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Elizabeth Emerson Humphrey

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Presented by

REV. WILLIAM BREWSTER HUMPHREY
and
MRS. MARIE E. IVES HUMPHREY

1 86 J.

1890.

/ifcarrieo.

OCTOBER 9, 1865, at the home of the bride's
mother, Mrs. Eliza Rockwell Emerson, Rock-
ford, 111., by Prof. Joseph Emerson, assisted by Prof.
Joseph Haven, Miss ELIZABETH EMERSON
and Rev. S. J. HUMPHREY.

ftbese selections from tbe literary work of tbe oevoteo
wife ano motber, are bete gatbereo in bonor of
tbe twentg=fiftb anniveraarg of
tbis event.

^Thcir appearance in this form mill be as much a surprise
to th.e author, as, it is belieoeo, then mill be a delight to he*'
friends. ®h.eu are placed in her hands as a siluer briaal gift
from f(er husband, to whom through alt their united, gears she
Iras been an inspiration ano a joy. ano from her children,
Horace, William, 2clizabetf( an6 Herbert — Artie an6 JFrcooic
are not, for <So6 took them — mho euer delight to rise up and
call f»er blessed.

KATY:

A Story of Kitchen, Camp Meeting and
Convent ;

llimtlj ©tJj*r ^hetcijs»*

ELIZABETH EMERSON HUMPHREY.

CHICAGO.
P. F PETTIBOKE & CO., PRINTERS.
1890.

m

K/\TY.
A Story of Kitchen, Camp-Meeting and Convent.

Not the Katie of the poems. This was
plain Katy — a spare and sallow woman, the mis
tress of the kitchen in my early housekeeping.
I came from a distant city, to take possession
of my new house, weary, and with a little heart-
sinking at the thought of its very newness, and
its want of the associations that warm a building
into a home. We rounded the curve of wild-
wood, and caught a glimpse of the front balcony.
There, high on a wooden chair, tiptoed, her long,
thin wrapper trailing down, her lank form and
bare bony arms stretching up, mid a little chaos
of sponge, and suds, and dripping window panes,
stood Katy. Tired and faint, I crossed the
threshold. The tall exclamation point descend
ed from her pedestal, introduced herself as the
new servant, and received me. I jwas surprised.

2 Katy.
There was a grace and suppleness in the gaunt
form ; the air of a lady in the menial guise ; and
the eyes — black, brilliant and unconquered, they
looked out of place in the faded tokens of what
must once have been beauty, possibly queenli-
ness. I looked, and the query rose — whose
house is this to be, yours or mine ?
And that was my Katy, the help, the incu
bus ; the companion, the dread ; the pity, the
admiration ; the heathen ground, the romance of
the next eleven months of my life. She initi
ated me into the luxury of having servants under
me. It was a rough experience. My trunk was
not put away in the storeroom before I trod on
a torpedo. Then we each drew back, to study
the other, and modify our expectations. In her
need, and in my need, we must not part ; and
where two are resolved they will keep the peace,
it can be done.
Thanksgiving, close at hand, showed her a
good cook ; but how I longed for strength, that
I might "pervade" that kitchen. Mrs. Stowe's
Dinah, with her occasional " clarin' up times,''
could scarce show more languid disregard of
orderliness. Poor Katy ! with a life weariness

Katy. 3
upon her ! " But I was ambitious once," she
said, " and my servants didn't dare to leave
even a broom out of place. But ambition is all
vanity." I wish I could have seen Katy in her youth,
and freshness, and beauty, when, with her new
toilets, she dazzled the village folk of Pfalz, as she
bade them good-by for that wonderland, Amer
ica. " You'll get a husband right away, and a
good one," they said. And she did get one, to
her cost. But she was silent on that history,
only saying to me :
" If I ever marry again it will be to an Amer
ican. They are good to their wives."
But of Katy's story I learned nothing then.
There were weeks when a gentle nurse came
and went in my darkened room, and I was find
ing within its four little walls an undreamed-of
breath of life and joy, and a sympathy in that
happy Christmas time with the glad Bethlehem
mother. Outside, Katy reigned and served, and
in my almost hallowed nest, I did not dream that
she suffered. Proud as well as poor, how could I
know that her wrapper was almost her only gar
ment, or that her heart was breaking for its long-

4 Katy.
ing to spend the time searching through the near
city, peering into young faces for the blooming
girl she had been so proud to call her own.
" My daughter, my Jeanie ! She was such a
pretty one, and only fourteen years old. If she
is dead, she is with the Virgin, for she never
done no sins. Oh ! you don't know how I felt
when you were so happy in here at Christmas,
and I was in my little bedroom praying to the
Virgin to show me my Jeanie."
Little by little, a few facts of Katy's story
came out, as her reticence occasionally gave way.
I wish my memory could reproduce the quaint
vividness of the semi-German setting. There
was a time when, proud and happy, she had
known a home life in Milwaukee, and an absorb
ing love to her baby daughter. There was an
other picture, at a little Wisconsin port farther
North, of herself in three rented rooms, with
cholera corpses on every floor of the tenement,
and even the aged wretches in the barn creep
ing into her own rooms to die. Herself, money
less and starving, fleeing the house and sitting,
her baby in her arms, on the pier, to see the
northern -going boat draw nigh. The passen-

Katy. 5
gers stepped ashore, and, all at once, a friendly
voice was speaking to her. An old employer,
shunning the pestilence in Chicago, was taking
his family to Mackinac. He asked her to go
and serve them. She went, and found food, and
comfort, and safety. And so there came about
what she had seen in the vision ; for at times
Katy took on a kind of weirdness, and had
dreams that came to pass.
Another glimpse of her life. "I had two
houses, and I kept boarders, and had servants
and beautiful furniture. But it was not right.
One night, as I was sleeping, I saw in the sky a
man away up in the clouds, who said to me,
' Reach up your hand and I will draw you up.'
He continued saying it, and when I waked, I
kept thinking, ' Reach up your hand and I will
draw you up.' And I saw that it was not right,
what I was doing, and I got rid of my houses
and furniture. I left my little daughter to board
in Milwaukee, where she would be brought up
mannerly, and my Jeanie, 1 found a home for
her with my rich brothers in Springfield. And
then I took my money and went South, to find
something to do by the war. But " — It was a

6 Katy.
story of heedlessness and improvidence. I knew
Katy well enough to understand that no money
could stay by her long. " I was poor then, and
I came back to Chicago and went out to service.
I was trying to be better, and I was getting worse
and worse off. I went to Milwaukee, but I did
not write many letters, and my Jeanie did not
know that I had gone. She quarreled with her
uncles. They let her go to strangers, and from
there she slipped away with another girl and
came to Chicago, for my Jeanie wanted to find
her mother."
It was only after some months that Katy
learned the fact. Poor mother ! She went to
Springfield. No clue. Back to Chicago. No
trace. Up and down through its asylums,
schools, intelligence offices ; besieging commit
tees and Christian Associations ; hurrying from
one institution to another, scanning every inmate
with persistent eagerness, going out from each
with the same disappointed heart-sickness, mean
while earning her daily bread by general house
work, and supporting her Milwaukee daughter
with the scant wages that her broken health
could gain.

Katy. 7
Thus she was living when she came to me.
Two years had passed since her daughter's dis
appearance. But every day, when she could be
spared, the search for which she lived was re
newed. It was a good morning's work for the whole
family to get Katy started for Chicago. The
spiritless evolutions in the kitchen would begin to
grow animated as train time approached. And,
while all were urging her departure and promis
ing to do her work, she would suddenly be seized
with "the lust of finishing," and never till the
latest moment would she emerge in a flurry from
her room. Then, catching the offered ticket,
with unpinned shawl and floating black veil, she
would disappear in a fluttering run down the
drive. Katy, strange mixture that she was, half
grotesque, half weird and wholly engrossing as
a character-study, had dashes of mother-love
and tenderness that were almost fierce. Even
her good sense, like her rages, appeared in
flashes and gusts. She was by turns the enter
tainment and terror of my life. Every now and
then there would be an unaccountable outbreak.

8 Katy.
More than once it culminated in an abrupt dis
appearance of some days. On one occasion,
when my husband was absent, and myself too
feeble to stay out of my room, inflamed by some
trifle she rushed away. I heard the outer door
slam, and saw nothing of her from Saturday
noon till Tuesday morning. How she lived, or
where she spent the time, I never knew, but in
her gentle after-mood, she told me she had not
been out of the house ; and sundry tokens in
the pantry and mysterious foot-falls at night cor
roborated the story. It may seem strange that
I kept such a domestic. It is true I could
scarcely live with her, but I could not well do
without her. Though her freaks wore upon me,
I felt a kind of fascination in both the romance
and religion of her life.
Katy had been with me two or three months
when there came at last the crisis of her search.
She had had another of her foretelling dreams,
and had told it to the nurse. There was a
house, broad and high, there was a portress who
admitted her, a parlor within with great, holy
pictures all round the walls,- — a lady that had
come and retired, and another statelier lady that

Katy. 9
followed, and, at last, her daughter coming in
and throwing her arms around her mother sitting
there beneath a picture of Christ on the cross.
All this, even to the least detail, was vividly
pictured on her mind.
Well, the time went on, and the search.
We scanned her face at each return. "I have
looked through every institution in the city.
Your Protestant ones let me see everybody in
them, but in the Catholic asylums they would
not show me one of the girls. Yours be the
best." At last, as she came home one evening,
we observed an unusual gleam of light in her
eye. The whole day through she had given to
the old, fruitless search, and was sadly turning
her steps homeward. At the corner of Clark
and Washington Streets she saw an organ-
grinder, — "a soldier mit one leg," she said. " I
thought if I did give him something, God would
show me where my daughter was." All she
had, a ten-cent scrip, was immediately in his
hand. A few blocks farther on, shivering and
slipping in the winter twilight, she came to the
slope of the Wells Street bridge. Across the
way stood two policemen. "I have never asked

10 Katy.
the police," she thought; "it will do no harm
to try ; " and in a moment she was telling them
her story. " I give you five dollar if you find
my daughter."
It was a great sum for Katy to offer.
" I know where your daughter is," said one
of the men. "It was something more than two
years ago, wasn't it ? "
"Yes." "Well, about that time, I remember now, I
found two girls from the country in the street.
It was near dusk, and they were crying. They
did not know where to go. One of them said
she was looking for her mother. That was her,
no doubt. Come next week, Tuesday, to the
Central Station, and I will show you how to find
her; but I don't want your five dollars."
Katy went, and found the policeman as he
had directed, and learned from him the street
and number of a convent on the North Side, to
which he had taken the girl on that night two
years before. She was not long in finding the
street. As she approached the number, there
was the identical building of her dream. The
portress who opened the door called another

Katy. 1 1
nun to speak with her. In the reception-room
a third of higher grade came to examine her
errand, the face and figure of each the exact
counterpart of those printed in her memory by
that strange night- picture. One and all said,
"There is no such girl here. You are mis
taken." The mother knew better. She looked
around. The very pictures of her vision hung
on the walls, and over her head the crucifixion
rose as she had seen it in that dream. The Vir
gin, she was sure, had not verified so much of
the foretelling, to leave her disappointed at last.
Katy, the dauntless, stood and said :
"My daughter is here. You know she is,
and I know she is. You have given her another
name, but I must see her."
There was long waiting and silence. The
mother sat quivering and expectant under that
picture ; a slight rustle in the hall caught her
strained ears, low voices outside, and then her
daughter rushed in, and clung and nestled in her
mother's almost frantic embrace. It must have
been a wild scene. Katy went over it the next
day when she came into my bed-room in my
nurse's absence. It was a piece of consum-

12 Katy.
mate acting ; and, while I lay, faint with intense
sympathy in her story, she threw herself into
every attitude, now scanning the building with
head thrown back, now questioning eagerly, now
listening, now on her knees with eyes and long
arms thrown upward, now angry, now springing
with such a burning look of love in her eyes, and
throwing her arms right around the empty air,
and pressing them, crossed, to her bosom, as
though her daughter were in very truth within
them. "We met there, right under God," said
Katy, lifting up her streaming eyes as if the holy
picture were again before her mental vision.
"My Jeanie! she is holy, for she has been all
this time with the holy nuns ; she never went
outside of the walls from that night she went in.
Last Christmas, while I was so wretched, pray
ing in my little room to the Virgin, there was my
daughter all dressed in white, taking her first
communicant." Katy was exultant and grateful.
" They have taught her to sew, and now she
may stay and sew till she has paid them for all
they have done for her." Our joy matched hers.
But the query would come, "Why could not

Katy. 13
those good nuns have helped the forlorn daugh
ter to find her mother, instead of burying her at
once under another name, and keeping her there
sewing two years for them ? But I said nothing
of that to Katy.
" They told me to bring things for her to
wear. How can I ? "
Yet she did, and was soon again at the con
vent door. But there were to be no more parlor
receptions, nor embraces for her aching arms.
" They took my things, but Lent had com
menced, and they told me that Jeanie must not
be disturbed in her holy meditations. I did not
see her, and I must not go again till after Lent.
It is a long time, but they do right to make my
daughter holy." How eagerly she hastened to
her as soon as the glad Easter Sabbath was
over ! But she came back troubled, and, of
course, in that housekeeping, whose horrors I
have not revealed, her perturbation was wreaked
on me. " What is it, Katy, didn't you see Jeanie ?"
" Yes, she sat behind a latticed grating.
A nun beside her, and another nun sat by me,
and, when I came away, they opened a little

14 Katy.
square window in the lattice, and I put my lips
through and kissed her. But that is not what I
mind so much. They mean to keep her. I am
not so young as I was. I shall want to live
with my Jeanie. We can manage together to
support ourselves. But they tell me if I want
her, I must pay her board. Six dollars a week
for two years. Six dollars ! They know I
couldn't ! She has sewed for them all the time.
Won't they count that for nothing."
The months went on, and Katy fancied her
daughter looked sad and constrained, as she sat
primly behind the lattice by the watching nun.
But to the question, " Are you happy ? " would
come the same " Yes, ma'am." These occa
sional visits were the joy of Katy's life, antici
pated beforehand, and lived on afterwards ; and
a lingering tenderness was always in the tone
in which she said " My Jeanie ? "
But while this story of Katy and her daugh
ter was going on, she was passing through a
soul-history that grew directly out of it. All
winter long, as I could not attend church, I had
begged her to go. " Whenever you choose,
Katy, only go to church somewhere." But no.

Katy. 1 5
So when the spring dawned and I felt stronger,
I handed her the baby, and went, thinking that
now I might have every Sabbath morning my
self. I returned refreshed, and thanking her as
I took back my charge, I heard her say, "I go
myself next Sunday." Half vexed, half amused
that she would even go to church, to be rid of
touching my darling, I said, "Very well, Katy,
we will take turns Sabbath mornings, and you
shall have all the Sabbath afternoons and even
ings if you will attend church." But her
morning found her much more ready for a nap
in her room than for church-going. I had almost
to force her at last, and my motive was nothing
better than pure vexation at the loss of my own
church privilege. She went out with snapping,
angry flings and shoulder twitches, and I saw no
more of her that day. Often afterwards she
made me ashamed, thanking me for that morn
ing scene. " You were good, you made me go
to church. I thought I might rest, but you
made me go."
But where did Katy go ? Wandering in
search of the Catholic church to which I could
not direct her (and which I afterward learned

1 6 Katy.
was closed), she heard the sound of German
singing, and followed into a little Methodist meet
ing of her own people. They welcomed the
stranger, had her to their own homes, took her
to the woman's prayer-meeting in the afternoon.
'The women prayed with their hearts, just
as I prayed when I wanted my daughter. God
will hear such praying, if it ain't to the Virgin."
And she went continually. Their demon
strative ways suited her passionate nature. She
knew nothing of the Bible. They read it to
her, and told her of a change of heart. "But
that," she told me, " I felt before, only I did not
know about it, or that anybody else ever felt so.
Now God has given me my daughter, I believe
in Him. I wanted to see if he would do that."
In truth, I think God did change her heart,
down in the depths of her blindness, as the little
seed is touched in the dark ground. And, just
as it goes swelling and pushing, perhaps down
ward at first, but turning upward and reaching
toward the sun that called it, till it is drawn out
into the light and upper air, so Katy had tried
to reach up her hand to "The Man in the
Clouds," and God, tearing her former self all to

Katy. 1 7
pieces, had given her something to pray for.
She had prayed to the best of her Catholic
knowledge. And, now that Jesus was shown
to her, she seized upon Him, and though she
declared, " I am a Catholic all the same," I
noted that her talk was of the Saviour and of the
Holy Spirit. Repentance and faith, she seemed
to know what they meant as soon as told. And
now I recall the fact that, in unpacking a box of
books, I had thrown out a little German tract.
Not stopping even to glance at its title, as it lay
on the floor, I said, "Take that to Katy.'' It
proved to be a few words about the Holy Spirit
and the new birth. She read it till it was \vorn
to fragments, and its very scraps were precious
to her as bank notes. Of course, when I learn
ed that, a German Pilgrim's Progress and Tes
tament were not long in finding their way to her
room. She fastened on these with the avidity
of a hungry soul, and no knight-errant was ever
so taken to a ladie's heart as was Bunyan's Pil
grim to hers.
It was a time of special zeal in that little
German church. There was a "mission" (I
think they called it), which took Katy's time for

1 8 Katy.
two or three days, and they were getting ready
for a camp-meeting.
Katy's earnestness was not uniform, how
ever. One Sabbath she found her way to an
other church, with English services. She re
turned in ecstasy.
" It was just like the Catholic ! All the cere
monies just like it ! And, Oh ! the minister, he
was like a priest, and he had such holy ways,
and parted his hair in the middle ! I am going
there all the time, it was such a beautiful house,
and there were only a very few there. Don't
you think I ought to help the smallest congrega
tion ? They need it most."
But before camp-meeting time, she was back
to the Methodists.
"These people," she told me, "have got
something that I have not. They have got their
sign. They know just when they had a new
heart, and they have all had some sign to tell
just the minute. They all got so happy, all at
once, and saw such things, and shouted and
sang ! I never had no such sign, but I am pray
ing for me to get it. I feel just as they do every
other way. I love God and Christ, and pray

Katy. 1 9
and try to be good, and I love all Christian peo
ple, even the niggers. But I haven't got my
sign. I want to go to Springfield just as quick
as I can, for my brother there, we don't be no
good friends, we don't speak to each other for
some years ; but I must tell him this about a new
heart. He never heard of it. They never told
us in our church. Priests are holy, but my
brother had bad luck with his priests. One
cheated him out of his money, one had a bad
woman to keep house, and one" — (but I forget
his special sin) — " my brother is wicked now, and
hates all priests and all religion. I must speak
to him.. And my other brother's widow, her
heart is broken for her husband, and she is
angry at God. I know she would not be so
angry if I could tell her this that I know about,
a new heart. I will go to her."
Camp-meeting time approached. I gave her
leave of absence, for she wanted her sign ; and
one dripping April sunrise, she was gone, and
my water-proof and traveling basket, too. She
" did not want to disturb me to ask for them."
The rain drizzled, the ground was spongy.
The fifth day, the sun broke through the thick

20 Katy.
clouds, and with its reappearance came Katy, —
mud-be-draggled and forlorn in appearance, ex
ultant and ecstatic in heart, but with no voice to
tell us what she was burning to let us know.
"You have taken a terrible cold, Katy, in
these rains."
"No," she whispered, with a great effort, "it
was the shouting that took my voice away. I've
got my sign / I was the best of all of 'em. How
I prayed, and how they prayed for me ! There
were a dozen of us, and one was a nigger. We
knelt side by side, and God saw him first, and
he sprang up and shouted, and then God gave
all the rest their sign and not me ; and I kept
praying at the front in all the meetings, and,
when there was no meeting, I was off in the
woods on my knees. They told me the trouble
was that I had on my bonnet and that vail, and
so God could not see me for my pride." (Katy
had an air that gave a little style, even to that
shabby black bonnet). "So I left my bonnet in
the tent and went bare-headed. The last even
ing came ; I was no better. They kept their
meeting late. I was all dark. They adjourned.
I would not go off from that bit of ground where

Katy. 2 1
I was kneeling. It was almost midnight when
my sign came. But it did come. I jumped away
up in the air, you never saw how high, and I
shouted and sung for a whole hour. I was the
last, but I was the best of the whole. And yet,"
she said, "I don't feel no different from what I
did before. They told me I should feel different.
I don't ; but I have got my sign."
Katy carried her antipodal character into her
religion. " Now I must do all things that are right. I
am a Catholic, and pray to the Virgin just as
I used to do, and I must go to confessional. I
haven't been there for years." And to the con
fessional she went.
Poor Katy ! how troubled she was after that.
It took all her money for one thing. But it took
all her joy beside. She went about silent and
dreary. It was only by degrees that her confi
dence in her Protestant friends returned, but it
did come back, and she manifestly grew in the
right way. Often she was docile as a child, and,
with baby in my lap, I would sit by the hour,
answering her eager soul-questions while she
pursued her work. It was a new sensation to

22 Katy.
have a veritable heathen mind in one's own
household and to watch its unfolding ; to be tell
ing a grown woman the commonest Bible truths
and stories that are so familiar they seem to have
been born with one.
And now that Katy was, as far as we could
see, converted, it may be thought that our house
hold arrangements ran smoothly, and joy and
peace made an Eden of our home. But it must
not be forgotten where Katy started from. I
think it must have been from the very farther
side of the City of Destruction, and she had
many a weary day's journey, under Heavenly
guidance, before she could reach the starting
point of those trained under Bible light. Still,
though ignorant and willful, moody and gusty, I
could see, day by day, that the Christian in her
was gaining ground. Once, in the midst of a
storm of passion, came the remorseful exclama
tion, "I was praying in my bedroom this morn
ing that I might not get angry to-day, and here
I am angry."
But between my great, hearty baby and the
house -keeping regime, I was failing; and it
became a serious question whether her complete

Katy. 23
sanctification would be in my day or not. My
friends took me away at last, and thus ended
that episode in my life.
The winter passed, and the spring. One
perfect June morning Katy reappeared, and the
tall, lithe figure beside her, with its gentle dignity,
its rose-tinted cheeks, and those wonderfully
lustrous eyes, — ah ! it was Katy's self, made
beautiful. How the proud mother's face glowed
as she introduced "my Jeanie." How glad was
the greeting on all sides. Our Katy's manner
had not altered much. She was the same mis
tress of all she surveyed. The old spirit in
which she used to declare that she could speak
her mind to the Queen herself, was still un-
quenched. But the daughter ! she would sit in
motionless silence till addressed, then rise with a
respectful look in the brilliant eyes that had not
yet learned their power, and remain standing till
her answer was given, a manner she had learned
of the nuns.
"But, Katy, how did you get her away at
last ? "
"Oh, the winter was hard, people were sick
and died, and the institution was too full. They

24 Katy.
had to sleep on the floors. I kept telling them
I wanted my daughter, and they said at last that
on my next visit I might ask her if she wanted
to go. I did, and she answered, ' Yes, mother,
I want to live with you.' Then I had to wait
again, for they said, ' The clothes she has on are
ours, you must bring her everything to wear.'
So I went away. I bought her shoes. I took
clothing from my own person. I got everything
but the dress. I could not get that. Then I
went back with my bundle and told them. They
found an old dress and put on her, and so she
came away, and now we live with each other."
They had found a place at service together,
on Michigan Avenue, and now, in the delicious
fragrance and beauty of that day in June, they
walked away down that same path where I had
so often seen Katy springing with desperate
haste in the bare winter of that dreary search ;
and departed to enjoy their re-united lives.

r\Y CHINESE GUESTS.

I confess that it was with a slight tremor of
solicitude that I looked forward to a visit from
seven Celestials. I knew that I should not
"entertain angels unawares." They were sim
ple laundry men, fresh from their suds and iron
ing boards, but they were to be my guests, and,
since they had learned one phase of Christian
ity from the "hoodlums" of San Francisco, I
must show another side. But what could I do ?
I had only three pairs of chopsticks ; there were
no " rats and puppies for pies ; " I had plenty
of rice, but to cook it and keep it whole was an
art to which I had not attained ; and then how
about my little ones among these "heathen Chi
nee," who drown a daughter as they would a
kitten, and who think that women have no
souls ?
The train arrives, but brings no guests.
While I am wondering what has happened, here
they come in state. " A lady has invited them,
25

26 Aly Chinese Guests.
and therefore they cannot think of riding in
an ordinary car ; " and so two carriages, at an
expense of ten dollars — the railroad would have
brought them for three — wind up the drive, and
these seven wonders alight. The despair of Cal
ifornia politics, infinitesimal fragments of that
vast one-fourth of the human race, disciples of
Confucius, worshipers of Buddh, subjects of that
ancient "middle kingdom" which reaches back,
it makes one dizzy to think how far, here they
are, real heathen, fresh this very morning from
their shrines and their incense burning ! With
a sudden growth of respect for the courteous,
well-dressed company, and an inward conscious
ness that "the lady" must do her best to match
the politeness of her guests, I am introduced to
them — Ah Wing, Ah Sin, Ah Jung, and other
Ah's, more than I can remember. (I learned
afterward that "Ah" is simply Chinese for
"Mister"). I doubt if seven common laborers from any
other nationality in Chicago, put to their best,
could, in like circumstances, have approached
the self-possessed propriety of these denizens
of the laundry basements.

My Chinese Guests. 27
But how came this visit about ? While my
Chinese are wandering through the grounds and
lounging .under the trees, let me tell. A few
weeks since, as some of the members of our
Woman's Board were returning from their mis
sionary meeting at Galesburg, a rough-looking
stranger in the seat behind suddenly accosted
us with, " I beg your pardon, ladies, are you
interested in missions? So am I." His worn
overalls and the buffalo robe by his side, showed
that he knew more of camping out than he did
of Pullmans, but the counter-sign " Missions "
had been given, and very soon "his speech be
trayed him " as of that family in which we are
no more strangers, but one in Christ Jesus, and
we were not long in becoming willing listeners
to the story of his most interesting work.
From his early youth, while living in his
native Wales, he felt called to the life of a mis
sionary. Following the seas, later on, he
attempted twice, once in Alexandria, Egypt,
and again in Barcelona, Spain, to enter into the
service. But the way did not open. A few
years since, he found himself a mechanic in
a Pennsylvania village where were a number of

28 My Chinese Guests.
Chinese. He soon felt that his life-work was to
be among them. After a variety of vicissitudes,
in which his worldly estate did not increase, but
by which his soul prospered, he started for the
larger communities of Chinese in the new West,
as a stepping-stone for reaching China itself.
With no preparation for his journey but an iron
constitution and a Miiller-like trust, he worked
his passage on the river steamboats, and then
made his way on foot i,coo miles, stopping only
to earn his daily bread, until in the Chinatown
of Evanston, Wyoming, he found the opportu
nity to study and to teach. Here, to the intense
disgust of the white people, he identified himself
wholly with the Chinese, earning his living and
teaching daily in a school house provided by
themselves. Two years of this, and then the time seemed
ripe for work in China itself. A thousand or two
friends had been made in Wyoming, a large
number of them had returned to Canton, and
their invitations that he should follow were
pressing. He must first come East for ordina
tion and the good-bye to his mother in Wales.
Then came another long tramp across Wyo-

My Chinese Guests. 29
ming and Nebraska, sleeping on the ground
with the thermometer below zero, and earning
his ride by shoveling from the track the heavy
snows of last April. Thus we met him that
afternoon in May.
At the depot we separated. Our acquaint
ance slipped away to find his work and his
iving among the Chinese laundries, and we,
through the stir and greetings of the home
coming, bore the consciousness of having re
ceived a new answer to the question, "Who is
my neighbor ? "
But to return to my guests on the lawn. It
was through this friend whom we met in the cars,
that the overture and the invitation had come,
and he made the eighth one of the company.
He finds it essential to his prospective work that
the Chinese should learn that real Christians,
the " Jesus people," as they call them, are totally
different from the roughs who greeted them with
stones and revelings as they landed. And to
this genuine missionary service, — not merely,
not chiefly, for these "heathen" at our doors,
but for the vaster multitude to whom they will
go back, to tell the story, — we most gladly lent

30 My Chinese Guests.
ourselves. It was a real pleasure to feel that
the simple courtesies of this day might be used
by the Master to help open doors for Christian
work in the villages in China from which these
men had come, and to which most of them will,
sooner or later, return.
The dinner was by no means the formidable
thing I had feared. " Pilgrim " with his " Chris
tiana " and other neighbors came in to help.
Most of the "boys," as they called themselves,
had waited in hotels and knew the routine of
table etiquette. As to the chop-sticks, to our
disappointment, they could be induced to use
them only to amuse the wondering little folk.
After giving them a climb among the cherry
trees, from which they came down with well-
laden baskets, and after some sports with the
children, into which they entered with a rolic-
some glee, we gathered in the parlor for singing
and a good-bye.
What " ways that are dark " may lie beneath
this courteous exterior, I do not know, but I am
certain they are not the hopeless race that many
would have us think. If the Chinaman can
overcheat, when that is understood to be the

My Chinese Guests. 31
game on both sides, he can also excel in hospi
tality and in graceful returns. A few days after
this visit, one of our guests surprised us with
packages of the choicest tea and specimens of
Chinese art, and especially the Testament in his
own tongue. The best of this after-visit was
the Bible reading. Chanting along in the
monotonous sing-song of their school-room, he
evidently gathered the sense, and grew inter
ested in those chapters of Matthew new to him,
for he stopped to gesture out "the great wind
that blew down the house on the sand," and the
"little gravel" in another's eye, — the "great
board " in your own eye. What stirred him
most, however, was the verse which he trans
lated, "If men be sassy to you, and you no for
give them, you no go up there." No wonder a
Chinaman's version of "trespasses" is con
tained in that word. I feared the " hard say
ing" would dishearten him, but the next day he
carried the young Welshman to live with him on
Twenty-second street, to teach him " more of
that good reading."
Whatever may be said of the coming of more
foreigners from the West and the East, before

32 Aly Chinese Guests.
our country can assimilate what it has already
gained, this is plain, those who are here must
receive from Christian America Christ-like treat
ment. And how can we expect the few mission
aries we send abroad to accomplish much, if all
our Christianity surrounding these few in our
land cannot avail for their enlightenment. They
are eager to learn our language. We can teach
them that and the truth also, and send them
back as helpers of our brethren in China, with
out ourselves facing that unknowable tongue.
That terrible "language, invented by the devil
to exclude Christianity " is hard even for them
selves to learn. Lo Bo, one member of the
Sunday school, shows the marks of harsh
schooling-scars on his knees where he knelt on
the heated chains ; the palm of his hand thrust
through with the burning copper wire, because
he tore out the leaf he did not want to read ; a
stiffened thumb by which he was hung up for
punishment ; the scar on the back of his neck
from a blow of his enraged teacher when he
sprang into the water, but did not duck quite
quick enough. Perhaps he was a "hard boy"
in his kindergarten days, but his heart is grow-

My Chinese Guests. 2>i
ing soft. "Me most love Jesus now," he says.
The prayers of his Boston teacher are following
him, and when he saw "Pilgrim's" word in the
Congregationalist about the Chicago school,
she wrote to have her boy hunted up, and he
writes back, "Pray Jesus that my heart may be
white as yours."
Men are not altogether bad that show such
fine susceptibilities as these ; that buy flowers
every morning for the miserable places where
they live ; that photograph the bouquets you
send them ; that, when once their confidence is
gained, will not suffer you to outdo them in
generosity. It cannot be a hopeless task to seek
their conversion, when one of the wealthiest of
them, a thorough heathen, not even the Sunday
school, himself supports the Christian teacher
among his own countrymen.
This semi-missionary day of ours has given
us a new sympathy with our brethren and sisters
abroad, and also a new assurance that among
the nations of the saved will be "these that
come from far, and these from the land of
Sji mim.

The Crusade of the Children.

In the grave, olden time, six centuries ago,
when Christendom had been sleeping through
many dark ages, there was a strange stir, in
which the children had a conspicuous part. The
mothers were praying for pilgrims tortured, and
for the woes of captive Jerusalem. The fathers
were going forth in mad, misguided, futile en
deavor to rescue the Holy Land ; and the little
ones — fresh-hearted and impressible, just as
children are now — caught the glow of that
grand enthusiasm. They saw delicate hands
buckle on the clanking iron mail, and fix the
casque over brows stern with a high resolve.
They ran unchecked to catch the last glimpse
of pennons fluttering down the forest defiles,
and hear, dying away in the distance, the echoes
of that shout of the departing hosts, " God wills
it / God wills it ! " And so the impulse grew,
which ripened into that strangest event in the
34

The Crusade of the Children. 35
history of Christendom — The Crusade of the
Children. A French shepherd boy, in vision, saw the
Lord in suffering pilgrim guise, and was at
once on fire with zeal to rescue the Holy Sep-
ulcher by pure child hands. Boy preachers
started up everywhere, and crowds ran about,
crying, " Lord Jesus Christ, restore thy cross
to us ! " Thousands rushed to the standard,
and followed the bannered car of Stephen of
Cloye. There were the tender and high born
— petted little ones — delicate maidens, whose
sensitive self-devotion made the very terrors of
the way a reason for encountering them — dute
ous, home-loving children, who sacrificed more
than life itself in trying, as they thought, to
obey the word, " He that loveth father or mother
more than Me is not worthy of Me," — dimpled,
plump little peasant girls — rugged Swiss boys
from the Alps — barefooted street urchins, ready
for anything — noble, earnest-eyed sons — moth
erly, helpful daughters, leading little brothers,
and thinking they did the best they could for
their charges in taking them to follow the holy
vision. There were romantic youths, who only

36 The Crusade of the Children.
sought adventure ; sturdy, runaway herd-boys,
who looked for fun ; and, scattered here and
here in the vast child-army, a black-robed priest
or a cowled head.
A motley crowd ! but all impelled by one
wild enthusiasm, which was, to them, a divine
inspiration. In two great masses they swept
southward, and while the magnificent German
army dared the Alps and looked for the sea to
open a passage to them, as to the Israelites,
the other part took a more western course.
Down through France the fierce impulse hurried
them. " Boys and girls stole from their homes.
No bolts, no bars, no fear of fathers, no love of
mothers, could hold them back." Thirty thou
sand strong, they reached the sea, — children,
mostly, between the ages of seven and fifteen
years. Hungry and footsore, yet trustful still, they
read God's special providence in the offer made
them of ships and a free passage, "for the love
of God," to the Holy Land. Seven shiploads of
them, so densely packed that they could scarcely
stand, sailed away from France — not to the Holy
Land, as they thought, but, alas ! to miserable

The Crusade of the Children. ^y
bondage in Africa ; for the pious generosity of
the shipowners was a lying pretense, — the chil
dren were in the hands of treacherous slave-
dealers, and lives of sore thralldom with the
Turk, tortures, and death even, for their relig
ion, end the story.
We sorrow for the suffering, hollow-faced
little children, and the beatings and abuse of
their cruel slavery. But we grieve more for the
terrible awakening of those trusting young spir
its — the waste and wreck of so much child-piety
and enthusiasm.
There is a new stir in Christendom. This is
the age of Missionary Crusades, and the chil
dren are wanted again, — not now to rescue any
Holy Place, but to recover from the thralldom of
sin souls that maybe temples of the Holy Ghost.
They are called to a crusade whose forces are
not to be wasted, as were those of the olden
time, for it is a real call of God, and His sure
promise of triumph stands behind it.
Did not God permit that story, brilliant and
sad, in order to show us what forces are in the
child nature ? Does He not call now for these
powers, — the bounding vigor of youthful feel-

38 The Crusade of the Children.
ing, the warm sympathy, the outbursting gen
erosity, the inquisitiveness, the docility, the
capacity for faith and for trust, the unceasing
activity and the intense power of enthusiasm,
the very ignorance of results which leads them
to rush against probable defeat, and, in fact, to
conquer, because they think they are going to
conquer ?
God's work needs these forces, and for the
battle-cry of this new Crusade of the Children,
there is sounding in our ears that word of the
Christian Alliance, just now reaching us from
the Eastern metropolis — "the Gospel for the
world, arid the world for Jesus Christ ! "
This subject — the work of the children for
missions — is one of the greatest importance. It
is so for a two -fold reason.
What they actually accomplish is not to be
despised. They are eager workers, these little
ones. They put us to shame by their zeal, and
while people are smiling in good-natured sym
pathy at their trifling pittances, the busy emmets
are piling up their littles into a total that changes
that smile into a look of real surprise and admi
ration. See these figures :

The Crusade of the Children. 39
A "Morning Star" was wanted. The Amer
ican Board said to its children, " Give us
$18,000 ; " but $28,000 were counted before the
enterprising stockholders could be checked in
their investments. " Children, another ' Morn
ing Star ! ' " They gave more than for the first.
" Children, a third ship is needed for the Pacific
Isles." It was launched, equipped, and paid for, —
three " Morning Stars," with a total of $66,000 !
Meanwhile, the stream of their contributions
for the mission school fund was not stayed.
It flowed fuller than ever, with this result, — for
the last ten years, a total of $135,000. We have
just heard with glad surprise — and we gave
thanks as we heard — that the gifts of our
Woman's Board of the Interior, for the last year,
have reached the sum of $15,000. The yearly
average for the children, for the last ten years,
is $17,322. The amount of their little workings,
then, is in itself a sum Christ's cause cannot
spare. But more — and this is the other reason — the
work of the children is important, because they
are being trained in our hands, mothers, to be

40 The Crusade of the Children.
the men and women of the next generation, and
what we make them will that generation be.
These little lispers, prattling around our fire
sides, straightway — and we tremble to think how
soon — will be in the thick of the conflict. We
must train them, not less for the great hereafter,
but more for the near hereafter. And to what
a future are they stepping forth ! what opportu
nities ! what possibilities ! what foretellings ! —
prophesying, I dare not imagine how much. We
need not go to the poets for a heroic age ; it is
right here. What doors are opening into long,
grand vistas of work ! What events are unfold
ing in the old dead empires beyond the sea! A
year now is worth a generation in the past ;
and a year in the future, in our children's future,
what number of these present years will it not
be worth ! Our children must be ready to serve
in this great work, to which God certainly will
call them if they be worthy to live at all. Our
daughters, especially, must be prepared for these
grand possibilities for reaching degraded women.
For all that is deepest and holiest and might
iest in womanhood, manifestly, is now to have
the grandest opportunity for exercise.

The Crusade of _ the Children. 41
But there are practical questions that lie close
to us. How shall we train them ? We can only
hint at some of the answers.
One most obvious thought is, we must be
ourselves what we would have them be. "As
is the mother, so is the daughter." There is an
unconscious influence that, like sun-rays, daguer
reotypes one character upon another. The only
way is to be right ourselves, down to the very
core. And, farther, the little mimics are forever
copying what they see us do. They form their
very plays after the pattern of the serious
work of our lives. Even the little Dakota girl
binds her tiny bundle of sticks and skins, and
trudges along in playful imitation of the mother
burdened with the wigwam. Whether it be a
household trifle or a crusade that engrosses
us, the little ones will surely follow close in our
steps. The mother knows that she cannot begin
too early the training of her child, and there
will naturally occur to her little ingenious plans
and devices to direct and organize its awakened
interest. Shares of stock in a ship or building,

42 The Crusade of the Children.
certificates, medals, family mission-boxes, wisely
used, are helpful and stimulating. And then
there should be given them some definite part
of the great work, one appropriate to their
years, which they can understand, and which
they can hope to accomplish.
But, added to this, should be the power of
organization. The gathering and care of mission
circles is a work of great importance. Here
individual effort multiplies itself by association.
Here social forces work. Here interest mounts
into enthusiasm. Here, under the loving eye
and guiding hand of well-chosen leaders, the
ardent zeal of the young crusaders, that might
otherwise waste itself, can be led to practical and
large results.
The power to manage well a mission class or
circle is to be coveted earnestly as among the
best gifts. To make its meetings sprightly, in
structive, helpful to the life of grace ; to hold in
check, and yet not draw the rein too tightly upon
the neck of rollicking boys ; to encourage and
bring out the bashful girls ; to utilize the effer
vescing spirits of the forward ones ; to keep
down petty jealousies ; to make it a school of

The Crusade of the Children. 43
thorough instruction in missionary history, geog
raphy, life; to gather up and join on the plan-
nings and finger-work and heart-throbs of the
hour to the great object for which they meet ;
and, above all, to draw them gently, tenderly,
into the sympathies of the dear Lord, so that
the true, heartfelt expression of it all shall be,
"Jesus, we do all this for Thee." Ah ! who is
sufficient for this ?
If there be fairs, let them be honest fairs ; the
articles useful, tasteful, if you will, but, by all
means, sold at their true value. They need the
training of hard work for what they get. If you
wish to give them more, make it a separate do
nation, but do not spoil the delicate sense and
the pride of honesty ; and lay the hand of utter
prohibition, as you would upon the beginnings
of any sin, upon everything that has on it the
taint of lottery or gambling. It would be a poor
outcome of your labors if, while you wrought to
benefit the heathen children, you demoralized
your own.
It is not mere child's play, and trivial, this
business of the little works and fairs. It is a
part of the training of these immortal spirits,

44 The Crusade of the Children.
and the more we think of this the more watchful
shall we be that no seeds of harm creep in, to
mar what is so much to us, — what is so much
to the Saviour.
Last, and chiefest of all, if we wish our chil
dren to be the Lord's, to do His work, we must,
in earnest prayer, consecrate them honestly to
Him. And if, out of this missionary training,
shall come conversion, let us give thanks with
exceeding joy. And should God, accepting that
consecration in its fullest sense, call to them, as
to Samuel, the child, and bid them carry his
most distant, trying, glorious messages, let us
not say, "Send some other mother's son, not
mine." Let us thank the Lord that made and
counted them worthy. And will it not help us
to this if we let in upon our souls afresh the vital
truth that they are not our own ? They are
bought — let us never forget it — with a great
price, and are only lent us of the Lord, lent us
at such a time, and for such results, if we will !
It is a grander thing than ever before in the
world's history, to come into the holy relations
of motherhood.

The Crusade of the Children. 45
Let my children — shall not this be the aspira
tion of us all ? — be among the chosen of the
Lord. Let Him call them to any station, be it
humble or high, for which His grace can fit them.
Let Him appoint their lot in the hidden walks
of life, or let Him set them afar on the rugged,
storm-swept pinnacles of missionary work, if
only He guides where their lives will best fill out
His plan, and His acceptance be revealed to us
in eternity.

From the Sideboard to the Saloon.

Oh, the fragments of broken lives that lie all
about us ! We may flee the city, draw around
us the greenness of trees and shrubbery, and
settle down in the home nest, amid baby cooings
and the caresses of pure, dimpled hands, but
God will not suffer us to grow hard and self-
absorbed. Even the home quiet does not defend
us from a glimpse now and then of the fierce
tragedy that is going on in tempted hearts.
Friday, Feb. 20. — I am weary and oppressed
to-day. A burden is rolled off my hands, but it
lies heavy on my heart. The problem is not
solved ; it is merely given up. Some one must
go on caring for the poor woman that I have
dropped, for her life will still go on somewhere.
Two weeks ago I did not know of her exist
ence. Then she came to do service in my
nursery — a widow, the mother of six children,
experienced, and capable of any ministration,
46

From the Sideboard to the Saloon. 47
from winning the baby's heart to training the
older ones in music and German. No service
was too menial for her glad rendering ; no
thoughtful kindness too slight for her quick,
unbidden performance, and the stray moments
were closely filled in with the glancing of busy
needles. My heart warmed to the stranger in
a strange land. Only one month from Denmark,
few words of intercourse could we have, but
the baby understood her perfectly, and such
faithful service needed no interpreter. So, with
some broken English on her part, and some
utterly demoralized German on mine, with a
mingling of the French, which she could not
speak, and the Danish, which I never heard,
but mainly by her expressive gesture-language,
we found the want of a common tongue a tri
fling obstacle.
I was very happy in " My Dane ; " and
though my confidence grew tremulous when
once the absence of an afternoon was prolonged
to two days "because of an ill turn," yet the
doubt melted before her honesty and ready
kindness. It was evident that she had not been
used to such offices. Two servants she had had

48 From the Sideboard to the Saloon.
in her own housekeeping, and her " kleine trunk "
was stored with choice embroideries of her own
handiwork, that spoke of leisure and taste, while
her treasure box showed jewelry and keepsakes
and the photographs of noble-looking relatives.
"'Tis a sin to set that woman to washing; she
knows no more about it than a baby," was the
criticism from the head of that department, and
her further services in that line were dispensed
with. We were becoming wonted to each other,
when, one day, she had an unconscious spasm,
which startled me. If she were subject to such
fits, children would not be safe in her arms, and
so she must be given up. A less difficult place
was found for her, but she was loth to go, and
the mute appeal of her redoubled service touched
and almost shook me. She asked to stay for
little, for nothing ; and when the time for parting
came she lingered for one and another little
kindly office. Poor woman ! how she wept at
the good-bye, catching each of my hands in turn,
and bowing over it with tears and kisses, and a
choking, smothered cry. At length she passed
out and, standing in the kitchen, with her face
to the wall, she sobbed and shuddered as though

From the Sideboard to the Saloon. 49
a dread and horror were before her, a great
struggle within. Then she was gone.
That night I was awakened from troubled
sleep by the dull, heavy thud of a fall on the
floor overhead. It was that woman. She had
returned late at night, had been helped to her
room and fallen there ; for my Dane was — intox
icated ! Limp and helpless, with bruised, disfig
ured face, and meaningless eyes, there she was.
We made her comfortable and locked her into a
room alone, then carried to God our heavy
hearts and the sore problem before us. Who
had given her drink, and who had closed their
doors upon her, or by what means she had
been guided back, we do not know. Once that
evening she had blanched the faces of a group
at the depot, as she escaped from them and
exposed herself to peril from a passing freight
train. Was this temptation and fall, then, what she
had seemed to dread that morning? Was it a
fore-reaching fear of herself and the demon
within her that made her cling to the place of
safety, and wrung her heart at her leaving ?
The next morning found her ill, with a

50 From the Sideboard to the Saloon.
raging thirst, and suffering hard to witness.
Once, almost frantic with the gnawing pain, she
rose, dressed herself in her best, and was slip
ping from the house, "to find the doctor."
Promises, commands could not stay her. Push
ing by almost fiercely, she sprang away. We
were sure that it was drink that she wanted,
and with all possible haste I followed. She was
nowhere in sight. I took the direction of the
saloon — for, spite of all vigilance, even here
the nether fires of perdition have one of their
breathing-holes. There was a glimpse of her at
last, hurrying on in the distance. Where would
she lead ? Must I meet her behind those whited
window panes, face to face with the human
fiends who give drink to such as she ? My heart
quivered with loathing for them and their trade.
Unwonted words of indignation sprang to my
lips. I should certainly have uttered them had
I found her there ; for how could I have held
them back in such presence, with her standing
there as she was — as she might have been ?
But she took the wrong street, and stood,
at last, bewildered in the unfamiliar turnings,
and so I overtook her.

From the Sideboard to the Saloon. 51
"You have lost your way. Come back and
take a new start."
She was docile then, and returned. But it
had to be done over again that day — yester
day. This morning I brought her in to the Danish
Consul, for she was friendless. He will try to
shelter her in the Washingtonian Home. I do
not know what better I could have done, but
there is a heartache and a burden that I cannot
shake off. Her parents are wealthy, he tells
me, and her husband's brother, a wholesale
druggist, of whom he knew, a member of the
city council of Copenhagen. Three children
write her letters from the old country, and three
little ones beckon her to the Better Land. It
was in circles of elegance that she learned the
destroying taste, for the wine-cup graced her
father's table, and her first impulse was surprise
not to find it on mine. How I wish I could
show her to all the parents in this land who
think there is no harm in a little personal in
dulgence, and laugh at the cunning baby who
knows the corner in the sideboard where the
ruby bottle hides. Can they be selfish enough

52 From the Sideboard to the Saloon.
to choose their own pleasure in face of the peril
to which they expose their children ?
Wednesday, Feb. 25. — While these lines
were being written, where was she ? Must such
things run their full course to let us know that
God is in earnest when he says, " The wages
of sin is death ? "
This notice appeared in yesterday's paper :
About half-past one o'clock yesterday afternoon, a
woman, apparently 50 years of age, who gave her name as
Sophia Holm, entered the house of Christina Rickless, at
No. 19 Fifth street, and sat down to rest herself. After
remaining in the house nearly an hour, she fell from her
chair, and died before medical aid could be procured. A
woman by the same name was arrested at a late hour Sun
day night, at the corner of Cornelia and Noble streets, and
was fined by Justice Scully yesterday morning, after which
she was released. Deceased is supposed to be a Dane by
birth, of medium height, with dark hair and eyes. Her
body was taken to the Morgue and the Coroner notified.
Just three days from us and the measure was
full. Of the horrors of those days we have but
slight hints. The wages that I had given in
trust for her use had helped her down, and,
"There are plenty," said my informant, "about
the saloons, who will stuff a woman with drink
for the fun of seeing what she will do."

From the Sideboard to the Saloon. 53
So ends another of the sad tragedies which
have caused the fierce uprising of women all
over the land.
Her life, with all its possibilities of virtue,
piety, and graceful service, the saloon men
coined into miserable dollars, and left the city
to hide the poor remains in the Potter's Field.

FOR CHRIST'S SAKE.

[A paper read at the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Woman's
Board of Missions of the Interior, held at
Iowa, October 26, 1SS1]

Robert McKenzie, in his history of the
nineteenth century, says :
"In the foremost rank of powers destined
to change the face of the world, stand Christian
Missions. Among the glories of
the century is none greater than this."
What is the secret of this power ? Do I
not simply utter the spontaneous thought of
your heart when I say it is a personal love
for the person of the Lord Jesus Christ ? It is
found in that utterance of Paul: "The love of
Christ constraineth us." It was this that made
the early Christians triumphant in persecution
and martyrdoms. This was chief among the
powers that made the age of Christ and the
apostles the turning point in the world's his
tory. We may humbly hope that it is greatest
54

For Christ's Sake. 55
among the motives that have brought together
this gathering, with its thirteen years of history.
We are here to plan and to do for Christ's
sake. Other motives may have moved us, but
the wave of enthusiasm with which we set out
is not enough. Sooner or later it spends itself.
The push that sends the boat from the shore is
not a power to bear it on. Has not the time
come for us to bring more distinctly to our
thought that inner, that enduring power by
which we must be impelled ? Do we not need
to see anew what the early Christians saw ? Is
not the special want of this hour a new vision
of our Lord, and a fresh baptism into His love ?
For herein is the hiding of the Missionary
power. Why is it that the sight of Christ has such
power ? We are moved by the idea of sweet and
grand virtues, but God has so made us that in
order to lay hold on the secret springs of our
natures, they must be embodied. The ideal
must become concrete. The power of the great
religions of the world has been in the incarna
tion of ideas in a living character, and what
the blinded fire-worshiper vainly seeks in Zo-

56 For Christ's Sake.
roaster, the Moslem in Mohammed, the Buddhist
in Gautama, is revealed to us in the Lord Jesus.
He is God showing Himself to us for the
clasping of our faith. The love of God, the
tenderness of God, the infinite hunger to give
pardon and blessing to the lost, and to make
them like Himself, could only be fully known
to us by being incarnated, and so God let
down Christ into the world, full of grace and
truth, the express image of the Deity, that we,
poor, dim-sighted souls, might see what is the
heart of God.
He who formed us knew what would move
us. He gave the soul its aptitudes for Christ,
and gave Christ for the aptitudes of the soul.
And this, not simply to awaken a temporary
emotion, but a passion of love that should over
power all other passions and desires, its tender-
est, its most commanding quality, springing from
the knowing that He is my personal Saviour.
I was under the curse, and He lifted me into
the blessing. "God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son to die," to
die for me. Oh, the amazing love of God in
Christ !

For Christ's Sake. 57
Do we not recognize it ? Do not our
Christian instincts say, "This is the power,"
and, with a great yearning of heart, do we not
pray, Lord, give us this absorbing, this impel-
ing love ? Those who have known it must
know more. There is no happy relapse for a
soul that has been stirred by a glimpse of the
unsearchable riches. It must press onward or
be wretched. And is not the point of that
longing a fuller vision of the personal Christ ?
We would see Jesus ! Is not that the goal of
Paul's most intense yearnings — -"to know Him,
and the power of His resurrection ? " Let us
"count all things to be loss for the excellency
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, our Lord."
But have not we, the church, in a measure,
forgotten what love is ? Is it sunning one's self
in ecstasy of delight in the loved one ? Is it
sitting down to receive ? Is that love ? Do we
thus love our children ? And is it love to God
to settle into a quiet sense of enjoying religion ?
Not in that way did Christ love. He loved and
gave Hirjiself. Not even the giving to Him, not
even the sharing what we have with Him, will
be a faint reflection of the love He gives, and

58 For Christ's Sake.
asks, unless we give ourselves, unless we take
into our hearts all that He took into His, — the
great world and its great needs, and throw
our whole selves into lifting, with Him, at its
heavy burdens. The Son of Man came to seek
and to save the lost ! That was the reason of
His coming, that must be the main thing in our
lives, to seek and to save the lost, if we are
Christ's. Clearly our Lord meant that this love, of
which He spoke so much, should not be a mere
emotion, but a life power. Hear his words to
Peter. "Lovest thou Me ! Then feed My flock."
Was He looking into the eyes of that one fish
erman alone when He said and reiterated, " Love
and feed ? " Was He not taking into His
thought every Mary of the ages who should sit
in rapture at His feet ; every cumbered Martha
who should try, a little blindly, perhaps, to do
something for the dear Master ; every tearful
Joanna, watching with Him while the earth
shuddered ; every unnamed bearer of the ala
baster box, pouring the wealth of her loving soul
at His feet ; every spice-laden watcher for the
morn of His reappearing. To every one of

For Christ's Sake. 59
them, His word is " Love and feed." And in
all those throbbing hearts that looked steadfastly
from Olivet, as the sacred form floated upward,
was left echoing, at the culminating moment of
their tenderest love, the last word, " Go," every
one of you, "to every creature." " Go for My
sake. If you love Me, make that love tell for
the world's help. Go to hasten the coming of
the promised glory."
But what did they do, these newly commis
sioned missionaries? How were they to be
transformed, from dazed and stricken souls, into
fiery apostles of the new faith ? The teachings
of their Lord, His life, His death, even, like
seeds in the frozen earth, still lay dormant in
their hearts. There must be some fructifying
power, some Divine inbreathing. And so, as
they waited and prayed, there came the baptism
of the Holy Ghost, and then, with spiritual eyes
clarified and souls aflame, they went out to Pen
tecost and the conquest of the world. Precisely
this must come to us. Our spirits, hard and
cold, with the winter spell upon them, must be
warmed and quickened by the Divine Spirit's
taking these things of Christ and showing

60 For Christ's Sake.
them to us ; this incarnation of the Divine love,
this embodying of unutterable compassion, and,
above all, that sense, which the Spirit alone can
give, of our personal relation to Christ as the
one who saves each of us by His own infinite
suffering. We need this for our own assurance of
faith. We live in a time when, to many eyes,
the personality of the Divine Jesus is fading
out. "The spores of unbelief are in all the
air ; but they can fasten only on a dead or de
caying faith. Is our spiritual soundness such
that, coming, they find no roothold in us ? Are
we utterly sure, sure in our deepest souls, that
Christ died for our sins, that He is indeed the
" Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the
world ? " Is there not, for this reason, especial
need that we grasp with new hold the hand of
the personal Jesus — the One who lived and
lives — who said, " Lo, I am with you?" Our
hearts must burn within us by the way, for we
are walking with the Lord. He is by us, as he
promised, the living, loving Jesus, and, being
there, what a sore pity not to see Him ! We all
know what it is to stumble on dimly through the
daily routine, until, by a quick thought upward,

For Christ's Sake. 61
we catch a glimpse of His always present look,
and the whole is flooded with sudden light, as
from a window open into Heaven. Can we
not learn to walk constantly in this light, to
work and to give with Him and for Him ?
Yes, to give for love to Him. Our giving
has too often the air of charity — that poor,
chilled word, that has lost its warm first meaning.
We are grateful that the new version has
dropped that word from the 13th of Corinthians,
and given us the old, right word, love. Let us
go on restoring lost meanings. Here is the ex
pression, "the charities of the church," are they
the loves of the church ? Bring the question to
our work. Is it a charity, or is it a love ?
A few days ago, some of us joined in the
tender and sacred scenes at St. Louis. The re
peated, earnest prayer of all those uplifting
days was, "Give us, O Lord, Thy Holy Spirit."
The breath of that prayer is upon us. We look
for its answer here. We tarry at the Lord's
command and wait with awe for the infilling
from above — the missionary inbreathing, that
shall reveal vividly to us. Him for whose sake we
labor — that can make, even of us, witnesses for
Him unto the uttermost parts of the earth.

EASTER.

A beautiful baby had only learned to lisp
"All wight," and then was taken home. The
mother felt that the baby's words were hers, for
she had been lifted upward in the same arms
that bore away the child. When, at the burial,
the story of Samuel was read, she said gladly,
with Hannah, "Yes, 'as long as he liveth, he
shall be lent to the Lord ' for the service of
the upper temple."
But how was she, like Hannah, to send
him the little coat year by year ? This one
thing, at least, was certain, "There is joy in
the presence of the angels of God over one
sinner that repenteth." Could she — might she
dare to hope to send him that joy ? Might
that be the little token which she was to pro
vide for him year by year — a soul helped to
find the Lord ? It gave intensity to her prayers,
and new meaning to every missionary gift that
she sent around the world in search of souls.
62

Easter. 63
The year passed, and although she had
almost dwelt with her little one, in an ecstacy of
joy, yet she knew of no sinner helped heaven
ward by her means, and she was troubled.
Years afterward, she asked a Christian
woman, to whom she had never spoken of per
sonal faith, "What brought you to Christ?" and
was overwhelmed at receiving the answer: "It
was you yourself; that summer, you were a
Christian and yet were happy. I had thought
Christians must be sad." And so the baby had
received his little garment of praise that very
first year, and the mother thought, "There
may be other surprises yet in store, I will
trust Him with my prayers and my gifts, and
wait for the revelations of the final Easter
morning." And now, as Easter time is coming, she
thinks it is one year nearer to her own waking
into the fullness of the real life, and one of the
glad things of that resurrection morning will
be the looking again into her baby's eyes and
learning from him of those outbursts of rejoicing
in the presence of the angels of God, and per
haps learning also that he knew that it was in
her heart to send him such love tokens.

The Empty Robin's Nest.

[ These lines -were sent to a friend upon the loss of " beloved son,
whose pet name 7uas " Robin."~\

My robins came back ere the spring-time,
And shaped a fair nest in the oak ;
And warm 'gainst the heart of the mother,
Twin eggs into birdlings awoke.
My heart, with the heart of the mother,
Beat quick for the soft nestlings twain,
In that glad, loving ho.me, 'mid the bleakness,
Where swayed the bare branch in the rain.
Came Easter eve. Fluttering his winglets,
I saw my tall youngling appear ;
Then soft came the sweet vesper bird-note, —
Coo, love, all is safe, all are here.
Came Easter morn. Wild was the rapture
Of woodland and song-bird and rill.
All pent things had found their expansion ;
All cramped lives might wander at will.
64

The Empty Robin s Nest. 65
While the Christ from the tomb was delivered,
And chrysalid souls were released,
Could I grieve that the tomb was all empty ?
Yet I wept o'er my poor, empty nest.
O, my robin, my lost and my loved one !
O, the rain-wet, bare nest, on the tree !
O, the hearts that beat close, with one throbbing !
O, come, O, my Robin, to me !
Would I draw my free robin down earthward,
And crowd him that small nest within?
Would I trail the bright wings of the seraph
Through earth-stains and earth-tears and sin ?
Soft budded the leaves of the oak tree,
With moss-tints and rose-tints and green,
Till, veiled from my eyes' tearful searching,
No glimpse of the nest-home is seen.
I love the dear nest for its story ;
I joy that it sheltered the dawn
Of the wondrous, the boundless expansion
Of being and loving and song.
I see not the form of my robin ; -
He wings the pure air, high and free ;
But, 'mid the wild warblings of day-dawn,
My Robin is singing to me.

66

The Empty Robin s Nest.

And my heart springs aloft, where he soareth,
The gates of the morning among,
And I see all earth's clouds heaven-tinted,
As I mount at the touch of his song.

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