictured, and where your life may be no less brave and true than here. By Conemaugh's mountain flood or in Loyalhanna's sequestered glens you may hear the heart of nature beat, and muse of all His mighty works who "watereth the mountains from His chambers." XXII THE HUDSON HIGHLANDS OLD WEST POINT From Canterbury the way up Idlewild Creek is of easy grade at first, but when you cross the iron bridge and take the new West Point road, most of the time it is easier to walk than to ride, as the road leads you further and fur- ther into the solitude. Your slow travel, however, and the solitude, too, are favorable to observation of nature as you mark the forest-clothed mountains about you. There is indeed no dark forest, nor ever were, perhaps, on this rocky mountain soil "The dim aisles" of the giant woodland; but there is a fair growth of cedar and hemlock, birch and butternut, oaks of many a leaf, climbing vines and herbs of the mountain, nameless to you, but all known to Him who said : "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind." Yes, apple trees are found here and there by the way, remnants of or- chards ; and traces of settlement are seen even on these heights. The road on the further side is steeper than the ascent. There are no "beetling cliffs" nor 85 86 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN "yawning chasms," but the great tree-clad slopes seemed to lead down interminably into the blue abyss, while the mountain brooks made half-mournful music falling from height to height, in the weird enchantment of the Indian Summer. But here a cannon planted to the trunnions by the roadside marks the boundary of the reservation, and then at the lone cross-roads in the forest you turn to the left, and "coast" for miles down a broad, smooth slope to the northwest corner of "the plain." The crumbling walls of old Fort Putnam may still be descried high on the mountain, though almost hidden by clustering cedars, while the view from its grass-grown ramparts is one of the loveliest in the world, of moun- tain and stream, and the Post spread like a map four hundred feet below. The site of Fort Clinton (at first Fort Arnold) may be found at the northeast angle of the Plain with Kosci- usco's monument hard by, and on Trophy Point may be seen portions of the great chain which was stretched from Gee's Point to Con- stitution Island to prevent the passage of Brit- ish ships. In the Ordnance Museum, too, are Revolutionary relics and interesting collections of arms and equipments dating to the most modern, and many novel things gathered in all our conflicts, including Cuban, Chinese and THE HUDSON HIGHLANDS 87 Philippine curios. In the Library, CuUom Memorial Hall, and Academy buildings are many military mementos, and some things suggesting our years of peaceful achievement, while the hospitals, the gymnasium, well ap- pointed, with its great swimming pool, and the new Officers' Mess, might claim hours of atten- tion. Beyond and about the charmed circle of cadet life and officers' quarters, like a coarser husk, is another West Point not so well known to visitors, seldom thought of by the great public who, from sea to sea and from the Lakes to the Gulf, feel something like personal pride and interest in the Academy. Thousands of visitors indeed come for but a few hours, between up boat and down, or gather about the plain to watch a foot-ball con- test or drill of cadets, fair to see, and carry away this charming picture alone in their minds. Few except those having friends or business on "The Post" ever penetrate to Rugertown, the home of enlisted men and their families, with hospital, school and gardens, and the casual visitor may hardly note that there are distinctly two castes within army lines, while civilians are received either as "distin- guished guests," or tolerated as purveyors of necessities from which neither officer nor sol- dier is exempt. 88 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN There is something, indeed, of a mediaeval cast and air of seclusion and separation from that world which moves past so close in swift steamer or by rail beneath the Point itself in the great tunnel. The castellated Cadet Bar- racks and the Elizabethan architecture of the Library (built of native granite in 1841) lend to the illusion, and the impressible visitor must feel the atmosphere of a class conservatism fos- tered by military traditions. With it all there is a strange fascination which grows by acquaintance, and, lover of peace though you are, and democrat by in- stinct, you condone the pride of position which transforms the raw country boy and transfers him to a place in the exclusive caste which seems sufficient unto itself. Over all, indeed, officer or soldier, cadet or civilian, floats on its tall white staff the flag of our common country, and though the tinge of seclusion may be felt, here in the heart of the Highlands, natives of every State feel themselves at home beneath the banner's bright folds and enjoy a pride of their own in the place. It may be further said that all these, from Colonel to scullion, are human as others, knowing the joys and sorrows, trials and tri- umphs, common to men and, however exclusive their kind, all will treat the stranger kindly, whether nameless or distinguished. THE HUDSON HIGHLANDS 89 HIGHLAND FALLS The village of Highland Falls lies on a plateau of irregular shape and surface two hundred feet above the Hudson. The popula- tion is near three thousand; there are four churches, a large public school and a library, yet the tourist may pass by boat or rail and hardly suspect the existence of such a place. The road from the station of the West Shore Railroad is wildly romantic, bordered by a footpath that saves distance by climbing stair- like the rocky terraces. The brook that tum- bles from above is caught half way down in a reservoir of dark masonry, and the clear waters catching the light through the tree-tops relieve pleasantly the sombre gray of the scene. To the left are the grounds of Ladycliffe Academy. Here was once the well-known Cozzen's Hotel, where not a few famous guests were entertained in past days. The great building crowns the cliff and is seen from afar. The property is now in the hands of the Sis- ters of St. Francis who conduct a school after their manner here. The Rev. E. P. Roe was pastor of the Pres- byterian Church of Highland Falls when he began to write the books that gave him at the time such fame as the author of "What Would Jesus Do.'*" has lately attained. During his 90 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN pastorate, and with money largely raised by him, the substantial granite building was erected, as a tablet in the vestibule bears wit- ness. The squad of cadets who attend the morn- ing service, though but a score in number, rep- resent localities as far apart as New York and Montana, Michigan and Texas. The only other opportunity that cadets have of visiting the village is when they are permitted, a few at a time, to make a circuit of the mountain roads on horseback, but without dismounting. Many of them, however, gain their first ac- quaintance with Highland Falls as "candi- dates." There are three schools here devoted to preparing aspirants for entrance to the Military Academy, and most of the civilian employes of the Post and a few of the married soldiers live at Highland Falls. These close relations with the Academy and Post and its physical surroundings give this village a character of its own which it is easier to feel than to describe. It is a community for the most part of toil- ers dependent largely on West Point and to some extent, too, on the families of wealth who have summer homes close by. There is little surface for tillage near at hand and no outly- ing tributary agricultural district. So here as at West Point the people dwell alone on their THE HUDSON HIGHLANDS 91 narrow, broken table-land between mountain and river. Over the mountain a "Coaching party" may come; up and down the river thousands of tourists pass by boat or rail, and travelers whose itinerary compasses the round world are borne swiftly under the cliff by thundering trains, while the people of our village, like other Highland dwellers, live on their peaceful, independent lives. Here, as at West Point, there is an old world savor. No castles, indeed, are here, nor ruins gray; but the monk and the soldier are here, and the "Sisters" walk in their ample grounds in seclusion, as of a world apart from the tur- moil of traffic, toil, or travel. The village is of irregular outline and varied architecture. Narrow, winding streets climb here and there in such picturesque fashion as is more com- mon in lands beyond the sea; and here, where a few pioneers of the sturdy Puritan kind gained scant subsistence from the rocky soil or held these mountain ways at the price of life in the days of British aggression, are now the crowded homes of thousands from far for- eign shores. FORT MONTGOMERY A local historian writes that the drive from West Point and Highland Falls to Fort Mont- 92 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN gomery is the finest in the country. True, the road seems almost lonely, as there are few houses on the road itself, and the view for much of the way is limited to immediate surround- ings as you pass in silence on ; but even so, you seem to come nearer to Nature's heart and to hold communion with the Genius of the mount- ains gray. We are told, indeed, of elegant villa resi- dences near at hand, but they are out of sight; and when you look for them you may think of the prophet's words, though you may not pro- nounce a prophet's woe on those "that lay field to field till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth." Best known of those who thus dwell apart is J. Pier- pont Morgan, whose "field," indeed, is largely forest, and his place of half a thousand acres is well named "Cragston." His summer home, though thus secluded like others of its kind from vulgar contact, may yet be seen by the tourist on the river who knows where to look, soon after the steamer passes north of lona Island. He may also see, just below Conn's Hook, the long, slender, pier from which the king of finance boards his yacht, the dark Corsair. Further on, you pass an occasional Cottage and a few farm dwellings of pleasant appear- ance. There seems to have been more cultiva- THE HUDSON HIGHLANDS 9S tion formerly than now, and probably there were more inhabitants of native lineage. For as you ride through the group of children play- ing in front of the American school-house you note the dark complexions that tell of Italian parentage if not of foreign birth. In the ham- let, too, on the banks of Negro Creek, you will find citizens of African descent living in shanties hastily built, the men being tempo- rarily employed, with other laborers, in the changes which the West Shore is making in its line. Climbing the steep hill beyond, bordered close by dark hemlocks, you find a lonely road with not a few turns and often steep, till your southward way ends on the graceful iron bridge that spans Poplopen's Creek where it tumbles below the great Roe Dam. The dashing waves beneath make fit music for such a scene, while the sky of the morning frames a picture of such solemn majesty of the gray mountain that you wonder not that Moses sought to see the face of God in Sinai's solitude. Other sights and scenes, indeed, have here been known, when the two forts at the mouth of the creek were taken by the British in 1777, and the name of Bloody Pond for years re- minded him who wandered in this wilderness how the bodies of dead and wounded men were flung into its crystal wave, which henceforth seemed incarnadine with patriot blood. 94 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN More pleasant thoughts are suggested by the old mill which recalls the days when the pio- neers cleared the forest and planted these hill- sides, which are now overgrown again almost as in the "time primeval." The present Fort Montgomery is a strag- gling hamlet at the meeting of some mountain roads. It is half a mile from the Hudson, in semi-seclusion, and like other places in these hills, combines both the old and the new. But the morning passes, and the home in the city fair is miles away. So you turn your wheel northward, while some musician, unseen in one of the ancient cottages, wafts you on your way with the strains of "Auld Lang Syne." I XXIII FROM PASSAIC TO PATERSON The road runs through the township of Clif- ton. This is a territory of remarkable beauty, filled with handsome homes, in wide, well-kept grounds, most winning to the lover of rural life and scenery. The swift trains of the Erie, fol- lowing one another in rapid succession, move in the midst this way and that, while the Lacka- wanna and Susquehanna bound either border, and a trolley line connects these thriving cities, where thousands of busy toilers produce the finest of fabrics for feminine wardrobes, and the foundries furnish machines of the world's commerce and arts. But the morning ride soon leads to the mar- gin of the river, mountain born, and tortuous enough in its hundred-mile course to the sea, the Passaic, peaceful here and placid as a lake, it seems to hide its beauty coyly between em- bowered banks, and the darkly silent waters calmly mirror waving branch and overcast sky. All the world of toil and traffic seems far away, though now and then an automobile glides swiftly over the smooth road, and a long line of wagons, loaded with carboys from some acid works, comes, like a caravan out of the 95 96 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN mystic desert, to move in solemn dignity be- side the stream. On the left hand the land inclines in a gentle ascent to a ridge running parallel to the river, on whose slope lie green pastures, fertile gar- dens, and a field of rye, waving like a sea of green; and then comes a beautiful miniature lake with its boats and boat-houses, and on the right is a shallow lagoon where the leathery leaves of the water lily lie on the sluggish sur- face; and all the air is perfumed with the wild vine's spicy odor and the scent of the black- berry's bloom mingled with the locust's fine fragrance above, and like a dream of that gar- den which our first-father kept were walnuts and willows and blossoming buckeyes, while one ancient pine tree rose high over all. It seems fitting to find, a little further on, a cemetery, Paterson's beautiful necropolis, where, in its costly mausoleum the dust of Vice- President Hobart lies, and where loving hands had garnished the graves, where sleep Passaic County's soldier dead, who followed the flag which marks each mound, and, as you turn back from the bustling city's border, you forget Paterson's evil name of anarchist-assassin's haunts, though men will not soon forget how this stream, so peaceful to your eye to-da-y, has rushed like a torrent of doom through the city's heart. XXIV MEMORIES OF THE MEADOWS Six weeks of commuting from New York to Passaic wrought the impressions of the Hackensack Meadows here set down. The trip by night had a solemn sort of fas- cination. To walk from the heart of the great city, to cross the ferry from gleaming shore to gleaming shore, where a thousand lights of green or red or white flash over the harbor's dancing waves, and ride out of the Erie's busy terminal, over the maze of tracks that converge at the tunnel, and emerging, to move through the silence of the marshes, in a darkness lit only by a dull lamp in a fisher's cabin here or there, wrought a transformation scene indeed. Even more unique was often the experience of a morning ride, when, leaving Rutherford, the train moved into the great sea of gray mist, and seemed cut off from all the world, as they who sail the fog-wrapped waters by New- foundland's shores. Still the memory will rather hold visions of the days of sunlit meadows, lying in wide ex- panse on either hand, where the rushes grow and sedges tall — the broad, unpeopled plain where a million pink flowers gleam through the green, and the purple trumpet of the morning- 97 98 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN glory decks the rank growth nourished by the dark ooze of the salt lagoons. At times a sail appears, flung out like some great albatross wing on the wide surface of the sea of green, the hull that it slowly moves hidden between the banks of the Hackensack River or Berry Creek. The road lies level as a floor, straight as a line, for four miles, and the swift train seems to pass in a moment, from the beauty of the meadows, into the yawning mouth of the black tunnel. If, in the swift flight, commuters care to look up from the morning paper, or light literature with which the girls of office or shop beguile the monotony of daily journeys, the shores that bound this lake of green may be seen ris- ing to east and west. The passenger will see on his left the steep ridge known as Jersey City Heights, with a school building, monastery, or water-tower as landmarks. In the dim distance, southwest, lies the fair city of Newark, while the tall chimneys of power-plants rise like monuments of modern methods, all round the circle. Or, if warning semaphore stay the train for right of way at the tunnel, you may note a tree-grown islet, in the grassy sea, in the foreground on the right, and beyond it Snake Hill, rising like some castle-crowned rock by the banks of the Rhine. Alas for the MEMORIES OF THE MEADOWS 99 bright beauty of buildings, picturesque in out- line against the rocks' sombre tone or the oaks' dark foliage! Pauper homes are these, and penal institutions, near as odious to mention as the name the Hill bears. When the meadows are reclaimed and the new order comes, a beauty better in the eyes of some will appear, but your memory may still be of the flower-strewn plain, where the salt tides surge up through river and creek. XXV PROHIBITION PARK On the hottest day of the season, a friend in Jersey City said, "Let us go down to Prohibi- tion Park." So we went by street car on Ocean Avenue. Leaving the city behind we rolled down its long, straight line past the gardens of Peter Henderson, pioneer seedsman, on past suburban residences, churches, schools, and saloons to the car stables, where we exchanged horses for mules, slow-paced and sad, it seemed to us, as they plodded wearily along the wide, drowsy way where doubtless the winter wind holds high carnival, coming fiercely up from New York Bay on one hand or Newark Bay on the other. But for us no zephyr stirred the leaves or blew aside the red dust of the road. From Bergen Point the ferry-boat "Astoria" carried us over the narrow Kill von KuU through which the swift tide was bearing before the wind the white-winged boats. Landing at Port Richmond on the Staten Island shore, we find the new electric cars ready to convey us rapidly to our destination. Here are numerous tasteful cottages newly built or in course of erection, and a respectable hotel for boarders or transient guests at reasonable rates. But best of all to country eyes was the sight of the 100 PROHIBITION PARK 101 beautiful grove, and sweetest to lips that loathed the water of plumbers' pipes was a draught from the great spring, like the fount- ain of life, "free to all." For three days the Auditorium had been held by the Salvation Army. Passing down the noiseless aisles, we found a not large company engaged in an "Experience Meeting." A Sal- vation sister presided, supported on the right by sisters and on the left by brothers. On both hands these were "Captains" it seemed. The features, most of the women, were foreign, and the speech betrayed a birth beyond the wave ; though one comely matron, who stood to testify with her white-robed infant in arms, ex- pressing her gladness, said, "I love Staten Island, for I was brought up here, but I was *born again' in Jersey." Others of the Army were seated in pairs and groups among the audience. These for the most part gave no sign, except when they joined in the ringing songs sung to the accompaniment of a piano so faint that at first it was difficult to locate the instrument. Who can tell the charm of such assemblies.? For charm there is. What psychology explains the magic of the rhythmic movement of such songs ? After the "experiences" the leader read the Lord's lesson of prayer, Luke 11 : 1-13, with running comment; and when they had 102 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN sung again, as they still stood, the leader led in a quiet player, and then with uplifted hands, she closed in a form-like benediction, but still only petition. So all went forth, seemingly edified. After another drink from the spring and a parting look over the grounds and the country southward, we took our way from the well- wooded island by the rapid transit railroad, and soon the great steamer "Middletown" was bearing us through a scene of which penman and poet and painter might well despair, as from a rift in the cloud-vail the setting sun sent a gleam of burning red to gild the windows of vessels that glided here and there on river and bay; and then came the softly-changing shades to rest like the peace of God on the populous shores. XXVI LEST WE FORGET Readers country born may recall the plain meeting-house where families filed into the pew, leaving the end seat to the head of the house. He on occasion might rise in his place and beckon the stranger to a seat beside him or point him to some other, while unattached attendants might drop into a rear seat or mount to the gallery. And as they came thus in, so they sat long days through, family by family and aisle by aisle, passing but a whis- pered word within the solemn precincts, with seldom a smile of recognition as they mused upon the message of the man of God. He too came and went like his flock, it may be with grave salutation to an elder as he entered, and sometimes, even on other than sacramental oc- casions, members of sessions were requested to meet him after the benediction. It is related indeed that one acting pastor drove long miles from his home, entered the pul- pit, delivered his message, and went his way, with no other word to living soul, like the prophet who anointed Jehu. (II Kings 9: 1-10.) Times have changed, however, and a wide- awake usher may be the pastor's best help. 103 104 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN Even in small churches, the modest young stranger who presently finds himself wedged into the pew of a large family, or that he has pre-empted the seat of some old saint who holds it as the very palladium of her heavenly hope, may wish himself well out of it. A recent item in the press tells of a young man who, yielding to the prayer of his country mother and persuasion of friends, entered a church in the city and because the usher was tactless, he went forth to visit haunts where the welcome seemed more sincere than in the House of God. The discrepancy between profession and performance is what offends the ingenuous. Churches and Young People's Christian Or- ganizations too often seem like mutual admira- tion societies — charmed circles not for the uninitiated. True, the church is not, after all, an open common where passing strollers may find di- version. So the invitations in church bulletins mostly mean that strangers coming to the city and desiring a permanent place of worship may find it where the sign is displayed. To quote: "Strangers and all others who have no church home are invited to make this home." Another bulletin: "The church cordially wel- comes to its services strangers in the cij:y, and any persons not identified with other congre- gations, inviting them to unite in its worship LEST WE FORGET 105 and work." Now if the ushers will meet at the entrance persons casually visiting the church, and seat them without obvious distinction of worse or better, (James 2: 1-4) the right- hearted will ask little more than a sincere "come again" by printed or spoken word at the close. There remains the more delicate task of greeting and speeding the transients — many in every great city, or the still more difficult duty of welcoming and winning the drifting prodigal. For the first a sanctified imagination will greatly help, and memory of the Master's word: "I was a stranger and ye took me in." For the second let all lay to heart His admoni- tion, "See that ye despise not one of these lit- tle ones." Churches that write themselves "nearest to hotels" should make earnest effort to find the transient and greet him with no feigned words of fellowship : and if the wan- derer's footsteps turn to the house of God, let loving hearts welcome and willing hands help him, lest the Samaritan put Priest and Levite to shame. "He that is wise winneth souls." XXVII THE CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS THE CONQUEROR On Ninety-seventh Street, New York, be- tween Fifth Avenue and Madison, stands a square brick building surmounted by a cen- tral dome. This is unmistakably Russian in form. Four smaller domes in the same style are about it, each like the central dome bear- ing aloft a Byzantine cross. Replace the crosses with stars and you might suppose the edifice to be a well-built synagogue. As you approach, a man opens a case beside the portal, displaying for sale books, doubtless of devotion, in characters strange to you. An- other who in gait and dress resembles a native of our own Western plains, enters with you, but betrays his origin as he stoops to kiss the picture in the vestibule. Within the white walls rise to the dome with- out ornament except the pilasters, crowned with capitals in acanthus patterns, and conventional Cupids above. There are a few windows in colored glass in the walls, and in the central dome, but no emblems, except the figure of a dove in the window above the chancel. .There are no "Stations of the Cross" in relief as in Roman Catholic churches, nor realistic cru- 106 CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS 107 cifixes on the walls, as the Greek Church dis- allows such images. Nor is there any "dim re- ligious light," nor "organ's peal through nave and transept ;" but a choir of men, directed by a robed leader, chant with a volume and beauty of tone that holds the listener rapt, though but the single word "Alleluia" seems intelligible. Candles, however, are even more in evidence than in Latin Churches. Eight massive cande- labra in burnished brass are ranged on the north side of the room. In each there is a cen- tral candle, two inches in diameter rising so high that the attendant seems to have trouble in extinguishing and re-lighting them from time to time. Around this central candle are many sockets to receive half-inch tapers. The last are bought from an attendant who has a desk near the entrance where he seems to dispense various ecclesiastical wares and file records. Procuring one or more of these candles, a wor- shiper advances to one of the candelabra, and lighting one, places it in position about the central candle. Before inserting, it is neces- sary to warm the lower end of each in the flame, and, this process being too hasty, occa- sionally the small tapers topple with some sound to the floor, but are replaced without apparent embarrassment. There is no furniture on the polished hard- wood floor except a few camp chairs on the west 108 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN side, and a great square rug in the center. On this is a throne-like seat, reached by the chief of the ecclesiastics over a carpet laid to the en- trance. Thirty men wearing badges and hold- ing lighted candles, form a double line through which he passes to his place, in bearing and dress like some patriarch of old. The candle bearers now form a cordon about the rug with hundreds of men standing close up to them on the one side, and on the west stand hundreds of others, though fewer, of women. There are eight ecclesiastics wearing vestments, stiff with silver and gold. These vestments are changed from time to time, and there is much movement — bowing and prostrations, censors swung and tapers crossed — all to you in dream-like fashion as the sonorous chant continues through the hours. It may be noted that for a time the officiating priests performed the mysteries within the veil or screen. This is a light lattice work dividing the raised chancel from the body of the build- ing. Doors in the center of this were open part of the time and disclosed an altar which really had a surface on which offerings might be laid as in sacrifice. This was actually used to hold the great gold-bound book, the bell-like tiara, and vessels of ministration. Time however fails, and power as well to describe in intelligent terms what was done. It CHURCH OF ST. NICHOLAS 109 is hard to follow even such an impressive spec- tacle standing through near four hours. But now the great official has passed out, with his robes sweeping behind him and a priest with a few assistants officiates at a marriage ceremony. The poor bride has been standing in the throng, leaning on the arm of the groom through the tedious hours of the preceding ser- vice. She is supported by four bridesmaids bearing beautiful bouquets, but, when the cere- mony actually begins, these remain with the other women who look on, while the young couple step upon the central rug before an altar placed for the occasion. Considerable time seems to be taken in enter- ing names, and a functionary reads from a manuscript record. Two rings are used and two gilt crowns. Two young friends of the bridegroom grasp these with napkins and hold them over the heads of the bride and groom, no easy task, especially when the priest led all in the procession three times round the altar. Fortunately the bride's train was not long, for as it was, her 'squire found it hard to keep from treading on it. Here again much seemed beyond comprehen- sion, in the ritual in this strange tongue; but since the world began such solemn service in which "twain become one flesh" never loses in- terest, whether celebrated with the solemn pomp 110 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN of oriental rites or the simple service of the Friends. XXVIII A MORNING RIDE There was no rush of traffic or speeding of pleasure vehicles to interfere with observation on Fifth Avenue, but on the morning of June 16th, 1904, death lured the wheel forward, with hardly a thought by the rider of the marble pal- ace that Clark, the Copper King, builds, and only a glance at the solid square house of Car- negie, walled with granite and fenced with steel. Further on is a Jewish congestion on side- walk and street; but speed may not be slack- ened, for the quest leads far forth from the crowded city, by green fields, over country roads. So the way passes round Mount Mor- ris Park and thence eastward to the great bridge over the Harlem. The black tide flows sullenly beneath, and above the sun looks down through a blue haze — another day a friendly haze to quench his too hot beams — to-day a pall over land and flood. Turning eastward again, a little beyond the bridge, others are seen, by wheel or on foot, passing toward the water-side fringed with men and women and children mutely gazing toward the islands South Brother and North. Surely the scene might draw the eyes of those who see beauty in broken coast lines and reefs 111 112 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN which cut the hissing surge like a knife. But to-day the cynosure is beneath the waves and between the islands green. A double line of men passes, blue-coated and in order, bearing grappling irons, and the sun looks down through the blue haze on the patient watchers, and the black tide laps sullenly bulkhead and reef and shore. The wheel moves out the dusty boulevard to Hunt's Point Road. Here are gardens of herbs, green meadows, and fields where the food of man grows, attractive to eyes ef the coun- try-born, hemmed in through hot June days by walls of brick, and shut off from contact with mother earth by pavements of black asphalt or granite gray. But rural sights and sounds stay him not, until the rocky shore is reached and eyes sweep westward to see the stem of a stranded steamer on North Brother's shore, burnt to the water's edge, while through the blue haze the sun looks down on the proud waves that bear this way and that gallant ship or tiniest pleasure boat, and fathoms deep, across the far channel's slimy ooze, lie the dead who yesterday laughed for very gladness of the blue sky above them and the sweep of the bright waters about them. The wheel turns to go as it came tilt at 97th Street the "Woodman's" Gate of Central Park is reached, through which it passes and down A MORNING RIDE 113 the broad drive, over-arched on this side and that with maple and elm and linden tree. Spar- rows chirp in the branches, a squirrel finds his way just in front of the wheel with dainty steps across the damp road, and robins hop on the grass where green lawns line the roadway fur- ther on. To the left rise the walls of the Metropoli- tan Museum, and, in its lonely, solemn gran- deur, to the right stands the Obelisk, relic of a dead civilization, fit emblem to-day of the mute but mighty sorrow of that lower East-Side, where the sun looks down through the blue haze on half a thousand homes over which Hell Gate's horror flows like the black tide, where the mourning is like the mourning of Egypt when her first-born died. Christ save us all from a death like this where the tide flows fast by North Brother's shore. XXIX A PAUPER FUNERAL The March snow fell deep and dank over all the town, blinding the motorman and stall- ing the draught horse, while good women toiled through the streets to arrange for the burial of one who lay in the dead-house of the City Farm Colony on Staten Island. The result of their efforts was an appoint- ment for a few friends and a clergyman to meet at the ferry next day to take the noon boat. This appointment was kept, but in the meantime money enough had been gathered to rescue the body from burial in "the potter's field," and the company went their several ways, except one who crossed to Staten Island, and at the close of another strenuous day she had arranged that a Tompkinsville undertaker should convey the body from the City Farm to the cemetery, for burial next day. When the company met at the ferry on Wednesday, one friend failed to come, so leav- ing but a single mourner of the same kindred and country to look for the last time on the face of the sister, who in youth had come with her from bonny Scotland. There were, indeed, two children, but being, like their mother, depend- ent on charity, the daughter of thirteen in an 114 A PAUPER FUNERAL 115 orphans' home, and the son of ten, who had lost a leg, in a cripples' hospital — the efforts of the women to have these also see their mother laid to rest were unavailing. At last the hour comes for the start, this third day, and the boat moved out of her slip upon the dancing waters of the harbor, bright in the sunlight. All sorts of craft are to be seen in the five miles that lie between the shores, from the humble bearers of the city's waste to dumping grounds beyond the harbor's limits, to the great ocean liners bearing through the Nar- rows, thousands of souls to some far world. In due time the boat makes the landing on the Staten Island shore, where trolley cars are taken. The track winds here and there till the streets of New Brighton are passed, and then, though the whole island is within the city limits, there is a succession of villages and ham- lets — some of ancient date, while others are the new-built homes of Manhattan's toilers, made possible by better transit facilities. Much of the way is through rural scenes of farm and forest, though on terraced slopes, or crowning the heights, glimpses appear of elegant villas or stately mansions. These wooded hills sug- gest familiar scenes in Western Pennsylvania, but soon the illusion is broken, as rapid move- ment brings to view on the left the blue waters of the lower bay. 116 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN In an hour from the start on Manhattan, the journey ends at the gates of the beautiful Moravian cemetery at New Dorp. The snow lies heavy on the hillsides, but the gravel walks have been cleared, and the fresh earth of a new- made grave tells that all is ready. In the receiving vault the coffin is opened that identification may be sure, and then the bearers — cemetery laborers — place it on the bier, and the procession moves silently to the burial. There is no dirge sung nor floral trib- ute offered, but the sky is radiant above the dark grave, while close by the gentle fall of the stream sings of lapsing life. The coffin is lowered decently, the clergyman reads brief words of burial service, and the words of "committal" sound not unkindly "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," — and after the prayer the sleeper is left to rest in peace, till the Lord Christ comes again to take home his own. XXX THE IRISH SHOEMAKER He came to America a hundred years ago. At that time on the Western Reserve, as in most of the land, indeed, the spinning wheel and loom were found in every home. The fields furnished flax and the flocks the fleece from which fair hands fashioned fabrics for use and for beauty. For the last, dyes were needed which the forest furnished, but alas, our shoemaker did not know a beech from a butternut. His wife, however, though "she was Irish too," soon learned so much lore of the land as to distinguish those trees which would yield the desired colors for chain or fill- ing, but she could not wield the woodman's axe to peel the precious bark. However, the couple were blessed with children, too young, indeed, for such-like service either of knowledge or strength, but they served very well as adjec- tives. So the mother took so many as she might need and placed a child at the foot of each tree whose bark she wished, and returning to the care of house and shop, sent the goodman forth to hew, for her dyeing, bark of the smooth young butternut or black-oak's scaly scarf. Perchance the cherry, too, for medicament, 117 118 ST. LUKE^S GARDEN yielded a homely spoil, or the sassafras its fra- grant root to cleanse the sluggish blood from winter's dregs. Now, in the language of Aesop : "This fable teaches," that knowledge is always a joy and sometimes power; but for want of the "ad- jectives" while all the trees of the forest are found even in the city's streets, and in its parks shrubs native or exotic, yet some sadly say that they do not know a sugar tree from a syca- more, and though "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," yet eye or nostril would all the better appreciate shades of color or odor if the mind could put a name on this or that. The trees in most parks, indeed, may bear labels, but children, who might most profit by this fact, need to have attention called, and a real arbor day in a park with an expert teacher might make such adjectives of more worth than those of the Irish shoemaker. True there would be some expense ; but there would be fewer anarchists, in cities great or small, if children could learn the beauty of the world that God has made so fair and which men ought to make more free. Then too the forest might be more attractive than the beer garden, and those who knew the cedar as a fa- miliar friend in field or on hillside would grieve to see its green as garnishment for gin-mill doors. XXXI AN APPRECIATION " An embryo capital where fancy sees •Squares in morasses, obelisks in trees ; Where second-sighted seers the plain adorn With fanes unbuilt and heroes yet unborn, Though naught but woods and Jefferson they see ^ Where streets should run and sages ought to be. Tom Moore, 1804. Moore's flippant fling remained long too true, but now it may be said that the old reproach of the lack of the conveniences or necessities of municipal life is passed. Surely the inhabi- tants of many another city may envy the citi- zens of Washington, with her broad, level streets, asphalt paved, machine swept, bor- dered by shade trees, the fresh air space afforded by its parks and thoroughfares being proportionally greater than of any other city in the world. Not only in the city proper, but in the Fed- eral District and beyond it, fair suburban homes are built, but there is little of that raw freshness that so often marks the boom town. Indeed it should be said that Washing- ton is not so much as may be thought a city of the transient residence of official life, domes- tic or foreign. It has a permanent business life and citizenship comparable to that of other 119 120 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN American cities, while there are home-like sec- tions where dwell a humble folk in the quiet walks of life, and though the city is young in a way, now within its corporate limits is Georgetown, founded by Scotch immigrants in 1695. Hard by too is old Bladensburgh with its memories of bitter defeat and the burning of public buildings in Washington by the vandal victors. It may be said also that while a great change in the atmosphere of the city as well as in its municipal appointments has taken place since the Civil War, even at the close of that conflict, Ohio's soldiers who had seen the noble Capitol, the vast Treasury and other massive buildings of the earlier architecture, re- ceived an impression that here by Potomac's wave, far from the Tiber another "eternal city" had been founded. More facile pens, indeed, may describe its buildings of beauty or of public interest in ac- curate detail; one of more mathematical mind may number its people, set down its boundaries, or tell of miles of streets or modern municipal equipment; but our present aim is rather to gain general impressions, to catch the air of this city set mid-way between the North and the South; and, so far as possible, convey to friends far off or near, who care to know, some knowledge of what manner of place it is which more and more is central in the nation's life. AN APPRECIATION 121 Washington was planned by Major L'En- fant, one of the French patriots who came to the assistance of the colonies during the War of Independence. He died a disappointed old man, and was buried in the garden of Chellum Castle near Bladensburgh, eight miles from the capitol; but, as the Seer of Patmos saw the vision of the city that "lieth foursquare," so L'Enfant had a true prophetic foresight when he drew the streets running north and south and east and west on the rectangular plan, so common in modern cities ; but also made provi- sion for shortening the lines between distant points of the great city's site by the avenues. These avenues also serve to break the monotony of the "gridiron" plan, while to them are due the many circles and small squares character- istic of Washington. The intersections also afford sites for many statues of the illustrious sons of our own country or of foreign lands whom we delight to honor. Among the modifications of L'Enfant's plan to be regretted is the break in the course of Pennsylvania Avenue caused by the position of the Treasury. It is said that President Jack- son, impatient of the delay in choosing a site for this building, struck his cane into the ground saying "Build it here," and here it stands, its massive bulk cutting off the view from the Executive Mansion to the Capitol. So 122 ST. LUKE'S GARDEN the brave array — thousands on thousands, sol- diers and civilians — that moved up the wide way in the bitter March weather to be reviewed by President Taft was broken at 15th Street as a great river's rush is turned swiftly aside by some mountain's shoulder thrust out at right angles to its course. It may be in place to say here that no ave- nue, strictly speaking, radiates from the Capi- tol. Pennsylvania and Maryland, New Jersey and Delaware do, indeed, focus travel there; but these are continued beyond the Capitol grounds and in pairs respectively form here on the map the figure of a St. Andrew's Cross, with the Capitol at the intersection, while North, East and South Capitol Streets meet at the same point, the Mall taking the place of West Capitol Street. Avenues in Washington, with slight excep- tion, bear the names of States of the Union. Some of them reach far out, to the District Line and beyond; while others are very short. Ohio Avenue, of the same width as Pennsyl- vania and parallel to it, extends only from 15th Street at the President's Park, to ISth Street. The enlargement of the Mall may, indeed, ob- literate Maine Avenue and Missouri from the map; but, nevertheless, citizens of thos'e states, alike with citizens of the new states that were no more than a dream when the original ave- AN APPRECIATION 123 nues were named, will as often as may be, make their pilgrimage to the capital city, with no thought forevermore of "geographical center" or sectional relations, and find in these avenues and their names suggestion that they who gave the city such form builded better than many knew. Truly what is written here of square or cir- cle, street or avenue, is not for guidebook study, that you may find your way from White House to Capitol, but to assure all that the city is even now, and surely more and more will be, the worthy capital of a great nation. It may never be so in the sense in which it is said that "Paris is France," nor is it cosmopolitan like some larger cities of our own land. Washington has no Ghetto or Little Italy. True the children of Abraham are here as everywhere, and there has been too much crowding of colored citizens in the alleys ; but even they are not segregated in any African quarter, and no foreign accent is theirs. The city of course, is unique, in the land, as having within it embassies from all the nations; but the language of the place is not polyglot, and not only on Inauguration Day, but at all times, the appearance of people in streets or buildings is distinctively American. During long hours' waiting in the throng of thousands in front of the Capitol on the 4th of March, no voice was heard, save in our Eng- lU ST. LUKE'S GARDEN lish tongue, in admonition or protest, gibe or small talk; except for a moment only, the chat- ter of two Italians, and lonely enough looked the single silent Chinaman in the midst of the multitude, not a few of whom had come from far oceans' shores — from northern Lakeside or the Gulf's warmer coast. This appreciation may well close with the kindly words of Ambassador Bryce, spoken a score of years ago: — "Washington, which even so lately as the days of the war was a wilder- ness of mud and negroes, with a few big houses scattered here and there, has now become one of the handsomest capitals in the world, and cultivates the graces and pleasures of life with eminent success." W 98 .*l°«, .^^= v.'^* .' • « " aP WERT II ' » "^^^ - BOOKBINDING ■ o ^ N O JULY ■ AUG 1989 W» r» Oulliiy »oj •■U-o<