Library of The Theological Seminary 
 
 PRINCETON ° NEW JERSEY 
 
 C=) 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Thomas C. Davies 
 
 
 
Land of All Nations 
 
 “~ 
 a 
 ‘/~ 
 
 By Margaret R.’Seebach “M4.0g)cAl Sis 
 Author of Martin of Mansfield, Missionary Kapa 
 Milestones, Other People’s Children 
 
 Published jointly by 
 Council of Women for Home Missions 
 and 
 Missionary Education Movement 
 New York 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1024, BY THE 
 COUNCIL OF WOMEN FOR HOME MISSIONS: 
 AND 
 MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT 
 OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 I A Stupent or Two Booxs 
 George W. Carver 
 II A MoprerRn CoLumBuSs 
 Constantino Panunzio 
 
 III Tue HAnp or A HELPER . 
 Loo Lin 
 
 IV A Soxprer oF PEACE . 
 Teizo Kawai 
 
 V A DAUGHTER oF LEBANON . A 
 Layyah A. Barakat 
 
 VI A MESSENGER oF Goop NEws . 
 Peter Halenda 
 
 VII A Sarninc Licut 
 Ambrosio C. Gonzales 
 
 VIII A SHUTTLE oF THE GREAT LooM 
 Edward A. Steiner 
 
 PAGE 
 
 118 
 
 134 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 George Washington ‘Carver (000° Sa a ao 
 Constantine: Panwinzio 9 )05' 9.) “AD at eens 
 Loo Lin . y : : : ‘ ‘ : 3 > ee 
 Japanese Union Church, Los Angeles, Cal... . . 58 
 Layyah A. Barakat Aa hI keg py | tase 4 it 
 A Slavic missionary among miners in Pennsylvania . 106 
 Ambrosio C.'Gonzales J) BAe pi alk ee 
 Ectward- Ai Steir yoo egal ats Mey ene ee 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Wuat is America? and whom do we mean when we 
 speak of Americans? Are they those who were born 
 on the soil of the United States? But these speak 
 many languages, and have varying customs and ideas. 
 Do we mean those whose ancestors came here a few 
 generations further back? But where shall we draw 
 the line, and how long does it take to make an Ameri- 
 can? Do we mean those who have been here from 
 the beginning, whose history shows no former life as a 
 race in any other land? ‘Then we should have to ad- 
 mit that, as far as we know, the red man is the only 
 real American. 
 
 Perhaps we can all agree in saying that real Ameri- 
 cans are those who have the spirit and ideals of Amer- 
 ica. But where did America get these ideals? They 
 were not brought here by a single group of people. 
 They did not come from one race alone, but are made 
 up of the ideals of many nations. And the greatest one 
 of all—the one we call the American spirit of equality 
 and brotherhood—did not even come from the Anglo- 
 Saxon race, but from a Man who went about long ago 
 in a little country called Judea, and taught people to 
 love and help one another. 
 
 The sketches in this book are stories of real Ameri- 
 cans, although they are of different races. Each of 
 them has brought the best gifts of his race to contribute 
 
 Vv 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 to the making of the true America; and all of them have 
 that highest ideal, and are serving and helping others 
 in the name of the Christ who brought a message of 
 good-will to all people. If we are able to catch their 
 spirit, and are willing to work with them—and with 
 many others like them—to make this “Land of All 
 Nations” a land of Christian brotherhood, we shail 
 come one day to understand what St. John meant when 
 he saw the vision of the Perfect Country, and wrote, 
 “They shall bring the glory and honour of the nations 
 into it.” 
 MARGARET R, SEEBACH 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, OHIO 
 March, 1924 
 
Land of All Nations 
 
 I 
 A STUDENT OF TWO BOOKS 
 
 t 2 Sa pee had settled over the village of Dia- 
 
 mond Grove, Missouri, and over the surrounding 
 farm-land. It was at the close of the Civil War, and 
 though the slaves had been freed, most of them still 
 remained on the lands of their former owners. So the 
 farms had yet their Negro quarters, overrunning with 
 bright-eyed, kinky-haired children, who were now cud- 
 dled together like little brown birds in their nests, for- 
 getting the day in sleep. 
 
 Suddenly there rang through the air the shriek of a 
 woman and the wailing of a tiny baby. Moses Carver, 
 owner of the farm, sprang from his bed and ran out 
 toward the flash of torches which gleamed from the 
 Negro quarters. A sobbing boy ran almost into his 
 arms. Mr. Carver caught him. 
 
 “What is it, James?” he asked. 
 
 “De night-riders . . . dey done took mammy an’ de 
 baby!” sobbed the child. ‘“Dey’s lookin’ for me now, 
 I ’spect!”’ 
 
 “Come, I’ll take you where they will not get you!” 
 said the kind farmer, soothingly. ‘Out here in the 
 woods I know a place where they won’t find you. We 
 must get back your mother and the baby, too. Poor 
 Mary! there they go with her.” 
 
 EF 
 
2 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 And crouching in the underbrush, the white man and 
 the Negro boy watched the torches disappear. 
 
 The marauders rode off into Arkansas with Mary 
 Carver and her baby, who were called, as slaves usually 
 were, by the name of their owner. In those regions, 
 remote from the enforcement of law, little attention 
 was paid to the edict that had freed the slaves, and 
 the raiders found no difficulty in selling the robust 
 young Negro woman. It was a different matter with 
 the puny baby, who had developed whooping-cough on 
 the journey and was so nearly dead that the raiders 
 thought he could not live more than a few days. 
 
 As a consequence, when a man sent by Mr. Carver 
 arrived with a fine race-horse and some money to buy 
 back Mary and her baby, he found that the mother 
 had disappeared with her new owner, and that only the 
 sick baby could be rescued. The man knew Mr: Carver 
 well enough to feel sure that he would not want the 
 child to die; so he ransomed the frail scrap of human- — 
 ity with the blooded horse, valued at three hundred 
 dollars. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Carver had never liked the idea of 
 owning slaves, but that was the only way they could 
 get farm help. “And we will be good to them,” they 
 said, “when other owners might not be.” Accordingly, 
 James and the ransomed little brother were brought up 
 by the good farmer and his wife as if they were their 
 own children. 
 
 As soon as the baby could toddle alone, he began to 
 show an interest in growing things. Wherever he went, 
 
A STUDENT OF TWO BOOKS 3 
 
 he was never seen without a bunch of something green 
 in his little fist—flowers or weeds, it made no difference 
 so long as it was something that had grown out of the 
 ground. If anyone but the Carvers tried to take his 
 treasure from him, he fought like a small wildcat. He 
 inherited his mother’s hot temper. He inherited some- 
 thing else from her too. No matter how much to her 
 disadvantage the truth might be, she had never been 
 known to tell a lie, and perhaps it was because her 
 little son had never been known to tell one either that 
 he was nicknamed ‘‘George Washington.” 
 
 Of his father he knew nothing, except that he had 
 been the property of a neighboring farmer named 
 Grant, and that, while hauling wood with an ox team, 
 he had fallen under the wagon, which passed over him 
 and killed him. Mr. Carver supplied the place of a 
 father to James and George, training them with care. 
 
 In this kindly atmosphere, George continued to love 
 everything that lived and grew. Besides his precious 
 weeds, he came to love animal life also, and usually 
 carried a toad or two in his pockets. He even took 
 these odd playmates to bed with him until Mrs. Carver 
 made a rule that he must turn all his pockets inside 
 out before he could come into the house at night. 
 
 “T literally lived in the woods,” he says, recalling 
 these days. “I wanted to know about every strange 
 stone, flower, insect, bird, or beast, but no one could 
 tell me about them.” His only book was an old speller 
 which he knew by heart; but it could not answer his 
 questions, and his wish for an education grew daily. 
 
4 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 After ten years on the Carver farm, the elder brother, 
 James, went to live in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Shortly 
 after his brother’s departure, George also left the farm, 
 with the consent of the Carvers, to attend a school for 
 Negroes in a town about eight miles away. Here he 
 remained until he had learned all the little school could 
 teach him, sometimes lodging in the cabins of friendly 
 Negroes, and sometimes sleeping in the open fields or 
 in a stable. 
 
 When two years had passed, there came an oppor- 
 tunity to go to Fort Scott, Kansas, with a family who 
 were moving there. They traveled in a wagon drawn 
 by mules, but the slow rate of progress made the jour- 
 ney only the more interesting to the nature-loving boy. 
 Every new plant along the way, every strange bird or 
 curious stone, was a fresh delight to him. 
 
 For six or seven years he went to school at Fort 
 Scott, supporting himself by doing cooking and all 
 sorts of housework in various families. 
 
 “Here,” he says, “I began to feel renewed gratitude 
 toward Mrs. Carver, who taught me to cook and to sew 
 and make embroidery, which I have done ever since. 
 They were the means of supporting myself through 
 many hard years.” Indeed, he has a gift for beautiful 
 embroidery, and of his crochet-work he has a wonder- 
 ful collection that includes more than a hundred origi- 
 nal patterns. 
 
 At the age of nineteen he went back to Missouri to 
 spend some time with the Carvers. He was so small at 
 this time that he rode on a half-fare ticket, and the 
 
A STUDENT OF TWO BOOKS 5 
 
 conductor expressed doubts about his being old enough 
 to travel so far alone! A year later he began to grow 
 rapidly, and shot up to six feet before he was twenty- 
 one. ; 
 After a happy summer with his old friends, he re- 
 turned to Minneapolis, Kansas, to finish his high-school 
 work. He opened a laundry here to support himself, 
 and soon had all the work he could do. 
 
 During this time the sad news came to him that his 
 brother James had died of smallpox. ‘I was conscious 
 as never before that I was left alone,” he says; “but I 
 trusted God and pushed ahead.” 
 
 He graduated from high school and applied for en- 
 trance to an Iowa college. His application was ac- 
 cepted, and he spent almost his last cent to reach the 
 _ place. But when the president saw that he was a 
 Negro, he refused to admit him into the college. The 
 boy stayed on in town and, in order to accumulate 
 more funds, opened a laundry which was well patron- 
 ized by the students as soon as they learned his story. 
 
 The following spring he went to Winterset, Iowa, 
 as cook in a large hotel. 
 
 It was in Winterset that George attended service one 
 Sunday evening in a church for white people, taking 
 an inconspicuous seat in a rear pew. ‘The next day 
 a fine-looking man called at the hotel and asked him to 
 go home with him, saying that his wife wanted to see 
 him. To his surprise, he found that the gentleman’s 
 wife was the soprano soloist of the choir he had heard 
 the night before. Still greater was his astonishment 
 
6 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 on being told that she had heard his voice as he sang 
 in the church, and had been greatly attracted by its 
 quality. Leading the way to the piano, she asked him 
 to sing for her, and after several songs it was arranged 
 that he should come to her house once a week for vocal 
 instruction. From that time on, Mr. and Mrs. Mill- 
 holland have been among George Carver’s warmest 
 and most helpful friends. He formed the habit of 
 going to their home each evening and telling them what 
 he had been doing all day. After this recital, Mrs. 
 Millholland would laugh and say, ‘‘Who ever heard of 
 any one person doing half so many things!” 
 
 The Millhollands discovered that George was tal- 
 ented not only in singing, but in painting as well. They 
 encouraged him to study music and art seriously, and 
 to save his money with a view of going to college. In 
 a year he had saved enough to enter Simpson College 
 at Indianola, Iowa, where, in addition to the regular 
 work, he registered for courses in art and music. 
 
 By the time Carver had paid all his entrance fees 
 at Simpson, he had exactly ten cents left to live on. 
 He bought five cents’ worth of corn-meal, and five 
 cents’ worth of beef suet, and on these he lived for one 
 entire week. By the end of that time, he had managed 
 to advertise his willingness to do laundry work, and 
 thereafter he never lacked for employment. 
 
 His course in art did not last very long. After the 
 third lesson, the instructor asked him not to come to 
 classes, saying that he was a natural artist and that 
 the rest of the lessons would not teach him anything 
 
A STUDENT OF TWO BOOKS 7 
 
 he did not already know. Though he did not study 
 again under a formal instructor, painting was always 
 his favorite recreation, and his first painting, exhibited 
 at the World’s Fair in Chicago, was valued at four 
 thousand dollars. 
 
 Three years at Simpson College quickened his old 
 desires to know all about the wonders of nature. By 
 this time there had entered into his curiosity the con- 
 viction of a plan and purpose in the whole creation. 
 
 “My watchword was, ‘I want to know.’ I wanted 
 to know how a plant grows, where the blossom gets its 
 color, why God makes each thing, and why I can’t 
 make things as well as God makes them. What 
 is my relation to the plants and their relation to me? 
 What is the relation of the plants and myself to the 
 great God who made all of us?” 
 
 So he decided to take a course in agricultural chem- 
 istry, and for that purpose went to Iowa State College 
 at Ames, Iowa. 
 
 Again he supported himself at first by laundry work;' 
 but after he had taken his bachelor’s degree, he was 
 put in charge of the greenhouses of the institution and 
 given direction of the work in systematic botany. It 
 was here that he learned the answers to many of the 
 questions that had been puzzling him, and began to 
 catch glimpses of still greater wonders to be revealed. 
 At length he received his master’s degree in science. ‘I 
 was not weaned away from art and music,” he says, 
 “but science seemed to be more useful and practical.” 
 
 At this time, that great industrial school for the 
 
8 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 Negro, Tuskegee Institute, in Alabama, was in the 
 early stages of its growth. The great buildings on the 
 present campus were, in those days, scarcely dreamed 
 of; but even then large numbers of wide-awake, eager 
 young people were filling its temporary sheds—one of 
 them a remodeled hen-house. New possibilities for 
 their race were opening before them. 
 
 The head of this institution, Booker T. Washington, 
 had an almost prophetic foresight of what might be 
 done for his people, not by taking them out of the 
 surroundings in which they lived, but by teaching them 
 to use the minds and the hands God had given them, 
 and to discover the gifts He had hidden for them in the 
 soil they lived on. To develop this work he needed a 
 man trained in just those branches which George 
 Carver had been studying at Iowa State College. In 
 some way Mr. Washington was directed to write to 
 the college and ask if they could recommend a teacher — 
 of science for Tuskegee. The faculty replied that they © 
 had the very man for him. And so it happened that, 
 in the year 1894, George Carver journeyed southward 
 to Alabama, to take up his life work at Tuskegee 
 Institute. 
 
 Science was a new subject at Tuskegee. When the 
 young teacher arrived, he found no equipment for ex- — 
 periments of any kind. Nor had the school any money 
 to buy apparatus for him; but the motto of Tuskegee 
 was then, as it is now, “Use what you have.” 
 
 So the new professor sent his students out through 
 the village of Tuskegee to visit the alleys and rubbish 
 
A STUDENT OF TWO BOOKS 9 
 
 piles, and to bring him whatever they could find in the 
 way of broken china, empty bottles, and bits of rubber 
 and wire. Out of these fragments he made apparatus 
 for his laboratory, and began work. 
 
 As he went about his task of collecting and studying 
 the plants that grew around Tuskegee, Carver was 
 accustomed to carry a long, slender botany case, about 
 a yard in length, in which to place his specimens. 
 Nothing like it had ever been seen in that neighbor- 
 hood, and it aroused great curiosity among the Negroes. 
 
 “YT knows what he is!” declared more than one old 
 “mammy,” with a look of wisdom. ‘“Needn’t nobody 
 tell me nothin’ about dat man! He’s a root-doctor 
 (conjurer), dat’s what he is!” And many of the 
 Negroes came to him to ask him for “spells” or 
 “charms” out of the long case he carried, to ease ‘“‘de 
 misery” in their. backs, cure their sick cows, or keep 
 away thunder-storms. 
 
 One of the great objects of the school at Tuskegee 
 is, not to educate young men and women in such a way 
 that they will leave the ignorance and poverty of their 
 home surroundings to seek for success in business or 
 professional life; but rather to show them that it is 
 not necessary for their homes to be meager and 
 wretched, when those homes can be so greatly improved 
 simply by knowing how to use the things about them. 
 Tuskegee aims to make its students eager to return to 
 their homes, and able to transform them because of 
 what they have learned in school. 
 
 As time went on, Carver’s discoveries in the labora- 
 
10 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 tory grew to be of such importance that it was decided 
 to let him stop conducting classes and give his whole 
 time to research and experiment. 
 
 It was discovered that there were two ways of get- 
 ting at the problem of making a new life for the south- 
 ern Negro. One was to find out what kind of crops 
 the soil would support and to introduce new plants. 
 This Dr. Carver has done with the eight-feet-high tropi- 
 cal grass from Africa which he has successfully grown 
 at Tuskegee, and which, by successive cuttings, yields 
 four crops of fodder in a year. 
 
 The other, and still more practical way, was to study | 
 the possibilities of the things that already grew in 
 abundance—the natural products of the land. This 
 has been Dr. Carver’s greatest work, and its results 
 are truly like magic. 
 
 Starting with the commonest of crops, he began to 
 study the products which could be obtained from the 
 peanut and the sweet potato. These are plants which 
 are easy to raise. They produce in great abundance 
 even in poor soil, and do not take away as much fer- 
 tility from the ground as do many other crops; in fact 
 the peanut actually enriches the soil it grows in. In- 
 deed, the value of the experiments in agriculture at 
 Tuskegee is greatly increased by the fact that the 
 twenty-three hundred acres of land belonging to the 
 Institute are naturally poor soil, so that anything that 
 can be raised at the Institute is capable of being grown 
 on the poorest land in the neighborhood. 
 
 From the sweet potato Dr. Carver has succeeded in 
 

 
 
 
 
 és i ay 
 
 % - = # Bi. 1f eS . 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER 
 
 The motto of Tuskegee Institute is “Use what you have.” Mr. 
 Carver had peanuts and potatoes and brains. Out of them he 
 made nearly three hundred useful products. 
 

 
A STUDENT OF TWO BOOKS Ir 
 
 ‘making four varieties of flour, five kinds of library 
 paste, three kinds of breakfast foods, two kinds of 
 coffee, fourteen varieties of candy, forty-five dyes, 
 ranging from jet black to a rich orange; as well as 
 starch, vinegar, ink, shoe blacking, molasses, fillers for 
 wood, and substances closely resembling cocoanut, 
 chocolate, tapioca, and preserved ginger, and a rubber 
 compound which may prove to be his most valuable 
 invention. Thus, from sweet potatoes alone, over a 
 hundred products have been derived in his laboratory, 
 each and all of which can be readily manufactured for 
 practical use. | 
 
 Still more remarkable are the one hundred and sixty- 
 five products which Dr. Carver has developed from the 
 peanut. These range from flour to axle grease, and 
 from a drug resembling quinine to a fine quality of 
 linoleum. They also include pomade, wood stains of 
 nine different colors, nineteen dyes, Worcestershire 
 sauce, soap, and nitroglycerine. Sprouted peanuts are 
 much like very tender asparagus, and peanut germs are 
 an ideal food for pigeons and young chicks. Peanut. 
 milk can hardly be told from cows’ milk, and keeps 
 just about as well; it makes a smooth and delicious. 
 ice-cream. 
 
 In fact, Dr. Carver declares that “if all the other 
 kinds of vegetable foodstuffs in the world were de- 
 stroyed, a well-balanced ration could be made for both 
 man and beast from peanuts and sweet potatoes.” 
 
 These are only two of the many members of the 
 vegetable kingdom with which he has had great success. 
 
12 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 From the pecan nut he has made over sixty different 
 catticles, and the list is still increasing. He is working 
 now on okra, from the fiber of which he has already 
 made paper, rope, matting, and carpeting. Potash 
 and stock feed have been produced from the china- 
 berry; ribbons from the poplar bark; baskets from the 
 wistaria vine; and many varieties of blues, including 
 water-soluble laundry blue made from red clay. Dyes 
 made from dandelion, black oak, wood ashes, sweet 
 gum, willow, swamp maple, muscadine grapes, onions, 
 velvet beans, and tomato vines are among his discoy- 
 eries. A business organization known as the “‘Carver 
 Products Company” has recently been formed to manu- 
 facture and market these articles. | 
 
 More and more Dr. Carver has come to feel that 
 nothing God has made is without its use. In the soil 
 He has locked up all we need to support and beautify 
 life; the key is for the man who seeks for it. Look- — 
 ing at the hills around, unsuited for farming, this ear- 
 nest believer in Providence felt that they could not 
 have been made in vain. There came to his mind the 
 words, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from 
 whence cometh my help’; and encouraged by them, he 
 went forth to find what hills are good for. 
 
 As a result, some of his most interesting experi- 
 ments have been those he has made with the various 
 kinds of sand and clay to be found about Tuskegee, 
 which have furnished nearly every color for dyes and 
 paints. In these his artistic soul takes delight, and 
 he has used them in creating many pictures. He uses 
 
A STUDENT OF TWO BOOKS 13 
 
 no brush, but applies all the colors with his thumb. 
 Some of these pictures, made with clay, look like water- 
 colors; others are ‘“‘sand pictures,’ made by covering 
 a smooth board with shellac and applying the different 
 sands before it dries. He has many specimens of 
 these pictures, including landscapes, fruit, and flower 
 pieces. 
 
 But these discoveries are not worked out merely for 
 his own pleasure. Dr. Carver considers every one of 
 them.as a direct gift of God through him to his people,. 
 and feels that nothing matters quite so much just now 
 as how to make them known and how to get them used 
 by the people of the South. 
 
 About fifteen years ago, a “health car” passed 
 through Tuskegee, demonstrating the different ways 
 of preventing and curing disease. Booker Washington 
 and Dr. Carver were standing together watching it, 
 and Mr. Washington said: 
 
 “We ought to have a car like that going round the 
 country.” . 
 
 ‘“‘We need more than that!” said Carver. ‘We need 
 an exhibit of all the things that help people to live 
 better—foodstuffs and useful articles of all kinds.” 
 
 From this suggestion came the beginning of a series 
 of efforts to get the results of the Tuskegee discoveries 
 and experiments into use among the people of the 
 South. 
 
 The latest method of doing this is known as the 
 “Movable School.” This is a truck that goes out 
 from Tuskegee, carrying both men and women from 
 
14 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 the Institute, with various models and exhibits. It 
 stops at the home of some Negro who has previously 
 given permission to have his place used for demon- 
 stration purposes—usually the poorest place in the 
 neighborhood. The Negroes gather from all directions 
 to see the transformation. ; 
 
 The young men, aided by the owner, set to work on 
 the outside of the property. They show him how to 
 make new fences, to replace the broken ones, making 
 posts of the flint and sand to be found right there on 
 the place, molded into a sort of concrete. They help 
 him make a new roof, show him how to improve his _ 
 garden and field by fertilizing and better planting and > 
 cultivation; mend his outbuildings, and finally give 
 the entire house, inside and out, and the various sheds, 
 a coat of kalsomine colored with the clays discovered 
 by Dr. Carver, who has arranged cards’ with color 
 schemes for making the appearance of such a place 
 beautiful and harmonious. 
 
 Meantime the young women help the wife to put 
 everything in spotless order within the house. They 
 teach her new recipes, using in different ways the food- 
 stuffs raised on the place; they give her lessons in sew- 
 ing and mending and the care of children; and they 
 teach her to make various useful household articles, 
 using as far as possible only materials which are right 
 at hand. 
 
 Indeed, this is the motto of the whole Tuskegee — 
 work, given by Booker Washington to his students and 
 faculty, and made by Dr. Carver the watchword of 
 
A STUDENT OF TWO BOOKS 15 
 
 his life: “Let down your buckets where you are!” 
 “And my bucket,” says Dr. Carver, “has always come 
 up brimful and running over.” It is his firm belief 
 that, wherever God has placed a man, there He has 
 put everything that man needs to live by, if the man 
 will only search for it. One of his favorite verses is 
 the one in the first chapter of Genesis, in which God 
 speaks to man of every herb and tree He has created, 
 saying, “To you it shall be for meat.” Another of 
 his mottoes, constantly repeated, in the light of which 
 he has achieved all of his most wonderful discoveries, 
 is, “I can do all things through Christ which strengthen- 
 eth me.” 
 
 To such a man come great honors and opportuni- 
 ties, though he never seeks them. A few years ago, 
 Mr. Edison sent a special representative to Tuskegee, 
 to offer Dr. Carver a large salary to come and work 
 with him for five years in his laboratory at Orange, 
 New Jersey. Dr. Carver considered the offer a great 
 honor, but firmly though humbly declined it. 
 
 “T felt,” he said, ‘that God was not through with 
 me yet at Tuskegee; there is still plenty of work to do 
 for Him here.” 
 
 When Congress was considering the advisability of 
 placing a tariff on peanuts, Dr. Carver was called 
 before the Ways and Means Committee of the House 
 for consultation. The Committee had allotted him 
 five minutes for a hearing, and he kept carefully within 
 the limit; but when he stopped, they urged him to go 
 on and he talked for more than an hour. He is now 
 
16 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 frequently called to Washington as an si eciny in agri- 
 cultural chemistry. 
 
 He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in Lae 
 don, though he does not know who proposed him for 
 membership, and declares himself unworthy of the 
 honor. He received, also, the Spingarn Medal for 
 1922, presented to “that man or woman of African 
 descent and American citizenship who shall have made 
 the highest achievement during the preceding year or 
 years in any honorable field of human endeavor.” 
 This is the highest honor that can come to eel member 
 of the Negro race. 
 
 The impression which Dr. Carver’s work, as ex- 
 plained by himself, makes on those who hear him on 
 the many occasions when he is invited to all parts of 
 the South to tell of his discoveries and their uses, is 
 shown by an incident which occurred at Suffolk, Vir- 
 ginia. After his address, a white woman came pushing 
 her way through the crowd, and asked to be introduced 
 to him. Looking earnestly in his face, she exclaimed 
 ‘abruptly: 
 
 “You didn’t do that work!” 
 
 “No,” he said, catching her meaning in spite of her 
 bluntness, “‘no, it isn’t my work; it is God’s work!” 
 
 “Yes, it is His work,” said the woman, “and He gave 
 it to you to do for Him. You could never have done 
 it alone!” 
 
 At one time Dr. Carver was invited by William 
 Holtzclaw, a Tuskegee graduate, who is the head of 
 an institute at Utica, Mississippi, to make an address 
 
A STUDENT OF TWO BOOKS 17 
 
 before the school. Before his arrival, a white man 
 came to the principal and said: 
 
 “Look here; I want to ask one question of you. Is 
 this man who is coming a real black man, or is he 
 partly white? So many of your leaders have a good 
 bit of white blood, and of course we know that’s what 
 makes them brilliant. Now, is this a real Negro, or 
 not?” : 
 
 “This,” said Holtzclaw, “is a real black man; but 
 come and see him for yourself.” 
 
 After hearing Dr. Carver’s address, the white man 
 sought the principal again. 
 
 “Say,” he demanded, “what is that man, anyhow? 
 Is he educated, or is he a freak?” 
 
 Dr. Carver’s only comment, when told about it, was: 
 “Well, you can’t wonder that they feel that way about 
 us. But as a matter of fact, what I am doing is not 
 just the result of education. [ am not merely edu- 
 cated; I am /ed, in the doing of this work.” 
 
 His love for all living things makes everything in 
 nature dear to him. He is never seen without some 
 kind of flower or leaf in his buttonhole. Not long ago 
 he was asked to prepare a book on botany, and an- 
 other on chemistry. The botany he is now engaged 
 upon; but when asked whether he would also write 
 the chemistry, he shook his head. 
 
 “TY do not care so much for chemistry,” he said. 
 “That is about dead things—metals and acids and salts. 
 It is the living things I love—the plants that grow, 
 that God has given life as He gave it to you and me!” 
 
18 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 Dearest of all to him are the hours he spends with 
 his Bible classes. ‘These are held every Sunday eve- 
 ning during the half-hour between supper and evening 
 prayers. 
 
 About fourteen years ago, the young man who acted 
 as janitor of the agricultural building asked permission 
 of Dr. Carver to use one of the rooms. It was granted, 
 and the next Sunday, seeing a light in his own office, 
 Dr. Carver was curious enough to look in and see what 
 was going on. He found the janitor and two other stu- 
 dents so deeply absorbed in their Bibles that they did 
 not see or hear him at the door. The following day they - 
 came and told him that they had started a Bible class 
 and that they had elected him teacher! He protested 
 that he could not teach them anything like that, but 
 they insisted. So he began with the first chapter of 
 Genesis, and brought specimens from his laboratory to 
 show how science agrees with the Bible about the order 
 in which the plants and animals were created. 
 
 From this small beginning there has grown a class 
 of more than two hundred pupils to whom he explains 
 the two books of God—the book of nature and the — 
 written word. Between these two, he declares, there is 
 no disagreement; such variance as there appears to be 
 is due to our ignorance, and the more we know of 
 science, the more we see that it is one with the teaching 
 of God’s word. 
 
 He illustrates everything as he goes, from the facts 
 with which his work has made him familiar. The 
 plague of locusts is just like one he saw while living 
 
A STUDENT OF TWO BOOKS 19 
 
 in Kansas, when the daylight was darkened by the 
 hosts of flying insects. The spies knew that the Prom- 
 ised Land was “flowing with milk and honey,” because 
 they saw everywhere the long grass, and God never 
 makes a country like that without putting cattle in it; 
 and they gathered the grapes of Eshcol, which proved 
 there were bees; for without the bee, which carries 
 pollen to fertilize the grape blossoms, the vine could 
 not produce such marvelous bunches of fruit. Thus 
 every step of the study is illumined by the facts of 
 nature, which he believes are the truth of God as really 
 as the words of prophets and apostles. 
 
 To him there is nothing that is not a part of his re- 
 ligion, and he passes without a sense of change from 
 the church to the laboratory. A Sunday-night caller 
 once found him in his room, his hands stained from a 
 recent experiment. 
 
 “We were talking before Auch about the okra,’’ he 
 said simply, “‘and it suggested to me something new; 
 so I just came over here to find out another of the arte 
 God has put into the okra plant for our use.” 
 
 For his own race he has a deep love and a great 
 hope. 
 
 “T look upon the Negro race,” he says, “as a baby 
 race—still in its infancy, not yet grown up like the 
 ‘white race. But you know,” he adds with the smile 
 that so often brightens his dark features, “it is written, 
 ‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings Thou hast 
 perfected praise.’ ”’ 
 
IT 
 A MODERN COLUMBUS 
 
 | the little city of Molfetta, a quaint old town of 
 
 Southern Italy, there was great rejoicing one day 
 over the birth of a baby. The joy was the greater 
 because the baby was a boy, who could carry on the 
 name of his grandfather, Don Costantino, the family 
 hero. When Italy was much oppressed by the 
 Bourbon rulers, in the middle of the last century, Don 
 Costantino had been the leader of a group of patriots 
 who organized to resist that tyranny. Spies informed 
 on them, and they were hastened to prison without 
 trial. Don Costantino, as their leader, was compelled 
 to drink a cup of poison, while his followers were re- 
 leased on promise to conspire no more. 
 
 Don Costantino left a widow and six children, 
 among whom his memory was held as that of a saint 
 and hero. That was why, when the little grandson 
 was born, the child was christened Costantino, or 
 Constantine Panunzio. From his birth, his grand- 
 mother had charge of his bringing-up, and she never 
 ceased to tell him that he was to be a great man, like 
 his grandfather. She had his future fully planned; 
 he was to be “first a priest, then a teacher, and at last 
 a patriotic statesman.” 
 
 In these plans she was seconded by her son, Con; 
 
 stantine’s father, to whom she had contrived to give a 
 20 
 
A MODERN COLUMBUS 2r 
 
 university education. He had become a lawyer of 
 many and varied interests. At one time he estab- 
 lished and conducted a private school for boys; he 
 was also a writer and a speaker of some note, espe- 
 cially on the subject of clean politics, in which he was 
 deeply interested. 
 
 At times Constantine’s father was a stern ruler in 
 his household, and in after life the boy remembered 
 many severe punishments, most of them for truancy 
 from school. At other times, his father was a delight- 
 ful companion, taking the boy on walks and fishing 
 trips. He almost overwhelmed him with tenderness 
 when Constantine lost the sight of one eye while play- 
 ing with fireworks, as the boys did at Christmas time, 
 for in Italy fireworks were a part of the Christmas 
 celebration. 
 
 Not every Christmas was as sad as that one; in- 
 deed, to the Panunzio children it was the happiest 
 festival of the year. Although the Italian children 
 had no Christmas trees or exchange of gifts (in Italy, 
 St. Nicholas’ Day, January fifth, was the time to hang 
 up stockings, or rather, boots), on Christmas Day 
 everybody feasted on the best fruits of the year, care- 
 fully saved for that occasion; and the carol-singing 
 sounded like the voices of angels on the quiet air of 
 night. 
 
 The Panunzio children—four girls and four boys— 
 had a pretty household custom at Christmas. For 
 days beforehand they would hunt for the prettiest 
 letter-paper they could find, with decorations or mot- 
 
22 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 toes printed on it. Then each one would try to com- 
 pose the best letter or little poem to: express his love 
 for his father and mother. These were hidden about 
 the parents’ plates, and “the best part of the Christ- 
 mas dinner was to hear Father and Mother read the 
 letters we had written, and then pronounce. which one 
 was the best.” | | 
 The Christmas Midnight Mass in the Cathedral was 
 a wonderful service, with blazing candles and glorious 
 music. But better yet the children loved the home 
 ceremony of the Presepio—the Manger. They would 
 work for days before Christmas to make a miniature 
 Bethlehem, bringing home sod and planting little 
 twigs in it for trees, making tiny houses and winding 
 roads. Then amid this scenery they would place little 
 terra-cotta figures kept carefully from year to year— 
 the wise men with their camels, the shepherds and 
 their flocks, and a tiny stable with Mary and Joseph, 
 and the Babe lying in a manger. Their father would 
 gather them all about it on Christmas Eve, by soft 
 candlelight, and tell them the whole story of the holy ~ 
 birth—the star, and the angels, and the gifts of gold. 
 He was a wonderful father in many ways, beloved 
 in spite of his occasional sternness; yet he made one 
 great mistake with his eldest son, for he was deter- 
 mined that the boy should follow in his own steps and 
 in those of his grandfather, and persisted in trying to 
 train him for a profession. He lost sight, you see, of 
 the fact that Constantine had had another grandfather, 
 from whom he inherited more than he did from Don 
 
A MODERN COLUMBUS 23 
 
 Costantino. This was his mother’s father, who had 
 been a sea-captain, and had lost his life in a ship- 
 wreck, 
 
 From his very earliest days, Constantine seemed to 
 hear the call of the sea. Even his kindergarten books 
 were covered with crude drawings of ships. At every 
 opportunity he would run off to the harbor to watch 
 the vessels go by or to board those that lay at anchor. 
 His toys were always ships. He spent every bit of 
 money he could get for little vessels, which he fitted 
 out with complete rigging. “My dreams at night,” he 
 says, “were almost invariably of ships, of oceans, and 
 far countries.” 
 
 ‘Because of this love of the water, which often led 
 _ him to play truant from school in spite of the severe 
 punishments he knew he would suffer both from his 
 father and his teacher, Constantine acquired the repu- 
 tation of being a very bad boy. It was not really 
 that he meant to do wrong; but when he saw the 
 water or a ship, he forgot everything else. The first 
 time he heard a siren whistle, on an English coal 
 freighter, he simply ran to the harbor and stayed there 
 all day waiting to hear it again, forgetting entirely 
 that there was such a thing as school. He and his 
 “gang,” made up of other boys who loved the sea, 
 were always getting into scrapes, sometimes dangerous 
 ones, until all his relatives, except his mother and 
 grandmother, had decided that the boy who was to 
 have followed his honored grandfather was good for 
 nothing. 
 
24 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 He confirmed this idea by being a rebel against 
 church as well as school. He had never been much 
 interested in religion as it was taught by the priest, 
 and was much better pleased with a book of Bible 
 stories he happened to find one day. How such a 
 book ever got into his home, he never could tell, but 
 he took care to read it in secret, well knowing that 
 his people would call it a bad book and punish him 
 for reading it. “Even so,’ he said afterwards, “to 
 me that reading was most sweet,” particularly the 
 Resurrection story which he thought most wonderful 
 of all. | 
 When he was taken to his first confession, the priest 
 led him into a dark room and told him to kneel, and 
 there came on him a sense of bewilderment and of 
 being imprisoned. A streak of light fell from the 
 partly closed door, and in a fiash he had leaped to his 
 feet, rushed out of the door, and gone to play by his _ 
 beloved sea. Nor did he ever afterward go to con- 
 fession. : 
 
 His father, thinking to shame him into going back 
 to school, mistakenly tried to crush the desire for the | 
 sea out of the boy, first by putting him to work at 
 various occupations—in a foundry, a soap factory, a 
 blacksmith’s shop, and a cobbler’s place, and then in 
 the electric plant. The boy liked these new experi- 
 ences and enjoyed earning the money—which he 
 spent, as usual, on toy ships. The only result was 
 that while working in the soap factory, he learned 
 that the soap he was making was to be sent to 
 
A MODERN COLUMBUS 25 
 
 America, and he straightway resolved that he would 
 go to America himself some day. 
 
 Then his father, finding the apprenticeship method 
 a failure, sent Constantine back to school, going with 
 him every day to make sure he attended. Finally the 
 boy passed all the grades and was ready to go to a 
 higher school. His grandmother, still clinging to her 
 intention, insisted that he should be sent to the Semi- 
 nary where boys were trained for the priesthood. 
 
 This place was like a dungeon to him, with its dark 
 rooms and long corridors and the iron fence twelve 
 feet high all around the grounds, which the pupils 
 were not allowed to pass. The teachers he hated, 
 especially the professor of mathematics. Once when 
 Constantine had not prepared his lesson, this teacher 
 flew into a fit of anger and struck him so hard with 
 a ruler that he cut the boy’s head open. With blood 
 streaming down his face, Constantine ran to the gate 
 and fought with the gateman till he won his way out. 
 His father was very angry with the teacher, and now 
 at last began to see that he could not force the boy 
 to become a student. He did not again send him to 
 school. And so, at the age of thirteen, having convinced 
 everybody that he was not meant for a scholar, cer- 
 tainly not for a priest, Constantine was allowed to ship 
 on a coasting schooner as a sailor boy. 
 
 His parting with his people made them all forget 
 their disappointment in him and show the real affec- 
 tion of their hearts. All his uncles and aunts and 
 cousins brought him gifts—a sea-chest, a sailor’s bag, 
 
26 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 blankets, pillows and slips, clothing, towels and hand- 
 kerchiefs, and all kinds of eatables. The whole 
 family came to see him off, as his vessel, the Angelo, 
 spread her sails to the April breeze. 
 
 For a year and a half Constantine voyaged back 
 and forth along the Adriatic. Then he began to long 
 for a wider world. Home was no longer a place to 
 return to, for his grandmother had died of old age, 
 his mother and father had died in a scarlet fever epi- 
 demic which had swept Molfetta, his sisters were mar- 
 ried, and the three younger boys had been taken in 
 charge by relatives. Constantine’s Uncle Carlo, who 
 was his legal guardian, now gave him permission to 
 embark on longer voyages, and he visited many ports 
 of Europe, from Constantinople to the British Isles. 
 
 Still the call of the wide world grew louder, and at 
 last he shipped on a brig bound for America, Aus- 
 tralia, and the South Sea Islands. | 
 
 His ideas of America were very vague. He did not — 
 even know that North and South America were dif- 
 ferent continents. Much that he had heard of 
 America was from sailors who had touched South 
 American ports, and to his mind the name brought a 
 vision of “vast stretches of virgin lands and great, 
 winding rivers,” of a leisurely life among easy-going © 
 people, in a mild climate. How different he found it, 
 when he landed amid the crowded streets of Boston, to 
 pass his first winter in the rigors of New England! 
 
 It was not cold at first, for the ship entered Boston 
 Harbor in July. While it lay there, Constantine de- 
 

 
 CONSTANTINE PANUNZIO 
 
 The boy Constantine was forever running away to the seaside. 
 The picture shows the man Panunzio (in the center) again run- 
 ning away to sea, this time to study scientifically the conditions 
 under which steerage passengers live while on shipboard. 
 

 
A MODERN COLUMBUS 27 
 
 cided to make an effort to leave the vessel, whose cap- 
 tain was an unjust and brutal man, and return home 
 some other way. He tried at first to get the captain 
 to release him, but got only kicks; so one evening 
 early in September he left the vessel with his sea- 
 chest and sailor bag, and fifty cents in his pocket, to 
 seek a job which would pay his passage home on 
 another vessel. : 
 
 For five days he lived on one loaf of bread a day, 
 and slept on a recreation pier. On the fifth day he 
 met on the pier a French sailor named Louis. They 
 struck up a friendship, though they had to converse 
 chiefly by signs; and they went about together inquir- 
 ing for work. 
 
 At an Italian boarding-house they were given to 
 understand that there was plenty of work to be had 
 at “peek and shuvle’”—the first English words that 
 Constantine learned. He imagined they meant some 
 kind of office work. When he was led to an excava- 
 tion where men were digging, and saw what “pick and 
 shovel” really were, his heart sank. A “padrone,” or 
 labor contractor, made them what they thought a 
 splendid offer of work twelve miles out of Boston, 
 with a “shantee” where they could sleep, a ‘‘storo” 
 where they could buy “grosserie” very cheap, and one 
 dollar and twenty-five cents a day, out of which they 
 would pay the “padrone”’ only fifty cents a week for 
 having got them this “gooda jobba.” 
 
 After three days on the “gooda jobba,” they found 
 that between paying the “padrone,”’ buying groceries 
 
28 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 at the prices charged at the company “storo,’” and 
 paying for the privilege of sleeping in the straw bunks 
 of the ‘“‘shantee,” they would have nothing left of 
 their wages. Not having received a cent of pay, they 
 decided to quit. 
 
 They next tried a small manufacturing village, 
 where they applied for work in a woolen mill. The 
 rest of the workmen were Russians, who quickly 
 showed their dislike for the “dagoes”—a word which 
 Constantine now heard for the first time—and made 
 it so unpleasant for them that the boss, fearing a riot, 
 had to ask them to leave. This was the young man’s 
 first realization of what race prejudice means, and it 
 hurt him deeply. “It is an ever-present evil spirit,” 
 he writes, “felt, though unseen, wounding hearts, cut- 
 ting souls. It passes on its poison like a serpent from 
 generation to generation.” To the breaking down of 
 this evil he was one day to dedicate his life. 
 
 The two friends next took an offer to go to the 
 Maine woods at thirty dollars a month, with room and 
 board, to open the way for a new lumber camp. Con- 
 stantine was no success at this sort of work. “TI 
 seemed to have the knack of hitting the tree once 
 and once only in the same place. No one dared work 
 within a radius of twenty yards of me for fear of 
 losing his life.”’ The boss, a patient Scandinavian, set 
 him at dragging logs and finally at fetching water. 
 Once, while hunting a new brook for a larger water 
 supply, he heard a noise and thought he saw a wild 
 animal. Up a tree he went, and stayed there till 
 
A MODERN COLUMBUS 29 
 
 night; the men only discovered his whereabouts when 
 they found the bucket at the foot of the tree. 
 
 When he and Louis tried to leave the camp, having 
 decided by the ninth day that it was not their kind 
 of work, they found. that the captain of the little 
 steamer on which they had reached the place flatly 
 refused to take them across the lake. They realized 
 that their job held them virtually prisoners. But 
 sailors were not going to be held back by a little water. 
 They made a raft of some logs, tying them with ropes 
 and chains they found on the shore; filled two whisky 
 bottles with molasses—the only provisions they could 
 get—and started off to pole across the lake. A Rus- 
 sian who also wanted to leave hailed them as they 
 were pushing off, and begged by gestures to be taken 
 on board; so the three set out on their voyage—‘“‘a 
 twentieth-century Tower of Babel on a raft on an 
 American lake.” That night they slept in the woods, 
 or the other two did; Constantine spent the night 
 keeping up a fire to drive away wild animals! 
 
 The Russian left them in the morning, and the 
 others pushed along shore on their raft. When their 
 molasses was, about exhausted, they found a rival 
 lumber camp, whose boss took pity on them and got 
 the captain of the steamer to take them to a landing- 
 place. The captain kept all Constantine’s worldly 
 goods till he could come back and pay for his voyage, 
 which was not until months afterward. 
 
 They wandered from one lumber camp to another, 
 as there was no other work to be had. The Italian 
 
30 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 boy suffered severely from the cold of the Maine 
 winter, and once was nearly drowned crossing a stream. 
 on thin ice. When they reached a French-Canadian 
 camp, Louis found himself more at home; but Con- 
 stantine, never much of a lumberman, was soon dis- 
 charged. He left his Sunday trousers with Louis, who 
 had borrowed them and declined to give them up. 
 
 In Stacyville, a small hamlet, Constantine went to 
 work for a farmer, whom he believed to be the first 
 “real American” he had met. Had his only impres- 
 sions of America been what he gained in this village, — 
 he would have a poor opinion of it. In all his life, even 
 among sailors, he never heard such a ae ey and © 
 filthy speech as in Stacyville. 
 
 There was not a church in the village, though a 
 minister from ariother town occasionally preached 
 there. Women as well as men smoked pipes, and 
 “liquor flowed freely, though it was in prohibition - 
 Maine.” 
 
 Constantine’s boss found his name too long for con- 
 venience. At first, for some unknown reason, he called 
 him ‘‘Mr. Beefsteak”; on protest, he consented to 
 change his name to Frank Nardi, by which he was 
 known for several years. One thing Stacyville did 
 for him: there was nobody in the community who 
 could speak to him except in English, so he learned the 
 language very fast, if not very correctly. 
 
 By spring he had earned enough money to go home 
 to Italy, though it had not been paid to him. He» 
 asked his boss for it, but was put off. Finally the 
 
A MODERN COLUMBUS 31 
 
 man laughed at him and handed him five dollars, in- 
 stead of the eighty-five dollars due him, saying he 
 could give him no more. 
 
 Constantine was bitterly angry, and determined to 
 go to Boston and get a lawyer to help him collect 
 his wages. He had not money enough to get there, 
 but a friend advised him to steal a ride on a train, 
 and he attempted to do so. He was caught and put off 
 at a station in Vermont, where a big man told him to 
 go with him for the night. The place proved to be 
 the lock-up. Here the boy suffered agonies of humilia- 
 tion and fear, aided. by some Italian scribbles on the 
 wall to the effect that no one who ever entered that 
 cell would leave it alive. In the morning, children 
 threw stones at him behind the bars, and the black- 
 smith across the street came and spat in his face. 
 
 But the good old judge before whom he appeared 
 listened kindly to his story, and did nothing more than 
 to buy him a ticket back to Stacyville. Soon after 
 he returned, his employer left the town; and his suc- 
 cessor on the farm paid Constantine’s wages regularly. 
 But this man nearly got him into much more serious 
 trouble by making him help smuggle in liquor from 
 Massachusetts, and setting him to sell it in the woods 
 near a fair-ground. He narrowly escaped arrest by 
 the sheriff, and was furious with his boss when he 
 found what an illegal act it was into which he had 
 been entrapped. 
 
 Constantine had now grown hopeless of returning to 
 Italy. Yet he felt there must be something better 
 
32 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 than this in America, if he could only find it. At 
 this time of discouragement, his good angel was a 
 kind woman, the mother of his employer’s wife, who 
 arranged for him to go to her son’s home in the town 
 of Sherman till he could find work. 
 
 Just before he left Stacyville, he was unwillingly 
 attending a revival meeting of which he understood 
 very little, when there came to him a sense of a new 
 power that could make life better. What caused it 
 he could not tell; but he says, “For the first time I 
 thought of life in terms of service.” 
 
 At Sherman he truly did find “real Americans.” 
 His employer, a farmer by the name of Richmond, 
 was a New England Yankee of the ‘‘Uncle Sam” type. 
 Except for a tendency to use strong language when 
 angry, this man was a consistent and earnest Chris- 
 tian, and his wife a woman of “deep spiritual loveli- 
 ness.” Their five daughters were all kind and con- 
 siderate in their treatment of the- young man. ‘The 
 religion of this home was a matter of every-day life, 
 and the grace before meals, family worship, and sing- 
 ing of hymns on Sunday afternoons, beside the ser- 
 vices he attended with them at church and Sunday 
 school, gave him a new ideal of Christian living, 
 though the Puritan teaching of the minister was some- 
 times hard for his warm Italian nature to accept. 
 
 At Christmas the family gave him a little New Tes- 
 tament, and he sat up late at night reading it. He 
 liked especially the book of Romans, because it was 
 written to people in his native land. The twelfth 
 
A MODERN COLUMBUS 33 
 
 chapter was the first piece of religious teaching that 
 he really understood and took to himself; and he 
 memorized it word for word. 
 
 This made him eager to learn better English and 
 many other things. The oldest daughter of the Rich- 
 monds was a school-teacher, and he persuaded her to 
 let him attend her school. But the children made fun 
 of this big fellow of twenty who did not know as 
 much as. they; they called him names and threw 
 paper wads at him, till Miss Richmond decided to 
 teach him at home. 
 
 Late that winter he went to the home of the But- 
 terfields, relatives of the Richmonds in Maine, to help 
 with some lumbering there. Mr. Butterfield one day 
 said to him suddenly, “Frank, my boy, you ought to 
 go to school.” It was like a challenge to his waken- 
 ing mind. Soon after, he read of a poor Italian boy 
 who had worked his way through school and had be- 
 come a minister. He tried to get help from the vil- 
 lage pastor to reach that school, but found little sym- 
 pathy. Then he wrote to the Italian himself, and 
 got the name of the school, but not much encourage- 
 ment to go. 
 
 While he was waiting for his letter to come, he hung 
 around the post-office so much that he aroused the 
 interest of a policeman who asked him his name, na- 
 tionality and business, and why he loitered about the 
 office so much. Constantine explained about the 
 letter, and the policeman seemed so approachable 
 that after the letter came, and its contents proved so 
 
34 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 disappointing, he went to the policeman and told him 
 about it. The officer drew the whole story from him, 
 took him to the police station (rousing in Constan- 
 tine’s mind some fears of being arrested again), and 
 wrote him a letter to the president of the school, 
 which he then mailed for him. 
 
 There proved later to have been a mistake in the 
 address. When an answer did not come, the police- 
 man advised Constantine to go in person. He took 
 him to the station, lent him his mileage, with an ad- 
 dressed envelope in which to return it, put him on the 
 right train, told the conductor his story, asked him 
 to sec that the young man got off at the right station, | 
 and waved him good-by as the train pulled out. And 
 so Constantine came to the Maine Wesleyan Semi- 
 nary, with very little money but with one deter- 
 mination. 
 
 At first he was not popular with the soap who 
 took his aluminum pocket-comb to be a stiletto; and 
 later, though he had been among them three years, 
 they resented it when he was chosen to act ‘‘Shylock” 
 in the senior play. Resolved to prove that he could 
 do his part, he worked till he had memorized the 
 entire play, and could act as prompter to them all. 
 Such zeal could not help but put them in a better 
 humor, and he was warmly praised for his rendering | 
 of his part. This was his first real success, and it 
 heartened him greatly. Another came soon after, 
 when he took the prize for his school in a state ora- 
 torical contest for preparatory schools by declaiming 
 
A MODERN COLUMBUS 35 
 
 the court scene from the same play. At last he felt 
 that there was real justice in America, and that he 
 was not hopelessly handicapped by his foreign birth. 
 
 That fall he entered Wesleyan University in Con- 
 necticut where he worked his way through to a degree. 
 Then he went to the Boston University School of 
 Theology to prepare for the ministry. His teachers 
 in college gave him great inspiration and help, and 
 he felt that he had gained a new view of life. He 
 took pride in the work by which he earned his way 
 as janitor, tailor, watchman, and mail clerk, and de- 
 clined financial help when it was offered him out of 
 sheer joy in being independent. He says: “It put new 
 backbone in me. Life became a great adventure.” 
 With all this, he felt that he had lost some things in 
 America—his simple confidence in people’s motives; 
 his respect for law and order, which he often saw 
 badly administered; his fine health which, in the rush 
 of American life, he almost lost; and much of the 
 habit of careful and exact work. Yet he felt that it 
 was a wonderful gain to be somebody in himself, and 
 not be respected merely for what his grandfather had 
 done, as he would have been in Italy. 
 
 Loving his own land, it did not occur to him at first 
 to become an American citizen; and when at last he 
 did wish to become a citizen, his moves from state to 
 state made it hard to get his papers. It was not till 
 he had been in America twelve years that he was 
 naturalized, and then he was as proud as the old Ro- 
 mans must have been of Roman citizenship. He was 
 
36 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 glad, too, that he had become an American in spirit 
 before, instead of after, adopting the name. 
 
 Early in his preparatory course he had felt an im- 
 pulse to help the immigrants, especially Italians, who 
 did not understand America very well. He tried first 
 to serve in an Italian mission during a vacation, but 
 found that those in charge cared more about the num- 
 bers they could gather than about the real help that 
 they could give. After entering college he had the 
 experience of teaching an Americanization class super- 
 vised by a factory owner. The pupils were interested 
 in English, but were openly hostile when he tried to 
 teach them citizenship. They told him that it meant. 
 nothing to them to be Americans while the very 
 American citizen who paid for the teaching of the class 
 allowed his foreman to kick them around in his fac- 
 tory and call them “‘dagoes.”” When Constantine tried 
 to tell this to the manufacturer, the man was furious, 
 and spat out, “Let the dagoes go back to their rat- 
 holes!” 
 
 Because he was an Italian, Panunzio’s first church, 
 which he served for a time as a supply, was divided — 
 over accepting him as permanent pastor. He stayed 
 two years, however, and won over his opponents. For 
 four more years he served American churches. Then 
 he thought he saw a chance to help his own people by 
 taking a down-town church in Boston, whose congre- 
 gation had dwindled greatly with the coming in of 
 Italians all around it. He hoped to combine service 
 to the small American membership and to the large 
 
A MODERN COLUMBUS 37 
 
 Italian community about it; but the church officers 
 totally refused to have “this well-known church, or 
 even a part of it, turned into an Italian church,” so 
 that plan failed. 
 
 During this time he speaks with the greatest appre- 
 ciation of the helpfulness of a man he calls his 
 “American Big Brother.” This man had rather a 
 prejudice at first against Italians; but when a certain 
 social service institution in Boston, of which he was a 
 director, became divided about employing Constantine 
 aS superintendent (some of the committee declaring 
 he was too Italian, and others that he was too Ameri- 
 canized!), the man’s sense of fair play was aroused, 
 and he insisted that birth should not be considered, 
 but that ability alone should determine the point. 
 
 After that he always stood by Constantine in his 
 work; he invited him to his house, took him to con- 
 certs and plays, introduced him to his wife and friends, 
 and was truly a brother to him. “I am certain,” he 
 says, “that had it not been for my American ‘Big 
 Brother,’-I would not have the deep-seated faith in 
 America which is mine today.” 
 
 His experiences in the crowded tenement section of 
 Boston—dirty, treeless, ill-smelling, noisy, full of sa- 
 loons and gambling-dens—were often painful and dis- 
 couraging. But he came to love the people—first the 
 children, singing like larks on the grimy streets and 
 fire-escapes when they were not toiling under work 
 too heavy for them; then the patient Italian mothers, 
 trying to keep the life in their little ones in that sun- 
 
38 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 less, foul atmosphere; then the fathers, battling often 
 beyond their strength to make a mere living for their 
 families. . 
 
 It was a great trial to have nothing better to gather 
 these people into than an old, dark, dirty building 
 that “had been used for every imaginable purpose, 
 from a monastery to a storage house.” There were 
 three Protestant missions bidding for the attendance 
 of the same people, and none of them really helping 
 to better their condition. 
 
 Constantine Panunzio labored hard and unselfishly 
 to help these people. Once, when he had seen police- 
 men roughly drive from Boston Common a number 
 of poor people who had come out of the stifiing tene- 
 ments on a very hot day for a breath of air and a 
 little sleep, he submitted himself shortly after to un- 
 just arrest, simply to bring before the attention of 
 the court and the public the ill treatment of the im- 
 migrant. The result was a wide publicity and the 
 correction of a number of abuses. 
 
 When America entered the World War, he tried to 
 enlist, but was prevented by his defective sight. The — 
 Y.M.C.A. service was open to him, and he was sent 
 with their first party to Italy. There he revisited his 
 old home, and was urged by his relatives to come back 
 to live; but, dear and beautiful as Italy was, he was 
 of it no more, and felt that he would never be able 
 to make it his home again. 
 
 He had the privilege of raising “the first Stars and 
 Stripes which ever flew near the lines of the Italian 
 
A MODERN COLUMBUS 39 
 
 army.” This was a small silk flag which he carried 
 with him, and which he offered for use when it had 
 proved impossible to get an American flag for the 
 Y.M.C.A. headquarters. Later he carried it on his 
 car “to the remotest spots on the firing lines and even 
 down into Sicily, in places where it had never been 
 seen before.” 
 
 At the opening of a new hut, the patriotic priest 
 who was to have made the address was unable to be 
 present, and Panunzio was asked to speak to the sol- 
 diers on America’s part in the war. He did this so 
 clearly and effectively that the men were carried away 
 by enthusiasm, and the Italian general kissed him and 
 insisted on having his picture taken with him. 
 
 Next day he was called to army headquarters and 
 asked to go about, at the expense of the Italian Army, 
 from place to place addressing the soldiers. For seven 
 months he was engaged in this service, among soldiers 
 and civilians, even to the remotest towns of Sicily. He 
 gave a wonderful patriotic service to his native land, 
 as well as to his adopted country, and did much to 
 overcome the suspicion with which Italians at first 
 regarded America in the war. 
 
 _ Then sixteen years after his first landing in America, 
 he returned to her, this time coming to New York 
 Harbor when the city was in the full array and excite- 
 ment of the Victory Loan Campaign. “I was again 
 in America. I felt like kissing the ground, as Co- 
 lumbus had done centuries ago.” He had made his 
 “everlasting choice,” and knew that he belonged for- 
 
40 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 ever to America, to live and die an American citizen. 
 
 Soon after returning, a call for his services came 
 from the West. It carried him to the Pacific Coast, 
 where he became a professor of the Department of 
 Social Science in a Western college. He has since 
 resigned this position to devote himself to social re- 
 search and writing. He has also given much of his 
 time to efforts for the liberation of immigrants un- 
 justly imprisoned, and for the better distribution of 
 immigrants, who on landing in this country have a 
 tendency to settle in the congested parts of our cities. 
 
 His book, The Soul of an Immigrant, from which 
 this story is in large part taken, shows us the won- 
 derful development of a wayward boy into a strong 
 and splendid man, glowing with the love of liberty 
 and the passion for service to the new Americans 
 whose struggles and disappointments and persistent 
 hopes he knows so well. This modern Italian sailor 
 has discovered the real America—a greater achieve- 
 ment than that of Columbus; and the fruits of that 
 discovery, which he seeks to bring to his fellow 
 countrymen, are more precious than all the riches of 
 the Indies. 
 
Iil 
 THE HAND OF A HELPER 
 
 HERE was trouble and anxiety in the Lin house- 
 hold. Living near the city of Canton, the Lins 
 were a busy and prosperous family in ordinary times. 
 They made a living by cultivating silkworms and rais- 
 ing fish for market. But this had been a very bad 
 year. The silkworm crop had been a failure; and for 
 many days it had rained and rained, so that the fish- 
 ponds had overflowed and all the fish had been carried 
 away in the flood. Something must be done! 
 
 Now a Chinese family, no matter how large, is very 
 closely bound together. Nobody acts for himself; each 
 acts for all the others. So a family council was held to 
 decide what should be done. Over the seas, they had 
 heard, there was a country where there was much work 
 to be had at good wages. One of the family, they de- 
 cided, must go to America, where he could not only 
 support himself, but send home money to help the 
 others. Of them all, the one who seemed best fitted to 
 go was 2 younger son, named Loo Lin. 
 
 There were, already, relatives in the United States; 
 it was not as if there would be no one to help him get 
 work when he arrived. But there was no money to 
 pay for his passage. He must earn his way across. 
 So the boy secured a job as stoker on a vessel bound 
 for San Francisco. 
 
 4t 
 
42 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 When, after the long voyage, he at last reached the 
 American harbor, another unforeseen difficulty arose. 
 To his consternation, he was forbidden to land. .The 
 authorities were going to send him back again to China! 
 But the captain of the vessel took an interest in the 
 boy, and to him Loo Lin confided the name and ad- 
 dress of his cousin in San Francisco. The captain sent 
 to the address and found the cousin, who got a lawyer 
 to help them. Meanwhile, Loo Lin, terrified, not know- 
 ing what to be afraid of and what not to be afraid of, 
 was hiding in the smokestack of the vessel, getting very 
 black, but determined not to be caught if an inspector — 
 came on board. Had he come across the seas expect- 
 ing to work in the crew of some big company, he would 
 not have been allowed to land, but the lawyer and the 
 cousin managed to satisfy the port authorities that Loo 
 Lin had not tried to come in as a contract laborer, and 
 at last the young man was admitted. 
 
 He found work as a domestic in the household of a 
 German family in the city, and spent some years in 
 their employ and also in that of other families. 
 
 He was very ambitious to learn English, and went 
 faithfully to night school. Often the family for whom 
 he worked had dinner so late that he had not time to 
 eat any himself, but would hurry through with the 
 dishes and rush off to school. After the school was 
 dismissed for the night, he and other students would 
 go to a Chinese restaurant and get a supper for ten 
 cents apiece. : 
 
 It was after he had been in San Francisco some 
 

 
 LOO LIN 
 
 The scared Chinese boy who landed in San Francisco many 
 years ago without money and without work is now a confident 
 New York business man, a radiant Christian, active in Church 
 and Bible Class, and an inspiriting friend to the hopeless and 
 afraid on both sides the Pacific. 
 

 
THE HAND OF A HELPER 43 
 
 years that Loo Lin began to hear great things about 
 the World’s Fair which was to be held in Chicago. 
 Guessing that there would be a great demand for help 
 in restaurants and homes, and that he might get larger 
 wages than he had been receiving, he decided that it 
 would be a gocd time for him to go to that city. 
 Through a cousin there he soon found work with an 
 American family. | 
 
 Anxious to learn still more English, Loo Lin started 
 again to night school. So far it had happened that in 
 the United States he had met no one who professed to 
 be a Christian. But the night-school he entered in 
 Chicago chanced to be a mission school. Here, for 
 the first time in America, he met Protestant Christians. 
 At home, in China, he had heard of Christianity, but 
 only from the members of a Roman Catholic mission. 
 Here in Illinois, something about the new religion at- 
 tracted him, and he began to attend Sunday school as 
 well as night school. 
 
 Soon after he began going to Sunday school, there 
 was a lesson about Jesus and Nicodemus. The teacher 
 explained very fully and carefully the verse beginning, 
 “For God so loved the world...’ This was won- 
 derful news to Loo Lin. It went straight to his heart, 
 and from that day he decided to be a follower of this 
 loving and powerful Savior. 
 
 After becoming a Christian, he was invited to a 
 number of Christian homes by the friends he had made 
 through the mission, and was very happy in his new 
 companionships. But trouble was again on his trail. 
 
44 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 News came that his older brother in China had died, 
 leaving a wife and several children. Now the trouble 
 of one member of a Chinese family is the trouble of 
 all. The entire family would have been disgraced in 
 the eyes of their countrymen if they had failed to pro- 
 vide for the widow and her children; and this could 
 only be done by the aid of Loo Lin. He was already 
 sending home as much as he could possibly spare out 
 of his wages, which had never been more than three 
 dollars a week. So he left Chicago and went to New 
 York, where he hoped to find work that would apey him 
 beer. 
 
 Some time during these years, he received a letter 
 from home telling him that the family had arranged a 
 betrothal for him with the daughter of another family 
 of their acquaintance. He had never seen the girl, 
 and knew nothing whatever about her; but the word 
 of the family was law, and he presently set sail for | 
 China to bring back his wife. 
 
 His heart was rather heavy when he remembered 
 how lately he had become a Christian, and wondered 
 whether the girl he was going to marry would be a 
 help or a hindrance to him in this new way of living. 
 All the way over on the vessel, he was praying, “Dear 
 God, let my wife learn to be a Christian!” 
 
 At the same time, over in a mission school in China, 
 there was a young girl whose heart was as troubled as 
 _his. She had become a Christian, and now her parents 
 were giving her in marriage to a strange young man. 
 She did not know whether he would approve her faith 
 
THE HAND OF A HELPER 45 
 
 or frown upon it. So every day she kept praying, 
 “Dear Lord, make my husband a Christian!” 
 
 At length the day came when the betrothed bride 
 was to meet for the first time her husband-to-be. Her 
 people helped her to dress very carefully for the great 
 event, and told her that according to the Chinese 
 custom she must hide her face with her fan when she 
 first entered the room. 
 
 “Why should I do that?” asked the girl. “I am not 
 ashamed to be seen! I am a child of God, and I do 
 not need to hide my face from anyone!” 
 
 In spite of her relatives’ protest that the young man 
 would not be well impressed with so bold a bride, she 
 walked into the room without holding up her fan. 
 When he saw her come in, so frank and modest, look- 
 ing at him with her clear, honest eyes, Loo Lin’s heart 
 gave a great leap, for he knew that only a Christian 
 girl would look like that. It was a very happy couple 
 who, a few weeks later, sailed for America, content in 
 each other’s ideals. 
 
 In New York, Loo Lin’s life ran on smoothly for 
 some years. First he was in the employ of others, but 
 later he was able to invest for himself in a restaurant. 
 He and his wife were very busy, happy people. Sons 
 were born to them, to their great pride and joy, and the 
 parents worked very hard to lay by money for their 
 children. So busy were they that the restaurant 
 claimed their labors seven days in the week, and they 
 seemed seldom to find time for church or family 
 prayers. 
 
46 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 Yet even while not living an actively Christian life, 
 Loo Lin became known as an honest man of firm prin- 
 ciples, whose life was a rebuke to many of the inhabi- 
 tants of Chinatown. Finally, envious of his influence 
 and success, some of these Chinese decided to get rid 
 of him, and they started a movement to boycott his 
 restaurant. 
 
 Gradually his business declined. The Lins strugglea 
 on until it was evident that some change must be made. 
 Then it was suggested that in Florida there were good 
 openings for truck farmers who could raise Chinese 
 vegetables. Gathering their few belongings together, 
 they went South to begin life over, arriving in Florida 
 with just sixty dollars in their pockets. 
 
 A friend was sent them in the person of a man of 
 fine Christian character who owned a small farm and 
 a horse and a cow. These he rented to Loo Lin. The 
 whole family worked very hard, earning a bare living, 
 but there came to them in those days an experience 
 which was worth more than many dollars. 
 
 “In the daytime,” says Mr. Loo Lin, telling the - 
 story, “we saw the sun shining so brightly, making 
 everything grow green and beautiful; and at night 
 we went out and walked under the stars, and remem- 
 bered the God who had given us everything. And we 
 said to each other that we had been too busy making 
 money in New York, and had forgotten Him. We had 
 not prayed to Him as we should, we had not gone to 
 His house and taken our children, nor had we set a 
 good example to our neighbors who did not know Him. 
 
THE HAND OF A HELPER A7 
 
 And so God took away our business, to make us re- 
 member Him; and there in Florida we did remember 
 Him, and promised to serve Him better. We were 
 very poor in Florida, but very happy.” 
 
 The family continued to grow, and after a time 
 the little farm in Florida would not yield a living for 
 them all. With new faith and hope in their hearts, they 
 left the South and went to make a new start in Kansas 
 City. 
 
 It was here that Mrs. Loo Lin came to a decision 
 which few women, even the most devoted Christians, 
 are called upon to make or would be able to make. 
 When people accept Christ as their Master as whole- 
 heartedly as Mr. and Mrs. Loo Lin had done, He leads 
 them sometimes by strange ways, and brings them to 
 do things they would have thought impossible before. 
 
 There came to Mrs. Loo Lin more and more the 
 thought of the many children in China who have not 
 the chance to learn about Christ’s way of living as she 
 taught it to her own boys and girls. 
 
 Too well she remembered the many thousands of 
 little children running untaught about the streets in 
 China who would grow up to worship in the old, mis- - 
 taken way of their ancestors if somebody did not go 
 to teach them. ‘Too well she knew that the few mis- 
 sionaries and their helpers were not enough for the 
 task. ‘The thought of the children of China was with 
 her all the time, and the care she gave to her own boys 
 and girls only made her heart heavier for those who 
 were not taught and cared for as they were. Besides, 
 
48 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 she had been educated in a mission school, and it 
 seemed to her that she owed a debt to her people who 
 - had not had such an opportunity. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Loo Lin loved each other sad their 
 children dearly. Perhaps we cannot imagine just what 
 the family and the home mean to the Chinese people 
 and how hard it is for them to think of anything that 
 will break up the home life. But Loo Lin and his 
 wife had learned the words of One who said, “He that 
 loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of 
 me,” and they believed that He meant just what He 
 said. So Mrs. Loo Lin decided that they must be sepa- 
 rated for His sake, and that she would go back to 
 China to be a teacher, taking part of the family with 
 her and leaving the rest in America. If missionaries, 
 she .thought, could make such sacrifices for China, 
 could not one of China’s own daughters’ do as much 
 for her own people? 
 
 By way of preparation Mrs. Loo Lin began a course 
 of training for kindergarten work, which took her three 
 years to complete. During part of this time her family 
 all lived in Kansas City, but later her husband went 
 to work in Chicago. They placed the children with 
 people whom they trusted to care for them. Later they 
 found that the children were not being properly taken 
 care of. Then a Christian woman offered to take the 
 children into her home for a small sum, as she was not 
 wealthy enough to keep them for nothing. | 
 
 These were dark days for the Lin family, with very 
 little money coming in, the home life broken, and the 
 
THE HAND OF A HELPER 49 
 
 prospect of a long parting before them. They were 
 often discouraged, but held fast to the faith that God 
 was leading them. In Chicago, Loo Lin found many 
 temptations to increase his small earnings in ways that 
 his conscience told him were not worthy of a Christian. 
 
 “One day,” he says, “I told the Lord, ‘Dear God, 
 I need help. I am about to fall into temptation, and 
 there is no one to help me but you. I cannot go on 
 any longer unless you will stand by me and help me 
 out!’ After that,” he said, ‘““God showed me the way.” 
 
 He had taken the two oldest boys to Chicago with 
 him, while the younger children—two girls and a boy 
 —remained in Kansas City. He was obliged to place 
 the boys in an orphanage to keep them from running 
 in the streets. One summer they spent in a boys’ 
 camp. Both of these experiences were good for them. 
 They were well trained in both orphanage and camp. 
 
 One day a kindly woman, visiting the orphanage, 
 became interested in the eldest boy, Paul, and asked 
 him how he and his brother David would like to spend 
 the summer with her family on the shores of Lake 
 Michigan. When their father came to see them, they 
 were full of this project; and, as a result, they found a 
 plain but good home with this excellent family at 
 comparatively small expense. 
 
 Mrs. Loo Lin had now finished her course of kinder- 
 garten training, and came to Chicago to say good-by to 
 her husband and sons. There was a sad yet hopeful 
 parting. A few weeks later she sailed for China, tak- 
 ing the four youngest children with her, Paul remained 
 
50 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 for some years in school in this country; later his 
 father took him to China and placed him in.a mission 
 school there. 
 
 The path of opportunity now led Mr. Loo Lin back 
 to New York. There he invested in a business which 
 at first was not very profitable. Time and again he 
 tried to sell it, but something always happened to break 
 off the sale before it was completed. He came to be- 
 lieve that this also was part of God’s guidance, when 
 at a later date he was able to sell it for a much larger 
 sum than he could have had earlier, and to invest in 
 another business which returned him one hundred per 
 cent annually. In fact, from that time he has greatly 
 prospered. He is at present manager of the City Hall 
 Tea Garden, a large and beautiful Chinese Testaurank 
 on Nassau Street. 
 
 In the meantime, he did not again give himself any — 
 chance to forget God in his business. While he was 
 investing his money, he was also busy investing his life 
 for Christ in three different ways—in training and 
 influencing his children, in helping his people in China, 
 and in becoming a teacher and helper of the Chinese - 
 in this country. 
 
 He has made a number of trips to China to visit his 
 family. Mrs. Loo Lin is still occupied in kindergarten 
 work, and the children—six of them now—are all at 
 school there. Paul, the eldest, is in Shanghai Univer- 
 sity. On a recent visit, his father asked him what he 
 intended to make of his life. The young man seemed 
 uncertain. 
 
THE HAND OF A HELPER 51 
 
 “There is nothing greater you can be than a Chris- 
 tian missionary, Paul,” his father suggested. 
 
 Paul hesitated a moment, and then burst out: 
 
 “Oh, Papa, can’t I do something to make money? 
 Missionaries have such a hard time!” 
 
 “Paul,” said Mr. Loo Lin, very kindly, “if you go 
 into business for yourself, you may be making money 
 on earth; but if you invest your life in the Lord’s busi- 
 ness, you will be laying up riches in heaven. Think 
 it over, and see which you will choose.” 
 
 Paul has now decided, and is in training to become a 
 Christian worker. 
 
 The second boy, David, had always been a problem 
 to his parents. He was the one member of the family 
 who was different from the others. The things that 
 pleased his-brothers and sisters never appealed to him, 
 and often the father and mother were worried because 
 he seemed not to fit in with the rest of the family, or 
 to share their purposes and ideals. 
 
 A short time after the beginning of 1923, Mr. Loo 
 Lin received a letter from this seventeen-year-old son 
 which made him very happy. He told his father how 
 he had taken a walk alone in the woods on the last 
 day of the year, and had had, as he put it, “a talk 
 with God.” He had asked to be made one with his 
 parents in spirit and purpose—“for no boy in China 
 has a better father and mother than mine’”—to be 
 helped to understand and live harmoniously with his 
 brothers and sisters, and, all his life, to be used in the 
 service of God and man. 
 
52 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 So is the influence of these true Christian parents 
 leading their children to follow them in paths of help- 
 fulness. | 
 
 While he has been visiting in China, Mr. Loo Lin 
 has found many opportunities for service there. One 
 day he was told that an aged missionary and his wife, 
 whom he had known twenty-four years earlier, were 
 living in retirement and poverty. He went to call on 
 them, and found the old lady almost blind. When she 
 heard his name, her face filled with light. 
 
 “Ts it really the Loo Lin we knew so long ago?” she 
 asked, and gave him a welcome so warm that it touched 
 his heart. : 
 
 Seeing in what poor circumstances they were living, 
 he felt that something should be done for them and for 
 others like them. He spoke to some of his Christian 
 friends and, promising to give the first thousand him- 
 self, proposed that they join him in raising funds for 
 a home for aged and needy Christian workers. They 
 are now engaged in raising $30,000 for this purpose. 
 
 ‘“‘And we shall get it,” says Mr. Loo Lin, “for we 
 have a God who can do anything!” 
 
 Another still larger undertaking in which he became 
 involved while in China is the financing of a large 
 hospital for lepers on an island called Tai Kam, in the 
 province of Kwangtung. This project was started by 
 a veteran missionary, the Reverend John Lake, who 
 had labored in Kwangtung for twenty years, and had 
 seen much of the widespread suffering caused by lep- 
 rosy. It is to be a Christian hospital, offering not only 
 
THE HAND OF A HELPER 53 
 
 bodily care and the remedies which have lately been 
 found to arrest and sometimes cure the disease, but 
 spiritual healing as well. 
 
 The late Dr. Wu T’ing-fang, who was the Chinese 
 ambassador to this country for a number of years, and 
 who at the time this hospital was proposed was Acting 
 Civil Governor of Kwangtung, was greatly interested 
 in the project and donated a large sum of money 
 toward it. He also approved a grant of the entire 
 island as a leper colony. In 1918 the American Mis- 
 sion to Lepers made a grant of $66,000 toward the 
 fund. 
 
 With Dr. Wu T’ing-fang, Mr. Loo Lin visited the 
 island to inspect it, and was made a member of the 
 Board of Directors of the new hospital. Dr. Wu’s 
 former secretary is now directing, with Loo Lin’s as- 
 sistance, a million-dollar campaign for the hospital 
 among the Chinese in this country and all others who 
 may be interested. The most influential Chinese in 
 New York City are members of the committee handling 
 this campaign. 
 
 It is an honor to have a share in such a large under- 
 taking, but it takes a greater soul to do the small, un- 
 noticed, personal deeds of helpfulness which Mr. Loo 
 Lin is constantly performing among the people of New 
 York’s Chinese district. 
 
 This is far less easy and attractive than going about 
 on great campaigns, but it is so much more like the 
 work the Master did. Chinatown, with its narrow, 
 crooked streets, its strange, Oriental signs and odors, 
 
54 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 its rookeries of old houses, where many Chinese families 
 dwell, desperately poor, but guarding jealously those 
 few dark rooms against the intrusion of strangers— 
 who but a man of their own race could reach into those 
 narrow dwellings and win those shy, concealed hearts? 
 
 Though he has been for many years a member of a 
 church where the services are conducted entirely in 
 English, Mr. Loo Lin gives his time and effort to as- 
 sisting the Chinese department of the Church of All 
 Nations. Here he attends worship, and also teaches 
 in Chinese a Bible class of about ten men. He is, be- 
 sides, president of the Chinese Y.M.C.A. of the settle-. 
 ment to which the Church of All Nations belongs. 
 
 The head of the Chinese department. writes: “Mr. 
 Loo Lin is always going about doing good for his peo- 
 ple. Whenever I call upon him to go to the prisons or 
 hospitals to help a Chinese brother in need, he is ready 
 to respond, and it is often through his loving ministry 
 that these souls are led into the light.” 
 
 An American woman who is greatly interested in 
 prisoners, particularly those of other nationalities, 
 came one day and told Mr. Loo Lin of a Chinese, 
 no longer a young man, whom she had found in the 
 Trenton Penitentiary, serving a twenty-year sentence. 
 This meant that in all probability he would never come 
 out alive; and over in China he had a wife and family 
 whose poverty, resulting from his imprisonment, was 
 making him desperately unhappy. 
 
 Mr. Loo Lin went over to Trenton and visited the 
 man, promising to see what could be done for him. He 
 
THE HAND OF A HELPER 55 
 
 talked to him of the only hope for the troubled hearts 
 of men, and gave him a Bible and other Christian 
 literature. After he returned to New York, he made 
 it a habit to send each week to this man the outline of 
 the Sunday-school lesson, as he prepared it each Sun- 
 day to teach to his own class. In the meantime, he 
 was working for the man’s release on parole, under 
 condition that he should be deported to China, where 
 he might be able at least to keep his family from want. 
 
 The man studied the Bible and the Sunday-school 
 lessons faithfully. One day he wrote to his friend: 
 
 “T wanted to be free and come to New York, to go 
 to your church and try to find your Christ. But I did 
 not need to go to New York to find Him, for He has 
 
 - come and found me here in the prison, and I have given 
 
 my life to Him.” 
 
 The change in the man’s life became evident to every- 
 one. His behavior was so excellent that he became a 
 “trusty” in the prison, with a certain amount of liberty 
 within its walls and with responsible work to do. Mr. 
 Loo Lin continued to work for his parole and deporta- 
 tion to China, the chances being greatly increased by 
 the man’s good record. 
 
 Every year it is the custom to pardon or parole a 
 number of the best men in the penitentiary—not more 
 than thirty. The warden became greatly interested in 
 this prisoner and one day sent this word to Mr. Loo 
 Lin: 
 
 “T know that you have been praying for the prisoner 
 you come to visit. He shows the results of it, for he 
 
56 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 is among the sixty-one best men in the prison, from 
 among whom the thirty are to be chosen. Keep on 
 praying that he may be one of the thirty.” 
 
 A short time afterward, word was brought to Loo 
 Lin that his man was indeed among the thirty who were 
 chosen. He supposed that the man was to be released 
 on parole, and said at once, ““Now he can be deported 
 and go back to his family.” 
 
 Great was his joy when his informant replied: “No, 
 he doesn’t need to be deported. He has received a full 
 pardon!” | 
 
 The released prisoner came to New York, where 
 work was found for him by which he could help his 
 family much better than if he were sent back to China 
 to work for small wages there. 
 
 “So,” says Mr. Loo Lin, “the Lord gave me more 
 than I asked for. I prayed to have him deported, but 
 the Lord made him altogether free!” 
 
 The man who had been pardoned did not forget to 
 be grateful to his friend. One day he presented to Mr. 
 Loo Lin a picture he had drawn, to show what he felt 
 Loo Lin’s help had been to him. Up in one corner he ~ 
 had drawn a great Hand extended out of the sky. 
 Below rolled a sea of tossing waves, and out of the 
 water arose the hand of a drowning man, clutching for 
 help. Between the two stood the figure of a man, 
 representing Loo Lin. With one hand he was reaching 
 upward, to clasp the hand of God; with the other he 
 was grasping the hand of the man sinking in the water. 
 It is a true picture of a life of Christian service. 
 
IV 
 A SOLDIER OF PEACE 
 
 Ox the beautiful Inland Sea of Japan lies the an- 
 cient town of Akashi, picturesque among its 
 gnarled old pine and cypress trees. Long ago, when 
 Japan was still under the feudal system, with its many 
 ranks of nobility, the town was the capital where the 
 Lord of Akashi ruled. Among his knights was a young 
 man by the name of Kawai. 
 
 Changes came rapidly to Japan. The old system was 
 presently abolished, and Kawai was sent to Tokyo as 
 the representative of Akashi in the Advisory Council 
 of the new government. 
 
 But Akashi had been on the losing side in the war 
 that brought about these changes, and its representa- 
 tive was not looked upon with favor at the capital. He 
 knew this before he left his home for Tokyo, and sus- 
 pected that his political enemies might do him harm. 
 
 “A child will be born in our home while I am away,” 
 he said to his wife. “I hope it may be a boy, to carry 
 on our family name with honor. If anything should 
 happen to me, so that I do not live to tell him of the 
 honorable place our family has held in the records of 
 our country, give him my sword, and tell him to be 
 always a brave and loyal knight, and never to dishonor 
 the name he bears, the name which has been borne by 
 brave warriors before him.” 
 
 57 
 
58 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 Kawai’s forebodings proved true. The party in 
 power, fearing and hating him, plotted against his life, 
 and he was assassinated. A few months later,-in the 
 home in Akashi, a son was born to inherit his father’s 
 sword, and was named Teizo Kawai. 
 
 As the little Teizo grew, he was never weary of 
 hearing his father’s message, and of handling his 
 father’s sword, which was always his treasured pos- 
 session. His mother, faithful to her husband’s wish, 
 told him all the stories of the family heroes, until his 
 boyish heart burned with the desire to be a great sol- 
 dier and do valiant deeds, like his ancestors. 
 
 One of the stories Teizo liked best was about his 
 grandfather who had been admiral of the tiny feudal 
 state of Akashi twenty years before Teizo’s birth, at 
 the time when Commodore Perry made oe famous visit 
 to Japan. | 
 
 When the “black ships,” as the jiuee called the — 
 American war vessels, were sighted off the coast, com- 
 ing to waken Japan after her centuries of isolation 
 from the outside world, the excitement among her 
 people was tremendous. They thought the foreigners 
 had come to invade and destroy their country, and 
 every height along the shore swarmed with armed 
 troops as defenders and the rest of the population as 
 sightseers. | 
 
 Admiral Kawai put his little fleet in order for battle, 
 like the rest. But when it was found that the Ameri- 
 cans had not come to make war, but were on a peaceful 
 mission, he was chosen as one of the officials sent to 
 
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A SOLDIER OF PEACE 59 
 
 greet the strangers. How wonderful it was to hear of 
 the queer, white-faced people, with their red hair and 
 green eyes—for so the Japanese speak of the blond 
 coloring of the Anglo-Saxon race. And inasmuch as 
 the Japanese fairy-tales all represent evil spirits as 
 red-haired and green-eyed, it was no wonder that the 
 sight of the foreigners filled the people with horror 
 and distrust. | 
 
 “Ugh!” exclaimed the old admiral, returning from 
 the reception where he had helped to do the honors, 
 and had met the foreign guests. ‘“‘These strangers are 
 not like people; they are like dogs, with their hair cut 
 short all over their heads! And their clothes! Instead 
 of beautiful, flowing kimonos, such as every civilized 
 person wears, they have close-fitting things that show 
 the shape of their bodies—a tight, separate bag for 
 each leg, and their arms just the same way! There 
 is no fear that anybody in Japan will ever wish to copy 
 the foreign devils!” 
 
 “Mother, did you ever see one of them?” Teizo and 
 his sister would ask eagerly, after this story was told. 
 
 “Once I saw some foreign traders traveling in sedan- 
 chairs,” replied their mother. ‘They were not from 
 America, but from a place called Holland. All I can 
 remember about them is that they smoked long pipes 
 as they were carried along.’ 
 
 Teizo’s mother was a very religious woman, and the 
 children were never allowed to forget their prayers. 
 In one corner of the parlor was a shrine with an image 
 of Buddha, sitting, with his eternally clasped hands 
 
60 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 and his vacant expression, high above the children’s 
 heads. Every morning their mother would take the 
 children to this shrine, and they would kneel before 
 it and repeat prayers out of a Buddhist prayer-book. 
 They prayed for the best thing a Buddhist can pray 
 for—which is to be made not to want or care for any- 
 thing. 
 
 In the living-room stood another altar on a sheli— 
 an altar to the Shinto gods who are partly nature gods, 
 partly the family ancestors. Every evening the family 
 would light candles before this shrine, clap their hands, 
 and repeat some more prayers. Unlike the prayers in 
 the morning, these prayers were mostly prayers for 
 health, prosperity, and safety for the household. 
 
 “It was a Selfish religion,” said Teizo, years after, 
 “only concerned with taking care of self. There were 
 never any prayers for others.” 
 
 Though Buddhism and Shintoism are quite different 
 religions, and their prayers ask for such opposite © 
 things, it never occurred to the children nor to their 
 mother that they could not practise both at once—one 
 kind of religion for the morning, the other for the 
 evening! 
 
 But long before the offering to Buddha, the sleepy 
 Teizo was awakened each morning, while it was yet 
 quite dark, to go to the house of a private tutor for the 
 study of the Chinese classics. Teizo and the tutor 
 would sit on thick mats spread on the floor, facing 
 each other across a small desk. On the desk was one 
 of the wonderful modern improvements which were 
 
A SOLDIER OF PEACE 61 
 
 then beginning to come into Japan from this country 
 —a small oil lamp, highly prized and admired as a mar- 
 velous invention of the foreigner. 
 
 By the light of this lamp, before the gray dawn had 
 begun to brighten the paper screens, the little boy read 
 and committed to memory page after page of old 
 Chinese philosophy, which he did not understand in 
 the least. Ii he made a mistake, the tutor would take 
 the long-stemmed pipe he was always smoking, and 
 give his unhappy pupil a resounding whack on the 
 head. Happy was Teizo when the lesson was over, 
 and it was time to run home to his breakfast of rice, 
 “miso” broth, seaweed, and pickles. 
 
 After breakfast he would take his padded fencing- 
 clothes, somewhat like a football uniform, and his mask 
 and bamboo foils, and go to the fencing-master for an 
 hour of instruction and practice. No matter how cold 
 the weather, even when there was snow on the ground, 
 he always went to this lesson in sandals which left 
 his feet almost bare. But the cold did not trouble 
 him after he began fencing, for he always worked him- 
 self into a glow; then he would run home, take a cold 
 bath in water drawn from the well, dress, and start at 
 nine o’clock for public school. | 
 
 This was a government school, one of the first in 
 that great and excellent school system which Japan has 
 built up, and was much like an American school. But 
 the standard at that time was not high and required 
 little beside the ‘“‘three R’s.”” However, it was far 
 better as a means of education than the early morning 
 
62 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 study of the Chinese classics, and it is not strange that 
 Teizo often felt that the Bub ie school alone was all 
 he needed. 
 
 The shores of the Inland Sea are a wonderful alae 
 for a boy who loves the water. Akashi is today a quiet 
 but popular summer resort, and is noted for its ideal 
 conditions for bathing. Even at that time, every young 
 man in town was a good swimmer. Opposite the town 
 is the island of Awaji, and it used to be the favorite 
 test of an expert swimmer to swim across the channel 
 to the island. It was Teizo’s great ambition to be able 
 to perform this feat. 
 
 His mother, like other mothers the world aN was 
 never quite comfortable in her mind when she knew 
 that her boy was in the water, and it was not always 
 easy to get her permission to go. So Teizo did what 
 most boys have done at one time or another. After 
 school was dismissed for the afternoon, he would steal 
 off to the beach without going home, taking care not 
 to pass the houses of any of his claus who Hi 
 tell his mother. | 
 
 Yet it was one of his kinsfolk who sympathized with 
 him in his longings for the water and who taught him 
 to swim. ‘Teizo’s own words may best tell this story: 
 
 “It was when I was about seven years old that my 
 uncle took me out to teach me how to swim. He 
 grasped me with one arm and paddled with the other 
 until he had carried me far out into the sea. Then sud- 
 denly he let me go, and I had either to swim or sinks 
 I remember that I struggled fiercely and that I drank 
 
A SOLDIER OF PEACE 63 
 
 great quantities of water. But no matter how hard I 
 tried to keep afloat, I felt myself sinking. Finally, in 
 despair, I stopped struggling and relaxed myself. To 
 my surprise, I found myself floating. I cautiously pad- 
 dled with my arms, and I saw that I was swimming. 
 Thus I learned to swim. I often reflect back on that 
 incident and realize that life is like swimming. While 
 one struggles with his own little power, he will surely 
 sink; but as soon as one gives himself up to God and 
 trusts Him, he will float and be able to swim through 
 life.” 
 
 Constant practice soon made the boy an expert 
 swimmer, though he was never quite able to command 
 the strength and endurance sufficient to carry him over 
 to the island. However, he came to be as much at 
 home in the water as on land; and today, on the op- 
 posite coast of the Pacific, his chief recreation when his 
 work permits is to go to a bathing beach and prove that 
 he has not lost his boyhood skill in swimming. 
 
 About the time of his first swimming lesson, another 
 new experience, almost as startling, came into the little 
 boy’s life. It was no less than the entrance into his 
 own home of one of those dreadful foreigners about 
 whom he and his sister used to whisper with awed 
 speculation. | 
 
 She was not so terrible after all, this foreign woman 
 who came to visit them. It was true that her hair and 
 eyes were the colors that he had been taught to regard 
 as the mark of evil spirits; but when he looked up into 
 her face, it smiled so pleasantly that he forgot to be 
 
64 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 afraid. Somehow he did not feel as though she were 
 really dangerous; there was no light of malice in her 
 “oreen” eyes, no tone of unkindness in her. gentle 
 voice. 
 
 The stranger was a missionary who had come over 
 from Kobe, with a Japanese Bible woman, to make 
 some visits in Akashi, and had come to the home of 
 the Kawais to get acquainted. ‘Teizo felt that his 
 mother resented the call, though she received the visitor 
 courteously as a Japanese lady always does. ‘There 
 was an undercurrent of opposition at first in the feel- 
 ing of the whole household. It was as though the 
 Buddha in the parlor called to the Shinto gods in the 
 living-room: “Our day is over now! We have lived 
 together in this house in peace for many years, shar- 
 ing the worship of the family between us. But now 
 has come the messenger of a God who never lets any 
 other religion live in a house beside His own. Scon | 
 He will turn us both out, and rule alone here!” 
 
 And so, indeed, it happened; for the pleasant-faced 
 missionary won the heart of Teizo’s mother, as she had 
 already won those of the children. Other visitors came, 
 always bringing with them words about that One whom 
 they called the only true God, and telling the beau- 
 tiful, sad, yet comforting story of the Son of that 
 great God, whom they called Jesus, who loved every- 
 body, even women and children, and answered their 
 prayers as the vacant-eyed Buddha and the ancestors 
 worshipped at the Shinto shrine never did. And pres- 
 ently the shrines were gone, and the mother and chil- 
 
A SOLDIER OF PEACE 65 
 
 dren were proud and happy to be called by the name 
 of Jesus Christ, who loved them. 
 
 Teizo and his sister grew to be a young man and 
 woman, and the question of a life-work began to con- 
 front them both. The sister attended the Kobe Sem- 
 inary, and for several years was a Bible woman. She 
 is now the wife of a professor in a Methodist univer- 
 sity in Kobe. 
 
 Teizo went to the famous Doshisha, the school 
 founded by Joseph Neesima, the great pioneer among 
 Japanese Christian educators. At that time the school 
 was not of college standing; now it is a great univer- 
 sity. There he met an American professor, Dr. Davis, 
 who had been a colonel in the army during the Civil 
 War. From him the young man gained a different im- 
 pression of foreigners from that of his early childhood. 
 
 From the Doshisha he went to Waseda University 
 in Tokyo. Here he met another American missionary, 
 Mr. C. E. Garst, who exerted a great influence upon 
 his character and plans. This missionary was a grad- 
 uate of West Point, who had given up his commission 
 in the United States army to help others find peace. 
 
 Already Teizo had seen, in Dr. Davis, a man of sol- 
 dierly qualities and bearing who had dedicated his life 
 to the service of Christ. In this new friend he found 
 the same sense of the higher values of a commission 
 from the Master. 
 
 The young man’s ambition had always been directed 
 toward the life of a soldier. His father’s legacy to him 
 had been a sword; his childhood heroes were all men 
 
66 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 of war. Naturally he had grown up to think it the 
 highest profession of man. Now he saw two soldiers 
 who had given up the paths of war for those of Chris- 
 tian service. The more he thought of their choice, the 
 more it attracted him. He also would lay aside all 
 thoughts of earthly warfare and adventure to become 
 a soldier of peace. 
 
 In the university he became a leader in literary and 
 religious circles, serving en the staff of a college 
 periodical, and helping to organize the first student 
 Y.M.C.A. in Waseda. 
 
 As time went on, he grew more and more convinced 
 of the urgent need of bringing Christianity into the lives 
 of his people, seeing clearly how dangerous it was to 
 permit Japan to become modernized without giving her 
 the shield of a Christian faith to protect her against 
 the temptations of her new position among the great 
 powers of the world. Finally he decided to enter the — 
 ministry, and, upon the advice of some missionary 
 friends, planned to study in America. 
 
 Coming to this country, Kawai entered the Bible. 
 College of Drake University, at Des Moines, Iowa, in 
 1896. After a three-years’ course there, he returned 
 to Japan and held pastorates, first in Akita, then in 
 Tokyo. 
 
 Realizing that his Christian life was the result 
 of Christian education and influence since childhood, 
 rather than of a sudden conversion, he was inter- 
 ested in the importance of Christian education. This 
 brought him into active contact with the work of the 
 
A SOLDIER OF PEACE 67 
 
 Sunday school. He was one of the organizers of the 
 National Sunday School Association of Japan, served 
 on its educational committee, and compiled several 
 text-books for teacher-training courses. He also taught 
 in the Margaret E. Long Memorial School for Girls. 
 
 It was during these busy years that he also took 
 upon himself family responsibilities. In 1903 he was 
 married to a graduate of the Girls’ Department of 
 Doshisha College. She, too, had been a Christian from 
 childhood. 
 
 Important as Mr. Kawai felt it to be that the gospel 
 should be carried to his countrymen in Japan, there 
 was one place where it seemed to him that the people 
 of his race were facing an even more critical condition 
 of affairs, and that was on our own Pacific Coast. The 
 Pacific Coast, he saw, was the connecting link between 
 East and West, and, unless the religion and spirit of 
 Christ were to touch this link, the welfare of both West 
 and East would be in peril. 
 
 The Japanese on our Western Coast are not, for 
 the most part, of the educated class. They are poor 
 people, driven by poverty and the overflowing popula- 
 tion of the Japanese islands to seek a living somewhere 
 else; and the nearest place is the California coast, with 
 its ideal conditions for.the raising of such crops as the 
 Japanese knows best how to cultivate. But though it 
 is easy to make a living in the United States, it is hard 
 to make friends. 
 
 Coming without education, but with industry and 
 perseverance; having, like most immigrants, a simpler 
 
68 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 manner of living than our own, and thus being able to 
 live on lower wages than Americans, while working up > 
 to higher ones, the Japanese have caused many people 
 to fear that they might get entire control of some of 
 the coast industries, such as fishing, and the raising 
 and selling of fruits and vegetables. So they are looked 
 upon as dangerous intruders, and are avoided by many 
 American-born people. | 
 
 To reach and help these Japanese immigrants, a 
 number of American mission boards have established 
 work on the Pacific Coast. In 1909, Mr. Kawai re- 
 ceived a call to take charge of the work of the Women’s 
 Board of Missions of his own church, the Disciples of 
 Christ, in Los Angeles, and has been there ever since. 
 
 He is the pastor of a regularly organized Japanese 
 Church. When he first came, it had twelve members; 
 now it has grown to a membership of over one hundred 
 and eighty. The Sunday school has an enrollment of - 
 over two hundred; there are also an active Christian 
 Endeavor Society, a Woman’s Missionary Society, and 
 almost every form of activity that is found in our 
 American churches. Three of the classes in the Sun- 
 day school are taught in Japanese, for older people 
 and newcomers; the other eleven are in English. } 
 
 But this is only half of the work. Beside being 
 pastor of the church, Mr. Kawai has also been for a 
 number of years superintendent of the Japanese Chris- 
 tian Institute, which is a part of the same mission. 
 This Institute carries on an educational and social 
 service work among the Japanese. 
 
A SOLDIER OF PEACE 69 
 
 It is a busy place. “There is always something go- 
 ing on at the Institute,” says its superintendent. Here 
 are a kindergarten for the smallest children, and do- 
 mestic science lectures for the girls and young women 
 who need so much to learn the best methods of home- 
 making in order to raise the standard of living in the 
 Japanese homes. Here are sewing classes where the 
 women learn to make American garments—for Teizo’s 
 grandfather was mistaken when he said that no Jap- 
 anese would ever want to wear the ugly clothes of the 
 foreigner. Indeed, no sooner has a Japanese girl landed 
 in the new country, where her Japanese clothes render 
 her conspicuous, than she asks how she can learn to 
 make clothes such as the American girls wear. 
 
 New clothing for her tongue is sought no less eagerly 
 than new styles for her garments, and here are classes 
 of Japanese girls busily fitting their speech to the 
 strange American pattern. Here, too, are a library, a 
 playground, and rooms for games. Mothers’ meetings 
 teach child-training, and there is even a mission study 
 class. One section of the Institute is a dormitory for 
 Japanese young men studying in college or high school. 
 This is so popular that its income pays all current ex- 
 penses of the Institute, except the superintendent’s 
 salary, which comes from the Mission Board. 
 
 The great problems of the Japanese in America are 
 two—the lack of trained leadership, and the needs of 
 the young people. We have seen how the Japanese who 
 come here lack education and proper standards of liv- 
 ing. To teach them how to live in the new country, 
 
70 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 they need, not so much American teachers to come in 
 and give them occasional instructions, as men and 
 women of their own race to become leaders among 
 them, and teach them to think and live in ways that 
 will seem less strange to them when they see ‘their own 
 people practising them. 
 
 Then there are the young people who are American 
 born and who are really American citizens trying to 
 live in Japanese homes while studying in American 
 schools. People look on them all as aliens, and 
 do not realize that these young people have been taught 
 American ideals and are no longer in harmony with 
 their Japanese surroundings. Yet they can find few - 
 friends among American boys and girls. No matter 
 how much they want to be Americans, they are con- 
 tinually being pushed back into what Americans think 
 is their place among the Japanese. | 
 
 This can never be done. The parents understand 
 little or no English. The children are trained in schools 
 where English is spoken altogether, and they soon for- 
 get all but the most common Japanese words. Soon 
 the children look down upon their parents, who seem 
 to them narrow-minded and ignorant; they break away 
 from the home, and unless some friendly hand reaches ~ 
 out to them, they will wander far away from the better 
 things they have begun to want. 
 
 Now, here are the two parts of the puzzle which 
 careful hands like those of Mr. Kawai are beginning 
 to fit together: a people in need of leaders on the one 
 hand; and on the other hand their own sons and daugh- 
 
A SOLDIER OF PEACE 71 
 
 ters—a generation of young men and women who might 
 be trained for leadership. It is not hard to see how 
 these can be brought together, if they can be united 
 by the only thing that can hold the Old World and the 
 New in one—the spirit of Jesus Christ. 
 
 These young people are nearly all favorable to Chris- 
 tianity, even when they do not take it very seriously. 
 They have already broken away from the religion of 
 their parents; the educated young Japanese never go 
 to the Buddhist temples. They are proud to be Ameri- 
 cans, and want to attend churches where English is 
 spoken. They would like to do something for their 
 own people if they knew how; but they can never go 
 back with them to the old superstitions and the sense- 
 less worship that consists in repeating certain words 
 over and over again. A new religion, a religion of 
 helpfulness and hope and progress, is one they can un- 
 derstand; and this is what Mr. Kawai is trying to 
 give them. | 
 
 His own children—there are five of them—are fine 
 examples of young Japanese manhood and womanhood. 
 The eldest is a son named Kazuo, who is attending the 
 Southern Branch of the University of California and 
 also taking courses at the California Christian College 
 in preparation for Christian service. The eldest girl is 
 also a life-service recruit; the three younger girls are 
 in the public schools. 
 
 In the university where Kazuo Kawai is studying, 
 very happy relations prevail between the Oriental and 
 American students. There is little or no antagonism 
 
72 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 between the races. Kazuo is president of the Cosmo- 
 politan Club and is a member of the cabinet of the 
 student Y.M.C.A. He has frequently been invited, 
 with other Japanese students, into American homes, 
 and has there met Christian people of the finest type. 
 His heart is in the land of his adoption, as a recent 
 conversation with his father shows. 
 
 It was at the time when there was much excitement 
 over the California Land Bill, with its spirit of hos- 
 tility to the Japanese. 
 
 “Kazuo,” said his father one day, when they had 
 been talking over the situation, “I do not think that 
 this will cause war between. Japan and the United . 
 States; but if ever the two countries should quarrel, 
 my boy, which would you fight for?” 
 
 Kazuo’s face grew very serious. 
 
 “Father, I was born in Japan, and I love her!” he 
 said. “I am proud of her splendid history, and the 
 part my own ancestors have taken in it. I think she 
 is the most beautiful country in the world. I love 
 Japan! But, Father—” A new look came into his face, 
 and he sought for words, but could not find them. At 
 last he burst out, “But, Father—America is a great 
 country!” : 
 
 And what America means to Kazuo, it means to thou- 
 sands of other young Japanese, who form the strong- 
 est protection both East and West can have against 
 misunderstandings that might end in war. 
 
 Mr. Kawai’s work is not limited to his church and 
 the young people who attend the Institute. Calls are 
 
A SOLDIER OF PEACE 73 
 
 coming constantly from all over the city for his ser- 
 vices, from Japanese of all classes. Beside this, he 
 carries the gospel out to many who never come to hear 
 it in the town. He has six out-stations with Sunday 
 schools and preaching places. During the berry-picking 
 season, when hundreds of Japanese employed as pick- 
 ers are encamped in the fields, it has been his custom 
 to go out and hold Sunday school for them. He takes 
 a vacation each year from the work in the city, that 
 he may go and hold evangelistic services among young 
 men in the Japanese ranching camps. So much does 
 this work appeal to him that he is now resigning his 
 city work to spend his entire time in general evan- 
 gelistic work enone the Japanese along the Pacific 
 Coast. 
 
 A few instances will show the kind of work he has’ 
 been doing for the past fourteen years. 
 
 One of the first men he met when he began his work 
 in Los Angeles was an ex-sailor who had lived a riotous 
 life in all the shipping ports of Asia and the Mediter- 
 ranean region. At last he had drifted to America and 
 had become a notorious “bad man” and gambler in 
 the slums of Los Angeles. Somehow he came into con- 
 tact with the work of the mission, and became a Chris- 
 tian. The change in this man was marvelous. He 
 became head janitor of a large apartment house, and 
 always gave nearly half his salary to the church. Later 
 he became a deacon of the church, and one of the most 
 effective street preachers of the mission. His chief 
 delight was to go down and preach in the gambling- 
 
74 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 dens to his former associates, telling them of the 
 change that Christ had made in his life. 
 
 A brighter picture is that of an orphan boy whose 
 parents had left him a considerable sum of money. His 
 uncle, who was his guardian, took all the money and 
 refused to send him to school. But the boy was re- 
 solved to have an education. He ran away when he 
 was about sixteen, borrowing enough money to take 
 him to America. He landed in Vancouver and went 
 to work in a lumber camp to pay off his debt. Then 
 he worked on the railroads till he came to Southern 
 California. Ap 
 
 One day Mr. Kawai was invited to dinner at the 
 house of an orange rancher who was an active Chris- 
 tian. Here he met the young man, who was employed 
 there as a servant. Mr. Kawai talked with him about 
 Christ, and the family helped, so that a short time 
 later he became a Christian. He told Mr. Kawai of 
 his ambition to study, and how he had run away from 
 his uncle and come to America, hoping for a chance 
 to go to school. 
 
 “Before I became a Christian,” he said, “I wanted 
 an education so that I could better myself; but since 
 I have become a Christian, I want one still more, so 
 that I can help other people!” 
 
 Mr. Kawai took him into his home and tutored him 
 for a few months, and then managed to get him into 
 the University of Southern California. The young 
 man had exceptional ability. While he was studying 
 with Mr. Kawai, he became superintendent of the mis- 
 
A SOLDIER OF PEACE 75 
 
 sion Sunday school which he handled with great suc- 
 cess. He went on through the University, then at- 
 tended the Pacific Theological Seminary, and has been 
 pastor of the Japanese Christian church in Berkeley 
 for the past four years. Now that Mr. Kawai is leav- 
 ing his present position, the boy he picked up on the 
 orange ranch has been called to become his successor. 
 
 Here is another instance. 
 
 About seven years ago, a man brought to him what 
 Mr. Kawai describes as the greenest-looking, most 
 awkward boy he had ever seen, to ask his advice. The 
 man was a Japanese of quite a respectable family, 
 who had lost his money in a business failure. So he 
 had sent to Japan for his son and brought him to 
 America, thinking that here the boy might be able to 
 work his way through school. 
 
 The case looked rather hopeless to Mr. Kawai, but 
 he promised to do what he could. He took the boy 
 into the Institute dormitory, put him in a class that 
 was being conducted in the summer, somewhat like a 
 Daily Vacation Bible School, and when school opened 
 in the fall, placed him in the second grade. 
 
 The boy surprised everyone by finishing grammar 
 school in three years, and entering high school. About 
 this time he became a Christian and decided to study 
 for the ministry. Through him his father became a 
 Christian, and when his younger brother came from 
 Japan, he brought him also into the church. He made 
 a brilliant record for scholarship in the high school, 
 and soon became leader of all the activities among the 
 
76 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 many Japanese high-school students of the city. After 
 graduation, he entered the University. 
 
 Meantime he had become intimate with a promiitient 
 young Japanese business man. When this man bought 
 three large hotels, he made the young student manager 
 of two of them, at a very good salary. Presently the 
 youthful manager had saved enough to buy a hotel of 
 his own. And before long he was able to make good 
 all his father’s losses, and send him back to Japan to 
 join his family. 
 
 At present he is a junior in the University, taking 
 special work in social science and religious education, 
 he is an officer in the University Y.M.C.A., super-_. 
 intendent of Mr. Kawai’s Sunday school of over two 
 hundred members, and also superintendent of the out- 
 station Sunday school at Gardena, Wee meets on 
 Sunday afternoons. 
 
 At the same time he is a prosperous business man, 
 still owning his own hotel and managing the other two. 
 He is thus supporting himself in college, sending his 
 younger brother through school, supporting his parents 
 in Japan, and carrying on active religious work. After 
 his graduation he intends to study for the ministry. 
 
 These are the stories of a few of the many leaders 
 who are being developed by the work of Mr. Kawai. 
 ‘Peace hath her victories,” we are often told; and 
 surely this soldier of the Cross has no reason to regret 
 that he laid aside his father’s sword to serve his people 
 and his two countries in a nobler way. 
 
V 
 A DAUGHTER OF LEBANON 
 
 od OTHER, mother! come and see the man with a 
 
 queer thing on his head! How funny he is!” 
 
 “It was evening in the little Syrian village of Abeih, 
 
 on the slopes of Mount Lebanon. The mothers paused 
 
 in their work and came to the doors, as the eager chil- 
 
 dren urged them out to see a man wearing an American 
 hat and clothes. 
 
 “Tt is one of the Frangi (foreigners),”’ said one 
 woman to her neighbor. “Why do they come to our 
 country? Surely they are strange people! Do you 
 know, I heard Assad telling last night that the Frangi 
 have no bones in them!” 
 
 “That is not so!” said another neighbor, joining the 
 group. “Last week one of their women came and 
 talked to me when I was drawing water at the fountain; 
 and when she asked me for a drink, I felt her hand, 
 and it was just like ours! But certainly, they are 
 strange people, and I wonder why they come here.” 
 
 “Do you not know?” put in a fourth, drawing nearer. 
 “They have come because there are not children 
 enough over in their country; so they come to steal 
 our children and send them across the sea! First they 
 will get them to come to their houses; then they will 
 scribble some of their queer language on a piece of 
 paper, hold it over the children’s heads, and pour on it 
 
 77 
 
78 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 some sort of liquid they brought with them, and set it 
 on fire. So they will bewitch the children, and make 
 them fly over the great water to America!” 
 
 “Yes, yes!”? mumbled an old crone from a doorstep 
 across the way. “Hide your children when the Frangi 
 come by, if you want to keep them safe!” | 
 
 Under such difficulties the early American mission- 
 aries to Syria labored to start schools for the children 
 of those mountain villages. Little by little, their. kind- 
 ness and patience won the confidence of the people, 
 though it was a long time before the villagers could 
 understand why anyone should want to teach children 
 to read and write. That was something which the 
 fathers and mothers themselves had never learned to 
 do. If they wanted any letters written or read, there 
 was the old sheik who traveled about with his ink- 
 horn in his girdle, proudly displaying it as a sign that 
 he alone, in all those miles of mountain side, had the © 
 rare gift of interpreting written characters. Now little — 
 boys and girls were supposed to learn these things. It 
 was past understanding! 
 
 In the Syrian villages of that day ieee were two 
 distinct quarters—one for the Druzes, a sect of 
 Mohammedans, and the other for the Negara or 
 Christians. The latter were Maronites, and belonged — 
 to the Roman Catholic Church. Between the Druzes 
 and the ‘“‘Nazara” there was always hostility; and in 
 the year 1860 there broke out a terrible massacre, 
 when the Druzes attacked and killed every man they 
 could find who went by the name of Christian. 
 
A DAUGHTER OF LEBANON 79 
 
 When the firing broke out in Abeih, many of the 
 Christians left their homes to take refuge in Beirut, 
 about eighteen miles away. Among them was a family 
 by the name of Alkazin, descended from the very 
 earliest settlers of Abeih—a father, mother and six 
 children. The mountain roads were rough, and it was 
 a weary way for the children to travel. Mrs. Alkazin 
 carried her baby boy, less than a year old; and the 
 youngest girl, little Layyah, who was between three 
 and four years old, was carried by the eldest sister. 
 Now and then they changed, and the mother carried 
 Layyah to rest the young girl’s arms. 
 
 “Lay her by the wayside!” urged some of the neigh- 
 bors who overtook them. “The Druzes are following 
 fast; you can hear the shooting! Lay her down and 
 leave her; she is too heavy to carry. Save the boy if © 
 you can; Layyah is nothing but a girl.” 
 
 “No!” cried the brave mother, clasping her little 
 daughter closer. “I will either live with my Layyah, 
 or die with her!” 
 
 On the way an armed Druze met them, and stripped 
 the mother of her jewels. It would take too long to 
 unbraid the gold bangles from her hair, so he cut off 
 hair and all. On they stumbled, hungry, barefooted, 
 and half naked, with the shooting all around them; 
 but the mother carried her little girl all the way. 
 
 At the seacoast, the father was wounded by a bullet. 
 He and the eldest boy threw themselves into the sea to 
 escape by swimming, and the rest kept on to Beirut. 
 There they found their haven in the American Lega- 
 
80 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 tion, under the shadow of the Stars and Stripes, and 
 were cared for by the American missionaries, who 
 lodged them under the trees in the compound-and fed 
 them by means of relief funds. 
 
 The father and brother reached their family after 
 some days, but the father was so badly wounded that 
 he died. The brother found work in Beirut; the wid- 
 owed mother and the other children went back to 
 Abeih. The whole village had been burned, but that 
 village was home. Soon they had a one-roomed hut 
 built on the site of their old house, with a cellar beneath 
 and a kitchen shed across the yard. 
 
 Here they took up their life again. The one room - 
 had a divan running around two sides, and over it a 
 shelf for dishes. The hearth, made of clay, was in 
 the center, and as there was no chimney, in winter the 
 room became black with smoke. There was no glass 
 in the windows which were closed by wooden shutters; _ 
 the chicken-coop stood just inside the door; and mat- 
 tresses were laid on the floor at night for beds. But the 
 windows looked out toward the Mediterranean with its 
 ships; the brook across the road ran so clear that you 
 could count the pebbles in its bed; the wild doves cooed 
 in the old fig tree; and geraniums, carnations, and lilies 
 bloomed in profusion around the little house. | 
 
 “Children,” their mother would say, “blessed is he, 
 and he only, who has his feet upon Mount Lebanon!” 
 
 It was a happy life for the children, but a hard one 
 for the mother. Day after day she went out to work, 
 washing for others or sifting wheat, and receiving a few 
 
A DAUGHTER OF LEBANON 81 
 
 cakes of Syrian bread as her pay. Often she gave all 
 she earned to the hungry children and went supperless 
 to bed. Sometimes there was not even bread, and the 
 mother would gather grains of barley from the horses’ 
 mangers and boil them with bones to make the children 
 a meal. Through all the village Mrs. Alkazin was 
 loved, and was sought out to care for the sick. 
 
 In Abeih there were two day-schools established 
 by the missionaries—one for girls and one for boys. 
 Layyah was ailowed to go to the girls’ school, not to 
 learn reading and writing, which were thought unfit 
 for girls, but to sew and embroider. She soon won a 
 prize offered for the best patchwork. But when Mrs. 
 Bird, the missionary in charge, told Layyah to come 
 _ to her house and get the prize, the child was afraid 
 to do so, for fear Mrs. Bird would write a paper over 
 her head and make her fly to America. At last she 
 plucked up courage to go in, but her shoes were so 
 old and broken that she left them outside and went in 
 barefooted. 
 
 Kind Mrs. Bird questioned the little girl, and found 
 out how poor the family was. She offered Layyah a 
 pair of new shoes if she would come to Sunday school. 
 The child went, fearing punishment at home, because 
 the foreigners were not Maronites, but taught a strange 
 religion. But when she heard the story of Jesus, told 
 so lovingly by the teacher, she said to herself: 
 
 “Ts this the new religion? No, this is the same 
 Christ that we suffered for in the massacre.” 
 
 She continued to attend the Sunday school, and loved 
 
82 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 it more and more. And she loved the missionaries as 
 well. When the frail hut of the Alkazins collapsed one 
 night in a thunderstorm, it was to Dr. and Mrs. Bird 
 that Layyah went for help, and those good people had 
 the fallen wall rebuilt at their own expense. It was 
 they, too, who persuaded Mrs. Alkazin to let them send 
 Layyah to Beirut to the orphanage kept by German 
 deaconesses; but confinement in the schoolroom was 
 too hard for the “little wild bird” of Lebanon, and she 
 was brought home very ill, to be nursed back to health 
 by her mother. 
 
 Now Layyah had an uncle in Beirut who was a very 
 devout Maronite. Hearing of the girl’s devotion to | 
 the missionaries, he determined to put a stop to it, and 
 sent for her to come to his home in Beirut and wait on 
 her grandmother. It was a piace of luxury after the 
 mountain hut; but every day her uncle:made Layyah 
 go to church, confess, and do penance for her sin in 
 listening to the strange religion; and when, one day, he 
 found that she had actually learned to read and write, 
 he felt that the family was disgraced. 
 
 He decided to find her a husband in Beirut, so that 
 she could not go to hear the foreigners any more. 
 Layyah wept and pleaded with him, but he thought it 
 was the only way to save her from disgrace. One day, 
 in desperation, Layyah slipped out and ran away, hop- 
 ing to find some travelers starting for Mount Lebanon. 
 
 Then the thought came to her: ‘“‘Why not go to the 
 Americans? They saved us in the massacre—they may 
 Save me now!” 
 
A DAUGHTER OF LEBANON 83 
 
 She asked a man where she could find some Ameri- 
 cans, and he directed her to the house of a missionary, 
 Dr. Henry Jessup. Here the frightened girl told her 
 story, and the missionary promised to help her. 
 
 “You can stay as long as you like in my house,” he 
 said; “and as long as you are here, you'll be protected 
 by the United States flag.” 
 
 Soon her uncle, her aunt, and her eldest brother 
 came to Jook for her. When Layyah heard their voices, 
 she was so terrified that she hid behind the valance of 
 a bed, while Dr. Jessup answered the visitors and re- 
 fused to tell them anything about the girl. He wrote 
 to Dr. Bird, who came to Beirut after some weeks and 
 took Layyah home to her mother. 
 
 But home was no longer a peaceful place for her. 
 Yousef, her brother, who was now the man of the 
 household, reproached her bitterly for having disgraced 
 the family, and determined to keep her away from the 
 missionaries. 
 
 “Many a time on Sunday morning I tried to reach 
 the mission chapel, and when I came near the door, 
 found Yousef standing on the highway watching for 
 me. He would seize me by the hand and drag me 
 home and give me a good thrashing. - Many a night 
 after the little oil lamp was put out I waited until I 
 thought they were all quietly asleep, and then arose 
 and knelt to say my prayers. As soon as I began, I 
 would feel a heavy hand on my lips, and hear Yousef’s 
 voice in the darkness, saying: ‘You bad girl! You still 
 want to follow the religion of the foreigners!’ ” 
 
84 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 In spite of this, Layyah managed now and then to 
 slip away to the school; and at last, seeing her deter- 
 mination, the family decided to let her go on week- 
 days, unless she were needed to work at home. But 
 they saw to it that the days she was needed were many. 
 There were dandelions or other herbs to be cut for a 
 meal, or she must go to the woods to gather sticks, or 
 into the fields to glean barley, wheat, or lentils aiter 
 the reapers. She picked figs and olive-berries, and in 
 the silkworm season brought mulberry leaves and fed 
 the worms—and all the time she was longing for an 
 education, 
 
 At length she heard that Dr. Jessup ae his family 
 were coming to spend the summer in Abeih. One day 
 she left her water-jar at the fountain and went to their 
 house, to tell of her circumstances and beg them to 
 help her go away to a boarding-school. | 
 
 Dr. Jessup was busy just then on a book called 
 Women of the Arabs, for which he was making a collec- 
 tion of Arabic cradle-songs. He did not answer her 
 plea, but asked, “Layyah, do you know any lullabies?” 
 
 She recited to him the few she knew; then he asked 
 if she would go among the women of the village and 
 learn some more to bring him. : 
 
 “T will if you will send me to school!” she answered, — 
 and he smiled and promised to see about it. 
 
 For three days she went from house to house learn- 
 ing lullabies, and when she came back to Dr. Jessup, 
 she brought him about a hundred new ones. He was 
 greatly delighted. 
 
A DAUGHTER OF LEBANON 85 
 
 “A girl with such a memory,” he said, “surely ought 
 to have an education.” 
 
 He wrote to the Sidon Seminary for Girls about her, 
 but word came back that the school was full. 
 
 That was a winter of great hardship and discourage- 
 ment. There was famine, and the Alkazins suffered 
 with the rest. Often Layyah had to go to Dr. Bird 
 to ask for flour, for the American missionaries were 
 the enly source of relief for the village. Sometimes 
 the funds they had to distribute were not sufficient, and 
 once Mrs. Bird sold a piece of silk intended for her 
 own dress to get flour for the hungry women and 
 children. - 
 
 All this helped to win the hearts of the Alkazin 
 family. Even Yousef was completely changed when, 
 to take care of the missionary’s horse, he made a tour 
 with Dr. Bird. The preaching and kindly conversation 
 of the missionary, and the generous wages he paid, gave 
 Yousef quite a different opinion of the foreigners, and 
 he came home declaring, “Surely these are Chris- 
 tian people!” 
 
 After a time Yousef became Dr. Bird’s assistant; 
 later he was a trusted inspector of mission schools, and 
 in time he became a preacher. 
 
 When Yousef and his mother had learned that the 
 religion the missionaries taught was no strange doc- 
 trine, and that the missionaries lived as they taught, 
 the Alkazin home, with others in the village, was 
 opened for cottage prayer-meetings. Neighbors and 
 friends came in to hear the missionaries, and much 
 
86 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 seed was sown which grew up to make the ae of 
 Abeih a better place to live in. 
 
 When Layyah was a little more than fourteen years 
 old, a letter came from Dr. Jessup asking her to come 
 to Bae Away off in America, in the city of Phila- 
 delphia, there was a Sunday-school class in a large 
 church which had heard Layyah’s story, and had of- 
 fered to pay her expenses at the American School for 
 Girls in Beirut. 
 
 ‘“‘Are you ready,” asked Dr. Jessup, “‘to go to scHuel 
 and study hard? Do you think you can learn to tell 
 the story of Jesus as well as you learned those lullabies 
 for me?” 
 
 Layyah was sure she could, and entered on her new 
 life with great joy. For two years her time was spent 
 in learning all she could. In her third year at the 
 seminary she taught a Sunday-school class of eighteen 
 young girls who called themselves ‘Daughters of the. 
 Cedars of Lebanon.” Early in the year the head 
 teacher of a day-school connected with the seminary 
 was taken sick, and Layyah was asked to take her 
 place. Half her time was now given to teaching. The 
 following year she taught the entire time, presiding 
 with two assistants over a school of seventy or eighty 
 children. ; 
 
 The next year she was asked to go with a missionary 
 to start a new school for girls in Tripoli, Syria. Here 
 she spent a happy and successful year, teaching and 
 going about with the missionary in the slums of the 
 city, to gather pupils for the school. 
 
A DAUGHTER OF LEBANON 87 
 
 The following summer a request came to Dr. Jessup 
 for a teacher to be sent to Egypt, to take charge of a 
 department in a girls’ school in Assiut. They asked 
 for a Syrian, hoping she would be able to stand the 
 climate better than the American missionaries. So 
 Layyah, now about nineteen, left her native land for 
 the African shore. From there, a journey of four hun- 
 dred miles up the Nile lay before her. In her charge 
 for the journey were put three young African girls, 
 rescued from a slave dealer, who were to be sent to the 
 school at Assiut. On this journey, stopping between 
 trains at Cairo, she first met a young mission worker, 
 Mr. Elias Barakat, whose little niece was also being 
 sent to Assiut. , 
 
 The work here was much more difficult than it had 
 been in Beirut. The Egyptian girls were not accus- 
 tomed to habits of 'tidiness, and it took perseverance to 
 teach them to wash themselves and comb their hair 
 every day. The climate was almost unbearably hot, 
 and scorpions abounded. One night soon after her ar- 
 rival Layyah found a large one under her pillow, and 
 during that night captured fifteen in her room and 
 the courtyard! Many a night she had to rise and take 
 the ammonia bottle to some of the girls who had been 
 bitten by the poisonous creatures. 
 
 The girls came crowding into the school, and Layyah 
 found her hands full. She was to have charge of the 
 sewing, and as she wore European dress, all the eighty 
 girls at once wanted to make dresses like hers. Then 
 their mothers wanted clothes like the children’s; but, 
 
88 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 even under such difficulties, the girls became so pro- 
 ficient under Layyah’s direction that their exhibit of 
 work at the end of the year brought her much praise. 
 
 Near the close of the year, two offers of marriage 
 came to Layyah. One was from a wealthy young 
 Egyptian who could give her every luxury but whose 
 ideals were not like her own. The other was from the 
 young Syrian teacher of the Cairo mission, Elias 
 Barakat. He had formerly been private secretary to 
 a British general who accompanied the famous Gen- 
 eral ‘‘Chinese”’ Gordon through the Red Sea to Khar- 
 tum, and had now for some years been engaged in 
 teaching and in translating tracts for the mission in . 
 Cairo.. Layyah was attracted by the first offer, but 
 decided to accept the second, considering “‘that it was 
 better to eat bread and salt and serve the Lord than 
 to own all the treasures of Egypt.” : 
 
 After their marriage, Mr. Barakat took charge of a 
 mission printing-press, while his wife became principal 
 of a small day-school of which she had formerly been 
 an inspector and which was now being enlarged into a 
 school preparatory to the seminary. In a very short 
 time she had nearly two hundred pupils enrolled, with 
 two assistants to help her. 
 
 It was here that she was visited one day by an 
 American, Dr. John Dulles of Philadelphia, who told 
 her that he was superintendent of the Sunday school 
 that had educated her. On leaving, he gave her a card 
 with his address, asking her to write to his school about 
 her work. | 
 
A DAUGHTER OF LEBANON 89 
 
 The work was varied and eventful. Often rescued 
 slaves were brought to. the mission—once a band of al- 
 most eighty—and it was the privilege of Layyah to 
 minister to the women among them. One runaway girl, 
 who came to Layyah’s house with the chain still on her 
 ankle, after being legally freed by the help of the mis- 
 sionaries, became a member of the Barakats’ house- 
 hold, and cared for the baby daughter who was born 
 to them. | 
 
 Three years flew happily by, and then came the great 
 religious war that tore Egypt to pieces in the year 1882. 
 “Death to the infidel dogs!”’ was the cry of the Moham- 
 medans through the streets, and mobs rushed about 
 with guns, clubs, and axes, seeking Christians to kill, 
 wherever they could find them. 
 
 Mr. Barakat and his wife, with their baby, had gone 
 to Alexandria to spend the summer, and were caught in 
 the thick of the trouble. For three days they lived 
 in a state of siege with his sister and her family, hav- 
 ing no food and scarcely any water, and keeping the 
 hungry children quiet with the greatest difficulty. 
 Under their windows they could hear the shooting 
 and the groaning of the wounded Christians, and ex- 
 pected every hour that the house would be raided. 
 
 Taking advantage of a lull in the rioting, the little 
 group put on disguises and planned to slip out sepa- 
 rately and meet at the seashore, hoping to find a ship 
 in which to escape. Dressed like a Mohammedan 
 woman with veiled face, her feet dyed with the blood 
 of the Christian martyrs, Layyah ran through the 
 
go LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 streets with her baby on her arm until she reached the 
 appointed place on the shore. One by one the others 
 joined her. They mingled with the crowds of for- 
 eigners trying to get boats, and hoped to escape 
 notice, but it was soon seen that they were not English 
 or Americans, and they were told to go back and get 
 passports. This would have meant death; so in the 
 beautiful moonlight they huddled on the beach and 
 prayed for deliverance. 
 
 Suddenly a small boat turned its course and came 
 directly toward them. The boatman proved to be a 
 Mohammedan, but they fell on their knees and begged 
 him to carry them out to one of the steamers in the - 
 harbor. Although he was of the enemy, he took pity 
 on them, crowded them into his little boat, and took 
 them to an English vessel bound for Malta. As they 
 were helped on board, they heard the booming of 
 cannon and saw smoke rising from the city. Almost 
 two thousand Christians were yet to perish before Eng- 
 land got control of the situation. 
 
 From Malta the Barakats went to Marseilles where 
 they were advised to sail for America. The American 
 consul got them tickets, and they started off to find 
 friends in the New World. The only direction they 
 had was the address on the card that had once been 
 given to Layyah and now was left behind. They could 
 remember only “Dr. Dulles, Philadelphia, Chestnut.” 
 What “Chestnut” meant they had no idea. 
 
 Arriving at length in Philadelphia, the Barakats 
 wandered from street to street, asking for “Dr. Dulles, 
 

 
 LAYYAH A. BARAKAT 
 
 The little Syrian girl whom her mother was urged to “throw 
 away’ during a massacre of the Syrians is now a mature woman, 
 mothering the Syrian children of two hemispheres. 
 

 
A DAUGHTER OF LEBANON QI 
 
 Chestnut,” while a crowd of children followed, calling 
 them gypsies, Indians, and other names. No one 
 helped them, except an old woman selling doughnuts. 
 She gave them three of the cakes when she heard little 
 Emily crying with hunger. 
 
 At last a kindly policeman whom they consulted 
 found in the directory that there was a Dr. Dulles 
 who lived on Chestnut Street, and he put them on a 
 horse-car which would take them to this address. 
 Layyah, still shaken by her Egyptian experience, took 
 the metal instrument at the conductor’s belt for a re- 
 volver, and thought he was taking them somewhere to 
 shoot them, until she saw him punch a ticket with it! 
 
 They found Dr. Dulles out of town, but Layyah 
 _ finally recalled that the pastor of his church was called 
 Dr. Dana, and she asked the housekeeper to direct 
 them to him. He.also was away, and now poor, tired 
 Layyah sat down on the steps and cried, utterly worn 
 out after a whole day’s wandering. 
 
 The family started away again but were presently 
 met by Dr. Dulles’ housekeeper to whom they had 
 given their names on a slip of paper. 
 
 She recognized “Layyah” as the name of the girl 
 their Sunday school had educated, and followed them 
 to ask, “Are you that same Layyah from Syria?” 
 
 Friends were found at last. The home of Dr. Dulles’ 
 son was opened to them at once, and he found them a 
 quiet lodging-place. The church that had helped be- 
 fore came to their aid again, and work on a religious 
 paper was soon found for Mr. Barakat. 
 
92 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 Layyah had found rest, but often her heart was 
 heavy, for she thought her work was at an end. 
 
 ‘Woe be unto me!” she cried to herself. “All my 
 missionary work is over. I am ina Christian country; 
 everybody in America is a Christian eabhna and there 
 is no work for me to do!” 
 
 Not long after, she was invited to an assembly of 
 missionary women, and after the luncheon was asked 
 to say a few words to them. | 
 
 “Never!” she cried; “I cannot speak. I am an 
 Oriental woman—I was brought up under the veil. I 
 can never speak!” 
 
 Then the president talked eran to her, tell- . 
 ing her how much it would help if she would tell a 
 little about her work as a teacher, and of the story of 
 her life. Others came and insisted, and at last she 
 slipped into a little anteroom and fell on her knees. 
 
 “Open my lips!” she prayed. “Give me the lan- 
 guage!”’ Then she went into the crowded auditorium, 
 and when called upon, rose bravely to speak. At length 
 she said: “That is all of my English.. When know more 
 English, speak more.” 
 
 As she sat down, a white-haired minister arose and 
 said to her: “My daughter from the Orient, God bless 
 you! Go north and south and east and west through-— 
 out this Christian America, telling what God has done 
 for you, and may He make you a blessing wherever 
 you go!” lLayyah, with happy wonder, thought that 
 he must have known the meaning of her name, -for 
 “Barakat” means “blessings.” That hour was, she 
 
A DAUGHTER OF LEBANON 93 
 
 declares, ‘at once the turning-point of my life and the 
 benediction upon it.”” She found that there was work 
 for her to do, even in a Christian country. 
 
 It is more than forty years since Layyah Barakat 
 began to go up and down America telling the story of 
 her life, and the needs of her people in the Orient. 
 No one who has ever heard her can forget her, holding 
 in her hands her Arabic Bible, and translating from it 
 freely into English, with a running commentary drawn 
 from the daily life of Syria, the proverbs and beliefs 
 of her people, until her hearers feel as never before 
 that the Bible is a living book, and the things that 
 are hard for our Western minds to understand grow 
 simple and natural in the light of her explanations. 
 
 Sometimes a life of traveling and public speaking 
 such as Mrs. Barakat’s will loosen home ties and make 
 the speaker less thoughtful of what she can do in her 
 own community. This has never been the case with 
 her. Philadelphia, the city which first received her to 
 the. New World, has always been the place of her most 
 earnest endeavors. Here her heart has been anchored 
 by three unbreakable ties—her children, Emily (Mrs. 
 Corey), and two sons, Samuel and Anees, all residents 
 of that city; here she has labored for her Syrian coun- 
 trymen, and by her untiring efforts to help them, has 
 become probably the most influential Syrian in that 
 city. 
 
 In any national group in such a city there are always 
 two strata. The upper class, consisting usually of 
 wealthy merchants, has little to do with the lower 
 
94 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 class—the poor and ignorant people who have come 
 over in the steerage and fill the city slums, trying to 
 earn a mere living, and often in dire need of help. 
 Between these two classes, Mrs. Barakat has been the 
 connecting link. To her the poor and distressed come 
 —not Syrians only, but Armenians and even Turks, in 
 fact any who speak Arabic—when they need a helper. 
 From hearing their needs, she goes with her tact and 
 eloquence to enlist the aid of their wealthy countrymen, 
 and gets help for many a despairing family. Not only 
 with her own people, but everywhere, she willingly acts 
 as interpreter and mediator. She has appealed to judges 
 in behalf of Syrian prisoners with large families, who 
 had been arraigned on trifling charges, and she has 
 obtained their release. She has secured free legal ad- 
 vice for those in difficulties, free hospital and surgical 
 aid for the suffering. : 
 
 One incident will show the nature of her work. A 
 Syrian workman employed in a Pennsylvania quarry 
 lost his sight through an explosion, due to a mistake or 
 wrong orders of the foreman. At that time there was 
 no compensation law in Pennsylvania. The man must 
 either have become a public charge, or be sent back 
 to Syria to beg for the support of his wife and three | 
 small children. When Mrs. Barakat learned of this, 
 she took up his case personally, with the aid of her 
 attorney. First she gave the company that operated 
 the quarry a chance to help the man, offering to settle 
 the case out of court if they would give him three 
 thousand dollars. When they refused, she took the 
 
A DAUGHTER OF LEBANON 95 
 
 case into court, and won a verdict in the man’s favor, 
 which, after paying all expenses, left an amount far in 
 excess of three thousand dollars. The man, now pos- 
 sessed of what would be a fortune in his country, went 
 back to Syria and bought a farm, hiring help until 
 his boys should be old enough to take charge of it; 
 and, instead of being a public burden, lived an inde- 
 pendent and self-respecting life among his neighbors. 
 
 Under the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, 
 Mrs. Barakat had charge of work at the Philadelphia 
 port for arriving Syrians; under the Pennsylvania 
 Prison Society she has done great things for those who 
 have broken our laws, often through failing to under- 
 stand them. One of her chief ways of helping was by 
 standing sponsor to paroled prisoners, who were re- 
 quired to make regular reports to her for periods of 
 from one to three years. She held Christmas and 
 Easter services in the Penitentiary; she met released 
 prisoners with clothing when they came out, and helped 
 them to find work. 
 
 One case was that of a man who had been confined 
 in one of the state penitentiaries for second-degree 
 murder. Mrs. Barakat had seen him only two or three 
 times in the ten years of his twenty-year sentence be- 
 fore his parole, but had corresponded with him, and 
 believed he was worthy of help. When he came out, she 
 took him into her own home and kept him there for a 
 week, until she had found a position for him. 
 
 “TIsn’t it dangerous,” her daughter asked, “to have 
 such a man living in our house?” 
 
96 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 “Emily,” said her mother, “God always takes care 
 of His children, especially when they are doing His 
 will. He will not let us suffer for helping this poor 
 man!” 
 
 The man was a Mohammedan, and could find no 
 one else to be his sponsor, so the Christian woman 
 whom Mohammedans had persecuted from her child- 
 hood became his helper. 
 
 Other work of hers was the founding of a Syrian 
 mission in the down-town section of Philadelphia, which 
 became more frequented by Italians than by Syrians, 
 and is now an Italian church. About five years ago 
 she organized a neighborhood Bible class, which meets 
 in various homes and which has ae one hundred 
 members enrolled. 
 
 So large a heart could not fail to be deeply im- 
 pressed by the news of the terrible conditions prevail- 
 ing in the Near East since the World War. Indeed, 
 they came home with a personal meaning to Mrs. 
 Barakat, when she learned that her own brother and 
 sister in Syria had died of starvation. It was too late 
 to. save them, but there were many more who might 
 yet be helped by relief work; so she organized her 
 Bible class to collect food and clothing, of which they 
 gathered about ten tons at a room used as headquarters 
 in Philadelphia. In tor19, Mrs. Barakat started to 
 Syria to distribute this relief; but when she reached 
 that country, she learned that the vessel which carried 
 the supplies had sunk. 
 
 Friends in America cabled money, and she wenk't on 
 
A DAUGHTER OF LEBANON 97 
 
 with the relief work as she had planned. The follow- 
 ing year she returned to America, and collected ten 
 thousand dollars insurance on the cargo which had been 
 lost. This she decided to use as the nucleus of a fund 
 for an orphanage in her native town of Abeih. 
 
 She remained in this country until 1922, collecting 
 further funds for the orphanage, and organizing a com- 
 mittee for its management, incorporated under the laws 
 of Pennsylvania. The institution is known as the 
 “Layyah A. Barakat Home for Orphan Girls.” 
 
 She then went back to Abeih to put the orphanage in 
 actual running order. It holds about fifteen girls 
 now, and a much larger number can be accommodated 
 when a suitable building is secured. Meantime she 
 _ has enlisted the interest of many tourists in the enter- 
 prise; parties of them are invited to visit the orphan- 
 age, and their aid is enlisted in advertising and financ- 
 ing the work. After spending more than a year in this 
 way, she has lately returned to her home in Philadel- 
 phia. 
 
 In the Foreword of a little volume entitled, A 
 Message from Mount Lebanon, in which she has told 
 the story of her early life, Mrs. Barakat declares that 
 the only purpose of the book is to make known the 
 goodness of God in directing her life; and to all who 
 read her story she says, ‘“My message is that if He can 
 do what you shall read of here through a poor, weak, 
 barefooted, Mount Lebanon girl, He can do far more 
 through you.” 
 
VI 
 A MESSENGER OF GOOD NEWS 
 
 UT of the heart of the Carpathian Mountains 
 there flows a little stream, gathering volume until 
 it becomes a small river which men have named the 
 Wislok. On its way through Galicia, in the region 
 of the Ukraine, its banks are bordered by a number 
 of villages. One of them is named Wislok, from the 
 river itself. : | 
 Along both banks of the river lies a thin line of 
 houses extending almost five miles. Back from each 
 little house, lying like a long ribbon stretched away 
 from the river, is a strip of farm land, sometimes not 
 more than ten or fifteen feet wide, but often a mile 
 or two long. This strip, with the house which stands | 
 on it, is supposed always to be the possession of one 
 family only, and is handed on from father to sons. 
 Some of the farms were once much larger, but in the 
 course of generations they have been divided into 
 these strips, so that each child might have his portion. 
 Once in a while—oftener in recent years—the tiller 
 of one of these long ribbons of soil grows tired of try- 
 ing to make a living on it, and goes to America for a 
 better chance. He sells his strip of land to a man 
 who stays behind, so that nowadays one man some- 
 times owns two or three or more strips lying in dif- 
 ferent parts of the village. 
 98 
 
A MESSENGER OF GOOD NEWS 99 
 
 On such a farm in the town of Wislok, thirty or 
 forty years ago, there lived a man named Ivan 
 Halenda. 
 
 A much-respected man, he was an able director of 
 singing in the Greek Catholic Church to which all the 
 people of the village belonged, and of which the 
 Halenda family had been very devout members for 
 generations. Many of them had become monks, and 
 the records show forty-eight Greek Catholic priests 
 who have come out of this family. 
 
 It looked as though Ivan Halenda’s farm were to 
 be subject to a great deal of division, for he had many 
 children. Six boys and five girls played and worked 
 together on the family acres. In the village, all the 
 children had to work. The younger ones cared for 
 the baby while the mother worked on the farm; those 
 who were a little older herded the cattle, and the 
 eldest ones worked in the fields with their parents. 
 Many of the children were kept so hard at work that 
 they got little schooling; but the Halendas always 
 managed to send their children to school, so that they 
 might learn at least to read and write. 
 
 One of the boys, the one they called Michael, 
 seemed to his parents to be fitted to follow the family 
 custom and become a priest. They sent him to a 
 higher school, or gymnasium, as such schools are 
 called in Europe. 
 
 “This is not the place for you!” said the teachers 
 of this school, when he applied. ‘Schools are for the 
 children of a higher class of people. Farmers’ chil- 
 
100 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 dren should stay on the land and Cullavate it; p tearning 
 is not their business!” 
 
 They allowed him to stay for a time, but later did 
 missed him on some pretext. Then his parents sent 
 him for some years to a school of mechanics. Soon 
 after his graduation, he left home for America, where 
 an older brother, Simeon, had gone two years before. 
 
 By this time Ivan Halenda had died. The oldest 
 brother, Stephen, was trying to do his best for -his 
 mother and the children who remained at home; but 
 he was married, and had his own responsibilities, and 
 the younger brothers felt eager to do something for 
 themselves. America called to them; and two years 
 after the father’s death, the third brother, Peter, 
 sailed for the United States. 
 
 How different from the little village along the river, 
 with its ribbon-like farms, was the country in which 
 Peter found his brother Michael! It lay in the hard- 
 coal region of Pennsylvania, in the Schuylkill Valley, 
 where the streams ran black as ink, the high culm- 
 banks frowned darkly over the landscape, the trees 
 and shrubbery were blighted by the sulphur fumes, 
 and the giant ‘“‘breakers’”—tall wooden buildings full 
 of windows, in which the coal is washed and sorted— 
 stood roaring and quivering with the vibrations of 
 their powerful machinery. 
 
 Inside these breakers there sat row after row of 
 young boys, with a few older or disabled men who 
 could no longer work in the mines. Beneath them, 
 in long chutes, ran the constantly moving coal, washed 
 
A MESSENGER OF GOOD NEWS tor 
 
 by a stream of cold water. From this moving mass 
 the “breaker boys” had to pick out the pieces of slate 
 and throw them aside. In cool weather their fingers 
 grew numb from the icy water, and often they were 
 cut or bruised by the coal and slate. Many of the 
 boys were too young to be at work, but were kept 
 out of school to help support the family. Back in 
 Galicia also the children had been kept out of school 
 to work; but theirs had been open-air labor, in the 
 free wind and sunshine, not grinding, back-breaking 
 toil like this! 
 
 The younger children, here in the mining town, had 
 often the task of tending the family cow or goat, as 
 at home in the “old country.” But here it was not 
 a matter of watching in a safe, open pasture. The 
 hills above the town, where the cattle found scanty 
 grass, were pitted and honey-combed with great holes, 
 called ‘‘cave-ins.”” When the coal is taken away from 
 under the ground, the earth above it naturally falls 
 in, sometimes very suddenly. You might walk along 
 one of the paths on such a hill, and come back an 
 hour later to find that a part of the path had disap- 
 peared, and make your way around the yawning hole 
 by grasping stones or bushes. More than one cow 
 or goat, and sometimes even the children who tended 
 them, vanished in this way, buried under earth and 
 rocks in some worked-out mine shaft. 
 
 Smaller children, also, though not big enough to go 
 far from home, were still subject to danger as they 
 ran and tumbled in the coal dust that covered the 
 
102 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 narrow streets, and had often to be snatched by an 
 older child from the way of the brewer’s heavy wagon 
 or the trampling feet of the “fire horses.”’ With dogs, 
 goats, and chickens they swarmed in and out of the 
 dingy houses at will, or took a nap on the edge of the 
 curb while their mothers toiled inside to provide for 
 their many children, and often for boarders as well. 
 
 A saloon flourished on every corner. In those days, 
 it was the only place of cheap entertainment for the 
 working man. Here he met his fellow workers, after 
 the toil of the day was over, to discuss politics or labor 
 conditions. Here he made and heard fiery speeches 
 against the “Company”’ and all its works and ways. 
 The “Company store,’ owned and operated by the 
 coal company, from which the miners were obliged to 
 buy at prices that were often excessive, was a favorite 
 subject for criticism; so were the variations in wages 
 and the exactions of the ‘“‘bosses.”’ Here were sug- | 
 gested and planned strikes against the company, such 
 as made more than one winter a time of starvation 
 and violence in that unhappy valley. Here men drank 
 and sang and played cards or dice and forgot for a little 
 while that tomorrow the fall of a rock or a whiff of 
 poisonous gas might end it all for them. 
 
 What the saloon was to the men, the back-yards — 
 were to their wives—their only social club, where they 
 chattered in strange tongues across the fences, stop- 
 ping now and then to scream at a child who was catch- 
 ing the little chickens or teasing the baby. Deep 
 under all their noisy laughter was always a listening 
 
A MESSENGER OF GOOD NEWS 103 
 
 dread—a dread that listened for the sound of the 
 ambulance that might come rumbling along at any 
 moment, bearing the victim of a mine disaster. ‘Is 
 it my man?” would run like lightning from house to 
 house when that terrible rumbling drew near. No 
 wonder a long sigh of relief rose daily to the lips of 
 every miner’s wife when she heard his tired footsteps 
 coming through the alley to the kitchen door and 
 could fill the wooden tub with warm water for the 
 nightly scrubbing of his inky face and hands! 
 
 Into these gloomy scenes came Peter Halenda, a 
 boy of eighteen. He was determined to support him- 
 self, but for a time this was difficult because work was 
 scarce, and he was not strong enough for heavy labor. 
 But Michael helped him in every possible way, and 
 he managed to live, though he did not earn enough to 
 save anything. 
 
 Meantime, back in the homeland, the next brother, 
 Dimitry, aided by the village priest of Wislok, who 
 knew the boy’s desire to follow the priestly calling, 
 had left the village to go to school. In the course of 
 time, he graduated, and then, with the youngest 
 brother, Theodore, came to America also. For a time, 
 Dimitry taught in a Greek Catholic parochial school 
 and directed the church singing in Plymouth, Penn- 
 sylvania. But in the year 1900 he joined Peter and 
 Theodore in Pittsburgh, where they went to work on 
 the North Side for the Pressed Steel Car Company. 
 
 Not long afterward this company built a new car- 
 shop at a place called Presstown—also familiarly 
 
104. LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 known as ‘“Hunkytown’”—near McKee’s Rocks. Here 
 the company erected several hundred houses for the 
 workmen, of the sort seen so commonly in the steel 
 and coal regions—rows of plain, bare frame buildings, 
 looking like barracks, and crowded to overflowing 
 chiefly with young men who sleep on cheap mattresses 
 usually flung on the floor, as many as can be crowded 
 into the little rooms. Here, in the boarding-house 
 kept by Wasyl Riopka, the three Halendas found 
 lodging, together with a dozen other young men of 
 about their own age. | 
 It was not a life of great interest or variety for 
 boys such as they. In those days employers took 
 little thought for the way in which their employees 
 might spend their leisure hours; but the brewers did. 
 Every day the beer wagons went rattling about the 
 streets. On Saturday they were particularly busy be- 
 cause a double supply must be laid in for Sunday. 
 On the morning of that day, the men—some of them 
 already half drunk from their festivities of the night 
 before—usually went to church; most of them were - 
 Greek or Roman Catholics, who believed that the 
 sooner they could get the business of church-going 
 over and done with, the more of the day they would 
 have for their own, to spend as they pleased. As the 
 day went on, there would rise from the bare, wooden 
 houses the thump of heavily dancing feet, the whine 
 of accordions, the sound of singing in all keys and 
 languages, the slapping of cards on tables, the harsh 
 voices of quarreling men, and presently the upsetting 
 
A MESSENGER OF GOOD NEWS _ 105 
 
 of furniture and the scuffle of a free-for-all fight. 
 Then the patrol-wagon would come jangling up, and 
 the bruised and bleeding combatants would be bun- 
 died in and taken to the “lock-up.” 
 
 To the Halenda brothers, this sort of amusement 
 was not attractive.. They had been taught better 
 things by their good father, Ivan; and these memories 
 kept them from many of the temptations which were 
 too strong for their companions. 
 
 About this time some of the Christian peoples of 
 Pittsburgh began to notice the neglected condition of 
 these foreign-speaking workmen, and to plan some- 
 thing for their benefit. The Presbytery of Pittsburgh 
 persuaded Dr. Vaclav Losa, who was doing a success- 
 ful work in Nebraska, to come. and start a mission 
 in Presstown, where he would be especially valuable 
 because he was familiar with most of the languages 
 spoken in the community. The Pressed Steel Car 
 Company gave him a house to live in, and he began 
 to go about the town studying his field. 
 
 As he went about, he saw only too plainly the need 
 for such work as he was sent to do, but not so plainly 
 how to make the beginning. The men were satisfied, 
 it seemed, with their miserable way of living. Drink 
 had blunted their desire for better things; hard work 
 had left them indifferent and dull. For seven weeks 
 he tried in vain to interest them, and during all that 
 time he did not succeed in getting a soul to come to 
 his mission. 
 
 Deeply discouraged, he was walking along the 
 
106 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 street one Sunday afternoon when he saw in a back- 
 yard a group of fifteen young men lounging at ease, 
 _ laughing and talking. A great desire arose in his 
 - heart, and he prayed, ‘Oh, God, help me to win the 
 friendship of at least three or four of these young 
 men!” 
 
 He entered the yard and began to talk to them in 
 his own language, which most of them understood. 
 Soon they were gathered around him, and one of them 
 went into the house and brought out to him a glass of 
 beer. 
 
 “No, I thank you,” said Dr. Losa. “That is some- 
 thing I do not use, though I thank you for your kind- . 
 ness in offering it to me. But I have something to 
 offer to you, which is much better than that; it is 
 something that will give you happiness, and ‘bring no 
 trouble after it.” : 
 
 From his pocket he drew a little Testament and 
 opened it. 
 
 “Listen!” he said. “Do you want to know who are 
 the truly happy people in this world?” He turned 
 to the book of Revelation and read, “Blessed is he 
 that readeth, and they that hear the words of this 
 prophecy, and keep those things which are written 
 therein.” | 
 
 For some time he sat and talked with them and then 
 invited them to come and hear more at the service he 
 was going to hold at the mission that day. When the 
 time for the service came, he found that his prayer 
 had been answered; for out of the group of fifteen, 
 
‘osens 
 -ure] UMO I9Yy} UI pojutid soqrq Suryze} SI BpugzTeyy “A 3eY} ISoy} Oy] SIOUIWT O} SI 3] 
 
 VINVATASNNGUd NI SYANIN DNOWV AUVNOISSIN OIAVIS V 
 
 
 

 
A MESSENGER OF GOOD NEWS _ 107 
 
 four young men came to hear him—the three Halenda 
 brothers and Wasyl Riopka, the “boarding boss.” 
 
 The heart of the missionary was glad as he looked 
 into their earnest faces, and the message he gave them 
 was one of gladness also. He told them of the joy 
 that fills the heart of God when one of His children 
 believes His word and tries to do His will. They had 
 heard much of God, but only as a stern ruler and 
 judge, who had to be approached through many saints 
 before He would listen to sinful men. Now they 
 learned that the Father was rejoicing at that very 
 moment because they had come to hear more about 
 Him. The love of God entered deeply into their hearts 
 
 that day, in the little mission house. 
 _ They took home with them a copy of the Bible in 
 Russian; it was not yet issued in the Ukrainian dia- 
 lect, or, as it is also called, the Ruthenian language, 
 but all of them could read Russian fairly well. Few 
 Catholic families have Bibles, even of the Catholic 
 version, and the priests do not encourage them to read 
 it. So the four opened this Bible with intense in- 
 terest. They read very carefully and carried all their 
 questions about it to Dr. Losa. Their questions were 
 many, because they soon found differences between 
 the teaching of the Bible and the things their church 
 had taught them. 
 
 They began to talk about these things to their 
 friends. 
 
 “But this book that you have,” many of these 
 friends objected, “is not the right Bible. It is a Prot- 
 
108 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 estant Bible, and is no good at all. Every true Bible 
 is sealed with the bishop’s or the Pope’s seal; and 
 there is no such seal on this book, as you can see for 
 yourselves.” 
 
 “Very well,’ said the young men, “we will get a 
 Catholic Bible and see what the difference is.” 
 
 So they managed to get a Bible in two volumes, 
 which had been sent from Rome, and bore the seal 
 of Pope Leo XIII. This they compared with their 
 own Bible, and found that, except for certain pas- 
 sages, It was much the same. The difference lay 
 mostly in the explanations given by the priests, which | 
 made some things sound quite different from the ob- 
 vious reading of the text. 
 
 Hot were the discussions that arose over these 
 things, but the four men became stronger every day 
 in their belief that they had found the real truth; and 
 before long they confessed this faith and joined the 
 little mission. 
 
 This made their former friends very angry, and 
 they began to persecute the converts in ‘every possible 
 way. They were put out of the various organizations 
 of their countrymen to which they belonged, were 
 hissed on the streets and at their work, and were 
 called heretics and traitors. 
 
 Their changed way of living also gave great offense 
 to their companions. They had always kept away 
 from the worst vices of the place, but now they gave 
 up entirely all smoking, drinking, dancing, card-play- 
 ing, and everything which seemed to them to make it 
 
A MESSENGER OF GOOD NEWS 109 
 
 harder for people to serve God faithfully. Of course 
 their former friends resented all this greatly, and 
 abused them for trying to be better than others. 
 
 Shortly after their conversion to the Protestant 
 faith, the Pittsburgh Presbytery asked the three 
 Halendas to give up their employment and devote 
 their whole time to carrying the Bible into the homes 
 of the people. So they became colporteurs, or Bible 
 distributers. At that time, in this region, only about 
 five families out of every hundred had a Bible of any 
 kind. Though it paid them far less than they had 
 been earning, the brothers took up this work because 
 they felt that it was greatly needed, and that it was 
 a privilege to be able to help people learn the truth. 
 
 When their companions found that persecution had 
 no effect on the young converts, they began to write 
 home to their people about them. Wasyl Riopka had 
 a brother in Europe who grew very angry when he 
 learned that his brother had become a Protestant. He 
 called in all his neighbors and relatives, and they all 
 mourned over this terrible news and discussed what 
 could be done about it. 
 
 “T will go to America myself and see Wasyl,” at 
 last the brother declared. “I will bring him back to 
 the faith of our fathers, or I will kill him with my 
 own hands! It is better for him to die than to live 
 in such disgrace!” 
 
 And the zealous brother actually did come to 
 America. But he was not able to turn Wasyl back 
 to the old faith; for before he had time to carry out 
 
110 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 his threat, the truth his brother explained to him took 
 hold of his own heart, and he also became a reader 
 of the Bible and a member of the mission church. 
 
 The Halenda brothers had one trial even harder 
 to bear than all the persecutions of their former com- — 
 panions. Some of their countrymen reported to their 
 mother, at home in Wislok, that her sons in America 
 had become heretics and infidels, and had given up 
 the religion of their fathers. Their mother wept and 
 would not be comforted; at last she wrote her sons: 
 “My children, I am growing old, but still I had ex- 
 pected to live a few years longer. Now, since I hear 
 that you have given up the religion of your father, 
 and of his forefathers, I am broken down by grief; 
 and unless you recant, I shall go down before my time 
 to the grave, with a broken heart!” | 
 
 The sons wrote letter after letter to their mother, 
 trying to explain to her what the change in their lives 
 really meant, but she could not understand. At last - 
 Peter said: “I will go home and see our mother, and 
 talk with her. Perhaps I can explain things better.” 
 
 So he went home to Wislok and visited his mother, 
 striving to comfort and reassure her. It was a trying 
 visit, for the priest of the village argued with him and 
 warned everyone against him. His people were only 
 a little consoled by what Peter told them; but some 
 time later, the old mother herself came to America 
 with one of her daughters, and visited her sons. 
 Then what she saw of their lives and work, and the 
 kindness shown to her by Protestant people, convinced 
 
A MESSENGER OF GOOD NEWS © i111 
 
 her that they were right, and she as well as the sister 
 became Protestants also. | 
 
 All three brothers had started their work as col- 
 porteurs, but after a time the two younger ones began 
 to follow different lines of Christian service. Dimitry, 
 the second of the trio, went to Mount Hermon, Mr. 
 Moody’s school, in Massachusetts. Afterward he at- 
 tended the Pittsburgh Academy, and then the Western 
 Theological Seminary, and became a minister. ‘Theo- 
 dore also entered the ministry, and is now serving a 
 church in Hartford, Connecticut. 
 
 In 1907, Dimitry went home to Wislok to see his 
 relatives. The priest was ready to oppose him also, 
 
 and they had many long arguments about the differ- 
 ences in their beliefs. When Dimitry returned to 
 America, the priest said to the oldest brother, Stephen 
 Halenda, “I don’t wonder that so many of our people, 
 over there in America, are converted to Protestantism, 
 for if Dimitry had been here much longer, I am afraid 
 he would have converted me, too!” 
 
 On his return the young man—now the Reverend 
 Dimitry Halenda—took up again a work which he 
 had started while still in the seminary. On the South 
 Side of Pittsburgh he had organized and taught a 
 night school, then had organized a Sunday school, and 
 finally a church—a congregation of Ukrainian people, 
 of which he is still the pastor. 
 
 When he began this work, he met with great oppo- 
 sition. He was called all sorts of names, was pointed at 
 on the street, and the very people he sought to help 
 
112 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 would cross the street to avoid him or shut their 
 doors in his face. Children who came to his Sunday 
 school were punished both by their parents and by 
 their teachers in the Catholic parochial schools. 
 Through it all, the young pastor kept calm, patient 
 and friendly, never showing resentment, but always 
 ready to help and serve, until he won their respect 
 and confidence, and finally their hearts. In this way 
 he won one of his first and strongest converts. ‘This 
 man came to him one day and said: 
 “T have decided that I want to join your church.” — 
 “And how does that happen?” asked Pastor 
 Halenda. 
 “Well, you see,” said the man, “whenever I have 
 gone to my Greek Catholic Church, I have been hear- 
 ing the priest talking against you and telling the peo- 
 ple to have nothing to do with you. But when I have 
 come to your services, I have heard you pray for ail 
 your enemies, and for those very priests who oppose 
 you so bitterly, and I believe that yours is the real 
 religion of Christ.” Ried: 
 Without wearying, this faithful missionary has 
 gone about helping his people wherever he could—in 
 their homes, at their work, in hospitals, in courts and 
 in prisons. Instead of being hated, he is now the 
 best-loved man in that part of the city, and the whole 
 attitude of the people toward the Protestant faith has 
 changed. In his Daily Vacation Bible School fast 
 summer he taught children of eleven different nation- 
 alities. 
 
_A MESSENGER OF GOOD NEWS 113 
 
 He has a beautiful little church, built by the gift 
 of an American lady. In this church more than five 
 hundred people have been converted, though only 
 about a hundred are now members of the church. 
 The rest, moving from place to place in search of 
 work, have carried out the influence of the church 
 all over the United States and Canada, and even back 
 to their own country, from which constant requests 
 are coming that Protestant missionaries be sent there. 
 
 Peter Halenda has always remained a colporteur, 
 and has devoted more than twenty years of efficient 
 and devoted service to carrying the Bible to people 
 of all nationalities. When he began, as we have seen, 
 there were about five in every hundred homes that 
 possessed a Bible. Now the number is about sixty- 
 five in a hundred. He distributes Bibles in twenty- 
 four languages—before the war, in thirty-six. At 
 present Bibles in certain languages are not being 
 printed. He has soid about fifteen thousand dollars’ 
 worth of Bibles, Testaments, and other books, and 
 at least one-half million pages of tracts. 
 
 As he goes from house to house, this question meets 
 Mr. Halenda everywhere, “How dare we read this 
 book, which is forbidden by the priest?” 
 
 By way of reply, he quotes the words Dr. Losa 
 brought to him years ago, “Blessed is he that readeth, 
 and they that hear the words: of this prophecy.” 
 
 Then they ask him why the priest forbids it; and 
 he tells them how, many years ago, the Catholic 
 Church neglected the Book of God and taught the 
 
114 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 people legends and traditions instead. He tells them 
 how, in the course of time, a wise man here and there 
 would find a copy of the Bible and read it and would 
 realize what a treasure he had found and wish to 
 share it with others. He explains that all the copies 
 were in Greek or Hebrew or Latin, and that the people 
 who were not scholars could not read them. So, he 
 goes on, these unselfish men began to translate the 
 Bible into the every-day language of their people— 
 some in Germany, others in France, still others in 
 Switzerland, in Sweden and in England; and people 
 began to read it eagerly, and to see that they had been > 
 mistaken about many things: Then, he adds, they 
 were very glad, because they learned that through 
 Jesus Christ we can come directly to God with all our 
 needs, with no priest or saint to stand between. 
 
 This coming back to the Bible was what we know 
 as the Reformation, or the “making over” of the 
 church; and the men who translated the Bible— - 
 Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, Wyclif, and others—are called 
 the “reformers.” The Roman Catholic Church cast 
 them out, with those who followed them, because they 
 protested against its wrong teaching; and this is why 
 the non-Catholic churches today are known as 
 “Protestant.” 
 
 Sometimes he finds readers among people who are 
 ready to give up all religion because of the way in 
 which they have seen it practised. One such case was 
 that of a family belonging to a church whose priest 
 was a money-loving and selfish man. The father of 
 
A MESSENGER OF GOOD NEWS 115 _ 
 
 this family had his back broken in a mine accident 
 and became paralyzed. He had been in the hospital 
 six months, but nothing could help him; and now he 
 had lain six months more on his bed at home, helpless 
 and discouraged. One day, feeling very weak, and 
 fearing that he was about to die, he sent for the priest 
 to come and hear his confession. 
 
 After the confession, the miner’s wife brought out 
 a little glass with some change in it, and told the 
 priest to take out his fee from the glass, which con- 
 tained about three dollars. The priest declared that 
 this was not enough. 
 
 Then the woman explained: ‘We have four chil- 
 dren, and nobody knows how hard it is to take care 
 of them and of my poor, crippled husband. ‘There 
 are no factories here for me to work in, but I get a 
 little money from my kind-hearted neighbors. They 
 pay me fifty cents a day for doing their washing, or 
 twenty-five cents for helping to clean house, and some- 
 times not that much. All I have are the pennies and 
 nickels in this glass. JI have nothing else unless I[ 
 should give you one of my children!” 
 
 The priest, without a word, emptied the glass into 
 his pocket and walked out of the house, leaving them 
 without a penny. 
 
 “The poor, crippled man,” writes Mr. Halenda, 
 “was telling me his story with tears in his eyes. So 
 I opened the Bible and read to him, comforting him 
 with the help of God. Then I asked him if he would 
 like to have that book, and he said he would like to 
 
116 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 have it very much, but it was impossible for him to 
 pay for it. Of course I gave him the Bible outright. 
 He thanked me many times, and I was very glad to 
 be able to help such a poor and helpless family.” 
 
 Not all of Mr. Halenda’s visits are as safe and 
 pleasant as this one. Often he goes into places where 
 men are playing cards and smoking, and where he is 
 roughly told that nobody has any time to listen to 
 him. Usually, instead of leaving, he waits patiently 
 till their game is finished, and then asks permission 
 to tell them about something better than cards. Often 
 his patience and courtesy win him purchasers, after 
 they have seen that he cannot be discouraged by their 
 rudeness. 7 
 
 Some of his time he spends among the Negroes, in 
 the district known as the worst part of the hill section 
 of Pittsburgh. Once he was warned by Negro men 
 not to enter a certain flat where there was constant 
 fighting and in which someone was killed almost 
 every month. There were over a hundred families, 
 all Negroes, living in that tenement. In spite of the 
 warning, he went into the building, and sold thirty- 
 five Bibles there. In the worst part of the hill dis- 
 trict he has sold over four hundred Bibles. 
 
 As he goes from house to house, he finds many op- 
 portunities of helping people. One evening, while 
 working in Coraopolis, an order was given him for a 
 Bible to be delivered on Neville Island. He delivered 
 the Bible, and was on his way home to attend an 
 entertainment in the church that night, when he 
 
A MESSENGER OF GOOD NEWS © 117 
 
 began to feel troubled because he had not visited any 
 of the houses in the neighborhood. His sense of duty 
 undone was so strong that he turned back to make 
 some calls. At the very first house, as he stood at the 
 door, he heard sounds of bitter crying within. He 
 knocked, and a woman came to the door with tears 
 running down her face. She told him, between her sobs, 
 that her husband had beaten her very severely and 
 had then taken all the money in the house and had 
 run away, leaving her sick and penniless. 
 
 “JT might just as well jump into the river and be 
 out of my misery,” she said, “unless you can tell me 
 what to do. Surely God has sent you to me at the 
 darkest hour of my life!” 
 
 “Yes, God has sent me to help you,” said the good 
 colporteur, and he gave her great comfort by his kind 
 words. Next day he went with her to the Pittsburgh 
 post-office, where her husband had several hundred 
 dollars in Postal Savings. He told the officials of her 
 destitute condition and secured fifty dollars at once 
 for her. Later on she became a member of the 
 church and attends regularly every Sunday. 
 
 It has been the great mission and glory of the 
 Protestant Church, down to the present day, to give 
 the Bible to all people in their own tongue. That is 
 why Mr. Halenda and many others have given their 
 lives to carrying the Book of Truth to those who are 
 without it. “How beautiful upon the mountains,” 
 says the Book, “are the feet of Him that bringeth 
 good tidings!” 
 
VIL". 
 A SHINING LIGHT 
 
 ii the dooryard of a New Mexican home, one morn- 
 ing about forty years ago, a little boy of eight was 
 busy at his play. Presently an uncertain step sounded 
 on the threshold of the house, and in the doorway an 
 old man appeared. His eyes were dim with age, and 
 he stood peering out vaguely into the strong sun-. 
 light that kindled his white hair into a crown of 
 silver. | | 
 
 “(Where are my eyes?” he called aloud. “I need my 
 eyes this morning!”’ : 
 
 At once the little boy jumped up. “Here I am, 
 Grandfather! Here are your eyes!” he cried. “Are we 
 going driving this morning?” ne 
 
 “Yes, Ambrosio,” replied the old man. “TI have ~ 
 a ibe: of calls to make, and I eel borrow “hid 
 bright eyes to find the way for me.’ 
 
 “T like to be your eyes and take you driving, Grand- 
 father, ” said the boy, hastening to bring the little pony 
 and hitch him to the cart. Don Ambrosio Gonzales 
 groped his way, smiling, into the house to find his 
 hat. 
 
 Soon the two were seated side by side, driving hap- 
 pily along in the morning brightness of forty years 
 ago. Don Ambrosio Gonzales, the grandfather, was 
 
 going to make calls on some members of his congrega- 
 118 
 
A SHINING LIGHT 119 
 
 tion, and on some others whom he was trying to in- 
 terest in attending church; for he had been the first 
 Protestant Mexican in all the territory of New Mexico, 
 and had become the first Mexican preacher in the whole 
 United States. 
 
 Little Ambrosio, his namesake, had come to live 
 with his grandparents when he was only a year old. 
 His parents were living, but, with their six other chil- 
 dren, they had been rich enough to spare Ambrosio to 
 be the joy and help of his aged grandfather. 
 
 As the old gentleman and the little grandson bumped 
 along over the uneven roads in the little cart, they 
 talked, as they often did, of the days when Grand- 
 father Ambrosio was young; of how he had grown up 
 among neighbors who were ignorant and superstitious, 
 believing in all sorts of charms and witchcraft, and 
 knowing nothing of real faith in a loving God, nor 
 much of any religion except what was told them now 
 and then by traveling priests. : 
 
 “T had a better education than most of them,” said 
 Don Ambrosio, “but I grew up with my soul in the 
 dark. It was just thirty years ago that the light of 
 God’s truth began to shine for me.” 
 
 “Tell me about it, Grandfather!” begged the boy. 
 
 “You have heard it so often,” said his grandfather, 
 “that I think you ought to be able to tell it yourself!” 
 
 “But I like to hear it!” persisted the boy, and Don 
 Ambrosio willingly began. 
 
 “There was a good man, a Methodist minister, 
 named Nicholson,” he said. ‘When he came to 
 
120 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 Peralta, I was glad to entertain him in my home, be- 
 cause he was a kind and friendly man, and I could 
 see that he came to try to do good to our people. 
 
 “Before he left, he said to me, ‘Don Ambrosio, I 
 know that you are one of the few people about here 
 who have an education and can read weil: I wonder 
 if you would not be interested in a book I have here. 
 I will gladly give it to you to read, and if ia like it, 
 you may keep it.’ 
 
 “T took the book and began to read. It was a Bible 
 —the first Bible of any kind I had ever seen. I started 
 at the beginning, and it told a wonderful story of how © 
 God made the world, and all the plants and animals, 
 and then men and women. I read on, finding the stories 
 of Noah and his ark, of Abraham and Jacob and 
 Joseph. The rest of the family went to bed, but I was 
 not sleepy; so I sat reading further and further in that 
 wonderful book. 
 
 “After a long while, I thought I would turn to the 
 second part of the book—for I saw that it was divided 
 into two parts—and see what that was about. I soon 
 found it was about our Lord Jesus Christ and His won- 
 derful words and deeds. I knew a little about Him, 
 what the priests had taught us; but I had never read 
 for myself just what He said and did. I began to read 
 His words in the Gospel of John, and it was just as if 
 He spoke to me Himself, when I read, ‘Let not your 
 heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’ 
 
 “As I read on and on, suddenly I heard a sound 
 outside. It was the chickens in the pen beside the 
 
A SHINING LIGHT 121 
 
 door, and already they were crowing for daybreak! I 
 had read all night! 
 
 “Then I found that I was very tired and sleepy, so 
 I lay down on the couch there in the living-room, and 
 fell asleep. When I woke it was broad daylight, and 
 the sun was streaming through the window, shining di- 
 rectly on my face. But the light in my heart was 
 brighter still, for now I knew that God was my loving 
 Father, and that I need never be troubled or afraid of 
 anything again!” 
 
 ‘“‘And then you wanted to be a preacher,” said the 
 boy, who knew the story by heart. 
 
 “Yes, I wanted to tell everybody the good news that 
 had come to me,” said the white-haired minister. “TI 
 am growing old, and [I shall not go about much longer, 
 teaching and preaching; for my sight is almost dark- 
 ened, and if my Ambrosio were not eyes for me, I 
 would have had to give up my work before this. But 
 the brightness is still in my heart, just as it was when 
 I woke up that morning and saw the sunshine pouring 
 in the window, and the good Book lying beside me 
 on the table!” 
 
 There were not to be many more of these happy 
 drives together. ‘The next year, when Ambrosio was 
 nine years old, his grandfather fell ill. One day he 
 called the boy to his bedside and made him kneel down 
 beside him, putting his hand lovingly on the shining 
 dark hair. 
 
 “Ambrosio, my dear boy,” he said, “I am going to 
 leave you very soon. You have my name, and I am 
 
122 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 glad to think there will still be an Ambrosio Gonzales 
 to take my place. I wish that you might take up my 
 work also, when you are old enough, and become a 
 minister of the gospel, to carry the good news as I 
 have tried to do.” 
 
 Not long after this, Grandfather Ambrosio died. 
 Ambrosio missed him very much, but after all he was 
 a very little boy, and the memory of his grandfather’s 
 words was soon put away on one of the back shelves of 
 his busy mind, to lie there for many a day unremem- 
 bered. | 
 
 The boy went back to his parents for a time; but it 
 was not long before an uncle, who kept a saloon in 
 connection with a store, offered to take Ambrosio ta 
 live with him, to help him wait on customers. 
 
 In these surroundings, the memory of Don Ambrosio 
 and his Book grew dimmer and more dreamlike every 
 day. There was nothing in the new life to remind him 
 of his grandfather’s wish; if he ever thought of it, it 
 had no attraction for him. The gossip of the store, the 
 noisy talk of the saloon, filled his ears and his mind. 
 
 The uncle found Ambrosio a prompt and intelligent 
 helper. At last one day he said to the growing boy: 
 
 ‘Ambrosio, you do not want to spend all your life 
 as a bartender. I think you would make a good busi- 
 ness man if you had more education. Suppose I send 
 you to school for a few years, and then you can come 
 back here and be my partner.” 
 
 Ambrosio felt large and manly. 
 
 “Where shall I go to school?” he asked. 
 
| 
 Hi 
 i 
 | 
 | 
 | 
 
 
 
 AMBROSIO C. GONZALES 
 
 Mr. Gonzales is pastor of a Spanish-American mission in the 
 Southwest from which, in thirteen years, twelve new preaching 
 centers have been developed. Counting both. the American-born 
 Spanish-speaking people and the Mexican immigrants, we have 
 now about a million and a half people in this country whose lan- 
 guage is Spanish. 
 

 
A SHINING LIGHT 123 
 
 “Well,” said his uncle, ‘the best school I know in 
 this part of the country is the Boys’ Biblical College 
 in Albuquerque. They will give you a good practical 
 training, as well as habits of industry and thrift.” 
 
 “But that is a preacher school!” said Ambrosio, in 
 surprise. “I do not want to go there, if I am to learn 
 to be a merchant and saloonkeeper!”’ 
 
 “They will give you a good education,” said his 
 uncle. “It does not matter what you are going to be 
 afterward. You do not have to become a preacher 
 just because they train them at the school.” 
 
 So Ambrosio entered Albuquerque College, one of 
 the most successful home mission institutions of the 
 great Southwest. | 
 
 We can hardly imagine today what it meant to the 
 boys and girls of the New Mexico of that day to have 
 such a school to attend as this college and the Har- 
 wood Industrial School for Girls in the same city. 
 These schools were founded by the great Methodist 
 missionary, Thomas Harwood, who spent half a cen- 
 tury in New Mexico. When he first came into that 
 territory, in 1870, he reported that “not a public 
 schoolhouse could be found; hardly a Bible in one 
 family in a thousand, and only a few other books; 
 hardly a public road or a bridge; hardly an American 
 plow, wagon, or buggy.” Seventy-three per cent of 
 the people over ten years of age could not read, and 
 seventy-eight per cent were unable to write. 
 
 Even at the present day it is hard for a traveler 
 in New Mexico to realize that he is in the United States. 
 
124 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 The ancient Indian pueblos, the little adobe houses, 
 the reapers in the field stooping to cut with the sickle, 
 the oxen treading out the grain, the corn ground by the 
 women between two stones, the people journeying with 
 their beds rolled up and carried on their backs, all 
 seem to belong to an earlier civilization than ours and 
 make us feel as though we had somehow strayed back 
 through the gateway of the past into the long-ago. 
 
 Up in the mountains, one may visit thriving com- 
 munities of people where there is neither telephone nor 
 doctor within thirty or forty miles, and groceries and — 
 all manufactured goods must be hauled fifty miles or — 
 more over mountain roads before reaching the cus- 
 tomer. In such a village, scarcely anybody under- 
 stands any language but Spanish. Indeed, even when’ 
 we come down to Santa Fé, and visit the state legis- 
 lature in session, we shall find that its business must 
 be conducted in two languages, with interpreters to 
 turn Spanish into English and English into Spanish. 
 
 Yet these people are not chiefly Mexicans who 
 have lately crossed the border, but American-born, 
 often for generations. But they have been shut off 
 from contact with American life and customs as we 
 know them As late as 1910, over twenty per cent of 
 the population could neither read nor write. Now, if 
 we multiply this percentage by three or four, add to 
 the illiteracy the superstitious beliefs of an earlier day, 
 and take away even the few conveniences the people 
 have at present, we shall get some picture of what Dr. 
 Harwood and his wife found in New Mexico. 
 
A SHINING LIGHT 126 
 
 Their first attempt was the organizing of the first — 
 Sunday school recorded in that territory. Its place 
 of meeting was an old adobe house with a dirt floor. 
 Next they opened a day school with about thirty pupils. 
 Meantime Dr. Harwood traveled far and wide on the 
 back of a pony or in an old buckboard, covering many 
 hundreds of miles in learning to know the people. He 
 slept in their homes, learned to speak their language, 
 and won their confidence. Today a chain of churches 
 and missions, and the Biblical College and the School 
 for Girls in Albuquerque, stand as memorials of his 
 work. 
 
 To this good and great missionary Ambrosio was 
 sent, to enter school under his direction. At first the 
 boy felt ill at ease, as if somehow the school might 
 turn him into a preacher against his will. But soon 
 he found that the boys he liked best were the sons of 
 preachers; and as his love and admiration for Dr. 
 and Mrs. Harwood grew and the teachings of the school 
 began to have their effect on him, he felt more and 
 more clearly that he could never carry out his uncle’s 
 plan. Now, too, his grandfather’s words came back 
 to him, and he decided that he would fulfil that good 
 man’s wish, and become himself a preacher of God’s 
 word. : 
 
 After some years in the college, he was made a local 
 preacher in 1895. At this time he was only twenty 
 years old, and in his field of labor in the Albuquerque 
 circuit, he showed so much interest in working among 
 young people that he became known as the “Boys’ 
 
126 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 Preacher.” He helped to organize the first Epworth 
 League for Spanish-speaking young people in New 
 Mexico. In the year 1900 he became a regular pastor, 
 and received his first appointment in the town of Clay- 
 ton, near the Colorado border. 
 
 While the youthful minister was getting acquainted 
 with his new field, a young woman by the name of 
 Marta Frances Garcia was teaching in a country 
 school, only a short distance from Clayton. Like Am- 
 brosio, Marta was American-born, of a Protestant 
 family, and of Spanish descent, one of her ancestors . 
 being Cabeza de Baca, or De Vaca, who was said to 
 be the first European to set foot upon the soil of New 
 Mexico, and about whom this romantic tale was told. 
 
 After the conquest of Mexico by Cortes, so the 
 story goes, the Spaniards in Mexico were very eager 
 to penetrate the country to the northward because of 
 a tradition that in that region lay the fabulous Seven 
 Cities of Cibola, where even the doorsills and lintels of 
 the houses were set with turquoises, and riches beyond 
 description were stored. De Baca and a few com- 
 panions made a journey into this unexplored territory 
 in 1528, meeting with marvelous adventures. At one 
 place, finding some sick Indians and undertaking to 
 cure them, they became objects of such reverence to 
 the tribe that they had great difficulty in getting away. 
 The belief of the Indians in their power as sorcerers, 
 as well as their interest in the articles they carried to. 
 trade with, enabled them to travel all over the country 
 which is now known as Texas, and over into the wilder- 
 
A SHINING LIGHT 127 
 
 ness of New Mexico. De Baca suffered imprisonment 
 among the Indians for seven or eight years, but at last 
 escaped and got back to his comrades in Mexico. His 
 tales fired their imaginations, and many of them went 
 into the new land to explore and settle it, though they 
 never found the fabled riches of the Seven Cities. 
 
 Almost four hundred years later, a descendant of the 
 discoverer, Ezekiel Cabeza de Baca, became governor 
 of New Mexico, and this man was the great-uncle of 
 the charming young teacher, Marta Garcia. 
 
 It was not of the De Bacas, however, past or present, 
 that Ambrosio Gonzales thought when he met the lovely 
 and talented girl. In her he saw a vision and a purpose 
 like his own, and he asked her to share his life-work. 
 _ They were married in December, 1900. Mrs. Gonzales 
 continued to teach for some years, first in the public 
 schools, afterward in several mission schools. 
 
 Mr. Gonzales served several pastorates in New 
 Mexico; then in 1912 he was called to become the first 
 Spanish-American pastor under the Methodist Board 
 in California. -This was a new work when he took it 
 up, in the town of Santa Ana. There was at first no 
 church. There were no members, and only a few 
 people were at all interested. But soon the work began 
 to grow. An old Mormon church was bought, and 
 large numbers of Mexicans began to attend it. The 
 work has now spread and become established in a 
 circle of neighboring towns and cities. From the one 
 small mission twelve new preaching places have been 
 developed. 
 
128 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 Mr. Gonzales later became pastor of a church in 
 Pasadena which has had the remarkable record of a 
 hundred per cent increase of membership in one year, 
 with no losses. He served this church for seven years, 
 until its growing demands caused his health to break. 
 He is now in charge of a small but rapidly growing 
 mission near Pasadena. | 
 
 Work of this sort is of a different kind from that 
 performed by Grandfather Ambrosio Gonzales among 
 the Spanish-speaking people of New Mexico. In 
 Grandfather Gonzales’ time the dwellers in the scat- — 
 tered towns were largely of American birth. Some of 
 them were not from old Mexico at all, but were de- 
 scended from Mexico’s Spanish conquerors who settled 
 in New Mexico; others were of Mexican families that 
 moved many years before to our side of the border. 
 Today an increasing number of our population are 
 people who have been coming in as immigrants from 
 Mexico during the last ten or fifteen years—that is, 
 ever since the unsettled conditions in Mexico have 
 driven her peopie out to seek security in the United 
 States. Many thousands of these Mexicans are 
 laborers who come to find work, or who have been 
 imported as contract labor by American employers. 
 Altogether, counting both the American-born Spanish- 
 speaking people and the Mexican immigrants, we have 
 now about a million and a half people in this country 
 whose language is Spanish. 
 
 In all the border states, and far up into other parts 
 of the country, these Mexican immigrants are to be 
 
A SHINING LIGHT 129 
 
 found. Many of them were admitted as laborers dur- 
 ing the World War, to make up for the shortage of 
 labor caused by the draft. Had they not come into 
 the United States, many fertile parts of our Southwest 
 would have deteriorated into desert country for want 
 of cultivation. The Mexicans raise corn and cotton 
 in Texas; they are the principal workers in the sugar- 
 beet industry, from California to Michigan; they work 
 in the orange and walnut groves and in the bean fields 
 of Southern California; and they are coming to be con- 
 sidered the finest florists on the Coast, even surpassing 
 the Japanese. 
 
 Agriculture is only one of the many occupations of 
 the Mexicans in the United States. Thousands of them 
 are employed on our railroads, making track, cleaning 
 cars, and loading stock. ‘They herd immense numbers 
 of cattle and sheep, caring for them alone in the wilder- 
 ness where other workmen refuse to go. They are de- 
 scribed as “natural miners,” proving very skilful in 
 taking out coal, copper, gold, and silver, and many 
 other ores. ‘They do road and construction work. 
 Others are listed as “storekeepers, laundrymen, bar- 
 bers, clerks, chauffeurs, printers, street-sweepers, news- 
 venders, bootblacks, window-cleaners, gardeners, cob- 
 blers, expressmen, meat-cutters, scrub-women, factory 
 workers, ranchers, teamsters, carpenters, plumbers,” 
 and so forth. There seems to be no form of industry 
 to which the Mexican cannot turn his hand, and he has 
 the reputation of being a steady, faithful worker. 
 
 It is not only the men who come across the border; 
 
130 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 they bring their wives and children along—families 
 of eight, nine or ten being common. They are very 
 poor, coming with nothing but the clothes they wear, 
 and crowding into the cheapest shacks they can find. 
 Sometimes a dozen persons live in one room. In the 
 Mexican quarter of the cities, where they are crowded 
 together in houses usually without baths, often with 
 no plumbing at all, health conditions naturally become 
 very bad. When sickness comes, they shrink from the 
 help they might receive in the hospitals, because of 
 their superstitious fear of the fabled “black bottle,” a | 
 draught from which, they believe, might put them out 
 
 of the way and no one be any the wiser. 
 
 Others, who have become the victims of drink, leave 
 Jarge families to be cared for by charity. Those who, 
 by ignorance of our language and laws, have been 
 arrested unjustly, are in hapless case unless they find 
 a friendly interpreter. In all these ways, the Mexican 
 in the United States needs the aid of someone who can 
 understand his language, and whose kindly sympathy 
 will inspire him to spend time and care on the problems 
 of the helpless immigrant. 
 
 Such helpers have Mr. and Mrs. Gonzales been dur- 
 ing all the time of their missionary labors. Being 
 American citizens, and yet of Spanish blood, they form 
 a link between the two races. On the one hand they 
 gain the confidence of the Spanish-speaking people 
 and gather them into school and church, and, on the 
 other, they can enlist the interest of American Chris- 
 tian people, who have given large sums to establish 
 
A SHINING LIGHT 131 
 
 Bible and industrial schools for their Mexican neigh- 
 bors. 
 
 One of the successful experiments of Pastor Gonzales 
 in Pasadena is a hotel for young Mexican men, in a 
 building which was formerly a den of gambling Chinese 
 and Greeks, who had been doing great harm among 
 the Mexicans. Mr. Gonzales filled it with young men, 
 all of whom attended the Pasadena church. Every 
 day, during meal-times, one of their number read aloud 
 from the Bible while the rest were eating. The pastor’s 
 brother, Aaron, was in charge of this enterprise. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Gonzales are always seeking to find 
 among the younger people some who may be trained 
 _ to spread the gospel and drive away the fears and 
 superstitions that gather in the darkness of ignorance. 
 They have been very successful in this work. Mr. 
 Gonzales rejoices especially over five young men, four 
 of them brought into Christian service while he was 
 their pastor, who have now become preachers. 
 
 One of these was a young man who had been a 
 captain in the bandit army of Pancho Villa in Mexico. 
 When Mr. Gonzales first found him among the work- 
 men in a section house, the man was afraid to go to 
 church on the pastor’s invitation. Gradually, however, 
 his shyness was overcome, and he came to be a power 
 among the young people in the League meetings, always 
 ready to take part in any service and encouraging 
 others to do the same. Now he is one of the most 
 promising young preachers in the Latin-American Mis- 
 sion in that district. 
 
132 LAND OF ALL NATIONS > 
 
 Many stories could be told of the changes that have 
 taken place in the lives of men and women through 
 the very presence among them of a church where the 
 services are conducted in their own language. One 
 such story comes from the period when Mr. Gonzales 
 was pastor of the little mission church in Santa Afa. 
 
 One night, a Mexican was passing along the street 
 with a hot and angry heart. Four years before, an- 
 other Mexican had treated him very badly, and he 
 had brooded over it all those years. The longer he 
 thought of him, the more he hated the man who had 
 wronged him; and at last he had come to the point 
 where it seemed to him that he could no longer go on ~ 
 living in the same world with his enemy. So he was 
 going to the man’s house that night with weapons in 
 his pockets to kill his enemy or be killed by him. 
 
 As he passed the mission church, he heard sweet sing- 
 ing and paused for a moment. The words were in his 
 own language, and he listened to the end of the hymn. 
 Then a man began to read from a book; this, too, was 
 in Spanish instead of Latin, and the listener stayed to 
 hear it. Next the man began to preach, and the ser- 
 mon was all about brotherly love. Outside, in the 
 dark, the angry heart of the injured man began to. 
 soften, and then to turn away with horror from the 
 thought of the dreadful thing he had been planning 
 to do. He listened until the end of the service, and 
 then went quietly home. 
 
 Next day the man came to the parsonage and asked 
 to see Pastor Gonzales. 
 
A SHINING LIGHT 133 
 
 “Would you please read some more,” he said, “from 
 that book you were reading in the church last night?” 
 
 Mr. Gonzales took his Bible and began to read to 
 the man. After listening for a while, the visitor drew - 
 from his pockets a large revolver and a long Mexican 
 knife and laid them on the minister’s desk, saying: 
 
 “May I exchange these implements of death for a 
 copy of that word of life?” 
 
 Then he told the pastor the story of his great temp- 
 tation and how he was saved from it by the words he 
 had heard from the church the night before. 
 
 “Let us go,” said Mr. Gonzales, who saw that the 
 man’s heart was deeply touched, “and see that man 
 who was your enemy, and ask him to become a friend.” 
 
 So they went with words of friendship instead of 
 deadly weapons; and soon the former enemies were 
 asking forgiveness of each other. The families of both 
 men began to come to the little mission, and the sons 
 and daughters of the intended murderer have become 
 very active and helpful workers in the church. 
 
 There are still many whose minds and hearts are 
 dark because of ignorance and wrong teaching; but the 
 light that shone long ago for Don Ambrosio from the 
 pages of the Book is being spread farther and farther 
 each day by the labors of his grandson, who has chosen 
 as his motto the words: 
 
 “Let your light so shine before men that they may 
 see your good works and glorify your Father which is 
 in heaven,” 
 
VIiTl 
 A SHUTTLE OF THE GREAT LOOM 
 
 ARLY one Sabbath morning, the beadle, or crier, 
 was going about the streets in the Jewish quarter 
 of a Hungarian village, striking the doors with a 
 hammer to waken the people in time to go to the syna- 
 gogue. As he struck on one door, crying, “Uri, Uri!” 
 (Awake, awake! ), a little new-born cry answered him 
 from within the house. The little boy who was born 
 just as the beadle called was known in the household, 
 for some years after, by the nickname of “Uri.” 
 
 He had another name, of course—that of his father, 
 Edward Steiner. It was a name given him with many 
 tears, for the father who had borne it before him had 
 died some months earlier, stricken with cholera while 
 helping to care for the sick in the village. This pesti- 
 lence followed a battle, and was followed in its turn 
 by famine. Robber bands passed through the town at 
 night, and many Jewish homes were broken into and 
 plundered. It was dangerous to be a Jew of a well- 
 to-do family, as Edward’s people were. : 
 
 In spite of this, the little boy was five years old be- 
 fore he began to learn that he was different from any 
 of his playmates. ‘The village children, Jew and Gen- 
 tile, played together as friends, and Edward was on 
 good terms with them all. He helped them with their 
 work, gave them a share of his sweetmeats, and played 
 
 134 
 
A SHUTTLE OF THE GREAT LOOM 1335 
 
 in all their games. At Easter time he helped make 
 willow switches and went around with the Gentile boys, 
 threatening to whip the girls, who would buy them off 
 with colored eggs. Edward’s mother and brother did 
 not know that he took part in this particular Gentile 
 diversion, nor that he helped one of the boys to ring 
 the bell and pump the organ in the Lutheran church. 
 But when they caught him dividing all the Sabbath 
 apple-cake among his friends, they punished him 
 severely. 
 
 Angered by this punishment, he tried to run away 
 with a company of village Catholics who were going 
 on a pilgrimage to a neighboring town, where there was 
 a sacred spring said to possess healing waters. It was 
 then that he learned for the first time that he was not 
 like the other children; for the driver of the wagon 
 called him a “Schid” (Jew), and threw him out into 
 the road. There his Uncle Isaac, who was his guard- 
 ian, and a very strict orthodox Jew, found him and 
 took him home to another punishment at the hands of 
 his older brother. 
 
 The next day his uncle, who was horrified when he 
 found how Edward had been mingling with the Gen- 
 tiles, began to teach him the Hebrew alphabet, and 
 every day he took the boy to the synagogue for prayers, 
 all of which Edward had to learn by heart out of the 
 Jewish prayer-book. 
 
 “My mind,” he says, “never was with the prayers, 
 which I could not understand. My eyes wandered me- 
 chanically up and down the walls. I knew how many 
 
136 LAND OF ALL NATIONS | 
 
 cracks they had, and how many rivulets of moisture 
 came down from where the roof had leaked. I could 
 tell the exact number of spindles in the railing of the 
 gallery which divided the women from the men, for 
 I must have counted them a thousand times. When- 
 ever my uncle caught my wandering eyes, he brought 
 me back to the prayer-book by poking me in the ribs, 
 at times very forcibly.” 
 
 Edward would have much preferred to wander with 
 his Gentile playmates, Catholic or Protestant, but there 
 was a difference now. They had begun to call him 
 “Schid”; and even when he ran away to play with 
 them, he felt that he was not one of them. Besides, 
 in a short time he began to go to a regular school for 
 Jewish boys, when for the first time the Austrian gov- 
 ernment sent to the village a teacher to start a school 
 for the Jews. From this teacher Edward got for the 
 first time an idea of what patriotism means, and he 
 also got a glimpse of the great truth of the brother- 
 hood of all men, so that wonderful thoughts of a world 
 where all should be friends were rising in his mind, even 
 while his former friends were rejecting his friendship. 
 
 Then there came a bitter winter, when the snows 
 were piled almost to the roofs of the peasants’ cottages, 
 and a common danger united the people of the village. 
 
 “No one asked: ‘Is this a Jew’s house or a Magyar’s 
 isba? Is it the home of a Roman Catholic or of a 
 Protestant, to which we are making a path?’ ” 
 
 Just before Christmas, it was found that one of a 
 group of boys who were to go about singing carols, 
 
A SHUTTLE OF THE GREAT LOOM 137 
 
 dressed up as the three wise men, was snowbound in 
 a distant farmhouse. The other boys offered to let him 
 take the place of the absent wise man. 
 
 Wonderful crowns and a star were manufactured 
 from gilt paper, and Edward was secretly drilled in the 
 Christmas hymn. He was to represent the wise man 
 from the land of the Moors; so when he sallied out in 
 red robe and gilded crown, his face was covered by a 
 liberal coat of stove-polish. 
 
 The “kings” made straight for the home of the Pany, 
 the great man of the village, expecting fine gifts at this 
 house, which looked like a palace to their eyes. 
 
 The Pany, who was a rough, brutal man, greeted 
 them harshly, and told them to get done with their 
 mummery and be gone. Out of deference to the great 
 man, the two Gentile boys promptly fell on their knees 
 and began to sing their hymn. Edward remained 
 standing, and, before the others were through singing, 
 was in the midst of a fight with the Pany’s son, who was 
 trying to make him kneel. “Ordinarily,” said Steiner 
 in later years, “he would not have had a difficult task, 
 but my wounded royal pride had given me unknown 
 strength, and majestically I held my ground.” Finally 
 the struggling youngsters rolled on the floor, but the 
 Jewish boy was on top: 
 
 The Pany rescued his son from the much-rumpled 
 “king,””? and demanded of the victor why he wouldn’t 
 kneel. 
 
 “Because I am a king and not a peasant,” cried the 
 boy, ‘‘and I won’t kneel to anyone.” 
 
138 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 Everybody laughed loudly, and the Pany hustled the 
 royal visitor roughly down the broad stairs, speeding 
 him with kicks and abuse. The child was trying to find 
 his way out, half-blinded by the tears streaming down 
 his blackened face, when a woman’s gentle hand 
 touched him in the dark and drew him into a lighted 
 room. It was the Pamy’s sister, a maiden lady as noted 
 for her good works as was her brother for his rude- 
 ness. She washed the little fellow’s face, straightened 
 his disordered clothing, filled his pockets with nuts and 
 sweets, and as she led him out, kissed him on the fore- 
 head, saying, “Our Lord was a little Jewish boy, just 
 like you.” Me bs 
 
 Edward was sorely to need the memory of this Chris- 
 tian gentlewoman in the days to come, for often the 
 people of the village, both Catholics and Protestants, 
 raided the Jewish quarter on the slightest excuse, 
 breaking windows and threatening to drive the Jews 
 out of the town whenever one of the hated race did- 
 anything to displease them. So little of the true spirit 
 of Christ did His followers display, that Edward wrote 
 in later years, “Whenever I passed a cross I seemed 
 to hear the Christ saying, ‘Get out of here, you little 
 Jewish boy; you crucified Me!’” Of Jesus as the 
 Friend and Helper of all men, the boy had not the 
 faintest idea. 
 
 One beautiful June Sabbath, Edward stayed away 
 from the synagogue—to him a place of tiresome repeti- 
 tions, where the Jewish business men bargained with 
 each other between the chanting of the Psalms. Far 
 
EDWARD A. STEINER 
 
 Our Lord was once a little Jewish boy like the lad who once 
 played, among the Carpathian Mountains, the part of a ‘Wise 
 Man of the East.” A professor now, in an American college, 
 and wise in sympathy and humor, he 1s held by many Americans, 
 both new and old, to be still a veritable Wise Man, but a Wise 
 Man of both East and West. 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 ae 
 
 ag: 
 
 
 
 
 oe art 
 
 < 
 
A SHUTTLE OF THE GREAT LOOM 139 
 
 more real and dear to him was the simple worship of 
 the home, where his pious mother would presently bless 
 and light the Sabbath candles in preparation for the 
 holy-day meal. Until it was time for her to do that, 
 there wasn’t much to do. So it happened that he was 
 loitering around the village that Sabbath morning, and 
 was on hand to witness the arrival in the omnibus of a 
 strange-looking man. “Three quarters of a man,” he 
 declared himself; for a wooden leg and an empty sleeve 
 appeared as the man left the vehicle, followed by a 
 brass-bound trunk. The stranger was a Jew, a former 
 townsman, who had run away to America and had 
 fought and bled in the American Civil War. 
 
 Edward was shocked to see a Jew drinking palenka, 
 the native whisky, and to hear him order pork for his 
 dinner. To save him from such apostasy, he invited 
 him home on the spot, and his good mother, pitying 
 the homeless man, asked him to stay and live with 
 them. 
 
 Out of the brass-bound trunk came various trea- 
 sures—a huge American flag, a history of the Civil 
 War, and a picture of a sad-faced man, which was hung 
 on the wall of the old soldier’s room. Edward asked 
 many questions, and soon learned that the man’s name 
 was Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 “How is it,” the boy inquired, “that this man, who 
 was a Christian, was named Abraham?” 
 
 . Then the soldier told him a wonderful story of a man 
 with the faith of Abraham the patriarch, and a courage 
 like that of Moses the liberator; a man who freed not 
 
140 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 his own people, but a strange race of black men, from 
 slavery. 
 
 The boy’s imagination was kindled by the tale. He 
 applied it at once to the evils he saw about him—not 
 only those of his own race, but those under which all 
 his neighbors suffered. The government under which 
 they lived was harsh and oppressive to the poor; the 
 judge of the village was a man of evil life, who con- 
 demned others for the things he openly did himself; 
 and the police were cruel to those who were too poor 
 to offer them bribes. A great longing to make things 
 right arose in Edward’s heart. He gathered a group 
 of boys in the synagogue yard and made them a speech, - 
 trying to stir them to a promise that they would resist 
 bad government and help the oppressed. The boys 
 told the teacher, who gave the young revolutionist a 
 whipping; and of all his great undertaking there was 
 nothing left but bruises and a mournful comfort in 
 looking at the picture of Lincoln and feeling some 
 small share in his martyrdom. 
 
 One day the omnibus brought to town some visitors 
 very different from the old soldier—a Jewish family 
 richly attired, flashing with diamonds, who had lived 
 for a number of years in America and had become rich 
 in the business of distilling whisky. The boys of this 
 family were quite different from those of the Hun- 
 garian village. They brought new games, new songs 
 (including “Yankee Doodle”), and new books, chiefly 
 Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales, in an illustrated -Ger- 
 man edition. A new world was opened to Edward. 
 
A SHUTTLE OF THE GREAT LOOM 141 
 
 “T felt the glow of camp-fires, the joy of the chase, 
 the hardships of adventure, the fierceness of battles and 
 battle-cries. I drew the first plowshare over my prairie 
 farm and defended my blockhouse against the red- 
 skins.” 
 
 When the family went back to America, Edward was 
 almost heartbroken. He had made all his plans to go 
 to America, and, in time, to marry Maud, the rich 
 man’s daughter. He ran after the omnibus which car- 
 ried them away and clung to it, only to be sent home 
 in tears, and to receive the usual punishment from the 
 heavy hand of his older brother. 
 
 Even after this disappointment had lost its sharp- 
 ness, the thought of America remained. He made 
 another effort to reach it by running away with an epi- 
 leptic boy from the poorhouse. He spent all his 
 money paying a hackman to drive them to the nearest 
 railway station, where they were arrested as vagrants 
 when they tried to board the train without tickets. 
 After a night spent in jail with gypsies and thieves, he 
 was rather relieved to be found by his brother, who 
 gave him the inevitable whipping and then bought him 
 breakfast before starting home. 
 
 This adventure made his mother decide to send him 
 away to school; and it was not long before the omnibus 
 carried him away to a distant town, where he attended 
 a school taught by Jesuit fathers, though he was com- 
 pelled by his religion to live in a Jewish family. Here 
 he found plenty of hard mental discipline—“pages and 
 pages of Latin, curious problems in mathematics, and 
 
142 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 such history as they deigned to give us. They were 
 painful years,” he adds, in which he found little com- 
 panionship and no satisfaction for the questions of his 
 busy mind. These questions kept coming to the sur- 
 face, and so greatly disturbed his teachers and class- 
 mates that the rector openly praised the Lord when 
 the troublesome Jewish youth passed his final exami- 
 nations and said good-by. 
 
 At the University of Heidelberg, to which he now 
 went, he formed close friendships with a number of 
 Russian students, who were always ready to sit up 
 with him into the morning hours “vehemently discuss- 
 ing everything under the heavens.’”’ From them he . 
 learned to know Russian literature, and during one of 
 his vacations he made a pilgrimage which opened new 
 doors of thought—a journey into Russia to visit Tol- 
 stoy, the famous Russian nobleman, soldier, courtier 
 and author, who laid aside all these things to live the 
 life of a peasant in order to do, as he saw it, the will 
 of God and to carry out the teachings of the Man of 
 Nazareth. . 
 
 From this earnest man he first heard the words of | 
 Jesus uttered without bitterness or narrowness. What 
 surprised him was that Tolstoy’s remedy for the ills 
 of life was so exceedingly simple. Within himself, said 
 Tolstoy, was the secret, and it was “‘to like the unlike, 
 to love the unlovely, to regard wealth, place, honor, 
 of no import, and to believe that the purpose of life 
 is to do God’s will.” 
 
 One day they went out to the field, where the faa 
 
A SHUTTLE OF THE GREAT LOOM 143 
 
 man took a scythe and cut grain with the peasants. 
 
 “Try it,” he said to Edward; and after the young 
 student had made some clumsy attempts and was wip- 
 ing his perspiring face, Tolstoy said: ‘Young man, for 
 a few minutes, at least, you have been doing the will 
 of God. He has not made your hands merely to hold 
 gloves and a cane and cigarettes, but to do useful, 
 honest work.” 
 
 But the greatest lesson that Tolstoy taught him was 
 the oneness of all men. 
 
 “You are a Jew, I am a Russian,” he would say to 
 him; “yet I feel no difference in the touch of your 
 hands, in the look of your eyes, and hear none as you 
 speak to me. There are differences in the color of the 
 skin, the shape of the nose and eyes, but beneath the 
 surface we are all alike.” And the way to bring this 
 sense of brotherhood into all men’s lives, he said, was 
 the way of self-sacrifice: “Give everything, and ask 
 nothing in return.” 
 
 This visit made an impression on Edward’s mind 
 which he never lost. From that day forward his motto 
 was, “All men are one.” 
 
 The student was not to finish his university course. 
 One year when he was at home for the spring vaca- 
 tion, a copyist from the office of the village judge came 
 to his mother and offered for a certain sum to tell her 
 an official secret, which would save her boy from arrest 
 and punishment. Edward, whose sympathies were 
 always with the poor and oppressed, may very easily 
 have said something at one time or another that might 
 
144 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 be understood as disloyal to the Austrian government 
 which was never noted for impartial justice to all; but 
 that the state could be seriously disturbed by the words 
 of a nineteen-year-old boy was probably a fiction of the 
 copyist’s own mind, eager to make money by playing 
 on a mother’s fears. The man promised to keep the 
 secret till the boy was safely across the border. In 
 three days after leaving home, Edward Steiner was on 
 the ocean, bound for America. 3 
 
 In those days—for this was about forty years ago— 
 nobody bothered much about the comfort of immi- 
 grants crossing the sea. Into a space so small for the 
 number of people it held that it was almost impossible 
 to walk about, these poor travelers were packed like 
 cattle. On stormy days, when the hatches were closed, 
 the odors of the place became unbearable. Cleanliness 
 was impossible, soap and water were luxuries scarcely 
 to be had. On one vessel, drinking water for the steer-— 
 age had to be stolen at night from the second cabin. 
 
 The food was miserable—chiefly soup made in im- 
 mense kettles, and served in tin pails, with bread often 
 so ill-baked as to be uneatable. Steiner says that 
 though the steerage pays about one third as much 
 passage money as the first cabin, it receives less than . 
 one per cent of sheltered deck space, not ten per cent 
 of food value, and nothing in the way of courtesy or 
 civility. 
 
 “And yet,” he adds,—and he learned this on his first 
 voyage,—“‘the steerage holds a luxury which is grow- 
 ing rarer and rarer in the cabin—good fellowship.”’ 
 
A SHUTTLE OF THE GREAT LOOM 145 
 
 There were days of storm, when the terrified steerage 
 passengers, under closed hatches among rattling chains 
 and groaning.planks, with water coming down the ven- 
 tilators, thought their last hour had come. There was 
 dreadful seasickness, with nobody to tell them that 
 they were not going to die of it. And then there were 
 calm and sunny days when they lay on the crowded 
 deck drying their damp clothing by the steam-pipes, 
 and starry nights when somebody would play an accor- 
 dion and the folk-songs of many nations would be 
 chanted hoarsely by the reviving wanderers. Some- 
 times they would even try to dance a mazurka or a 
 czardas in a little cleared space. 
 
 There was prayer, too, in the steerage—devout 
 Catholics telling their beads, Protestants humming their 
 hymns, and a little group of faithful Jews gathering in 
 a corner to sing their welcome to the Sabbath, with 
 their faces, as nearly as they could tell, toward Jeru- 
 salem. There were unselfish and helpful deeds as the 
 stronger yielded the best places, now and again, to the 
 weaker. There was sympathy as one after another 
 told the tale of poverty or persecution which was driv- 
 ing him to the new country. 
 
 And then, one day, there was quiet from the tossing 
 of waves and a breathless silence in the steerage as its 
 passengers looked across the water to the land that was 
 soon to receive them. Then a rapture of joy—America 
 at last! Hands were grasped, farewells were said, and 
 the travelers disembarked upon a strange shore, to find 
 the place of their fortune or their failure. 
 
146 LAND OF ALL NATIONS | 
 
 None of them all came with less cheerful prospects 
 than young Edward Steiner. Knowing no English, with 
 very little money, trained to no trade or profession, his 
 one possession was a knowledge of a number of Euro- 
 pean languages, with a natural ability for language 
 study. Of American ways he knew little. 
 
 His first purchase on landing was five cents’ worth 
 of bananas which he proceeded to eat with the skins 
 on, nobody having told him any better. At his first 
 meal at a lodging-house table, he meekly waited to have 
 things handed to him, while the rest of the boarders 
 gobbled everything. After he had paid for his supper 
 and a night’s lodging, he was left penniless; and the 
 next day lived on ice-water, which was the only thing 
 in the country he had so far found to be free. 
 
 All that day he wandered the streets looking for 
 work. When evening came, he remembered that his 
 mother had given him the address of a distant relative 
 living in New York and he started out to find the 
 place. The relative proved very distant indeed, for the 
 tired boy walked over eighty blocks before he reached 
 the house. He received a kind welcome, and a supper 
 that tasted delicious after his day of fasting, and fell 
 asleep in his chair while trying to answer all the ques- - 
 tions asked him. 
 
 The following day, with a borrowed capital of 
 twenty-five cents, he started down-town again to look 
 for work. He visited about twenty hotels, only to be 
 told they didn’t need any Dutchmen. At one hotel he 
 might have had a job assisting the bartender, but 
 
A SHUTTLE OF THE GREAT LOOM 147 
 
 _he refused, having always a dislike for liquor and its 
 traffic. 
 
 When he returned to his relatives at night, he was 
 still without employment; but next day they secured 
 him a job in a sweat shop where he was taught to guide 
 a hot iron over cloaks. The iron weighed ten or fifteen 
 pounds when he began, but by noon he was sure it 
 weighed a ton. Worse than the unaccustomed work 
 was the angry tongue of the red-haired Irish fore- 
 woman. “I was a presser, but she was the oppressor,” 
 he says; and when he scorched a garment that after- 
 noon, he felt scorched all over by the time she was 
 through with him. 
 
 When at last the end of the week arrived, the three 
 dollars and fifty cents in his pay envelope made him 
 supremely happy. He had also hope of better things; 
 for some friendly fellow workers had directed him to a 
 night school to study English, assuring him of a better 
 job when he had learned it. 
 
 Unfortunately, the first person on whom he tried the 
 new language was the Irish forewoman; and using, in 
 his innocence, some English he “had learned out of 
 school,”’ he found to his amazement that she went in a 
 rage to the boss, with the result that his next pay 
 envelope bore a new English sentence, with which he 
 was to grow only too familiar—‘“‘Your services are no 
 longer required.” 
 
 By the aid of some of the other pressers he got an- 
 other job, this time as a cutter. He worked at this job 
 about a month, going to night school every evening, 
 
148 LAND OF ALL NATIONS | 
 
 after a ten-hour working day. Then a “slack time” 
 came, and again the pay envelope bore the unwelcome 
 words. After that he worked by turns in a baker’s 
 shop, a feather-renovating establishment, and a sau- 
 sage factory, earning barely enough to live on and be- 
 coming more discouraged every day. 
 
 Somewhere he had read the advice, “Go West, young 
 man,” and he determined to get away from New York. 
 He crossed to Jersey City and bought a ticket as far 
 as his money would take him, which was only to Prince- 
 ton Junction. There he slept on the platform of the 
 freight station, never dreaming that he was within sight 
 of a great university where he would one day lecture 
 with distinguished honors. 
 
 Next day he knocked at a farmhouse door and asked 
 for work. The farmer proved to be a man who “spe- 
 cialized in greenhorns,” getting their labor as cheap 
 as possible and making of his farm “a new kind of 
 sweat-shop.” But the German housekeeper, Maria, 
 took a fancy to the new hand, and when she discovered 
 his love for books, she borrowed them for him from 
 the farmer’s library. The farmer caught him with 
 some one day, and, though angry at first, promised 
 finally to take him to the university in the fall and see 
 what could be done for him there. 
 
 This promise kept the young man at the farm for 
 some months, in spite of many discomforts, including 
 the painful effort to do the cooking after Maria left. 
 One day he walked to Princeton and actually rang the 
 president’s doorbell; but it was vacation time, and 
 
A SHUTTLE OF THE GREAT LOOM 149 
 
 nobody was at home, Finally he left the farm, unable 
 to stand its exactions any longer. With ten dollars 
 in his pocket, he took to the road again. 
 
 A young Russian Jew, selling tinware, overtook him 
 and offered him a partnership. In the morning the 
 peddler had disappeared, leaving the tinware, but tak- 
 ing with him Steiner’s ten dollars. The deserted part- 
 ner carried the tinware almost to Philadelphia, and 
 finally disposed of it for a few dollars to a hotel-keeper 
 in a small town. Entering Philadelphia, he walked the 
 streets for miles in search of the one thing there he 
 most desired to see—the Liberty Bell. 
 
 He left again by train that evening, expecting to go 
 as far as his money would carry him. The conductor 
 put him off late at night among the tobacco fields of 
 eastern Pennsylvania, and once more he found a farmer 
 to employ him. © 
 
 Here he worked till autumn, and then moved west- 
 ward again, this time to a’steel mill in “darkest Pitts- 
 burgh,”’ where he pushed an immense hot caldron from 
 a room whose temperature was over two hundred de- 
 grees out into a cold shed, so that his hands were 
 often scorched by the heat while his feet were nearly 
 frozen. At the end of the day, he says, ‘‘All my senses 
 seemed to go to sleep at once,” and he lay too utterly 
 exhausted to care for anything but rest, in a crowded, 
 stuffy boarding house where any kind of a bath was 
 an almost impossible luxury. 
 
 From steel to coal was his next move. In Connells- 
 ville he found work in an underground “world of men 
 
150 LAND OF ALL NATIONS. 
 
 and mules,” where he labored as a helper for a dollar 
 a day. Soon there came a strike, and while trying to 
 go to work he was seized by strikers, beaten and left 
 insensible, and woke to find himself in the county jail. 
 There he was kept six months because an old, rusty 
 revolver was found on him—the gift of a dying man he 
 had befriended in Pittsburgh. 
 
 After his final release, penniless, he set out to tramp 
 to Chicago, working at various things by the way. His 
 chief impression of Chicago was of solid blocks of 
 saloons, with whirling wheels of chance to strip the last 
 penny from the pockets of their frequenters. He 
 worked there first at digging cellars, later in a ma- 
 chine shop. And there he found friends among the 
 Bohemians, before whom—in a saloon—he made his 
 first public speech on the teachings of Tolstoy. 
 
 More strikes and riots, and scarcity of employment 
 drove him forth again into the great harvest fields of 
 Minnesota. Here he found work with a well-educated 
 farmer whose family made friends with him and whose 
 evening household prayers touched him strangely; 
 though because he was still under the influence of cer- 
 tain skeptical books, he was at that time averse to all 
 religion. Here, in this quiet household, he began to 
 dream of a peaceful farm life on broad and fertile 
 acres of his own. But the hatvesting was soon over, 
 and once more he moved—this time to a mining town 
 in Illinois where he lived and worked among Slovak 
 laborers for whom he started English classes, wrote 
 letters, and did all manner of generous things. 
 
A SHUTTLE OF THE GREAT LOOM 151 
 
 His next move was to a near-by city where he worked 
 in a factory owned by the head of the Jewish family 
 who had brought to his home town a glimpse of the 
 wonders of America. One of the sons was manager, 
 but none of the family recognized him. When he got 
 up courage to call upon them, he found that even Maud 
 had forgotten him; but when he was recalled to their 
 memory, they treated him kindly and offered to help 
 him find better employment. On one of his visits, they 
 proposed his studying law. He gave his reasons against 
 it so fluently that Maud remarked in jest, “He talks 
 like a rabbi!” 
 
 This was a suggestion that was taken seriously by 
 the family, who urged him to go to a Hebrew college. 
 He felt that his religious views were not such as a 
 rabbi should hold; but they pressed him at least to 
 go and study, suggesting that he might become a 
 teacher if he did not wish to be a rabbi. Persuaded at 
 last, he did finally start east to the college, working 
 his way by labor on a cattle train. 
 
 On the way a rough Irish youth, who had robbed him 
 and had been threatened with arrest when they reached 
 their destination, tripped him one evening as he was 
 running on top of the moving train. Steiner fell from 
 the car and rose with a painfully injured leg, to limp 
 into a little town near by. While recovering, an in- 
 fluential Jewish woman helped him to a clerkship, and 
 here at last he found a chance for real mental life. 
 He gathered a small library in the back of the store, 
 bought a microscope, and started a Natural Science 
 
152 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 Club. He also taught a modern-language class organ- 
 ized by the public school-teachers. He found other 
 chances to use his knowledge of languages to help 
 many immigrants who had to change cars at the town, 
 which was a junction point, and presently the town 
 officials began to use him in cases concerning people 
 who spoke foreign languages. 
 
 But best of all was the contact with Christian people 
 who made religion a matter of daily practice. He 
 began to attend a church whose pastor, and also the 
 pastor’s wife, seemed to him real examples of Christian _ 
 character. | | 
 
 Yet he hesitated to change his faith. Then he met a 
 young woman of Jewish birth, whose parents had be- 
 come earnest and active Christians. The story of their 
 sincere, unselfish life convinced him that a Jew can 
 really become a Christian without losing what is best 
 in his own faith. From that time his way was clear. 
 
 ‘“‘When one meets Jesus of Nazareth,” he says, “there 
 is no way back; there are new marching orders, and 
 they call ‘F duwardt? 4s 
 
 Not long afterward, the man who had started to bi 
 a rabbi was a student for the Christian ministry. At 
 the first service he attended in Oberlin College chapel, 
 the Scripture was the saying of St. Paul about those 
 who “are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow- 
 citizens.” It seerned to Edward Steiner as if the text 
 had been chosen expressly for him. 
 
 Those words rang again in his memory a few months 
 
A SHUTTLE OF THE GREAT LOOM 153 
 
 later, when he walked seven miles from Oberlin to the 
 county seat to receive his papers as an American citi- 
 zen. He was part of America now—oi the land of 
 brotherhood for all; but brotherhood, he had learned, 
 could be found only in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. 
 
 As a minister in the various parishes he served, his 
 passion was always the helping of the man who was 
 down—the poorest and neediest, particularly new- 
 comers in America. His own experiences had made him 
 familiar with almost every trouble and difficulty of the 
 immigrant, and it was his delight to serve such lonely 
 and bewildered foiks. Sometimes his congregation did 
 not see the duty as he did and objected to having the 
 needs of the immigrant brought to their attention and 
 the foreigner seated in their pews. Then he would 
 leave them and go elsewhere. 
 
 He began to use his vacations for trips to Europe 
 and back in the steerage, to study more closely its con- 
 ditions and their remedy.. He brought abuses to the 
 attentions of the immigration authorities; befriended 
 every class and nationality on the voyage and at the 
 port; and began the writing of the series of books 
 which has made him known as an authority on immi- 
 gration problems. Best known of these are On the 
 Trail of the Immigrant, The Immigrant Tide, its Ebb 
 and Flow, and his own story, From Alien to Citizen. 
 Beside this he has lectured all over the country, trying 
 to make us older Americans see our duty and privilege 
 in helping newcomers. He shows us the immigrant as 
 
154 LAND OF ALL NATIONS 
 
 he is—neither a beast nor a hero, but just a human 
 being like ourselves, who will make a good or a bad 
 citizen according to the treatment he gets from us. 
 
 Not all of this happened at once. It began while he 
 was in the active ministry, but has reached its height 
 since he became Professor of Applied Christianity in 
 Grinnell College, Iowa, about twenty years ago. He 
 has crossed the ocean to Europe and back more than 
 thirty times in the interest of the immigrant of every 
 nationality. He has taken groups of young Americans 
 abroad with him to study the races sympathetically in 
 their Old World surroundings. : 
 
 He compares himself to a shuttle in the hands of » 
 the Master Weaver, thrown back and forth across the 
 sea to weave the Old World and the New together. 
 With his gift for speaking many languages and his 
 greater gift of sympathy with all kinds of people, he 
 has truly woven many threads of friendship and help- 
 fulness that can never be broken. 
 
 “If a good fairy,’ he writes, “were to come from 
 the fairyland of my childhood, and were to ask me to 
 make three wishes, and she would grant them ail, I 
 could make but one wish. Not for wealth, though I 
 could use it; not for strength, although I need it; not. 
 for wisdom, although I lack it. My one wish, and this 
 the fairies cannot grant me, would be that I may have 
 grace given me to be a man to the end, and to the end 
 love my brother man with all the passion of my soul.”