^ JUN 18 1897 ^ BX 8495 .D44 A3 1897 Deems, Charles F. 1820-1893 Autobiography of Charles Force Deems . . Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/autobiographyofcOOdeem_0 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS, D.D., LL.D. AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CHARLES FORCE DEEMS D.D., LL.D. PASTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE STRANGERS, NEW YORK CITY AND PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY AND MEMOIR BY HIS SONS Rev. EDWARD M. DEEMS, A.M., Ph.D. AND FRANCIS M. DEEMS, M.D., Ph.D. New York Chicago Toronto Fleming H. Revell Company Publishers of Evangelical Literature Copyright, 1897, by Fleming H. Revell Company THE NEW YORK TVPE-SETTING COMPANY THE CAXTON PRESS IN FILIAL LOVE THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO OUR MOTHER WHOSE UNSELFISH DEVOTION, TENDER SYMPATHY, AND HELP- FUL ENCOURAGEMENT STIMULATED AND SUSTAINED OUR FATHER IN ALL HIS ASPIRATIONS AND ACHIEVEMENTS PREFACE IN preparing this volume, the editors have been impelled by filial love, indeed, but more especially by the conviction that Dr. Deems was a unique character, who lived through the larger part of the greatest century of the ages and did original work for society. We have been influenced also by the con- viction that when the reader sees how Dr. Deems rose to a sublime life by perseverance, industry, and faith in God, he too will be encouraged to make his life sublime. If the autobiographical notes appear at times too compla- cent, let all blame attach to the editors and not to Dr. Deems, for he wrote for his family only. In our work we have omitted his sermons and many letters and articles written for the press, because of the abundance of such materials, there being enough for another volume. Nevertheless, whenever we could tell the story of his life in his own language we have done so, thus striving to let him speak for himself. Being his sons, we have attempted no elaborate estimate of Dr. Deems's character and work, but have either quoted from the estimates of others or left this matter to the judgment of the reader. We take this opportunity to thank all who have sent us letters or other material, thereby aiding us in our work. We now send forth this book on its mission of love, trusting that it may enable our father, though dead, yet to speak. Edward M. Deems. HORNELLSVILLE, N. Y. Francis M. Deems. New York City. 7 CONTENTS PAGB Preface 7 Part I. Autobiography CHAP. I. Childhood, 1820-30 17 Birth — Earliest recollections — Parents — Named — The circus — Learning to spell — Summerfield's visit CHAP. II. Boy Life in Baltimore, 1830-34 . . . .31 At the Osborn school — Wins a prize for declamation — First speeches — Temperance work — First poems published — Death of his mother — His conversion CHAP. III. College Life at Carlisle, 1834-39 . . .43 Enters Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa. — President Durbin — The faculty — Dr. Deems's classmates — Ruinous habits of study — Carlisle pastors — Escapes from drowning — His ideal of a college course — Closes his college career CHAP. IV. Professional Life Commenced, 1839-44 . . 56 Offered a principalship — Goes to New York City — Impressions of New York — William Cullen Bryant — Teaching — Methodist celebrities — Occasional preaching — Introduced to Miss Disos- way — On the Asbury circuit, N. J. — Goes to North Carolina for American Bible Society — Accepts call to chair of logic and rhetoric in the University of North Carolina— The Holden poem — The faculty of the university — Married to Miss Disosway — Primitive traveling facilities — His courage tested by the students 9 10 CONTENTS Part II. Memoir PAGE CHAP. I. Teaching and Preaching, 1844-jo . . .93 Birth of his first children— President Swain— Professor at Ran- dolph-Macon College— The "Southern Methodist Pulpit" — His views of slavery — Pastor at Newbern, N. C. — General Con- ference at St. Louis— Recollections of Bishop Kavanaugh CHAP. II. President of Greensboro College, 1850-54 . 108 Moves to Greensboro, N. C— Successful work as an educator- Advocates legal prohibition of the drink traffic— Receives the degree of D.D.— Called to Centenary College CHAP. III. Circuit-riding, 1855-56 121 Resigns presidency of Greensboro College — Everittsville circuit — Ira T. Wyche — Life in Goldsboro — Experiences on the circuit -David B. Everitt-" Ghost Elliot "-"The Czar and the Babe" — Glenanna — "Twelve College Sermons" — Relations with the Masons and Odd Fellows— Prosecutor in a notable church trial— " The Annals of Southern Methodism "—In the lecture field CHAP. IV. The Wilmington Parish, 1857-58 . . .139 Appointed to the Front Street Church—" What I Know about Fishing " — Interesting letters— Delegate to General Conference at Nashville— Made pres ding elder of Wilmington district CHAP. V. Teaching and Traveling, 1859-60 . . -153 Moves to Wilson, N. C— St. Austin's Institute— Labors as presiding elder — Visits New York — Meets Commodore Vander- bilt — Sails for Europe — Experiences abroad CHAP. VI. The War, 1861-65 169 Returns from Europe— The breaking out of the war— Extracts from his diary — War experiences — Breaking up of the schools — Death of his son Theodore— Removal to Raleigh— Close of the war— Removal to New York City CHAP. VII. Settling in New York, 1866-70 . . .191 The "Watchman "—Origin of the Church of the Strangers- Commodore Vanderbilt's gift of the church on Mercer Street— Formal opening of the Church of the Strangers on Mercer Street CONTENTS 11 CHAP. VIII. The Church of the Strangers, 1870 . . 222 The constitution of the church— Its ritual— Its organizations for work— Miss Cecile Sturtevant— The Sisters of the Stranger — Secret of the success of the Church of the Strangers CHAP. IX. Life in New York City, 1867-71 . . .236 Home on West Thirty-fourth Street— " Every Month"— Mis- sion work at the " Tombs " — Friendship with Alice and Phoebe Cary formed—" Life of Jesus "— " Hymns for all Christians " — " No Room for Jesus " — Lectures— Extracts from his journal- Death of his father— Death of Alice Cary— Death of Phoebe Cary— Punctuality CHAP. X. Pastor and Author, 1872-76 . . . .251 "Life of Jesus " published— Vanderbilt University founded— Dr. Deems's home in West Twenty-second Street— His home life and traits — Visits Florida — Reception on his return — Incident at Vanderbilt University dedication — " Locates " in New York — Unique church relations — His views of evangelistic work — Becomes editor of "Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine "-Com- modore Vanderbilt's last sickness— Death of Dr. Durbin CHAP. XI. Increasing Activity, 1877-79 .... 270 Poem: "Oh, to be Ready ! "—Death of Commodore Vanderbilt and his funeral at the Church of the Strangers— Southern tour- Receives the degree of LL.D. — Healthful habits — His Saturday sleep — Visits Boston — Alumni oration at Carlisle : " Forty Years Ago"— Resigns editorship of the "Sunday Magazine "—The " Deems Fund " CHAP. XII. In Bible Lands, 1880 289 A Sunday on the sea — In London — In Paris — Letters from Greece, Egypt, Palestine, etc. — Visits the Victoria Institute, London — Returns to America CHAP. XIII. The Institute of Philosophy, 1880-92 . . 308 Reception by his church— History of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy — The "Deems Lectureship of Philosophy " in the University of the City of New York CHAP. XIV. Bearing Much Fruit, 1881-93 • • • -323 Identified with many societies and institutions— Illustrations of his wit — Relations to the Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor— The " Soo Tribe "—Poem : " The Banner of Jesus" —Dr. Deems as a temperance advocate— Anniversary of twenty- 12 CONTENTS one years of Dr. Deems's pastorate— The " Christian Worker "— "The Deems Birthday Book "— " A Romance of Providence " — "The Gospel of Common Sense" — "The Gospel of Spiritual Insight "—" Chips and Chunks for Every Fireside "—" How to Manage a Wife "— " My Septuagint "— Poem : "The Light is at the End "—His last sermon CHAP. XV. Euthanasia 339 Intense toil — Death of Dr. Moran and General and Mrs. Gra- ham—Address of welcome to International Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor convention— Thrilling experience in the rapids of the St. Lawrence River — Stricken with paralysis —The year of illness— Euthanasia— The funeral— Laid to rest on Staten Island, in the Moravian Cemetery — Poem : " In Memoriam," by A. M. N. Appendix 353 I. Outlines of Dr. Deems's Last Sermon— II. Funeral Sermon by the Rev. James M. Buckley, D.D.— III. Memorials of Dr. Deems ILLUSTRATIONS Charles F. Deems Frontispiece Charles F. Deems at the Age of Nineteen, Preaching in New York .... Facing page 65 The Church of the Strangers, Exterior . 203 The Church of the Strangers, Interior . •* 222 IS U3 ; Copvrialit, .88q, by Wilbxr B. Ket. h: PART I AUTOBIOGRAPHY CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD, 1820-30 MY children desire some autobiographical sketches. As permitted I will write them ; the writing may do me good, and what is written may entertain my family. But most sin- cerely I do not believe that there will be a hundred people in the world who will have the least curiosity about my life fifty years after my death. I am told that I was born in the city of Baltimore, Md., on Monday morning, December 4, 1820. The house in which this event, so important to myself, occurred is still (1886) standing on Lower Water Street, near what is called the " Marsh Market." Baltimore was at that time a little city as compared with its present dimensions. My very earliest recol- lections were bounded by the market of which I have spoken and Light Street. One of the first things of which I have any recollection is that of being in love, of which I shall have more to say farther on in these notes. My second recollection is of attending a circus. My nurse was a colored girl of athletic strength but peculiar gait, the latter owing to a dislocation of her left thigh. This circumstance did not seem at all to diminish either her strength or her celerity, while it did afford me a capital saddle- place. Her splendid name was Lucretia, which the family dreadfully abbreviated into ' Creesh." She was entirely de- 17 18 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS voted to me, and, I believe, loved me intensely, unselfishly, and constantly. Her name for me was " Bebe," which, I sup- pose, was a softening of babe, a name too hard to be given to her litde darling. Creesh was accustomed to snatch me up and toss me upon her hip, which I learned to mount with the agility of a monkey, and then she would go tramping through the streets to any kind of gathering, show, meeting, or other collection of people which interested her. She had a negro's delight in spectacular performances, and cultivated an acquain- tance with all the showmen that visited the city. She seemed to have a free entree to all circuses but one. I recollect that upon that occasion, when she sailed up to the door like an ostrich with her little Arab at her side, she was refused admit- tance without pay. She indignantly sailed away. " Me pay? You not let this chile go in that circus? No, sir; I would not go in a circus so mean that would not let me go in without pay!" And she flew back home to tell the family of the in- dignity which had been put upon Bebe and her. She did it with a fiery eloquence that brought the whole family into roars of laughter. My aunt Juliet, with tears of fun running down her cheeks, said, " Do hush, Creesh ; you are as good as a circus yourself." But before this she and I had visited these shows, and once or twice I had been put upon the ponies to ride. I recollect that on one occasion, when I was making my round, the life was nearly frightened out of me by a loose monkey jumping on the pony behind me and striving to clasp me around the waist. The family, of which Lucretia formed no inconsiderable part, was small. It consisted of my father, my mother, and her half-sister, who was with my mother from her earliest married life. My father, George W. Deems, was of a Dutch family, that came from Holland and settled in Maryland somewhere between Baltimore and Reisterstown. The origi- nal name, De Heems, eventually was shortened into Deems. CHILDHOOD 19 I have heard my father tell that his grandmother had spanked him soundly for speaking English, so perseveringly did she hold on to her Dutch. I never saw my grandparents on either side. I know nothing of my father's family above him, except that they were farmers and his mother was a Cole. If there be any great ancestral line I know nothing of it, and, having had an honest, excellent, and revered father and, as far as I know, plain, honest, and decent Dutch grandparents, I do not care to go any farther back. I might go farther and fare worse. My mother's maiden name was Mary Roberts. She was the daughter of the Rev. Zachary Roberts, a Methodist min- ister, who lived on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and who was, I am told, a cousin of the late Robert Roberts, one of the bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church. My mother's grandfather, James Roberts, was a farmer. When my father and mother were married, August 22, 181 1, they were young and poor, but giddy and gay. My mother was especially devoted to dancing. She was a woman of great natural endowments, which largely overcame her want of culture. In the early part of this century girls in her con- dition of life had little schooling. But whatever she under- took she did thoroughly, and by employing what time she could command from her domestic duties in the reading of books she became exceedingly well informed and acquired a literary taste. She devoted herself to religion with that ear- nestness which distinguished her in every department of her activity. I have heard my father say that it shocked him greatly when my mother became religious. He thought it would cut them off from all the pleasures of their lives. He became very unhappy. But one day as he passed her door he heard his wife in earnest prayer to God, pleading as for the very life of her husband. It convinced him that true religion but deepened and heightened and purified the affection of a 20 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS wife for her husband, and the thrilling tones of my mother's prayer so followed him that he determined to become reli- gious ; he began to attend church. One night, during a revival in a Methodist church in Exeter Street, Baltimore, he had a profound sense of his need of a Saviour, but, being surrounded by his companions in pleasure, he had not the courage to go forward to the "altar," as it was called, when the invitation was given to the penitents to present themselves. When one of the ministers came to him as he sat in his seat, betraying his agitation in his manner, and invited him to go and kneel with the other penitents, he made the excuse that he had promised himself he never would become religious in that way, and that to go forward now would be to tell a lie. The good old minister replied: "My young friend, count that promise among your other sins, and go forward now and have the forgiveness of all." The suddenness of the reply brought him to his feet, and he bowed with the other suppliants. But while engaged in prayer he heard a voice next to him which he seemed to recognize, and, looking up, beheld the very man whose presence in the assembly had kept my father from earlier doing his duty ; but when he had come to the point of discharging that duty his friend immediately followed. One of the first things my father and mother did after his conversion was to erect a family altar, and from that time until his death my father carefully held domestic services, which no business was allowed to interrupt. All visitors were invited to join in them, and at that home altar I have heard many of the most notable Methodist ministers and laymen offer prayer. In addition to my father and mother there was, as I have already stated, an aunt. Miss Juliet Roberts, my mother's half-sister, who came very early into the family, being younger than my mother. She remained while we kept together, and at the breaking up of the family went with me to CarHsle when CHILDHOOD 21 I went to college. She was a devoted Christian maiden, and while I write these reminiscences (1886) she is still living in Baltimore, and spent last winter with me in New York, her plain little Methodist bonnet and general drab and Quaker appearance attracting attention to the exquisite, neat httle lady wherever she went. My parents had had a daughter born to them. They named her Josephine, from my mother's admi- ration of the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte. She died in in- fancy. After an interval of nearly eight years I made my appear- ance. As children came so slowly in our family, my parents loaded me down with names. They called me Charles Alex- ander Force. I do not know what friend bore my first name ; it was some one with whom my parents were intimate. The Alexander was for a Mr. Alexander Gaddess, who dealt in marbles and monuments. He was an excellent man, at whose house I recollect to have taken tea frequently with my parents in my childhood. I visited him on the same spot when I was fifty years old. The other name came from the Rev. Manning Force, a Methodist minister, at one time exceedingly popular in Baltimore and Philadelphia. He was an extraordinarily large man. His manners were very pleasing, and that acquired him a reputation he could never have gained by his pulpit talents. He is said to have had two sermons, upon which he played variations. The divisions of one were "The World," " The Flesh," and " The Devil," and the divisions of the other, "The Father," "The Son," and "The Spirit." That may have been a joke perpetrated by one of his clerical brethren who could not make women and children love him as we all loved " Uncle Force." On this matter of naming children I have held forth else- where. Parents do not stop to think of the effect which a name may have. The earliest display of shrewdness upon my part which I can now recollect was in the change of my 22 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS name. I did not come to be a large boy before I found that my initials spelled c-a-f, and I knew that if I entered school with those initials it would not be a week before some other boy would perceive the effect of the collocation of the letters, and that then there would begin a persecution to terminate only with my life. So as soon as I learned to write I signed my name, " C. M. F." I never told my parents the secret reason of the change, and never have spoken or written of it before the writing of these Hnes. I justified myself to the family by saying that Alexander was too big a name for a little boy, and, besides, that I thought " Uncle Force " would rather I should have his whole name. Their affection for him made this really quite an argument, and so I bore the name through college. A few years after I dropped the " M.," and so have passed through public life with three initials instead of four, and a hundred times have wished they were only two. I have only three recollections connected with my first resi- dence. That of the circus I have already narrated. I am not sure whether it preceded another event, namely, my falling in love. I was an exceedingly young man, wearing a little frock, because I had not attained to the dignity of pantaloons. She was a very lovely little lady, but, as almost always happens in the case of first love, she was several years older than her admirer. Her name was Sarah Ridgeway, and her father lived opposite our home. There was a garden attached to her house, and I used to persuade her to come out and sit there and talk with me. More than a half of a century has intervened between those little garden scenes and the time that I am writing, but I rec- ollect as distinctly as if it were yesterday how I sat by her side, how she held my little hand in hers and talked to me, and how my little heart filled almost to bursting with adoration of her charms, and how, because I could not yet speak plainly, CHILDHOOD 23 I called her " Lallie." More powerful passions have swayed me since, and I have gained a more manly, profound, exalted affection for her who has been my fellow-traveler through more than half of life's journey ; but never did I have a sweeter, tenderer, truer sentiment than my infantile affection for " Lallie " Ridgeway. A third recollection comes to me. It was the beginning of my literary pursuits. As touching letters I was a slow and stupid child. At one time it was feared that I never could learn the English alphabet. When that was finally mastered, it was several years before I could at all spell, and then there was a long lapse of time between that and my discovery of the possibility of reading. Both these events are as plain to my memory as if they had been two epileptic fits. My father, my mother, and my aunt Juliet in turn showed me letters of all kinds and colors in books and newspapers and placards. At last it was determined to send me to a little school, taught by an excellent lady, whose name was Oldham and who resided in a httle house on Upper Water Street, near Light Street. She was very kind, and I worked hard. At last I learned to spell a number of words of one syllable. I kept the precious secret to myself for weeks. At last I ascended to dissyllables. These steps in education were taken in Comly's spelling- book. How fresh in memory is my own copy! When I learned to spell " baker," " cider," etc., I could hold my secret no longer. My faithful Creesh was accustomed to take me to school and carry me home. One day when my enthusiastic pedagogue came for me, as we passed out of the gate I said, " Creesh, I can spell ! " Her reply was, " Bebe, hush ! you know you must not tell stories!" Poor thing! although she possessed no literary acquirements, she used to stand by in an agony of interest while the family attempted to teach me my letters. I can recollect to this day her look of mingled love and despair 24 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS when she saw how unavailing were the efforts of my father and mother and aunt Juhet to initiate "the sweetest child that ever was born " into the secrets of literature. No wonder that after such sights at home Creesh felt doubtful of such a huge statement as that "I could spell in two syllables." She exclaimed, " Bebe, you can't learn!" " Yes, I can, though," said I ; " you try me." She incon- tinently sat down on the curbstone and took me in her hip. I opened the spelling-book and turned to the place. On the left-hand page was the picture of a whale, on the right-hand rose the column of dissyllables ; I put my left finger on the first and began to spell. Now the fun of the whole scene was that Creesh didn't know a capital " B " from a moss-rose, and she was the examiner of my literary acquirements. But Creesh had acute ears ; if it sounded all right she passed it ; so when I commenced " b-a-k-e-r," " c-i-d-e-r," at each letter her great eyes grew greater. She felt that that was really spelling " baker " and " cider," and the two words were very familar to Creesh. She used to go often to the baker's, and not infrequently she imbibed cider as a favorite beverage. I was about half-way through the third word when my black ostrich caught me up and, flinging me upon her hip, tore down the street like some- thing wild. Now it so happened that the entire family were assembled around a roll of carpet which was to be laid. Creesh burst in. She was accustomed to call the white mem- bers of the family by the names I called them. She went through the row like a flash. "Fazzer! muzzer! aunt Julet! Bebe kin spell ! " "Hush, Creesh!" said my aunt Juliet, who was often very impatient. " Here you are with one of your yarns again." "I 'clare to gracious, he km spell! You t'inks dis chile a fool, but he ain't none!" My mother, who was concerned about the laying of her carpet, carefully interposed, " Hush, Creesh, be quiet!" CHILDHOOD 25 "But, muzzer, I ain't gwine to be quiet! Bebe kin spell, and you all fixin' the carpet when Bebe kin spell, and you ain't hearin' him! " My father said, " Son, have you learned to spell? " " Yes, sir! " " Well, now let us hear you begin." So I was placed upon the roll of carpet, and the family immediately grouped around me. I have stood a good many tests since that, but few things ever tried my nerves so much. I was afraid that in my ex- citement I should fail. That would put Creesh in trouble and spoil my reputation for veracity, and, behind it all, I had a feeling that if I failed now I never would be able again to spell in dissyllables. But I commanded myself enough to go down the entire " baker " and " cider " column. The gratifica- tion of my family was intense. My father has since that held a volume of my writings in his hands, but I do not think that I ever gave him greater delight. Before the admiring eyes of my fond mother and aunt there stretched vistas of great literary acquirements for the beloved boy, and I can hardly keep the tears back as I now recall the face of poor Creesh. Her eyes stretched till the whites were startling to behold ; her mouth opened almost from ear to ear, and the delight of her soul was so great that it seemed as though she would grow frantic. After the home triumph she caught me up and sailed round the whole neighborhood, exhibiting me at every house as the Bebe who could "spell in two syllables." While I was still quite young my parents moved to Upper Water Street. It was a pleasant residence. I have very few memories of what happened there, but there are a few things important. I remember that I still sucked my thumb, and the family had great difficulty in breaking me of the habit. I remem- ber my chagrin, after I had been thought to have stopped, at my mother looking out from the window and seeing me as I 26 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS sat in the door, having for the moment resumed my old com- fort. Her upbraiding me for want of firmness in resisting the temptation stung me to the very quick. I recollect also that it was at this residence that, when some money had been given me, I failed to resist the temptation to make a purchase of something good to eat on a Sunday after- noon. The scorpion lashes of my conscience for this act I shall never forget. Mingled with them also was the shame of having been detected, and by my mother. Her good opinion was my heaven ; she stood to me a representative of the purity as well as the providence of God. My mental suffering, and the correction which she administered, effectually cured me of all Sunday purchases, and from that day to this I have never bought anything on Sunday except what seemed to be neces- sary medicines. I have another remembrance of this residence. There was high political excitement. Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams were candidates for the Presidency. I was a strong Adams boy. Just because I had heard ugly campaign stories about General Jackson. I could not read. I was too small to attend any meeting. My recollection is confined to certain noises made in the streets at night. I also distinctly recollect that the watchmen of the city used to cry the hour. Sometimes I would be awakened and a great awe would come upon me as I heard the watchman cry, " It is— ho! —three o'clock, Sunday morning! All's well!" That seemed to be a municipal regulation so that the wakefulness of the watchmen of the city might be secured, for if a watchman failed to make his cry any household on his beat could report him. The most beautiful remembrance I have of this residence is a visit of John Summerfield to my mother. In i860 I em- bodied that remembrance in a letter to my dear friend, the Rev. Dr. Sprague, for his " Annals of the American Pulpit." As I cannot repeat it any better, I insert the letter here : CHILDHOOD 27 "Wilson, N. C, March i6, i860. " My dear Sir : Among the very first of my recollections of men, and certainly of Methodist ministers, is of John Summer- field. Amid all subsequent studies, travels, labors, joys, and sorrows there has followed me the serene image of his winning manners and his extraordinary face — a face so full of strange beauty and a suppressed pain. None of the extant portraits I have been able to examine presents that remarkable face as it has dwelt in my memory. One is so much softer and more girlish, and another is, especially about the mouth, so much coarser, than the original. The expression of a tugging pain, which he seemed to be perpetually holding down by the main force of his will, as a man would hold a wolf which he was barely able to master, kept my childish heart in awe before the feeble, strong man. And yet something about him so drew my heart that all toys and sports would be left at his approach, that I would find myself unconsciously at his side. It seemed so strange that a man whose name was in all mouths, and whose wondrous utterances in the pulpit, although beyond my comprehension, I could not fail to see producing great effects upon the grown people around me and exerting a magnetism over my heart, could be playful ; and yet, when a blister was drawing on his chest, I have known him to sit at the fireside of my father's house and for a quarter of an hour at a time, with raillery and badinage, exert himself to arouse me to a controversy and to provoke me to give ' as good as he sent.' But he always had the upper hand, for though, when some- times stung, I was willing to reply perhaps impertinently, I could never look into his eyes, which had a peculiar and not always angelic expression, without dropping the weapons of my childish repartee. " It was my blessed mother who drew him to oiu" house, and who has since rejoined him in the city of our God. Her 28 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS peculiar, sympathetic nature created a strong tie between them, and her determined will and strong faith made her such a fe- male friend as Summerfield always needed and always appre- ciated. She was like an older sister to Summerfield, and, I believe, made strong prayers for him daily and almost hourly. For a time, while in Baltimore, he had his lodgings with Dr. Baker, I think, on the corner of Charles and Lexington streets. On one occasion I accompanied my mother to see him, after he had been confined several days. Not being allowed to go into the sick-chamber, I was left to amuse myself with a number of toys in the sitting-room below. It seemed a long time before my mother returned, and I can now distinctly recall her expression of sorrow for the sufferings of her friend, and the elevated, saintly joy which the interview seemed to have afforded her. Thus upon young and old he exerted the power of his pure spirit. I heard him preach in what the children of my acquaintance were accustomed to call 'The Round Church,' on the corner of Sheaf and Lombard streets. On this occasion his strength failed before the completion of his discourse, and he dropped his handkerchief as a signal for the uprising of the orphan children, whose cause he was pleading. The remembrance of his words and tones, his gracefulness, his exhaustion, his lovingness, all united with the silent standing up of the children to create a most thrilling sensation.* " The last time I can recollect having seen him in public was at the preaching of a sermon in Dr. Breckenridge's church, in Eastern Baltimore Street. A large body of military was present. I recall not a word of the discourse, and only have in my remembrance the contrast between the helmeted and * Upon reflection, I think I may have confounded two things. I heard the sermon, and I also heard Summerfield preach in that church, which be- longed, I believe, to the Baptist denomination ; but whether I heard that sermon in that church I do not so well remember. CHILDHOOD 29 uniformed soldiery and the serene, placid, pure young preacher, who stood up amid them, setting the story of the cross to the music of his intonations, and teUing it with the ardor of his elevated and holy enthusiasm ; and I remember how deeply I felt his irrepressible devotion to the ministry', by a remark of my mother as we were threading our way out through the crowd : ' Dear fellow, three blister-plasters on him, and he talking so like an angel ! ' "The most vivid picture before me is Summerfield's last visit to my father's house. After an earnest conversation with my mother about matters of religion and the church, which I could not understand, he turned to me, and commenced, in his playful way, to get up a battle. 'And, Charlie, what is your middle name?' 'Why, Uncle Summerfield, I told you long ago, and you ought to remember.' ' Oh, I am such a forgetful fellow, please tell me again.' And I told him again. 'Frosty! Frosty! What a cold name for a warm boy!' ' Not Frosty, Uncle Summerfield, not Frosty ; you know as well as I do that it is not Frosty.' ' Do tell me again! Sister Deems, am I growing old and deaf? ' And so for a long time we had it, and I never could determine whether he really did misunderstand me, or was merely making game of me. At last he dropped it all, and calling me to him, told me that he was going away, perhaps never to return, and that he wished to pray with my mother and me before we parted. We knelt, my mother at her own chair, and I beside Mr. Summerfield's. His intonations and emphasis were always peculiar to my ear, and especially on this occasion. I paid little attention to the prayer until it became personal to the family. He prayed for my father, and then with what tender, loving tones for my mother, that, whereas to him, a stranger in a strange land, she had been such a comfort, so her boy might, everywhere in life, find friends to sustain and console him. And then he interlaced his fingers, and bringing his hand like a band over my head, 30 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS he prayed most impressively and especially for me, that God would call me to the work of the ministry. Up from under these hands I peeped, child as I was, to see how he looked, and down into my heart there sank a picture whose hnes are as sharp and whose coloring as fresh this day as they were the day it took its place in the gallery of my memory. Just in that picture, and with that look, I have preserved Summerfield to myself. It was a look of awe, of gratitude, of exaltation, and of tenderness. He seemed so full of the thought of the solemnity of talking with God, and the pain of parting from a cherished friend, of gratitude to God for putting him into the ministry of Jesus, and an appreciation of the grandeur of that work, and a feeling of tenderness to all who had loved him therein, and a sense of the responsibility of invoking a blessing even upon a boy ! The face was lovely and great and luminous. " He arose, and with humid eyes left us, never to return. And my mother sat and wept. And I was thoughtful. I did not like that prayer, dear Dr. Sprague. I did not say in my heart, 'Amen;' for I did not want to preach the gospel with blister-plasters on my back and breast. And in after years, when the question of the ministry came home to my con- science, I had great disturbance lest my call might be only from Summerfield and not also from my God. " I have written these paragraphs to present an account of the impression this blessed young minister of Jesus made upon women and children, that being, in my humble judgment, the best criterion known to men of the real character of their fellows. " I am, my dear sir, most sincerely yours, "C. F. Deems." CHAPTER II BOY LIFE IN BALTIMORE, 1830-34 From some personal recollections, dated May 10, 1839, written just be- fore leaving college, the following extracts are made. IN May of 1830 my mother and myself paid a visit to Philadel- phia, to the family of the Rev. Manning Force, from whom I received my middle name. Being only nine years of age, of course I remember but little of the city, and need only record the recollection I have of the Rev. Dr. Sargeant and his kind family. The doctor has since deceased. He was struck with paralysis while preaching. While in Philadelphia my mother felt the first symptoms of the disease which terminated in her death. What that disease was I have never been able to learn. On my return from Philadelphia I was placed in the school of the Rev. V. R. Osborn. I can never forget the love which I entertained for this gentleman ; mild and benignant, he won my esteem, and inspired in me an affection for himself and his family which will last forever. He was in Baltimore some time before he brought on his family from New England, and he treated me as kindly as though I had been his son. This familiarity with our family attached him to us all, and I looked upon him more as a relative than a schoolmaster. [A break in the autobiographical notes occurs at this point, but the substance of the incident whose close is narrated in the next paragraph we give from our recollection of Dr. 31 32 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS Deems's account of it. It appears that in a hall in Baltimore there was held a pubhc competition, by boys from the schools of the city, for a gold medal to be awarded to the youth who should deliver the best declamation. Among other competitors appeared Charles Deems, of Mr. Osborn's school. When his name was called, with great inward trepidation he stepped forward and delivered his declamation with all the energy and oratorical effect that he could command. — Ed.] With the closing words, " A patriot Tell, a Bruce of Ban- nockburn," I sank back to my seat perfectly exhausted. The judges communed for a few minutes, when the president of the board announced that, with but one single opposing vote, I was declared victor. The loud expression of congratulation which greeted the announcement was the sweetest music that has ever fallen on my ear. From the hall I hastened to the embrace of my mother, who was detained by sickness, and the excitement of the afternoon confined me to my bed. My medal bears date " June 5, 1832, aged 1 1 years and 6 months." A certificate dated July 4, 1832, signed '' V. R. Osbom, princi- pal," and " E. G. Welles, professor of rhetoric and history," at- tests that the " honorable board " gave me preference at the second trial also. During the following fall my time was occupied with my studies and writing. I was quite a hard student. I would generally be up with my father before daybreak, closely applied to my books. My parents indeed seemed to fear that this intense application was injuring my health. The first item which I have journalized was my first speech delivered at a little Sunday-school two or three miles from the city, at a place called Hart's factory. This was the commencement of my career in original speaking, and was of course very simple, even with the assistance of my father's experience. I have the memorandum of a little incident which I will record, although not of any peculiar interest but by the asso. BOY LIFE IN BALTIMORE 33 ciation it calls up. It is my father's preaching in one of the graveyards of the city on the Sabbath evening of May 5, 1833. I remember the beautiful afternoon, the solemn service, the affected assembly. In that graveyard was a beautiful spot where had been interred an infant, and I have often gazed on its fresh grass and secluded situation and wished that I might be permitted to lie there. Melancholy was one of my first companions. On the nth of the following June I delivered an address at Elk Ridge, Md., on the subject of "Temperance"; on the 14th of the following July I spoke at Whatcoat Chapel on " The Advantages of Sunday-schools " ; and on the 28th of the same month I delivered an address before the Juvenile Temperance Society, in Wesley Chapel. (Memorandum.— Father presented me with the watch which I have at present, August 7, 1833.) About this time I heard the Rev. John N. Maffit preach for the first time. Eloquence has ever thrilled me with most peculiar feelings, and for nights I listened with rapt attention to his discourses. I find passages in my journal, and particu- larly anecdotes, which he was so peculiarly felicitious in re- lating, which were wTitten before the excitement his sermons produced had entirely subsided. There is a witchery and eloquence for which I am not able to account, and yet he holds his congregations almost perfectly entranced. In September of 1833 my father and I made a temperance excursion to Elkton, Md. I notice this incident as marking a happy period of my life. I was here called before the public on several occasions, and formed during my visit a Juvenile Temperance Society. (My whole soul was devoted to the temperance cause about that time, and it is even now a cause in which my affections are enlisted. I ever after looked upon this society with the eyes of peculiar regard. What has since been its fate I am unable to tell.) 34 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS In October, 1833, the missionaries Wright and Spaulding left America for Liberia in Africa. During their stay in Bal- timore I became acquainted with them, and became peculiarly attached to the first-named gentleman. Indeed, when I en- tered the parlor, where I had an introduction to him, he singled me from a large company which had come to pay their respects to these devoted men, and taking me in his lap, he held me to his bosom as a near relative. He gave me his address on paper, which sacred relic I still preserve, and insisted on our corresponding. On board the steamboat, when it was about to leave the city to carry them to the vessel, he took me in his arms and wept over me as over a beloved brother ; indeed, so greatly were we moved that a gentleman standing near inquired of my father if we were not brothers. Alas, the eloquent, the zealous, the devoted Wright sleeps beside his beautiful wife in the hot soil of Africa! I pray Heaven that if it is consistent with divine providence I may be permitted to stand by the grave of my beloved and lamented Wright, and preach " the unsearchable riches of Christ." About this period my father gave up his business by selling off his stock in trade to a man by the name of . My father's being kept out of his just dues at this time has been probably the whole cause of my passing through college with such contracted means, and the many heartburnings and miseries which poverty will ever bring upon a student. Oh, if there is a situation truly to be deplored, it is that of an enthusiastic youth burning with desire for knowledge and yet under the galling restraint of a limited supply of means! From my first recollections I can recall the remembrance of the in- tense interest which I took in my father's business, and the great pain which the perplexity of his concerns caused me. A slight incident will illustrate them : I was once returning from the dentist's with my mother, weeping bitterly for the pain caused by the extraction of two teeth. To soothe me as BOY LIFE IN BALTIMORE 35 much as possible she proposed to stop in a book-store where my father had an account and purchase me a toy book. I would not consent to this, for I remembered that I had heard my father sigh on the previous evening when making a calcu- lation of the amount of his notes which would be due that week. As young as I was, I would not permit mother to add the small- est amount to the weight which rested already upon my father. In October of this year I again visited Elkton to stir up my little temperance society and to cultivate the friendship which I had formed for several families in that place. Toward the close of 1833 I commenced to correspond with the "Temper- ance Herald," a publication of some interest when first started, but which has now dwindled into an insignificant sheet. This was my first appearance in public print. The articles arrested the attention of the editor of the " Mechanic's Banner," a literary paper, who requested me to let him have some few articles. I wrote for him a series of little papers under the title of the " Pretended Beggar," and, indeed, gave him occa- sional articles until he left the city. Sabbath, February 9, 1834, 1 delivered a speech at Reisters- town, Md., on the subject of Sabbath-schools. In May of this year the first pieces of poetry I ever pub- lished made their appearance in the " Mechanic's Banner." Previously to this my reading in poetry had not extended beyond the hymn-book of the Methodist Episcopal Church and a few stray pieces of newspaper rhyme. About this time I find in my journal that I became very much attached to Virgil's ^neid, and to this day I prefer it to all the classics with which I have become acquainted. His Bucolics are also favorites of mine. Never having read his Georgics, I cannot tell how I should be pleased with them ; not much, however, I presume, and the agricultural terms cannot well be appreciated. I have read some books of the .^neid over several times. 36 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS The first volume of poetry I remember to have read was Moore's " Lalla Rookh," in my freshman year.* The year 1834 was an eventful year for me. Its earliest days looked in upon the room in which my mother was fight- ing a long battle with death. There has never been a day since in which I could not call up most vividly the circum- stances attending the last hour. We had been a small family from my first recollection, just four of us : father and mother, her half-sister, — whom 1 always called "Aunt Juliet," — and myself. My training had devolved upon my mother and my aunt. I have always felt the evil of being an only child. I am frequently humiliated by a sudden sense of a selfishness which would have been corrected if I had been reared with brothers and sisters younger or older than myself. And then I also suffered from that other trouble which besets an only child, the trouble of being exceedingly much raised ; the hav- ing two women with scarcely anything else to do but to devote themselves to this one individual boy. The being the only son of two mothers, one an invalid and the other an old maid, was a most trying position. My mother was a woman of strong character; she ruled wherever she went, and had unusual natural abilities, with the very slight school culture of that day. She was a woman of prodigious faith and great gifts in prayer. I have heard her pray till strong men bowed their faces to the very carpet on the floor. The remembrance of her prayers is such that I can never speak of them without feeling that tingling in my blood which one feels while hearing thrilling eloquence ; and it has been fifty-two years since that voice was stilled. Her inva- lidism extended over a long period ; indeed, I am told that she never was well after the hour of my birth. Her disease caused so much pain that the physicians administered great quantities of laudanum. It became so costly that when I was eleven * End of extracts from recollections, dated May 10, 1839. BOY LIFE IN BALTIMORE 37 years of age I was taught how to make the laudanum, and would buy the spirits and the opium in quantities. I recall now the very appearance of the knife with which I was accus- tomed to cut the opium into small pieces before putting it into the bottle of spirits. I do not believe that I have tasted opium for half a century ; but some of it would stick to my fingers, and I frequently took it off with my teeth. I look back to that experience with wonder that I totally escaped addiction to either alcohol or opium. The effect of this drug upon my dear sick mother was necessarily to obscure her fine intellect and strong natural spirits, so that very frequently she was under a cloud, very frequently irritable, very frequently feeling as if her trust in God were gone, and she could read no portion of her title to a mansion in the skies. Then at other times her pain was frightful. I have had my hand crushed in hers, and my arm held tightly, so tightly as to exhibit the marks of my mother's fingers. But my devotion to her never ceased, and it has been a comfort to all my after life that the assurance has never failed me of my being a comfort to her up to the last moment of her mortal life. She who in former years had been such a buoyant, triumphant Christian had, during the latter years, been in heaviness through temptation that at the last moment she should lack dying grace. But God was better to her than all her fears. When the last came I was not a Christian, and this was a real sorrow to her; but she died believing that her only son would live to be a useful Christian man, and expressed that belief in the most decided tones. She had always been fond of Pope's poetry, and her last intelligible articulations were made in striving to repeat Pope's version of the Roman emperor's little poem. She spoke it gaspingly: " Vital spark of heavenly flame, Quit, oh, quit this mortal frame ; Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying— Oh the pain, the bliss, of dying! 38 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS " Cease, fond nature, cease thy strife, And let me languish into life! " Then for some time there was silence; she had almost ex- ceeded her strength. My recollection is that she missed the next verse in the well-known poem, but evidently her mind was going over the sentence. She began again, gasping at each word : " The world recedes, it disappears. Heaven — heaven — heaven — " She could not get farther, she looked into our eyes. My aunt added the next line : " Opens on our eyes." My mother smiled, nodded her head, and closed the eyes into which we had been gazing, to open the eyes of her spirit on the vision of God. The year 1834 was also remarkable in my history as the date of the beginning of my church-membership, the breaking up of our little family, and my departure for college. I had always been a serious boy, and really desired to be rehgious. The death of my mother brought a crisis in my experience; I desired to live with her forever. I had promised to meet her in heaven. I was not a vicious boy; very few external violations of the moral law had marked my short history, and yet I felt that there was need of some act of consecration which should separate me from the world, and that for my own spiritual purification and growth there was needed some- thing to be received into my heart. This led me to listen carefully to religious conversations, to seek to hear practical preaching, and to find out what that " change of heart " meant of which I heard the Methodist brethren speak so much. If my mother had been living, as she was a few years before, in the fullness of her powers, and I had opened my heart to her, how she might have led me! As it was, I remembered many £0Y LIFE IN BALTIMORE 39 of her teachings, and think that I was very much affected by her spirit, but I did not know how to come out " on the Lord's side." My father and my aunt, as I afterward learned, were deeply solicitous for my condition, and became more anxious as I became more reserved ; and I became more reserved as my religious exercises deepened in my soul. I have since learned how natural this is, and know how to appreciate the delicacy of the soul of a young person who shrinks from talking about that which concerns his innermost being and which really is indescribable. But through the spring I had fixed upon an approaching camp-meeting which was to be held in the summer, about fourteen miles from the city, on what was called the Reisters- town road. When the time of preparation had arrived the question of our going came up in oiu" little circle, and my father observed that he did not think he would go ; he could see no good of it. This startled me ; it seemed to be taking away my day of grace. I made a quick expression of desire that we should go, and he said to me, " Son, you have had so many religious opportunities that I am afraid to go to camp-meeting with you, for if you pass through those exercises unconverted, you will come out harder than you are now." I said, " O father, do go!" and I suppose there must have been more in the expression of my face than in my words, as I learned the next day that we were to attend camp-meeting, and afterward learned from my father that he saw in my countenance that something unusual was passing in my mind. The camp-meeting of that day was very different from things that bear that name in this. There were no two- and three- story cottages with bay-windows and balconies, with carpeted floors, pictured walls, and swinging cages of birds. Every tent was really a tent— canvas put up on poles. Before the en- campment there were no signs of it, and, but for the fires and 40 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS the clearings for the " stand," as it was called, and the arbor, there were no signs after the encampment departed. Two or three city churches would unite, and their officers would take charge of the whole affair. Companies went out on wagons, with their tents, their bedding, and their cooking utensils. On one such occasion we started up the turnpike. We passed quite near the place where my father was reared. That neighborhood had its ghost-stories, as every neighborhood has. My father had told me several, to all of which there was a rational explanation. But there was one which none of us could ever explain ; it was as follows : Within a few rods of the turnpike a gentleman had, in the days of my father's boyhood, undertaken to build a dweUing. Before it was finished, the inner walls, however, being plastered, my father and some other urchins saw a light in the house one night, and went to its open door, where they beheld an old hag, who was considered a sort of witch in the neighborhood, sitting and warming herself beside a very large fire made of shavings, blocks, and other light pieces of wood. The flame roared up the chimney, and the old crone was holding her hands toward its genial warmth. When the boys came near the door and saluted her she rose with a stick to drive them off. Her rising was enough, for they fled with terror. Next morning, when the sun was shining and the workmen had re- turned, the boys came back and examined the fireplace. It was absolutely clean, the bricks and the mortar which joined them being fresh and free from any mark of fire. This was a great puzzle to the boys, and no explanation of it ever was reached, but the house was always uninhabitable. A number of families had tried to live in it and had failed ; after a night or two they were flung from their beds. The owner had never been able to occupy it himself nor to keep a tenant, and, after a few efforts, the house came to have such a bad fame that it could neither be sold nor given away. All this I had heard years before. BOY LIFE IN BALTIMORE 41 We were approaching tlie house in the gloaming, and I determined to try the strength of my nerves; so I jumped from the wagon, let it pass the house a little distance, and then entered. It was an old-looking house now, for the weather had beaten through it. There was light enough to see. I boldly walked to the middle of the room, out of which stairs ascended to the second story. At the turn of the stairs I laid my hand upon the open floor above, and thought I would simply draw myself up and look in. All at once all the ghost-stories that I had ever heard in my life rushed upon my mind. I heard the dying sounds of the retreating wheels as they passed away. It flashed upon me that some mischievous or wicked persons might use the bad fame of the house to carry out their improper designs upon travelers, and that so unnerved me that I dropped to the floor and ran after the wagon. I have never had any belief in ghosts, and have always gone into weird places, sometimes visiting graveyards at midnight just to see if I could do it. And yet I do believe from that early experience and subsequent experiments, whatever may be the state of a man's logical understanding toward the whole sub- ject of ghosts, in the bravest of boys and of men there is something in what they have heard which so affects the ima- gination as in some measure to unnerve them. The camp-meeting was held on what the Baltimore Meth- odists of that day were accustomed to call " Clark's Old Ground." In the personal recollections (1839) already re- ferred to, I find the following record of my experience : On the bright and beautiful morning of August i8th — can I ever forget the scene?— I accompanied a young friend to an adjoining hill. I there erected an altar of stone, and, bowing down, I resolved never to rise until God should speak peace to my soul. My cries for mercy drew several persons to the spot. I wrestled for a long time. I had laid down a partic- ular plan in which I wished to receive the blessing, but when 42 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS I gave myself up entirely to God, then he listened to my prayer, and answered it to the joy and comfort of my soul. It did not come, as I had supposed, like the rushing of a mighty wind, but it was a still, small voice, whispering, " Peace." I knew not how long I was on my knees, but was so earnestly engaged as not to know that I was surrounded by strangers. When I arose the fields seemed greener, the air sweeter, and the heaven itself brighter, and my soul was filled with love. CHAPTER III COLLEGE LIFE AT CARLISLE, 1834-39 MY mother's death had made a great break in our circle. My father had been a local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and would have entered what is called the itinerancy but for my mother's health. When she was gone I was still left with my aunt, the half-sister who had reared me, and who was devoted to me then as she is now (1886), and who could not be separated from me. For months my father was in doubt as to what course to pursue. I was not quite ready for college. His losses in business and the ex- penses of my mother's sickness necessitated the consideration of economy. It was just at this juncture that Dickinson College, in Carhsle, Pa., passed over from the hands of the Presbyterians to the hands of the church in which my father was a minister. The Methodists reorganized the college with great vigor. At that time there was in the city of Baltimore a man of extraordinary physical and intellectual endowments, the Rev. Stephen George Roszell, who had great influence over my father. He came to see us. He insisted upon my going to Dickinson College, and met the difficulty of my lack of preparation by the statement that a most excellent prepara- tory school was to be organized in connection with that college. He increased the inducements by offering to take my father and myself to Carlisle in his own carriage. 43 44 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS It was determined that we should go to the college to hear the new president's inaugural. To me the ride was one of very great interest. Before the existence of railroads one saw the country so much better in carriages and on foot. This time we rode ; but in one of my college vacations afterward, when I wanted to revisit my native city, my funds were so low that I walked the distance to within twelve miles of Baltimore, out to which point a railway had been made. So from Balti- more, on that old Reisterstown road, up to Carlisle in the beautiful Cumberland Valley, I once knew the whole road. In the summer of 1834 my father took me to Carlisle and entered me in the preparatory school of Dickinson College. This institution, as I have already stated, had just passed from the hands of the Presbyterians into the control of the Metho- dist Church. It was intended to do for the Methodists of the Middle States what Wesleyan University was accomplishing for New England. The Baltimore and Philadelphia confer- ences of the Methodist Church had it especially in charge, and they entered upon the work of rehabilitation with great zeal and managed it with marked ability. Perhaps no college in America ever started with a more able faculty. The Rev. Dr. John Price Durbin, who had had experience in the colleges of Kentucky, was called to the presidency. He was an ex- traordinary man in many particulars. As a pulpit orator he had attracted the attention of the nation while traveling for the other colleges with which he had been connected. In person he was slight. His face was not handsome, neverthe- less it was peculiarly attractive. The life of it was in an eye of remarkable expression. When calm it was sweetly benevo- lent, but when excited it seemed really to flash. His sermons very frequently dwelt on speculative themes. In the beginning of their delivery there was such a drawl that when he went to strange places persons who knew nothing of the fame of the preacher would frequently leave the church in disgust while COLLEGE LIFE AT CARLISLE 45 he was reading the morning lessons or the hymns or making the opening prayer. He would drag on sometimes for fifteen or twenty minutes, making preliminary statements, searching the mind for some startling thought. The expression of his countenance in the beginning was that of a man intently in- terested in what he had in hand, as if preparing to do some- thing startling with it. Suddenly, without premonition, lifting himself to his height, he would flash the climacteric sentence on his audience. A shock from an electric battery could not have produced more marked effect. Sometimes the whole audience would be startled into a movement forward. I remember that in one of his sermons he administered such a shock that, sitting in the gallery of the church, I was com- pelled to run into the street to avoid outright screaming. After my graduation, when he had quit the college, I went to his church in Philadelphia on one of the hottest days of sum- mer—and no place on earth that I have ever visited can become hotter than Philadelphia. The house was packed. Nearly every one slept, except while standing to sing, and many of the congregation were too much overcome to do that. It was one of those dull, hot days when it seems impossible to keep awake. It was one of the four times in my life in which I had slept during divine service. Even under those circumstances, several times during the discourse Dr. Durbin roused his audience by the peculiar intonations of his voice and administered that peculiar thrill. I could see the audience in the thrill, and then, when it was over, relapse into slumber. Dr. Durbin not only was very attractive in the pulpit, but he had excellent governing powers. He won the respect of the students, administered discipline wisely and well, and kept the conditions between the faculty and the body of students comfortable. He had four remarkable men associated with him. On our way from Baltimore to Carlisle we stopped to pay 46 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS our respects to the Rev. Bishop Emory, who lived on the road about sixteen miles from Baltimore. While my father w^as conversing with him I was sent outdoors to play with the children, one of whom was a sweet little girl, who afterward grew to be an admirable woman and died the wife of my friend and classmate, the Rev. Dr. George R. Crooks. When it was time for my father to resume the journey, a tall young man of blond complexion and wearing glasses recalled us to the house. It was the bishop's son, Robert Emory, who had been called to the chair of ancient languages in the college. His father had been book-agent of the Methodist Church, and Robert had been graduated with distinction in Columbia Colkge in the city of New York. He was not a brilliant man, but he had rare equipoise of mind and an elevated, manly nature, a thorough training, and all the ways of a gen- tleman. He not only discharged his duties as a teacher with piety and success, but devoted much of his time to personal intercourse with his students and attention to their religious condition. To the chair of mathematics there had been called a brilliant young man, recently graduated from the University of Penn- sylvania, John McClintock, afterward distinguished by the contributions he made to religious literature, especially as editor-in-chief, up to the time of his death, of McClintock and Strong's Encyclopedia. The professor of moral philosophy was Merritt Caldwell, a layman, who had come from Bowdoin College, in Maine. He was a quiet, distinguished, scholarly man. To promote econ- omy among the students each young man was assigned to a professor who had charge of his financial affairs. Professor Caldwell received the amounts my father sent him and acted as my bursar. A fifth man was in that young faculty, a layman, Professor William H. Allen, who had charge of the department of natu- COLLEGE LIFE AT CARLISLE 47 ral science. His was a rich mind. His lectures were peculiarly charming, and his store of thought and illustration appeared to be exhaustless. After leaving Dickinson College he became president of Girard College and of the American Bible So- ciety. How these five men did work, and what enthusiasm they kindled among the students! They were so different, so in- dividual, so earnest, making themselves so acquainted with the peculiarities of the dispositions and circumstances of all the students, that their influence now seems to me wonderful. Only one is now (1887) living, Dr. Allen, president of Girard College, who has just resigned the presidency of the American Bible Society on account of advancing years. In charge of the preparatory school was a Mr. Dobbs. He left soon after I entered college, and the last I heard of him he was in the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church. I spent one year in the preparatory school, and boarded in town with a family named Keeney. My father had made arrange- ments that my aunt. Miss Roberts, should accompany me. Her devotion to me was so great that she could not endure to be separated from me. Thus it came to pass that I had the protection of this most affectionate and pious woman. She is living while I write this, forty-two years after quitting college, and this very morning I hear from a near relative in Baltimore that she is pining to see her " old boy." Having her oversight and affectionate caresses was a blessed thing for me. I was admitted to the freshman class in the summer of 1835, a class which graduated seventeen strong. Of that number five entered the ministry, three in the Presbyterian Church and two in the Methodist. Of the men in my class few have become distinguished. Daniel E. M. Bates died chancellor of the State of Dela- ware. He was a gentle, excellent, high-minded boy, and be- came a noble and useful man. 48 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS James D. Biddle, a relative of Nicholas Biddle, well known as the president of the Bank of the United States when Gen- eral Jackson made his famous movement on it, was a very agreeable and gentlemanly student. William F. Roe was an excellent scholar, and afterward became professor in Shelby College, in Kentucky. Lemuel Todd was in after years a general in the army of the United States during the Civil War, and afterward repre- sented his district in Congress. In the class next after ours was Spencer Fullerton Baird, who afterward became distinguished for his scientific attain- ments and for the position which he held at the head of the Smithsonian Institution. While in college he showed his great fondness for studies in natural history, spending much of his time in the fields and streams around Carlisle, noting the habits of animals. George R. Crooks was a member of our class, but by reason of ill health fell back and was graduated with the class of 1840. He was a laborious student. His thickness of hearing was very much in his way. I recollect distinctly how, when he recited in the ancient languages, he was accustomed to go and stand beside the professor while making his translation. He afterward became quite distinguished in the Methodist Episco- pal Church, was a professor in Dickinson College, and assisted Dr. McClintock in his great cyclopedia. For years he was the editor of the " Methodist," published in New York, and subsequently professor in Drew Theological Seminary. George David Cummins entered the freshman class when ours became junior. He became the well-known founder of the Reformed Episcopal Church. My first room was in the old building, a long room over the chapel. At that time interest in the two literary societies was very intense, the members of the Belles-Lettres and the Union Philosophical societies severally exerting themselves to secure COLLEGE LIEE AT CARLISLE 49 members. I joined the latter and took very great interest in all its affairs to the close of my career. My habits of study were ruinous. No one then seemed to have any care for the health of students. A man or boy, as the case might be, was allowed to go forward without warning in regard to his health. Frequently I studied until twelve o'clock at night and rose next morning at four. No boy, at my time of hfe, should have been allowed to do such a thing as that. Afterward I modified it, studying until eleven, then walking up and down the campus, my mind occupied in mus- ings, in brown studies, or in excited thoughts about the future. In my freshman year I know there were periods in which I went from Sunday night when I returned from church, until Sunday morning when I went to church, without going out of college. Of course such things told on my health. The pulpit in Carhsle was an educational influence. The two Methodist preachers who were stationed in the town during my term were the Rev. George G. Cookman and the Rev. Thomas A. Thornton. Both these gentlemen had been stationed in Baltimore and were friends of my father. Under the former I had become a member of the church before going to college. His name is one that is likely to live in the annals of Methodism. An Englishman by birth, he had not been in this country many months before he made a national reputation by a most extraordinary speech before the American Bible Society. From that day to the day of his death he drew crowds. He was a slender man, trim, well made, about the medium height, very alert in his actions, with a ringing voice and a gray eye full of life. He afterward became chaplain of the Senate of the United States. He started on a return voyage to his native land in the unfortunate " President," which has never been heard from since her departure from the American port. His sermons were neither profound nor pol- ished, but they were full of life, and very vivifying to the hearer. 50 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS Dr. Thornton was a Virginian, a gentleman of pleasing manners, an interesting though not a great nor stirring preacher. Young Professor McClintock came to the college a preacher, and the young Professor Emory was hcensed to preach while I was still in college. Outside the Methodist Church the other pulpits were ably manned. The Episcopal clergyman, who boarded in the house next to the one in which I spent a whole year of my college life, was a preacher of very considerable intellect and much culture, and had a rich rhetorical style. He was very social and markedly convivial. A very different man was Dr. McGill, in the Seceder Presby- terian Church, who now (1887) in his old age is a professor at Princeton. He was tall, angular, and highly intellectual. His matter was beaten oil before it was brought into the sanctuary. It was an intellectual treat to hear him preach. In the First Presbyterian Church was the Rev. Dr. Duffield, who in after years labored and died in Detroit. His congre- gation embraced many of the elite of the town, and he himself was a gentleman as well as a scholar, and his scholarship, al- though high, did not dry up his powers of preaching. His wife was a New Yorker connected with the Bethunes and the Grahams. His sons became my intimate friends, and I was especially attached, and am to this day, to Divie Bethune Duffield, who is practising law in Detroit. The Duffields were most kind to me, and I frequently spent my Saturdays at their beautiful home on the edge of the town of Carlisle. I believe that the influence of that family upon my Christian character was very marked and very useful. With such preachers as these to fill up our Sunday hours and cultivate the spiritual side of our characters, we who were then students at Dickinson College had very great privileges. Twice while I was an undergraduate I seemed to be near the end of my life. Many of us were accustomed on Satur- day afternoon to go to the Canadaquonet Creek for bathing. COLLEGE LIFE AT CARLISLE 51 It gave us a walk of two or three miles, besides the pleasure of the bath. Here one Saturday I had the experience of drowning. I had been in the creek some time and was prob- ably weakened. One of the older collegians, coming down to plunge in, proposed to me to swim across. I consented if he would hold one of my hands and let us strike out to- gether. He caught my hand and we started. He thought that I was just pretending that I needed the help of his hand, sup- posing me to be a very good swimmer. In the middle of the creek he loosened his hold, shot under my breast, and threw me back in the water. I could not recover myself sufficiently to know which shore was the nearer. In my confusion I be- came alarmed, my alarm took away what httle strength I still had, and I began to sink. A student on the bank saw my condition, and called out ; that student's name was Francis A. Baggs. He afterward became a Methodist clergyman in Virginia. A young man from Newark, N. J., a powerful fellow, who had been to sea, took in the state of affairs, plunged into the stream, caught me by my arm and leg, and flung me into shoal water, and then, with the assistance of other students, flung me out. I had gone through the horror of the struggle and had come into a condition of perfect peace and perfect comfort, the kind of comfort a tired boy feels on a warm spring day when he comes from a race and lies down to sleep— the feeling that precedes the loss of consciousness. At that moment, too, I seemed to remember every event of my outward life, every thought of my mind, every emotion of my heart ; my whole hfe, in separate, condensed panorama, rose up before my view. I had never read anything in mental philosophy, and this seemed very strange to me, but very awful. Subsequently I found that it is common experience. To this day I never refer to it without a feehng of solemnity. It seems so strange that my mind could see at once ten thousand things that had come into a life of fourteen years. Apparently 62 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS it was at once, although they must have come up into the mem- ory successively, but with such rapidity as to appear to be seen all synchronously. This event sobered me, and, I think, gave a tinge to my feelings through my whole college career. My rank in scholarship was never very high in college ; I sought no prizes. As I intended to study and practise law, I took from the curriculum only what I supposed would be helpful to me in future law studies. I devoted myself mainly to belles-lettres, to compositions, and to preparation for de- bates. I did not put a proper estimate upon the training which was given by the regular college course. This error I perceived later in life. Now I believe that in the undergrad- uate course a man should give himself up wholly to Latin, Greek, and mathematics ; and, if I had the shaping of all our college work, I would exclude every study except those three. No boy should enter college until he had a thorough prepara- tion for the higher study of the Greek and Latin tongues and the masterpieces in those languages. I should put other studies afterward, in a postgraduate or university course, beginning with the English language and literature. I should never put an English grammar in the hands of a boy until he had pretty well mastered the Latin and Greek grammars. The university or postgraduate course I should have to include studies in law, medicine, and the Bible. Of course preparatory to law would be the English language and literature, rhetoric, and dialectics ; and connected with medicine would be all the departments of physical science. A boy at fifteen should be thoroughly prepared to enter the college ; three years should then be devoted to the college course, two years to the postgraduate preparatory course for one of the professions ; then two years in a legal, medical, or biblical school would complete the theoretical education of the young man and prepare him to enter the practical school of the profession of law, medicine, or the ministry. COLLEGE LIFE AT CARLISLE 53 But the college course of the classical languages and mathe- matics gives the mental discipline needed by every man who is to take high rank as agriculturist, mechanic, or manufac- turer ; for this discipline is needed by such men as much as it is needed by those men who intend to pursue one of the learned professions. It should not have anything in it op- tional, and no man should be admitted into one of the learned professions who had not taken his degree out of some well- established college giving thorough training in Latin, Greek, and mathematics. But I had no friend to give me advice, and so floated along, picking up what I could and looking at everything in the light of the use it might be to me at the bar. I believe all my teachers liked me. I am sure that Pro- fessor Emory and President Durbin were fond of me. Within a few days Dr. Durbin's son-in-law, Mr. Harper, of Harper & Brothers, publishers, told me that the dear old doctor, up to the day of his death, would frequently speak of me, and always mention me with pride as one of his stars. Generally my in- tercourse with the students, so far as I know, was pleasant. I was never called before the faculty, never reprimanded. This is a very stupid record of a college career. I am at a great disadvantage at a reunion of the " old boys." They all have some narrative to tell, but if I stick to the truth I cannot repeat a single exploit. [In the paper dated May lo, 1839, from which Dr. Deems drew most of the above facts concerning his college life, we find near and at the end the interesting extracts which follow this parenthesis. — Ed.] In a few weeks my collegiate course will be finished. O Carlisle! can I ever forget you? Shall I cease to remember the haunts of five of the most important years of my life? 54 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS The hand of time can never erase from the tablet of memory the images it has graven there. I shall cherish the remem- brance of pleasant walks and kind friends, and I can never forget hours of misery and a few bitter foes. Oh, how often in after life will I call up to my mind's eye the rooms in which I have pursued my studies, the hall of prayer, the sound of the bell which has so often awakened me from pleasant dreams to prepare for devotion, and which has frequently fallen on my ear as a death-knell when calling me to the discharge of some irksome duty. Nor will I forget the countenances of my kind professors, the jokes and sport which occasionally obtruded themselves into the recitation-rooms, and the lugu- brious expression which sighs from the face of every unpre- pared student. Above all, I shall remember, " while thought or life or being last," the path which connects the old building with the front gate. How often have I paced that path, feasting my mind with thought, and drinking in the imaginary melody of star-born music ; and how often have I given the heavy sigh which burst from a burdened heart to the night breeze that chilled as it kissed the tear from my cheek ; and, when my poor frail body has been exhausted, sunk upon the cold step of the chapel and pressed my temples, which have seemed ready to rend with intense pain and the agony which a too sensitive spirit contracted by mingling with the unfeeling. I bid you all a prospective farewell. My name will soon be forgotten here, but perhaps these sheets will fall into the hands of some kind friend, who, forgetting my thousand faults, will remember my few virtues, and love and cherish my memory. My frail bark may be dashed against some rock in the ocean of life; but whether, in my dying hour, my head be pillowed on some bosom that loves me, or in distant lands where no friendly hand can wipe away the death-damps that COLLEGE LLFE AT CARLISLE 55 gather on my brow, I wish the last words that tremble upon my Hps to be, " 1 have not hved in vain." Charles M. F. Deems. Dickinson College, midnight, May, 10, 1839. I have thus endeavored to trace my history from the first dawn of memory to the present hour. And I must not con- clude this sketch without making my acknowledgments to thee, my good goose-quill, for having so patiently accompanied me over these ten sheets without being once mended. Thou shalt soon be lost, perhaps sooner than thine owner, but thou shalt, nevertheless, have the consolation of knowing that thou hast been the wand with which he has called into existence the spirits of long-buried thoughts and feelings. CHAPTER IV PROFESSIONAL LIFE COMMENCED, 1 839-44 I TOOK my degree of A. B. in July, 1839, and went to Baltimore very undecided what to do. Before leaving the college President Durbin had offered me the choice of two places, positions of very great responsibility ; but I had the good sense to dechne them. One was the principalship of a large institution for young men and women, at a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year, which was equal to the average salary of college professors at the time. Something was to be done. I intended to make the Christian ministry my life-work. I should at that time have entered the Protestant Episcopal Church but for the doctrine of apostolic succession. For many reasons I preferred it to the Presbyterian or the Meth- odist Church. I did not believe in Calvinism, and I did not altogether hke Methodism. But I could not persuade myself that the doctrine of apostolic succession was true, and without an overmastering belief in its truth I could not become a clergyman in a church which would ignore my father and my grandfather, and such beloved men of other churches as I knew, such as Dr. Duffield, of Carlisle ; and so I was very much at sea. I had not the means of going to a theological seminary, and if I had had there was at that time no seminary in which Arminian doctrines were taught, and I did not care to take 66 PROFESSIONAL LIFE COMMENCED 57 training at the hands of those who held other views. My consolation at the time was that I was very young, and that I would better teach awhile, until there came to be some opening of providence. Somehow I felt that the city of New York was to be the great city of the Union, and that would be the place in which a man should begin who looked to a long run of influence and a broadening life. It so happened that my father's brother, Mr. Henry W. Deems, at that time resided in the city of New York. I cor- responded with him, and was invited to go to New York and make his family a visit. I did not have a dollar in the world, and had borrowed twelve dollars and fifty cents from the Rev. Dr. Durbin to pay my last board bill when I left college and to take me to Baltimore. Determining that if I continued in the Methodist ministry not to belong to the Baltimore Con- ference, of which my father was a member, I felt that there might be better openings for me in New York. When I had been a boy in the city of Baltimore, David Creamer had pub- lished what was called the " Baltimore Monument," in which had appeared the effusions of the rising young writers of that city, and into it some of my own productions had been admitted. Very timidly I made known to Mr. Creamer my thought of going to New York ; and while his affection for me prompted him to say that his wishes were for me to remain in Baltimore, his judgment approved my course ; and he loaned me twelve dollars and a half, which barely took me to the rising metropolis. I shall never forget my arrival there. The possibility is that the latter portion of the journey was made in a steamer commanded by a man with whom a half-century later I was to have most important relations — Commodore Vanderbilt. My good uncle, Mr. Henry W. Deems, was at the wharf. What I knew of New York I had derived from the accounts of travelers and from the " Knickerbocker Magazine," which 58 CHARLES POkCE DEEMS at that time was far in front of all American periodicals, and from the bright paragraphs of N. P. Willis, who was a favorite poet with collegians. The city was larger than Baltimore, having at that time a population of 312,710. We came up town in the Knickerbocker omnibus, past the office of the " Knickerbocker Magazine," turned into Bleecker Street,— the finest street I had ever seen, the houses seemed so stately, — and came down to Carmine Street, only a short distance be- yond which was the terminus of this great transportation line. I think our passage cost us twenty-five cents each. At Car- mine Street we debarked, and I went to my uncle's house, which was a short distance around the corner (No. 28). It was a bewilderingly big thing for me to be in New York ; twenty years afterward London did not seem larger. The first thing I did was to find Bond Street. Bond Street seemed to me to be at the top of all human thoroughfares. The local love-stories were laid in Bond Street ; the men of wealth lived in Bond Street ; in every woman I was to meet in Bond Street I expected to see a peri— such girls as Willis was accustomed to paint in his " Inklings " and " Hurrygraphs." There was a little disappointment, I confess ; but I must also confess that I had never seen so many noble mansions on one block in my life as in 1839 I saw on that short street. It must be remembered how small the city was then. Mr. Astor lived at No. 585 Broadway, near Prince Street,— there were no business houses along there then,— and there was no house above that of the Roosevelts, Broadway and Fourteenth Street. Washington Square had been a potter's field a very short time before this, but had been fenced in and made a drilling-place for the local mihtia and called " Washington Parade-ground." A few houses were built there. Second Avenue was laid out, and was going to be what Fifth Avenue has since become, but there was very little of it. This was just about the time that the avenue idea had taken possession of the minds of the PItOFESSIOXAL LIFE COMMENCED 59 people. Fourteenth Street was the highest street laid out, and very little of that was curbed,— none on the north side, — so that it was a good time to draw Fourteenth Street as the dividing line of the city, just as in former times Wall Street had been considered ; and from this time forth the city grew with more regular thoroughfares, the exception being the old Bloomingdale road, as Broadway was called, which continues running its course regardless of rectangles, bearing northwest- ward toward Albany. That first Saturday night in New York was clear, with a full moon. I walked up Carmine Street to Fourth Street, and turning round that corner soon came upon Washington Parade- ground, with its iron railing. As I came to the East Side, the new university rose in the moonlight, so wonderfully beautiful that it seemed to me that I had never seen such a structure before. I thought it was a church. Across the street was another, and I wondered that two such splendid churches should be together. I recollect my aspiration then : Oh, if I could ever preach in that church! How httle did I dream that twenty-seven years afterward I should be preaching in that identical building, to a few strangers who would consoli- date into a church to be probably as widely known as any other in New York ! The literary celebrity in New York whose name was best known to me was William Cullen Bryant, whose " Thanatopsis " probably every college boy in America knew. I had a natural desire to look upon his face. I found from the directory that he lived two blocks above my uncle's house, just at the bend where Carmine Street became Sixth Avenue, a few doors above Bleecker Street (No. 12 Carmine). On Sunday morning I walked out and stood in front of the house, looking at it with all the reverence natural to a youth of eighteen who himself had a manuscript volume of poems in his trunk, which he hoped shortly to see in print. You see there was a sort of 60 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS brother-poet feeling, with a sprinkle of modesty which made me feel there was an American poet a good ways ahead of me, and him I naturally wished to look upon. While I was gazing at the house Mr. Bryant came out : a man apparently in middle life, well made, hthe, and active. A httle girl was with him. They started up Sixth Avenue, and turned at Fourth Street toward Broadway. At a respectful distance I followed them. Sometimes he would waltz the little girl around him on the pavement, and then go forward with a few dancing steps, and then resume a sober pace, which he would occasionally break with a little waltz. They went to Broad- way and then turned north and entered a church, and I fol- lowed. It was a Unitarian church, standing immediately in front of the present site of the New York Hotel. The Rev. Dr. Orville Dewey was the pastor, and he preached that day. I stayed through the sermon, and followed Bryant and his daughter on my way back to my own lodgings. I have re- peatedly seen Mr. Bryant since that day ; but that little girl I have seen only once, and then when I met her she was the wife of Parke Godwin and the mother of a daughter who also was a grown woman. I set to work at once to do something. My family and the Reeses, of Baltimore, had been friends. At that time there was a physician well known in New York City, David Meredith Reese, who resided on Hudson Street. He was the leading practitioner among the Methodists, and he made me acquainted with the chief people of that denomination— with the Rev. Dr. Nathan Bangs, the chief literary man of Methodism then in America ; with the Rev. Thomas Mason and George Lane, who were the book-agents of the Methodist Church, the agency hav- ing its headquarters at No. 200 Mulberry Street ; with the Rev. George Coles, editor of the " Christian Advocate " ; with the Rev. George T. Peck, editing the " Quarterly Review " ; with Francis Hall, Esq., who edited the " Commercial Advertiser," PROFESSIONAL LIFE COMMENCED 61 and lived one block below Dr. Reese. Immediately below Mr. Hall's was St. John's Park, in front of St. John's Church, and a number of handsome residences were around it. It was one of the aristocratic quarters of the city. In one of its stately mansions lived Mr. George Suckely, a leading Methodist layman. Dr. Reese was an official member of the Vestry Street Methodist Episcopal Church, then called the " First Wesleyan Chapel." This and the Mulberry Street Church, called the " Second Wesleyan Chapel," were the aristocratic worshiping-places of Methodism in New York City. The officials of the Book Concern mostly gathered around Mul- berry Street, which also was strengthened by the families of the Harpers, publishers, and the Disosways, merchants. But the West Side Methodist aristocrats worshiped in Vestry Street. Their pastor was the Rev. Charles A. Davis, whom I had known in Baltimore, where he had at one time been stationed. He had been a friend of my father, and immediately took me up and showed me friendship. It was agreed that I should begin a classical school, and all these gentlemen fur- nished pupils and found others, and I was permitted to use rooms in the basement of the church for my school. I entered upon this work with zeal, and commenced writing so as to make money to pay the debts which I had contracted in clos- ing my college course and in transporting myself to New York. Among other things I wrote a paper for the " Methodist Quarterly Review," on " George Crabbe and his Poems," and I also wrote a little volume which is in print to this day (1886), being a " Life of Dr. Adam Clarke," the great Methodist com- mentator. Of course this small volume was a simple compi- lation of the three large volumes in which the doctor's life was originally published in Great Britain. Occasionally, also, I preached in the absence of Mr. Davis, and, when invited, in other churches. I have recollections of three of those occa- sions. 62 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS One Saturday the Rev. Mr. Davis was called away to his dying father, and when I went down to the Bible class on Sunday morning I was told that he had left word that I must preach. I did not know what to do ; it was a great surprise. I had at that time preached only two or three times in my life. I took my seat in the chancel, praying and praying that some one might come in. I was not ordained, and so could not administer the communion, and there were the elements on the table in the chancel. I could postpone the administration of the sacrament, on account of the trouble of the pastor, but — the preaching! In the midst of my distress of mind I saw the great lumbering figure of Dr. Bangs, who carried his big head always to one side, as if his neck were too weak to sus- tain it. I took heart. As he came up I caught his hand and said, "O doctor, what a relief! You will preach for the people this morning? " He whispered to me that he had just got out of his bed ; he was ill, but Dr. Reese thought he might come over and administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. " But," said he, " you are to preach." I had all a boy's shy- ness in addition to my reverence for Dr. Bangs, the man of letters of greatest fame in the Methodist Church ; and I had also that sense of responsibility which frightens me to this day, so that I never even now go into the pulpit without it, and some- times it is so severe that I am on the point of running across the river to Jersey and letting things go as they will. After nearly fifty years of preaching (1886) I often make the usher stop just an instant when his hand is upon the door to open it to let me in ; so it may be fancied in what a state of mind I went to the pulpit on that day! When they were singing the hymn after the prayer and preceding the sermon, I said to Dr. Bangs, " Oh dear, doctor, what shall I do, what shall I do? " The good old man said to me, " My young brother, trust in God and have no fear of man, whicli brings a snare. Tell the people what is in your heart." I could hear him praying be- PROFESSIONAL LIFE COMMENCED 63 hind me while I preached. The condition of affairs gave me very considerable excitement, and I finished some kind of a sermon without breaking down, and comforted myself all I could at the holy communion, trusting that God would make up for all deficiencies. The effect of that sermon upon Dr. Bangs's mind was such that, a vacancy occurring at Sands Street Church, which at that time was the principal seat of Methodism in Brooklyn, Dr. Bangs actually suggested me as the temporary pastor ; but this also I had the sense to decline. I have recollection of another sermon. It was preached for the Rev. Mr. Gilder, pastor of Allen Street Methodist Church. There was a revival. The house was crowded, the aisles being so packed that I think we made entrance through a back window. The magnates of Methodism were here in full force. The crowd and the circumstances naturally excited me, and I was coming to have the dreadful reputation of being a "boy-preacher." I recollect my text on the occasion— "I pray thee have me excused." I preached with might and main, and, following the custom of the denomination, at the close of the sermon I invited penitents to the "altar," as the Methodists call the chancel, although at this day they turn with great revulsion from the use of the word "altar" by their Protestant Episcopal brethren. They came in great number, they knelt three deep around the entire chancel, and it was a very exciting scene. When I sat down an old gentleman came into the pulpit and asked me if I did not want to go to Wesleyan University, and gave me his name as Dr. Laban Clarke. I supposed it was a proposition to take a tutorship at least, if not a profes- sorship. It was some time before the venerable man succeeded in making me understand that he wished me to go to the uni- versity to be educated. Somehow he had not got any of my previous history. When it dawned upon me that he was a 64 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS traveling agent for that college and was endeavoring to beat up students, I was greatly amused, and shall never forget the expression of his countenance when I told him I was an A.B. of Dickinson College. Next day it dawned upon me that my discourse must have struck the old gentleman as a very crude affair ; that he saw in it nothing fulfilled, but enough of promise to justify an effort to give me a college training. This so mortified me that I never had the courage to ask him how on earth he could have made such a proposition to me. The only emollient that I could apply to my wounded vanity was that, in point of fact, I was only nineteen years of age, and weighed only ninety-five pounds. But even so, it occurred to me that the right course for him to have taken would have been for him to turn upon the authorities of the church for allowing such a youth as myself to officiate on prominent occasions. I have recollections of a third sermon, the record of which requires a preliminary statement. Upon leaving college I paid a visit to Mr. James Inness, a college mate residing in Newark. He had a cousin, a very charming young lady, whose intimate friend was the daughter of a prominent Methodist merchant in New York. This merchant had his country-seat in the suburbs of Newark. The house is now (1886) in the center of the city. This young lady insisted that her cousin Jim should take me to see Annie Disosway, whom I had seen at the carriage when Jim and his cousin and I were driving past the house, and Amanda had stopped to have a little chat with Annie. We walked up the lawn, entered the house, were shown into the parlor, and Miss Annie arose and greeted us ; but after a very few words became reabsorbed with a visitor who had entered before us, and who, I learned, was a wealthy young cousin from Philadelphia; she paid litde attention to Jim and myself — he was an old neighbor, and I made no impression. I learned afterward that her father drove up from New York as Jim and I were leaving the grounds, and PROFESSIONAL LIFE COMMENCED 65 upon catechizing Annie as to who we were she mentioned my name, and her father thought it exceedingly strange that she had not invited me to stay to tea. Why, she never thought of doing such a thing "with that college boy"! "College boy, college boy, Annie," said her father ; " why, that boy is preaching in some of the first churches in New York!" She then awakened to a sense of her condition — that she had not treated me with the respect due even the youngest and lowliest of the servants of the Lord, for she was exceedingly devout, and the ministry in her eyes was a sacred thing. It so happened that when the family returned to town I was invited by their pastor, the Rev. Dr. Edmund S. Janes, who afterward became bishop, to preach in the Mulberry Street Church. After the sermon there was to be a meeting for some parochial business, and I did not remain. As I passed down the aisle I saw Miss Annie give her brother a sign to go out and speak to me, which he did, telling me when we reached the vestibule how his father regretted not being at home when I was at their place in Newark, and inviting me to visit them at their city residence, which, however, I did not do. Miss Annie had not yet captivated me. In the spring of the year 1840 the confinement to my school, to my writing, and to supplying pulpits began to have such an effect upon my health as to cause Dr. Reese to advise my removal from the city. I then made up my mind to enter the itinerancy of the Methodist Church, and took a recommenda- tion to the New Jersey Conference. It was presented by my mother's old friend, Manning Force, after whom I was named, and who at that time was presiding elder of a western district in that conference. At the time I was accepted I was on a visit to some college friends in Alexandria. When the ap- pointments were made I was assigned to be the colleague of the Rev. George Banghart, of the Asbury circuit. This hap- pened to be in Warren County, in the extreme western portion 66 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS of the State, a high, hilly, healthy, and beautiful country. The circuit took its name from a village called Asbury, and that took its name from Bishop Asbury of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Old Colonel McCullough once owned a large portion of that country. He lived like a baron on his estate, and ruled that whole district. His house was beautifully located, and near it he had built a church, which was one of the stop- ping-places of the old itinerant Methodist bishop, and around the manor had grown the village. Two young fellows from New York had made love to the rich old Methodist noble- man's daughters. One was William Van Antwerp, of a good Dutch family, and the other was Israel D. Disosway, of an equally good Huguenot family. When I reached Asbury Mr. William Van Antwerp, who had two grown daughters, lovely girls, and educated at the best schools in New York, occupied the old McCullough mansion ; Colonel McCullough had been dead a number of years. Across the road was the Disosway domain, Mr. Disosway occupying a little cottage preliminary to the building of another large mansion. I went up to my work, saw my colleague, who was a short, fleshy man with bright eyes, a strong voice, and considerable gift at singing. He had the old-fashioned Methodist fervor. It is to be remembered that I had just passed my twentieth year in December when I went to this region in the following spring. I was entertained at the house of Mr. Van Antwerp, whose family immediately took me up very warmly, and I had a lovely time with the girls, who belonged to the Dutch Re- formed Church, their father— at that time a prosperous whole- sale hardware merchant on Pearl Street— having contributed largely to the church built by Dr. Mathews on the north side of Washington Square. Now the uncle, Mr. Disosway, who lived on the other side of the road and was building the new mansion, was the father of Miss Annie Disosway. Fortunately for me she was still in the city. I studied in a room I had in PROFESSIONAL LIFE COMMENCED 67 the village, preached at the church there, and took my regular round on the circuit, which included a village which has since become the large and prosperous town of Washington. But at last Miss Disosway was to come up from the city. The curious thing to me was that while this young lady impressed me so little, except with her white teeth, her blooming com- plexion, her ladylikeness, and her little affectations, as they seemed to me, she appeared to be idolized by all who knew her : the bishops, the clergy, the leading laymen of her church who knew the family, her kinspeople, these, her two lovely cousins, Libby and Mary Van Antwerp, all spoke of her as being the best girl there was upon the face of the earth, and the sweetest. Unfortunately for my peace of mind she was also wonderfully conscientious. I did not know how she was going to meet me, but she did meet me with a fervor and a gush of which she herself must have been conscious ; for she blushed to the roots of her hair at the warmth of her saluta- tion, perhaps checked at the coolness of mine ; for in my heart of hearts I was sorry she had come ; I felt she would be de trap in our circle. Her warmth arose from no regard for me personally ; it was simply that she had been brooding over the sin which she had committed in treating me, a minister of the gospel, as if I were an ordinary college boy. She had deter- mined, as she afterward said, to make atonement for that by devoted attention to me when she came to the country. In alluding to it since I have often playfully told her that I thought she rather overdid the thing ; for when my recogni- tion of the feeHng came, when I found that she had the inno- cence of a new-born babe united with uncommon good sense, ladylike manners, and a delicate conscientiousness which shaped her whole life, from dislike to her I went to the other extreme, and everybody can see what followed. When I was a boy at school, in Baltimore, I had made up my mind upon coming of age to go to North Carolina, to 68 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS settle in the town of Asheville, in Buncombe County, and marry a mountain girl. The North Carolina project was carried through, all except the settling in Asheville and the marrying a mountain girl — my little Asbury friend prevented the mountain girl. But still I had a strange drawing toward North Carolina. Miss Annie Disosway's pastor, the Rev. Dr. Janes, had become one of the secretaries of the American Bible Society. He was very much interested in my affairs, one of his pet projects being to marry me to Miss Disosway. I wrote to the American Bible Society to know if they had an agency anywhere in the South that I could secure. A letter came back to me very promptly, saying that the society was delighted at my turning my attention to their interests, and they would give me shortly a very excellent position, but at the present there was but one Southern State vacant, and that was one which they would not think of offering to me. In reply to my question as to which Southern State that was, they told me it was North Carolina. It surprised the society to learn that that was the identical State I desired above all others, and that I would take some modest agency for some portion of the State. I was immediately appointed general agent for the whole State. This was stunning ; but I had been declining big things so long I thought I would change my tactics, especially as now I was a whole year older than when I was graduated ; and, although not yet having attained my majority, I accepted the appointment. After a year of preaching, making love, and multifarious other businesses pertaining to that peculiar transition period of a man's life, I left to take charge of my Southern work. I never had seen a North Carohnian in my life until I reached Washington City on my way to my field. There I met the Hon. William A. Graham, of the United States Senate, to whom I had a letter from New York. Mr. Graham received me politely. He was an unusually handsome, stately, yet PROFESSIONAL LIFE COMMENCED 69 graceful man. If all the North Carolinians I was to meet were to be like William A. Graham, I felt that I had seen no such society. Truth compels me to say that after I became a North Carolinian myself I saw a number of grown men who were not nearly so captivating as the graceful William A. Graham. I stopped in Richmond, Va., and became acquainted with Dr. Leroy M. Lee, who was editor of the " Richmond Chris- tian Advocate." My headquarters were at the Powhatan Ho- tel. I saw several leading Virginia lawyers in the courts, and Richmond seemed to me a very charming little Southern city. Just forty-five years after that I had occasion to stop in Rich- mond on my way South, and went to Ford's Hotel, which had in it something so familiar that I made inquiry and found that that was the hotel which anciently had borne the name of Powhatan. My entrance upon my work was not brilliant. The first place at which I stopped in North Carolina was Gaston, then a wretched little hamlet, having a little tavern in which every- thing was as filthy as anything I have ever seen in the way of human shelter in Asia or in Africa. You could touch nothing that would not stick to you— the spoon, the cup ; and the cup of coffee was a round lake in which there were floating isles of grease. Everybody that was not drunk was sleepy. There had been a cock-fight the day before my arrival, and I reached Gaston to see a number of young planters who had been carousing during the night till early in the morning and had left nothing fit to touch. I felt that if all North Carolina were like Gaston, and the majority of North Carolinians were like these dirty, tobacco-smeared, tangle-haired, blear-eyed young ruffians, by God's help I would get out of the commonwealth in less than a week. But young as I was, I was too old a traveler to expect to find North Carolina made up altogether of men like William A. Graham or like the young planters of 70 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS Halifax and Warren. Down the Raleigh and Gaston Rail- road I proceeded to Henderson. I had heard there was a very estimable Methodist merchant residing there, named Wyche, that this gentleman had been a member of the State legislature, and that he could give me a good start on my mis- sion. Upon depositing my luggage, purposely condensed into a small space, I called upon Mr. Wyche. He gave me the coldest kind of a reception, did not invite me to his house, but informed me that a stage would leave in a few hours for Dan- ville, Va., where I could meet the Rev. Mr. Bryant, who was presiding elder over a district of the North Carolina Confer- ence. It was very plain that this estimable gentleman desired to transfer the charge of me to some one else. Years after that, I may stop here to say, his son, the Rev. Ira T. Wyche, and his son-in-law, the Rev. John Tillett, became my de- voted friends, and I learned from them that Mr. Wyche felt so disgusted that the American Bible Society should bestow its general agency upon such a poor-looking little Yankee as I was that he felt as though he did not want to have anything more to do with the work. I took the stage, the one mode of conveyance in those days, and went to Danville. It was a long, hard, and doleful ride. I seemed to be going out of the State to which I had been sent. My funds were running low. When I reached Dan- ville the Rev. Mr. Bryant was out of town and would not be back for three days. I put up at a hotel immediately on the riverside to await the coming of this gentleman. I felt that I could not take another step till I saw him ; in point of fact, I did not know how to get back into North Carolina. To take the stage in return would exhaust my money and send me into a region whose temperature had been greatly lowered for me by the presence of the cold Mr. Wyche. Whereupon it set in to rain, and it rained three or four days, and I stayed on in the hotel. I must have made a pitiful appearance, for the wife PROFESSIONAL LIFE COMMENCED 71 and the sister-in-law of the tavern-keeper plainly took com- passion on me, and I could see on the second day, as I sat eating my melancholy meal, that they were making designs upon me. One of them at last came to me and said I might be lonely up in my room, and, if I chose, any time I could come down and be in the sitting-room of the family, if the children would not annoy me. Now that was quite an open- ing. I felt as Mungo Park did, while staying in the wilds of Africa, when the native women gathered about him and sang him songs of compassion. It was a lonely position for a boy twenty years of age, with his first undertaking among strangers, mightily in love and most uncommonly poor. By and by, however, Mr. Bryant came and everything changed. He was a man much below medium size, with a Jewish countenance, his hook nose a little bent toward the right. He was bright, buoyant, witty, and sometimes impassionedly elo- quent. Mr. Brj'ant received me most heartily, entered cordially into the matter of laying out work for me, and gave me a good start in my operations. We went down into Caswell County, one of the northern tiers of counties in North Carohna and not far from Danville. Mr. Bryant was to perform the service at the marriage of a young lady in the highest circle of society in that part of the coun ry. It gave me an introduction to the principal people whom I wished to know in Caswell County— to the United States senator, Bedford Brown, to the eloquent lawyer, John Kerr, who was my lifelong friend and who died while on the superior bench of North Carohna, to Dr. Williamson, a physician and planter of great influence and a leading man in the Methodist Church. Mr. Bryant laid out the plan for me, gave me letters, and arranged appointments. At that time the Methodist camp-meetings were going forward, and I was sent out to Iredell County to meet the Rev. Peter Doub, who was a presiding elder and a man of great native power, who had acquired more than usual learning under the 72 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS difficulties of the Methodist itinerancy. All through the coun- try, as I went preaching and making collections for the soci- ety, I heard accounts of Mr. Doub's strength and length of preaching. I was told of sermons extending over three hours, which seemed to be as great as they could be so far as the people could understand them, and how much greater they were beyond that no man in North Carolina had yet been able to determine. I remember that I drove up to the camp- ground in Iredell County, hitched my horse, inquired for the preachers' tent, went in, and found that services were going forward at the " stand," as the pulpit was called, and that Mr. Doub was holding forth. I stood where I could hear the conclusion of his sermon. He was a large man, of great physi- cal vigor and of real mental robustness. I heard only the last few ringing falls of his sledge-hammer on the anvil of his text. The hymn was sung, and after the prayer he came to the tent, where I was introduced to him. At that camp-meeting I preached every day, and I think it did me a world of good. All young preachers, upon quitting the college or theological seminary, ought to seek a round of camp-meetings and preach whenever they can get a chance —at a real, genuine, old-fashioned camp-meeting; not your camp-meeting on grounds where they have houses three and a half stories high with gable ends to the streets, but where there are tents and wagons, and nothing else to sleep in, and where people are gathered from great distances. No man could read a litde twenty minutes' moral essay there ; neither men nor angels could endure the ridiculousness of that. He has got to turn himself loose and preach with a swing. I am very thankful to my old friend Doub for keeping me that sum- mer at camp-meetings. Physically and mentally it nearly wore me out, but it loosened my mental joints and made me un- commonly supple. I was taken so young— not yet of age- that I had the full benefit of tuition like this. PROFESSIOXAL LIFE COMMENCED 73 At the close of the camp-meetings of Mr. Doub's district I made my way to the town of Salem, in Forsyth County. This is an old settlement by the Moravians. For years they have had a noted female school at this place, which has educated several generations of Southern girls, and many of the leading families of the Southern States, from Virginia to Louisiana, have been represented at this school. The town and seminary were more like my imaginings of a foreign place than anything I had ever seen. I was the guest of the excellent Bishop Van Vleck, not only as agent of the American Bible Society, but also as the friend of the family of his cousin in Newark, N. J., who were intimates of Miss Annie Disosway. Everything was very quaint and very simple and to me very sweet. Every attention was shown me, and I was invited to preach in what might be called their cathedral. I recollect two incidents in that visit. Naturally, love and marriage were favorite topics with me, and so one evening I led the conversation to the method among the Moravians. I said to the good bishop that I did not quite approve this taking a wife by lot. " Why not?" said he. "Oh, it seems to me," I replied, "that it is not only devoid of sentiment, but has the appearance of tempt- ing God." He set his views before me after this fashion. There was no tempting God, but implicit trust in God. All Christian people believe in a special providence ; why should not a heavenly Father care as much for the mating of his children as earthly parents do? Moreover, when a Moravian had a wife assigned to him by lot, he took her precisely as if the sky opened and God handed her down to his arms, and she came to him in the same spirit. Now, two people, he thought, marrying in this way would be better prepared to en- dure the strain made upon them by the prosy and drudging details and often harassing anxieties of married life ; they would never think of divorce on account of incompatibility of temper. They might have been brought together just be- 74 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS cause of that incompatibility, if such existed ; or, having been brought together of God, perhaps there was no such thing as this fancied incompatibihty. He instanced his own case, where his wife had been selected for him at Herrnhut, in Ger- many. He had never seen her until he met her on the wharf in Philadelphia. " I doubt," he said, looking at the dumpy little German frau with fond eyes, "if I could have made a better choice if I had taken many years and searched all the States through." " Oh yes," I said ; " but yours happened to be a happy union ; but really, now, are there not many mis- takes made by this method?" He turned to me and said, " My young friend, when you come to be older you will find that there are a great many mistakes made by the other meth- od, where a man has no one to blame but himself for his own choice." I felt that there was great force in this, but at the same time I had a secret conviction that I had not made any mistake. From Salem I came to the town of Greensboro, which was afterward to be my home. I had a horse and a sulky. Coming down the hill just west of the town, my horse stum- bled and broke one shaft in falling, the other shaft as he at- tempted to rise ; but he fell again, and I was drawn across him. I lay perfectly still until I could gather the reins, and then, putting my two hands on his side, I leaped as far from him as I could. He was up as quickly as myself, and shivering, his flanks trembling with the splinters which had been driven into them like arrows. If I had not made the arrangement with the reins before I rose I should have been in very great peril. But having had him now for a number of weeks, we had be- come friends, and he allowed me to extract the splinters and fasten him to a fence, which I afterward learned was on Governor Moorhead's grounds. Gathering together my little luggage, I walked into the town and went, as I was directed, to the house of Dr. Lindsay, the leading physician of the PROI-ESSIOXAL LIFE COMMENCED 75 place, where I found the Methodist pastor, the Rev. Solomon Lea, and his presiding elder, the Rev. Mr. Brock. The first was a scholarly man and had been a school-teacher ; the sec- ond was a very handsome man, after the style of General Jack- son, but not a learned man. His library consisted of but little beyond a Bible, a Methodist Discipline, a Methodist hymn-book, an almanac, and a file of the " Richmond Chris- tian Advocate." Most of his thinking was plainly done with- out the aid of reading, but he was a verj' superior man. I had my duster on, and plenty of dust, and my small valise in my hand. Meeting the two ministers on the porch, we sat and talked for some time. On this, as on almost every occasion upon meeting prominent men in North Carolina, the look was given of wonder that I should be the general agent of the American Bible Society. I knew what it meant ; I knew that I weighed only one hundred and one pounds, that I was slightly below five and a half feet in height, and that I looked as if I should be in the junior year in college. My anxiety always was lest this should interfere with the success of my work as agent for the great society, which I was serving not in a perfunctory manner, but with a great delight in being instrumental in dis- tributing copies of the Word of God. Mr. Lea was a nervous man ; Mr. Brock was imperturbable. After we had conversed for some time, and I had given an account of the camp-meet- ings I had attended, I told them at last that my horse was tied to a fence on the roadside and the remnants of my sulky were near him. Mr. Brock sprang up at once and called for a colored serving-man to come with us, and we four proceeded immediately to the scene of my disaster. When about half- way there Mr. Brock suddenly stopped and, looking at me, said, " You'll do ; I hke you! " " I am glad you think so," I replied, "but why do you hke me?" "Because you didn't tell yotu: story until you were ready." " Well," said I, " I can 76 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS return the compliment ; I like you, and for the reason that, although you saw me come into the house in the strange con- dition in which I was, you asked me no questions until I was ready to tell my story." From that time on till the day of his death, in the far West in after years, Moses Brock and I were fast friends. The day after my arrival Mr. Brock took me out to another hill at the west of the town and showed me the site of the projected Greensboro Female College, of which he was a trustee and an earnest promoter. I gave him what views I had on the subject of female education, which of course at that time were crude enough, but I had seen some schools at the North. I asked him if he were also trustee of the Ran- dolph-Macon College, the Methodist college for boys in Vir- ginia, belonging to the two conferences. He said no, he had been. When the chief duty of a trustee was to carry a sur- veyor's chain around the old fields in Mecklenburg County to stake out the campus of a college he felt himself sufficiently endowed by nature and grace for a duty of that sort ; but when they called on him to sign his name to a Latin diploma he felt that common honesty compelled him to resign his trustee- ship. He was a great man ; a small ignoramus would have kept on signing diplomas. My next point of interest was the city of Raleigh, the capi- tal of the State. This I reached in November, 1841, to at- tend the session of the North Carolina Conference, to which I intended to transfer my membership from the New Jersey Conference. Here was the seat of the North Carolina Bible Society, whose president was at that time the venerable Dun- can Cameron, a wealthy Scotchman, an Episcopalian, and president of the State Bank. My position as general agent of the American Bible Society for the whole State brought me to the acquaintance of the prominent citizens of the several de- nominations, and made me a subject of great interest to the PROFESSIONAL LIFE COMMENCED 11 North Carolina Conference, which body of ministers received me with very great cordiahty. The impression which I had made upon the three leading men of the conference seems to have been most favorable. The impression upon gentlemen of other denominations charged with the interest of the Bible Society seemed also to have been not unpleasant, although on both sides I met at first with that expression of surprise and, as I interpreted it, slight disgust that the American Bible So- ciety should have selected such a stripling for such a work ; it seemed to throw contempt upon the venerable commonwealth of North Carolina. I can now see just how those gentlemen must have felt, but the effect upon me at the time was provo- cative ; it put me on my mettle, and I was determined to work day and night in such a fashion as to echpse all that my large and aged predecessors had ever done in the work of collect- ing money for the parent society and supplying the State with copies of the Holy Scriptures. It so happened that in the Methodist church, a night or two after the conference opened, I was called upon to lead in prayer, and that prayer seemed to have produced a considerable impression upon the preachers who were present. On Sunday I was invited to preach in the Presbyterian church, the pastor of which was the Rev. Dr. Drury Lacey, afterward president of Davidson College, the Presbyterian institution in the State, and to the day of his death my warm, consistent friend. Here again I seemed to have been divinely aided, and the sermon that day was a turn- ing-point in my life. At that time the Hon. David L. Swain, who had been on the bench of the Superior Court and also governor of the State, was president of the university of the State, at Chapel Hill. He had married Eleanor White, a granddaughter of Richard Caswell, one of the early governors of the State, whose venerable mother was still alive and resid- ing in an old-fashioned mansion on a place occupying a whole square in the city, Her husband had been Secretary of State. 78 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS The Whites were Methodists. Mrs. White's lovely young granddaughter, Miss Felton, had just married the Rev. Ed- ward Wadsworth, of the Virginia Conference, and I had met them in Richmond as I came through. Governor Swain was on a visit to his wife's mother. He was an energetic man of great abihty and far-reaching policy and of tireless ambition ; these quahties were united with a high moral sense, generous disposition, and a keen sense of honor. He was one of the homeliest men in North Carolina; very tall, angular, with a narrow, towering head and keen gray eyes. He had an only son, whose baptismal name was Richard, but who had inherited his father's nickname of " Bunk" Swain, Gover- nor Swain being thus familiarly known because he was born in Buncombe County and had represented that county in the State legislature. Little Bunk happened to hear me preach in the Presbyterian church, to which he had come with his aunt. They both went home with such glowing accounts of " the lit- tle boy what preached," as Bunk described me, that he drove his father into coming to see me and into bringing Bunk with him. Now it came to pass that at that time Governor Swain was exceedingly anxious to have a Methodist professor in the university. My age and size were much against me, as I afterward learned, but the governor became interested in me ; I was invited several times to dine or take tea at the White residence, and the governor had an opportunity to hear me preach again. Before we parted a pledge was taken that I should visit the university on my mission in the course of the spring. After the adjournment of the conference which met in Raleigh, I went to Fayetteville, under the direction of Mr. Cameron, to look after a lawsuit in which the American Bible Society was interested, and which I succeeded in bringing to a satisfactory conclusion. After that I passed up into the PROFESSIONAL LIFE COMMENCED 79 center of the State and recollect very distinctly that I attained my majority in a little town in Chatham County called Hay- wood. I spent the remainder of the spring diligently work- ing at my agency, visiting and preaching, and becoming acquainted with prominent clergymen and laymen of all de- nominations, one of my visits being to the seat of the uni- versity, where I could not have made an unfavorable impres- sion, as the trustees of that institution the following summer elected me to ihe professorship of logic and rhetoric. This occurred while I was on a visit to the North, for a change of occupation and for some rest, which I really needed, for I had worked almost incessantly. In the month of March I went to the town of Newbem. The Methodist pastors at that time were the Rev. Dr. John E. Edwards, now (1887) living, having ever since continued in the active pastorate, and an associate, the Rev. John Todd Brame, a young man of very fine intellect, who had been graduated with considerable hon- ors at Randolph-Macon College. I was engaged to preach every day for a week. Full of zeal, I went at it with all my might, preaching twenty-eight times in twenty-six days, hold- ing prayer-meetings, assisting in pastoral visiting, and enjoying the hospitalities of a town so refined that at that time it was called the Athens of Carohna. All this told upon me. It was while I was on a visit to Saratoga that I received the notification of my election to the North Carolina professor- ship. I submitted it to my friend Dr. Janes, who, while greatly praising me for my success in the agency of the soci- ety, advised me to accept the professorship. So also did Miss Disosway's father. I think it was a gratification to him, and I felt that it was a feather in my cap to ask his advice about accepting such an elevation as that. When I first told him I wanted his daughter he burst into tears and said, " I can offer no objection to you at all, but I don't want to see Anna a 80 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS widow after being the wife of a poor Methodist preacher three years" — a hmit which I now think my appearance justified him in making. So I accepted the professorship, upon which I entered in January, 1843, being at that time a httle over twenty-two years of age. [The editors would insert at this point the following article, which appeared in the " Raleigh Christian Advocate " in July, 1885:] "a poem with a history " Forty-three years ago Dr. Deems preached a sermon in Raleigh, after the hearing of which Ex-Governor W. W. Holden wrote a little poem, the history of which our readers will appreciate, and will find in the following letter from Dr. Deems to Governor Holden, which we publish, together with the poem referred to : " ' New York, July 13, 1885. " ' Hon. W. W. Holden. " ' My dear Sir : Yesterday I found in an old tin box an old album, in which were many things pertaining to the tran- sition time of my passing from my " teens," among them this poem. It has occurred to me that perhaps you and your children would be pleased to have the original scrap cut by me from the " Standard " nearly forty-three years ago (!!!), when the reading of it almost took my breath away. " ' In the album from which it is cut there is a memoran- dum, stating my suspicion that it was written by you "the day after I had preached upon the soul's paradise state be- tween death and the resurrection." " ' With best wishes, " ' Very truly yours, '"Charles F. Deems.' PROFESSIONAL LIFE COMMENCED 81 " ' For the North Carolina Standard. " ' TO THE REV. C. F. DEEMS " ' It is a startling and a glorious thing To gaze on genius in its hour of might, To hear the rushing of its flaming wings, To mark its eye as upward through the range Of the bright worlds of thought it sends its glance Amid the splendors of the spirit-land. " ' Speaker of God ! thy work is great indeed, And thou dost gird thyself unto the task With all the strength of deep humility, Till thy " boy-spirit," gathering in its course The power of angels, sweeps untremulous O'er all time's wrecks, from Adam's paradise To that far land, shrouded in mystery Beneath God's throne, and from whose radiant shores Ascend the anthems of the waiting throng In thrilling numbers to the gates of heaven. " ' And what to thee Is all earth's pageantry, the bannered pomp Of glittering legions? What the clarion's tone Rousing to battle? What the rending shout Of the strong multitudes that pave the path Of mad ambition? What the laurel wreath Which blooms forever on the poet's brow? Thine is a holier mission than the earth, Robed as it is in beauty, ever gave ; And thine an honor which the worlds shall see In the great judgment-hour, when all the stars Which thou hast plucked from out the night of sin Shall flash their glories, fresh and beautiful And all undarkened, from thy crown of life. •"H. " ' Raleigh, September 5, 1842."' When I look back at the period of my life when I accepted the call to the university, it seems to me unaccountable. I 82 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS have always been afflicted with a large measure of self-distrust, which has been strangely mingled with a sort of obstinate au- dacity. When challenged to perform any public duty I have invariably shrunk from it in my feelings and yet have under- taken it by sheer force of my will. That at such an age, with so little acquirement, I should go into a faculty of men of ability and experience now seems to me to be the most ridic- ulous action of my life ; but I had determined to undertake it, and so I fell to work in the few intervening months to qualify myself for it as well as I could. For years the chair of rhetoric and logic had been occupied by the Rev. Dr. William Mercer Green, an Episcopal clergy- man, reared in Wilmington, well connected and well known, a gentleman and a scholar— especially a gentleman— a gentle- man of very suave and pleasing manners. The duties of the chair were divided and the harder portion assigned to me. I had to take the department of logic, but also assisted in the department of rhetoric, in the correction of compositions, and in the teaching of elocution. Before my advent the only book on logic used in the university was that most absurd and con- temptible little treatise by Professor Hedge, of Harvard Uni- versity, a book bearing the title of logic, with every essential thing belonging to logic left out. I adopted Whately's treatise and commenced with the junior class, in which there was not a single student who could not have taken me by the nape of the neck and put me out of the window, and I managed to make work for the class ; so much so that they complained to the president that this young professor was making the de- partment of logic absolutely more difficult than the department of mathematics. The professor of mathematics was Professor James Phillips, an Englishman by birth, who had had experi- ence as a teacher in New York City before coming to the university. He was a man of very considerable ability. The salaries of the professors were not large, and Professor Phillips PROFESSIOXAL LIFE COMMENCED 83 eked out the support of his family by preaching at a country church. I always liked to hear him preach and had great re- spect for his brains and acquirements, but have suspected that his son, the Rev. Dr. Charles Phillips, who afterward came to the chair in the university, was the better teacher. Professor Phillips was fortunate in his children, one of whom (Mrs. Cornelia Spencer)* has made many contributions to current literature, especially in the religious papers of her own church, and wrote a book called " The Last Ninety Days of the War," which I published in 1866, the first year of my residence in New York. The elder of his two sons is the professor to whom I have alluded, and the younger, Mr. Samuel Phillips, has been solicitor-general of the United States. The senior professor was Dr. Elisha Mitchell, who had been brought from Yale College to the university. He had devoted himself to science, had trodden almost every cow-path in the State of North CaroHna, and before his death had edu- cated three generations, grandfather, father, and grandson. Dr. Mitchell was a man of commanding appearance and mag- nificent head. His memory was like a tarred board ; every feather that dropped on it seemed to stick. He spared no pains and no expense to settle the most minute questions which had sprung up in his investigations. I have known him to spend forty dollars to secure a map from Europe which would settle the name and precise location of some small village in Mexico or South America. And so he would explore die re- cesses of any county in the State to strive to find a piece of stone or humble plant, the existence and the characteristics of which it seemed to him necessary to know in order to pursue his studies. It was in this pursuit that he lost his life. He was examining the mountains in west North CaroHna to de- termine the height of the highest when he fell from a height * The University of North Carolina, at its commencement, 1895, con- ferred the degree of LL. D. on Mrs. Spencer. 84 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS into a pool of water, where he expired. His remains were discovered, and great honor was paid to his memory by an assemblage on that mountain-peak, in which the Rt. Rev. Bishop Otey, of Tennessee, President Swain, of the university, and other distinguished gentlemen took part. The professor's name was given to the mountain, which will hand it down to future generations. Professor Mitchell was a genial as well as a learned man, a wit as well as a scientist ; and I think we all regarded him at that time as the person who gave the greatest reputation to the institution. Professor De Berniere Hooper, a descendant of the North Carolinian signer of the Declaration of Independence of that name, was professor of Latin. These were the only members of the faculty of any mark. Governor Swain, the president, imparted his activity to the institution and built it up in many ways. He survived until after the war. I believe that at this writing (June, 1887) all my colleagues are dead. The duties appointed me upon my first entrance upon the professorship would not have been at all arduous to a man thoroughly prepared for them ; but for me, having had no time even to review my college studies on the subjects which I was to teach, it was pretty hard work. I was young and ambitious, and threw myself into it with all my might. In addition to teaching logic, I also had care of the essays written by some of the classes, and took turns in preaching in the college chapel with the senior professor, Dr. Mitchell, and my colleague, Dr. Green, afterward Bishop of Mississippi. It was a prodigious ordeal for a young fellow who had no theological education and no practice in writing sermons. The first of my produc- tions in that line was made for the chapel of the university. In addition to my college duties, I paid attention to the Methodist church in the village and did all I could to build it up. On Sunday niglit, in a little chapel on the site of the present Presbyterian church in the village, I took turns with PROFESSIONAL LIFE COMMENCED 85 the other professors in preaching. Unrestrained by manu- script, I turned myself loose on the boys and the villagers in earnest appeals. The collegians preferred my crude night discourses to my carefully prepared morning sermons, which, although written out, now seem to me to be about as crude as any young man's sermons well could be. While I was at Chapel Hill there came a young publisher of the name of Ball, representing the firm of Sorin & Ball, who secured from me twelve of my manuscripts and pubhshed them under the title of " Twelve College Sermons." There is such power and usefulness in ignorance. It does seem to me that the more we know the less we are willing to do, because we become more and more severely critical of our own performances. No twelve sermons that I have pro- duced since I was fifty-five years of age would I allow any house to publish now. My very youth, I suppose, disarmed criticism in a measure ; I was phenomenally young for such a position. In those early days salaries in colleges were not very ample. My salary was seven hundred and fifty dollars ; in Chapel Hill, however, at that time it was equal to fifteen hundred dollars in New York, and was not much less than twenty-five hundred dollars probably would be in Chapel Hill at this day. On that sum I determined to marry. When I became engaged to my wife her father was one of the most prosperous merchants in New York. Between our engagement and this summer the disastrous tide which leveled almost all houses passed over New York, and my fiancee was as gloriously poor as her lover. But I knew that in their most prosperous days the Disosways had trained their children to habits of economy, and that my little sweetheart especially was a woman who by her natural disposition, her acquired habits, and the grace of God which ruled in her heart would be ready to adapt herself to any circumstances and help me 86 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS in my work ; so by correspondence it was arranged that in the summer vacation we should marry. Courtship and marriage did not take me away one single hour from my professorial and ministerial duties ; and now (1887) that we have been married forty-four years and have had six children I put it on record that my wife has never for personal or domestic con- siderations interfered with my work so much as one hour. It seems to me it must be almost unparalleled in the history of a Christian minister that any man could say so much. Her family were living at the old country-seat in Asbury, in western New Jersey. It was a journey from Chapel Hill to that place in those days. A day was spent in going by car- riage from Chapel Hill to Raleigh, then by a miserable Httle railroad, consisting of rows of hewn logs with strips of iron spiked to them, to Gaston, thence to Petersburg, and so on slowly till we reached Princeton. It took me a good part of a week to do this. At Philadelphia I fell in with a presiden- tial party, the center of which was President Tyler, and we all drew up at Princeton on Saturday night and lay over Sun- day. I remember being at a party that night with President Tyler at Commodore Stockton's, although how I got there is to me a mystery to this day. On Monday by stage I reached my destination. There, on the 20th of June, in her father's house, I was married to — well, there is no use of an old man making a fool of himself by undertaking to tell what it was he married. In time to reach my duties at the university, we started back, visiting my friends in Baltimore and in Raleigh. The condition of the railroads in that day may be made to appear by the following incident. While going from Gaston to Ra- leigh a rail shot up through the floor of the car between my bride and myself. If it had struck the foot of either of us it would probably have broken a limb. What a road it must have been when the wheels were so small that a piece of iron PROFESSIONAL LIFE COMMENCED 87 lying loose on the track could jump a wheel and strike the floor of a car! What a curious piece of iron that rail must have been to perform such a feat! What a slight kind of floor that must have been that could be penetrated by so slender a strip of iron! There was a joke current about this road at that period. A conductor going along perceived a wooden-legged traveler, and as he was lame invited him to board the train and thus get a lift on the journey. The lame man excused himself on the ground that he was in a hurry and could not wait. Nevertheless the accommodations then were better than they had been a few years before, when the whole journey was made by stages. Then it required several weeks and was full of perils ; and North Carolina merchants going to New York, or to Philadelphia or Baltimore, as many of them preferred, were accustomed to make their wills. Collegians make a point of testing every man who enters the faculty of their institution. The boys tested me. I had put on no airs in the recitation-room ; I had overlooked many things ; had gone straight forward, endeavoring to interest them in their studies, creating discussions in the classes, array- ing some portion of a class against another in a logical discus- sion, taking sides first with one party and then another, some- times leading my party to victory and then again encountering a defeat, which I always took in good humor, pointing out to the best of my ability to each party why the defeat or the suc- cess came. A part of the discipline of the university was that each member of the faculty took his turn in making a nocturnal domiciliary visit to the rooms of the students, talking with them, helping them in their studies, and also having the re- sponsibility of the care of the campus. There were some wild, rough fellows in my day from the South and Southwest, but they were not such dangerous men as certain boys from some of the older families of Virginia and North Carolina, 88 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS who could plan and execute mischief with great cold-blooded- ness. I knew my time for trial would come. It did. I was visiting the room of one of the students on the first floor in the southwest end of the east building, when certain of the boys, who had taken umbrage at a very plain sermon I had delivered to them in the chapel, managed to fasten the door so that there was no exit to the undergraduate in whose room I was, nor to me. I was the only professor on duty. They commenced stoning the room. It was not only a mischiev- ous, but a perilous thing. I believe every window-pane was smashed. The room was so exposed that there was but one part in which it was possible for two men to stand without being hit if missiles were sent in from every practicable direc- tion, as they certainly were. After the first shot or two, when I found that the combined strength of the undergraduate and myself, who were prisoners, was unable to force the door open, I led him to that point of safety. Our assailants had un- doubtedly calculated that we would go under the bed when they had searched the corner with small stones. I calculated as much and gave that bed a wide berth. It was fortunate, as they were drinking and singing and exciting themselves in their attack. Suddenly there came through the window a stone so big and so aimed that it fell in the center of the bed and broke it down to the floor. We were in our corner, how- ever, conversing together until the storm blew over. It was a long time, probably two hours ; it seemed to us much longer. At last a tutor coming by discovered the state of affairs and opened the door. The undergraduate found another lodging, for the room was wrecked and piled with stones ; and I went back to my little wife, to whom I said nothing about the mat- ter, as I determined never to allude to it in the college. The boys had tried my pluck once or twice before, and found that I was not scared by having a pistol pointed at me and that I simply did my duty. PROFESSIONAL LIFE COMMEXCED 89 Next morning I went regularly to my class with just the same appearance, I suppose, I had any other morning. But Governor Swain, the president of the university, had been told the matter by the tutor and was in a state of great exasperation. I had become his pet, and he was proud of me and could not bear to have any slight or disrespect shown me. He felt as if the older professors could take care of themselves, but as he had induced me to come to the university, he was pledged to give me special presidential support. The trustees were called together. One of the sons of one of the prominent members thereof, of very distinguished family, was in the row, and quite a number of the boys were sentenced to rustication. I went before the board and pleaded that the sentence should not be executed ; that I believed it was a proper one and necessary for the discipline of the college, but, the disci- pline being vindicated, I had no animosity against these young men, and felt that it was merely a foolish college freak. I succeeded in saving them ; and from that day on each man in that outbreak was my friend. Moreover, during the remain- ing years of my stay at the university I never had a disagree- able encounter with a student. My first year made them be- lieve that I was true, courageous, and unvindictive ; that if I was not a great man, I was greatly addicted to doing my duty ; and I have no better friends than the Chapel Hill boys of that period. PART II MEMOIR THE YEARS The years that come to us are dumb, Their footsteps rhythmic, low ; We hear not as they swiftly come And yet more swiftly go. Each brings us something we must keep, And each doth something take ; Thus we are changing while we sleep. And changing while we wake. From " My Septuagint." CHAPTER I TEACHING AND PREACHING, 1844-50 THE five years of Professor Deems's life in Chapel Hill as a member of the faculty of the University of North Caro- lina were, indeed, marked by perfect good will between the students and himself, as well as between his colleagues and himself. His home and social life, too, was such that he ever afterward looked back upon that period with pleasure al- most unalloyed. It was here that, on May 27, 1844, his first child, a son, was born, to whom was given the name Theo- dore Disosway Deems. On December 18, 1846, another son, Francis Melville Deems, was bom. Among the members of the faculty none secured a larger place in the heart of Professor Deems than President Swain, as has been seen from the reference to him in the autobio- graphical notes. This high esteem was never lowered by time ; for on May 13, 1869, in the course of an address on the oc- casion of the fifty-third anniversary of the American Bible Society, in the Lafayette Place Reformed Dutch Church, New York City, Dr. Deems said : " On this program you have an announcement of the death of one of our vice-presidents, the Hon. David L. Swain, of North Carolina. He was my in- timate friend, and his death is to me a severe personal be- reavement. That great and good man, judge, governor, president of the university, has accompanied me to the cabins 94 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS of sick servants, and sat reverently while I read to them the Word of God, and knelt humbly on the sanded floor w hile I prayed. That was in the days of master and servant. The first time I saw him after the war he came into a yard where, on the occasion of the death of a little colored child, I was preaching to an assembly of freedmen, and then he spoke words of comfort to the bereaved mother, and walked with them to the graveyard, where we buried the child amid the solemn services of the church." The five years at Chapel Hill, from 1842 to 1847, were not only happy, but also busy and significant years. Professor Deems toiled incessantly, laboriously, and fruitfully. As a natural consequence his reputation as a teacher and preacher of unusual ability went abroad. So it is not strange that the authorities of Randolph- Macon College, a Methodist institu- tion, then at Boydton, Va., had their attention attracted to him. By invitation he delivered an address at Randolph-Macon at the commencement exercises of the class of 1847. I" ^ let- ter to the Rev. Edward M. Deems, from Mr. Richard Irby, the present secretary and treasurer of the college, whose per- sonal recollections of the institution go back to 1839, that gentle- man says : " I recollect very well his [Professor Deems's] speech at the old college, and had a copy of it in my collection, but unfortunately that, with many other such things, has been lost in my moving to and fro. The first time your father visited the old college he took part in a debate in the Washington Hall. A young ' limb of the law ' took occasion to quote os- tentatiously legal authority to sustain his argument ; but your father showed he knew more about Coke and Littleton than the young lawyer himself, and floored him, much to the amusement of the audience." This visit led the authorities to call Professor Deems to the chair of natural science. Had the University of North Caro- lina been a Methodist institution this call would doubtless TEACHING AND PREACHING 95 have been declined, but Professor Deems had this one draw- back to his happiness, the impression that he was not as use- ful to his church as he might be. Perhaps in that idea he was mistaken, but he himself used to say, in reference to this matter, " The impression was deepened by the frequent appeals of certain brethren in behalf of denominational posts, and especially by the repeated efforts of the friends of Randolph- Macon College to draw me to that institution." Randolph- Macon College was founded by the Methodist Cliurch in 1830, was opened at Boydton, Va., in 1832, and moved in 1868 to its present site in Ashland, Va. It is the oldest Methodist college in the United States, its charter hav- ing been granted by the legislature of Virginia at its 1829-30 session. The idea of the college was bom as early as 1828, in the mind of a layman, Gabriel P. Disosway, who received aid in crystallizing and realizing it from the Rev. Hezekiah G. Leigh, the Rev. John Early (afterward bishop), and other prom- inent Methodist ministers and laymen. Mr. Disosway was at that time living in Petersburg, Va., and was a brother of Is- rael D. Disosway, whose daughter became Professor Deems's wife. Randolph-Macon College was in 1846 the joint property of the Virginia and North Carolina conferences. Professor Deems was then a member of the North Carolina Conference. In 1846 the Rev. William A. Smith, D.D., was elected president, and Professor Deems was invited to take a chair in the faculty. The question of the wisdom of so doing he submitted to a number of his ministerial brethren, some of whom urged him to accept and others to decline the invitation. After much thought he decided that it was his duty to accept. And so in December, 1847, he took his wife and his two boys, Theodore and Frank, and moved to Boydton, Mecklenburg County, Va., aboutone hundred and twenty-five miles southwest of Richmond. The travelers reached their new home in midwinter, the 96 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS ground being covered with snow. Boydton naturally ap- peared at its worst. It was a very small place, and remote from the railroad. The cottage into which Professor Deems moved was in a grove somewhat apart from other dwelling- houses, and at first the new-comers were very lonely, the soli- tude of their surroundings being intensified in the spring and summer evenings by the weird call of the whippoorwill, who seemed to find in Boydton a congenial atmosphere. In January, 1848, Professor Deems entered upon his labors in the department of chemistry, commencing his course of lectures on January 24th. This he did with an inadequate equipment for his laboratory, and with no special training or knowledge of the science which he was to teach. In view of these facts we have brought out at this time that ambition, boldness, and faith in divine help which ever marked his char- acter and conduct. One of the rules of his life was to leap into any work to which he was called by Providence, and then work or fight his way out. He rarely failed, although at times he found himself in desperate straits. As professor of chem- istry at Randolph-Macon he had in his class, as he often said, some pupils who knew more about tlie subject than he did; although he did not let the young men find that out, for, as he used to say, laughingly, he kept at least one lesson ahead of his class, rising often before day to prepare himself, and when he lacked minute knowledge of the subject in hand he performed so many and such brilliant experiments that his young men found no time nor disposition to ask embarrassing questions. Among the members of the faculty Professor David Dun- can, whose son, the Rev. James Duncan, D.D., became one of the Southern Methodist bishops, was probably his most intimate friend. But Professor Deems formed other warm friendships among his colleagues and among tlie students. Upon the whole, however, the one year of life at Boydton had in it more TEACHING AND PREACHING 97 clouds than sunshine. In a certain place Professor Deems writes : " The year 1848 covers my professorship at Randolph- Macon. It was a bitter year. The failure of a Northern firm stripped me of what little I had saved at the University of North Carolina. I immediately projected the ' Southern Methodist Pulpit,' a periodical intended to assist me. The prospectus was concocted and written in Richmond, and ap- peared in the ' Richmond Christian Advocate ' of December 29, 1847." The " Southern Methodist Pulpit " was published monthly, and was maintained for four years, the bound numbers mak- ing four stately volumes, and containing much interesting and valuable matter. Naturally Professor Deems's time was closely occupied by the preparation of his lectures, but he managed to find time enough to write quite frequently for the periodicals of the day, especially the " Richmond Christian Advocate." He found living at Boydton an aged Methodist minister, the Rev. Hezekiah G. Leigh, who owned a number of slaves. From him he hired as cook Lucinda, a negro woman about fifty years of age. She was an earnest Christian, possessing most of the good traits while free from most of the bad quali- ties of the Southern slave. The family became warmly at- tached to good old " Aunt Lucinda," and their affection was heartily reciprocated ; so much so that when, at the close of 1848, Professor Deems told her that they must part, as he was going to move away, she protested violently. " No, sir," said she, " I will never leave you. You've got to buy me. If you don't buy me I will run away and follow you!" So Professor Deems had a slave thrust upon him, as it were. He paid Mr. Leigh about three hundred dollars for the good woman, and until her death at Greensboro a few years later he did all he could to make her lot a comfortable one, and she served him with untiring industry and sleepless fidelity. 98 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS While never a rabid pro-slavery man, Professor Deems nevertheless conscientiously accepted negro slavery as a part of God's providential dealings with our race, finding in the Word of God provision made for the righteous attitude of the slave toward his master and the master toward his slave. Wherever he lived in the South he won the hearts of the ne- groes by his sympathy and self-denying efforts to provide them with the gospel of their Lord and Saviour. In less than a year after arriving at Randolph-Macon Col- lege he began, on various accounts, to feel that he was not exactly where he could best serve the church and the Master. He therefore finally decided to resign his professorship, and, yielding to the pressure brought to bear on him to enter the itinerancy, he became pastor at Newbern, N. C., where he had won many friends years before as the " boy-preacher." Professor Deems's resignation did not mean the end of his interest in Randolph-Macon College, for he ever afterward cherished toward it a warm feeling of interest. Nor was this a mere sentiment, but a practical thing, for he twice delivered the annual address, once before the war and once after. He aided the presidents in their efforts to secure in New York subscriptions for the college, besides giving liberally himself. He sent the library several of his books, and but a short time before his death aided the professor of physics and biology to furnish his laboratory. He also, by request, sent his portrait, which is now on the wall of the library, surrounded by a num- ber of others, whose originals he was associated with in former days. But his resignation in 1 848 was made in good faith, and was soon followed by his departure from Boydton. Again packing his household goods, he and his family, after another mid- winter journey of about two hundred miles, found a home in the parsonage of the Methodist church at Newbern, N. C. Here he continued his work on the " Southern Methodist Pul- TEACHING AND PREACHING 99 I)it," but gave most of his time and toil to his pulpit and pas- toral work. Although only twenty-nine years old, and although most of his experience had been in educational work, yet at Newbern, both as pastor and preacher, he was eminently suc- cessful. The church was in every way greatly strengthened by the efforts of the earnest, industrious, and eloquent young pastor. From a letter of a friend who hved in Newbern and was a parishioner of Mr. Deems when he was pastor there is culled the following interesting extract : " I wish I could write of his beautiful hfe and work in Newbern. As you probably know, he went there first in 1842 as agent for the American Bible Society. In a protracted meeting at that time he preached a powerful sermon from Judges v. 23 : ' Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the in- habitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.' This gave great offense, but by it the wrath of man was made to praise Cod. Hundreds flocked to hear the bold young preacher, and I think the protracted meeting resulted in over one hun- dred conversions. I once went with him to a Thursday after- noon appointment in the country. For some good reason there were only three persons, besides myself, in the congrega- tion. Instead of dismissing us with a short service, he preached one of the most beautiful sermons I ever listened to from mortal lips. As we left the church I remarked upon it, and he said, 'Yes, that congregation was an inspiration!' He knew they had made great sacrifices to come to church, and he preached his very best for them. Great good resulted from it." The home circle in the Methodist parsonage at Newbern during 1849 a very happy one. Mrs. Deems's good mother, Mrs. Letitia Disosway, at this time spent several months with her daughter's family. It was in Newbern that 100 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS Mr. Deems's third child was born, and named Mary Letitia. With that playfulness of nature which ever characterized him, and with reference to a certain nasal conformation of his little daughter, he immediately dubbed her " Little Cambric Needle Nose," as he had called his little son Theodore " Theodoric the Goth," or " Ollie de Gok," as the little one himself put it, in his vain effort to echo his father's words. The only cloud which flecked Mr. Deems's sky at Newbern was the fact that his physical powers were unable to keep pace with those of his mind, compelling him for a time to recuperate at Beaufort on the seashore. While a pastor at Newbern Mr. Deems was elected by the North Carolina Conference as one of the delegates to the General Conference, which met at St. Louis on May i, 1850. On his way to the St. Louis Conference Mr. Deems first met the Rev. Hubbard H. Kavanaugh, afterward made a bishop, and always a valued friend. In April, 1884, he sent to the Rev. A. H. Redford, D.D., who was writing a life of the bishop, a paper, portions of which are inserted at this point because touching on several points of interest to the readers of this memoir. "some recollections of bishop kavanaugh "In May of 1850 I first saw Hubbard H. Kavanaugh. I was then a Methodist minister. The delegation from the North Carolina Annual Conference, of which I was a member, was on its way to the General Conference of the Methodist Epis- copal Church, South, to be held in St. Louis. The two youngest members elect were, I believe, the Rev. A. H. Red- ford, of Kentucky, and the writer of these recollections, who was twenty-nine years of age. Our delegation went to Cin- cinnati by the river. When the steamer drew up to the levee there were several ministers waiting for us. Being young I remained on the hurricane-deck and saw the landing of some TEACHING AND PREACHING 101 of the older members of the Virginia delegation, who had joined us en route. While the fastening of our steamer was going on I studied the faces on shore. There stood in the group one whom I had never seen. He made a great im- pression on me. He was a short, square, muscular man, large for his height, without superabundant flesh, ruddy without being florid, with a pertnanent look, and made to stay. In his eye there was a tremble of innocent fun, and when he laughed heartily he shook all over like a well-filled jelly-bag. I wanted to know him. " As our delegation lay over in the city it fell upon me to have to preach, and already I had formed the habit of being careful, on special occasions, not to try to preach, but on all occasions to do my best. The sermon made Mr. and Mrs. Kavanaugh my friends. She was a charming type of the best kind of Methodist woman, and that is high praise. She was tall and slender, and in every physical, and perhaps mental, quality the opposite of her husband, certainly in the latter his complement. They went down the river with us, and every- thing I saw and heard of Hubbard Kavanaugh made him dearer to me. Then I felt that that man ought to be a bishop of the church, but knew that his time was not yet. " From St. Louis I carried back the best remembrances of Mr. Kavanaugh. He was so simple without insipidity, so conscientious without asperity, so earnest without fanaticism, so cheerful without frivolity, so efficient without ambition, that I loved to dwell upon his character and try to form mine after the model. And what a preacher he was, after the first three quarters of an hour! He was an Alleghany thunder-storm turned loose. He could not preach in an expository, quiet, conversational manner. His subject seemed to burn in him like a smoldering fire until it reached a vent, when it suddenly blazed forth and set his whole nature in flame. " In 1854 we were again elected to the General Conference, 102 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS held that year in Columbus, Ga. As few of the North Caro- lina delegates had seen Mr. Kavanaugh, and none but myself knew him personally and well, the brethren depended upon my representations of him, and I urged his name warmly. It was agreed that we would vote for him. It ought perhaps to be said that I had never spoken on this subject to Mr. Kava- naugh, and that in the North Carolina Conference there was no one suffering with the cacoethes episcopalis. " During the session a Kentucky delegate came to me and asked me what the North Carolinians desired in regard to the episcopacy. I told him that we had no aspirations, but would be pleased to receive suggestions ; and he replied that the Kentucky brethren had not made any choice. 'Well, you don't have far to look.' 'What do you mean?' he asked. 'Of course you will vote for Hubbard H. Kavanaugh!' was my answer, and he replied, ' We have not thought of him ; could he be elected?' 'That is not the question,' said I; ' but the whole North Carolina delegation is going to vote for him because we believe he ought to be elected.' The Ken- tucky delegate seemed to be surprised, but pleased. The result was that Mr. Kavanaugh was elected bishop. "The bishop was known to be given to preaching sermons that were lofty and long, taking a good while to reach the req- uisite pitch. After his election, while we were talking it over in his room, and his natural modesty was really so oppressing him that he felt as if he could not take the mighty work in hand, I spoke cheerfully and playfully with him, giving him two pieces of advice. One was that when he was to preach at a conference he should commence in the basement, hold forth about three quarters of an hour, and then go preaching up into the pulpit, and carry everything before him. Mrs. Kavanaugh said she had given him similar advice. The other was that he never attend an annual conference without having Mrs. Kavanaugh with him, assigning as a reason that I had TEACHING AND PREACHING 103 cast my vote mainly for the female side of the house, for if ever there were to be lady bishops, Mrs. Kavanaugh was my first choice. The first advice I have never heard that he heeded ; the second I beheve he faithfully observed, to his own great comfort and the profit of the church, "At the General Conference of 1866 in New Orleans, the last in which I had the honor to represent the North Carolina Conference, who gave me that distinction although I had been removed to New York, Bishop Kavanaugh one day invited me to dine with him. Connected with the house of his host was a garden, in which we walked and talked. At the end of the alley, after we had passed up and down the path sev- eral times, he wheeled in front of me, stood and chuckled, and shook with that peculiar motion of merriment so familiar to his friends, and said, ' Deems, the responsibility of my being bishop is on your shoulders.' ' Let it stay there ; I am willing to bear it.' ' Do you know what I thought of you when you first mentioned me for bishop?' 'Certainly not; you never told me.' ' Well,' said he, pausing a moment and chuckling again, ' I thought you were a fool.' And he laughed outright. ' Well, bishop, what did you think of a majority of the Gen- eral Conference when they coincided with me?' Then he shook with merriment and exclaimed, 'Why, I thought they were fools too.' ' And have you never recovered your respect for the General Conference and for me, bishop?' There came suddenly a deeply solemn expression into his face, and he said slowly, ' Never, until our war came. There was a moment of crisis in Kentucky and the surrounding region. The affairs of the Southern Methodist Church were in such position that perhaps there was no man living who could have held the church from destruction but myself. My antece- dents and connections in Kentucky gave me the needed influ- ence, and one day in the midst of great pressure there came to me a consciousness of that, but never up to that hour had 104 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS I been able to understand the providence which had allowed the church to make me bishop.' A little twinkle came back into his eye, and he added, 'Then it occurred to me that Deems might be a fool, but he was a prophet likewise.* And he put his arm in mine, drew me affectionately to him, and we left the garden. " When the Round Lake Fraternal Camp-meeting was pro- jected, among the names in the South which I furnished the promoters was that of Bishop Kavanaugh. The church papers. North and South, told how he won all hearts by his modesty, sweetness, and cheerfulness, and how he surprised the great audience who heard him preach by the vast sweep of his thought and the mighty unction of his delivery. There are thousands who will make the impression on their children's children that the man they heard at Round Lake was the mightiest preaching bishop in America. " My last meeting with Bishop Kavanaugh was at Deering Camp-ground, in Kentucky. I suspect that I owed my invi- tation to that meeting to my dear old friend. It was easy for a man of my style to preach alternately with a man of Bishop Kavanaugh's style, because we were so totally different in physique, and in manner of thought and deHvery, that no comparison would probably suggest itself to any hearer ; and we were intent on saving souls. A cottage was set apart for us; there we talked together about things pertaining to the kingdom of God, there we prayed together, thence we went together to the pulpit, and there we parted, to meet no more on earth. The next spring, when traveling in the Arabian Desert, going up to awful Sinai, the mount of God, one night I dreamed of that cottage on the Kentucky hill, and thought it was night, and thought I heard the choir singing, as they did one night before that cottage door, the strains of ' Beulah Land,' and the impression was so great that I awoke, and still heard the notes so distinctly that I walked out of the tent upon TEACH I XG AND PREACHING 105 the cold sand, among my sleeping Arabs and sleeping camels, as if I would find the singers. Then I knew it was an echo from the Kentucky camp, and I seemed to be with Bishop Kavanaugh. I felt that since Moses went that road with Aaron and Hur no purer, loftier soul had gone that way up to the mount of God." The St. Louis Conference consisted of one hundred and three members, the bishops present being Bishops Andrew, Paine, Capers, and Soule. Probably the most interesting event of the occasion was the election to the episcopate of Henry B. Bascom, D.D. His ordination took place in the afternoon of Sunday, May 12th, and is referred to as follows in Mr. Deems's account of the conference in the " Southern Methodist Pulpit " : " An hour before the appointed time the large and elegant church where we met was crowded, the aisles were full, the vestibule was blocked up with standing spectators, aged clergy filled the altar and the pulpit steps. The bishop elect opened the services with a chapter from the Scriptures and announced a hymn. Dr. Lovick Pierce followed in prayer, and Dr. Bas- com preached. ' God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross,' was his theme. He read his sermon, adhering minutely to the manuscript, and following the lines with the finger of his left hand. His voice was low and husky, so that he could scarcely have been heard by more than half the assemblage, until he arrived at his concluding paragraphs. Occasionally he would look up with an eye all fire, and fling upon the con- gregation a sentence which had the effect of the touch of the torpedo upon those who heard. His excitement was intense ; he trembled under it, and so did we. We were afraid that it was more than he could endure. The last paragraph was as- cendingly glorious. After his sermon the bishop elect was conducted by the venerable Drs. Early and Lovick Pierce 106 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS to his place in front of the altar. Bishop Andrew read the collect, Bishop Capers the epistle, Bishop Paine the gospel. Dr. Early presented the bishop elect. Bishop Andrew moved the congregation to prayer and afterward addressed and questioned the bishop elect. The impressive Veni Creator Spiritus was repeated in alternate strains by the bishops and other clergy present. The senior bishop was then brought in, in a feeble state, tottering and gasping for breath. He stood up— that great wreck of the noble Bishop Soule*— and laid his large and heavy hand on the head of Dr. Bascom, which seemed to sink beneath the pressure. The other bishops and Drs. Early and Pierce then laid their hands upon his. In the profound stillness of the great congregation, making, as it were, the last effort of his old age, in a low, tremulous voice Bishop Soule said, 'Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a bishop in the church of God.' The Bible was presented by Bishop Andrew, and the concluding prayer was offered by Bishop Paine. In a state of exhaustion from the protracted and intensely interesting service, the congregation retired from the church." Meeting Bishop Bascom shortly after the service, Mr. Deems said to him, "Good-morning, Doctor— Bishop Bascom;" and his reply, with his husky voice and flushing face, to the ac- knowledgment of his new honor and authority was, " You tear my head with a crown of thorns." Impressive as was the occasion of the ordination of this great and good bishop, its impressiveness would have been deepened had those concerned seen that within four months, on September 8, 1850, the good bishop was to exchange his " crown of thorns " for a " crown of life." While the conference was in session St. Louis was suffering from a visitation of the cholera. Considerable sickness and * Bishop Soule was the framer of the constitution of the Southern Methodist Church. TEACHING AND PREACHING 107 panic prevailed among the delegates, but, with commendable faithfulness, they stood at the post of duty, and much impor- tant business was transacted before adjournment. It was while at the St. Louis Conference that Mr. Deems was called to the presidency of Greensboro Female College, at Greensboro, N. C. After due consideration, deciding to accept the position, he returned to Newbern, and, closing his pastorate there, moved his family to his new field of work. CHAPTER II PRESIDENT OF GREENSBORO COLLEGE, 1850-54 MR. DEEMS found the affairs of Greensboro College at a low ebb. The buildings were sadly out of repair and in- adequate to meet the demands of any increased patronage ; the curriculum was more contracted than that of any similar school in the South ; there were virtually no appliances for teaching, such as maps, globes, and philosophical apparatus ; the staff of teachers was insufficient in numbers and variety ; and the charges for board and tuition were below those of other like schools. With characteristic executive ability, zeal, devotion, and fidelity, he detected the wants of the college, and by his fac- ulty for inspiring confidence he so aroused the enthusiasm of the trustees that they gave him his way, which meant certain success. During the five years of his life in Greensboro he caused the older buildings to be repaired and new ones to a great extent to be added ; the curriculum was enlarged so as to equal any, and in some respects to surpass all, rival female seminaries in the South. He gathered about him— for he pos- sessed rare powers for the appraisement of the fitness of others — a superb corps of faithful and capable teachers. These he in- spired with his own ardor, ambition, and breadth of views ; and not only by his liberality toward them in the matter of secur- ing for them increased salaries,— for he believed in paying good 108 PRESIDENT OF GREENSBORO COLLEGE 109 teachers liberally,— but, above all, by that genial, gracious, just, and generous manner which ever marked his intercourse with everybody and in every relation of life, he so endeared him- self to them personally that service seemed but an act of friendship. The college was fully equipped for efficient teach- ing ; the charges for board and tuition were raised so as no longer to underbid other hke institutions ; and withal, under his able and brilliant presidency, Greensboro Female College took a foremost place among the seminaries of learning for young women ; and so deep and broad were the foundations which he laid anew for the reorganized and remodeled school that it has ever kept its high rank. During vacations, and often during term-time. President Deems was indefatigable in making tours to various parts of the State for the purpose of raising funds for the college and otherwise promoting its interests. From his Journal, 1852 " March 27th. Visit from the Rev. G. M. Everhart, a tutor in Emory and Henry College, who came to sound me upon taking the presidency of the college, about to be vacated by President Collins, who goes to the head of Dickinson. Do not see that it is my duty to go. Am doing much good here, and should be perfectly satisfied if I had a comfortable house. By ' perfectly satisfied ' I mean as much so as I could be in a literary institution. In any situation I must have vexations. I have them here. ... I am too small, too young, too little learned, to preside over a faculty of older and abler men." "April 22d, Thursday. Cold and windy. At twenty min- utes past nine o'clock in the morning I looked upon the face of my jourih child, a boy. There is no name for the young man as yet. His mother insists on calling him Charles, but I protest against this, as I cannot endure the practice of per- 110 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS petuating names in a family. The use of names is to make dis- tinction. But suppose there should be half a dozen Charleses. Some adjunct to the name would have to be used, as old Charles, young Charles, big Charles, little Charles, swearing Charles, etc. My plan in names is to make as sure as possi- ble that no other Deems ever had the name I proposed for my child." Faithful old "Aunt Lucinda," the colored nurse who had served the family so loyally at Randolph-Macon and at New- bern, was a valued member of the household in Greensboro. After a time her health failed. One night, after an unusually hard clay, she asked Mrs. Deems to come up to her room and read the Bible to her and pray with her. This was gladly done, for we all loved Aunt Lucinda. Then came the good- night salutations. In the morning when her room was visited, she was found, with a peaceful expression, resting in the sleep of death. It was a terrible shock to the family, and more genuine grief for the dead was never felt than that of our household when Aunt Lucinda died. Shortly after this there came to the kitchen door and in- quired for Mrs. Deems a very neatly dressed colored woman, whose speech and bearing were those of a person of unusual intelligence. "Well, my good woman, what can we do for you? " asked Mrs. Deems. " I want you to buy me. Miss Deems." (The negroes never said " Mrs." ; it was always " Miss.") " What is your name? " " Rachel, ma'am." "Why do you want us to buy you, Rachel? Have you not a good home? " " Yes, ma'am, I got a good home, and my master is very kind ; but he's got to sell, and he told me I might pick out PRESIDENT OF GREENSBORO COLLEGE 111 somebody to buy me if I could. I likes Dr. Deems and you, and would like you to buy me. Can't you, miss? I wish mightily you would! " Mrs. Deems told her that they did not want to buy a ser- vant at that time, but " Aunt Rachel " persisted, carried her point, and was bought for about eight hundred dollars. As Dr. Deems made it a point not to separate negro families, he hired " Uncle Henry," Aunt Rachel's husband. They were a worthy couple, and a deep attachment existed between them and the family. They were always present at family worship, and received every care and attention. Aunt Rachel could read and was a devout Christian, as was the case with slaves in so many homes in the South. From his Journal, 1852 "June 30th, Weldon, Wednesday. A mass-meeting, at which I took ground distinctly in favor of the passage of a law prohibiting the traffic in ardent spirits, reviewing the statutes of the State upon the subject. I was about two hours speaking, and the assembly listened with marked attention. Thursday, dined at S. W. Brandis's, took tea with the Rev. Thomas G. Lowe in Halifax, spent the night in Weldon, and next evening reached Stony Creek and the residence of my father-in-law, I. D. Disosway, Esq., where I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Deems and the children. On this tour I collected bonds and cash amounting to one thousand dollars for the Fund for Educating Preachers' Daughters." "July 15th. The college opened its fall session, and fifty- four boarders were in attendance the first day. In about a fortnight we had seventy-seven. This is the largest number ever in attendance during the fall session. We reached sev- enty-five last Christmas." "August 1st. The little book 'AVhat Now?' was written 112 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS for the class which graduated at our late commencement. It was the product of three weeks' work of scraps and shreds of time, and was sent without copying to the printer. This is very indiscreet, but it was an emergency. May it do much good. Dr. Collins has finally left Emory and Henry College. I have had a visit from the Rev. T. R. Catlett, a trustee, and the Rev. G. M. Everhart, formerly of the faculty. They both urge me to accept the presidency. A letter from my friend Coleman does the same. Do not yet see my duty clear ; must be con- vinced of that, or I do not move. How much easier life would be if we had an angel of revelation to tell us on each occasion what is right ! I think I desire to do right, but I am very frequently puzzled to know what to do. ' Father, thou art my guide from my youth.' " "August 1 6th. Made a missionary collection of sixty dol- lars, only seven dollars and fifty cents having been collected on the whole circuit last year. This was favorable. On the 20th of August I started at two o'clock in the morning for Halifax, after being up and at conversation or labor all night. The next night, about ten o'clock, reached the court-house and had half a night's sleep. The next day I left Brother Samuel Major's. With him and Brother Sackett and Brother Mallett, whom I met for the first time, I went to the camp- ground at Asbury Meeting-house. There was no preacher from a distance but myself, Brother Bibb (the preacher in charge) and Brother Joseph Goodman being the only other preachers. The consequence was that I had most of the heavy work to perform. It rained almost incessandy after Sunday morning. I collected one hundred and twenty-five dollars in bonds for the college ; but it is such hard work." "August 25th. Rode to Mr. Stovall's, who is senator for the county, and who gave me fifty dollars on my scheme for the college. At night reached Halifax, and started off in the stage, reaching home on the night of the 27 th. In all this PRESIDENT OF GREENSBORO COLLEGE 113 time I had been in dry sheets only one night, and yet am mercifully preserved." "August 29th. The sermon which I preached on the ist of August was remarkably blessed to the conversion of Pro- fessor Kern, who has since professed sanctification and is a happy soul. Thank God! I began to feel that I had lost my call. Glory be to the Comforter for this blessed revela- tion of Himself! " " Saturday, September 4th. Went to visit Sylva Grove School, Davidson County, N. C, the property of Charles Mock, Esq., twenty-four miles southwest of Greensboro, with some view of purchasing it." "September i8th. Went to Sylva Grove and concluded the bargain for Mock's place." " September 25th. Have changed the name of Sylva Grove to Glenanna, in honor of my precious wife." " October 27th. The Grand Division of the Sons of Tem- perance held its annual session in Salisbury, N. C, commenc- ing on the 25th of October. I was elected Worthy Associate. Having been put in nomination against L. Blakmer, Esq., I declined votes, desiring to have him unanimously elected, be- lieving him to be entitled to the position. I am glad that I did this. It is always pleasant afterwa7-(i to have denied one's selfishness. I was immediately elected Associate, and the Grand Division appointed Mr. Blakmer and myself to repre- sent them at the National Division to be held in Chicago next June. They give each one hundred dollars to pay expenses. I was also able to help another friend by having the Rev. Peter Doub appointed Grand Lecturer of the State, on a respec- table salary. It is so pleasant to have influence to exert in behalf of the good and deserving ; it is the highest pleasure of my life, so far as intercourse with my fellow-men is concerned. At this Grand Division I made a move to mcite the people of the State to forward legislative action against the liquor traffic. 114 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS I made the motion with little hope of seeing it taken up so warmly and prosecuted so vigorously as it was. The Grand Division as a body resolved to petition the legislature, and appointed a committee, of which I was chairman, to draft a memorial to be scattered through the State for signers of all classes. These agents were appointed to lecture and obtain signatures to this memorial until December 1 5th. The memo- rial to the legislature does not ask what I desire ; it is only such a one as we hope may obtain signers. Believing it a crime in the sight of God to sell liquor as a beverage, I would no more legislate for its regulation than for the regulation of adultery, theft, etc." " October 29th. Left Sahsbury in the stage early in the morning and rode all day to Greensboro. Among my fellow- passengers were the Rev. Peter Doub and Philip J. White, the temperance lecturer. White is the most entertaining traveling companion I ever saw. At night simply stopped at home to have tea, kiss wife, shake hands with the folk of the college, and off again. Sunday evening, the 30th, reached Raleigh and stayed with S. H. Young." " On Tuesday, November 2d, went to Franklinton depot. Reached Louisburg same evening. Our session lasted eight days and was the most harmonious and pleasant I ever at- tended. The most important action, so far as I was concerned, was the assumption by the conference of the raising of fifteen thousand dollars necessary to complete the twenty thousand dollars' education fund. It is to be solicited by the preachers." " December 4th. My birthday. Damp, unpleasant, part of the day rainy. Rode to Pleasant Garden, Guilford, to deliver a temperance address. Am thirty-two years old. How the time flies! Alas, how Utde I have done! This is the sad song at the close of each year, and the old resolution is entered to do better. May God give me grace to make this next year the richest of my life!" PRESIDENT OF GREENSBORO COLLEGE 115 " December 24th. The session of the Annual Conference closed December 15th, and on Monday, 20th, I went to my place at Glenanna. Miss Nixon accompanied me. Met Miss Bronson on the evening of the 20th at John W. Thomas's. She will enter upon the principalship of Glenanna on the first Mon- day in January. Prepared a circular for Glenanna." " December 25th. The memorial to the legislature on the subject of the liquor traffic went up on the 20th of December with the signatures of more than ten thou.sand voters, more than four thousand ladies, and a number of youths, in all over fifteen thousand. This is a most glorious result, far beyond my expectations. For this I thank God, and I thank him that he gave me the spirit of this work and the coiu-age to bring it before the people. The legislature did nothing, but the thing is now before the people, and the discussion will be kept up until we prohibit the traffic." " December 31st. During the past year I have dehvered fifty-two discourses. This was small, but I remember how con- fined I am, and hope that having preached more than once a week on an average will not be considered too infrequent. The Lord have mercy upon me and forgive all my shortcom- ings! I desire to be as useful as possible. The total number of my discourses to the close of this year is nine hundred and eighty-eight." 1853 "January ist. I open the year with labor, commencing a new series of lectures on chemistry. I have also commenced the compilation of a cyclopedia of temperance matter. This is intended to be a work of permanent value.* At the close of the last year I concluded the publication of the ' Southern Methodist Pulpit ' after years of labor. In the several peri- * He never finislied that undertaking. 116 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS odicals and in many letters, I am receiving expressions of great regard for that publication." "April 24th. Mrs. Deems and all the children accom- panied me to Glenanna. Wife's first visit. Went on Friday, 2 2d, the first anniversary of the birthday of our fourth child, whom we have fully concluded to call Edward Ernest.* Per- haps it is not much of a coincidence, but my family arrived at Greensboro College the day our third child, Minnie, was one year old." " May 3d. Discourse on Odd Fellowship at the dedica- tion of the hall of I. O. O. F. at Salem, N. C." " May 19th. Our annual commencement." "June loth, Chicago, 111. I was in attendance upon the National Division. Here became acquainted with Judge O'Neal of South CaroHna, Neal Dow of Maine, General Car- ney of Ohio, Oliver of New York, and other co-laborers in the great temperance work." "July loth. A family meeting was held at my father-in- law's, Mr. Disosway's. The Rev. John Bagley thus signalized the event in a newspaper article : " ' On last Friday morning a pleasant ride of about forty miles from Richmond, on the Petersburg and Raleigh rail- roads, brought me to the depot at Stony Creek, where I found a friend waiting with a carriage, in which I was conveyed to Pleasant Grove, the residence of Israel D. Disosway, Esq., the father-in-law of Dr. Deems, where I spent several days in the most agreeable manner. Here I found one of those deeply interesting family gatherings which are so often seen in old Virginia. Brother George W. Deems, of the Virginia Conference, Dr. Deems, his gifted son, with their wives and children, had left their fields of labor for a season to meet once more on earth, probably for the last time that all would enjoy such a meeting. Eleven children and thirteen adults formed * He was finally named Edward Mark. PRESIDENT OF GA'EENSBOA'O COLLEGE 117 the social band who had been thus brought together by the mysterious providences of God, to sit around the family board, to talk and sing and pray, to go to the house of God together, and then to take the parting hand and in different spheres to engage in the great battle of hfe. " ' As Dr. Deems had made an appointment to preach at Hall's on Sunday, Brother Covington had embraced the op- portunity to hold a meeting of several days. It was my priv- ilege to hear Dr. Deems and his father preach on the same day to quite a large country congregation. Owing to the smallness of the house, which would not accommodate all the female portion of the congregation, the services were con- ducted under an arbor. The doctor's text was John v. 40. For about an hour and a half the eloquent preacher enchained the attention of the congregation while he held up before his hearers the reasons why the glorious gospel of the Son of God is rejected by the mass of mankind. It is not my intention to attempt an analysis of the discourse. It was well adapted to produce conviction on the minds of sinners. It came hke the breath of spring on the cold, frost-bound heart, and I trust that it produced in some the buddings of good desires, the blossoms of holy resolutions, and that it will yet bring forth the ripe fruit of faith, hope, and love.' " The degree of doctor of divinity was conferred upon me by the authorities of Randolph-Macon College, June, 1853." " October 27th. At the meeting of the Grand Division of the Sons of Temperance in Wilmington I was chosen to be the Grand Worthy Patriarch by a very large vote." " November 1 2th. At the conference held in Raleigh I was elected to the General Conference at the head of the dele- gation. The confidence of brethren is pleasant." " December 5th. My thirty-third birthday fell on the Sab- bath, and was spent at home, the first so spent in many years." " December 25th. My father and his family visited me in 118 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS November. The first number of the ' Ballot-box ' * issued in December. My soul, I hope, has greater desires after holi- ness! During the past year my discourses amounted to forty- eight, of which twenty-five were new. The total number of my discourses to the close of the year is one thousand and thirty-six. Oh, how deeply I feel my feebleness!" 1854 " The Rev. Professor Jones enters upon his duties. May we be mutually profitable." " On Monday, April 24th, started, in company with the Rev. Dr. Carter, to attend the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, to be held in Columbus, Ga." " April 28th. Reached Augusta, Ga., and early next morning we were in Macon, thence to dine in Columbus. My residence was with Joel Early Hunt, Esq., at Wynnton, a delightful resi- dence. My room-mates were the Rev. H. N. McTyeire, editor of the ' New Orleans Christian Advocate,' and W. H. McDan- iel, P. E., Talladega district, Alabama. The principal work done was the determination to establish a Southern Book Concern, and the location thereof in Nashville, the improvements in missionary and publishing plans, and the election of three bishops, Pierce, Early, and Kavanaugh. The first was elected on the first ballot, the second upon the fifth, and the third upon the seventh ballot. For the election of Dr. Early and Mr. Kavanaugh I may hold myself responsible, as I suppose that without the effort I made they would not have been chosen. Believing them to be best entitled to the place, I am happy in reflecting upon the part I took in this matter." "On Monday morning, May 2 2d, was born my fifth child and fourth son, George Israel. May God consecrate him to Himself and set him apart to a high and holy work! " * A small periodical devoted to the cause of temperance legislation. PRESIDENT OF GREENSBORO COLLEGE 119 "July 30th. Elected president of Centenary College, Louisiana." The North Carolina Conference met in Pittsboro in 1854. During its session it passed the following resolutions : " Whereas, We have learned that the Rev. C. F. Deems, D.D., has been elected to the presidency of Centenary Col- lege, Louisiana, and is now considering the acceptance of the same ; therefore, " Resolved, That, while we appreciate the honor thus con- ferred upon one of our body by one of the highest institutions of learning in the country, and while we regard him in the highest sense in every way qualified in intellect, integrity, and learning, yet we beg our brother to consider the state of the work in North Carolina, both as regards the pastorate and in- stitutions of learning, and if he can find it consistent with his duty to the church, that he dechne the presidency of Cente- nary College." Following a copy of these resolutions in his journal for December, Dr. Deems writes : " I did decHne the call, and my reasons are embodied in my letter to the Rev. Dr. Drake, dated November 18, 1854. Upon declining the presidency of the largest institution of learning in our church, I couid not reconcile it with my sense of propriety to retain the headship of a more limited sphere, and so I resigned the presidency of Greensboro College, and was appointed to Goldsboro circuit, the Rev. Ira T. Wyche being presiding elder." Thus it appears that ever within he heard the old call that he had heard when a student in Dickinson College, whore he had solemnly consecrated his whole life to "preach Christ, and him crucified." Therefore, when he had securely assured the future prosperity of the college by showing on what lines it should be conducted, he determined to take up again the 120 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS regular ministry. It need hardly be said that while rendering these great special and substantial services to his denomina- tion, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and to the cause of education in general, Dr. Deems was also rapidly increas- ing his own pe-rsonal fame and greatly widening the circle of his loving admirers ; for in this, as in everything he had so far seriously undertaken, he displayed the possession of qualities not often found in the same person. The brilliant pulpit ora- tor had shown himself to be an almost ideal college president. He had a rare faculty for maintaining discipline, and so rare was this that the writer feels himself unable satisfactorily to describe it. He was not a severe man in either appearance or disposition, but quite the opposite in both of these respects. He appeared to have ruled by a kind of moral authority and persuasiveness, unless he did so by the profound respect for his sincerity which he inspired in all who were brought into close relationship with him. There was a moral dignity about him in such exercises that seemed like the judicial ermine and other insignia of right to rule. Whatever that gift of ruling may be, whether a single quality or a union of qualities, Dr. Deems possessed it in a notable manner and to a high degree. But by the time he had reached the close of his Greensboro experience he had shown himself to be also a thorough busi- ness man. He was a whole committee on ways and means in himself when it came to the devi.sing of schemes and methods for the raising of funds. Much of this he had learned in the hard school of poverty through which we have seen him passing while as yet even a mere boy. The youth who could help pay his way through college by writing " poems " for the press had become, with all his higher achieve- ments, a systematic, painstaking business man in his habits and methods, while liis innate sagacity had developed by ex- perience until he was able to, and did, put this poor college on a paying basis. CHAPTER III CIRCUIT-RIDING, 1855-56 APPOINTED by the North Carolina Annual Conference ^ of 1854 to the Everittsville circuit when he resigned the presidency of Greensboro Female College, Dr. Deems went to his work early in 1855, making his home at Goldsboro, the county-seat of Wayne County, and the largest place on the circuit. He entered the little parsonage Saturday, January 13, 1855. Goldsboro was, and has continued to be, quite a railroad center, being one of the principal stations on the Wil- mington and Weldon Railroad, which was the main route from the North to the South. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, had a female seminary in Goldsboro, whose president, the Rev. Samuel M. Frost, was a good friend of Dr. Deems, as was also the Rev. Dr. Ira T. Wyche, who was then the presiding elder of the Newbern district, which included the Goldsboro circuit. In a letter from New York City, written November 2, 1880, Dr. Deems thus writes about the good presiding elder of the Newbern district : " How shall I write of Ira T. Wyche? He was my friend from the earUest years of my ministry until he went up higher. He was a good man, so true, so faithful, so forbearing, so per- sistent in duty! He served his friends in darkness as in sun- shine, and his friendship looked for no reward. He served in every department of conference work and served so faith- 121 122 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS fully! He could be trusted with anything and everything. I know that my friends regard me as no judge of preaching, and I suspect they are right. My talent for /learitig the Word is so great that it neutralizes any little critical ability there is in me. But I dehghted in the preaching of Ira T. Wyche. It struck me. One discourse of his, preached long ago, so fixed its outline on my memory that on several occasions I have used it, so modifying it as to make it available for my style of delivery. It has been blessed to the conversion of many souls. There is a little incident connected with this discourse. A few years ago I was engaged one week-night to preach in the Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity in this city. By some mismanagement a marriage party had posses- sion of the church, and the rector caused the great congrega- tion to be turned into Dr. Hepworth's. There I preached this sermon. At the conclusion of one passage the Rev. Dr. Tyng was so warmed up that he shouted out a hearty 'Amen.' As we rode home my wife said that she never expected to hear an Episcopal clergyman saying a loud ' Amen ' to a sermon preached in a Congregational church. ' Ah, my dear, it was Ira T. Wyche's sermon, and any man can say " Amen " to almost anything of his.' That sermon has since been printed and circulated widely. The Lord will reward each man ac- cording to his work. For the pleasure of his intercourse, for the fidelity of his friendship, and for his influence upon my personal character, I owe our dear departed friend so much that when the telegram reached me announcing his death, this new bereavement, following so soon on the departure of Mrs. Nicholson, melted my heart within me. I have reached that time of life when the majority of my comrades and friends are on the other side of the river. Now Ira T. AVyche has joined not only the majority, but the innumerable company of those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." CIRCUIT-RIDING 123 The only record of events in the Hfe of Dr. Deems in Goklsboro is contained in a small pocket-diary, and even this has only brief jottings, evidently hastily entered while engaged in the restless and absorbing work of an itinerant Methodist minister. Most of his time was spent away from his family at the various points on his circuit. From his record of ser- mons preached we learn that his preaching appointments were Goldsboro, Everittsville, Live Oak, Providence, Falling Creek, Indian Springs, Friendship, Smith's Chapel, Ebenezer, Salem, and Pikeville. Some of these churches were out in the pine woods, and attended by people who had to walk or ride for miles in order to hear the gospel. In the opinion of some, a change from the presidency of a college to a Methodist circuit might be regarded a degrada- tion. Dr. Deems looked upon it as a promotion, and flung himself into his work with a zest and ambition never excelled at any other period of his life. He preached to his congre- gations in the villages and woods of the Everittsville circuit in the spirit of the Master as he poured into the rapt soul of the woman at Jacob's well the wonderful spiritual truths recorded in the fourth chapter of John's Gospel. Nor were Dr. Deems's labors lessened by his exchange of a college presidency for a circuit ; the rather did they become more abundant and press- ing. No greater mistake could be made than to suppose that the life of an itinerant Methodist preacher in North Carolina in those days was an easy one. On some circuits the preacher finds large compensations for his trials in picturesque scenery and invigorating air ; but the Everittsville circuit was not favored in these ways. The roads were either very sandy or ran through swamps whose mud was bottomless, and they stretched through a generally flat and uninteresting country, whose monotony was somewhat relieved by vast fields of green and waving corn or glistening white cotton. Moreover, in summer the heat was intense and the 124 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS air freighted with malarial gases from the swamps. Dr. Deems found his compensation in his joy at being able to preach again, and in the keen and affectionate appreciation of his labors by the people on his circuit, among whom were many bright and refined women and able, earnest, prosperous, hos- pitable, and godly men. Dr. Deems himself gives us a most interesting insight into his life on the Everittsville circuit (1855-56) in a letter to the "Raleigh Christian Advocate" of April 15, 1885, written on the occasion of the death of one of his most faithful friends and co-workers : " A few weeks ago a North CaroHna paper brought us the announcement of the death of David B. Everitt in Goldsboro. My whole family felt a sudden sorrow. The younger mem- bers had so often heard their parents speak in loving terms of the man who bore that name that they felt a claim to be his friends. " When I quit the presidency of Greensboro Female Col- lege in 1854 I was sent to Everittsville circuit. I think that was its name, although it embraced Goldsboro. There I met David B. Everitt. His plantation was some miles from the village which bore his name, where he lived near a little church which was one of the preaching appointments on the circuit. We were not long in becoming fast friends. We were as un- like in body and mind as two men could well be, and perhaps therefore we loved each other. He was very large, bluff, loud of speech, sometimes boisterous, but gentle of heart as a woman. He was a thorough Methodist; perhaps he was considered by some a bigoted Methodist ; but he was simply a brave, conscientious, earnest soul— a soul that had been converted. He had no doubt of that ; neither had any of his friends. He was not a mere church-member; he had been converted. He no more doubted it than he doubted his birth. CIR C UI T-RIDING 125 Converted under Methodism, he knew no other way. But he was not bigoted ; he had friends in other churches and he loved and honored them— but he was a Methodist. I know men of that type among Baptists, Presbyterians, and Episco- pahans, and it is always a charming type to me. These men do not deny the good that is in other churches, but they are not familiar with it, while they do know the good that is in their own. In them what superficial observers take for igno- rance is mere innocence. Of all guile, malice, meanness, and uncharitableness David B. Everitt was as free as any man I ever knew. " And then, I think he had a great desire to know the truth. This was shown in whatever interested him. Many things did not interest him ; they lay beyond his circle of thought ; but if anything did attract his attention he was earnestly solicitous to go to the bottom of it. He could listen wonderfully and question closely. " He was very ardent in his friendships, and steadfast. Within three miles of him were two other men, his intimates, William Carraway and David McKinne. Such another trio I never knew and probably never shall know. They were so large and so loud. I venture a sketch to show the character- istics of these men. I remember the first time I saw them together. They had gone down to Indian Springs, where the new preacher was to hold forth. We four started together for Everittsville and brought up at William Carraway's. In the after-dinner conversation the talk turned on some question of the yield of crops on their several plantations. It waxed warm. Sometimes all three talked together. Carraway roared, McKinne bellowed, and Everitt yelled. They were all red in the face, and their faces were very large. It was an unhappy moment for me. I had never been in Mr. Carraway's house before, Mr. McKinne I had just met, and Mr. Everitt was a recent acquaintance. What should I do? If those 'bulls of 126 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS Bashan ' locked horns what was I ? I could not prevent a general fight. And just from church! And all official mem- bers of the church of which I was pastor! At last I ven- tured very meekly to suggest, in most modest terms, that the ' brethren ' might all be right, or if all wrong, was it really a question for neighbors, members of the same church, to be excited about? At this suggestion they all looked at me, and then at one another, and then burst into roars of laughter that literally jarred the house. They were accustomed to ' chaff ' one another in this free, rough manner, and it never had oc- curred to them that a stranger might take it for quarreling. When they saw from my face that I did regard it seriously, the ludicrousness of the situation was too much for them. Mr. Everitt laughed until tears ran down his face. " After that, how often I have seen tears on those great faces, when those three men have engaged with me in prayer for the spiritual improvement of the neighborhood or the conver- sion of some special neighbor! And they have all crossed the flood before me! " Gentlest at heart of them all, perhaps, was David B. Everitt. How much I have desired in the last two years to see him! And I was planning to enjoy that pleasure when the news of his death came. I have seen no notice of his last hours and heard nothing. It is not needful that I should. Such a man's life, of gentleness and force, of cheerful sobriety, of fixed principle, of humble, happy faith, is the testimonial most precious to his friends. May some other in his church be raised to take his place, and may his children be Christians after the manner of their father! Very dear to me forever will be the cherished name of David B. Everitt. " Charles F. Deems. "Church oi" tiik SiRANnicRS, " March 31, 1885." CIRCUIT-RIDING 127 While editor of " Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine " in New York City, many years afterward, Dr. Deems, writing of an- other of his parishioners of a very different, but equally inter- esting, type, said : " Some years ago, among the churches to which the editor of this magazine ministered in North Carolina was one called 'Smith's Chapel.' It would seat about two hundred white and one hundred colored people. But in that climate a large part of the year a considerable portion of the congregation sat outside. The nearest house to the little chapel was the dwelling of a gentleman who was one of the most famous school-teachers in his native State. He was the college-mate of James K. Polk, and the first time we ever saw him was when he had just completed a walk of fifty miles to meet his old college friend at the university. " Mr. John G. Elliot got his middle initial from his resem- blance to a ghost. He was usually known as ' Mr. Ghost Elliot.' Small, thin, washed out by multitudinous ablutions, built after the architectural design of an interrogation-mark, with a disproportionately large head, the white hair on which was cropped to a length measured exactly by the thickness of the comb, he was a man whose appearance attracted attention everywhere. In some departments he was very learned, and his solid acquirements dominated his eccentricities and won for him the respect of a large class of citizens. He was what the colored people would call ' a powerful hearer of de Word.' Upon warm days he would walk into the meeting-house, throw his coat, if he had one, over the back of his seat, pull off his shoes to cool his understandmg, and propping his head against his left hand and supporting his left elbow with his right hand, he set himself to penetrate the speaker with auger eyes. The thing his soul most hated was nonsense. He had no kind of reverence. He would take up a slave or the Archbishop of 128 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS Canterbury with equal patience, and by Socratic methods ex- hibit to him the ridiculousness of his errors. " If within the reach of practicability, Mr. Ghost EUiot was always at any service this editor held within his range. There are readers of this magazine in North Carolina who, when they peruse this article, will recollect how sometimes, when an assertion had been roundly made by the preacher, Mr. Elliot would rise in his place and say, ' Doctor, what is supposed among theologians to be the proof of that? ' Or, ' Doctor, I have heard that circumstance stated quite differently.' Or, ' Doctor, that statement of yours has been publicly denied in the papers.' " There was no laughing. Mr. Elliot was the oracle of that neighborhood. There were boys about there whom his skep- tical ideas had infected ; there were people in that audience not to be surpassed in what is called ' a Boston audience ' ; and Joseph Cook never ran a severer gantlet in the Athens of America than the young professor from the university ran in that chapel in the pine woods. No one laughed ; every one listened ; and if Mr. EUiot had frequently got the better of the preacher the preacher's occupation would have been gone. " To this day we feel the healthy influence of that instanta- neous criticism. To this day, in preaching every now and then, it occurs to us that somewhere in the church there may be a ' Ghost Elliot,' who does not ' speak out in meeting,' but carries the objection away in his soul. Would it not be bet- ter that men should speak out? " Saturday morning, February 17, 1855, Dr. Deems preached at Salem. While driving home he met with an accident, from which he suffered greatly and by which he was confined to tlie house for about two weeks. He thus speaks of this ex- perience in the entry in his diary for the above date : " Flung from my buggy coming home. Badly hurt, but, thank God, preserved." By this accident his ankle was sprained, and so CIRCUIT-RIDING 129 seriously as to trouble him all his life thereafter. During his confinement at this time he wrote his lecture entitled " Trade Life," which became quickly very popular in North Carohna and the neighboring States. It was while returning from Petersburg, Va., where he had been for the purpose of deliver- ing this lecture, that he was shocked by the intelligence of the death of his little baby boy, George, who at eleven o'clock at night on Wednesday, March 14th, had fallen asleep in Jesus. As he has not only embalmed the precious little one's memory, but also brought out an interesting truth in his characteristic style, in an article, published in 1880, entitled "The Czar and the Babe," we here give our readers the article in full. "the czar and the babe "On the 17th of March, 1855, I was coming from Peters- burg, Va., to my home in North Carolina. In the car was a gentleman with New York papers bearing the inteUigence of the recent death of Nicholas, autocrat of all the Russias. He was gone. A man of great stature, of iron will, of vast ener- gies, a born king, ruling fifty millions by his simple word, he had bowed to destiny and death and dropped the scepter which swayed an empire. He had died at a crisis in which he was the most conspicuous and important personage among men, at such a juncture in affairs as will draw an arresting line across the page of human history. He had roused the world to arms. He had brought thousands into fortified towns and stretched tents and camp-fires along miles of hills and valleys. The stride of his ambition had made troops of orphan children and thrilled the nation with woe. He was known to all the world, and his history, his words, his deeds, his policy, were the study of all who read or thought. But he had gone. Europe stood still and held its breath as the curtain dropped upon the co- lossal actor on a stage trembling with the thunder of artillery 130 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS and red with the gore of the gallant. And then the cabinets of all governments, and the traders upon the marts of the busy nations, began industriously to calculate the probable effects of this great departure upon all the operations of man- kind ; and Russia was preparing to bury the ' father ' with mingled barbaric pomp and civilized splendor. " I was not indifferent to the importance of such an event as the death of the emperor, but it stirred my heart very little. / was far off. " Twenty miles farther south I heard of another death. In this case it was a babe only ten months old. He was heir to no great estate or title. He was known to very few, and very few had any interest in him ; he had never uttered a word. He was in no one's way. His life made no great promise. He had always been delicate. He was a mere intelligent, 'pretty little fellow,' as his father was fond of calling him. He was dead. How sad, how very sad a thought was this to me! He was 'our little George.' " All the potentates of Europe might have died and my heart have felt no pain. But this was a near grief. This was the first departure from the little flock. There was no pomp at his funeral. He lay calm and lovely in his little coffin — beau- tifully dead. His brothers and his little sister stood in the awe which the first invasion of the invisible feet makes in a family. A few friends went from the humble house of the bereaved living to the humble resting-place of the shrouded dead. No retinue, no plumes, no emblazonry of ostentatious sorrow, marked the child's removal to his last home. " But he was our babe. How little thought his mother of the grand griefs of a European empire ! Her little kingdom was darkened. While we had read accounts of the slaughters which marked the Crimean campaign, and shuddered at the desolations they must have brought thousands of homes, none of the thrilling reports had penetrated and agonized us like the CIRCUIT-RJDING 131 sight of our own dead. Nothing I ever read or saw or felt transfixed me with such cold pain as the kiss of the little hands folded over the heart of our serene and breathless boy. They were beautiful hands. How often I had admired them as he clapped them when his earnest gaze had brightened into a smile and broadened into infantile glee! How often had they pressed their soft little palms upon my aching head, and buried their little dimples under my chin! Death had not discolored the lovely flesh, but had made it clearer and finer, as if it had been purged of all taints of corruption. And so I could hardly believe him dead. But when I stooped to kiss those hands for the last time they met my lips with such an unexpected chill that I felt stricken. It was as though I had been stabbed in the heart with a dagger of ice. "Oh, how different the far and the near! A quarter of a century lies between that death and this writing, but that dead babe to-day has more power over me than any living man. He walks the streets with me. He goes to all the funerals of infants. Before his death I did not know how to talk at the funeral of a babe. Now I know at least how to sympathize with the parents. When a man comes into my house and tells me with quivering lips that there is a baby lying dead in his home, I go with him, led by the hand of a little child whose mortal body was buried a quarter of a century ago. " Charles F. Deems." During the month of May a fruitful revival of religion re- warded Dr. Deems's work at his Indian Springs appointment. Thirty-four were added to the church. Of those added more than half were heads of families, and quite a number were past middle hfe. Dr. Deems baptized twenty of these con- verts, eleven of whom he immersed in the river. It was a most gracious season, in which some signal victories were achieved by the Holy Spirit's conversion of persons regarded 132 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS as hopelessly ungodly. Similar works of grace occurred in other portions of the circuit, which were most cheering to the faithful pastor. About this time, greatly to his gratification, he was invited to preach the commencement sermon at Greensboro Female College. This, on May 15th, he did most acceptably, and while in Greensboro at commencement he was honored by being made president of the board of trustees of the college. From Greensboro he made a visit to Glenanna. This was a seminary for young ladies which Dr. Deems founded while he was president of Greensboro College and owned and supervised for a number of years. The object of the school was to prepare young ladies for college, especially for Greens- boro College. It was situated in Davidson County, one mile from Thomasville, which was on the Central Railroad. The location was picturesque and healthful, and the school was a center of refined culture and influence. While this school was a care and responsibility to Dr. Deems during his itinerancy, yet it was a source of intense gratification that while preaching he was also teaching for the Master. Notwithstanding the inevitable interruptions in his life on the Everittsville circuit, he did considerable writing for the press, and in September published a new edition of his " Twelve College Sermons." An idea of the public estimate of this book may be gained from the following criticism by the " Home Circle," of Nashville, Tenn. : " Dr. Deems is one of the most racy writers of our acquain- tance, and the public will expect to find in this volume a fine specimen of correct and elegant rhetoric. In this they will not be disappointed ; but they will find that its helks-lettres merits are, as they should be, the merest accessories to the great end of preaching. When it became known to us that these discourses were produced by a very young professor of bclles-kttrcs, which the author was at the time of their com- CIRCUIT-RIDING 133 position, we expected to find in them an undue amount of ' fine writing.' We were agreeably disappointed. If there be anything of the sort in them, it is not more than the reader will relish ; and we feel bound to say that, as far as we have observed, every artificial merit that they possess promotes the religious purpose of the sermons. Every rill that sparkles through them helps to swell the tide of the author's exhorta- tion ; every vine has its cluster ; every flower brings fruit." It was at this time that Dr. Deems wrote to the Rev. Dr. Sprague, of Albany, the letter referring to Summerfield quoted in the autobiographical notes. By both pen and tongue he also did all in his power to assist the cause of temperance, so dear to his heart from his youth, being an ardent advocate of legal prohibition, and being greatly in demand as a lecturer on this theme. His temperance oration delivered in the hall of the South Carolina Institute at Charleston, on June 6th, elic- ited from the press the most glowing encomiums. From his diary we learn that on Saturday, June 23d, Dr. Deems delivered a masonic address at Long Creek, Duplin County, having been invited to do so by his masonic friends in that region. He had been raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason by the Greensboro Lodge, No. 76, on October 4, 1852. He had been made a Fellow-craft Mason by the same lodge on September 7, 1852. The record of his being made an Entered Apprentice Mason has been misplaced. For the above facts we are indebted to Mr. W. D. Trotter, of Greensboro, N. C, who was Worthy Master of the lodge in 1884. Dr. Deems kept up his interest in masonry all his life, taking the degrees beyond the " Blue Lodge " as far up as the commandery. At the time of his death he was a member of Kane Lodge, Crescent Chapter, and Palestine Commandery, all of New York City, and in all of which he was for years chaplain. Among his many friends Dr. Deems had none more faithful and enthusiastic than his masonic brethren. In 134 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS 1 846 he had become an Odd Fellow, but he did not keep up active membership. Fever and ague, eye troubles, and other physical ailments annoyed him exceedingly during the latter half of 1855, but do not appear to have cooled his zeal or lessened his labors. On July loth he wrote the prospectus of the " North Carolina Christian Advocate " ; on Sunday, July 29th, he dedicated Smith's Chapel, Wayne County ; in September he commenced work on "The Annals of Southern Methodism," of which more will be said later ; and attended the Annual Conference in Wilmington, N. C, Wednesday, November 14th, where, among other things, he delivered an address on " Education," and was reappointed to the Everittsville circuit. Leaving Goldsboro on Saturday, December ist, Dr. Deems went to Petersburg, Va., to attend the annual meeting of the Virginia Conference, at which Bishop Andrew presided. The business which took him to this meeting was of a most painful nature ; although only thirty-five years old, he was to be one of the principal figures in an important and complicated ec- clesiastical trial. As the chief personages involved are dead and in heaven, and as they forgave one another before their death any and all real or imagined injuries they had sustained, and as a complete account of the affair would fill a volume, we see nothing to be gained by giving names or going into details. But to ignore altogether what is history, and what at the time excited the Methodist Church, South, more than any other controversy (that concerning slavery excepted), would be a fatal omission in any biographical account of Charles F, Deems, who, though the innocent cause of it all, became thereby involved in a miserable tangle of miscon- ception, misrepresentation, and malicious persecution, which, while it temporarily clouded his reputation in certain quarters, yet stimulated the development of his mental and moral char- acter and enabled him to present to those who followed him CIRCUIT-RWrnG 186 closely through the long, hot trial — and they were thousands — a splendid example of moral courage, unswerving integrity, Christian forbearance, and fearless candor. On Tuesday, December i8th. Dr. Deems delivered his closing argument in the case. This address was in many particulars the master- piece of his life. It was four hours long, but was heard with breathless attention by the vast congregation assembled. When the vote of conference was taken the defendant in the trial was acquitted by a bare majority of his brethren. Nevertheless Dr. Deems found that he had suddenly leaped to a lofty place in the esteem of the people of the South as being an able, eloquent, and godly man. In Petersburg itself, although he had been the prosecutor in the trial of an eminent doctor of divinity in the Virginia Conference, he received a remarkable ovation, costly family Bibles and elegantly bound hymn-books and glowing resolutions and elaborate silver plate being the visible tokens of the popular verdict. When he returned to North Carolina he was received like a conqueror ; and such he was, but greater than the victor in any bloody battle, for he had by his courage, self-control, and splendid genius won a victory for public truth and justice. From every part of the State, from Weldon to Wilmington, from Goldsboro to Greensboro, public meetings were held and resolutions were passed, and the name of Charles F. Deems became a household word throughout all her borders, and so remains to this day. The older children in Dr. Deems's family well remember the opening of a box which came a few weeks after the Virginia Conference adjourned, and was addressed to the Rev. Charles F. Deems. The brilliant contents when set forth were dazzling to our young eyes. The box contained a very beautiful and costly service of silver plate. With painful eagerness we deciphered the following inscription : " Presented by the citizens of Petersburg, Va., to Charles F. Deems, Doc- tor of Divinity, ' in the dew of his youth,' as an evidence of 136 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS their appreciation of his virtuous hfe and exalted worth, and especially as a memento of their admiration of his moral cour- age, his powers of speech, his Christian spirit, as displayed by him on the trial of before the Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in Petersburg, Va., in 1855." We remember also the advent of a large and splendidly bound copy of the Holy Bible, on the fly-leaf of which was this inscription: "Rev. Charles F. Deems, D.D. : Accept the Holy Bible as a token of esteem and affection. May a good and merciful God long spare your life, and may you continue to be, as you have been, a faithful and able expounder and defender of its sacred truths ; and may it ever be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your pathway, guiding you to heaven, is the sincere prayer of the givers. Petersburg, Va., December 18, 1855." That prayer was answered in every particular and to the uttermost. Upon the volume was laid a sumptuously bound copy of the hymns of the Southern Methodist Church, with the following note : " This little volume is gratefully presented to Dr. Deems as a tribute to his splendid talents, Christian purity, and gentlemanly bearing through this trying controversy. The following ladies are proud to bear testimony in his favor and to subscribe themselves his admirers." The ladies of Peters- burg, after their names, signed themselves, " Members of the Episcopal Church." In the corner of the parlor of the little Goldsboro parsonage stood a goodly number of ebony canes with gold heads, bear- ing each the name of Charles F. Deems, D.D., the name of the donor, the date of the gift, and an indication that it was an expression of appreciation of the genius and character of the recipient, especially as brought out at the Virginia Con- ference of 1855. And so It came about that a year which at one time CIRCUIT.RIDING 137 threatened to close with dark clouds closed flooded with sunshine. Sometime during 1855 Dr. Deems conceived the idea of "The Annals of Southern Methodism," and during the latter part of 1855 and in 1856 and 1857 he pubhshed an annual vol- ume of about three hundred pages with that title. The author's purpose was to furnish once each year a volume which should present in a collected form all that was desirable for full in- formation in regard to the workings and growth of the Southern Methodist Church. The titles of the chapters of the volume for 1856 are as follows: "The Episcopacy"; "The Annual Conferences " ; " Dedication of Churches " ; " Missions " ; " Colleges and Schools " ; " Sunday-schools " ; " Tract Soci- ety " ; " Southern Methodist Literature " ; " Our People of Color"; "Historical Sketches"; "Biographical Sketches"; " Personal Notices of the Living " ; and " Miscellaneous." The editor gleaned his information from a multitude of books, pe- riodicals, and persons, at the cost of much time and tedious toil. Four volumes came out, which by their variety, logical arrangement, and accuracy of detail showed what a many- sided mind the editor possessed. In reviewing the volume for 1855, the " Home Circle," of Nashville, Tenn., said: "There can be no sort of doubt about the success of this book. It will have an enormous circulation. One can scarcely think of a question in the last year's history of Southern Methodism which is not answered here. The idea of making an annual contribution of this sort to our literature is a happy conception. Another egg stands on end! How can we, after this, do without it? Why was it not thought of sooner? The edi- tor's rare talents and tireless industry have been worthily em- ployed, and he is entitled to our thanks— not so much for the copy sent us (we could have bought it cheap at five times the cost, one dollar), but for the invention of the thing and for the promise of an annual series." 138 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS By request, Dr. Deems attended the commencement exer- cises at Hampden-Sidney College, Virginia, in 1856. On June 25th he delivered before the Philanthropic Society a lecture on "The True Basis of Manhood." While he had delivered other lectures, this one first attracted public attention to Dr. Deems as a lecturer. The " American Phrenological Journal," in its sketch of Dr. Deems's life, states that " of this effort a distinguished logician of the South said, ' It shows the highest capabilities as a thinker and a writer.' " Dr. Deems's interest in education was so great, his experi- ence so wide and varied, and his talents as an orator so con- spicuous, that he was in great demand every summer at the various college and school commencements. These visits to educational institutions did not interfere with his regular work on the circuit, which was prosecuted with vigor and success, while he continued to win souls and build up saints on their most holy foundation. On September 30, 1856, his heart and home were gladdened by the birth of his sixth child, a daughter, who was named Anna Louise. All who knew Dr. Deems when living remem- ber his fondness for babes. He always took them in his arms when administering the holy sacrament of baptism and kissed them. The little ones ever seemed by instinct to rec- ognize in him a friend, and it was most unusual for a child to refuse to get into his outstretched arms. CHAPTER IV THE WILMINGTON PARISH, 1857-58 THE North Carolina Annual Conference for 1856 was held in Greensboro from November 12th to November 20th. Bishop Early presided. Dr. Deems was appointed to the Front Street Methodist Church in Wilmington. The Rev. D. B. Nicholson was presiding elder of Wilmington district, and was held in the highest esteem by Dr. Deems, as were all of the Nicholson family. Wilmington was then, as it is now, the metropolis of the State and an important center of influence, because of its situ- ation on the Cape Fear River, with a commodious harbor and extensive internal navigation and railway connections. The Front Street Church was one of the strongest stations in the conference, which paid Dr. Deems a high compliment when it sent him there. He entered upon his work in January, 1856. To the gratification of all concerned, he was reap- pointed to the Front Street Church by the conference which met at Goldsboro in December, 1857. The Front Street Church was a spacious building, situated on a comer and in a desirable part of the city. It had galleries which were always reserved for the colored people of the congregation, for whom the doctor also held special Sunday afternoon services, and among whom he quickly became popular. The membership, already large, greatly increased 139 140 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS during the two years of his pastorate. Into the work of or- ganization, pastoral visitation, and preaching he here flung himself with characteristic energy and ability. Invitations to preach at revival services, to address schools and colleges and other institutions, poured in upon him, and his letters during these two years show how frequently he had to decline such calls. But to a few of them he responded favorably, because of special claims upon him— as in the cases of the Goldsboro and Greensboro female colleges. Not long after the home was established in Wilmington a little incident occurred which is of interest and might have had a tragic conclusion. His family, fearing a breakdown from overwork, persuaded him to tear himself away from his studies and other toils and go fishing with his three sons. Accordingly, one day the little party of four, armed with fishing-rods and supplied with luncheon, tramped up to Hilton Bridge on the Cape Fear River. While they were strung along the bank and watching their corks with eager expectancy, their father ambitiously attempted to walk across some logs lying in the water and thus reach a very " fishy "-looking place in the river. But alas! one of the logs turned with him, and in he plunged, going in over his head. While the youngest of his sons wept and wrung his hands, the two older boys with great diflSculty managed to get their father on shore. But he was drenched, and had to walk some miles in wet clothing; moreover, this experience brought on sickness, from which Dr. Deems took months to recover. It is to this incident that he alludes in the following article, which appeared in the " Christian Intelligen- cer," November 30, 1892, and which we insert as showing his opinions and habits with regard to hunting and fishing. To the best of our knowledge and belief, Dr. Deems never fired a pistol or shot-gun in his life ; he had neither time nor taste for entrapping or slaying the inhabitants of the woods and waters. THE IVILMINGTON PARISH 141 "what I KNOW ABOUT FISHING " From what I have accomplished in the piscatory hne, if any one should infer 'what I know about fishing,' he would conclude that I was as well up on that subject as my old friend Horace Greeley was on another, when he wrote ' What I Know about Farming,' and allowed people to see his Chap- paqua farm. " My two boys, who now have sons that can fish, I think could tell of a time, years ago, when they went with their father a-fishing in the Cape Fear River ; and how he trod upon a loose log and went a-ducking, and had to walk home in wet clothes, and on the way caught a cold, which was the only catch of that expedition. " Long since then, after eight years of constant labor in the Church of the Strangers, I went one winter to St. Augustine, and, just for a total change of employment, one day took a canoe and went fishing on the river. I had never read a page on the subject and I had had no personal instructions, but as rapidly as I could drop my line into the water up came a fish, until I had all I could well carry back to the hotel. That was phenomenal. The fish seemed to want to jump into my canoe. I could not understand it. I am not superstitious, — I belong to the Thirteen Club,— but from that day until the summer of 1892 I have taken no part in the original business of the apostles. " But last summer, after a month of twenty-two lectures and speeches in thirty days, I did what never occurred before in my ministry of fifty-three years — when I was not sick and not out of the country: I spared the churches three whole Sundays. In all that space of time I did not speak in public ; I hardly had strength and sense enough to pray in private. But I was on Dr. Bethune's old fishing-grounds, and worship- 142 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS ing in the church which stands to his blessed memory, and— I went fishing. I went once with a beloved friend and twice with my beloved self. The results were as follows : "i. I caught a fish. Mark 'a fish' — one fish, only one, and that was not very large. Brethren of the rod, is it not a triumph of grace that I am able to tell the exact truth on such a subject? "2. I caught another fish. While the first came to me in a normal manner, the latter was hooked by the tail. My only theory for this is that that fool fish was just flouncing around in the neighborhood of my hook and got caught in that ignominious manner. Another possible theory is that he looked at my hook and bait, and desired to express his con- tempt for the whole concern, and in flirting away struck the wrong place with his tail. " 3. But I caught a thought or two about fishing, and that being all the rest of my game, I frankly express it to you. " What is the object of fishing? There is but one which can satisfy a highly rational and deeply conscientious nature, and that is to obtain food for one's self or for some one else. To fish for any other purpose must be both foolish and wrong. I ask myself this question : Am I so small in resources that I cannot amuse myself without inflicting pain upon a fellow- creature? And then I reflect upon the prevalence of the slurs that are made upon the veracity of fishermen. I believe they generally take the form of ridiculing the reports made of the number of fishes, or of the size, or of both. There may have been occasions when my brethren of the rod have yielded to a temptation in that direction, but if so, I think I caught on the bank of that Manhattan Island which is in the great St. Law- rence River something which may be morally helpful to all my brethren in moments of violent temptation. " Settle it with yourself once for all that the number of fish caught has nothing to do with the importance, the grandeur, THE WILMINGTON PARISH 143 the beauty, or the utility of fishing. Let it be understood that when one goes fishing there is an object one has in view higher than all kinds and any number of fish, and that that object is the better secured the longer time he is out and the fewer the fish he may catch. Going a-fishing does not at all necessarily involve the bringing home of fish. That may be an incidental, but it ought to be made a subordinate, con- sideration. In every case, where a man is not actually trying to get his food, holding a rod over the water on the bank of a river or lake, outdoors, hour by hour, without hurling up the swimmers in the water, is very far from being a bad business. Its success depends upon the fewness of the fish caught and the length of time one has to wait. " Just settle that as a fundamental principle of your philos- ophy and you have gained much. A quick catch would spoil the whole thing, and many fish would knock the bottom out of the whole business. This was my summer discovery, namely, that going a-fishing does not involve catching any fish whatever. The relation of fish to going a-fishing is of the most abstract possible character. Any fellow can have a lovely old time catching the biggest fish in a couple of hours, but he may come back morally no better than when he started. Not so the fisherman who for six hours never budges and comes back with no more in his basket than he took out. Morally, he must be better as a man, and this can be shown to be the case philosophically. If there were time I believe I could prove this merely on the doctrine of conservation of energy, but I forbear. " I caught one story which illustrates my theory. A boy was on the bank, and a man came by. " ' Why, what are you doing? ' " ' Fishing,' replied the boy. " ' Been at it long? ' " ' Four hours,' the boy did say. 144 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS " ' Caught anything? ' "'Yep.' " ' What? ' " ' Patience.' " The gentleman, who was a railroad man, immediately employed that boy at twelve dollars a week and his board to take charge of the information bureau at a neighboring sta- tion on the trunk-line." Among Dr. Deems's letters was found one written from Wilmington, N. C, and dated August 31, 1857. It is ad- dressed to his friend the Hon. John A. Gilmer, of Greensboro. After congratulating Mr. Gilmer on his recent election to Con- gress, Dr. Deems goes on to confer with him as to the sale of Aunt Rachel, the colored cook. This extract is deeply inter- esting and significant as showing the relations which existed between the Southern master and slave. No satisfactory purchaser appearing, Aunt Rachel and Uncle Henry continued to live in the Deems family until her death. " You know that I own a woman whose husband belongs to General Gray, of Randolph. I hire Henry to keep him with his wife, and then hire him out here to pay me back. But it is a risk, and next year I may be stationed where I cannot get a situation for him. So I would Hke to sell Rachel to a good master in your county. I do not wish to separate tliem. And then, my dear friend, I am probably too poor to own her. I have not sought lucrative stations in the church, you know. I have worked hard, spent my time and talents to build up the church in North Carolina, given freely, helped to educate other people's children, and if I were sold out and my debts paid perhaps I might give each of my own five children twenty-five dollars apiece. At nearly thirty-seven years of age this is rather a gloomy prospect, isn't it? It would be if it were not for the reflection that I have endea- THE WILMINGTON PARISH 145 vored to do good, live unselfishly, and have faith in the final rewards. " But to return to Aunt Rachel. She is a nice woman, has improved much since she came to me, and would readily bring twelve hundred dollars from the speculators here ; but I would not sell her to them, nor, indeed, would I either sacrifice my interests or let her go to a master who would not serve her properly. It has occurred to me that if you knew any gen- tleman who wants a good, honest, faithful woman for his lot, who lives within range of General Gray, say in Davidson, Guilford, or Randolph, I would sell her for something in the neighborhood of nine or ten hundred dollars. And if I could sell her in that vicinity to a good master, it would be doing her a service and enable me to ' square off ' matters. She and her husband are very loath to hear me speak of parting with her, and I do not wish this matter at all spoken of unless you can put us on the track of making a satisfactory arrange- ment." The tone of Dr. Deems's letters during the year 1857 is in the main most cheerful ; but in places they show that he was tempted to be depressed by physical infirmity, pecuniary anxieties, and the detractions of certain evil and envious men. In a letter written to an intimate friend in the fall of 1857 he says : " What an immense deal is couched in the promise of that heaven where ' the wicked cease to trouble, and the weary are forever at rest ' ! My troubles have seemed to produce a complex effect upon my character. They have hardened the muscles of my spirit and they have bruised also. I can bear more, lift more ; but there is a very sore iiiside spot, and I have continually to watch it, lest it fester and break out. And then I have a sensitiveness lest it be discovered. I have in- augurated street-preaching in this city, and last Wednesday night, October i4lh, I rang our new bell, mine being the first hand to employ it in calling the people up to worship. This 146 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS is an event. My steeple is going up. Last week I spent in Goldsboro and was sick all the while. Mrs. Dr. Annin, of Newark, N. J., Anna's playmate in childhood, has been our guest some weeks." To Miss Mary Reamy " September I, 1857. " Our baby girl is one of the cutest, sharpest, liveliest little things you ever saw, and so small and plump! We call her partridge, snow-bird, rice-bird, everything we can think of which is expressive of brief plumptitude." To His Son Theodore " Wilmington, N. C, November 4, 1857. " My dear Son : We were much gratified yesterday by the reception of your letter, and much pleased to know that you were growing fat. Upon the failure of your letter we wrote to Mr. Wilkinson, and he told us of your punctuality and praised you in terms which gladdened us. I wish, my dear son, you could look into your father's heart and see how it grows happy when he learns that you have done anything to please others and make them happy. None but a parent can know a parent's anguish at the misdeeds of a child. We pray daily that our dear Theodore may always bless us. I shall be willing to be an old man if my children will only so act that they can maintain a good position in society. If this gives us concern, how much more anxious should we be that our children stand well with God, who knows all hearts and who will fix our places in eternity! " All the children send love. Louly is so sweet! Our kind regards to Mrs. Hook and Uncle Everitt's family. " Affectionately your father, "Charles F. Deems." THE WILMINGTON PARISH 147 The North Carolina Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was opened at Goldsboro on the second day of December, 1857, Bishop Pierce presiding. Dr. Deems was present and took an active part in the proceedings, especially as chairman of the Committee on Education. He was elected one of the delegates to attend the General Conference, which was to be held at Nashville, Tenn., the following spring. It was at this conference in Goldsboro that Robert S. Moran, D.D., then a local elder from Genesee Conference, New York, was readmitted into the travehng connection. Dr. Moran was a man of brains and culture, and Dr. Deems and he became devoted friends for hfe. The closing weeks of 1857 were largely devoted by Dr. Deems to preparing the third volume of " The Annals of Southern Methodism." With this exception, he had done but little literary work for two years ; so we find him writing to the editor of the " North Carolina Christian Advocate," early in 1858: "For two years, except a few scraps, I have given nothing to the press. My personal matters, as you know, have kept my faculties in their full employ, and in Wilming- ton, you know, a man has hardly an hour to himself." Being devoted to children, it was a constant source of sor- row to Dr. Deems that his duties separated him so frequently from his family. In April, 1858, he sent his two elder sons, Theodore and Frank, to an excellent boarding-school at South Lowell, N. C. Writing to Mr. Joseph Speed, the principal of the school, he says, among other things : " When Wilberforce once entered the nursery of his own house and took up his own little child, it cried, and the nurse informed him that it ' always did so with strangers.^ That is one of the great afflic- tions of being a public man and the servant of the whole com- munity. Perhaps I do not know my own children as well as others do." He then proceeds to speak of the dispositions and needs of his two sons in a way which shows how thoroughly 148 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS he did know them. All his children can testify that never was a father less deserving of the title " stranger." On the con- trary, he was their companion and most trusted friend. All their little joys and sorrows they took straight to their father, ever assured of finding in him a true sympathizer. No father ever found greater comfort in, or showed truer devotion to, the babe in the home than did Dr. Deems. In a letter to a friend written shortly after the one just referred to, he writes affectionately about all his children, concluding this part of his letter by saying : " The pet of the house is ' Louly ' [Anna Louise], our Goldsboro bud. She begins to expand beauti- fully, after very little promise. She is exquisitely sweet. The dear child now makes attempts at a few words and keeps up an enormous amount of jabbering and chattering. This morn- ing she woke like a birdling and opened on us with the sweet- est twitterings and attempts at songlets." This same letter is full of characteristic expressions of affection for his wife. And a few weeks later, in the midst of a business letter to his father, he suddenly breaks off to say : " I love you dearly for all your goodness, tenderness, and devotion to me. You are just one of the dearest and best fathers that ever a boy had— and I write that out of my heart, with tears in my eyes. God bless you! And if I live when you are gone I shall survive to bless your memory." He did outlive his father and most faithfully fulfilled his promise to bless his memory. To His Infant Daughter Louise Wilson, N. C, July 29, 1859. " Poppa's darlin' Nits, pop's goin' to yite a itty letter to. 'Most all his work's done, and he's goin' in the tars to Wi'm'- ton. Pop do want to see Pidfit to mut. No itty Looloo to teep in itty bed 'side poppa's ; no mama in the yoom ; no Sis Minnie. P'ees, Looloo, do tum home to poppa. Poppa will hud and tiss, and tarry on wid, and div it tandy. My gayshus! THE WILMINGTON PARISH 149 won't pop be g'ad? And won't Fide dump? Itty Fide been all way up in Johnson Tounty on a visit. When pop dot home Fide 'most eat him up. Looloo ought to see how he ' make his tail went.' Looloo 'member ' Missie,' Miss Hon- fluer's itty dog? Well, yesterday pop went to see it; and it was so g'ad. It 'most talk, and would stay by pop. Poor Missie t'ou't pop could tell her 'bout her mittit. Looloo, 'et's all tum home — mama and Min and F'ank and Eddie and Bud Teedy and pop. And 'et's hud and tiss powerful. " Hud F'ank for pop, and tiss Eddie, and skeeze Sis Min, and eat mama up. Dood-by, darlin' itty bitty teet dal! Tell danpa and danma and Untie Markey and Aunt Mary and the chillun they must tum home wid Looloo! "Your owney-downey " Pop." Dr. Deems's tenderly affectionate and demonstrative spirit was manifested toward many outside as well as those of his own family circle, and was one of the secrets of his popularity and success ; for all felt that it was genuine. In March, 1858, in the Front Street Church, and in fact in all the churches of Wilmington, a work of grace was mani- fested. This was most cheering to Dr. Deems in his ministry, and to the editor of the " North Carolina Christian Advocate," Dr. Heflin, he thus writes : " The Lord has been pouring out his Spirit upon this church during the last fortnight abundantly. The humility, earnest- ness, and zeal of the membership have been greatly increased. We have had two meetings daily. The prayer-meetings at noon have been largely attended and ha\'e proved precious seasons. Persons of all classes have been penitent at our altar, and more than thirty have made a profession of reli- gion. Last night there were twenty-nine penitents. The intervals of public service are spent in private conversa- 150 CHARLES FORCE DEEMS tion with 'mourners.' Of course I have httle time for any- thing else. "'The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.' " About the middle of May Dr. Deems went to Nashville, Tenn., as one of the delegates from the North Carolina Con- ference to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which meets once in every four years. Al- though kept very busy all the time he made many friends, and returned to Wilmington refreshed and stimulated in spirit, though weary in body. Writing from Nashville, May 1 5th, to a member of his church, he says, among other things : " I made my North Carolina tour safely, reached this city ' right side up,' and, as they say in Georgia, ' pitched in '