ROBGRT-COLLYeR
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OP 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 presented to the 
 UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO 
 
 by 
 
 Miss Nancy Davidson
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 SOME 
 MEMORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT COLLYER 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ER!K!S! 
 
 
 
 HVERITATIS 
 
 
 
 r^^E^l^gS^ 
 
 
 
 BOSTON 
 AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION 
 
 25 BEACON STREET 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 PRINTED IK U. S. A.
 
 To 
 
 my dear friend through all the years 
 of my life in New York 
 
 HENRY HUDDLESTON ROGERS
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 rflHESE memories were written for The Chris- 
 -* tian Register, and ran through twenty-nine 
 numbers, from December, 1903 to April, 1904. 
 Many friends had suggested in the later years 
 that I should write some memoirs of my life and 
 print them, or leave them in the care of my chil- 
 dren to be printed after my death. I did not 
 favor the idea. But when I came to the eightieth 
 mile-stone of my pilgrimage, there was such an 
 outpouring of greetings and congratulations 
 from the Church of the Messiah, the sister 
 churches and ministers, and from friends far and 
 wide in my motherland and my homeland these 
 fifty-eight years, that my heart was moved to 
 do something in this sort, and it was done, not 
 as memoirs these I could not attempt but 
 as " some memories." 
 
 May I say also that they stole out from the 
 mists of time by no effort of memory, but as if 
 they had been waiting for those quiet mornings 
 when they were written, I dare not say by in- 
 spiration from on High, but will say the inspira-
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 tion of a grateful heart. I remember when my 
 children were in their early " teens," and would 
 bring me to book now and then, as the little 
 maid in the memories caught me about the pan of 
 milk. My small son, who must have been turn- 
 ing over a sermon on my desk, said to me, 
 " Papa, do you write your sermons by what you 
 call inspiration ? " I answered, " I hope so, my 
 son ; " and then he said, " Why do you cross so 
 much out? " He had caught me in a net and I 
 had not the mother wit to answer. There may 
 be an inspiration to cross out as true as the in- 
 spiration to let the rest stay on the paper. And 
 now I love to remember these memories ran clear 
 from the first number to the last. There was no 
 " crossing out." They were so interwoven with 
 my life through the fifty years they touch the 
 sunshine and shadows, the sorrows and the joy. 
 
 ROBERT COLLYER.
 
 SOME MEMORIES
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 I was born on the 8th of December, 1823. 
 My father was born in the same year and on 
 the same day as the Emperor William of 
 Prussia. My grandfather Robert was a sailor 
 in Nelson's fleet, and my father would tell me 
 how he sat on his shoulder to see the procession 
 when they brought the body of the great ad- 
 miral up the Thames for burial in St. Paul's 
 Cathedral in London. This sailor man is the 
 earliest ancestor on that side the house I can 
 lay my hands on. He went to sea again very 
 soon after Nelson's burial and was lost over- 
 board in a storm; and my grandmother died 
 soon after, leaving her family of, I think, five 
 children who were taken to an asylum in the 
 city of London for shelter and nurture. My 
 mother's father was also a sailor. His port 
 was Yarmouth, but the family lived in Nor- 
 wich. He was also the earliest ancestor we can
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 find on that side of the house. His name was 
 Thomas Norman, and we take a touch of pride 
 in our " Norman blood " and imagine we also 
 may have come over with the Conqueror. He 
 was lost at sea, and not long after his family of 
 four children were left orphans and taken to 
 an asylum in Norwich. So we have no family 
 tree to speak of, only this low bush. 
 
 Very early in the last century there was an 
 urgent need for children to work in the fac- 
 tories they were building then on all the 
 streams they could find fit for their purpose in 
 the West Riding of Yorkshire. The local sup- 
 ply of " help " could not begin to meet the de- 
 mand; and so the owners of the factories went 
 or sent south to scour the asylums where chil- 
 dren were to be found in swarms, to bring them 
 north and set them to work as apprentices, who 
 must be duly housed, fed, and clothed until the 
 girls were eighteen and the boys twenty-one. 
 They must also be taught the three R's and the 
 boys some craft by which they might earn 
 their living when they were free. They found 
 my father with some more in the asylum and 
 carried them north to work in a factory on a 
 stream called the Washburn and in the parish 
 of Fewston. He told me they gave him the
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 free choice to go or stay and wanted him to 
 stay ; but he said, " I will go." And so it was 
 he went out, not knowing whither he went, was 
 bound apprentice, and served his time first at 
 the spinning-frames and then in the forge, for 
 this was his choice of a handicraft. But here I 
 touch a bit of romance. A few years ago when 
 I was over in England I went on a visit to an 
 old friend in Surrey who said to me one day: 
 " Here is an invitation from Esquire Ellis, a 
 good Unitarian, to come and drink tea with 
 him. He is far on in years and lives in a fine 
 old manor house. You will like to see where, 
 as the tradition runs, Queen Elizabeth stayed 
 once over night." 
 
 I was glad to go, had a very pleasant visit. 
 And as we sat on the lawn under a grand old 
 tree, chatting of many things, my good host 
 said : " I have been told, sir, by your friend 
 that you emigrated from Yorkshire to the 
 United States. My family came south from 
 Yorkshire many years ago where my father was 
 partner in a linen factory. The firm was Col- 
 beck & Ellis : the factory was in Fewston. You 
 may have heard of the place." " Yes," I 
 answered. " I worked in that factory, sir, 
 seven years in my boyhood. My father was 
 [ 3 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 the smith there and worked in the factory, 
 boy and man, thirty-two years. He was 
 brought down from London and was bound 
 apprentice to your father and Mr. Colbeck, I 
 think it was in 1807." So there we sat, the 
 sons of the master and apprentice, after eighty 
 years, with a good warm grip of the hands. 
 
 I have said my mother was also an orphan in 
 the ancient city of Norwich where the agents 
 found her and brought her north to work as an 
 apprentice in the same factory, and I think in 
 the same year. So the lassie and laddie grew 
 up together, each in their own 'prentice house, 
 to manhood and womanhood. They were of 
 about the same age, and it came to pass in due 
 time that they fell in love with each other and 
 were married by the good parson of the town at 
 his church two miles away. And many a time 
 my mother told us in a gust of glee how they 
 had to walk there and back again through the 
 January snow-drifts which were so high in spots 
 that they were obliged to walk on the top of 
 the stone walls. 
 
 I was their first-born. My father was work- 
 ing at the anvil in Keighley through the year 
 after the wedding, so I was born there; but 
 they offered him higher wages to return to the
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 old place. So they would tell me how they car- 
 ried me in their arms over the moors when I 
 was a month old and went at once to keeping 
 house. And there I find myself when I begin 
 " to learn the use of I and me " in a cottage of 
 two rooms and an attic, the windows looking 
 right into the sun's eye over the valley and 
 westward to the moors, and before the cottage a 
 bit of greensward with a rose bush in the centre 
 which bears a great wealth of roses (I held one 
 to my face the other Sunday, and the perfume 
 spanned the chasm for me of more than seventy 
 years) and a plum-tree that gave me a good deal 
 of trouble in those days because the fruit in 
 the summer never began to make good the 
 promise of the blossom in the spring. 
 
 Sir David Brewster brought a crystal to a 
 meeting of savcms which held in its substance 
 a landscape taken aeons ago by the sun. The 
 picture was clear while you kept it in the dark, 
 but began to fade exposed to the light. So 
 the picture of my first home is a photograph 
 and steals out sharp and clear through the mys- 
 tery of remembrance. For now I go indoors 
 \ where there are three and then five children sit- 
 j ting about a bright open fire. The walls of the 
 I living-room seem to be white as snow ; and there 
 [ 5 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 is a bureau of mahogany that shines like a dim 
 mirror through much polishing with what my 
 mother called " elbow grease " over beeswax 
 and turpentine, and chairs for the company, 
 but we sit on stools, a tall clock which was 
 always too fast for me at bedtime and too 
 slow at meal-times, some pottery of the fine 
 old willow pattern in a rack over the bureau 
 (held sacred for Christmas and the village feast 
 which fell in summer), and pictures Rubens 
 could not have painted to save him. There was 
 also clean linen and soft calico to wear next the 
 body and to sleep in, and once a week when 
 we were old enough a good, sound scrubbing 
 in a tub with yellow soap that got into your 
 eyes and a rough harden towel to dry us down. 
 The wise man says in the Bible : " Who hath 
 red eyes? Who hath contention? Who hath 
 strife? " I can answer truly we had all these 
 on the Saturday night when we were turned into 
 that tub. 
 
 My dear good father's wages were about $4.50 
 a week in our American tenor, and this was the 
 whole income until we were old enough to help 
 earn the living in the factory; but my mother 
 made this income stand good for plenty to eat 
 and drink, two suits of clothes (one for week- 
 
 [ 6]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 days and one for Sundays), house-rent, and 
 fire-elding, and whatever we needed besides. 
 And for food we had oatmeal porridge and 
 skim-milk morning and night, with oat cake 
 to fill in ; a bit of meat usually for dinner, soup 
 and potatoes, dumplings now and then of a fine 
 staying power, and for a treat 
 
 " Stick-jaw pudding that tires your chin 
 
 With whatever it was spread ever so thin ; " 
 
 white bread always, with a film of butter on 
 Sunday afternoon, and tea of the brand we call 
 cambric. There were variations of course, but 
 this was the rule. And I touch these mem- 
 ories because I believe in that fair sweet linen 
 and the tub, the white purity of fresh lime 
 laid on the walls every year with my mother's 
 own hands, and in the food she gave us lies one 
 momentous reason, if no more, for the 
 verity that we children grew up healthy and 
 strong, living to a good old age; while I my- 
 self have never been one day sick in my bed in 
 these fourscore years or so far as I can remem- 
 ber had my breakfast there. We went to Sun- 
 day-school twice every Sunday, with no re- 
 wards and no picnics ; and I really know of noth- 
 ing in my boyhood outside my good home train- 
 
 [-7 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 ing which can compare in pure worth to my 
 teaching through seven years in that good 
 orthodox Sunday-school. Or when I ask how 
 it has come to pass that I have " wagged my 
 pow in a poopit " in some sort these fifty-five 
 years, and through forty-four years in the 
 churches of our faith, my good home training, 
 I say. For my father and mother made no 
 " profession " of religion, but they held our 
 home so sacred that I cannot remember one 
 profane word passing their lips or ours; while 
 the instinct lay so deep in my own nature that, 
 when I became a preacher and might make 
 them " tell " in a sermon, I still shrink from 
 the words "devil," "hell," and "damnation." 
 
 Our birthright lay in the old parish church 
 where my father and mother were married, and 
 the children were all baptized by our good par- 
 son Ramshaw ; but we only went there at Easter 
 and Whitsuntide. The rest of the year we went 
 to the small dissenting chapel on the hill. But 
 the great holiday and festival in our home was 
 Christmas, when we held a very carnival of 
 good cheer. 
 
 It is true that as the festival drew near fear 
 was not seldom blended with hope for us. We 
 were never well-to-do, there were so many of us 
 
 [ 8 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 and our income was so small. So I can still 
 see my mother sitting by the fire with a far- 
 away look in her good gray eyes as we would talk 
 about the coming festival, and can still hear her 
 saying, " I fear we shall have no Christmas this 
 year, * childer,' things are so dear." And then 
 life would seem to us not worth living. Still 
 this was always, I think, a false alarm. The 
 wolf never came so near the door as to devour 
 our Christmas. The brave eyes would brighten 
 and the able head begin to plan. There would 
 be a bit of malt from the malster. This was 
 the first move. Then the yule-cakes and the 
 loaf would be made. How good they do smell 
 still in the baking! And the cheese would be 
 bought, a small one, but always a whole 
 cheese, a bit of beef for the roast. We 
 never attained to the splendor of a goose and 
 the things for the plum pudding, but we never 
 stoned the raisins. 
 
 Meanwhile up the stream at Thurscross 
 Thor's cross the singers and the players on 
 divers instruments had been busy for weeks pre- 
 paring the Christmas carols; for they were 
 musical up in the glen and had sung once in 
 an oratorio, so it was said. And on Christmas 
 morning, long before it was day, they would 
 
 [ 9 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 come down through the snow and sing for their 
 first number the fine old hymn, 
 
 " While shepherds watched their flocks by night, 
 
 All seated on the ground, 
 The angel of the Lord came down 
 And glory shone around." 
 
 (My old eyes grow dim as I listen to the music 
 and the singing after all these years.) And we 
 would rise in haste. The yule-log would be 
 turned, the great candles lighted, the small bar- 
 rel tapped, the yule-loaf and cheese set out. 
 Largess would be given, with good wishes all 
 round and the invitation to come again when 
 Christmas came round. And along through the 
 day the poor creatures would come with their 
 carols, God's poor. I have heard brave 
 music and singing in all these years, the best 
 there is; but as I sit here and listen to two of 
 these I think I have never heard any singing be- 
 sides so near the heart. It was the gift of God 
 to His poor and was saved for Christmas. It 
 was seldom you heard them at other times, but 
 then it seemed as if they had listened to the 
 angels. They knew nothing of music, but the 
 charm was in the heart and they sang. They 
 were very old carols, never rising as I hear them 
 [ 10 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 now so far away above some minor key. And 
 this once in the year, if never again, they did 
 eat and were satisfied as they went from house 
 to house and closed their carols always with the 
 same old strain, 
 
 " God bless the master of this house, 
 
 The misteriss also, 
 And all the little children 
 That round the table go." 
 
 The Christmas tides in my early life were all 
 in the homes. There were no festivals in the 
 churches, no gifts from the altar, no doles for 
 us from dead hands, and no sermons save when 
 the day fell on Sunday. It was just Christmas, 
 but so full of joy for young and old, so warm 
 from the yule-fires and so fragrant with good 
 cheer, that I wonder whether we have not lost 
 track of something even in the great and gen- 
 erous bounty we pour out now, something of 
 the Home Christmas.
 
 II 
 
 I must lose no time about getting my educa- 
 tion, so I was sent to a dame school near at hand. 
 But after a while the dame set me to do things 
 I loved better than my lessons, and when this 
 came out there was trouble. My mother was 
 not willing to have me work my passage and 
 pay my school wage too. So she took me away, 
 but not before I had learned one art at which I 
 became a master, or so said the dame, the way 
 to scrape new potatoes. You take them out of 
 fair water and remove the thin silken skin with 
 your thumb. Then I went to a master's school 
 half a mile away. He made me stick to my 
 tasks in which I made some headway, while one 
 little incident gives me a hint of my progress. I 
 was in a temper; he must have scolded me. I 
 made up my mind that he should see what I 
 could do. One word on my battledore caught 
 my e ye, the word " good," one letter more 
 than the rest on the line. I wrestled with that 
 word amain, stood up by the desk, and spelled 
 it out, good, God ! He gave me a small crack 
 [ 12]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 with the middle finger on the top of my head 
 as my mother would with her thimble. His 
 finger was hard as bone through much usage in 
 this kind, and I never forgot the tap. The 
 school was closed, the master went away, and I 
 was old enough then to walk to another two miles 
 away near the old church at Fewston where I 
 was baptized. This was a good school, and 
 Master Hardie was a good teacher, but was 
 somewhat given to searching for the springs of 
 what the elder English calls the humanities in 
 the backward boys, as those who have " the 
 gift " search for springs of water on the prairies 
 with a hazel rod; and I think I was a back- 
 ward boy. Still he lifted me along, doing his 
 best for me; and some three years after this, 
 when I was at work in the factory, he held a 
 night school in our hamlet. I went there one 
 winter and made good progress, climbing up- 
 ward in figures to the rule of three. I went to 
 a night school another winter after I left home 
 to learn my craft, and this ends the story of 
 my education in the schools. 
 
 Now I must return on my way to touch an 
 incident which holds for me a pregnant mean- 
 ing, as I glance backward to my childhood. 
 The memory comes clear as if it was yesterday,
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 of a happy day when some good soul had given 
 me a big George the Third penny, and I must 
 needs go and spend it forthwith, or, as my 
 mother used to say, it would burn a hole in my 
 pocket. There was only one store in our ham- 
 let, and there I must go. I had quite made up 
 my mind what I would buy. I dearly loved 
 what we call candy, do still ; and there it was, 
 the sort I would buy, in the window. But 
 close to the jar there was a tiny book, and 
 I can still read the title " The History of 
 Whittington and his Cat. William Walker, 
 Printer." Price, one penny. I gave up the 
 candy and bought the book. And now when I 
 am in London and go up Highgate Hill to see 
 a dear friend, I always halt to look at the stone 
 on which the small boy sat when the bells rang 
 him back again to become lord mayor of Lon- 
 don. 
 
 Does some reader say, Why should you 
 touch this incident? And I answer, I have a 
 library now of about three thousand volumes, 
 and in all these years have had to forego a 
 sight of " candy " in many guises to get them ; 
 but in that first purchase lay the spark of a 
 fire which has not yet gone down to white ashes, 
 the passion which grew with my growth to read
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 all the books in the early years I could lay my 
 hands on, and in this wise prepare me in some 
 fashion for the work I must do in the ministry. 
 Seventy-two years ago last summer the bell 
 tapped for me to go to work in the factory 
 where my father and mother had served their 
 time. It is told of the younger Pitt that, in 
 looking round for more earners and still more 
 to meet the demands for more money and still 
 more to carry on the war with Napoleon, the 
 great statesman said, " We must yoke up the 
 children to work in the factories." And this 
 was done. I cannot vouch for the story; but 
 there I was at work in the factory, with many 
 more children of about my age or older, stand- 
 ing at the spinning-frames " doffers " they 
 called us thirteen hours a day five days in the 
 week, and eleven on the Saturday rung in 
 at six in the morning and out at eight in the 
 evening, with an hour for dinner and a rest. 
 And, if we got a chance to sit down for a few 
 moments when the overlooker was not round with 
 his leathern strap to lay on our small shoulders, 
 we were in luck, while for protection we invented 
 a code of signals to warn each other when he 
 was coming our way; and the result of this 
 was that the weaker children were so crippled
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 that the memory of their crooked limbs still 
 casts a rather sinister light for me on the scrip- 
 ture, " The Lord regardeth not the legs of a 
 man." It was in 1831-32 I went to work on 
 these terms, but in 1834 the burden was lifted 
 by the Factory Act which barred out the chil- 
 dren under nine years of age, while those over 
 nine but under eleven must work no more than 
 nine hours a day and at thirteen could work the 
 full stint. This gave me a fine breathing space 
 of about two years, and then I took the full 
 stint with no harm; for the foundations were 
 strong. Also in the hardest times the dear 
 mother looked after me and the whole brood. 
 The home was bright always when the day's 
 work was done, and replete with all the good 
 cheer her heart could compass for us. There 
 was quite the minimum of " Thou shalt nots " 
 in her tables of the law. She gave us our 
 heads and held on to our hearts, and all was 
 well. Dr. Bellows was introduced to her on his 
 last visit to England. She was then far on in 
 years, and the first time I met him after his 
 return he said to me, " I know where you got 
 your outfit: I saw your mother in Leeds." 
 
 On my first visit to the motherland fifteen 
 years after I came to this new world, I went to 
 [ 16]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 look at the old factory and wandered about as 
 one that dreams. I saw in one of the great 
 dusty rooms a little fellow about eight years old, 
 but big and strong for his years, standing at 
 the spinning-frames through thirteen hours, 
 tired sometimes almost to death, and then again 
 not tired at all, rushing home when the day's 
 work was done if it was winter to some treas- 
 ure of a book; and if it was summer, with the 
 long twilights, the books would be perhaps 
 neglected, and the rush would be out into the 
 fields and lanes and down by the river, hunting 
 in the early summer for birds' nests the tender 
 and holy home canon would never permit to be 
 robbed; and in the later summer seeing how the 
 sloes, the crab-apples, and the hazel nuts fared, 
 and what was the prospect for hips and haws. 
 
 I watched him in my day dream with a most 
 pathetic interest. Dear old fellow, I said, you 
 had a hard time; but then it was a good time, 
 too, wasn't it now? How good the bread and 
 butter did taste, to be sure, on Sundays, when 
 half a pound a week was all your mother could 
 afford! And did any flowers in this world 
 smell as sweet as those old roses and the 
 primrose, or prima donna sing like the skylark 
 and the throstle! For you money cannot buy
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 such a Christmas pudding or prayers and tears 
 such a Christmas-tide as mother made and the 
 Lord gave when you and the world were young. 
 I had lost sight of you all these years and have 
 never set eyes on you until to-day, you dear 
 little other self who was dead and is alive again, 
 was lost and is found! 
 
 One thing more I must touch before I leave 
 these memories of the factory. I said the quite 
 infernal factory bell began to clang through the 
 valley at half-past five in the morning, before, 
 as I was sure, I had been asleep an hour, so tired 
 I was and so sure also that in all the world there 
 could be no bell so harsh and evil in sound. 
 Some years after our family moved to Leeds 
 the factory fell on evil days and was dead. 
 Then about 1870 the great city of Leeds must 
 have more pure water, and bought the water 
 rights to the Washburn with much land in the 
 valley for reservoirs, including the site of the 
 factory which must come down. When I read 
 of this in my Leeds Mercury, I wrote to a 
 friend in the Common Council, asking him to 
 send me a bit of the old bell when it was broken 
 up. I wanted to hammer it as Quilp in the 
 story hammered the figure head to blow off his 
 wrath. I received for my answer the bell 
 [ 18 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 sound and whole, laid down in the hall of our 
 house, carriage paid to the door. But the dear 
 house mother, who did not share my memories, 
 did not want it cumbering the hall even when I 
 suggested we might use it as a sort of Chinese 
 gong to call us in the morning and to our 
 meals. We could use a hammer and cover the 
 head with leather, I insinuated. This would 
 make a nice soft murmur. But mother would 
 not hear me. I must get rid of that bell or she 
 would. It was an elephant in the house. 
 
 It has been my happy fortune for more than 
 twenty years to take the services and sermons 
 once a year in Sage Chapel at the Cornell Uni- 
 versity, and, talking that year with President 
 Adams about the training school for smiths' 
 and carpenters' work, the thought flashed on 
 me that I might foist the bell on the university 
 and have it hung over the shops. The good 
 fellow caught the idea with pleasure, though I 
 told him honestly what an evil clamor it made 
 for me all those years ago. " Send it up," he 
 said, " and we will run our risk. It may be the 
 clamor was in the hearing and not in the bell." 
 So it was duly sent, and when I went up the 
 next year he said : " The bell is hung, but has 
 not been rung. We want you to strike the first 
 
 r 19
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 sounds. So come right along and ring your 
 bell." I rang it with a touch of tremor, and 
 it seemed to be quite another bell; for it gave 
 forth a pleasant sound. The president was 
 right. The clamor was in my hearing when it 
 would storm me out of what we call my first 
 sleep. I cannot remember any second in those 
 days, only one, and that all too brief. 
 
 I think it is Evelyn who says : " Being in 
 Antwerp, I stood in the bell chamber while the 
 bells were ringing, and the noise was full of 
 dissonance and distraction. But the next 
 morning I walked forth from the city when 
 they rang again, and they were full of sweet 
 harmonies." So the enchantment of time and 
 distance, with all the good fortune which had 
 come to me in the many years, had changed the 
 clamor to this pleasant sound; and here ends 
 the tale of my life in the factory.
 
 in 
 
 There was one article in our home creed that 
 would admit of no doubt or denial: the boys 
 must learn some craft better than those we were 
 taught in the factory, and this would cost 
 money, because they must find us in clothes 
 through our apprenticeship, when we had no 
 wages. But this made no matter, when the 
 time came for me to leave home sixty-five years 
 ago last August. If I stayed on in the fac- 
 tory, this would be a step down from the rank 
 my father had attained as a smith. So it was 
 ordained by the fireside council, of which I was 
 a member, that I should be a smith too, and the 
 money to clothe me would be found somehow, 
 while my mother would stand true to her colors 
 and her counsel, " Childer, no matter how 
 poor you be, when you have to do for your- 
 selves, don't look poor and don't tell." The 
 smith who had taught my father was still living, 
 and kept his forge in Ilkley, six miles away over 
 the moor, and he agreed to take me as an ap-
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 prentice. I was then turned fourteen and was 
 bound until I was twenty-one, he giving me 
 house room and food, week day shirts and 
 leathern aprons. So in this way I came to work 
 at the anvil, the utmost limit then and for many 
 a year after of my ambition. 
 
 And the change was for the better in many 
 ways. I was homesick for a time, as most boys 
 are, and missed the home safeguards and sanc- 
 tities; but the work was not so hard as a rule, 
 and the hours were much shorter, for save when 
 we were very busy we did not work more than 
 ten hours a day, and Master Birch kept a good 
 table, rough to be sure, but wholesome and 
 plentiful, so that I began to grow apace and 
 moved an old man to say, when he would step 
 into the forge to warm his hands, " How thou 
 does grow to be sewer: if thaa doesn't stop 
 soin, we sail hev to put a stiddy [anvil] on thee 
 heead." And then he would grin. 
 
 And this was not only an ampler life, but a 
 wider world than that in which I was so far 
 raised on the Washburn. So the environment 
 was finer in many ways. Some readers of these 
 memories may remember the lines of Words- 
 worth in which he makes a picture true to the 
 life of the
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 " Yorkshire dales, where warm and low the 
 
 hamlets lie, 
 
 Each with its little plot of sky and little lot of 
 stars." 
 
 The dale I left answers well to the picture, as 
 Wharfedale does also in its upper reaches, but 
 begins to open out where the town of Ilkley 
 stands into wider holms and uplands, bound on 
 the south by the " fine brow of crags " the 
 poet Gray saw in a journey through the dale, 
 and mentions this wise in one of his letters. The 
 town also holds a fine historic interest, as I came 
 to learn in the course of time. On this, how- 
 ever, I cannot dwell now, but may ask for room 
 to tell the story, it may be, when these mem- 
 ories come to a close. 
 
 And now I will return to note that the spark 
 struck out on the day when I bought the tiny 
 book at prime cost was not' as a fire enfolding 
 itself, to be no more seen or heard of. It must 
 have started a fire in my nature which has not 
 yet burned down to white ashes; for, when I 
 had learned to read to some purpose, I see my- 
 self in the far-away time and cottage reading, 
 as I may truly say in my case, for dear life. 
 There was a small store of books in our home, 
 and among them Bunyan's " Pilgrim," " Rob-
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 inson Crusoe," and Goldsmith's histories of Eng- 
 land and Rome. These I may say I almost got 
 by heart. The rest were religious books ; they 
 did not suit me, so I let them hang on the shelf, 
 more's the pity, do you say? And I an- 
 swer, I am not so sure about that, because I 
 think it was then I must have found the germ 
 in those I did read of my lifelong instinct for 
 the use of simple Saxon words and sentences 
 which has been of some worth to me in the work 
 I was finally called to do. And now when my 
 work is almost done, and it may be the first 
 sign of dotage is anec-dotage, may I give a little 
 toot on the trumpet to help verify my surmise? 
 A good many years ago, as I was walking down 
 Broadway, a young gentleman said to me, " I 
 am a student, sir, preparing for the ministry, 
 and our president, Dr. Hitchcock, said to our 
 class the other day we must go to the Church 
 of the Messiah and hear you for your English, 
 so I am coming." Pardon the toot. 
 .y My, father noticed in good time my hunger 
 I for books, and, as there was no money to buy 
 . more, the dear good fellow began to borrow 
 them from far and wide in our small commune. 
 He found Burns and Shakespeare for me, with 
 more I do not remember, and brought them
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 home; but he laid down the law that I should 
 not soil them, and should return them when 
 they were well read to the owner, so I think the 
 lenders had no reason to complain with our 
 dear Sir Walter Scott that some of his friends 
 were good book-keepers, but bad accountants. 
 Now I come to Ilkley again where in the first 
 year of my 'prenticeship I found one of the 
 friends that sticketh closer than a brother. He 
 was some years my elder ten I think, a 
 workingman who never married, and was be- 
 yond all comparison the best read man and of 
 
 > the finest culture among the native men of the 
 town. John Dobson let me write his name 
 
 ! for love's sake was my whole college of pro- 
 fessors, if I may use the term, through the 
 twelve years of my life there as apprentice and 
 then manager of the forge. There was no 
 library where we could borrow books, so he 
 must buy them out of his scant wages; for I 
 had no money. This he would gladly do, spar- 
 ing to spend, and bring them to me with shin- 
 ing eyes. 
 
 John was fond of Scotch metaphysics and 
 other books of that school, and books which 
 held arguments with you deep and vital, touch- 
 ing the eternal supremacy of mind over matter, 
 [ 25 ]
 
 the immanency of God and His adequacy to take 
 care of the world He had made; the essays of 
 John Foster, the eminent Baptist, Robert Hall, 
 describes as a lumbering wagon laden with 
 golden ingots; and the essays of Isaac Taylor, 
 these and many more, stories of dauntless 
 fights for the soul's freedom, and most especially 
 those of the old Scotch Covenanters. He re- 
 minds me now of Davie Deans in " Old Mor- 
 tality," and considered MacCrie's answer to Sir 
 Walter's misstatements about them of more 
 worth than all the Waverley Novels. 
 
 He walked on foot to Scotland to visit the 
 battlefield of Drumclog, for his main reason, 
 and to see " The Solemn League and Cove- 
 nant " signed with the blood of the saints ; and 
 went or came through Westmoreland, stealing 
 near the home of Wordsworth without leave or 
 license, and saw the old poet, almost blind then, 
 seated on a chair in the sun, while his old wife 
 came outdoors swiftly with a shawl to wrap 
 about his shoulders. 
 
 If John Dobson had come into this world two 
 hundred years or so earlier, he would have gone 
 out with Black Tom Fairfax of Denton a mile or 
 so down the river from Ilkley to the battle, but 
 would have changed into the Ironsides before
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 Marston Moor. And when, after his return 
 from Scotland, he heard there was still a rem- 
 nant left of the old Covenanters, I think only 
 the good common sense which held him fair 
 and true prevented him from returning to hunt 
 them out and say, I am of your heart and mind. 
 Half a dozen men all told owed more to John 
 than to any other man. 
 
 The hunger for books grew by what it fed 
 on. Two of my shopmates were hard drinkers, 
 and Master Birch had fallen away from the 
 grace of sobriety ; but my love for books fought 
 the fiend with a finer fire. For many years I 
 never ate a meal, if I could help it, without a 
 book at my elbow. I did worse than this, for 
 when I went a courting I would still be reading ; 
 and if my sweetheart had not been the best 
 lassie in all the world for me, as well as the 
 bonniest, she would have given me the mitten, 
 and served me right. 
 
 I had no dream of the worth which might lie 
 in the hunger any more than that I should sit 
 here this morning touching these memories 
 while the soft thunder of this great city steals 
 through my library. The worth lay in the 
 reading in which not seldom I would " plunge 
 soul headlong, impassioned by the beauty and 
 [ 27 ]
 
 salt of truth." And I still remember how I 
 would climb up to the moor on Sunday after- 
 noons in the pleasant summer-time with some 
 book I always went to the old church in the 
 morning sit down on one great gray crag to 
 read a chapter and to watch the sunshine ripple 
 over the heather like a great translucent sea, and 
 listen to the music of the bells in the dark old 
 tower at Haworth meet and mingle with the 
 music from the tower of our own church be- 
 low where the Longfellows worshipped through 
 some centuries of time. Then something I had 
 read would set me thinking and talking back, as 
 we say, with no audience but the moor sheep 
 looking up in wonder as they fed. 
 
 Then the memory comes of a change through 
 a great sorrow which befell me, when my life 
 was dark in the shadows of death, for which I 
 found no help in books and must find help in 
 God. I did not consult with flesh and blood, 
 not even with my dear friend and good helper 
 John. The whole experience seemed too sacred. 
 The secret lay between God and my own soul, 
 and seems still so sacred that I hesitate over 
 these lines. 
 
 But in about a month my heart was quiet. I 
 had found rest in Him, and then must needs find 
 [ 28]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 fellowship among those who were like hearted; 
 for the great woman well says : 
 
 " On solitary souls the Universe 
 Looks down inhospitable, and the human heart 
 Finds nowhere shelter but in human kind."
 
 IV 
 
 There was a band of Methodists, my old 
 neighbors and friends, who met in a small 
 chapel. There I went and told them in not 
 many words how it was with me. They won- 
 dered first and then gave me a warm welcome. 
 I had found out that one stick is not good for a 
 fire. I knew how they would have loved to 
 have a share in my conversion, open and above 
 board, with Hallelujahs and Amens; but there 
 I was, take me or leave me. They were not 
 over-particular about the sticks if they would 
 burn well, while in the burning a certain gift of 
 speech came I must have inherited from my 
 mother, in the prayer and class meetings, of 
 which this was the upshot. In about a year 
 the preacher in charge of the churches came to 
 see me and told me how the brethren in the 
 quarterly meeting on the previous Monday 
 had risen one by one and said it had been 
 borne in upon their hearts that I had a call to 
 preach the gospel. They were local preachers, 
 [30]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 with a gift for this work, and rustical men, 
 with one exception, who made their own living as 
 artisans and small farmers, and preached on 
 Sundays for the love of God and of human souls, 
 while some of them answered well to the canon 
 of the great Swiss reformer, " A man who is 
 truly called to preach the gospel may know 
 many things, but must know two, God and 
 how to speak to the people." 
 
 Shall I say that there have been moments in 
 my life when what " Friends " call " the inward 
 light " has shone or flashed for me on turning 
 points always as I see now? Well this was one, 
 and the first. I told good old Michael that I 
 should be glad to try, and he said I must be 
 ready when he called. So I went home to think 
 out a sermon from the text, " As I live, saith 
 the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of a 
 sinner." 
 
 The word came duly that I must preach at 
 the chapel in Addingham three miles up the river. 
 It was Sunday afternoon. Luther loved to 
 preach on Sunday afternoons because the men 
 servants and maid servants could come to hear 
 him then in great numbers, but I found only a 
 handful. And here I must make confession. 
 The sermon was divided into three parts : the 
 [ 31 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 firstly and lastly were my own, the secondly I 
 stole from a sound Scotch divine. 
 
 I must have no paper, so I had none, but 
 managed somehow to get through. There was 
 no greeting from the hearers as I came out of the 
 chapel to go home ; but half way there I halted, 
 for I found I had quite forgotten the secondly I 
 had stolen. And then came the painful con- 
 clusion that it served me right, and my text 
 should have been by good rights, " Thou shalt 
 not steal," while from that time to this I may 
 say in all honesty I have stood true to Paul's 
 words, " Let him that stole steal no more." 
 
 There was no inward light for me then. I 
 had meant to do a mean thing and had failed, 
 but by heaven's grace the failure opened the 
 way to my ordination as a Methodist local 
 preacher. I felt no great eagerness to try 
 again : my sin had found me out. They did not 
 know my, secret, and old Michael sent me on a 
 Sunday soon after to preach in a farmer's 
 kitchen, on the lift of the moor, where they only 
 had preaching now and then, and where I may 
 suppose he thought poor provision might pass 
 where the feasts came few and far between. 
 
 It was in June. I see the place still, and am 
 aware of the fragrance of the wild uplands
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 stealing through the open lattice on bars of 
 sunshine, to mingle with the pungent snap of 
 the peat fire on the hearth which gives forth the 
 essence of the moorlands for a thousand years. 
 And I still mind how heavy my heart was that 
 afternoon. I had been trying all the week to 
 find a sermon in a parable ; but there was no pulse 
 to answer, no vision, and Bishop Home says, 
 " If you distil dry bones, all you will have for 
 your pains is water." 
 
 Still there I was, the preacher, and they were 
 simple-hearted folk up there, of the old Meth- 
 odist election unto grace, eager and hungry for 
 the word of life, and ready to come in with the 
 grand Amens. 
 
 The big farm kitchen was full, and they were 
 just the hearers to help a poor soul over the 
 sand bars on the lift of their full hearts. So 
 they sang with a will; and where in all the 
 world will you hear such singing with a will 
 as in Yorkshire and Lancashire ! Then I must 
 pray. Father Taylor said, " I cannot make 
 a prayer," nor can I. But, with those hearts 
 filled from the springs of life, I felt that day 
 the prayer was making me. Then the time 
 came for the sermon. Some stammering words 
 came to my lips, and then some more, while 
 [ 33 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 gleams of light began to play about my parable. 
 And their eyes began to shine, while now and 
 then the grand Amens came in as a chorus from 
 the chests of men who had talked to each other 
 in the teeth of the winds up there from the times 
 of the Saxons and the Danes. And now after 
 all these years I feel sure it was given me that 
 day what I should say. 
 
 So the service ended, and the good man of the 
 house came, laid his hands on me, and said very 
 tenderly : " My lad, the Lord has called thee to 
 preach the gospel. The Lord bless thee and 
 make thee faithful in the truth." And all the 
 people said Amen, while I have always said that 
 this was my true ordination. 
 
 The service on the moor side and ordination 
 from the hands and heart of the good old farmer 
 helped me greatly to feel that I had a call to 
 preach, and, if I was true to my calling, need 
 not filch from any Scot or lot for such sermons 
 as I could compass. But I feel sure also that 
 I was exalted above measure and needed to have 
 my thorn in the flesh to buffet me. Well, this 
 was what befell me. 
 
 The minister in charge sent word that I 
 must preach on the next Sunday evening at our 
 own chapel in Ilkley, and I was proud of the ap-
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 pointment. They should see what I could do. 
 I do not remember the text or the sermon now, 
 only that I was rather proud of the effort. But 
 on the Monday morning, as I was going down to 
 the forge, I met one of the members of the small 
 society, a shoemaker, and a thoughtful man, 
 who said : " I went to hear thee preach last 
 neet. Would thou let me tell thee what I think 
 of thy sermon ? " " Yes," I answered, feeling 
 almost sure I should hear a word of commenda- 
 tion ; but there was no such word. " I think 
 thou will never mak a preacher like what we 
 want," he said. " Thou wants to reason ower 
 much, and that will never do. We want our 
 preachers to preach from the heart, not from 
 the head : to say, ' Thus saith the Lord,' and 
 be sure about that. Thy preaching may do 
 for some folks, but it winnat do for us." Then 
 good old Tom went his way, and I went mine. 
 I was not glad for the thorn, yet I have thought 
 many a time since then he was not a messenger 
 of Satan sent to buffet me, but a very honest 
 man who said what he most surely believed. 
 
 And here again I must anticipate this inci- 
 dent in my memories. Seventeen years after, 
 when I was a minister in our own denomination, 
 of about six years standing, I crossed the ocean 
 [ 35 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 on my first visit to the motherland and my 
 mother, and of course must go to Ilkley: was 
 there over a Sunday and met my messenger on 
 his way to the chapel. I greeted him gladly, 
 but he said, " I don't know ye, sir." So I told 
 him my name, and after chatting some moments 
 he said, " I am ever so pleased to see ye, sir. I 
 am going t' chapel, and the preacher has sent 
 word he cannot come, he is badly. Ye were a 
 local when ye left us : do ye preach a bit still ? " 
 " Yes," I answered, " I am still a preacher." 
 " Then ye will come and take our man's place. 
 We shall be ever so glad to hear you again after 
 all these years." Then I told him I was no 
 longer a local, but was settled over a church in 
 Chicago of quite another brand. The old man's 
 face fell as he said, " What made ye leave us ? " 
 I asked him if he remembered telling me I should 
 reason myself out of the Methodist body if I 
 did not change my methods, and I thought his 
 words had come true. We clasped hands, said 
 good-bye, and I saw the old man no more on the 
 earth. 
 
 The old miller in the town also gave me a piece 
 of his mind after my first effort. He said I 
 should make a preacher in time, and be right 
 [ 36 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 useful; for they would use me for a spare rail 
 to fill the gaps, and we needed such a rail to 
 keep things straight. There was scant time for 
 the preparation of the sermons so called. I 
 went to see Dr. Dewey for love's sake when he 
 was near the end of his long life, and saying 
 something as we sat in his study about the high 
 worth to us of his sermons, he looked up and 
 said, " I do not call them sermons : I call them 
 things only things." 
 
 So I may well call mine " things" ; and, scant 
 of time for close study, I must find some other 
 way to my purpose then and through the ten 
 years of my time as a local preacher here and in 
 England, while I was still at work in the forge, 
 and the problem in some sort was solved in this 
 way. When I would be hard at work for all 
 I was worth, some thought I had harbored would 
 suddenly grow luminous, touching earth or 
 heaven, would be as the seed which groweth 
 secretly, and there would be no great trouble 
 when the time came for the reaping. Or the 
 idea would still elude me, coming and going as 
 the winds come and go, giving me sometimes 
 sore distress, yet for the things worth the pain 
 there would be a day of redemption, when the 
 [ 37 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 thought I could not capture captured me, and 
 turned the croak I had feared I must make into 
 a new song. 
 
 One of these songs of deliverance still haunts 
 my memory. I had walked to Burnsall twelve 
 miles up the river to take the services in the 
 chapel, and then walk home ready for my work 
 in the morning. The new song carried me away 
 captive, so that I took no note of time, and as 
 nearly as I can remember sang my way through 
 a good ninety minutes. It was a sore imposi- 
 tion. When an eminent judge was asked how 
 long he thought a sermon should be, he an- 
 swered, " Twenty minutes, with a leaning to the 
 side of mercy." And when a young fledgling 
 in our dale told the minister he believed he had 
 " a call," and took for his text " I am the light 
 of the world," an aged sister, all out of patience 
 with him, after some time cried out, " John, if 
 thou's the light of the world, I think thou needs 
 snuffin'." So did I, no doubt, that Sunday 
 evening, and I have never done the like again in 
 all these years. And yet it is hard to draw the 
 line, for a sermon of an hour shall seem shorter 
 from one man than a sermon of twenty minutes 
 from another. On my life in the forge as boy 
 and man I must not dwell, because these mem- 
 [ 38 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 cries are of my ministry in their main purpose. 
 And to tell the clean truth, I think I was never 
 a very good blacksmith, not nearly so good as 
 my father; for to do anything supremely well 
 you must give your whole mind to it, yes, and 
 your heart, and these for me were given to the 
 books. Still, as manager of the forge after 
 the old master died, I could command the highest 
 wages and believe I gave worth for worth, while 
 one bit of work that I can lay my hands on is 
 still to be seen. I must make a pair of iron 
 gates. This sort of work is done by the white- 
 smith; but I took the job with no proper tools 
 or skill for that work, and the result was a pair 
 of gates as homely as a barn door, so homely 
 that I would dream of them after I came to this 
 new world, and say to myself, If I can ever af- 
 ford the money, I will ask to have a new pair 
 made by some skilful man over there, and the 
 old things sold for scrap iron. 
 
 But just a touch of satisfaction came to me 
 on my last visit to the homeland a few years 
 ago, when the humor took me to go and have 
 another (and it may well be the last) look at 
 the gates I had made just fifty years before. 
 The touch of satisfaction lay in the fact that 
 not a rivet had sprung in the clanging back and 
 [ 39]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 forth through all the years. Those on the lock 
 had sprung, but that was set by another man. 
 So I said, I have so much to the good in any 
 case. And when I came home, being in Chicago 
 on a visit, President Harper asked me to come 
 and speak to some of the students ; and I wove 
 in the story of my gates, of which the moral 
 was, " No matter how homely your work may 
 be in this world, look well, my boys, to the 
 rivets." 
 
 [ 40 ]
 
 y 
 
 In 1849 I had made up my mind to emigrate 
 to this new world. I had dreamed for some 
 years of doing this when I was able. My father 
 and mother had made up their minds to come 
 when they were married ; but the panic of 1823- 
 24 had struck England like a bolt from the 
 blue and slain their hope, while among my earli- 
 est memories this still stays clear of sitting by 
 the fireside and listening as they would talk of 
 their dead or dying hope. They had heard 
 from Tom Ross, one of my father's shopmates, 
 who had come here and was doing well. They 
 would talk of Tom and then of their regret. 
 So I think the seed was sown then which came 
 in good time to the harvest. 
 
 When it was known that I was to emigrate, 
 a gentleman of note came to see me and said, 
 " You will go to Canada of course, and I will 
 give you letters to friends in Montreal or in 
 Australia, if you choose to go there." But, 
 thanking him, said I was going to the United 
 States. " You have friends there," he said, 
 [ 41 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 But I answered, " I do not know a soul there." 
 And no doubt he thought I was standing in 
 my own light. 
 
 But this was the truth : the light lay on these 
 States, the inward light I must mind without 
 debate, and have followed these many years. I 
 was alone. The great sorrow I touched in one 
 of these memories rested in the death of my 
 wife eighteen months after our wedding. We 
 were of those who marry young. I was in 
 no haste to marry again ; but now the time had 
 come to find a helpmeet and the woman who was 
 to be by far my better half through more than 
 forty years, how well I know this now ! 
 
 And just for the humor of it, when we talked 
 of our life together, I would say I won her 
 heart through a sermon from the text, " The 
 spirit and the bride say, Come," while she would 
 answer, " I could have no great opinion of the 
 woman you would win by that sermon." 
 
 We made the sacred vows in mid April, 1850, 
 and went at once to Liverpool to take our pas- 
 sage for New York on the old liner Roscius, 
 where we landed in four weeks to the day. I 
 had read all the books I could find about this 
 strange land to me the prospect for good 
 work and wages but wanted to know more
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 about the people, their spirit and temper, and 
 if they were what we call " folksy." So I had 
 walked some miles to see a kinsman of my 
 wife who had come over three times to seek 
 his fortune, but had by no means found it, poor 
 fellow! I told him my errand, and of our in- 
 tention to emigrate and make a new home in this 
 new world. " I hear you have been there three 
 times. Please tell me all you can about the 
 people you found there. Are they kind and 
 well disposed toward an Englishman, a working 
 man and a stranger?" "No," he answered in 
 his broad Yorkshire, " they are nayther. Wha, 
 they'll tak the varry teeth out o' yer heead if 
 ye doant keep yer moath shut ! " I noticed 
 he had lost some, so this was not quite encourag- 
 ing; but there we were after four weeks at sea, 
 drawing up to the wharf in New York, and 
 must go ashore and run our risk. We stood 
 ready to land when I heard a man speak to 
 another in our own tongue broad Yorkshire 
 and, speaking to him, I found he kept a 
 tavern and was seeking guests. He asked us 
 to go there, and we were glad to go; for we 
 knew your Yorkshire man down to the ground. 
 In the night my wife was taken ill, and in the 
 morning I went out to find the medicine she 
 [ 43]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 wanted. I found by direction of our host a 
 drug store on Broadway across from the City 
 Hall Park, told the man in charge what I 
 wanted, and he presently began to talk to me, 
 man fashion. Had I just landed? Where was 
 I from? What was my business? And I an- 
 swered him, but thought the while, This may 
 be the way we lose our teeth. I must see what 
 he charges. "How much, sir?" I said. And 
 he answered : " Not a cent. Glad to do it. 
 Come in again and let me know how you are 
 getting along if you stay in New York." This 
 was my first lesson: the first thing I bought 
 in this new world I must not pay for. 
 
 Our destination was Philadelphia. I could 
 not tell you why that day, but can now if there 
 were time and space beyond this. The light 
 lay on that city, and there we must go. We 
 started after two days by the way of South 
 Amboy and the Delaware, the cheapest route. 
 It was a lovely mid May morning as we went 
 down the river. The orchards were in full 
 bloom. It was the most beautiful land I had 
 ever laid my eyes on! Our host in New York 
 had told us of a tavern kept also by a York- 
 shireman, and we went there. 
 
 I must lose no time finding work, for our 
 [ 44 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 funds were low. It was the first time in my life 
 I must seek work and hurt my pride; but I 
 was spared the pang, for the work sought me. 
 I saw an advertisement in the Ledger, 
 " Wanted, a blacksmith. Apply to No. 5 Com- 
 merce Street," and there I hastened. The 
 forge was in the country, seven miles away, 
 and I must go out there by, the old York road 
 the next morning. It was one of those burn- 
 ing days that come in mid May. I was just 
 clear of the city, plodding along, when a gentle- 
 man passed me rather swiftly in a carriage and 
 pair, halted presently, and when I came into 
 line with him asked me where I was bound. 
 " A place called Shoemaker town, sir," I an- 
 swered. And then he said : " I am going that 
 way. Get in and have a ride this hot day." 
 I was rising twenty-seven. It was the first 
 time in my life any gentleman had asked me 
 to come in and ride with him. He also wanted 
 to know about my whence and whither. I told 
 him of my hopes, but not my fears. He told 
 me I was sure to prosper, with much besides, 
 clasped my hand when we parted in good, frank 
 fashion, sorry he could not take me to the 
 forge a mile away, and I never saw him 
 again. 
 
 [ 45 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 One more memory remains of our first ex- 
 perience among the greedy and grasping folk 
 over here who would have my teeth. When I 
 left the city, my good helpmeet said she must 
 find work also with her needle, and help earn 
 the money for our new home when we got one. 
 There was an intelligence office free for emi- 
 grants near the tavern on Front Street near 
 Market in the care of a Mr. Thomason, a Pres- 
 byterian clergyman, whose health had given 
 way in New Orleans, and he said, " My wife 
 wants some sewing done, so you will come to 
 our house." So my dear wife went there and 
 worked some days, but then was taken down 
 with a fever she had no doubt caught on the 
 ship. It was of a bad type. There were, I think, 
 four children in the home. There would be 
 peril if she was kept there, and the right thing 
 to do would be to send their charge to the 
 hospital. I still think this never entered into 
 their minds. Mrs. Thomason isolated her in a 
 sweet, bright room in the house, called in their 
 own doctor, took care of her with no nurse to 
 help, and, when I went to the city at the week's 
 end, they said I must be their guest, and come 
 there until my wife was well able to join me, 
 and we could start our home in good fashion. 
 [46]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 And when we were ready to go we said : " We 
 can never cease to be your debtors for this 
 care and kindness, but you have been at a 
 serious expense also. This we must repay." 
 I was in good work at good wages. We would 
 lose no time. We could help. For this we 
 pleaded, but they would not hear us for a 
 moment. Not a penny, should we pay them: 
 much more they said. And then the dear old 
 man laid his hands on us and gave us his sweet 
 benediction. The measure was full. This was 
 the answer to the cousin's caution touching the 
 greedy and selfish Americans. 
 
 [47]
 
 VI 
 
 My work in the forge for almost nine years 
 was making claw-hammers, at a stated price per 
 dozen. This was a new craft. I had never 
 made a claw-hammer until then in my life; but 
 in the twelve years' training I had got what 
 we call a good ready, and piece work puts a 
 man on his mettle. Old veterans in the anti- 
 slavery crusade may still remember an illustra- 
 tion Mr. Garrison was rather fond of using 
 in his speeches touching the sound of the ham- 
 mer in the forge when you were working by 
 the day or the job " by the day by the 
 da-ay by the da-a-ay," the one hammer said, 
 and the other, " by the job, job, job." So 
 you need not ask on what terms each man was 
 working. 
 
 We were working by the job, and I soon 
 caught the fine contagion. So this was the 
 result: I earned double the wages in the first 
 month that I was paid as foreman in the old 
 forge in Ilkley. But this is also true, that I 
 worked, I may venture to say, twice as hard 
 [48]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 in the new forge as we ever thought of working 
 in the country smithies of the old homeland. 
 
 We lost no time in finding a home the best 
 we could afford; but in about a year we found 
 one much better, in a lovely, green lane, away 
 from the forge, where we lived until we moved 
 West in 1859. We were strangers there as 
 when we landed in the city seven miles away. 
 No soul knew us or knew of us ; but they took 
 us in not as the cousin said they would, but in 
 the good Scripture fashion, so that we soon 
 began to feel quite at home among them. It 
 was a new land and a new life, but so good 
 and fair that I can truly say there was no day 
 or moment in a day, when we wanted to return 
 to the life we had left, nor has there been one 
 in all these years. 
 
 We sought no friends: they came to us of 
 their own free will. And I think it was on the 
 first day in our new home the good woman, 
 our next-door neighbor, came in with a dish 
 of stewed tomatoes, and said : " I wonder if you 
 know how good ' tomatusses ' are ? We have 
 more than we can use, and I thought you 
 would not feel offended if I should bring some 
 in." We were not offended. 
 
 The people on the farms were mainly Ger- 
 [49]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 mans of the third or fourth generation, with a 
 sprinkling of English who had come over in 
 Penn's time and taken up the land. There 
 were a good many " Friends " also, but they 
 were not very friendly. Their soul was like 
 a star and dwelt apart, with the exception of 
 one old lady well up among the nineties, who 
 came over painfully on her crutch to greet us. 
 She was a maiden in the days of the Revo- 
 lution, and could tell us no end of stories of 
 those far-away times, touched here and there 
 by a fine imagination. Another neighbor, old 
 Michael, was of a good German stock that stays 
 by the land and old usage. Michael would 
 only plant his onions at the increase of the 
 moon. " Did you ever see Washington ? " I 
 said to him one day. " Yes, indeed I did," he 
 answered, " and it were this way. We lived 
 in Germantown when I were a boy, and one day 
 I saw Gen. Washington coming along our lane. 
 So I waited until he come near where I were 
 standing, and then I took off my cap and made 
 the best bow I knew how to; and he looked 
 down at me a-smiling, patted me on my head, 
 and said, ' fine lump of a Dutch boy.' And 
 what do you think of that ? " Alexander Wil- 
 son, the early and eminent ornithologist and 
 [ 50 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 poet. not eminent taught a school a mile 
 away from our home when the last century was 
 born. Michael's folks had moved to our vill, 
 I found, about that time. So I said to him 
 on another day, " Did you ever go to school, sir, 
 to a teacher by the name of Alexander Wil- 
 son ? " " I did," he answered promptly. " And 
 do you remember anything you would call queer 
 about him?" "Yes, and it was this: out of 
 school hours he were always poking among the 
 bushes after birds and birds'-nests." I told 
 him then of the grand book the master had made 
 all about our birds. It was a great surprise: 
 he had never heard of the book. And now 
 I am glad to remember this glint of light I 
 got at first hand from old Michael, of which 
 the kinsfolk of the great ornithologist, here or 
 in Scotland, who read the Christian Register 
 or ought to will be glad to make a note. 
 And the tiny picture of Washington patting 
 the " fine lump of a Dutch boy " on the head 
 is more to me than some eulogies I have heard 
 in my lifetime of the most noble and simple 
 man. 
 
 It was in mid May I went to work at the 
 forge, where I was earning good money; and 
 then in July we came to a standstill. The old 
 
 [51 J
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 boiler must be replaced by a new one, our fires 
 were blown by fans; and this meant no more 
 work at the anvil for three weeks or a month. 
 I could not afford to wait. The margin of my 
 earnings had gone for the outfit of the small 
 home. I must find work, and went to making 
 hay two weeks for a neighbor. And, when 
 the hay was in, I said to our employer, " Mr. 
 Hammond, can you give me a job on the 
 boiler? " I thought he did not like to say the 
 only work he could give me was to carry a hod 
 for the bricklayers, but so it was. And I said, 
 " I am your man." It was a full week's work. 
 I earned six dollars. It was through a ragged 
 hole in the wall I must carry my hod, and there 
 were many new bumps on my head at the end 
 of that week when the dear helpmeet said, " Well 
 done!" and Well I will not say what she 
 did besides. 
 
 Seventeen years after, in the heart of the 
 summer, they were building our new church in 
 Chicago, which was burnt in the great fire of 
 1871. And I stood on a beam one day on the 
 first floor when a sturdy Irishman came along 
 with a hod full of bricks, halted near me for 
 some moments, wiping his face, and said, " This 
 is hard work, sur." " Yes," I answered, " I 
 [ 52]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 know. I have carried a hod myself in my time." 
 The good fellow looked hard at me for a mo- 
 ment, shouldered his hod, and went his way, 
 saying something I did not hear. I went to 
 work at my anvil then for a seven years' spell, 
 and as I became more clever I earned more 
 money, $50 a monlh all told in the cool months. 
 And then in October, 1857, the great panic of 
 that year struck us like a bolt from the blue. 
 The fires went out, the forge was closed, and 
 no stroke of work was done until the spring 
 of 1858, when we were able to make half-time. 
 Mr. Hammond, our employer, could not even 
 guess how long the panic would hold us in its 
 cruel grip. There were three young children 
 by this time about the mother's knee. We had 
 saved some money and should have saved more, 
 but I had been laid off for a spell with a broken 
 arm and again with a splint of steel in my eye. 
 The dear housemother had also been sick for 
 weeks together through those years. So the 
 margin of savings was small and would not 
 begin to see us through the winter, and now we 
 must trust in Him who heareth the young ravens 
 when they cry. Of course I must not fold my 
 hands and wait for the help of God, I must 
 hustle. I use the word because I like it. So 
 [ 53 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 I mind how I helped to dig a well and worked 
 on the turnpike. A gentleman many years 
 after told me he saw me breaking stones, but 
 this I do not remember. We did what we could, 
 the mother and I, minding my old mother's 
 caution, " Don't look poor and don't tell." 
 And then help came without our asking. 
 
 I was making some slim purchase at the one 
 store for we were cutting down. when 
 Albert Engle, the owner, said : " You must not 
 scrimp your family for anything we have in 
 our jstore. The work will start up again, and 
 you will pay me, I know, when you are able." 
 Charles Bosler, the miller, came to see me, and 
 said : " Come to my mill for all the flour and 
 meal you need. I can trust you." And good 
 George Heller followed suit about the rent. 
 They are now no more. They made good the 
 ancient promise, " Before you ask I will an- 
 swer." And so I must record their names in my 
 book of life. And then, when the time of the 
 singing of birds had come and the grapes gave 
 a goodly smell, the fires were lighted again 
 and the hammers rang on the anvils. How 
 well I remember the day when I made my first 
 dozen hammers after that panic! I stood at 
 the anvil about two years more, and then laid 
 [ 54 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 down my hammer for good and all, except for 
 some fragment of an hour about twelve years 
 after. But this memory belongs to our life in 
 Chicago. 
 
 [ 55]
 
 vn 
 
 No word has been said touching those years 
 about the work I must do on Sundays, because 
 I felt this must wait until the story was told 
 of, shall I say, the bread and butter, the roof 
 and the fire. While here also there was a panic 
 which must be met and overcome not by the 
 help of men now, but I say in pure reverence 
 of the Most High. I brought a good letter 
 from the brethren in England to the churches 
 here of our faith and order; and soon after 
 we landed in Philadelphia, dropping into a book 
 store I was sure to do that found the 
 bookseller, Thomas Stokes, was a Methodist and 
 a local preacher. I took out my letter, and, 
 Methodist fashion, he gave me at once the right 
 hand of fellowship ; asked me to go with him to 
 church on the next Sunday, where I was pre- 
 sented to the minister, who was also glad to 
 read my letter and welcome me. There was a 
 prayer meeting after the regular service, and 
 I was asked to " make a prayer." And, as 
 we walked from the church, my friend said: 
 [ 56 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 " I feel sure that was a good prayer, but we did 
 not understand the half of what you said. I 
 suppose you spoke in the Yorkshire dialect. 
 You will have to speak as we do here in America 
 if you are a local preacher." 
 
 I had never thought of this, had indeed 
 rather prided myself on my good English. And 
 it was not broad Yorkshire, but Brother Stokes 
 did not know that. And no matter what it was, 
 there was the truth: it was not good American. 
 This was clear. Here was another panic. If 
 I must learn the new tongue and forget the 
 old before the people would hear me, rectify 
 the aspirates, change the accents, alter the 
 vowels, and all the rest, when could I begin 
 to be heard at all ? This was the situation when 
 we had got our home in order and joined the 
 church near at hand in Milestown, where again 
 they gave us a warm welcome. So did the 
 minister in charge of the circuit : but he also had 
 heard me speak in a meeting, had admitted 
 me to the band of local preachers, but had given 
 me no chance to stand in a pulpit. Then I 
 think I was angry ; but it was not a sinful anger 
 if I may judge from this distance in time, and, 
 after waiting, it may be, two months, I set 
 a snare for his feet.
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 I had noticed he was rather given to ask a 
 brother of our rank to take the service when he 
 was tired or had a very small audience, and 
 small blame to him. He was to preach in a 
 small schoolhouse on a blazing August Sunday 
 afternoon on the hill above our town. So I 
 went to the service in the hope that he would 
 invite me to take the service and risk the dia- 
 lect. He did risk it, the good, innocent man! 
 for he was both. And I am not sure there was 
 any overplus of the divine grace in me; but 
 I felt the question must be settled that day, 
 whether I must be what the Scotch call a 
 stickit minister until I learned how to speak, 
 or win against the formidable hindrance. 
 
 And at my work I had mused over those 
 words of the prophet until my heart burned, 
 " Get thee up in thy chariot, for there is a 
 sound of abundance of rain." I forgot all 
 about the dialect, so did the small band about 
 us. The farmer's kitchen on the moorside and 
 the small schoolhouse on the hill opened each 
 into the other. My brothers in the ministry 
 will know what I mean. It was given me that 
 day what I should say. In my poor measure 
 and degree it was as when in the old time they 
 spake to every man in his own tongue. I was 
 [ 58]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 in the spirit on that Lord's Day. How I should 
 love to feel that burning once more before I die ! 
 We speak of some event or experience as worth 
 a year of our life. I think the worth of that 
 afternoon has gone into all the years since then. 
 After the benediction Brother Taft gave me a 
 fine grip of the hand, and said, " Brother, you 
 shall have all the work you want to do." And 
 the promise was kept. After some time a 
 church was built on the hill, and then there were 
 four in the circuit. I took my turn and turn 
 about in them all through the nine years. 
 Slowly but surely I caught the new tongue in 
 some measure; for I have a pliant and sensitive 
 ear and was much pleased when, after I had 
 mastered the speech, an old man said to me: 
 " I did not understand you for a long time 
 when you came to preach for us, but I felt 
 good. So I always came to hear you." Still 
 I am not sure that I am already perfect in this 
 tongue ; for within a month, on a Sunday morn- 
 ing after the sermon, a lady came forward and 
 said, with tears in her voice, " I am from York- 
 shire, sir, and was so glad to hear the dear old 
 burr here and there in your discourse." 
 
 [59]
 
 VIII 
 
 As I touch these memories of the old time, I 
 would fain feel that I am as one who sits by 
 the fireside in the evening, and talks with his old 
 friends not in monologues, but in conversation 
 of the give and take. Then when I notice here 
 and there a man it is always a man lift 
 his hand toward his face to hide a yawn, I think 
 it is time to shut up and shut down. So they go 
 home, to drop in again, and then there are more 
 memories and more, until the tale is told in the 
 evenings at home. The last of these closed 
 with the remark of my old friend, that, in the 
 early years when he heard me speak, he did not 
 understand the half of what I said, but he felt 
 good; and this I take to be the truth touching 
 a good many beside old Robert. But in no 
 long time there was always a good congregation 
 in each of the chapels to hear me, no matter 
 about the aspirates and accents or the way I had 
 of putting things. William Jay of Bath in 
 England, a very eminent minister in his time, 
 would say to the students for the ministry, " Do 
 [ 60 ]
 
 not be afraid of using ' likes ' in your sermons : 
 the people like to hear them, and that was the 
 Master's way who taught the people by, par- 
 ables." So my great hunger for reading all 
 the books I could lay my hands on stood me 
 now in good stead, and drew the folk about 
 me. Moreover, there were times when the fire 
 burned as in the schoolhouse on the hill and 
 the farmer's kitchen on the moorside, and there 
 was a song of deliverance which helped all 
 round. 
 
 It was within a year also of this ministry 
 that a fine old farmer halted his team at our 
 door, on his way to the city, to see if I would 
 come for a Sunday to preach in their church 
 some six miles away in another circuit. They 
 had heard about me, and were eager, he said, 
 to hear me. So I accepted the call without 
 demur. Nothing was said about transport, 
 though it was a stiff walk; but this made no 
 matter, for in those days it was about as easy 
 for me to walk as to sit still, the good days 
 that are no more. So I went, and found a good 
 audience, of sorts, to hear or see me; but on 
 opening a ragged Bible to find my lesson, it 
 was not to be found, the lesson or the text, and 
 I used no manuscript. So I took what there 
 [61]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 was left and went through with the service, per- 
 haps with a touch of temper. They thanked 
 me with warmth when the service was over, and 
 asked me to come again soon. " Yes," I an- 
 swered, " I shall be glad to come again when I 
 am free," but told them my bother with the old 
 Bible, and said, " I cannot come again until 
 you get a new one." So this they promised they 
 would do, and made their promise good. 
 
 The trouble I found was this, in talking with 
 my host : the church was endowed with an income 
 of about three hundred dollars a year, if my 
 memory holds good, and this was no blessing, 
 but a bane, because it tapped the springs of 
 their own striving and giving, though they were 
 well-to-do farmers in the main. So the church 
 was as poor as Job's turkey, I get the simili- 
 tude from my mother. 
 
 There was no fee of course, but all the same 
 there was a rich reward. I found the town had 
 a library in which my host held a share he did 
 not use ; and, finding out, with no great trouble, 
 my passion for books, he said, " I shall be 
 glad if you will use my share, with no cost to 
 yourself, sir." So most gladly I accepted the 
 gift. There was no money to spare for books 
 in our home. We had brought over about 
 [62]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 twenty, volumes, and these were precious; and 
 my pen pauses here as I try to reckon all 
 the money I spent in books through the nine 
 years at the anvil, and I cannot make it amount 
 to ten dollars. Here the dear house-mother put 
 her foot down: the money was wanted in the 
 home. And she held me so well in hand that I 
 remember laying out not quite a dollar in a very 
 thick volume of Littel I could not resist, but 
 durst not bring in under my, arm. So I hid 
 it under a currant bush until the next morning, 
 and arose up early to smuggle the thing into 
 the house. It was some days before my guard- 
 ian saw it in my hand, and said, " My dear, 
 where did you get that book?" And I an- 
 swered softly, " Why, I have had this book some 
 time." Which was in some sort true: I had 
 owned the book a whole week. Tennyson, in 
 " The Grandmother," says, 
 
 " A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest 
 of lies"; 
 
 but I do not feel the sting. The mother smiled, 
 but said no more. I was forgiven: we were 
 good at forgiving, my wife and I. 
 
 The free pass for the library was a great 
 boon. Here was a fine wealth of American 
 [ 63 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 books, and English also, I had not read. One 
 Christmas-tide, when I was still a lad, I could 
 not be spared from the forge to go home, 
 so this was a sore disappointment the goose to 
 our dinner did not heal; and I was sitting by 
 the fire in the evening in quite a grim mood, 
 when a neighbor came in with a couple of vol- 
 umes in his hands he put into mine very kindly, 
 saying, " I notice, Robert, thou's fond o' read- 
 ing, and here's a book I think thou will like." It 
 was Irving's " Sketch-book." I just devoured the 
 volumes read by the fire-light that evening until 
 bedtime, and forgot all about my lost Christmas. 
 This was the first American book that had come 
 into my hands, and it went into my heart to 
 stay, while I wonder still whether this was not a 
 silken thread to draw me hitherward. Then a 
 volume of Longfellow's Poems came to my hands, 
 and I think I could place my feet to-day exactly 
 on the line where I halted to read " The Psalm 
 of Life" in a journey of three miles. 
 
 So these were my familiar friends; but here 
 in the library was a fine store I could read to 
 my heart's content, where the New World's lit- 
 erature clasped hands with the Old. The 
 library was some six miles from our home; but 
 I would overpass my stint of hammers in some 
 [ 64 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 week, make time to go browse in the library, 
 and bring home more books, and then I wist 
 not how far it was home again, for I read 
 the whole way.
 
 IX 
 
 In no long time after this the men in the 
 forges, together with a few young farmers, 
 called a meeting in the schoolhouse for the 
 purpose of starting a lyceum in which questions 
 of moment should be discussed by the members, 
 sans peur et sans reproche (dear reader, I have 
 stolen this from Worcester's Dictionary) ; and 
 for a time there was no fear and no reproach, 
 nor would have been if they had left us free 
 to handle questions close of kin to the first 
 proposed, " Which are the most beautiful, the 
 works of art or the works of nature ? " harm- 
 less as new milk and honey. But men from the 
 city came in who cared for none of these things, 
 and were by no means content to leave us to 
 our own devices. Emerson says, or sings, 
 
 " The old wine darkling in the cask 
 Feels the bloom of the living vine." 
 
 1 i II I 
 I ventured once to show him the figure in 
 
 Butler's " Hudibras " in very near the same 
 
 words, and he said he had never seen or heard 
 
 [66]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 of the lines to the best of his recollection. This 
 was the early spring-time of evolution and the 
 truth of the descent of man. The question was 
 proposed for discussion in a speech far too long, 
 I thought, by a gentleman from the city. We 
 were not prepared to admit the question, only 
 to condemn the whole heresy from Alpha to 
 Omega. The creation of this world in six days, 
 the story of the making of man, and the woman 
 from his rib, and the fall and what followed, 
 he whistled these down the wind. These things 
 were myths, he said, or poems or what not. 
 Man had not fallen, but had won his way 
 from the monad to the eminence on which we 
 stood. Well, I for one was amazed. This was 
 the most frightful heresy I had ever heard. If 
 my memory is true, I was the only man who 
 tried to frame an answer, and was indeed the 
 only man who stood in a pulpit on the Sunday 
 as a Christian teacher. The ministers gave us 
 a wide berth. They did not believe in free 
 platforms. So I stood alone, and not content 
 to scold; for I think this was the staple of my 
 speech. I must needs try satire in verse, or, as 
 Douglas Jerrold said once of a friend's effort, 
 in worse, of which I happily remember only 
 these lines our good editor may prudently sup- 
 [ 67 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 press. They were suggested by a complaint 
 my. fine heretic had made in our lasting meeting 
 about the mosquitoes in which I took their 
 part : 
 
 If your theories hold good, 
 
 Man was a muskeeter, 
 
 So we're all one flesh and blood, 
 
 Only you're compleeter. 
 
 I may hope to be a man 
 
 In the good time coming: 
 
 Now we're working to your plan, 
 
 Letting blood and humming. 
 
 I should be a bit ashamed to recall the dog- 
 gerel if I did not remember things from digni- 
 taries of the Church not much better as an 
 answer to the truth of evolution which since 
 that time has grown so radiant to the mind of 
 thoughtful men. 
 
 Shall I say now that another question sprung 
 on us not willingly, but perforce because ours 
 was still a free platform, was this, " Are the 
 Garrisonian Abolitionists entitled to the confi- 
 dence and support of the American people ? " 
 This was a burning question then, and it set 
 the lyceum afire. I hated slavery as a certain 
 personage was said to dislike holy water. My 
 dear father, when he was a young man, went 
 [ 68]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 without sugar in his tea for a long spell, and 
 gave the money he saved to help free the slaves 
 in the West Indies, though he loved the sweet- 
 ening as he loved his pipe, which he could not 
 give up. So there was an inborn instinct, it 
 may be, of revolt at the curse. I remember 
 also that my employer's son lent me " Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin " when it was published, and I 
 sat up one whole night and until past midnight 
 on the next after a full day's work to read the 
 story. 
 
 But the brotherhood in the church and con- 
 ference fought shy of the question as a rule, 
 with some noble exceptions, while especially it 
 was never mentioned in the pulpit for good or 
 evil in the whole nine years by the ministers 
 in charge of our four churches. 
 
 I went into the debate as a duck goes into 
 the water, but argued the best I knew for the 
 gradual abolition of the curse, because I believed 
 this was the good and safe way. But one even- 
 ing Lucretia Mott came to the meeting and 
 spoke as one who was moved by the holy ghost. 
 She held no argument: she just poured out her 
 soul on us. Some one says that in the abolition 
 meetings of those times eloquence was dirt cheap : 
 her speech that evening was of gold, well re- 
 [ 69 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 fined. She could quote from the Bible, chapter 
 and verse; and the ancient inspiration blended 
 with the new-born from her lips and heart. The 
 whole question grew luminous to me through 
 the light and the fire from heaven; and at the 
 next meeting I made a clean breast of it in a 
 very few words, and then sat down, told them 
 that I also was a Garrisonian Abolitionist from 
 that day out. And now I think of this ex- 
 perience as one of the most pregnant moments 
 in my life, when the divine hand " led me by a 
 way I knew not and brought me into a large 
 place," the church and fellowship that for 
 almost forty-five years has been my glory and 
 my joy. I cannot for my soul's health say 
 amen to what has been said to me and about 
 me when I attained just now to the eighty 
 years. The dear friend whose words on that 
 evening wrought the change in my mind and 
 purpose told me once that, when she spoke in 
 a woods meeting many years before down in 
 Maine, an Indian chief stalked up to her after 
 the meeting closed, held out his hand, and said, 
 " You have done well, if you do not think so." 
 And this she said was a memorable word, the 
 good caution of the old chief; and it was a 
 good word to me.
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 All the same, I am wandering from my text, 
 and must go on to say that my lot lay with 
 the Abolitionists to the wonder of the kindly 
 fellowship of the saints in the churches. They 
 were alarmed; those men and women were in- 
 fidels of the worst brand; I was touching pitch 
 and must needs be defiled. The time came soon 
 when I spoke at their meetings in the city, and 
 went forth also from home hither and yonder 
 to speak on the holy Sabbath day. It was a 
 real grief to them. Some spoke to me sweetly 
 about this, and some gave me the cold shoulder, 
 for which I could not blame them. In a mem- 
 ory of my dear friend and father in our faith, 
 Dr. Furness, printed in the Christian Register, 
 I told of the debt I owe to him, how he asked 
 me to preach for him in his absence, and I 
 gladly did this. It was the last proof of my 
 decline and fall from grace. I never cared 
 for what we call dogma, but the rumor spread 
 that I did not believe any more in the doctrines 
 so precious and essential, and this also was true, 
 but not by flat denial in the pulpit. This I did 
 not feel free to do, but preached much more, 
 I think, about the life that now is, because this 
 was what always lay near my heart. I did not 
 do many things they thought I ought to do, and 
 [ 7.1 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 the fetters hurt me, so that I made up my mind 
 to resign as a local preacher at the coming quar- 
 terly conference in January, 1859. 
 
 The president of that conference is the pre- 
 siding elder. He had made up his mind to clear 
 the murky atmosphere, and asked me, with no 
 grain of unkindness, if I would answer some 
 questions he must ask me by request of the 
 brethren, who feared I was not sound in the 
 faith. The first was, Did I think it was becom- 
 ing my standing in the church to speak from 
 infidel platforms and preach in an infidel pulpit ? 
 I said that is not an infidel pulpit. Then there 
 were questions about doctrine and dogma, the 
 Trinity, eternal punishment, and total deprav- 
 ity, with more of the same tenor. I said " No " 
 to each question. Whereat one brother cried out, 
 " This is what comes from going with them 
 infidels." I said also I had come to the con- 
 ference bound to tell them where I stood if the 
 presiding elder had not asked the questions, and 
 to resign from my office; and he said, not un- 
 kindly, " There was no help for it." 
 
 And, at a very full meeting in the church on 
 
 the Sunday morning, the good man for he 
 
 was good told the people what had come to 
 
 pass. There was no taint on me, he told them, 
 
 [72]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 and no shadow save this. I did not go to the 
 meeting; but the dear helpmeet was there, and 
 told me there were moans and weeping. I was 
 not deprived from my membership in the church. 
 I still hold this, and may touch other memories 
 that make good my word as I draw near to the 
 end of my story. 
 
 [73 ]
 
 You may imagine that I was glad to be a free 
 man when the elder had turned the key on the 
 pulpits I must enter no more, and in some 
 measure this was true. I seemed to draw a long 
 breath when all was over, but can truly say I 
 was not glad; for not one man in the brother- 
 hood held out his hand to me or said a word, 
 intimate as we had been in the church and in 
 our homes through those years. I went out 
 alone and lonesome. 
 
 Alone from the conference ; but the dear help- 
 meet was with me heart and hand when I told 
 her of that which had come to pass, good Meth- 
 odist as she was, and had been down to that 
 day. She had taken me for better or worse, 
 and this was the worse if she had only married 
 the Methodist; but she had married the man, 
 her man, and so after a few tears had fallen 
 how tenderly now I remember the tears she 
 began at once to turn the worse into the better, 
 while this was not because she had faith in my 
 misbeliefs or heresies, but because she had faith 
 [74 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 in me. She was well aware how I had striven 
 not to believe in the branded heresies one 
 or more among the brethren had used another 
 term which held a tang of brimstone had not 
 striven to believe them any more than I had 
 striven to grow to my girth and stature; for 
 indeed the striving for a good while lay in the 
 other scale. She knew also how I would have 
 loved to stay in the old warm nest, because this 
 would be also the safest; but it was not pos- 
 sible. The old shoemaker's warning had come 
 true, about " wanting to reason ower mitch." 
 John Locke says, " He that takes away Reason 
 to make room for Revelation puts out the light 
 of both." I found I must mind the light and 
 follow it, or I could have no peace; and being 
 still a preacher I must make the good confession 
 or I could have no honor or even self-respect, 
 and this the good helpmeet said I must do, bid- 
 ding me be of good cheer. 
 
 One memory is still clear, of the time when 
 I quite made up my mind to leave the old fellow- 
 ship and find a home, if I could, in some other 
 church, if there was one where I could be free 
 to speak the truth as it should be given me to 
 speak, without fear. The minister in charge 
 had " got up a revival " in our own home church 
 [75 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 which was carried on for some time week nights 
 and Sundays. I was not in close sympathy with 
 the movement, but went to the meetings all the 
 same to do all I felt free to do. Preachers 
 were invited from the city to lend a hand, and 
 among the rest a young man came who had won 
 a name among us as a revivalist, and, as I 
 found, was much given to preaching sermons 
 fraught with lurid fire; and in the last sermon 
 I heard from him he closed with this figure: 
 " If you could hold your hand," he said, " in 
 the flame of this lamp but a few moments, can 
 you imagine the agony of such a burning? 
 But this is no more than a faint and poor 
 intimation of the eternal burning in the fires of 
 hell which awaits you if you do not repent 
 the burning not for a few moments, but for- 
 evermore and some sinner now in this church 
 may be there before to-morrow morning." The 
 sermon turned me sick of heart. I wanted to 
 rise and say, That is not true, not one word of 
 it. I brand it in His name whose mercy en- 
 dureth forever, and in the name of his Christ 
 who came to seek and to save that which was 
 lost. No sermon so lurid had ever been preached 
 before in my hearing; and, when the young 
 man closed with the words I hold in my memory, 
 [ 76 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 the old minister uttered a loud amen, and the 
 brethren seemed to be pleased with the discourse. 
 I left the church almost instantly. It was the 
 sharp turning-point in my way as it seems to me 
 now. I had always believed that more would 
 find their way into heaven than my church was 
 ready to admit even by her evangel of free 
 grace, so I was not considered quite sound when 
 we would talk of these things out of meeting; 
 but from that evening my heart turned toward 
 the larger faith and hope I have held through 
 so many years without dubitation or debate: 
 I could not do otherwise. And yet I have 
 touched this memory for another reason far 
 more welcome. Fine old Thomas Fuller tells of 
 a young man in his time who would make your 
 hair stand up and your heart sink down when 
 he preached one of these sermons full of the 
 wrath of God; but, as he grew older, it was 
 noticed he grew more gentle, and said his damn 
 with a difference. So I hope it may well be 
 true now of the young man whose sermon I hold 
 in my memory, and I believe beyond all question 
 this is true of the discourses in my mother 
 church. I love to go now and then to hear her 
 ministers of mark in her pulpits: I never hear 
 such things said by any chance. The sermons 
 [ 77 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 as a rule are blended of sweetness and light: 
 the doctrine of free grace has taken on larger 
 and more gracious meanings in sermons and 
 prayers. Indeed I think such fireful things 
 are only to be heard now in the dark places of 
 our land. One of these I did hear on a Sunday 
 not many years ago when I was coming home 
 on the steamer from my motherland. I use the 
 word in no harsh or evil sen^e when I say the 
 preacher gave us hell; for indeed, as it seemed, 
 he gave us nothing else that evening. And, as 
 we walked out of the saloon, a lady said to me, 
 " That was a remarkable sermon, sir." " Yes," 
 I answered, " I have not heard one I can com- 
 pare to it in many years." The minister 
 not a Methodist was from South Carolina 
 and so was the lady, as I learned. 
 
 [78]
 
 XI 
 
 Now I must dwell on some memories which 
 are only and always full to me of a sweet 
 satisfaction, and will be to the end. I had 
 made up my mind that I should never stand 
 in one of those pulpits again. The old mother 
 had done with me for good or bad and 
 all, and it may well be the brethren thought so 
 too that day. I am now close to the memories 
 of our life in Chicago, where for more than 
 twenty years I was the minister of the Second 
 Unitarian Church. The church was burned in 
 the great fire in 1871, and the home we owned, 
 as well as almost all the homes in our parish. 
 These must all be restored as they were, our 
 home among them; and then in the winter of 
 1872-73 I went into the lecture field, which 
 was very fertile in those days, and lectured for 
 six months from Belfast in Maine to far away 
 in Minnesota, earning the money thereby to lift 
 the mortgage on the home. 
 
 While lecturing in Philadelphia, I went out 
 to stay over Sunday with our old friends, James 
 [79]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 and Lucretia Mott, who lived near the old home 
 church, where I had been suspended from my 
 ministry. I told them on the Sunday morning 
 I would go to the church, and my hostess said, 
 " I will go with thee." I went to our own pew, 
 while Mrs. Mott sat near the door on the 
 women's side; and, as the minister then in 
 charge passed up the aisle, she " gave me away," 
 told him who I was sitting in that pew, 
 and he came round, held out his hand, and 
 invited me most earnestly to take the sermon, 
 and, if I pleased, the whole service, because he 
 knew the people would be most glad to hear 
 me. He knew about the old trouble, of course, 
 but did not care. I did not want to preach 
 that morning, and said so. Then he said, " Will 
 you come up and speak to them when I am 
 through?" This I would do gladly; and, 
 when the sermon closed, he said, " An old friend 
 and long-time member of your church is with 
 us this morning, who has promised to speak to 
 you, and I am sure you will be glad to hear 
 him." They wist not who I was, and looked 
 at me, as I still remember, with a touch of 
 wonder in their eyes; but, when I began to 
 speak, there was a rustle as when the summer's 
 breath passes over the ripening wheat. How 
 [ 80 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 happy I was to speak to them once more from 
 the old pulpit! There was no word or whisper 
 of the break between us some fourteen years 
 before. I spoke to them of our life together 
 in the old time, and then on my memories, all 
 sweet and good now, of 
 
 " The kind, the true, the brave, the sweet, 
 Who walk with us no more," 
 
 and their hearts answered to mine as face an- 
 swers to face in a mirror. Then there was 
 the last hymn, and the prayer and benediction, 
 and, when I came down, there was the good 
 warm greeting first of all from an old English- 
 man and dear friend who rushed up to me with 
 the tears in his eyes and said, " When ye got 
 up to speak, I did not know who it wer; but, 
 when I heerd your voice, I knew you right 
 away, and said, ' That's brother Collyer.' " 
 
 Nor was this a mere flash in the pan. After 
 we came to New York they wrote me to say 
 they wanted to raise some money, and would 
 I come over and give them a lecture in the 
 church ; and I was glad to say " Aye," gave 
 the lecture on the old terms of the local preacher, 
 and got them quite a little pot of money. 
 Some years after this my good Albert Engle 
 [ 81 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 died, and Mrs. Engle, with the family, would 
 fain have me come over to take the service at 
 his funeral. Albert, you will remember, was 
 the man who said, " Come to my store for all 
 you need," in the panic of 1857. The score 
 had long ago been closed of debt, but not my 
 debt of gratitude. I went over, took the serv- 
 ices, and told the people, who had come from far 
 and wide for he was held in great esteem 
 what he had done so long ago for me and mine. 
 I stayed over the Sunday, and went in the 
 morning to our old home church, to find it was 
 their communion service, at which the minister 
 asked me to give the address. I was glad to 
 do this ; but, as I looked over the congregation, 
 I saw only one of my contemporaries together 
 with the old friend who had been my near 
 neighbor when I must leave the church. The 
 rest had " fallen on sleep." Yet I saw many 
 faces I had loved to see there so long ago, 
 not with my eyes, but my heart sight, as we 
 all do. I was in full fellowship again in the old 
 home church. Those I had left as children 
 were mature men and women now in homes of 
 their own, and I was still Brother Collyer. 
 
 There, in the church-yard, were the stones 
 of memorial over the graves, and very near 
 [ 82 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 where I stood the dust of the little maid, who 
 was taken to dwell with the angels fifty years 
 ago now our first great sorrow our angel 
 Agnes from that time ; and the twins which were 
 born after lay there also: they were only a day 
 old when they were taken. So, when we set up 
 our stone of memorial over the little graves, we 
 had given them no names, and had engraven on 
 the stone these " whose names are written in 
 heaven." One memory more must close this, 
 shall I call it, chapter. 
 
 I was on the Sound steamer last summer, 
 going east, and, sitting by a gentleman who 
 lives in the South, we talked about many things, 
 and among them some word was said about 
 Ogontz, once Shoemakertown, where we had 
 lived so long. He did not even suspect who I 
 was, and began to tell me things about myself, 
 asking me if I knew this ego. I said I had 
 known him a long while, had indeed lived there 
 once for some time. And he told me he was 
 quite apt to go there when he came North, that 
 some little children of mine Mr. Collyer's 
 were buried in the church-yard at Milestown, 
 and he always went to look at their graves. 
 So I must needs tell him who I was, and say 
 some fitting word out of my heart to the good 
 [ 83]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 man, a sort of free minister, as I found, 
 among the Quakers, very much given to think 
 his own thoughts and take his own way. 
 
 But now another very dear memory clasps 
 hands with these over which I have lingered. A 
 longing took me to have the same welcome in 
 the motherland and the churches there, where I 
 began to preach in the later forties. I was get- 
 ting on in years, had crossed the sea six times to 
 see the kinsfolk and old friends, to wander over 
 the moors and along the green lanes so familiar 
 still, to hear the skylark singing in the lift of 
 the blue, drop in to see the old friends who were 
 left, and eat a bit of haver cake if there was any 
 hanging on the bread flake, to be a boy again, 
 and then the young man to whom, as my faith 
 stands also, the Lord said, " Get thee out of thy 
 country, and from thy kindred, and from thy 
 father's house, unto a land which I will shew 
 thee." And on every visit I had met old friends, 
 members of the churches, who were right glad 
 to see me I was sure ; but on each visit, the num- 
 ber was still less, they had gone to their rest, 
 " out of the body to God." 
 
 And always I had preached in our own church 
 in Leeds, one of the best in our denomination, 
 and most prosperous, as well as in other churches 
 [ 84]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 of our order far and wide, so that I was quite 
 well known, and might perhaps be entitled to 
 the term an old man used in Western New 
 York, who came forward after a lecture and 
 said, " I should like to shake hands with you, 
 sir: you are quite notorious in these parts." 
 We shook hands forthwith. 
 
 This was the situation when five years ago 
 last summer I wanted to cross the sea once more, 
 it may well be for the last time, crossed with 
 the longing which had not abated, but with no 
 hope that it would be made good. I had never 
 whispered my desire to any man or woman in 
 the old communion, or, so far as I remember, to 
 any other man or woman, while, if I had told 
 my secret to any friend, and he had asked me 
 to name the churches in the old communion in 
 which I would love of all things, or churches, in 
 the world to be heard, I should have answered, 
 These three, the old meeting-house in Adding- 
 ham where I made my first effort and came to 
 grief; the church in Ilkley, where I bid fair to 
 make a good rail to stop the gaps ; and the small 
 meeting-house on the hill in the hamlet where I 
 was raised. Our family had left many years 
 before, but was still remembered in here and 
 there a home. These would have been my first, 
 [ 85]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 and, indeed my only, choice, while this is now 
 m J jy an d m y wonder, that I was invited 
 to preach in these three and no fourth, as if 
 they alone had known my secret. About a week 
 after I arrived in Leeds a gentleman came with 
 the invitation from the first I have named, and 
 would not hear me when, like a maiden who 
 receives a proposal from the man she loves and 
 means of course to accept, I was a little shy, 
 saying I was a Unitarian, and, if I preached for 
 them, it would make trouble, and so on. He 
 just whistled my words down the wind. This 
 was all settled, he said. The senior minister had 
 said I should be right welcome, so had the peo- 
 ple ; and so I said, " All right," and took the 
 service. It was a great congregation, filling 
 the old chapel to the doors, if I might judge 
 from what an old friend, a stone delver, whose 
 tools I made and sharpened fifty years before, 
 said, who told me he came to " t' chapel, but 
 couldn't git in." Then the senior minister, Rev. 
 Joseph Dawson, wrote me from Ilkley, where 
 they had built a noble church and where I 
 preached on the Sunday before we started to 
 find our new home, bidding the old friends good- 
 bye. He invited me most cordially to come 
 and preach for them, and to be his guest in the 
 [ 86 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 manse. I stayed with him and his good sunny- 
 hearted helpmeet three days, and we communed 
 together like brothers beloved ; and, as when the 
 priest from Canada stayed with Eliot, the apos- 
 tle to the Indians, he says it was delightful to 
 find how much of the divine truth they held in 
 common, so I felt when I stayed those three 
 days, all too brief, at the manse. 
 
 I have always kept in rather close touch with 
 my old town, so that after the forty-eight years 
 I was no stranger. Many old friends had gone 
 and few were left, but the new and the old gave 
 me as great welcome as my heart could desire. 
 
 There, on the hill in the small chapel, where 
 no man remembered me, and only one woman, 
 who went to her rest when this new year came in, 
 there was the same heart-whole welcome. This 
 is the story of what came to pass in the old 
 mother church I had left in sorrow that it must 
 be so, and was welcomed just as I was and had 
 been through the many years to the good old 
 mother's home and heart. And, as I turned my 
 face hitherward, I said, " I have had my heart's 
 desire." 
 
 [ 87 1
 
 XII 
 
 I wonder whether it was wise to wander away 
 from these memories in my last script, as they 
 follow each other in strict sequence, to tell you 
 how the desire of my heart was given me in 
 that warm welcome at the old home church at 
 Milestown once and again, and then in the three 
 churches of the old faith and fellowship with 
 which my life was blended in the motherland. 
 
 The truth is the impulse to do this there and 
 then was not to be resisted or to save them for a 
 final chapter. It overcame me, as when we want 
 to go at once and tell dear friends about some 
 stroke of good fortune that has come to us we 
 did not hope for that will make more sweet and 
 fruitful the whole tenor of our life. 
 
 The warm welcome was given to me just as 
 I was and must be in faith and fellowship to 
 the end of my life, the boon I longed for, 
 but must not ask for; while it may be this was 
 one fair reason that in all the years of my min- 
 istry since I became what I am I had said no 
 [ 88 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 word I can now remember against the mother 
 church or the faith she holds and maintains. 
 The story is told of an old lady at Brighton in 
 England who was so wrought up by, a sermon 
 she heard against the Quakers in the early 
 times that she broke the windows of their meet- 
 ing-house with her Bible as she went home. I 
 could never use my Bible for such a purpose, 
 even to crack a pane. John Wesley was, and 
 is still, my Saint John of the later time. In- 
 deed there is a sermon somewhere in the barrel, 
 in which I have tried to tell the great and 
 beautiful story of his life, so far as it can be 
 told in, say, forty minutes, with no ifs or buts 
 from the first sentence to the last, and in praise 
 of the church he founded, which has been and 
 is now one of the grandest forces in the reli- 
 gious life of our common Christendom, as I 
 most surely believe. To say this was the main 
 reason why I left the home in the lane where 
 we sat, my wife and I, that evening, when the 
 key had been turned on the pulpits, and when 
 there was no word or look of blame from the 
 brave and true helpmeet, but only of good 
 cheer. Ten years before, when I had made up 
 my mind to emigrate, and some months after 
 we had found each other, the memory has 1- 
 [ 89 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 ways dwelt in my heart of an evening when I 
 said to her, after much debate in my own mind: 
 " We cannot foresee what will be our fortune 
 when we have crossed the sea. It may be hard 
 for us to get a good start, and I can stand it; 
 but you have been used to a softer and more 
 gentle life. And so, if you think it will be best, 
 we will bid each other good-bye at the church- 
 door or in your home when we are married. 
 Then, when I am in good work and can make 
 a home, I will come over for you or you can 
 come over to me, as we think best." I can never 
 forget that evening as we stood under the stars 
 my right hand could sooner forget its cun- 
 ning how there was silence for a few mo- 
 ments, and then, with no preface, she answered 
 me in these words from the lovely idyl in the 
 holy book : " Whither thou goest, I will go ; 
 whither thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people 
 shall be my people, and thy God my God; 
 whither thou diest, I will die, and there will I 
 be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, 
 if aught but death part thee and me." The 
 time came soon after this evening for the wed- 
 ding, when we made the vows in the presence 
 of the minister and friends; but I have often 
 thought the words said, as we stood under the 
 [ 90 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 stars, were still more sacred to me than those 
 we said in the church. 
 
 The words were not said again that evening 
 when I came home from the conference or ever 
 again, because there was no need: it would be 
 a vain repetition. Some old friends who were 
 not in the church came also to cheer me and 
 ask me to hold a service in a small hall they 
 could hire, for they were not content that I 
 should preach no more; but I was not prepared 
 to begin again on my own account or theirs. 
 Still, I agreed to hold one service, the first or 
 the farewell, and speak to those who would 
 come to hear me of some things that lay near 
 my heart; and the service was held on the next 
 Sunday, the first and the last in the valley for 
 many a year. 
 
 In Scotland they say, " When one door steeks, 
 anither opens," and within a month one opened 
 I could not have dreamed of which has never 
 been closed in these forty-five years to the very 
 week when I pen these words. Now and then 
 on a Sunday I would walk into the city to hear 
 my dear Father Furness, who was teaching me 
 many things; and one of these days, when I 
 went down, there was a stranger in the pulpit. 
 So I must of course stay and hear him. It 
 [ 91 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 was Dr. Livermore, the editor in those days of 
 our New York organ, the Christian Inquirer, 
 and he had come, I think, on the double errand 
 to give Brother Furness a labor of love and 
 then to hunt up or hunt down subscribers 
 for the paper, which amounts to about the same 
 thing. Dr. Furness introduced me to the 
 preacher after the service, and asked me to go 
 home to dinner with him, whereat I did not begin 
 to make excuses with the men in the Gospels 
 who were invited to the great supper, but went 
 gladly. 
 
 This was some time before I came to grief in 
 the conference. We talked of many things in 
 the afternoon, then I went home; and in the 
 week after I had spoken in the hall a note came 
 from Dr. Furness, asking me to come on the 
 next Sunday. So I went, with no dream of 
 what he wanted to see me for any more than the 
 babe unborn. It was to consult me about a 
 letter he had received from Chicago and from 
 our Unitarian church. " The church," he said, 
 " employs a minister-at-large to help the poor 
 in their city. The man they have employed 
 has broken down and can do no more, and now 
 they want a man to take his place. They 
 wrote," he continued, " to Dr. Livermore, ask-
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 ing him if he could help them to find a man 
 in the East who could fill the gap. And in 
 his answer he told them to write me about a 
 young blacksmith he met here one Sunday, a 
 Methodist local preacher of a liberal mind and 
 make, who might be the man they wanted. So 
 they wrote to me, and I answered their letter; 
 and here is the letter they have sent you in an- 
 swer to mine. Will you take it home, think it 
 well gver, and then come again next Sunday 
 and tell me what you will do ? " 
 
 The letter held a hearty invitation to come out 
 to Chicago and take charge of their ministry- 
 at-large to the poor, with due instructions about 
 what my work would be. I read the letter care- 
 fully, and then said : " I do not need a week, 
 sir, to make up my mind and consult with the 
 mother. We will go." 
 
 It was one of those pregnant moments I have 
 told you of before, when the tide must be taken 
 at the turn without hesitation or debate. The 
 light shone again on the way I must go, and 
 this was all I needed so far, while I was sure 
 the mother would stand true to the vow she 
 made as we stood that evening under the stars ; 
 and so it was. She did not cast a pebble in 
 the way, but said " Amen " right heartily. And 
 [ 93 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 I began to inquire about this far-away city. I 
 am not sure now that I had heard one word about 
 it, and am quite sure that Pekin is not so strange 
 a city to me now as our home for more than 
 twenty years was then. One man in the forge 
 had been there, I found. I asked him to tell 
 me all he knew about Chicago, and the sub- 
 stance of his knowledge was this: the place was 
 all mud when he was there, and the water you 
 had to drink was brought from the lake in 
 barrels and peddled from house to house. He 
 was only there a few weeks, so many years ago, 
 and then he cleared out and came East, as he 
 thought I should. My employer had lived in 
 Illinois when he was a younger man. He had 
 been to Chicago, and advised me not to go, and 
 said also for my comfort that, if we went, we 
 should return, and he would keep my fire for 
 me and anvil; for this I thanked him kindly, 
 but said, " We are going to stay." We 
 talked these things over in the home, and began 
 to arrange for the moving. The managers of 
 the ministry-at-large wanted me to come out 
 at once. This I could do ; mother said she must 
 have time to sell the household goods at auction, 
 have everything ship-shape for herself and the 
 children, and then come out to me. So in 
 [ 94 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 February I went West, and in April she came 
 with the children, safe and sound, and would 
 tell me to the last how good James Mott and 
 Lucretia had been in helping her to get a good 
 ready, and how he had come with them to the 
 train and said, " Now is there anything more 
 thee thinks I can do?" It was a journey of 
 about forty-four hours or it may be more 
 in those days from Philadelphia to Chicago, 
 with no Pullman cars or their like. Mr. Pull- 
 man indeed was at work then, or soon after, 
 in the city, raising great buildings to a higher 
 plane : the whole Marine Block, I remember, was 
 one of them, and another was the Tremont 
 Hotel. The grand stroke of his life was wait- 
 ing in his good brain to be done, and make 
 millions of folk his debtors. But there we were, 
 all safe and sound; and, when the mother and 
 children came, I was busy at the work they 
 had engaged me to do for the poor. And here 
 is a rough outline of my work. 
 
 I must look after the poor, as one man said, 
 the Lord's poor, our own poor, and the devil's 
 poor; for I should find them all in Chicago. 
 Try by all means to set them on their feet and 
 help them to go straight, if possible. Find 
 homes for girls and boys on farms or in good 
 C 95 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 homes in the country, where their work would 
 be worth their home and education. Hold a 
 night school and a Sunday-school, mainly, as I 
 found, for the children of the emigrants who 
 were flocking there from Germany in those 
 times, and the managers would give me all the 
 teachers I might need.
 
 XIII 
 
 It was welcome work for me, and mother was 
 my good helpmeet and inspiration. She did 
 not lend a hand, she gave it for keeps ; and she 
 was my wise monitor in the time of need. One 
 memory, the most sacred of all now, she would 
 forbid me to touch if she was here with us still. 
 A man came one day to see if I could do any- 
 thing to help a poor girl who had been left 
 in a wretched den to die. I went at once to see 
 her, and found she was, as we say, a " lost 
 woman." I could find no refuge for her any- 
 where in the city. So, when I came home, I told 
 mother my trouble. She was silent some time 
 after I had said, " Can you do anything? " 
 And then she answered : " There is only one 
 thing we can do: we have a spare room, we 
 must take her in. It is hard. Here are the 
 children; but we can keep the poor creature 
 apart in that room, and I will look after her." 
 So this was done. In about a month she was 
 well. We wanted to find her a place to work. 
 Mother often told me in the after time how she 
 [ 97 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 had spoken to her about the life she had lived 
 and the life she might live, but could make 
 no impression on her heart or mind. She left 
 us, with no thanks even when she was well, and 
 went to her own place. She had no tears to 
 shed at the feet of the holy one of God, or 
 box of ointment to break. She was still a " lost 
 woman." The schools prospered. The boys 
 were eager to learn " de English," as they 
 would tell me: then they would be American. 
 This was their great purpose, and for years 
 after I gave up this ministry, when they were 
 grown men, one and another would stop me on 
 the street and tell me they were my old scholars 
 in the night school or the Sunday-school when 
 they were boys. 
 
 And now another memory comes to me which 
 may cast a gleam of light on our success in 
 the Sunday-school, and on the way they learned 
 their lessons. One of the classes had been work- 
 ing their way through the life of Moses, from 
 his infancy to his call to be the deliverer of 
 the tribes from their bondage. I had noticed 
 how one bright boy would wrestle, head well 
 down, with the story. So I picked him out one 
 Sunday to see how much he had learned, and 
 here are the questions and answers: 
 [ 98]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 " What have you learned about Moses, my 
 boy ? " " The king's daughter, she found him 
 when he was a baby, in a box in the rushes down 
 by the river, and took him home to nuss him." 
 " Did she nurse him herself? " " No, she hired 
 a woman to. nuss him, and it was his own 
 mother ; but she didn't know that." " And 
 what did Moses do then? " " He grew to be a 
 man." " And what did he do when he was a 
 man?" "He killed another man." "Then 
 what did he do ? " " Buried him in the sand." 
 " What did he do after he had buried him in the 
 sand? " " He run away and went to keeping 
 sheep on the prairie." " Did he stay there all 
 his life? " " No, he quit that because he saw 
 a bush afire." " Did that scare him, so that he 
 ran away and left his sheep ? " " No, some- 
 thing talked to him in the bush, and told him 
 to go back home; and it was the Lord what 
 talked to him." " And what did the Lord say ? " 
 " He told him to take his boots off." And here 
 ended our lesson on the early life of Moses, at 
 which I smiled and said, " You have done well, 
 my boy, very well indeed." 
 
 So the schools prospered, and in some fair 
 degree the ministry to the poor. I liked my 
 work, and, so far as I can judge now, would 
 [ 99 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 have been glad to go right on with it to the end 
 of my life; but this was not to be. There 
 is an inscription over the main doorway of the 
 old castle at Harewood, some miles from Ilkley, 
 which runs, " Vat sal be sal." I think of it 
 sometimes as I muse over the years, " What 
 shall be shall," and also those lines of Cardinal 
 Newman " A strong and gentle pressure tells 
 me I am not self -moving, but borne upward on 
 my way." 
 
 Rev. George A. Noyes was the minister of 
 the church in Chicago. I went at once to re- 
 port my arrival, and he greeted me warmly, 
 and with his wife, then and still my dear friend, 
 made me welcome to their home whenever I was 
 pleased to come. He also asked me to preach 
 for his people on the second Sunday after I 
 arrived. This was a risk, but he took it, the 
 dear good fellow! But there I was less than 
 a month from my anvil and fire, with horny 
 hands and not very fair to see after all the 
 scrubbing. 
 
 My heart was in my mouth, as we say, and 
 the word was not written. It was something 
 from the text, " They joy before thee accord- 
 ing to the joy in harvest," a word I had 
 said in the home church when I was in good 
 
 [ 100 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 standing. There was no such help from on 
 high as that which came to me on the moorside 
 and in the small schoolhouse. Still there were 
 those in the church who would tell me after 
 many years how they still remembered the ser- 
 mon. Please do not think I am blowing that 
 trumpet again: one and another did tell me 
 they were glad to hear me that day, and this 
 was welcome; for you see it was in some sort 
 my " trial sermon," and I should be glad to 
 try again, as I presently found I must. 
 
 Brother Noyes for this he was had 
 made up his mind to resign and go East. He 
 had " approved himself a minister that needeth 
 not to be ashamed," and I was present in a 
 company of the members when they besought 
 him to stay ; but he said he must resign, and 
 this he did very soon. 
 
 Then the foretelling of the old miller came 
 true about the spare rail. It was a far cry in 
 those days to Boston, where the church must 
 go for men to supply the pulpit from which 
 again they might choose another minister. 
 Brother Noyes had said in his parting words 
 that, while the pulpit was vacant, he was glad 
 to say here was a man meaning me who 
 would take the services; and I will not tell 
 [ 101 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 you what he said besides. They sent out 
 good men from New England, each, if I remem- 
 ber, for a month; anl I heard them all, to 
 my delight, Dr. Briggs, Dr. Thompson, Dr. 
 Sears, Charles Brigham, Mr. Woodbury, Dr. 
 Stebbins of Portland, and more I do not remem- 
 ber, who have all done their good days' work 
 and gone to their rest. But between those who 
 came out to fill the pulpit there would still be 
 gaps when the supplies did not meet and tie, 
 and then they would fall back on the spare rail 
 they had always with them, so that the church 
 was never closed for a single Sunday. I think 
 the church paid me something for over time, 
 but do not remember what it was, all I was 
 worth no doubt. But my great reward lay 
 in the sermons I heard from the men who came 
 out, and brought of their best, as was meet and 
 right. These were of a worth to me I cannot 
 estimate. They were my theological school: 
 each one had his message and his lessons for 
 me, and how greedily I drank them in, to be 
 sure ! I knew what I did not believe and would 
 not preach ; they gave me great and noble affir- 
 mations and some insight of the way to state 
 them, so that to this day I am grateful for 
 what I learned from their lips and their hearts. 
 [ 102 ]
 
 XIV 
 
 I was more than content in my ministry-at- 
 large. The church gave me a free hand, and 
 my heart was in the work. Nor did I care 
 much for the distinction drawn for my guidance 
 between God's poor and the others, because I 
 could not make it work. I began very soon 
 also to dream of a religious service we might 
 hold in the upper room where we held the week- 
 night and Sunday sessions of the schools, a 
 service which might bloom out into a church for 
 my poor; but this was not to be. 
 
 Chicago is a three-quarter city, or, if this 
 term touches her dignity, we will say a three- 
 sided city, the South Side, the West, and the 
 North. The first church of our name was built 
 on the South Side, which was then, and is still, 
 the centre of the great city, and had grown 
 strong in the ministry of Brother Rush R. 
 Shippen, who is still to the fore with the eager 
 heart and fervent fire of his earlier years, no 
 white ashes where the fire was, as it seems to 
 his lovers and friends. The city had given 
 [ 103]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 to each denomination the land on which to build 
 their first church on the South Side, with the 
 proviso that, when a society was organized on 
 the West and North Sides within a certain time 
 set forth in the grant, they should each have one- 
 quarter in land on which to build. The society 
 on the North Side was organized in 1857, to 
 secure the lot on which they would build as 
 soon as they could see their way; but they had 
 held no services, though they had sent a call, 
 or, it may be, a feeler, to Thomas Starr King 
 in Boston, but found he could not come on any 
 terms. You heard how they asked me to take 
 the services in the mother church after Mr. 
 Noyes left them, when the supplies from New 
 England did not meet and tie. The members 
 came there from all sides, no matter who was 
 to preach the good members and heard the 
 minister-at-large with the rest, and, as they 
 would tell me afterward, began to ask each 
 other, as they went home, whether it would not 
 be well and the best they could do to hire some 
 place on the North Side in which to hold 
 services on Sundays in the afternoon, and have 
 me take charge of them. 
 
 So a meeting was called, in which they re- 
 solved to begin and also to invite me to take 
 [ 104 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 the charge, looked round for a meeting-house, 
 and found one they hired from the Baptists, 
 where the first services were held on the last 
 Sunday in May, 1859; and here once more my 
 helpmeet comes in. It was my own understand- 
 ing that I should take these services as a supply 
 to see what could be done, and then, if there 
 was a fair prospect of success, they would build, 
 and call a man, well endowed, to take charge 
 of the parish, and I should give my whole time 
 and strength to the ministry-at-large. 
 
 We had talked all this over in the home, and 
 mother was willing that I should take hold; 
 but, when the time drew near, I said to her: 
 " We cannot tell what will be the result of this 
 movement. This is a Unitarian society. I am 
 sure I am no longer a Methodist, but beyond 
 this I am in a mist. I must preach the truth 
 as it comes to me, and you may not like the 
 sermons. So please do not go with me one 
 step farther if you do not feel free to do so, 
 but stay in the old church." This was about 
 all I said, and she answered me not one word 
 there, and then there was no need: she had said 
 her last word ten years before as we stood under 
 the stars. But now, on the Sunday afternoon 
 when I came out of our room ready to go 
 E 105 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 my lone self, if I must, there she stood in the 
 living-room, and turned to me with a sweet 
 smile and shining eyes, all ready to fulfill her 
 vow " Whither thou goest I will go " hat 
 on, gloves on, ready before I was; and so we 
 went together hand in hand through the thirty 
 years which remained. 
 
 This was in the spring of the year. The 
 Western Conference was held that year in Mil- 
 waukee. I went to the conference, and I found 
 the brethren wanted to ordain me and make 
 me a full-fledged minister of our faith. They 
 did not ask me where I stood, but went in the 
 face of the apostle's warning, " Lay hands sud- 
 denly on no man " ; and I did not say them nay 
 or tell them I was ordained already by the good 
 old farmer on the moorside. My friend and 
 brother of the many years, Rev. A. D. Mayo, 
 preached the ordination sermon; but who took 
 the other parts I do not now remember. Then 
 the president of the conference, Dr. Hosmer 
 of Buffalo, laid his hands on me, and blessed 
 me in a very sweet and tender prayer. They 
 had asked no questions about my beliefs. I 
 was glad for this, because I should have been 
 puzzled to answer them; nor did any man try 
 to tell me what I should preach or not preach, 
 [ 106 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 and I was glad for that, because I wanted to 
 walk free. And I may close this memory with 
 one of the last summer when I fell in with a 
 gentleman who told me he was present at my 
 ordination, and, talking with Dr. Hosmer about 
 the wide door they had opened for me, the 
 dear old saint said, Well, I had talked with him 
 before the conference, and found I did not want 
 to teach him anything except how to read a 
 hymn. 
 
 I came home to take hold of the new work 
 and do the best I could for the infant church 
 and my ministry-at-large (for both were on my 
 hands), and so far as I remember was never 
 tired. 
 
 There was no time to write sermons. Indeed, 
 I had never written one since I began my min- 
 istry as a local preacher. The sermons were 
 in my head or my heart, or both; but I had 
 made notes after I came to Chicago on half a 
 sheet of note-paper, to help me keep in line. 
 Good old Master Fuller says, " Some young 
 ministers in our time take a text for a kind of 
 horse-block wherefrom, when they have mounted, 
 they canter away, and you see them no more 
 until they dismount at the end of the sermon " ; 
 but I soon found this would not do. I had been 
 [ 107 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 sitting at the feet of those ministers from New 
 England, and learned, as I listened, that I must 
 not canter away from my text. So I began 
 to make my skeletons, and trust in the Spirit 
 to breathe on them and make the dry bones live. 
 One of these Sundays I well remember, an Au- 
 gust afternoon, so hot that I wore a linen duster. 
 My text was " Enoch walked with God," and 
 the dry bones lived that day. I wrote the 
 words down in spare moments. It was the first 
 sermon in manuscript I ever owned. Some who 
 read these memories may have seen it in one of 
 my books, and I shall preach it again on Sun- 
 day. 
 
 A grandson of Dr. Bancroft told me that, 
 when his grandsire was far on in years, he 
 would preach an old sermon to his people in 
 Worcester when the humor took him toward 
 the close of his ministry of forty-one years, 
 but made no note of day or year. He took one 
 for this purpose on a Sunday morning he had 
 repeated often in the many years, but had for- 
 gotten all about it, and said to one of his deacons 
 as he came out of church, " How did you like 
 the sermon, sir? " " Very much, doctor," the 
 good man answered. " I always did like that 
 [ 108 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 sermon." So I suspect the elders will say on 
 Sunday, or hope they will. 
 
 But I am rambling again, and must return 
 to the little church on the corner. By mid- 
 summer in this first year the society had made 
 up its mind to build. The congregation was 
 growing, and new families were added to the 
 church, so we were much encouraged. The lot 
 was bought, the plans made, the builder found, 
 and the church opened for dedication on Christ- 
 mas Day, when Dr. Hosmer came from Buffalo 
 to preach the sermon and lay his benediction on 
 the infant church, as he had laid it on me at 
 the conference in the spring. Then I thought 
 my work for the church was done, and I must 
 give all my time to the ministry-at-large. So 
 I asked the trustees to meet me on a week-day 
 evening, and, when we came together, told them 
 they must now find a man to take charge of the 
 church and parish, and I would give my whole 
 time to the ministry-at-large, but would lend a 
 hand still when I was needed in both churches. 
 
 I still remember their surprise. They had 
 
 not thought of such a thing, they said. The 
 
 society wanted me and not another man. I told 
 
 them frankly what indeed they knew in some 
 
 [ 109 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 sort that I had come to them right out of the 
 forge less than a year before, had no education 
 or training for the work they would have me 
 do, with more of the same tenor, but could not 
 move them. Then they said, " Will you agree 
 to this proposal, that we shall write to any 
 ministers in our body you may, name, and seek 
 their counsel as to what you ought to do? " 
 I agreed to this, and said I would stand to their 
 answer. Four men were named Dr. Eliot of 
 St. Louis, Dr. Hosmer of Buffalo, Dr. Bellows 
 of New York, and Dr. James Freeman Clarke 
 of Boston who answered with one consent 
 that I must take the church. 
 
 [ 110 ]
 
 XV 
 
 So I was " called," with due form and cere- 
 mony, to be the minister of Unity Church, but 
 with more fear than faith that I should be able 
 to meet the demand, and said one day, when 
 fear had me fast : " Mother, I think it was a 
 mistake all round. In a year from now I shall 
 not have another word to say. It will be drop- 
 ping buckets into empty wells." She must have 
 been busy and did not want to be bothered with 
 my moods ; for I see her turn to me with some- 
 thing in her hand she is still doing, and she 
 says : " Don't bother me with such nonsense ! 
 Yours is not a cistern: it is a living spring. 
 Keep it running clear and deepen your well 
 when you must, and you will have more to say 
 in a year from now than you have ever had be- 
 fore in your life." So the natives in the South 
 Sea Islands say of a missionary who has such 
 a helpmeet, " He is a two right-hand man." 
 
 We found an assistant for the ministry-at- 
 large, a good trained woman, who could not only 
 help me, but teach me some good lessons. So 
 [ 111 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 the work went on nicely through the winter, to 
 my pure content; and then along in the heart 
 of June my ministry took on a wider meaning. 
 
 A tornado or cyclone, or both, had swept 
 through Iowa, with a besom of destruction to 
 life and life's values. The good heart of our 
 city responded at once to the cry for succor. 
 You may still trust Chicago to do that. The 
 Board of Trade formed a committee of its 
 members to take action, money was subscribed 
 swiftly a large sum for those days and, 
 being what I was, they asked me to take charge 
 of the money and go over into Iowa to help 
 them. 
 
 I went at once the church, then and al- 
 ways, was glad to let me go on these errands 
 and touched the track of the destroyer first at 
 the pretty town of Camanche, where my heart 
 ached at what I saw and heard of the ravage, 
 and from thence took a wagon and went west- 
 ward on the zigzag out to Cedar Rapids, ask- 
 ing, as we went along, for those in sore dis- 
 tress, and helping them from my store. This 
 is no place to tell the story of the great dis- 
 aster. I told it at some length in a sermon 
 when I got home, but that was burnt in the 
 great fire, with many more. But two memories 
 
 I "* 1
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 still stand clear, one of a woman that holds 
 a gleam of humor, and the other of a man who 
 made good the scripture, " A wise man seeth 
 the danger, and hideth himself." The rest I 
 need not cite. The woman, they told me, had 
 been sadly hurt, and was staying at such a farm 
 in Eden township. I went, and found her lying 
 helpless in her room, and held out my hand, as 
 I told her my errand. She did not lift her hand, 
 but said, " I am so sorry, sir, but both my 
 arms are broken." Then, as we chatted (for 
 she was a cheerful soul) she told me of her life. 
 " I am alone," she said, " and go out nursing 
 for my living, and was getting on real nice, so 
 that I had saved money to buy a new dress. 
 It was a barege, real barege; and it was not 
 made up. But the house where I was staying was 
 blown all away, and my dress I do not know 
 where it went, nobody can tell me; and it was 
 real barege, the first I ever had " And then 
 she quite broke down. I comforted her the best 
 I knew, and one pleasant gleam rests on the 
 small room to this day. I made sure she should 
 have a new dress, real beyond all question. 
 
 My wise man was a farmer, who had pros- 
 pered by deserving, I was sure, so that he had 
 been able to build a new house of brick ; but the
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 tornado had literally crushed the brick into 
 small fragments and wrecked everything about 
 the place, which was strewn with the fragments 
 and splinters, and the tires of the wagon wheels 
 were twisted as if some strong machine had 
 twisted them round and about. My man was 
 there alone, the mother and family were shel- 
 tered in another home beyond the line of the 
 storm, which, by the way, was hardly more than 
 half a mile wide anywhere. 
 
 " You were not hurt then," I said, " or the 
 wife and children?" "No," he answered very 
 quietly, as one still in the shadow of a great awe, 
 " and I will tell you why. When we came here, 
 the Indians used to tell about these tornadoes; 
 and we have had bad storms, but nothing like 
 this before. And I would think the thing over 
 and wonder what we should do if one came along. 
 Well, it came to me sudden, one day, what to 
 do. You see that sort o' cave in the rise near 
 by? That was the idee that came to me. We 
 would dig in there and make a root house with 
 a good strong door. Then, if the [something 
 I will not spell] did not jump on us too sudden, 
 we would rush in there and shet the door. Well, 
 things began to look skeery, sir, in the week be- 
 fore that Sunday afternoon, up above, and it
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 was stifling on the prairie, so I began to look 
 out for squalls. I had told ' my woman ' how 
 I felt, and warned her to be ready with the chil- 
 dren if the thing should come along. Well, 
 about three o'clock I was setting on that hump 
 a-watching, and all to once I see her away out 
 yonder, comin' whirlin' head on, black and 
 angry, and I ran and shouted, ' Ma, here she 
 comes ! ' She was ready with the children. 
 There was no time to spare. We rushed for the 
 root house and shet the door. She could not 
 hurt the rise and slid past the door. First there 
 was a roar, and then it was still, and then an- 
 other roar; but we were safe in the root house, 
 and, when we came out, things were what you 
 see." 
 
 They tell of an Englishman, who came over 
 sea to see how we fared, and, coming to Chicago, 
 exclaimed, " Well, she beats her own brag ! " 
 And that is true, for the double reason, first, 
 of her marvellous growth, and then because she 
 brags no more. Forty-five years ago in this 
 week when I came there, she was lifting herself 
 out of the mud, where the need was, seven feet, 
 the buildings, as I have said, with jack-screws 
 worked by the might of Irish labor houses, 
 banks, stores, and hotels while the inmates
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 stayed about their business just the same, and 
 the spaces in the streets were brought up to the 
 new level. The population in 1860 was one 
 hundred and nine thousand, and she was alive 
 to the tips of her fingers and the core of her 
 heart and brain. I had lived in the country all 
 my life, and when I came there was thirty-six 
 years of age. The life in a city was a new life, 
 and I caught something of the strong inspira- 
 tion. The rune runs, " God made the country, 
 and man made the town." The rune is not true. 
 Every great city hath foundations whose builder 
 and maker is God. We come to the strong and 
 vital cities to find ourselves: this was what be- 
 fell me in going to Chicago. There was a chal- 
 lenge in the strong and headstrong life I must 
 answer. Evil, yes, but good also to match, and 
 more than match. And well the fine old Scotch- 
 man says: 
 
 " Evil is here that we may make it good, 
 Else had good men on earth scant work to do. 
 What would you have ? In Paradise, no doubt, 
 Weeds grandly grew, and Adam plucked them out." 
 
 How good the years have been as I look back- 
 ward now, and none more full of pure satisfac- 
 tion than those twenty years in the mighty 
 C 116]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 young city! I wist not what lay before us of 
 sorrow and joy, loss and gain. I thank God 
 for that, as I sit here in the silence, sure in my 
 soul that through all the mishaps, the mistakes, 
 and the failures more than I can number, " He 
 has led me all my life long." Of these years 
 I shall try to tell the story as the memories 
 touch me, of the new-born church in the great 
 conflict for the solidarity of the republic and 
 the extinction of slavery, her steadfast contin- 
 uance in well-doing and then in the great con- 
 flagration, when the church and the homes were 
 destroyed, to be rebuilt again and established. 
 Of these things I should have told the story, al- 
 ready, but have been allured to linger, it may be 
 to small purpose; but I did want to tell you 
 how I came to be the minister of Unity Church 
 through the wide door and the warm and strong 
 welcome.
 
 XVI 
 
 I was lured away last week from the true se- 
 quence of these memories of the time when the 
 telegram told us in Chicago of the shot fired on 
 Fort Sumter which was also heard round the 
 world and of the answer our lusty and loyal 
 young city made to the challenge. The news 
 came there on the Sunday morning. The answer 
 was given in that week, when our city spake, and 
 on the next Sunday by the loyal churches and 
 their ministers ; and you would not have doubted 
 for a moment where our own church stood when 
 you went indoors that morning. You could not 
 see the pulpit: it was wrapped about in a great 
 flag, and there was another behind the minister. 
 The organ at the other end was also hung all 
 about, while others hung from the iron rods set 
 under the ceiling to hold the frame well to- 
 gether. I did not like those rods at all, and had 
 branded them in my mind as an instance of some 
 Dutch deformed style of architecture ; but now 
 they looked beautiful to me because of the ban- 
 ners.
 
 I had ransacked my memory and Bible for a 
 text from which I would try to preach my ser- 
 mon, and found it in these words of the Mas- 
 ter, " He that has no sword, let him sell his 
 garment and buy one." We sang for the first 
 hymn " Before Jehovah's awful throne," for 
 the second " America," closed with the doxol- 
 ogy, and then after the benediction we sang 
 "The Star-spangled Banner." I had felt a 
 touch of dismay over the way our people did not 
 sing, used as I had been to the singing in our 
 Methodist chapels, where we made a joyful noise 
 unto the Lord, in tune or out, it made small mat- 
 ter. Here my people with but a very few ex- 
 ceptions were content to let the choir do the 
 singing. I had exhorted them to make the 
 same joyful noise, and had made small headway. 
 I had been given to understand it was not good 
 taste. So James Freeman Clarke, in speaking 
 of this in our conference, had said, " Such good 
 taste will be the death of us." 
 
 But that morning they sang as if they would 
 lift the roof in despite of the iron rods, and my 
 soul for once was satisfied. The ice was broken 
 by that cannon-ball at Sumter, and the waters 
 flowed free. It was the first time, but by no 
 means the last. The battle-cry of freedom had
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 set the people free, and that Sunday evening 
 the young men enlisted for the rush down to 
 Cairo. 
 
 In the summer the Sanitary Commission was 
 organized, the grandest organization, to my 
 own mind, the world has ever known in its merci- 
 ful ministration for the sick and wounded on 
 the battlefield, in the hospitals, or wherever 
 help was needed, with the whole loyal nation at 
 work, until the war was over, piling up money 
 and supplies. Dr. Bellows, the minister of our 
 church All Souls in New York, was beyond 
 all other men the inspiring soul of the com- 
 mission, and its president to the end of its most 
 noble life. And he told me once that, when they 
 had taken the first steps, he went to see the com- 
 mander-in-chief of the army, to tell him what 
 they proposed to do through the commission. 
 The great man heard him with a chill civility, 
 with no word of approval, and said finally, 
 " The truth is, sir, we hate your philanthro- 
 pists" ; and the doctor answered, " Well, we hate 
 your generals, you mean bogus philanthro- 
 pists of course, and I mean bogus generals." 
 Then he went forth to do the work God had 
 given him to do. 
 
 He sent me a message in that summer, asking 
 [ 120 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 me to come down to Washington and serve on 
 the commission. I laid the matter before the 
 church on the Sunday morning, and they said 
 with one voice, " Go ! " So I went, and found 
 my work would be to visit the camps where " all 
 was quiet on the Potomac " this, you will 
 know, was after Bull Run look well into their 
 sanitary condition, and report. They gave me 
 a team with a soldier to take me from camp to 
 camp, and I think I visited them all. It was 
 not pleasant work, but the colonels were pleas- 
 ant and helpful men. Many memories lie 
 dormant of Washington in that summer, but 
 they do not touch the marrow of the matter. So 
 I will only tell you of my bad scare. I was to 
 visit a camp somewhere towards the Maryland 
 line. It was on a sunny Saturday morning; 
 and I remember, as we went past the White 
 House toward the bridge, my soldier said, " See 
 them feet, sir? " There were perhaps half a 
 dozen pairs set sole towards us at two open win- 
 dows, and my man said : " That's the Cabinet 
 a-settin'. See the big feet in the middle o' that 
 window? Them's Old Abe's." How sacred the 
 name has become since that morning! but then 
 this was the term in common use among the 
 people.
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 We crossed the bridge and pointed, as my 
 man thought, all right for the camp ; but after 
 ome time he took a wrong turn in the woods, 
 and told me he did not know how to steer. 
 " Better go right on," I said. " We shall get 
 out of the woods, and then we can take our bear- 
 ings." He went on for a while, until we came 
 to an opening in the woods and saw a ridge be- 
 fore us planted with cannon. " That's a rebel 
 battery," he whispered. " What'll we do?" 
 " Turn round," I whispered, " and make a bee- 
 line, if you can, for the river." This the good 
 fellow did, and was fortunate. We got safely 
 to the city, and told the story of our hair-breadth 
 escape leastwise I did with empressement. 
 " Where was it? " my hearers said. And after 
 Borne time it came out clear that this was the 
 Munson's Hill Battery, and those were " the 
 quaker" that is, the wooden guns, bless 
 the mark! 
 
 I went home to Chicago early in October, 
 opened the church for one Sunday, perhaps, but 
 had been asked to go to St. Louis and thence 
 through Missouri, and report from there. The 
 Western Sanitary Commission was well under 
 way by that time, and also did a noble work un- 
 til the war was over. I went to Jefferson City,
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 to see after the hospital there, where I found 
 things in good condition, and then went on to 
 the end of the route. Fremont's troops had 
 gone over, picking up sick men to take back to 
 St. Louis. This was a hard task: the troops 
 seemed to have eaten the land clean to the bone. 
 I was never so hungry, so far as I remember, 
 before or since. All we had to eat going down 
 was hard tack. The men who were helping me 
 with the sick good fellows, but so hungry 
 said, when the train halted for a few minutes, 
 " Yonder is a tavern : we will go and forage for 
 victuals." 
 
 They went, and presently came on the dead 
 run, holding something by a string, with a man 
 running after them, shouting bad words. He 
 was the tavern-keeper, a German; and it was a 
 piece of pork they had on the string. The 
 train had begun to move slowly. They had 
 just time to board the train, so had the tavern- 
 keeper; and this is how I came to know he was 
 saying bad words when I could not hear them. 
 The soldiers told me they wanted to buy the 
 pork, which was roasting before the fire, and 
 he would not sell it at any price. So one of 
 them cut the string, and they ran off with it. 
 He calmed down after another polyglot of 
 [ 123 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 blasphemy, and sat up to help them eat his 
 pork ; and, when they had dined on that and the 
 hard tack, I said to one of them, " Now let's 
 pay him for the pork." So we paid him, and he 
 got off at the first station to take a train home. 
 No, I did not eat any of that pork. 
 
 Toward sundown a bad headache came on ; 
 and, when we came to a long wait at the Cali- 
 fornia station, I must needs find some good soul 
 who would make me a cup of tea. A man on the 
 platform pointed to a house where he thought 
 I could have one, and, asking there, the woman 
 said, " I will give you your supper for a quar- 
 ter." I told her this was what I wanted, so she 
 got me my supper. It was not good, but the 
 best she had. 
 
 I found, chatting with her, that she was a 
 member of the small white church near by. So 
 for the humor of it I said, " I suppose you en- 
 tertain the ministers now and then when they 
 come round? " 
 
 " Yes," she said, " I entertain 'em all and 
 never take a cent. I would scorn to charge a 
 minister." Whereat I said with a most win- 
 some smile, " I am a minister, ma'am." 
 
 She looked me over sharply. The grime of
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 a week was on me: I was unshaven also, and 
 looked much more like a tramp. So she said 
 promptly, " You are no minister." 
 
 I drew a lot of letters from my pocket, laid 
 them in her hand, and said, " Read the address, 
 please, on those letters." 
 
 She read them. " Yes, I suppose you be a 
 minister; but be you for the North or the 
 South? " 
 
 " For the North," I answered, " every time." 
 
 " Then," she answered, " you got to pay for 
 your supper. I am for the South every time. 
 I don't feed Yanks for noth'n' ; and, if my hus- 
 band out there wa'n't a coward, he would be 
 fighting for the South this day." So I paid for 
 my supper, and my head was better. 
 
 I reported in St. Louis to my dear old friend 
 Dr. Eliot, who was giving his life for the great 
 cause; and then went home to my church to 
 leave them again for Fort Donelson. I shall tell 
 the story soon of what we tried to do there. 
 Early in April, when the news came from 
 Pittsburg Landing of the stern battles, we met 
 swiftly again, ready to lend a hand. A larger 
 number volunteered to go, and we lost no 
 time speeding down to Cairo and then up the
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 river. They had elected me to be captain of 
 the company, because, as they said, I knew the 
 ropes. 
 
 Brother Moody, with some ministers in the 
 " Christian Commission," was in the company ; 
 and, as we went up the river, he said to me: 
 " Brother Collyer, we are going to hold a 
 prayer-meeting in the saloon. Will you come 
 in and join us? " " Gladly," I answered, and 
 went. Early in the meeting he made an ad- 
 dress to us, of which the burden was that we 
 were going to the battlefield to save souls 
 or those men would die in their sins. He 
 did not say they would go to hell, but this was 
 the clear inference if we did not save them. 
 
 When he sat down, I rose to my feet and said, 
 " Brother Moody is mistaken : we are not going 
 there to save the souls of our soldiers, but to 
 save their lives and leave their souls in the 
 hands of God." Our work would be this we 
 had done at Fort Donelson ; and I outlined the 
 work, to comfort them with tender words, lay 
 on the soft linen, and cool water, wash them, 
 and see by. all means to their help and healing. 
 The great first thing was the nursing back to 
 life, and this we must do. 
 
 There was a dead silence when I sat down, 
 [ 126 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 and then a brother minister from Chicago rose 
 and said : " This is the way the Unitarians al- 
 ways go to work, from the surface inward ; but 
 we go directly to the heart first, and then work 
 out to the surface, ending where they begin. 
 We must do the one thing and not leave the 
 other undone, warn the sinner, pray with 
 him, and point him to the thief on the cross." 
 
 I rose on the instant when he sat down, and 
 said : " My friends, we know what those men 
 have done, no matter who or what they are. 
 They left their homes for the camp and the 
 battle, while we stayed behind in our city. They 
 endured hardness like good soldiers, while we 
 were lodged softly. They have fought and fal- 
 len for the flag of the Union and all the flag 
 stands for, while here we are safe and sound. I 
 will not doubt for a moment the sincerity of my 
 friend and yours who has just spoken; but I 
 will say for myself that I should be ashamed all 
 my life long if I should point to the thief on the 
 cross in speaking to these men, or to any other 
 thief the world has ever heard of." And, when 
 I sat down, there was a roar of applause. 
 
 And now another memory links in with this. 
 About a year before Brother Moody was taken 
 to his well-won rest and reward, I was standing 
 [ 127 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 one morning on a platform of the elevated, 
 waiting for a train, when a hand was laid on my 
 shoulder from behind, and, turning, there was 
 Brother Moody ! I had not met him since that 
 day on the way to Pittsburg Landing. There 
 was a smile now on his honest face, I was glad to 
 notice ; and, with no word of preface, he said, 
 " You were all wrong that day in the saloon." 
 And I answered, " Old friend, if I was ever all 
 right in my life, it was in that afternoon on the 
 steamer; and, if we must all answer for the 
 deeds done in the body, my answer will be ready, 
 and don't you forget it! " We parted then, 
 and I saw him to speak to him no more. 
 
 [ 128 ]
 
 XVII 
 
 Our work at the hospitals was about the same 
 as that we had done before, but more plentiful 
 because there was much more to do. But one 
 memory wakes up as I write, of one job I must 
 tackle, painful then, but pleasant now, of a 
 man lying on a cot in a condition I cannot de- 
 scribe. He looked toward me with woe-stricken 
 eyes. It was a bad case of camp fever, with all 
 this means. There was so much to do for the 
 wounded that the poor fellow had been left quite 
 helpless in his misery. I saw at once what must 
 be done. I went for towels, soap, and warm 
 water, a clean mattress, bed linen, and a night- 
 robe, also something for him to take, my good 
 milk and things. He brightened up when he 
 had taken the milk, and was washed as a mother 
 washes her baby, as he lay on the floor. The 
 foul things were taken away, a brand-new bed 
 was made, his night-robe put on, and, if I had 
 been so minded, he was clean enough now to 
 kiss, the poor forlorn soldier ! and, when we left 
 [ 129 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 the hospital, he was getting well. I left him 
 there, and went with a steamer loaded with the 
 wounded down to Mound City, and then went 
 home. 
 
 When Lawrence was wrecked by Quantrell 
 and his guerillas with murder and burnings, the 
 good heart of our city was moved to help her. 
 A large sum of money was raised, and, being 
 now, as I suppose, very much a minister at large, 
 I was sent out with the money to relieve those 
 who had survived the massacre and were in need 
 of help. Jeremiah Brown " Jerry," for 
 short went out with me. He was the brother 
 of old John, knew Kansas like a book, and was 
 useful to me as my right Land until the work 
 was over and I came home to make a report in 
 the Chicago Tribune of what we had seen and 
 done. 
 
 Sixteen men who had gone from the homes in 
 our city were sent home for burial, and arrange- 
 ments were made for the services on the next 
 Sunday in our largest hall. The caskets were 
 laid side by side on the platform, draped or 
 covered with the flags. They asked me to take 
 the sermon ; but there was no text that day and 
 no sermon of the old pattern, only the story in 
 simple sentences of what we had seen and what 
 [ 130 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 they had done. You felt the great heart beat- 
 ing the grand Amen, and in the psalms and 
 songs. It is told in our Bible of one man that 
 they buried him among the kings because he 
 had done well in Israel. I think we gave our 
 boys the nobler funeral that day. I can never 
 forget that Sunday. 
 
 Many prisoners were sent to our city to be 
 held in Camp Douglas, and a committee was 
 elected to see that they were well cared for. I 
 served on the committee, and live to vouch for 
 the care taken for the prisoners. My heart was 
 drawn to them in something more than pity, 
 they were so forlorn; and, when I would talk 
 with them, I found them so simple of heart and 
 true to their own side still. They would say to 
 me : " We were raised in the South, so were our 
 folks ; and we belong there now just as you be- 
 long in the North, and we fought for our rights. 
 There was no other way, and we'll fight again if 
 we get the chance. Can you blame us ? " And 
 I did not blame them, but did not tell. The 
 government gave many of them the option to 
 join our navy and be set free. Very few of 
 them, so far as I remember, took the option; 
 and, when I said to one of them, " Why do 
 you not join our navy and be free? " he an- 
 [ 131 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 swered in wonder: " How can I do that? I 
 could never go home again and look my folks in 
 the face." 
 
 Many of them were country born and raised, 
 and those who could not write would ask us if 
 we would write a letter home and tell the folks 
 they were alive and well, prisoners at Chicago ; 
 or one would blush and stammer trying to tell 
 us what to write. It would be a maiden in that 
 case; perhaps he would not be able to say the 
 words he held in his heart, and we would help 
 him out. Some of us grew quite clever in this 
 sort of letter, and return to the days of our 
 youth; and how glad we were as we would lend 
 a hand ! 
 
 The memory touches me now of going one 
 morning through the hospital in the camp where 
 a boy he was no more beckoned to me, and 
 I went and sat down by his cot. He was very 
 weak, and whispered to me, " Be you a minister, 
 sir?" "Yes," I answered. " A Methodist? " 
 "No." "A Baptist?" "No." This seemed 
 to be the extent of his knowledge ; for he said, 
 " What be you, then, sir? " And, when I an- 
 swered, " I am a Unitarian," he looked at me 
 with a touch of wonder and said : " I never 
 heard of them. What do you believe, sir? I 
 [ 132 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 am dying, and would like you to help me if you 
 can." Then, in the simplest terms I could 
 find in my heart, I told him of our faith in God 
 our Father and of his Christ who came to tell 
 us of his Father's love for all his children, not 
 here and now alone, but forever here and here- 
 after. He drew a long breath with a sob in its 
 heart when I had done, and said : " That is good, 
 and I thank you, sir. Will you come to see me 
 again, when you are in the camp? " I said 
 " yes" ; but, when I could go again, he was not 
 there: he had gone to the Father with the mes- 
 sage in his heart, a prisoner of hope. 
 
 So I sit here, and the memories awake of the 
 great old time. Donelson comes out of the mys- 
 tery of remembrance, and the day when I had 
 a little spell of rest and stood alone by a bit of 
 woodland in the early spring morning, and 
 listened to the birds singing as sweetly and flit- 
 ting about as merrily as if the tempest of fire 
 and smoke but a week before was clean forgot- 
 ten, when they were driven in mortal haste away, 
 while at my feet a little bunch of sweet berga- 
 mot was putting forth the brown-blue leaves and 
 a bed of daffodils was unfolding to the early 
 spring sun. Our Mother Nature had sent down 
 great rains to wash away the crimson stains, and 
 [ 133 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 for the moment there was peace. The general, 
 whose name was now on all men's lips, rode 
 past me in the near distance, smoking the in- 
 evitable cigar, the first time I had seen him. 
 The mounds were not far away where our dead 
 were laid side by side, with here and there a 
 bit of board rudely fashioned with an inscrip- 
 tion rudely written with a black lead-pencil by 
 some comrade, to make good for a few days, if 
 no more, the promise given to his friend, per- 
 haps as they sat by the campfires a few days 
 before the battle. The dead are buried, a 
 soldier tells me, every man by his own company, 
 and the prisoners are detailed to bury their own 
 dead; but our men will not let them dig the 
 grave or touch the body of one of their own 
 comrades. These are held sacred even for the 
 grave. 
 
 In the far-away time and in the motherland 
 the Puritan and Cavalier came to the death- 
 grip with each other; but now they sit by the 
 same fireside, each proud of the other's valor in 
 the mighty struggle. So in our great war 
 Marston Moor clasps hands with Gettysburg 
 in the fifteen decisive battles of the world; and 
 now -we are learning nay, we have learned 
 to forget and forgive, to blend again in one 
 [ 134 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 family, because blood is thicker than water, 
 closer of kin now and more gentle and brotherly 
 than we ever were when the awful curse of hu- 
 man slavery lay over all the land.
 
 XVIII 
 
 This memory touches the battle of Fort Don- 
 elson, which resulted in the capture of the fort 
 and sent the first clear shaft of light through 
 the shadows which had lain like a pall over the 
 loyal North since the conflicts at Bull Run and 
 Manassas Junction in the previous summer, 
 when we were so confident of an easy victory 
 that the story was told of a chaplain in one of 
 our regiments, who had prepared a sermon from 
 the text, " Manassas is mine." He did not 
 preach that sermon. 
 
 The capture of this important stronghold set 
 the Northwest afire, and inspired our people 
 afresh to make every sacrifice the great crisis 
 might demand. This indeed was their purpose 
 from the first; but here was a new springing 
 forth of hope, while I well remember, when the 
 first telegrams were flashed to our city, the news 
 seemed almost too good to be true. But these 
 were confirmed beyond all question presently, 
 and then our city was almost insane for a time 
 in her joy over the victory, as the reports took 
 [ 136 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 on a stormful splendor, while still we knew how 
 weighted with woe the glad tidings must be for 
 some of our neighbors and friends. 
 
 We had broken the great bell in the cupola 
 of the court-house some time before, when the 
 news came that Richmond had fallen, and the 
 broken bell was all we had for our pains and 
 pleasure; for Richmond held her own through 
 many a weary month from that day. But now 
 all the bells in the town swung free, sound or 
 broken we did not care, and went clanging over 
 the prairies and the lake. The flags were shaken 
 out to the wind from every window, and my 
 grand old friend, the judge across our street, 
 sent his flag flying among the first. He had 
 three sons in the battle, and one of them was 
 slain. 
 
 We had a good many citizens who were from 
 the South, and their sympathies were there. 
 They durst not unfurl their banners and would 
 not unfurl ours. But men went quietly to see 
 them in their homes, and said to them, " We 
 leave it at your option for so many hours [or 
 minutes as the humor took them] whether you 
 will procure the flag of the Union and hoist it 
 over your place or have no place for the hoist- 
 ing." Men rushed everywhere through the 
 [ 137 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 streets, saying to each other, " Have you heard 
 the news from Donelson ? " Then they would 
 grasp each other's hand, though they had never 
 met before, and break into a laughter which 
 ended not seldom in tears, as I can bear wit- 
 ness. 
 
 In the spring before this there had been such 
 a throb of the heart through our city when the 
 ark of our covenant was struck by the shot at 
 Fort Sumter; and they knew, as all the North 
 knew, this meant war with the manhood of our 
 own blood and nurture. And then it was clear 
 to the wise and able men in our city that the 
 Southern point of the State where the great 
 arterial rivers meet and run thence to the sea 
 must be held at all odds. So the young men 
 who stood ready volunteered at once for this 
 service, and went down to Cairo. A number of 
 fine young fellows from our own church were 
 among them ; and one of them told me how they 
 intercepted a telegram from the Governor of 
 Louisiana, who wanted to know about a vessel 
 from Galena loaded with lead which was over- 
 due, and they answered, " She is anchored off 
 the point, and we will send down the cargo in 
 mall lots when we get a good ready." 
 
 Regiments and batteries were organized 
 [ 138 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 swiftly in answer to the first call from Wash- 
 ington, and the men were not drawn from the 
 ruck and refuse of our city. They were from 
 the very flower of our youth in that year, 
 and the best, young men from the stores, the 
 offices, and the workshops. I speak of that I 
 know and testify of that which I have seen. 
 They were of the manhood which nourishes a fine 
 ambition to rise, and were drawing good pay for 
 those times. They leaped from their stools, 
 closed their books, laid down the hammer, and 
 enlisted in the ranks in hundreds for the rank 
 and pay of the common soldier. I do not like 
 that word " common " for those men. 
 
 And presently they came with a rush from 
 Iowa and the Far West of that time. I can see 
 them now in gray frocks and belted, made in 
 their own towns and homes, handsome, sound, 
 and whole men. And, when they passed through 
 our city, we fed them royally on their way to 
 the front ; for they were of our Western clans, 
 and we were proud of them. They were our 
 boys also. 
 
 So you may be sure, when the news came from 
 
 the Southwest of the battle and victory at Don- 
 
 elson, Chicago could not be content just to 
 
 ring her bells and shake out her banners again, 
 
 [ 139]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 or run through her streets with the tears break- 
 ing through her laughter. 
 
 We knew there must be great numbers there 
 on the Cumberland friends yes, and foes, 
 and we could be as a very present help in the 
 time of need if we could get there with such sup- 
 plies of first help for the wounded as we could 
 muster. 
 
 A meeting of our citizens was instantly 
 called; and, as the memory steals out from the 
 shadow of forty-two years, that meeting was 
 one of the wonders. I think that, if some great 
 gift had been waiting for each man who would 
 come and ask for it, there could not have been 
 a more eager company than that which came to 
 the hall. Ask them a week before to leave the 
 church, the bar, the sick, or the market, for al- 
 most any other reason, and they would not have 
 heard you ; but they needed no asking now. The 
 client might swear, the church suspend her 
 services, the business wait, and the patient find 
 another physician: they would go to Donelson 
 and look after the boys. 
 
 And as the men came, so supplies came for 
 what I may call first aid for the wounded, so 
 that we were able to get on board with no loss of 
 time, take the train for Cairo, and from thence
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 take a steamer up the river to the battlefield, 
 and say, " Here we are : what can we do ? " 
 
 But in Cairo, that mud hole in those days, 
 we had to wait some hours for our steamer ; and 
 there I came on the first traces of the great con- 
 flict. Four of those long boxes we came to 
 know so well were shells, nailed together in haste, 
 holding the bodies of four officers sent home for 
 the burial. There was a card on each, bearing 
 the name of the man. They were laid on a low 
 bank out of the mud; and, as I stood there, a 
 man came to meet the body of his brother. 
 There was some doubt touching his identity, so 
 the shell was opened. I glanced at the fine 
 strong face of the brother and then at that in 
 the shell. There could be no doubt then that 
 they were sons of the same mother. He must 
 have died, I thought, instantly. There was not 
 a line on the face to tell you of a protracted 
 agony. It was the look rather of one who had 
 fallen on sleep. 
 
 Presently I walked away into the mist, and I 
 came on one of those bits of grim humor in 
 which smiles blend with tears in this human life. 
 A young soldier was sitting on the bank, with 
 his feet in the mud, looking as if he did not 
 quite know how to steer. He was wounded in
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 the head, and had twisted a sort of turban over 
 the wound, which was saturated with his blood. 
 I said, " You are from Donelson? " And he 
 answered, with no tone of dolor : " Yes : I was in 
 the battle, where I got a bad clout on my head, 
 So they sent me down the river, and I am going 
 home to Indiana, where I will get well, and 
 then come back and report." 
 
 So I said : " We are going up to help nurse 
 the wounded, but I should like to begin here. 
 Is there anything I can do for you ? " He 
 looked up shyly, saying : " Can you give me a 
 bit of tobacco? I am out, and want some real 
 bad, but have only just enough money for 
 [I think he said grub] until I get home." I 
 had no tobacco, but gave him some money and 
 some over to help him home. He took it quietly, 
 and said : " You are real good, sir. Would you 
 like to see my head? " I shrank back, but he 
 was already unwinding the turban. So he had 
 his way. It was a very bad bulge well up in 
 the forehead ; and, when I said in wonder, " The 
 bullet did not go in then ? " he answered quite 
 cheerily : " No, sir : my head was too thick for 
 the bullets of them rebs. It flatted and fell off. 
 I got it here in my pocket. Like to see it? " 
 He pulled the thing out and laid it in my hand, 
 [ 142 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 aaying, with a touch of pride, " That ain't no 
 use ajgin a head like mine." I must have given 
 him my name and address; for one Sunday, 
 some time after the war was over, a young man 
 waited for me at the foot of the pulpit stairs, 
 held out his hand with a smile, and said, " You 
 don't know me, sir." This was true ; but, when 
 he lifted up a tuft of hair from his forehead 
 and said, " See that? " I knew my man. He 
 also laid the flatted bullet again in my hand, 
 saying : " I am all right now, sir. I went back 
 to my regiment, and kept my thick head safe 
 and sound through the war, and took a notion 
 to come up to Chicago and see you. I had to, 
 for I will never forget how you acted about that 
 tobacco." 
 
 When we came ashore, we went to find the 
 men who had gone from our city. I went to 
 find those from our church and their comrades. 
 They gave us coffee ; and, as we sat there, others 
 came clustering about us, and after a while 
 would fain have us tell them all about the home 
 city. We told them how the city, when we left 
 on the train, was afire with the news from the 
 battlefield and the capture of the fort, and our 
 words could be no more than an echo of those 
 we heard everywhere, and then told them of our
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 errand. We had come out at once not to look on, 
 but to do whatever lay in our power to help all 
 round. I went over the battlefield with Gen. 
 Webster, who had command of the artillery 
 through the three days. Something had been 
 done already to clear away the wreck, and first 
 of all the dead. But the woods and the open 
 were still strewn with the dead horses and har- 
 ness, shot and shell, while in one reach I 
 counted three men who had not been buried, and 
 in another, on the edge of the woods, there were 
 eleven. And in a lone place aside, out of the way 
 of the brush and the carnage, as if he had crept 
 there the poor fellow ! to die, was a soldier 
 of the rebel army, with his blanket about him, 
 a poor bit of a shawl his wife had given him, it 
 may be, or his mother. He was poorly and 
 thinly clad I could notice, but he could not feel 
 the cold. 
 
 " His hands were folded on his breast ; 
 
 There was no other thing exprest 
 But long disquiet merged in rest." 
 
 He had done with it all, while in some 
 home they were wondering if they should ever 
 see his face again. 
 
 [ 144 ]
 
 XIX 
 
 This has been a word, and no more, about the 
 battlefield. And now I must tell you of the 
 work we went out to do. The small town of 
 Dover was full of the sick and wounded men, 
 huddled together anywhere until they could be 
 removed. Surgeons, helpers, home-made nurses, 
 we do what we can to help them where they lie, 
 pour out our stores for them freely as water 
 runs down hill ; for the Sanitary Commission are 
 burning the wires below in their eager haste to 
 send up other stores almost as soon as we get 
 there. Everything we could need was there. 
 " Sanitary " is lord of the day. 
 
 When we had done what we could, there and 
 then, a steamer was ready to take one hundred 
 and sixty sick and wounded down the river to 
 Mound City to a great hospital, and we went 
 with them. They are laid so close on the floor 
 of the long saloon that sometimes it is hard to 
 set your foot between them. Here is one who 
 has lost an arm, and there one who has lost a 
 leg. Here is a gray-haired man, and there a 
 [ 145 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 boy of eighteen: they are shot through the 
 lungs. 
 
 Here is a noble-looking soldier with a fearful 
 wound over the eye, and there a yellow-haired 
 German with blue eyes that appeal to me piti- 
 fully as I come and go, so that I feel I must at- 
 tend to him, no matter who else waits. He has 
 been mauled in the face, I find, so that he can 
 take no nourishment and is perishing for lack 
 of food. " What can I do for you? " I say, 
 and he points first to his mouth, or rather where 
 his mouth was, and then to his stomach. I am 
 at a loss for some moments what to do, while the 
 blue eyes watch me, eager and hungry ; and then 
 in a flash I see my way. I had rested some 
 while in a state-room, and, as I was turning out, 
 saw a pretty silvered funnel on a shelf above my 
 head. So I bend over him and say, " I am go- 
 ing to get something into you, old man, or I 
 will know the reason why; but you must help 
 me for all you are worth." His tongue could 
 not answer me, but his eyes said : " All right. I 
 will do what you tell me." 
 
 I got a fine pitcher of milk from the stores, 
 
 put a lot of sugar in it and something else, but 
 
 will not tell you what that was. I had noticed 
 
 a small slit in one corner of his mouth. " Now," 
 
 [ 146 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 I said, " this small funnel will go in there, and 
 this milk will go through into your stomach." 
 And again he looked the amen he could not say. 
 So I poured slowly, and the stream found no 
 hindrance. I could hear the gurgle, and his 
 blue eyes shone. I gave him all I dared, and 
 then said, " That will do for now." But, as I 
 passed him to help some other man, he would ap- 
 peal to me with those eyes and point to the place 
 where milk and things go. So we would have 
 another turn of the pitcher. The woful con- 
 cave changed slowly to the convex; and, before 
 we left the steamer, the surgeon said, " That fel- 
 low will get well." And, do you believe it, I 
 think that by Heaven's blessing on the milk and 
 things I saved the blue-eyed boy's life. 
 
 The surgeon comes to a young man close by 
 me, as I attend to that mouth, and says, " I fear 
 I must take off your arm." He begs to have him 
 leave it on a while longer, no matter for the pain. 
 So the good surgeon leaves him, and he moans 
 to me : " What shall I do if I lose my arm ? 
 There is only myself left to look after my old 
 mother and the farm. I must save that arm." 
 And, before we leave the steamer, the surgeon 
 tells me the arm will be saved. Here is a man 
 I must attend to who has lost his arm and is sink-
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 ing into the shadows. And, as I lay cool wet 
 linen on the stump, he tells me, in broken sen- 
 tences, he has left a wife and two young chil- 
 dren at home he will never see again, and gives 
 me a glance into his brave soul in asking me 
 what hope there may be for him when he passes 
 through the gates. He has always tried to do 
 right, he says, and to be a man, but never pro- 
 fessed religion. " You will go right home to 
 God, your Father and mine," I told him, " never 
 you fear." With some more words from my 
 heart he is comforted, and, as I come and go, I 
 watch the face grow white. He is very quiet 
 now. I ask a good, sweet Presbyterian deacon, 
 a neighbor of ours in the city, to watch with 
 him. The lovely, sweet soul is quite of my 
 mind about the future for such a man, and, when 
 all is over, he comes to tell me how he had put 
 up the one hand gently when the end came, 
 closed his own eyes, and then laid the hand softly 
 on his breast and was no more, no more, and yet 
 forevermore that man. 
 
 That boy on the bulkhead is shot through the 
 lungs, and all day long, and through the night, 
 he is in sore anguish ; but at last the pain ceases, 
 and he beckons to one of my comrades and says : 
 " I shall die now ; and will you do me a great 
 [ 148 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 kindness? Write to my father when I am 
 gone," naming a small rural nook in Indiana 
 as the address, " and tell him I am dead." And 
 I said it was all right. " And tell him I owe 
 such a man four dollars and a half, and such a 
 man owes me four dollars; and will he make 
 things straight for me, as I came away in a 
 hurry? And father must draw my pay and 
 keep it all." Then he lay silent for a while, but 
 woke up again and said to me, " I have been 
 dreaming about home, and had a drink out of 
 the old well in our door-yard: it did taste so 
 good ! " And then, while we looked on the lad, 
 his eyes grew dim. He had left us as we looked. 
 He also went up in his chariot of fire. Neither 
 shall he thirst any more, but drink 
 
 " From life's fair stream, fast by the throne of 
 God." 
 
 This was what we found to do day and night 
 on the steamer. One would be a surgeon's as- 
 sistant when he was needed; some of us grew 
 clever at that work. I was one, the surgeon told 
 me; but that is another story. Then we went 
 about with cool water and soft lint and linen, 
 nice choices of food and sips of wine by the doc- 
 tor's leave; but they liked my milk and things 
 [ 149 ] "
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 best. And they would tell us about their home 
 and folks after we had got a bit intimate. 
 
 This man, strong and bearded, was hurt twice 
 in the battle, and went away from the surgeon's 
 hands, as he said, to have another try for it. 
 He was struck the third time, and said, " I 
 guess this is the finish." And it was. That boy 
 stood in the fight, I was told, like one of Napo- 
 leon's old guard. I found, as I talked with 
 him, he was an old-fashioned, iron-clad, close 
 communion Baptist. He had just strength 
 enough, an officer told me, after he was hurt 
 to crawl into the bushes, and then he began to 
 pray with all his might, not for himself he 
 was all right but for the God of battles to 
 give the victory to the flag of the Union. " And 
 there's a man," one said to me, " an officer as 
 you see. His company was badly thinned early 
 in the first day of the fight. Well, he took 
 the musket and ammunition from one of his 
 men who lay dead, and said : ' Boys, we are 
 short-handed. I guess I will go into the ranks 
 a spell.' He fought all day with his company, 
 but now he will fight no more." 
 
 This is the story of the old battlefield, told 
 in the fitful fashion, but not half told. I am 
 there again, as I look through the long vista 
 [ 150 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 of the years, and am by no means sure that I 
 have done. 
 
 War is hell, the great commander said. Yes, 
 I would answer, war is hell. But these memories 
 steal out, and then I say, Is this all? And I 
 turn to the seer's vision in the Holy Book and 
 read : " There was war in heaven. Michael and 
 his angels fought the dragon and his angels, 
 and the dragon was cast out." And then I ask, 
 What do these things mean?
 
 XX 
 
 The church, I was glad to find, suffered no 
 loss by the minister's absence at Donelson, Pitts- 
 burg Landing, and Lawrence ; for, indeed, after 
 my return from the long spell in Washington 
 and Missouri, I was never absent, for more than 
 two Sundays, while the people were as eager 
 to send me on those errands as I was to go. 
 
 Also on the first Sunday after my return I 
 never thought of preaching a sermon, but told 
 them the story of what we had seen and done 
 in the hospitals and on the steamers in words 
 close of kin to the memories you have read, I 
 trust, while they would listen with blended smiles 
 and tears. There would be a lesson also, and 
 this would usually be one of the old fighting 
 psalms ; for these were in great favor with us 
 in those times ; a psalm and then a prayer, with 
 psalms and songs sung very much as they were 
 sung on that memorable first Sunday, but in 
 softer tones, as when we sing the requiems for 
 the dead, and deep calleth unto deep in the
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 heart's reverence and love. The immortal num- 
 bers of one of the chief singers in our Israel, 
 
 " Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming 
 of the Lord," 
 
 were pulsing before their birth-time in the strong 
 heart of the nation. Nor could the church be 
 content merely to spare her minister: she must 
 also be up and doing. The women organized 
 at once to work for the Sanitary Commission, 
 the needle to help heal the hurts of the sword, 
 to help take care also of the regiments which 
 poured through the city, as well as the sick and 
 wounded. Money, also was needed, and on a 
 Sunday morning after the service fifteen hun- 
 dred dollars was subscribed in less than so many 
 minutes for any and every demand. 
 
 Mr. Emerson was in the church that morning, 
 was to go home with me to dinner; and, as we 
 went away from the church, he said, with a 
 tremor in his voice, " I must give you something 
 also." And when I said, " I think we shall 
 have enough, sir," he answered, " It will be well 
 to have more than enough," as he passed some 
 bank-notes into my hand. I was glad to notice 
 also that our congregations grew steadily larger 
 Sunday by Sunday, until they quite filled the 
 [ 153 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 church. The newcomers were not of our faith 
 as a rule ; but they, took pews and sittings, and 
 were in full sympathy with the spirit and pur- 
 pose of the church, and wanted so far to be 
 counted in, while at the end of the first year 
 of my ministry and through the years to come, 
 the good early years, the foretelling of the dear 
 helpmeet came true, the well did not run dry 
 or the bucket often scrape the sand, so that 
 I almost ceased to be afraid of the next Sun- 
 day by Wednesday. 
 
 Then of course we must start a Sunday- 
 school, the children's church and nursery. So 
 this was done ; but I was troubled over the small 
 number that came to the school, and told the 
 people this would never do: we must have all 
 the children we could muster in the parish who 
 were old enough to come. 
 
 They made no answer to my cry; but one 
 day one of the members came to talk with me 
 about it, and said : " You know this is a young 
 church, and the most of us are young people. 
 There is only one gray head in the whole mem- 
 bership of the church to-day, so you must be 
 patient. We send all we have to our name who 
 are old enough to come, and, as those who are 
 too young come along, we will send them also ; 
 [ 154. ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 for we want to have, and shall have, a real good 
 Sunday-school, only give us time." And in 
 the fulness of time there was no room for com- 
 plaint: they made good his promise. 
 
 Our Sunday-school from first to last was an 
 open trust. We made all the children welcome 
 who came in, and drew no line between our own 
 and the children of the stranger within our 
 gates. The North Side was then, and may be 
 still, the German quarter; and in the course of 
 time, when there was ample room in the new 
 church we shall hear about anon, children from 
 the German homes came, not ragged or forlorn. 
 German mothers do not know how to let their 
 children go ragged! They were all whole and 
 wholesome. My other " right hand " took hold 
 and gathered a large class of the youngest, 
 as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, 
 mothering them. And here I touch a lovely 
 memory. I had noticed a new boy in the circle 
 about her with a great rough head and an un- 
 couth backward look in his eyes; and, after 
 we came home one Sunday, I said, " Mother, 
 what do you make of that new boy with the 
 great head? " " Not much yet awhile," she 
 answered cheerily. " About all I can do for 
 him so far is to wipe his nose. But there is 
 [ 155 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 something in that boy : he will be worth his salt." 
 And he was. Some years ago I was in Chicago, 
 and of course must take the services and sermon 
 in the dear church of my first love. After 
 the sermon the host of old friends waited to greet 
 me; and among the first to push to the front, 
 was a young man of a clear, fine presence and 
 well clad, who held out his hand with an eager 
 motion and said, " You will not know me, sir ; 
 but I was in Mrs. Collyer's class in the Sunday- 
 school, and I can never forget how good she 
 was to me." There was what we call an ear- 
 mark on the boy, and there it was on the young 
 man. So I told him how glad I was that he 
 should tell me this and thank me in her name 
 who was no more with us. He was in business 
 and prosperous, with a home of his own now 
 and a small family. The means of grace for 
 the small German boy began away down there 
 at the base line. 
 
 And here I must dwell on another memory 
 touching the children. When the church was 
 well established, her heart was moved to take 
 another step in his name who took the little 
 children in his arms and blessed them. There 
 were some back streets on our side of the river 
 in a poor neighborhood where the children were 
 [ 156 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 sadly neglected, and the good women said, " We 
 must see what can be done to help them." So 
 they rented a large room and started a day 
 home in about the centre of the quarter, to 
 which the children could come and be cared for 
 through the day and return to their homes 
 in the evening. They were to be taught and 
 fed, bathed, and their poor clothing made decent 
 or replaced. It was not what we call welcome 
 work. I remember a Saturday afternoon when 
 I met one of the faithful workers, a perfect 
 lady in one of our best families. She looked 
 tired; and, when I said, "Are you not well?" 
 she answered with a smile, " I am well, but 
 tired: I have just bathed sixteen of our children 
 in the day home." 
 
 The doors opened easily, and there was a 
 warm welcome for the children. There was 
 some trouble at the start. Many of the children 
 were from homes of the Catholic parentage, 
 and the rumor spread that the day home was 
 started to train them away from their mother 
 church. So a priest came to see what those 
 women were doing, found it was a false rumor 
 altogether, and bid them God-speed in the good 
 human enterprise. They taught them to be 
 honest and true and helpful, and were greatly 
 [ 157]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 encouraged; for one of them came to me one 
 day and said, with a tone of satisfaction : " You 
 have no idea how those children improve ! They 
 steal nothing now but mitts and thimbles." 
 And one day again she told me how a small 
 girl had come in she had not seen before, a 
 forlorn and neglected child, who sat down 
 quietly, apart from the other children, and was 
 heard to murmur to herself, " It's just like 
 heaven, and there's no flies." It was a swelter- 
 ing day in the heart of summer; and, if it be 
 true, as the old Assyrians held, that Beelzebub 
 is the god of flies, I thought there must have 
 been a legion of his creatures in the poor place 
 on Market Street that day from which the child 
 had wandered into our cool, sweet day home. 
 In no long time they must have a matron to 
 take charge of the place and the children and 
 " mother " them, and they found a woman I 
 have always thought of as one elected from 
 heaven for that work, a maiden lady of the 
 middle age from Concord, Mass. ; but, after 
 all too brief a time, she was taken from them 
 by the white angel, Death. The children came 
 always to our Easter festival, when plants and 
 flower seeds were given them to take to their 
 homes and nurse. The good matron's funeral 
 [ 158]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 service was held in the church, to which they 
 all came, bringing the flowers they had nursed, 
 all they had as I guess. I was abroad that 
 summer when she died, but they told me how 
 the children came and laid the flowers on the 
 casket with tears and lamentations. They had 
 lost the mother who had blessed them in His 
 name through the two or three years. The 
 day home is still open, doing its noble and beauti- 
 ful work. Eli Bates, who was one of the 
 founders and most munificent maintainers of the 
 church through many years, left the money at 
 his death to build a home for the good work 
 and for the matchless statue of Lincoln by St. 
 Gaudens at the entrance of Lincoln Park, and 
 for other good uses I need not name. And 
 now no sweeter memories of my ministry through 
 the twenty years in our old home city abide in 
 my heart than these of the good day home. 
 
 [ 159 ]
 
 XXI 
 
 Now I must return to the church and my 
 own work there, in which we were as one family 
 in our work and worship ; and I was quite con- 
 tent with my hearing, with no thought of a 
 wider. But after some time eager souls in the 
 society began to talk about a new adventure. 
 It was a far cry forty years ago from the South 
 and West Sides to Chicago Avenue on the North 
 Side where our church stood then, to which some 
 came from the distance ; but with this they were 
 not content. We must go to them who would 
 not come to us, they said. So they proposed 
 to hire a hall, the Metropolitan Hall, the only 
 one of note the city had to her name in those 
 early times; and, if I was willing to take hold 
 and do the preaching, they would see to the 
 funds, and we would hold services there on 
 Sunday evenings. A good many would come 
 to the hall, they said, who would not go to a 
 church. So, while I was not hopeful at all 
 about the enterprise, I said, " I will take the 
 services and see what can be done." These 
 [ 160 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 services were held through one year. The con- 
 gregations were large right along. Very few 
 of our own people came. Our own people are 
 inclined to think that two sermons on Sunday 
 are like two pellets in a potato popgun: the 
 one drives the other out. Those who came were 
 mostly what we call outsiders of the brand that 
 " go nowhere " ; but they came to these meet- 
 ings, and, after they closed, some came to the 
 church and joined us there. And for many 
 years after some one would tell me he or she 
 had attended the meetings and been helped by 
 them. Indeed, when I was near the eightieth 
 milestone in this journey, a gentleman spoke 
 to me in our church, told me he had attended 
 those services, and still remembered the sermon 
 I preached about what it is to be forty. That 
 sermon with so many more was burnt in the 
 great fire also, yet I still think it was not very 
 dry. 
 
 May I mention one memory which can never 
 grow dim, and went into my heart to stay, 
 while perhaps I should leave it in " the silence 
 of the breast"? 
 
 Some years after those meetings a gentleman 
 wrote me from California, to tell me how he 
 had found a poor fellow who had fallen very
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 low and was dying, friendless and alone. " I 
 did what could be done for him; and, on the 
 last day I was with him, he told me he had 
 lived in Chicago before he came here, and had 
 attended those services in the hall. Then he 
 reached under his pillow for a small photograph 
 and said : * This is the picture of the man I heard 
 preach there. I have always saved it. And 
 now will you be so kind, sir, as to pin it on that 
 curtain? I want to see his face the last I can 
 see before I die.' And it was so." How I 
 love the memory for his sake, the hapless man ! 
 
 All sorts and conditions of men and women 
 came to the hall, and other memories might be 
 touched, but not now, except to say that some 
 came from Boston, eminences who were in the 
 lecture-field, Wendell Phillips, I think, and 
 Mr. Emerson, who said to me, as we walked from 
 the hall, very kind and heartening words about 
 the sermon I cannot remember and yet cannot 
 forget: my brethren in the ministry will know 
 what I mean. Some things I had said were 
 also printed in the Christian Register thanks 
 be! and in other journals. And then some- 
 thing befell I could no more have dreamed of 
 than the little maid of two years in our home. 
 
 An invitation came asking me to take the 
 [ 16*]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 services for a Sunday in Music Hall, where 
 Theodore Parker had preached, with a matchless 
 power and an eloquence quite unique, for ten 
 years, and before this through seven years in 
 the old Melodeon. He died in May, I860. 
 Five years ago last summer I laid my hand in 
 reverence on his grave in Florence. Since his 
 death the pulpit-platform had been " supplied." 
 It was a great wonder, this invitation, but was 
 so warm that I could not say them nay ; and 
 so I went down, as we say, with my heart in 
 my mouth, to find such a crowd as I had not 
 dreamed of, and the hall so vast that, when I 
 had spoken for two or three minutes, the fear 
 clutched me that I was not heard. So I paused 
 and held out my hand to a man in the far-away 
 top gallery who was leaning forward listening, 
 as it seemed, for all he was worth, and said 
 quietly, " Can you hear me, sir, up there ? " 
 He moved his head with emphasis the right way. 
 I thanked him. There was a broad smile all 
 over the place, and I went on to the end, with 
 no more fear about that which is high. And 
 they thanked me with effusion ; you may trust 
 Boston for that leastwise I do and have done 
 these forty years and I went home rejoicing. 
 I had been heard in Music Hall. 
 [ 163 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 Then in no long time, to my still greater 
 wonder, a " call " came from the society to 
 come down and be their minister. It was a 
 strong and urgent invitation, signed by Mr. 
 Emerson, Wendell Phillips, and other men of 
 note, with a letter also of sixteen pages from 
 Wendell Phillips, setting forth the reasons why 
 I should come and must come. But I may say 
 in all sincerity that, so far as I remember, the 
 day, never came when I was tempted to hear 
 that call. I knew in some way what I could do, 
 but beyond all dubitation what I could not do. 
 No light shone for me on Music Hall : it lay on 
 my church in Chicago. I must stay right there, 
 and the wisest of all my counsellors said I must 
 not go. So I said, " I cannot come," and this 
 was final. This was forty years ago, and there 
 has been no moment when I have felt I was mis- 
 taken; but, if I should say I was not moved, 
 that would not be true, or the church was not 
 glad when I told them about my conclusion. 
 They gave us a reception and a feast of fat 
 things, but not " with wine on the lees well 
 refined." 
 
 Another call came presently that searched 
 me through and through, from the Second 
 Church in Brooklyn. Their minister, Nahor A. 
 [ 164]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 Staples, a man of brilliant and most beautiful 
 promise, was dead. He was dear to me as 
 Jonathan was to David, was the minister of 
 our church in Milwaukee when we went West; 
 and it was on my part certainly a case of love 
 at first sight. We would write to each other 
 once a week about the Sunday's sermons, to 
 find usually how nearly we had touched the 
 same thought and theme, and tease each other 
 now and then as lovers will I mean men of 
 course. One week I wrote to kim in great glee. 
 A man of eminence in the city, who had come 
 to our church, was taken insane, and would not 
 have any man save myself in his room. And 
 so I was with him about two weeks, until the 
 proper arrangements were made to care for and 
 keep him. The family was grateful for such 
 service as I could give, and made me a hand- 
 some present ; for they were very rich. I needed 
 a good watch. The children had mauled the old 
 one until it was no good. So we agreed, in 
 the living-room, that I should have a good one 
 of gold with part of the money. It is beating 
 over my heart as I write. Then I must needs 
 tell my dear friend all about it; and, in his 
 answer to my letter, he said : " I am glad you 
 have got the gold watch, but I think my preach- 
 [ 165 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 ing will never drive any man out of his mind. 
 So I shall have to wear my old silver machine 
 to the end of time." He resigned his charge 
 in Milwaukee early in the war, to be chaplain 
 of the Seventh Wisconsin Regiment; but his 
 health broke, and after some months he found 
 he must resign. Rev. Samuel Longfellow had 
 been the minister, and the first, if I remember 
 well, of the Second Church in Brooklyn through 
 some years, and had done a right good work 
 there, but had resigned. Then Mr. Staples 
 was called to the church, and it was a memorable 
 ministry; but the seeds of consumption, which 
 had been furthered, if not sown, when he was 
 chaplain, began presently to germinate. We 
 had kept in close touch with each other and 
 had been much together in one or more summer 
 vacations. He was still the friend dearest to 
 me in the brotherhood; and, when I found the 
 end was near, I came down to his home and was 
 with him in the last moments. Went with the 
 dust to the burial at Mendon, Mass., his native 
 place; and on the next Sunday preached some 
 sort of memorial sermon to his people. 
 
 He had said he would love to have them call 
 me; but to this, so far as I remember, I made 
 no answer. I think he had also suggested this 
 [ 166 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 to some members of the church, but am not sure, 
 only that a call came presently; and now I 
 do remember the pain it gave me to say I could 
 not come. The light lay on the church I loved. 
 I could not leave them even for his sake and 
 theirs who I was sure would fain have me come. 
 This was forty years ago, if I am right in the 
 memory. And now I can truly say that through 
 all the years I have felt only and always the 
 same deep satisfaction that I could not hear 
 the call, as I am prone to think they have also ; 
 for they found the one man, as I love to believe, 
 in the whole brotherhood of our ministers who 
 could fill the chasm made by my brother's death 
 my son as I have loved and love still to 
 call him John White Chadwick, whose praise 
 is in all our churches, our noble minister in 
 holy things, and sweet singer whose hymn, " It 
 singeth low in every heart," will still be sung 
 when he and we are all a handful of dust. 
 
 [ 167]
 
 XXII 
 
 The time came, before the war was ended, 
 when we began to talk about a new church. 
 We were still growing; and, when a young 
 church has no room to grow, it will begin to 
 grow stunted. Our audience-room had to serve 
 all purposes. We had no Sunday-school room, 
 lecture-room, or place for social gatherings, 
 and were cramped at every turn. So early in 
 1865 some of the leading men in the church 
 secured a lot, as the first step to be taken in 
 the new enterprise; and in June there was 
 another, and this time a most pleasant surprise 
 sprung on me. 
 
 I was tired with the long strain of such service 
 as I could render in the war and the church 
 and parish, but did not tell the people or indeed 
 quite know myself ; but the truth is I was preach- 
 ing tired sermons, some of them so poor and 
 fatuous that they made me sick, and I burnt 
 them off-hand. The wise heads in the church 
 knew what was the matter; and on a Saturday 
 evening one of them came to see me and said, 
 [ 168 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 " We want you to take a good rest this sum- 
 mer, to go over to jour old home and see the 
 folk; and here is a check for your expenses." 
 The money the church gave me then and after- 
 ward before I started would have been equal 
 to three years' steady work at the anvil, so 
 generous they were and eager to send me home 
 rejoicing. This was fifteen years after we 
 landed in New York; and in the six years of 
 our life in Chicago I had dreamed that some 
 time in the future I might be able to cross the 
 ocean to the old homeland, see my mother 
 again, the kinsfolk and the many friends. 
 And, lo! here I was bidden to go forthwith 
 " gold to give and gold to spend." 
 
 I would fain have the dear home mother go 
 with me ; but here the promise " Whither thou 
 goest I will go " must not be thought of. 
 She must mind the home and the children, who 
 were too young to leave. So I went alone, and 
 all the way over on the steamer New York 
 I dreamed dreams and saw visions. I had 
 told them I was coming, made a bee-line from 
 Liverpool to Leeds; and, when I came to the 
 home where my mother was, walked right in, 
 no knocking at that door of all the doors on the 
 earth. She was sitting in the same old chair 
 [ 169 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 where I had left her; but I think it was not 
 the same house, and her hair now was white 
 as snow. I said, " Mother." She looked up 
 with a touch of wonder, and said, " My lad, 
 I do not know thy face, but that is thy voice." 
 And then she rose up and kissed me, while the 
 tears ran down her fine old face. Presently 
 I must go to Ilkley, where I had lived twelve 
 years as boy and man; and there for the first 
 time in my manhood I kissed a man, my dear 
 old friend John Dobson, who had done more 
 for me in loving care and counsel, as I have 
 said before, than any or perhaps all the men I 
 had known through those years so momentous 
 to a youth. He had kept track of my life 
 through the fifteen years, and was well aware 
 of the change in my Christian fellowship; but 
 he did not turn a hair. And, when I preached 
 in our Unitarian church in Leeds, he came to 
 hear me, and was still the same fast friend, 
 heart fast. My mother also went with me that 
 morning; and I still remember so well, as we 
 walked home arm in arm after the service, she 
 said, " I am not sure that I understood all 
 thy sermon, my lad, or can believe as thou does ; 
 but I do believe in thee." Then she squeezed 
 my arm, and I was quite content. It is among
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 the pleasant memories also of my first visit that 
 I found every one of the kinsfolk and friends 
 I had longed to see once more alive and well, 
 and that I could fall easily into the dialect, as 
 we sat by the fireside, I had taken so much pains 
 to revise or lay away when I found my way 
 into the pulpit. That was the first, and lay 
 deepest in my nature. And so I may say, as 
 the conclusion of this memory, my first visit 
 was the cream of the bowl. 
 
 Another memory follows I have hesitated to 
 dwell on, but find I must, foolish as it may seem 
 to you, but dear to me; for here I returned 
 to the days of my youth. It was twenty-seven 
 years then since I had left the place where I 
 was brought up. My. people left the year 
 after, so that I had not cared to cross the moor 
 more than once or twice in the twelve years of 
 my life in Wharf edale ; and I was " as a child 
 that is weaned from his mother." But, when 
 we were well rooted down in the new life, mem- 
 ories of the old home-nest in Washburndale 
 began to steal out from the mists and grow ever 
 more dear to me as they do to us all who leave 
 the old life for the new. The longing grew 
 strong to make pilgrimage there if the way 
 should open, and be just a boy once more by 
 
 [ m ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 the grace of heaven. And I knew what I 
 wanted to see and to do when I came there. 
 There was one well at which I would drink my 
 fill, for the water was as sweet to my heart as 
 the water was to David in the well of Bethle- 
 hem by the gates. Then there was the great 
 holly-bush on the hill, where as a boy I had gone 
 year after year to look at the blackbird's nest, 
 where one year, as I remembered still, that 
 brigand, the cuckoo, had laid an egg, and when 
 I went one evening to see how the blue pen 
 fledglings fared, there was the young cuckoo 
 sprawling all over the place, while the young 
 blackbirds lay on the grass below. There was 
 also that shadowy reach in the stream where 
 the water came down from the moor to turn 
 the great overshot wheel for the factory, and 
 at the mouth of the tunnel the biggest trout I 
 ever failed to catch. He would look at me and 
 shake his tail, as if he would say, " It is no 
 use: I am here to stay," and then float quietly 
 into the tunnel. Then there were those swal- 
 lows that came every year to build their nests 
 under the eaves of one house right in the sun's 
 eye, and went away when the summer waned, 
 after sitting in council on the roof -tree, went 
 [ 172 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 I knew not where, and even my father could 
 not tell me. And there was the one oak-tree 
 in the pasture where I would sit and dream, 
 when the fit was on me, of the great and won- 
 derful world beyond the valley and the moors. 
 I seemed to own that oak. 
 
 So I would dream of these in my new life, 
 and wonder if they were all there as when I left 
 them. Well, I lost scant time when I came to 
 my old home-nest ; and, will you believe me, the 
 blackbird's nest was there in the holly-bush, 
 and the old birds were busy feeding their young. 
 I stood quietly at some small distance. They 
 did not seem afraid of me, and I wondered 
 if they had chirruped the tradition down of the 
 boy who came to look at the nest and never 
 harmed or robbed them. Yes, and the same old 
 trout was there, or another perhaps not quite 
 so big. But he knew the old trick with the 
 tail after taking my photograph on those eyes, 
 and floated away into the dark. The beryl 
 brown water in the well was sweet also to me 
 as the water in the well by the gate was to the 
 soldier and king, and I drank my fill. But 
 the swallows came no more to build their nests 
 under the eaves and sit in council on the roof- 
 [ 173 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 tree. The quiet home had been turned into a 
 noisy beer saloon, and they would not stay, 
 the good swallows. 
 
 There was the oak on the slope of the pasture 
 too, my oak; but it seemed to have grown 
 smaller in the many years. I was staying with 
 the owner of the pasture, who remembered our 
 family and kept the inn. He went with me 
 over the place, and, when we came to the tree, 
 I said, " It is not nearly so large, sir, as it was 
 when I was a boy." But he answered : " It is 
 larger. Your eyes are not the same: they are 
 the eyes of a grown man." But before we left 
 the pasture he said : " It may be the tree needs 
 some nourishing after all. But, whether or 
 no, for the sake of old lang syne I will spread 
 a load of manure about the roots, happen that 
 will help it to grow a bit faster." And after 
 I came home I heard this had been done. And 
 now do you say this is indeed speaking as a 
 child, you should put away childish things, 
 you old man of fourscore? I have but one 
 answer. I was a child and a boy again for 
 one good week in the old home-nest; or, if you 
 say the boy is father of the man, I was that 
 boy's son with the white hair already stealing 
 over and through the brown. 
 
 [
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 In the mountains of New Hampshire one 
 summer my host told me of a man who had come 
 from " away out West " to find what was left 
 of the old home where he was raised. There 
 was a well on the place. The waters were sweet 
 to him as mine were to me. He had brought his 
 three daughters with him; and, when they came 
 to the well, there was a dipper. But this would 
 not do. He must needs kneel down on one stone, 
 as he had done in the old time, to drink; and, 
 when he rose from the worship at his holy well, 
 he said : " Now, daughters, you must all kneel 
 down on that stone, and drink for father's sake. 
 Never mind your gowns. If you hurt them, 
 you shall have new ones. I can buy them, but 
 money cannot buy what kneeling on that stone 
 means to me." And I am brother in this way 
 to the man I never saw to whom the waters 
 were so sweet. 
 
 There are many more memories I must not 
 touch, of my visit to the old home-nest, but tell 
 you now that, when the time came to return, 
 I was quite as glad to take my steamer and 
 come home as some ten weeks before I had been 
 to go home. More glad, indeed; for here were 
 my treasures and here my life. For, when we 
 have come here to find what we found, the 
 [175]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 heart is not divided; and it is not needful for 
 us to " be sure we are off with the old love 
 before we are on with the new," because the 
 heart in us grows large enough to hold both 
 without the least constriction. But, when we 
 come here, if we can find nothing so good or fair 
 as it was in England, shall I say, or Scotland, 
 then the best we can do is to stay there, or, if 
 we are here, to go home again. 
 
 So I came home most gladly ; for here we had 
 found room, my wife and I, to grow and to be 
 as we never could have found it in the dear 
 and ever dear motherland. 
 
 [176]
 
 XXIII 
 
 On my welcome home I must not linger: that 
 was all the heart could desire. I will venture 
 to say also that my rest and re-creation was 
 a good investment. Such sermons as I could 
 preach did not make me sick of heart. I found 
 also that the purpose to build was no " will-o'- 
 the-wisp," but a steadfast purpose. Subscrip- 
 tions were made large and generous: the build- 
 ing committee was chosen, and the architect. 
 And the story was told I will not vouch for it 
 that the committee instructed him to measure 
 the largest Protestant church in the city, and 
 draw the plans for ours a foot longer and a 
 foot wider. I say I do not vouch for that 
 story. The plans were drawn, and the architect 
 reported that the foundation on which the north- 
 ern tower must stand was not safe. The mother 
 church on the South Side had built a tower 
 on such a foundation, and it had sunk, bringing 
 a part of the wall down with it. So great piles 
 were driven down for our north tower, to make 
 #11 safe and sound. The corner-stone was laid 
 [ 177 ]
 
 in August, 1867; and then our temple grew 
 as grows the grass. No labor troubles or in 
 the board. As I sit here I hear only the sounds 
 of the workmen. The wisest and best master- 
 builder in the city, to my own mind, George 
 Chambers, a member of the church, saw to the 
 upbuilding. He was not a rich man ; but, when 
 the board called for his bill, he said, " There 
 is no bill: this is my subscription." There was 
 but one man hurt, a laborer, whose shoulder 
 was bruised by a stone. The chairman of the 
 committee sent him home and told him to stay, 
 there until he was well, and his wages would 
 be paid. Many weeks passed before Mr. Hub- 
 bard thought it was time to look him up, and 
 sent a man to see how he fared, who reported 
 that he had been well some weeks, but had not 
 felt like reporting for work, only well enough 
 to draw his wages, for which he sent his wife. 
 
 Our sister church, Orthodox Congregational, 
 on the next corner to ours had built a beautiful 
 edifice, and had set a fine fragment from Plym- 
 outh Rock over the main doorway. This was 
 all right, but we must also have a stone of 
 memorial to set over our main doorway. I 
 mused and pondered about that stone quite a 
 while; and then one day the idea flashed on me
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 that I must write to a lady, a member of our 
 church, who was staying at Geneva in Switzer- 
 land, and ask her if it was possible to procure 
 a stone from the very spot on the hill above the 
 city where Servetus, our faithful martyr, stood 
 when he was burnt by the fiat of Calvin, and 
 send it over to set above the main doorway of 
 the new church. She saw the proper authori- 
 ties, and they gave her leave, as she told me, 
 most cheerfully to take the stone; and, when 
 she went with a man to do the delving, there 
 was quite a company assembled, who gave her 
 a cheer. They also were glad to have the stone 
 sent over to stand for a memorial in the church 
 built by those of the faith their martyr died 
 to maintain as he had lived. It came to us 
 safe and sound, and was duly set over our 
 main doorway, with the inscription, " Champel, 
 1553." And I may mention the fact, before 
 I pass on, that in the great fire which so soon 
 laid our beautiful church in ruin the stone was 
 not touched, or a large space of the wall, where 
 it continueth unto this day. 
 
 It was indeed a beautiful church, and good 
 
 as hands could make it. The first purpose was 
 
 to build the front and the side walls of stone 
 
 and the back of brick which would come cheaper. 
 
 [ 179]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 I did not like this, but would love to see the 
 back stone also, and, as we say, all of a piece; 
 and there were others of my mind. So the 
 vote was like to be about even when one said: 
 " Suppose the Lord should come up from the 
 lake. The first thing he would see would be 
 the brick back, and he would not like it." It 
 was only a bit of humor, a feather-weight, as it 
 were; but it turned the scale. I see the lovely 
 interior of the great audience-room across the 
 mists of thirty-two years, the wood-work blended 
 of butternut and black walnut, the roof azure, 
 set with stars; but the stars were a mistake, 
 and, I am real sorry to say, a sham, the only 
 false note in the fine harmony. They were 
 stuck on I know not how, but still remember 
 how after some time there would here and there 
 one get loose and come teetering down like 
 butterflies on the congregation. 
 
 In the summer of 1869 the church was dedi- 
 cated. Dr. Bellows came from New York to 
 preach the sermon, with quite a gathering of 
 the brethren from far and wide to take some 
 part in the services. The church was of one 
 mind, that I should write a hymn of dedica- 
 tion. I had never done such a thing. Still, 
 the hymn was written, and, as the Scotch say, 
 [ 180 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 I thought it " was no that bad." You will find 
 it in our service and hymn book if you care to 
 look it up. I use it once a year when we open 
 the church after the summer vacation, but at 
 no other time, and was glad some years ago 
 when Dr. Hunter, then the minister of the great 
 Congregational church in Glasgow, but now of 
 the Weigh House Chapel in London, wrote to 
 ask me if he might print the hymn in a book he 
 was compiling for his church. I was glad to 
 give him the liberty. It is also in an Episcopal 
 collection used in England. Dear friends, par- 
 don the toot once more. It was my first ven- 
 ture, my first-born in this sort, and I may plead 
 I have only written one more: that was for the 
 restoration after the great calamity, the Chi- 
 cago fire. 
 
 Dr. Johnson said of Dr. Watts's hymns, " He 
 has done the best where no man has done well." 
 And I am satisfied to think I did my best, while 
 Gabriel could do no more. It was a grand ser- 
 mon and a noble service. The church, still in 
 her youth of ten years, had subscribed gener- 
 ously when we set out to build, and, when the 
 fund was exhausted, built by faith, which was 
 not exhausted; and the order was made for a 
 subscription on the day of dedication. The
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 committee saw Dr. Bellows about this and the 
 debt which must be reduced and would be on 
 that day ; and toward the close of his great dis- 
 course he took hold of the question as he only 
 could, and set the people a-fire. I have wit- 
 nessed no such fervor in all these years for this 
 purpose as on that day. It was my lot to 
 stand up before them to say such words as came 
 to me, and report the subscriptions. They 
 pelted me with them large or small, and the 
 small, as I well knew, large for the givers, bless 
 them! I had wanted every man, woman, and 
 child to take part and lot in the good work, 
 and I think this was done that morning. Quite 
 a number who had given gave again. Good 
 men were there from the mother church, gave 
 nobly, and some Methodists from the church 
 near at hand. Saints and sinners were all of 
 one mind; and I mention the sinners, because 
 I still remember one man I loved for his manful- 
 ness, but could not quite call him a saint. He 
 gave a large subscription, and, when we made the 
 second rally, called out a thousand dollars more. 
 This was a surprise to me. I met him on the 
 street soon after, and thanked him. " Do you 
 know," he said, " why I chipped in again ? " 
 " Yes," I said. " It was because you have a 
 [ 182 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 big heart." " Not at all," he answered cheer- 
 ily. " But when Dr. Bellows got that ship in 
 the storm [meaning the church], you know, and 
 said, ' Will you let her go down under her 
 
 load? ' I said, * I will be [something very 
 
 bad] if I do for one.' So I gave the other thou- 
 sand." And I hoped the angel of the records 
 missed or left out the bad word. I have no 
 idea how far we should have gone that day 
 when the doctor said to me : " Stop now, and sit 
 down. They have done enough. In all con- 
 science do not ask them for any more money." 
 So I sat down. We sang, 
 
 " From all that dwell below the skies." 
 
 The great and good man for he was both, 
 and among the greatest and best I have known 
 gave us the benediction, and we went on our 
 way rejoicing. They had subscribed about 
 sixty thousand dollars ! The records of the 
 church were all lost in the fire, so that I cannot 
 give the figures. I notice in a book printed in 
 England the amount is given of seventy thou- 
 sand, but I think this is not true. 
 
 I saw a picture some years ago in a gallery 
 which blends with the memory of our brave, 
 new church. In the foreground was a pretty 
 [ 183 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 farmstead almost mint new, and in the back- 
 ground a log house on the edge of the clearing, 
 deserted and almost hidden in wild pines. There 
 was only one human figure in the picture, the 
 good man of the farmstead, leaning on a rail 
 fence and looking at the log house with the 
 light in his eyes, the tender light of the days 
 that are dead. That was once his house, as I 
 read the story, where he came long ago with 
 his newly wedded wife to make a home, and there 
 their children were born and raised; and the 
 memories of the old home thronged in his heart 
 as he leaned on the fence. So there was a 
 touch of tender regret in our hearts I think, 
 or know rather, when we were homed in the 
 large and good new church. The old home, to 
 be sure, was not deserted: it was bought and 
 occupied by the Baptist society whose smaller 
 church we rented for our first services ; and my 
 small boy was much interested when they put 
 down what he called their bath tub. Yet it 
 was still our old home where we " had such good 
 times," while we were proud of the new one. 
 That was all the heart could desire, with a 
 much larger congregation, and all the room we 
 wanted for every purpose. Yet, as I sit here 
 this morning, I see the first home in the tender 
 [ 184 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 light of the days that are dead, not with sorrow, 
 but with thanksgiving, for the good times in 
 the span of the ten years. 
 
 Two good and fruitful years were given us 
 in the new church, in which I for one certainly 
 began to feel very much at home, and then 
 the great calamity fell on our city when the 
 church and the homes were whelmed in the 
 common ruin. This memory I must touch at 
 a later time. 
 
 [ 185 ]
 
 My dear old friend, the editor, says, in a 
 note that came the other day, " I have not 
 wanted to remind you of the memories I prom- 
 ised our readers should be completed when you 
 struck work last spring, and we shall be glad 
 to begin again when you are ready." 
 
 It was a true and timely word, subject to a 
 slight correction. Paul says, a man who desires 
 to be a bishop should be " no striker," and herein 
 I plead not guilty. The truth is I was tired 
 and wanted to take a vacation, quite intending 
 to finish them in the fall or the early winter. 
 But in the fall the spirit did not move me my 
 editor will know what I mean or they, did 
 not seem ripe for the reaping. So, like the men 
 in the parable, I began to make excuses; and 
 my failure, with many more in all these years, 
 must be counted once more among the good 
 intentions that I love to imagine pave the way 
 to heaven. 
 
 I notice, as you may perhaps remember who 
 read the twenty-three chapters, that we had 
 [ 186 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 begun to feel at home in the brave new church, 
 too large as yet for our need, but not for our 
 hope and our fine ambition, while we still loved 
 to remember the little church on the corner in 
 which we met for worship and work about nine 
 years. The Baptist society had bought the 
 dear old place, and this was all to the good for 
 me, because my mother was a Baptist, and 
 would be glad to hear of this. And I had 
 said to our people, when the place became too 
 strait for us, when we have no more room to 
 grow, we shall begin to grow stunted. 
 
 Well, there was no danger now in that direc- 
 tion. And then I remembered what my mother 
 would say to our tailor when he came to measure 
 me for a new suit : " Make it big, John : give 
 him plenty of room to grow into the things. 
 He will be sure to outgrow them before he has 
 another suit." And this was true, for I was 
 a lusty fellow; but for what you would call a 
 good fit, when I donned them, they were a sight 
 to see, and sadly discounted the joy and pride 
 of the Easter Sunday when we went to the old 
 mother church two miles away where we were 
 all baptized. The church in which Edward 
 Fairfax, the uncle of the great general, and 
 who made the first and still the best translation 
 [ 187 ]
 
 'SOME MEMORIES 
 
 of the " Jerusalem Delivered," was buried in 
 1635 " under a marble tomb," and who in 1620 
 fell into sore trouble touching the witchcraft 
 done on his daughter, of which he wrote the 
 story I may tell in brief when I have finished 
 these memories. 
 
 I told the story of the garments in some 
 speech or sermon to the people for a parable, 
 wherewith they were well pleased when I made 
 the application ; for we all love parables which 
 encourage the hope that is not seen, and mine 
 came true. The big church was well filled in 
 the first year: the Sunday-school also prospered 
 finely. There was ample room for our social 
 gatherings, and then in the early spring of 
 1871 there came a great wonder. I was invited 
 to preach the sermon at the annual meeting of 
 the British and Foreign Unitarian Association 
 in London. 
 
 I could not have dreamed of so great an honor 
 had I been a dreamer, and I did not let I dare 
 not wait upon I would, when I read the letter; 
 for my impulse was to say no in the cleanest 
 words I could muster, and thank them with all 
 my heart. But now the dear helpmeet, who was 
 always my very present help in trouble, wheeled 
 promptly into line, after we had held the home 
 
 [ 188 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 council, and said I must accept the invitation, 
 I must not say no. I must go, and she would 
 go with me, she did not say to hold up my 
 hands, and my heart, and there was no need. 
 We would also take the little lassie with us 
 whose health had failed. The sea voyage and 
 the change of climate would do more for her 
 than all the doctors. This was another weight 
 in mother's end of the scale, and my end went 
 up. And, if she had not been out of health, 
 she must still have gone with us: she was our 
 youngest daughter, and her mother's bairn. 
 The sisters were well and strong: they could be 
 left in good care, and indeed could care for 
 themselves and the home. But Annie clave to 
 her mother, who still remembered how she must 
 leave her two summers before when her own 
 health failed, and I must bring her down to 
 the seaside; remembered how, when we came 
 home, she crept into her arms one day and said, 
 " Mamma, when you were away, I was so lone- 
 some I used to go into the closet and hug your 
 dresses." How often mother would tell the tiny 
 story, so sweet and pathetic, as we would sit 
 alone, when the dear child was translated so that 
 she should not see death; and how, when her 
 own health was broken and the end drew near, 
 [189]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 she would say, " I want to go to Annie, I think 
 she will want her mother even in heaven." 
 
 And now may I linger some moments before 
 we start for London to touch the memories 
 of the home we were to leave, and the children ; 
 for there may be no place for them afterward. 
 I well remember saying to my dear old father 
 in the faith, Dr. Furness, when they were still 
 weans in the mother's constant care : " Do tell 
 me how you managed to raise your children to 
 such a lovely purpose. Ours are still young 
 and full of life, for which we are glad and 
 thankful ; and I should like you to tell me your 
 secret." " It is no secret," he said, " and very 
 simple ; we turned those words of Paul the other 
 way about where he says, ' Children, obey your 
 parents in the Lord ; for this is right,' and made 
 them read, * Parents, obey your children,' and 
 the new version answered to a charm." 
 
 But how I fared may perhaps be best told 
 in a story, that will also touch the charm of 
 the little maid who was always so bright and 
 winsome. Her elder sister said to me one day, 
 as we sat all together, " Papa, I wish you would 
 write your sermons on Monday and Tuesday, 
 you are always so cross on Saturdays when you 
 are busy and we make a noise." This was true, 
 [190]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 the lassie was right. And so, after trying to 
 stand from under to no purpose, I gave in and 
 said : " Well, my dear, the new year is close at 
 hand when you know we all begin to make good 
 resolutions, and I will make one, I will try after 
 New Year's because the holidays are a busy 
 time to write my sermons earlier in the week 
 though I cannot promise to begin on the Mon- 
 day." 
 
 This pleased the children, you may be sure, 
 and the father too, who has loved to make good 
 resolutions all his life; but the Christmas-tide 
 came, and the new year, in which there is al- 
 ways so much to do, and I was still driven who 
 would drive, so that Friday and Saturday found 
 me busy as ever. Meanwhile my mentor was 
 watching me and biding her time to bring me 
 to book. So one day she said, " Papa, you did 
 not begin writing your sermons early in the 
 week as you said you would, you know, after 
 New Year's ; and you were cross again on Sat- 
 urday when we made some noise." Well, this 
 was true, and I wist not what I should do, when 
 it came to me in a flash that I could shuffle out 
 of the mire on a similitude. So I said oh, 
 so gently ! " My dear, if you should milk a 
 cow and set the milk to stand in a bowl, what
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 would that milk do? " The answer I expected 
 was, it would cream up, and then I would say 
 that is just what sermons have to do. You 
 cannot say on Monday, now I will write a ser- 
 mon and go to work and get it done by Tuesday 
 night: you have to think it over until, say, 
 Friday it must cream up, as the milk does, you 
 know, in the bowl. This would set me on my 
 feet ; but it didn't. My little maid was listening 
 to our conference with great interest, and said 
 suddenly, " I know what that milk would do : 
 it would turn sour" She did not point the 
 moral. She was a wise little maid, and reforms 
 go on leaden feet; but I remember no trouble 
 thereafter, and so am fain to believe that the 
 milk did not turn sour, no matter about the 
 days in the week. 
 
 May I linger over another memory I love to 
 cherish? We did not talk doctrine to the chil- 
 dren in the home week-day or Sunday, and it 
 may be some of you will say, More's the pity. 
 But of this I am not sure, and hereby hangs 
 my tale. Our eldest daughter, a thoughtful 
 lassie, went one Sunday evening to hear Dr. 
 David Swing, the pastor, then, of the Presby- 
 terian church on the North Side, who was after- 
 ward tried for heresy by a council in which Dr. 
 [ 192 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 Patton, the ex-president of Princeton, was the 
 leader. 
 
 Dr. Swing's sermon was on predestination, 
 and a very, able sermon, no doubt ; but my daugh- 
 ter was in a maze about the sermon, and said 
 to me next day, as we sat at the table, after 
 some account of the discourse, " Does predesti- 
 nation mean, father, that you must go where 
 God sends you, to heaven or to hell? " But I 
 think she did not use just these words. Well, 
 I was preparing, no doubt, to answer the lassie 
 when her younger sister, who brought me to 
 book about the Saturday trouble, said : " That 
 is not true, sister. It is not predestination, it 
 is pedestrianation. You can go which way you 
 will," and took for her proof the man whose 
 name I forget, a famous pedestrian who had 
 walked from Portland in Maine to Chicago of 
 his own free will. So I did not treat them to 
 my discourse or cite Dr. Johnson's brusque 
 dogma, " Sir, we know we are free, and there's 
 an end on't." 
 
 The children were left in good care, and we 
 made good time, as the time was thirty-four 
 years ago on the steamer to Liverpool ; and from 
 Liverpool we made a bee-line for Leeds, for a 
 brief visit to the dear old mother, who was then 
 [ 193 ]
 
 in her seventy-fifth year, and to the kith and 
 kin before we went up to London. (You go up 
 to London from all over England, never down.) 
 And, when we came home to mother, as we sat 
 about the table, she said, " Children, did you 
 know it was twenty-one years ago this morning 
 since you started on your way to America, the 
 day after your wedding? " We had not re- 
 membered, but mother had kept true time: our 
 wedding journey had taken in twenty-one years. 
 
 [ 194
 
 XXV 
 
 The chapel where the opening services were 
 held for the May meeting of our brotherhood 
 in London stood in Essex Street near the Strand, 
 the nearest neighbor to Norfolk Street down 
 which I am apt to daunder when I am in London 
 trying to verify " Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings." 
 The Essex Street Chapel was the first in the city 
 to bear our name Unitarian, which was also 
 then our brand, and was built for the ministry 
 of Theophilus Lindsey, a true given name; for 
 my manual says it means " a friend of God." 
 And, as I am still under the spell of talking to 
 familiar friends rather than to " all outdoors," 
 as I was last winter, I would fain put off 
 sermon time to tell you something about the 
 good Theophilus, and how it came to pass that 
 they built the chapel for him in the city of 
 London. 
 
 He was the vicar of Cattarick in the north 
 
 of England, a wild and large parish with a 
 
 small stipend, for which he had resigned some 
 
 rich incumbencies in the south where he could 
 
 [ 195 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 live at ease, with a bishop's mitre and apron 
 dangling in the near distance. 
 
 But a man was wanted in the great, rambling 
 parish, who, like Bernard Gilpin, would put his 
 whole soul into the work of winning the people 
 from a sort of semi-paganism to God, and, as 
 the event proved, he was the man. 
 
 He went to work with his wife, who was the 
 true helpmeet for her husband, to do the work 
 God had given him to do, fed the hungry and 
 clothed the naked, started schools where they 
 were needed far and wide in the parish, and 
 helped to maintain them out of their small in- 
 come. He was also a sort of self-appointed 
 doctor, carrying such medicines as he could 
 safely prescribe in the saddle bags with his 
 Bible and prayer-book, because he could not be 
 content with the cure of souls alone, but must 
 do what he could for the cure of bodies also, 
 and so fulfil the law of Christ. 
 
 But, in reading his New Testament one day, 
 those words of Paul suddenly arrested him, 
 " There is but one God the Father," and, as 
 he tells us, sank into his heart, so that he must 
 needs ponder them and strive to find the truth, 
 for his soul's sake, of the Trinity or the Unity 
 of God. He was a man of excellent learning 
 [ 196]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 and of absolute sincerity of purpose, who must 
 play no tricks with his conscience, but must 
 search the Scriptures painfully to find whether 
 this doctrine of the Trinity was the truth taught 
 in his Bible or was only a dogma of his Church. 
 And in his trouble he made a clean breast of it 
 to a friend in orders, eminent in the Church, to 
 find they were entirely of one mind about the 
 dogma ; but his friend gave no sign of distress 
 when he read the formulas of the Trinity on a 
 Sunday from the prayer-book. This was 
 another trouble. And then he says : " It seemed 
 to me at last to be a real duplicity that, while 
 I was praying in my heart to the one God our 
 Father, my people were led by my language 
 to pray to three persons. And, as one great 
 design of Christ's teaching and mission was 
 the worship of the Father, as he himself tells 
 us, I could not think it was right to do what 
 I was doing for the simple-hearted people who 
 worshipped God with me." 
 
 Then in the midst of the trouble and perplex- 
 ity he had a severe fit of sickness that brought 
 him face to face, he says, with death. And, as 
 he began to recover, a book fell into his hands 
 which was written by a man who had given 
 up his living, as he himself had thought he must 
 [ 197 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 do, a book in which he read these words, 
 " When thou canst no longer continue in thy 
 work without dishonor to God, discredit to thy 
 religion, the loss of thine own integrity, the 
 wounding of thy conscience, the spoiling of thy 
 peace, and the risking of thy soul, then thou 
 must believe that God will turn the laying 
 aside of thy work to the advancement of his 
 gospel." These words also went to his heart, 
 and he made up his mind to resign the living 
 and go forth with the good wife into the world, 
 not knowing as yet where they should go or 
 what he should do. 
 
 But, before he left his people, he must meet 
 them face to face and tell them why he could 
 not stay. There were chapels of ease in the 
 great parish for those who lived too far away 
 to attend the mother Church, which dates in 
 some rude fashion from about 627 A. D., when 
 Paulinus, the first missionary from Rome to 
 the northern tribes, " baptized his converts in 
 the river Swale which runs by the village of 
 Catarac," as Beda tells us. He spoke to them 
 as a father to his children, bidding them fare- 
 well; and there was sore weeping when they 
 were aware they should see his face no more. 
 They had no trouble about the doctrine or 
 [ 198]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 the dogma of the Trinity or the Unity. This 
 was as strange as if a Hindu should talk to 
 them about the mysteries of the Rig Vedas. 
 But there was one book they could read, and 
 this was the good parson's life through the ten 
 years of his ministry among them. This was 
 as good as fine wheat or freshly kilned oatmeal. 
 So their souls clave unto him, and they pleaded 
 with him to stay. I can hear them across the 
 chasm of the many years, pleading with him 
 in the dear old dialect and crying : " Naay, sir, 
 ye munnut leaave us. Ye mun steeay an* take 
 care on us. We cannut let ye gan aweeay. 
 Whaa, sir, if ye be a Unitarian, as ye saay, so 
 be we. We will be juust what ye tell us. 
 Steeay, sir, that's all we want." This was the 
 plea they made, and, as I read the record their 
 words are still wet to me with the tears; but 
 he could not stay. All the paths his feet had 
 worn as he went about doing good were closed 
 to him now. Only one was open that led into 
 the wilderness. There was about two hundred 
 dollars in our tenor when he had sold his library, 
 and it was borne in on him that he must go to 
 London. So he went forth, his good wife hold- 
 ing his hand, not knowing what would befall 
 him there. The old magazines of the period 
 
 [ 199 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 that report the change speak of him with pure 
 regard, the Gentleman's Magazine especially 
 (I find no religious magazines in that time). 
 And his bishop, in parting with him, said, " I 
 have lost the best man I had in my whole dio- 
 cese." 
 
 I said just now there was no church in Lon- 
 don then that bore our name or brand, though 
 our faith in the unity of God, the great central 
 truth we hold and maintain, was winning its way 
 there as it was in Boston in our Puritan 
 churches and theirs, in the Presbyterian, minis- 
 ters of the mind of Priestley and Lardner, Rees 
 and Kippis on the other side the water, and like 
 Chauncey and Mayhew on this side ; but they did 
 not take the name and were not what we call 
 " come-outers," while my good Theophilus, who 
 had come out alone because alone he had found 
 the truth in his Bible, found he must accept 
 the brand ; and if there was but one man to do 
 this, he would be the man. He had bought his 
 freedom with a great price, and it was dear to 
 him as his life his soul's life to be just 
 what he was, a confessor of the grand primal 
 truth, there is but one God the Father. And 
 he could give up his living and what we may 
 call his " caste," but for his soul's sake he must 
 [ 200 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 be the man he was called to be, an apostle 
 separated unto the gospel of God. 
 
 He hired a hall and began to hold services 
 there. The people came to hear him in such 
 numbers that the place was soon too strait for 
 them, so that they said, " We must build a 
 chapel." And, as many persons of wealth and 
 distinction heard him gladly, this was easily 
 done, while it is good to remember that our 
 Benjamin Franklin helped to build the chapel, 
 attended the services, and subscribed to the min- 
 ister's stipend while he lived in London. This 
 was the place, I said, where the services were 
 held that morning, in May, 1871. I still re- 
 member the pulpit we have branded as " a tub," 
 with the sounding-board over your head. I re- 
 member, also, I felt a little crowded in the tub, 
 and imagined Master Lindsey must have been a 
 slim man, such an one, it may be, as Richard 
 Baxter, the eminent Puritan divine, whose pul- 
 pit stands now on the floor of the vestry in our 
 church at Kidderminster, into which you passed 
 by a door ; but, when I would have fain gone in, 
 so that I might stand where he had stood, I 
 could not get through, and had to climb over. 
 And this, mind you, was not the other day: it 
 was thirty years ago. 
 
 [ 201 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 The chapel was full that morning to running 
 over. I think I was the first man from the 
 United States who had been invited to preach 
 the sermon at the annual meeting, but of this I 
 am not sure. And I was not from Boston ; for 
 in that case I should have borne the chrism on 
 my forehead. I had come from Chicago, a 
 strange city in those days to Englishmen, but 
 destined in the autumn of that year to be lifted 
 for a spectacle to the world in her monstrous con- 
 flagration. She was branded then as " a mud 
 hole," and was very far indeed from the emi- 
 nence on which she stands to-day, the emi- 
 nence that won the admiration of a gentleman 
 from England, who came to the city not long 
 ago to " mark well her bulwarks and consider 
 her palaces," and said, " She beats her own 
 brag." But I notice when I go there that she 
 has grown so great she has ceased to brag. 
 
 But now I must tell you about the services in 
 the old mother chapel. When the good Quaker 
 had a passage at arms with one he called a 
 hireling minister, touching the high worth of 
 their usage over ours, he said, " Thee preaches 
 because thee has to say something, but we preach 
 because we have something to say." I am not 
 sure that this is always true of their preaching, 
 [ 202 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 and am quite sure the converse is not always 
 true of ours, while I think both came together 
 for me that morning to meet and tie. I had to 
 say something, and had something to say, while, 
 if you ask, Where is boasting, then I would 
 answer, It is excluded by the law of grace. I 
 have told you of times in other memories, when 
 I had not to lift, but was lifted, when the light 
 shone clear for me, and it was as the budding 
 forth of wings. I also was in the spirit on the 
 Lord's day. A dear friend told me many years 
 ago how he met Morse in a company, and said 
 to him, " Are you not proud, sir, of what you 
 have done? " And he answered, " No, I am not 
 proud, because I always feel these things were 
 not done by me, but through me." So I have 
 felt, and still feel, when I remember that morn- 
 ing. I was in the spirit, mid-week as it was. 
 The sermon is still in the barrel, and, as the 
 Scotch say, " is no that bad " when I take it 
 out now and then; but the fervent fire is no 
 more in the words, as it was that morning, and 
 I have to remember what Mr. Emerson said to 
 me after a service in Chicago, " When you are 
 old, you will wonder how these things were 
 done." The good poet sings, 
 
 [203 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 "The tender grace of a day that is dead 
 Will never come back to me." 
 
 But the tender grace of that day comes back to 
 me always as I sit in the silence and touch the 
 memories, this, and how they spoke to me 
 after the service and clasped my hand. They 
 are by no means so clever in this wise in Eng- 
 land as we are on this side the water ; they need 
 to be thawed out, and I may say, in passing, 
 especially in Scotland. But there was no ice 
 that morning or down to zero, in the good old 
 chapel, and I felt I was at home in London, and 
 in England also ; for from that day, as it seems 
 to me, all the churches of our faith and order 
 gave me the freedom of their pulpit. For, in 
 the five visits I have made since then to the old 
 motherland, I cannot remember one Sunday 
 when I was not preaching somewhere, while on 
 my last visit, almost seven years ago, the council 
 invited me again to take the annual sermon ; 
 but I was then on the Continent, and could not 
 come to time, and felt I must decline the invita- 
 tion. 
 
 In another memory I may tell you about our 
 rambles about London and otherwheres, but, be- 
 fore this closes, may say I preached that summer
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 for Dr. Martineau's congregation in the chapel, 
 of which he was then the minister. In Manches- 
 ter, also, at the Cross Street Chapel, for Mr. 
 Gaskell,'the husband of Mrs. Gaskell, the author, 
 you will know, of " Ruth " and " Mary Bar- 
 ton " and " Cranf ord," to mention only her best 
 works to my own thinking. He was a lovely 
 man, with a touch of latent humor. I was chat- 
 ting with him one day in the vestry of the 
 chapel, and speaking of a former minister who 
 had won my regard. I said, " Do you know, 
 sir, where he is buried? " And he answered, 
 " Yes, you are sitting right on his grave." I 
 moved my chair. And for Charles Beard in 
 Liverpool, the son of the famous old doctor in 
 divinity, preacher and teacher. Mr. Beard had 
 written me to preach for him, and I had told 
 him when we should be due in Liverpool. 
 We went, on landing, to the Adelphi; and, as I 
 was inscribing our names, he stood near, and 
 holding out his hand, as I turned, he said, " I 
 am Mr. Beard." His hair was white. I took 
 him for the old doctor, and said presently, " How 
 is your son, sir? " And he answered promptly, 
 " I am my son." And so we clasped hands. 
 
 [ 205 J
 
 XXVI 
 
 In my last memory I told you the story of 
 our good Theophilus, " a friend of God," and 
 the services in the old chapel, when I stood in 
 the same pulpit, both good memories still, with 
 no rust on them or tarnish from the touch of 
 time. 
 
 And now I want to tell you about our stay 
 in London through some three weeks among 
 the friends of our faith and fellowship, who 
 gave me and mine the warm welcome on that 
 memorable morning. We were the guests 
 mainly of Rev. Robert Spears and Mrs. Spears, 
 his good and true helpmeet. He was then the 
 secretary of the Association, and also the min- 
 ister of the Stamford Street Chapel. Brother 
 Hale had given me a letter to him on my visit 
 to England six years before this, when he gave 
 me as warm welcome as my heart could desire, 
 and asked me also to preach for him on the 
 Sunday evening, and there to my delight I 
 found a congregation very much like my own 
 in Chicago. They received the Word gladly, 
 [ 206 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 and clasped my hand so heartily after the serv- 
 ice that, as an old friend used to say, it seemed 
 like the hand of Providence, as indeed I think 
 it was to me. And Robert I soon found was 
 a man to tie to and to love, sincere as the day 
 and wholesome as brown bread. We also found 
 presently that our lives in the earlier years had 
 lain on parallel lines; for he also had worked 
 at the anvil and spent all his spare time in read- 
 ing and study, had joined an offshoot of my 
 mother Methodist Church, and became a local 
 preacher, but found he was not in sympathy 
 with the doctrines or dogmas of the church, so 
 he gave up his fellowship and found his true 
 home in the Unitarian fold, and in our faith the 
 bread of life to his soul. You will find the 
 story of his life in a small volume you can pur- 
 chase at the rooms of our Association in Bos- 
 ton, for which I wrote a brief sketch. It is 
 the story of the most successful minister of our 
 faith and order, to my own mind, in London, 
 from his coming there to his death. He also, 
 with his good wife, kept what we were used to 
 call over here a minister's tavern; for they 
 were given to hospitality, as Dr. Ripley was in 
 Concord, where Mr. Emerson says every minis- 
 ter's horse from the eastward turned in by in- 
 [ 207 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 stinct at the gateway of the " Old Manse " 
 Hawthorne has lifted into the light for a time 
 we cannot measure. So Robert and the good 
 hostess welcomed the strangers within their 
 gates, who came to London with a message or a 
 burden, seeking the light, or bringing it, as 
 they thought, to our people from Hindustan or 
 Iceland. This was no matter: they were 
 strangers, and they took them in. 
 
 Other friends I must mention, who made our 
 stay in the great city most pleasant and mem- 
 orable. I noticed, as I was speaking that morn- 
 ing, a man sitting near the pulpit with a grand 
 head and snow-white hair, looking up intently 
 through a pair of quite formidable spectacles 
 he would throw back on his forehead with a 
 quick motion when something was said it may 
 be he liked or disliked, I had no time or will to 
 guess. But, when I came down literally from 
 on high, he came forward, clasped my hand 
 warmly, and mentioned his name, John Bow- 
 ring. It was the good knight Sir John, and I 
 bowed my head in reverence, not to the knight, 
 but to the man ; for he was known to me through 
 my reading and by common fame. 
 
 He was then in his seventy-ninth year, but 
 was hale and hearty to all seeming as a man of 
 [ 208 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 fifty; and, as I found, when he would speak in 
 our meetings and to myself in his home, he was 
 one with us and one of us, heart and soul. He 
 had no misgivings touching our faith or our 
 future. We were here to stay and to win the 
 world to the gospel of the One God our Father, 
 and there were moments in our communion when 
 his voice would take a deep tone and musical, 
 as if he were chanting his own grand hymn, 
 
 " Watchman, tell us of the night, 
 What its signs of promise are ? " 
 
 And now I love to think it was almost worth 
 the journey over sea to spend those hours with 
 the good knight; and, when he asked me, as we 
 sat at the table, whether I had seen any of the 
 eminent people since we came to London, I an- 
 swered, " No one greater than a knight," not 
 remembering at the moment he was one. 
 
 Sir John Robinson was in the old chapel also 
 that morning, then plain John. He was then 
 the chief on the Daily News. He also clasped 
 my hand warmly and wrote something about the 
 services to the Chicago Evening Journal, which 
 greatly pleased my people and let me be hon- 
 est pleased me when we came home. He 
 would have me go with him on a day to the 
 [ 209 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 Reform Club to break bread; and in the great 
 common room I sat in Thackeray's favorite 
 chair, that also is a pleasant memory. Our 
 friendship only ended with his life. We were 
 sure to meet when I came to London in the after 
 years and sit together at the table in the club; 
 and I loved to meet him, he was so heartily hu- 
 man. And I think he was the best story-teller 
 I ever met in England, drawn from the mem- 
 ories of his busy life as they usually were. Also 
 like the whole brood of us, he would take pos- 
 session of any story worth its salt and hold it in 
 fee simple. I told him such an one, when we 
 met as usual in 1892, of a man in the West 
 touched with a quaint and original humor that 
 pleased him greatly, as I had it fresh from the 
 mint ; and, not long after we came home, there it 
 was in Punch in a very thin disguise, but trans- 
 ferred to England with a capital illustration. 
 I went over again in 1898. He came to see 
 me, and we went to the club, where slipping into 
 the old groove, he had told some good stories 
 of the men he had met, and I had drawn also on 
 my memory, I said, " Sir John, did you give 
 that story I told you about the old humorist 
 in Illinois to Punch? " He did not blush: we 
 never do in such a case. He said simply, " It 
 [ 210 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 was too good to keep, you know," and then 
 added with a touch of alarm, " Do not follow 
 my example and print any of those I have told 
 you, I am making a book of recollections." 
 The book I notice is printed, but he did not live 
 to see it in print, and I shall see his face no 
 more; but I love to hold the memory of our 
 friendship through more than thirty years. 
 
 Another, and the last, of our sojourn may 
 close this monologue for the time, of the friend- 
 ship which dates from that year and still stays 
 warm and sweet with those who are left, of Sir 
 James Clarke Lawrence and his brothers which 
 must have budded forth that morning. Sir 
 James was at the head then, and if my memory 
 is good, in the firm of Lawrence Brothers, Con- 
 tractors and Builders. 
 
 Their father had come up to London many 
 years before, a workingman, with just his able 
 head, his clever hands, and the good wife for 
 his whole fortune and what better could you 
 wish for had established his business on 
 firm foundations, and prospered amain by hon- 
 est work well done; had also given such pledges 
 of his worth as a man and a citizen that he was 
 elected lord mayor of his city I think for two 
 terms, but of this I am not quite sure ; and had 
 [211 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 also been knighted. The sons had succeeded 
 him in the business at his death, and Sir James 
 had been elected lord major in the year be- 
 fore this we have in our minds, and had been 
 knighted in the opening of the great Holborn 
 Viaduct. 
 
 He was a busy man, but offered heartily to 
 go with me about London his London and 
 show me what I might not easily see otherwise. 
 This was just what I would love to do. I had 
 wanted to see the guild halls of the ancient 
 guilds about which I had read so much, and 
 his name was the pass-key to open their curi- 
 ous and capital treasures. Then he took me 
 to the great guild hall of the city he knew like 
 a book, having been lord mayor, and among 
 many things asked the guardian to open the 
 plate chest and show me the plate, all gold, to 
 lift out the great golden flagon he put into my 
 hand, and asked me to heft it, and did not ask 
 me if we had anything like that in the States. 
 We went to Newgate, that place of evil fame, a 
 hideous old structure now pulled down, but 
 black then with smoke and to me with its rec- 
 ords of crime, to the Holloway Prison also, where 
 there was a treadmill. There was one in my 
 boyhood at Wakefield in Yorkshire, the buga-
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 boo of boys when they would say of some reck- 
 less fellow he will land on the treadmill; and I 
 wanted to verify my grim memory. So I said 
 to my friend, " I should like to get on that 
 thing, sir, and see how it works." He smiled, 
 and the man who was ordered off seemed much 
 pleased to have me take his place ; but I wonder 
 if it was more than a fragment of a minute be- 
 fore I cried, " Let me down ! " It seemed as if 
 the very world was giving way under my feet. 
 I can dimly recall that moment still. 
 
 But better memories wait. Sir James said he 
 would like me on a day to attend the great 
 service held once a year in St. Paul's Cathedral 
 for the children of the great London charities. 
 I was glad to go, and have been glad for the 
 memory all these years. We sat, I remem- 
 ber, in the wardens' pew right under the dome. 
 The children ten thousand they told me 
 sat in the vast gallery to the left, and the con- 
 gregation, also vast, in the body of the cathe- 
 dral, I forget its especial name. The services 
 were intoned in beautiful harmony, lead by one 
 wonderful voice. I would love to hear that voice 
 again. There were other things done by the 
 choir in the proper order, and, when the right 
 moment came, all the children rose and sang a 
 [ 213 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 hymn to such a heart-invading purpose that 
 the tears ran down my face. 
 
 Then one evening I must go with my good 
 friend to the feast of the Carpenters' Guild in 
 their splendid hall my last memory of our 
 sojourn in London that spring. I had seen the 
 hall before in his company, but here were the 
 members of the guild on one of their holidays, 
 cheerful and ready for the good cheer. I was 
 introduced to the oldest earl in England by 
 strict descent, who gave me two fingers to shake, 
 and was told that they came over with the Con- 
 queror, but have still to find out what they had 
 done besides. It was one of those dinners I 
 suppose you can only partake of in the old Lon- 
 don guilds " a feast of fat things, . . . and 
 wines on the lees well refined"; but all things 
 were done decently and in order. There was a 
 bishop on the dais to ask the blessing, and a 
 toastmaster who was not a guest, but came in 
 at intervals to propose the toast and then sing 
 a song, as the custom had been observed for 
 hundreds of years, a person worthy the pen 
 of Dickens. And, when the feast was over and 
 done but, as I guessed, not done with by 
 some who sat near us there were speeches to 
 the honor and glory of the fine old craft. 
 [ 214 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 The first speech was made by the bishop, a 
 fine old dignitary of the first water; for there 
 are degrees in bishops, as I learned in Canter- 
 bury when I was the guest of Canon Freeman- 
 tie. I sat next a bishop, and said to him for 
 we were in a merry mood I felt a little proud, 
 for I had never dined with one of his rank be- 
 fore. " Do not be proud," he said, laughing in 
 his sleeve. " They have made a lot suffragan 
 bishops, and I am one. But I think we are not 
 held in any great esteem; for I went not long 
 ago to a place in my charge to preach and con- 
 firm, where I was not known, and overheard one 
 old farmer say to another, ' T' bishop's coming 
 to preach, did ye know ? ' ' Ay, I know,' the 
 other answered, ' but he's only o' of them suf- 
 ferin' bishops.' Do not be proud." So the 
 bishop, I said, made the first speech, and he was 
 followed by a fine old orthodox divine, the min- 
 ister of an eminent church in Manchester. He 
 was to be the last speaker that evening; but, 
 when he sat down, the president said, " We have 
 a gentleman with us, a minister from America; 
 and we shall be pleased if he will say a word to 
 us before we go home." Sir James whispered, 
 " You are the man." And I was of course quite 
 unprepared to say even the word. But the
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 word came to me in a flash, it was given me what 
 I should say. So, after due praise of the good 
 addresses to which we had listened we always 
 do that, you know, in any case, but here I could 
 speak with a good will I said : " There is one 
 word more can be said of your honorable craft, 
 which to my own mind casts the fairest radiance 
 on you and yours. Jesus Christ was a carpen- 
 ter, and wrought at the bench, as nearly as we 
 can make out, until he was about thirty years 
 of age, before he went forth on his holy mis- 
 sion." I cannot remember what I said besides 
 in the few moments, but had reason to believe it 
 was a welcome word ; for the good orthodox di- 
 vine clasped my hand as we left the hall, saying, 
 " Why should I have forgotten to say that 
 word myself? " I thought I knew the reason, 
 but did not tell him. 
 
 [ 216 1
 
 XXVII 
 
 Our sojourn in England that summer and a 
 journey on the continent from Antwerp through 
 the Rhineland to Switzerland and thence by 
 Geneva to Paris are memories I may touch be- 
 fore I have done if the play seems to be worth 
 the candle, but will only say now that we came 
 home in September to find a warm welcome all 
 along the line. 
 
 We were purely well, the father, the mother, 
 and the little maid, and no member of the church 
 had been taken from our midst. They were all 
 there to welcome us in the church, the Sunday- 
 school, and at the week-night reception. 
 
 We came home on the Batavia, and they had 
 a model of her made, studded all over with tube- 
 roses and set on the communion table. Their 
 fragrance still lingers in my memory as I write 
 these words, and in my heart. This would be 
 the third week in September when we held the 
 first services in our church, and sang, as I still 
 remember, the hymn which was written for the 
 dedication of our church: 
 [ 217 ]
 
 " Unto thy temple, Lord, we come, 
 
 With thankful hearts to worship thee; 
 And pray that this may be our home, 
 Until we touch eternity." 
 
 This was our psalm and prayer, our hope and 
 joy; and we wist not that the day of mourning 
 and desolation was drawing near when the words 
 of the ancient Hebrew prophet would again be 
 fulfilled. 
 
 " Saith God, I will shew wonders in the heavens 
 
 above, 
 
 And signs on the earth beneath, 
 Blood and fire, vapor and smoke. 
 The sun shall be turned into darkness, 
 And the moon into blood." 
 
 When on the third Sunday of our services 
 and in the evening, as I was telling the story 
 to a great congregation of the wreck and ruin 
 we had seen in Paris, and of what we had been 
 told by friends who had survived the siege and 
 the great woe of the Commune, never leaving the 
 city for a day, the fire was kindled by a mere 
 accident, as the story stands, that lifted our 
 fair city in the lurid flame for a spectacle to the 
 world. And on the Monday night, when I saw 
 the last home burn, far up in the north, the fire 
 [ 218 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 had swept over a space four miles in length and 
 from a mile to a mile and a half in breadth be- 
 tween the river and the lake, leaving over ninety- 
 eight thousand men, women, and children home- 
 less when the night fell, and on a rough estimate 
 more than seventy thousand crouching outside 
 the fire line in the open and in the bitter October 
 storm. 
 
 Still the fire did not fall on us like a bolt from 
 the blue. The summer had been the dryest 
 the oldest settlers could remember, and some of 
 these had lived there with the Indians when 
 Chicago was a trading-post. The rainfall by 
 the record had been only twenty-eight and a 
 half per cent, of the usual average, and the 
 drought had covered the whole region north- 
 ward, so that very soon after we came home the 
 woods and dry bent were afire in the lumber 
 lands, from which a heavy haze of smoke, as I 
 remember, hung over our city from the far 
 away, and the sad tidings came to us of small 
 lumber towns burning, the loss of many lives, 
 and of many more who were only saved by 
 standing up to their necks in the water. This 
 was the situation, and many took the alarm, 
 fearing what might come to pass in our tinder- 
 dry city in which the houses were mostly built 
 [ 219 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 of wood, especially on the North and West 
 Sides. So the authorities and the fire depart- 
 ment were taking all the pains possible, I think, 
 to fight the fire if it should kindle and spread, 
 while in the week before the great conflagration 
 there was a fire on the West Side where a large 
 area was burned; but this was got under after 
 a fierce struggle, and then we began to hope 
 for the best, while the worst was at our doors. 
 The alarm also had spread that the worst 
 might still be waiting; for Dr. Eliot, our min- 
 ister in St. Louis, told me he was greatly 
 alarmed, and on the Sunday morning said to his 
 people he feared a great calamity was impend- 
 ing over us, and told them they must all be 
 ready to help us by all means in their power 
 when it came. 
 
 It came, I said, on the Sunday evening; and 
 I well remember when the church scaled the 
 glare of fire that met us far away, as it seemed 
 then, on the South Side, and we were alarmed. 
 But I was tired with the heat and the two serv- 
 ices, and said I must have some sleep. Mother 
 was tired also, but could not durst not 
 rest. She would watch, and, if there was dan- 
 ger that the fire would cross the river and 
 spread north, she would wake me. She aroused 
 [ 220 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 me soon after midnight. The fire was burning 
 fiercely, she said, and we must be ready if it 
 crossed the river. The wind was blowing hard 
 from the south-west, and the burning embers 
 were borne high above us as yet on its wings. 
 If you can imagine a snowstorm of burning em- 
 bers for I can find no fitter figure there it 
 was high in the dark heavens. We must arouse 
 the children at once, she said, and have them 
 dressed. So this was done, and then we aroused 
 the neighbors down the avenue, and asked the 
 policeman to alarm all he could reach who were 
 still sleeping. He did not think the fire would 
 reach us, but went to work with a will. This 
 so far was more mother's work than mine. I 
 thought the fire might still be mastered before 
 it crossed the river. The children, I remember, 
 were very, quiet and asked me to take them over 
 the river to see the spectacle. Mother was not 
 willing, but I took them over the bridge. The 
 court-house was burning and the fire gathering 
 in volume, and I saw we must make haste home, 
 for the bridge was in peril. Half an hour or 
 so after this the bridge was burned, the wind 
 had risen to a hurricane, and volumes of flame 
 began to rise from the great stores of alcohol 
 and its like in the warehouses, and go northward 
 [ 221 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 on the storm. The spire of the Catholic Ca- 
 thedral came down before the fire came near. I 
 have seen this questioned; but I saw it fall, as 
 I stood not far away. Early in the morning 
 the fire had crossed the river. John Wentworth, 
 ex-mayor I know not how many times, and a 
 potency in our city, came pounding up the 
 street with a carpet bag, going north. We 
 were good friends, and he said to me : " The 
 fire will take the whole North Side. Get your 
 family away. It has burnt all I have except 
 the papers in this carpet bag." And then he 
 went his way, and I saw him no more for many 
 months. But we could not flee then, and made 
 up our minds to save what we could from the 
 home if it was burned, and take refuge in the 
 church ; for that might still be saved. It was a 
 forlorn hope; but we began at once to move 
 what we could take in our arms, with the chil- 
 dren to help us. So down to our little lad they 
 all volunteered. I remember still how we hung 
 a picture we would save, a landscape, by Wil- 
 liam Hart. We looped it over his neck, and 
 away he went. But the loop was long, the 
 picture hung before him and bumped on his 
 small shins, whereat he wept a few quiet tears; 
 but he got there, for he takes after his mother. 
 F 222 1 
 
 |_ <<v/v I
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 But the pathetic picture of his trotting along 
 is worth more to me now than the landscape by 
 Hart. We all worked like beavers to save 
 what we could, and a good woman came, say- 
 ing : " The fire will not take our house, the wind 
 is blowing it away. If you want to save your 
 most valuable books, send them to us." We 
 had saved a few: our eldest daughter had car- 
 ried them in her arms, going back and forth, so 
 that the bonnie face of my lassie was all grimy, 
 while the smoke had brought the tears down her 
 face and made cleaner lines. And in one of her 
 journeys, with her arms full of books, as she 
 still tells the story, a young gentleman, an ut- 
 ter stranger, said to her, " Miss Collyer, may I 
 wipe your face? " She answered, " If you 
 please, sir." So he did this, with a handker- 
 chief which she thinks must have been used for 
 many such faces that morning. So she said, 
 " Thank you, sir." She had never seen him 
 before and never saw him again, the good Sa- 
 maritan ! Well, I found an express to take my 
 most precious books. I do not remember what 
 I paid him, but it was all the money I had about 
 me. The books were taken in, and I felt that 
 a load was taken from my heart; but within an 
 hour the fire leapt on the house, and my books 
 [ 223 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 were a burnt offering to the monster. We kept 
 well at work, saving what we could carry, until 
 the front of the home was on fire; but still I 
 lingered after mother and children had taken 
 refuge in the church, picking up trifles worth 
 but little except to me and mine, and then I 
 must clear out by the rear door, but still remem- 
 ber, as I was passing, I saw the kettle standing 
 on the stove, as the maids had left it ready for 
 our breakfast. The sight went to my heart. 
 Something human seemed to touch the thing we 
 had used so long. I paused for a moment to 
 pat it on the shoulder, and said : " I am sorry, 
 old friend, that I must leave you there to burn. 
 You have been a good servant to me and mine; 
 and, quite unlike your master, you always began 
 to sing before you boiled over." So near is 
 humor of kin to our pain. 
 
 But the fire still swept northward, and well 
 along in the forenoon we saw the church must 
 go. A house near by on the line of the wind had 
 caught, and our house of refuge was in instant 
 peril. One house in the great waste of burning 
 was saved, the Ogden house. It stood in a square 
 quite near the church, and the good, gen- 
 erous inmates came over to us, and said : " We 
 have a great cistern full of water. Come over
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 and take all you will to save the church. We 
 may also be burned out, but we don't care. 
 Come for the water and welcome." But, in de- 
 spite of all we could do, the fire swept through 
 the slats in the spire, and the church began to 
 burn up there. Then, when there was no hope, 
 we took again what we could carry, of the most 
 value, and started on our pilgrimage from the 
 City of Destruction, buried our small store of 
 silver in a celery patch not far away, and heaped 
 the earth over it with our hands and feet. 
 Mother remembered that we moved five times 
 that day, all told, with what we could carry, 
 losing the most before the night fell ; but, when 
 we left the church, I was blind and helpless. I 
 could not open my eyes or my hands. So they 
 had to lead me northward out of the danger. 
 There was one house, we were sure, away up 
 north, the fire would not reach. The family 
 were members of our church. We would go 
 there, and we went. If we had been their ain 
 folk, we could not have been more welcome than 
 Mrs. Price made us, and her sons. They were 
 originally from Brattleboro. The town takes 
 on a touch of sacredness to me because of the 
 memory. I was lamed,, and they ministered 
 unto me: we were faint, and they fed us. My 
 [ 225 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 eyes opened after much bathing, and my hands 
 with the rest and refreshing, so that I was my- 
 self again as they were, the mother and the chil- 
 dren. When I went to look out, I said, " The 
 fire will take your house, dear friends." And 
 so it was, but there was time to bury many 
 things in the garden in the dry sand they re- 
 covered without damage about a week after. 
 Some members of our church lived north by 
 west in the lee of a small lake and were safe 
 from the fire. Mr. Moulding said, " We must 
 find our minister and the family at any cost." 
 So he yoked up his team and came to find us 
 found us I do not quite remember where; but 
 there the good fellow was with his wagon, ready 
 to take us home. Mother and the children went 
 with him, but I stayed behind to come after, 
 while among us we picked up fifteen young men 
 of the church, I remember, who were quite 
 stranded. They were also taken to the refuge 
 in the lee of the lake. There was no room for 
 them in the house, so they must sleep in the 
 barn, a palace to them that night, but very 
 cold, as they would tell for years after in great 
 glee. They slept in a row ; and, when the outer- 
 most men could bear the cold no longer, they 
 would take to the middle where the others gave 
 [ 226 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 them room. So they had a good time. My 
 last memory of the grim day was to watch the 
 fire fiend burn the last house. 
 
 This is the memory of the destruction of our 
 home, our church, and almost all the homes in 
 our parish. Another memory remains of our 
 restoration. 
 
 [ 227 ]
 
 XXVIII 
 
 I must reap some memories now of our res- 
 toration after the great fire, and this is the 
 first. 
 
 When we were alone in our safe harbor on 
 the lee of the small lake, and mother had seen 
 the children safe in their beds, I quite broke 
 down, for the pity of it and the pain. The 
 church was burnt, and the home we owned, with 
 more than 90 per cent of the homes in our 
 parish, while we feared also that dear friends 
 had been caught as in a trap when the great 
 volumes of fire from the explosions in the vaults 
 on the south side had leaped suddenly on them 
 and barred their escape by the avenues north- 
 ward. They might have escaped in a boat or 
 a tug on the lake ; but we feared the worst, and 
 I broke down. 
 
 But once more in our life together my ex- 
 tremity was mother's opportunity. Bunyan 
 tells us that, when his pilgrims were in the dun- 
 geon of the Giant Despair, Christian found a 
 key in his bosom called Hope, wherewith they 
 [ 228 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 opened the door of the dungeon and were free. 
 I had no such key that black midnight, but 
 mother found one in her bosom, and set me free. 
 I cannot recall her words, but this was their 
 burden, " Sorrow may endure for the night, 
 but joy cometh in the morning." She was sure 
 we had seen the worst, and now the best was 
 waiting. So I began to hope for the better and 
 the best; and in the morning I was ready with 
 her help and the help of God to face the grim 
 day and the instant demand. 
 
 My first-born son was not with us in the fire : 
 he was in the country on a visit to some friends, 
 but hurried home and found us early in the 
 morning, eager to help us. But he was also in 
 great trouble, poor lad! He was to have been 
 married on the Tuesday or the Wednesday 
 evening I do not quite remember in the 
 church. There was no church now ; but the far 
 sorer trouble was his bride had vanished in the 
 smoke and flame with her family, and he could 
 hear no word of what had become of them. 
 They had escaped by the lake when the fire 
 hemmed them in ; and this was his joy and ours, 
 you may be sure. Still he was heavy of heart, 
 as we were for him, that there could be no wed- 
 ding. He had taken a cottage just outside the 
 [ 229 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 waste of burning, as we found, and was in good 
 work when business could start up again. So 
 I said to him, he must be married all the same 
 forthwith. We were not going to break down, 
 but to build up again, and would stand shoulder 
 to shoulder. So he must be ready to be married 
 the next day, and go right away, after he had 
 seen his sweetheart, to hunt up the man who 
 would issue the license. I remember also how 
 eagerly he fell in with the plan and made good 
 the Scripture, " Children, obey your parents, 
 for this is right," found his man, whose forms 
 were all burnt ; but he drew up the license on a 
 sheet of paper, and they were married on time. 
 We must also have a wedding feast of course, 
 in despite of the fire, which had devoured what 
 had been prepared ; and we had the feast. Some 
 good friends, who had not been burnt out, sent 
 in what they could muster, and I went out my 
 lone to find some small luxury that would crown 
 the feast. It was a forlorn errand; for all 
 the money I had in the world was some very 
 small change, all the rest had been given to the 
 expressman who moved my books, that were 
 burned after all. Well, I saw the luxury in the 
 window of a small store. It was a string of 
 sausage, and I asked what they, were per pound. 
 [ 230 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 I had just enough money for a pound, so I gave 
 my order; but the string weighed half a pound 
 over my stint, and I told the nice, civil woman 
 the pound was all I could pay for. Would she 
 cut off the margin? She looked up and asked 
 me if this was not myself? "Yes," I said. 
 And then she asked me if I remembered help- 
 ing a poor family on Market Street on a time, 
 but the memory had gone. Then she said: 
 " You have forgotten, sir ; but I have not. I 
 will not cut the string. Take them all, and 
 welcome." I think there are times when it is 
 more generous to accept a gift than to give one. 
 It would have been a mean thing in me to say no 
 to that woman. So I accepted the half pound 
 with courtesy, and the sausage crowned the 
 feast. Also it was very good. 
 
 Then we must find a place for ourselves and 
 the children. The good friends who had taken 
 us in were straitened for room, mother said, and 
 must not be burdened more than we could help, 
 glad as they were to have us with them. We 
 did not know where to turn in the great con- 
 fusion. The problem was a hard one to solve ; 
 but it was soon solved for us by my dear friend 
 of many years, Charles W. Wendte, now the 
 minister of the Parker Fraternity in Boston,
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 but then the minister of our Third Church in 
 Chicago, far away on the South Side of the 
 city. He came through the burning waste of 
 the four miles with a team, and found us. I 
 could not have done it; but there he was, de- 
 lighted to find us, and take us to his own home, 
 where his good mother was waiting to welcome 
 us and care for us so long as we would stay. 
 So we went with him gladly, and there was the 
 welcome until we found a place to board with 
 other friends through the impending winter. 
 
 We were poor as Job's turkey, as my mother 
 used to say. We had money in the bank, and 
 all the banks were burned. But the morning 
 after the wedding feast I found our good 
 Deacon Mears or he found me and, find- 
 ing I was stranded, emptied all his pockets one 
 by one into my hands, so that mother was able to 
 make me look decent, as she said; for I was 
 what we were used to call " a hobject " in our 
 folk speech in fighting the fire. Then the mem- 
 ory steals out of my anxiety about our harried 
 and scattered flock. I wanted to find them, to 
 help them if I was able, and to see what we 
 could do who were still the unburned church. 
 This was my burden, and it was lifted. The 
 [ 232 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 light shone for me that had never failed in the 
 most momentous moments of my life, as I have 
 told you before, and my way was made clear. I 
 must give notice in the papers, when they began 
 to print them again, that I would meet my people 
 on the space before our church on the Sunday 
 morning at eleven, where we would hold a religi- 
 ous service. I found my friend Horace White, 
 the editor of the Chicago Tribune, hard at work 
 preparing the first imprint after the fire, as he 
 told me the other day; and he was glad to in- 
 sert my notice, while the result was beyond my 
 hope when we came together, a large com- 
 pany of our people, with other friends and 
 many strangers, on the space before the church. 
 A great stone had fallen in just the right place 
 for my platform, and I had borrowed a Bible 
 and a hymn-book, no doubt, from Brother 
 Wendte. The congregation had no hymn- 
 books. So I fell back on our custom in the 
 small chapel on the hill, when I was a boy, and 
 deaconed out the hymns two lines at a time, as 
 my father had done before me. 
 
 Some members of our choir were there 
 who led the singing. There could be but one 
 hymn to open the services : 
 [ 233 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 " Before Jehovah's awful throne 
 Ye nations bow with sacred joy. 
 Know that the Lord is God alone; 
 He can create, and he destroy." 
 
 I can hear them still singing the great hymn 
 to the solemn Old Hundred. The dear familiar 
 faces also come to me out of the mist, some bent 
 down and some looking up to heaven, while the 
 tears ran down their faces. I can never for- 
 get those moments. 
 
 Then I must read the lesson for the morning, 
 and this touches a curious coincidence in our 
 human story. In 1829, when I was a small boy, 
 the cathedral in York was set on fire and sorely 
 burned by a fanatic, as he claimed by the com- 
 mand of his God. It is the finest cathedral in 
 England, as Yorkshire men believed and believe 
 still, so wonderful in its beauty that, when a 
 stern, dissenting minister in Leeds would fain 
 go to see it many years ago, his son told me 
 how his father stood within the fane silent for 
 some time, and then, lifting his hand, said, in 
 almost a whisper, " This might have been done 
 by the angels." 
 
 Some time after the fire my father bought a 
 small chap-book from a pedler that contained 
 the story of the fire. It was a wonder-book to 
 [ 234 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 me when I was able to read it, so that I de- 
 voured every word; and, when I wanted to find 
 a lesson for the morning, the memory stirred of 
 the coincidence, that on the Sunday after the 
 cathedral was burned the lesson appointed for 
 that morning in the prayer-book, in the time, I 
 think, of Edward VI., was the sixty-fourth 
 chapter in Isaiah, in which you find these words, 
 " Our holy and beautiful house, where our 
 fathers praised thee, is burned with fire; and all 
 our pleasant things are laid waste." 
 
 When I came to the words, I had to stop, but 
 began again and finished the chapter. A 
 prayer came after the lesson, and then we sang 
 the beautiful strain from Ivanhoe: 
 
 " When Israel of the Lord beloved 
 
 Out of the land of bondage came, 
 Her father's God before her moved, 
 An awful guide in smoke and flame." 
 
 After the hymn I said the words that were in 
 my heart for consolation and courage, finding 
 both for myself as I said them, close of kin as 
 they were to the key mother found for me that 
 night. Then I spoke about the situation, and 
 I told them they must pay me no stipend for the 
 year to come. I could take care of my family, 
 [ 235 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 and this I would do. Could go back to the 
 anvil at a pinch and make horseshoes, whereat 
 they smiled, and so did I. When I was through 
 with the address, William Clarke, the brother 
 of our noble preacher James Freeman Clarke, 
 offered the resolution that we would go right 
 on and rebuild our church as soon as we were 
 able. The resolution was passed with some- 
 thing like a shout of gladness, and then we 
 closed our services with the doxology and the 
 benediction, and went wherever we had found a 
 shelter. I may say now, in perfect sincerity, 
 that my sole purpose that day was to do what 
 we had done, and was quite content. I found 
 no one was missing in our flock or had broken 
 down, so far as we could hear from them, while 
 I may say, before I close this memory, that one 
 life was saved, of a young lady in our church 
 who was wearing away before the fire came, so 
 that there was scant hope of her recovery. I 
 went to see her about a week before, and hardly 
 expected to see her again. Her family were 
 unable to escape by one of the avenues or by 
 the lake, but got away to the lake shore, where 
 they laid the dear daughter down on the sands, 
 and were obliged to pour water on her garments 
 to prevent their burning from the falling em- 
 [ 236 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 bers; and to our great wonder we heard she 
 was recovering. She got quite well, married, 
 and had a fine family of children. 
 
 I said just now, my one purpose in calling 
 our people together was to do what was done 
 that morning; but this was not all. Reporters 
 were there, who telegraphed what was said and 
 done far and wide. In the week before the 
 meeting a telegram found me from a young man 
 in Michigan, who said : " I have sent you four- 
 teen hundred loaves of bread. What shall I 
 send next ? " The bread was turned over to the 
 Aid and Relief Association, which was already 
 up to the eyes in feeding the hungry multitudes 
 that flocked to their doors. And other mes- 
 sages had come that assured us the great, gen- 
 erous heart of our own people was beating for 
 us and ours, and we should not be left stranded. 
 Then within a week after our meeting a letter 
 reached me from a gentleman in Boston, of 
 which this was the substance : Do not be troubled 
 about your stipend for the coming year. I will 
 pay it, and enclose my check for the first quar- 
 ter. My stipend was five thousand dollars. 
 
 And here I will anticipate this time by, say, 
 a month, to tell you about another letter from 
 the Cornell University, informing me of a thou- 
 [ 237 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 sand dollars held there for my acceptance if I 
 would make a horseshoe and send it out to the 
 writer. I had not made one since I left the old 
 forge in England twenty-one years before, and 
 so I felt a little dubious about my ability to 
 make one now I mean, of course, then. But 
 a favorite saying of my old mother, when she 
 could not quite see her way in some home ad- 
 venture, was " Nothing venture, nothing have." 
 So I made up my mind to try. My old friend 
 the blacksmith, in the wide lot near our church, 
 had got his forge going, or " agait," as we 
 used to say. So I went over and showed him 
 the letter, and asked him to lend me his anvil 
 and his helper. This he was heartily glad to 
 do ; for, if I won the prize, here was a story to 
 tell as long as he lived. The horseshoe was 
 made, and, though I say it, was well made, and 
 won the old man's approval. The convolution 
 somewhere in the back of my brain had pre- 
 served the tradition and directed every turn of 
 my wrist until the job was done. My name 
 was stamped on the shoe as the maker. Then I 
 went to a notary, who made out the proper doc- 
 ument, signed and sealed, sent out with the 
 horseshoe, and drew the thousand dollars with 
 fifty to boot. 
 
 [ 238 ]
 
 XXIX 
 
 I told in my last memory how the morning 
 broke for us after the night of fear, when the 
 first telegram came from the young man who 
 sent the fourteen hundred loaves of bread, and 
 then the letter about our living through the 
 first year which set me free to do whatever lay 
 in my power for my own people and wherever I 
 could lend a hand. It broke on our wasted city 
 also in a mighty pulse of sympathy and succor 
 before the cry went forth for help. The cry 
 came from our own people all over the land and 
 from the nations of kin to us in the old world, 
 What can we do for you? While they did not 
 wait for our answer, but sent the help in a vast 
 abundance to meet the instant demands, so that, 
 when the books were made up, my authority 
 says, in 1876, the contributions from our own 
 people and from abroad amounted to almost 
 five million dollars in money, besides the vast 
 bounty in food and clothing and whatever be- 
 sides would be of instant use or worth. 
 
 But of this bounty I can only make a mere 
 [ 239 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 mention now, and there is no need for more. So 
 I will touch the memories so good to me still of 
 what was done for me and mine by those of our 
 own faith, mainly here and in England, to re- 
 store our church and our last home. It must 
 have been in the week after the fire say, ten 
 days that a telegram came from London sent 
 by Sir James Clarke Lawrence, who went with 
 me about his London in May, saying, " Draw 
 on us for five hundred pounds for your family." 
 And this I remember we set aside as a sort of 
 nest-egg for the home when we could begin to 
 build. Then great consignments of provision 
 and clothing came to my care from friends, 
 known and unknown, we turned over to the as- 
 sociation where the bread had gone. Mother 
 remembered sixty-five great cases of this sort we 
 sent there, I think, in one week. Money came 
 also I must use as seemed best, wherewith I was 
 able to help a good number quietly, who could 
 not and must not apply to the Aid and Relief 
 Association. This is still a dear, good memory 
 you may be sure. Meanwhile money came to 
 help rebuild the church, and invitations from 
 St. Louis, New York, and Boston, asking me to 
 come and tell them the story of the fire. This 
 I was glad to do and told my story in our 
 [ 240 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 church in St. Louis, our Church of the Messiah 
 in New York, and the Music Hall in Boston. 
 And in Boston the generous gentleman who was 
 paying my stipend invited a number of friends 
 to meet me at his house for conference touching 
 the restoration of the church. The result in 
 Boston was the Unitarian Association, with 
 Mr. Shippen the secretary, took charge of the 
 subscriptions there and of those sent in from 
 many of our churches in New England, to such 
 a grand purpose that, if my memory is good, 
 the Association held seventy thousand dollars 
 all told to help us rebuild, while other sums 
 came directly to my hand for the same purpose. 
 My dear friend of forty years also, William H. 
 Baldwin, president of the Young Men's Christian 
 Union, was busy as a whole hive of bees in June, 
 helping in every way he could imagine. Then in 
 good time our churches in. England took a 
 hand in the work, the men and women and chil- 
 dren in the churches and the Sunday-schools all 
 over the motherland, as they did here in our 
 own land, sending their offerings with letters of 
 heart-whole S3^mpathy for me and mine in the 
 home and the parish, as good or better than 
 their gifts, good as these were. Now and then 
 & letter would come that made me smile. One 
 [ 241 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 I still remember from a man in Michigan, who 
 said he understood I could write a first-rate 
 lecture, but my delivery was bad. I had no 
 eloquence or elocution: he had both, but could 
 not write a lecture. So he would make me a 
 proposition. If I would write the lecture, he 
 would go round and deliver it, and I should 
 have half the profits. I did not answer that 
 letter. Another contained a quarter of a dol- 
 lar, with the request that I would send the giver 
 a relic from the fire. I think I returned the 
 quarter less two cents for the stamp, and 
 " sassed " him. One made my eyes dim for a 
 moment. The writer told me she was a hired 
 girl and a Catholic. She had read about the 
 services before the burned church and wanted 
 to help us. Would I accept the dollar she en- 
 closed? and she wished she could spare more. 
 It was a rude hand, and the words were rudely, 
 spelled; but I think an illuminated missal could 
 not have touched me as those words touched me 
 or brought the mist of tears. Meanwhile a 
 small band did not neglect the gathering of our- 
 selves together when Sunday came, but soon be- 
 gan to meet for worship in a house beyond the 
 fire line, where I spoke the words that came to 
 me for my own help and theirs. After some
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 time also the orthodox church on the next 
 corner from ours ran up a frame building in 
 the rear of their ruin, in which they held serv- 
 ices on the Sunday morning and evening, and 
 made us warmly welcome to hold ours there in 
 the afternoon. I think we should have felt shy 
 about asking them, but there was no need. 
 They asked us, and meant it, with no fear that 
 the place would be tainted by our heresy, the 
 good, generous folk who were of our kith and 
 kin after all. Then the time came when we 
 said we must begin to rebuild, about a year 
 after the fire ; and the committee that had built 
 before took the work in hand, for they were all 
 there and all ready, and the money was there to 
 foot the bills, enough, if I remember, and it 
 might be something over, so great was the 
 bounty of those whose hearts were moved to 
 help us. We could not restore our church in 
 the splendor we remembered, and this was not 
 our dream. The walls for some space were not 
 ruined, or the towers; and our good architect, 
 the best master-builder to my mind in our city, 
 who had done the work as his free gift before, 
 was ready, busy man as he was, to do it again 
 on the same old terms. He saw to the walls 
 that they should be well restored and strong as
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 ever; and all things were restored, simple now, 
 but good to the last piece of woodwork and of 
 stone. The first floor was done first, where we 
 gathered for the services and the Sunday- 
 school as soon as they were ready; and how 
 glad we were to be there I cannot tell you ! 
 Meanwhile our home was still a ruin I 
 would glance at now and then with a sore heart, 
 but hopeful; for we had drawn every dollar of 
 our insurance, to our wonder, and began to see 
 our way to a new home, but not on the old lot. 
 So that was sold at a good price, and another 
 bought quite to mother's mind and so to mine; 
 and we also began to build, but found after a 
 while we were not able to finish it save by a 
 heavy mortgage, but from this we were saved. 
 I had lectured now and then in several winters 
 through the Redpath Bureau in Boston, to my 
 great satisfaction and profit, but had not 
 thought of doing this again until after the 
 church was dedicated and all things were in 
 order; but now in the strait about the house 
 the bureau offered me work in this kind through 
 a whole winter, if I could take it at prices I 
 had never commanded. So I told my people 
 how we stood. The work would pay for the 
 home if I would take it in about six months; 
 [ 244 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 and, if they would give me my time, my stipend 
 they had then begun to pay should be used for 
 the supply of the pulpit, and would command 
 the best men they could lay their hands on. 
 So they voted me my vacation, and I went into 
 the work with all good will from early in No- 
 vember, 1872, to well on in May, 1873, lecturing 
 from Belfast in Maine to far away in Minne- 
 sota, and do not remember missing an appoint- 
 ment, nor did those who came to hear me seem 
 to notice my poverty in elocution and the like. 
 I would preach also on the Sunday now and 
 then, and came out at the end of all my labor 
 safe and sound, with money to pay for the new 
 home far more ample than the one we had lost, 
 into which we moved when it was ready and 
 lived in great content. 
 
 Meanwhile the church was noving on toward 
 its restoration with no break or trouble; and, 
 when it was ready for the dedication, my dear 
 father in our faith, Dr. Furness of Philadelphia, 
 came out to preach the sermon and give us his 
 benediction, being then seventy years of age. 
 It was a beautiful service, as you will know 
 who remember him, the last of the apostles, as 
 I would think when I heard him who " had seen 
 Jesus." We were at home again in our church, 
 [ 245 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 and it was good to be there. We had wept 
 over the destruction, and we read in the book 
 of Ezra how some wept over the restoration 
 of the temple after the great captivity who re- 
 membered the glory of the former house; but 
 I think there was no weeping over the glory we 
 remembered that Sunday morning. My heart 
 had been moved to attempt a hymn for the dedi- 
 cation of the grand temple that had gone, the 
 hymn we sang when we met for our first service 
 on our return home, as I told you; and, when 
 the time drew near for this dedication, I was 
 moved to attempt another I will transcribe from 
 my memory: 
 
 O Lord our God, when storm and flame 
 Hurled homes and temples into dust, 
 
 .We gathered here to bless thy name, 
 And on our ruin wrote our trust. 
 
 Thy tender pity met our pain ; 
 
 Swift through the world thine angels ran ; 
 And then thy Christ appeared again, 
 
 Incarnate, in the heart of man. 
 
 Thy lightning lent its burning wing 
 To bear the tear-blent sympathy, 
 
 And fiery chariots rushed to bring 
 The offerings of humanity. 
 [ 246 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 Thy tender pity met our pain, 
 
 Thy love has raised us from the dust; 
 
 We meet to bless thee, Lord, again, 
 And in our temple sing our trust. 
 
 There was only one strain I could think of for 
 the hymn : it was again the grand Old Hundred. 
 One more memory I must touch of those books 
 the dear friend would fain save for us when she 
 felt sure their home would be saved, .but they 
 were burned with the home. They were all 
 about our home county, of York, and most 
 precious to me for that reason. Another good 
 woman, a writer, saw me in the stress of my 
 trouble, and made a note of it for a letter she 
 would write, I think it was for our New York 
 Tribune. Some word of it must have gone to 
 London, for a letter came from there asking 
 me if I could remember the titles of those books. 
 Well, I could not forget them : they were graven, 
 shall I say? on my heart. And then, just about 
 the time we were rejoicing in our new home, 
 what should come to crown my joy but all the 
 volumes I had lost, with a good many more 
 I had never hoped to have for my very own. 
 And here they are now all about me as I write 
 this memory, the gift of Sir Edwin Lawrence, 
 the brother to Sir James of blessed memory. 
 [ 247 ]
 
 SOME MEMORIES 
 
 He had heard or read of the incident and sent 
 for the catalogue, so I was rich again beyond 
 my hopes and fears. 
 
 And now I must say farewell in this final 
 memor; to the friends I cannot name here and 
 over the sea. It has been a pleasant task for 
 me to write them, sweet as they are or bitter, 
 or bitter sweet, as they would steal out from 
 the mists of the many years. The good 
 Bishop Horn says, " Wormwood eaten with 
 bread is not bitter"; and these are all blended 
 for me now with the bread of life of my child- 
 hood, my youth, and my manhood through 
 the fifty years all told when they close. 
 Thirty-two years more have come and gone 
 since then; but of these I cannot tell you now 
 (and " cannot " means " need not " to me), 
 as I glance toward my sun's setting and remem- 
 ber the saying, " The young may die soon, but 
 the old must." Still I am glad to stay so long 
 as I may, while in some rare moments I must 
 confess I feel some touch of eagerness to go 
 when I am held captive by the vision of my 
 beloved waiting for me, my very own and so 
 many more where mortality is swallowed up of 
 life. 
 
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 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000752315 2