THE LIBRARIES William Plumer Jacobs '^9-U/X^ The Life of William Plumer Jacobs By THORNWELL JACOBS, A. M., LL.D., President of Oglethorpe University, Author of" The Law of the White Circle,'' "Sinful Sadday,' "The Midnight Mummer," "The Oglethorpe Story," etc. ILLUSTRATED New York Chicago Fleming' H^ RfeveH' Company London, , , , and -, . ^,Dii^.BiJROH Copyright, 191 8, by THORNWELL JACOBS /J.^ o^»? 73y^- Printed in the United States cf America New York: 158 Fifth Avenue Ghicagx>> ;i7.Nortb Wabash, Ave. l.(!indor^:; ii; ^aiernesjer'; 'Square EdJn'bui'gh: * 7$' ' Prince^ ' Street Preface THE value of a human life to his fellows and, therefore, of any biography to a library con- sists not in the name of the subject, nor in that of the town in which he lived. Neither do the names of his loved ones nor their number avail, nor his length of years with their praises and honours, to make the record of his days valuable. But if to these things which he holds in common Avith other men be added some new quality of struggle, some new fineness of sentiment, some new cleverness of thought ; or if per- chance there was discovered in his career an old truth, and one almost forgotten, to be set aglow with a mar- vellous light, then, ere he has walked to the end of his lonely path— for it is always lonely— men are following in the glow of his torch and when his career is done the very glory of God is seen to illumine his footway. That is why the details of a man's life are usually uninteresting and the one thing he thought or felt or did fascinates. The details of Eobert Fulton's days or the grandparents of Abraham Lincoln are only so much chaff swept aside by the wind of human thought seeking the kernel of their life-discoveries. So it is ever. A man must be just like his fellows to be of any value to them. 5 6 PREFACE A man must be entirely unlike his fellows to be of any value to them. Like in dream and struggle and hope ; unlike in that one difference the possession of which so dif- ferentiates him from others as to win from them the term " Great." As if once to each generation, that none may be without witness, such men come, learn and teach their lesson, and go. The world, their friends and relatives later — for they usually learn it last — note that some- thing unusual is happening, and after the inevitable period of ridicule and mockery and opposition, with their weapons of misrepresentation and evil speaking and jealousy, they render their words of generous praise. It was so with this man as with all the other Great. 'Now that it is all over, the secret of his life stands revealed. It is an old secret and very wonderful. From the beginning of time that which felt its power has glowed with a brightness so strangely beautiful that even a Moses must turn aside to see. For the life of this man can be summed up, with all the Apostles among the Dead, in the single word— God. With it was coupled unselfishness, and dreams, and common sense. When he was gone it was seen that a romantic halo had gathered about Riverside and the Enoree and the Orphanage and over the whole little town of Clinton as if the pillars of fire and cloud that had led him so long would remain yet a little while over the spot he loved so well. But, after all, these — his orphans and college and village and river, his honours and his family— all these were but incidental to the great purpose of his life PREFACE 7 which was to show that the Power is conscious of us and that we may be conscious of Him. This is the Great Discovery — it is the biggest fact in our Universe. It is worth writing a book to illustrate it again. T. J. Oglethorpe University^ Atlanttty Georgia. Contents I. At Sixteen . 13 IL Choosing the Goal 20 III. Voices from the Deep . . 30 IV. Homeward from Home . . 40 V. The Way to Bethany . . 52 VI. Putting on the Armour . 62 VII In the Upper Room . 69 VIII. " My Mary " . . 76 IX. The Midnight Watch . . 82 X. The Day of Small Things . . 97 XI. In My Name . . . • . 1X2 XII. The Working Model . . 126 XIII. The Rod of Hermes . 138 XIV. XV. XVI. For that Future . '« For Thy Sake" . Noonday . . • • . 148 . 160 . . 167 XVII. The Soul of a Soldier . 178 XVIII. Building the New Church . . 195 XIX. In the Later Years . . 200 XX. Moving His College . 2X8 XXI. Giving Up the Church . . 225 XXII. The Battle with Death . 235 XXIII. The Soul of a School . . 253 XXIV. Life and Leaves . . 260 XXV. His Successor . 270 Illustrations opposite page William P. Jacobs Mary Dillard Jacobs . . . • • The First Building of the Thornwell Orphanage " Home " for Thirty-Six Years Memorial Hall ...•••• William P. Jacobs at Various Ages . Buildings of the College and Church The Latest Photograph, Taken in Atlanta at the Home of His Youngest Son • Title 80 120 152 170 212 220 250 11 AT SIXTEEN Ah, Lord, how little do we men, below, Yet understand from whence Thy footsteps tread ! Of all the millioned words that men have said What one reveals the whither Thou dost go ? WE lift the veil of the past and there appears a little boy in a great city. He is five feet and three inches in height ; he weighs ninety-three pounds, and is in the Fresh- Sophomore year at college. It is his sixteenth birthday and his brother Eipley has broken his spectacles of which mis- fortune he says, '' I must have them to-morrow." He is not a strong lad, complaining often of colds and sore-throat and of sharp touches of pain in his lungs ; his breast hurts him so. His eyes also are con- stantly troubling him and as he peers through the glasses which he always wears going here and there about the city his friends liken him to a dreamer— which he is. The city in which he lived is one of whose mother- hood any youth might feel proud. It was of her that her own famous son Petigru had once said : " In the circle of vision from St. Michael's there has been as much high thought spoken, as much heroic action taken, and as much patient endurance borne as in any equal area of land on this continent." The oldest benevolent society in America was hers, St. Andrews. 13 14 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS In her halls the first drama was given in this country. The first cotton ever shipped from America was from her port. She claimed to have built the first long rail- road in the world, and spoke of her library as the third oldest in America. Her name was Charleston and she ranked among the important cities of the United States. And the boy upon whose soul the Great Sun was rising loved the city and thought of her as marvellous. He found in her the things wherein his heart delighted. There was the college which he was attending with its library upon whose shelves ten thousand volumes waited to welcome him. Many were the happy hours he spent there. A museum was hers also which he was constantly describing in his diary. It occupied the whole of the third floor and the collection of birds was his especial delight. In his Charleston lived Mr. Woodruff who loved phonography, "that noble study " which he also loved, and there was the orphan home of which he took note that provision was made for a college education for those who were far ad- vanced and it was located in a building which he thought of as large and beautiful. We can understand the temper of this boy of sixteen the better by noting one or two of those dominant traits which were to so surely determine his future. We view his soul in the mirror of his diary. He was at prayer-meeting and " They prayed for me ! " An- other night was rainy, preventing his attending his literary society, but " it was all for the best, for that night they had some uproarious mirth which would ill have suited me." Some of the young ladies in his father's seminary attended a dancing school in th© AT SIXTEEN 15 city, it being his task to escort them home often. Of this he writes — " I do most heartily wish that nobody had ever heard of dancing." He gets his college report and notes that his average is eighty-nine, better than last year, and wonders whether he is still first in his class. Next term he will do better. Miserly of time he finds out how to save an hour by studying an hour immediately after breakfast, thus " saving myself from talking nonsense at college." He is often afraid for his religious life but promises %V^ASnw^^1^^^^:lJ^. His own representation of an ante-bellum Boarding School, taught by the author of " Young Marooners," which he ad- tended near Kingston, Georgia, when a boy, before entering Charleston College. From the first volume of his Diary. himself to perish only on his knees. He notes that few in his classes like him because he is punctilious about studying his father's wishes and the rules of the col- lege. Of him he says, *'I have a good kind father, I love my father." One day that father gave him a desk that formerly belonged to his mother. " While you were here, Mother," he writes, " I did not love you as I ought but I love your memory and will ever love it." He was clean of mind and lip, esteeming profanity to be deprecated above all things. His pets were the Chrestomathic Society, the orphan house, the college 16 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS museum and library, a rare coin, the noble science of phonography and prayer-meeting. If he had possessed Aladdin's lamp he would have wanted to see Europe, Asia, Africa and America. And he wanted everybody to love God. There was something both strange and great about the tastes of this youth. He was fond of study, rising often at five in the morning to save an hour. He read Todd's Student's Manual, which pleased him well, and was particularly fond of astronomy. He loved libra- ries and printing as his fathers before him had done. " I studied very hard to-day," he writes in his diary, "and set the title page to ' Notes on the Bible.' " He liked to wander through the museum and interpret the stories of the wonders he saw there. He would often get his lessons early and go in at " Courtenay's " and "have a conversation with his books," adding in his journal, " Oh, I do love books ! " These were some of his tastes but his deepest taste was for God. " Oh, let me always remember this night," he wrote on February 8, 1858. "To-night I applied for ad- mission to the church and was received as a member. I applied the 26th of last October but I was received only as a seeker. Thank God I am enabled to receive Him to my heart. O that Pressley would find the way I have ! Father joined just at my age." All that he ever did thereafter was foreshadowed in that entry. For his soul had surrendered itself to a belief that utterly mastered him. "Let infidels say what they will about the Infinite Jehovah mixing in the affairs of puny mortals, yet I feel that the Lord of Hosts has often mingled in my affairs. He has brought AT SIXTEEN 17 me through many difficulties and dangers safe in body and mind and has answered many of my prayers." And to this boy of sixteen it was an inevitable sequence that his spirit should find no rest save in the service of the Power. Little by little the idea of the ministry takes hold upon him. He called it a delight- O ftiie _ Books. • 1. History GdQ«6!9» 6Xodnd« Levtticas, Dambeis, doute HTODomy^ |<^haa» judges* rath^sajraoal \i kiQgs ii» c!uron»o{es it- e^ra- oebexaiAli- 2» Poetry* ^ob- psalffls. proverbs* ^ccteiisstes, soIomo& 60Qg, lamootatiotts. S. PropIieer« leaiab* jetemiab* esekiet, datiiQf^ bos^a* joo* amoa- obadiab- jooab, micah- o&bum* bfibbs^ 4piI^4^ reveiatlona^ 4U€l&urclii History* llaUb9w« mark, lake- jobiu sot^ A page from his first book " Notes on the Bible," which he wrote, printed and published when about sixteen years of age. ful occupation and longed to breast the waters of its flood. In February it was a thought, in November it was a determination. He seemed himself to know that this year of 1858 was to be a memorable year of his life. In it he heard the famous Everett in his masterly oration on Washing- ton and wrote it down as the second great day of the 18 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS year. Shortly afterwards he heard Mr. Thornwell lec- ture before the Y. M. C. A. and thought himself unfit to describe his ability. In September, while the yellow fever was raging in the city, he caught sight of the Great Comet of Donati, discarding his spectacles for his father's spy-glass to view it better and noting its im- mensity with astonishment at the handiwork of his maker. But above all other things, it was in this 3^ ear that he reached out his arms to God. Not content with surrendering his present, he would surrender his future. He was ready to go to the utter- most parts of the earth fulfilling his dream. He would give both soul and body. " Ordain me," he prayed, *' to go and preach the holy and eternal gospel to Thy dying heathen. I am willing. Lord, if Thou art ! " And so this unusual lad came to the close of his un- usual year, yearning to taste of the sweet waters of life and the bitter. We see him a deeply religious youth, weak in throat and lungs and eyes, fond of libraries, a lover of books and printing and languages, disliking noise and dancing schools, preferring to dust his father's books, constantly calling himself lazy and sinful but rising at five in the morning to read and pray and study, lonely among his fellow students, already both- ered about theology, a lover of Latin and Greek and German and the " noble science of Phonography," fond of stars "and ancient coins, ever meditative over the brevity of this life and wondering over that which was to come, critically observant of his personal habits, and, though conscious of his weakness, unafraid be- cause of a superb faith in God. Such was the lad who wrote on the first day of that AT SIXTEEN 19 eventful year, " A journal is a picture of the mind," and on the last — " And now on this the last day of this year let me pause and cast a scrutinizing glance over all my past life. Have I lived a Christian year ? Have I drawn one year nearer to God ? As this year has come to an end so also will my life finally draw to a close." Then he placed the first tiny volume of his diary carefully away until the coming of that day, writing on its fly-leaf the unknown name of its author,— Wm. P. Jacobs. n CHOOSING THE GOAL I love Birds and stars and trees. Flowers, books and bees, Ants and embryology, Poems, anthropology, The gold of Hermes' rod, These : all of whom are God. THERE has been nothing more astonishing in all history than the discovery that each of us was once one cell. Embryologists tell us that the most powerful microscope and the acutest intellect are alike unable to distinguish between the first one- roomed house in which lion or oak or fish or man first lived. Yet in that original germ, given the proper environment, lies latent the power, the spirit, the prin- ciple that will eventually distinguish a leopard from a lichen. What this marvellous thing is we do not and probably never shall know, nor may any eye see those invisible processes which work out their inevitable destinies. Yet all these wonderful determinations are there, and to be unfolded need only time and life. Perhaps this is what he subtly saw who wrote : " The spirit of a youth who means to be of note, begins betimes." And so it happens that, guided by a long series of inheritances that have concentrated the attainments of his forefathers within it, the cell begins its high task of expressing itself. It builds for itself leaves or fins 20 CHOOSING THE GOAL 21 or claws or fingers. As it lives within, so it lives without. All that is seen is the expression of all that is unseen. And, since everj'^thing in this world is like everything else, we may see herein the story of each human life. No eye sees, no ear hears, no hand touches that un- known Within, the strange process of whose laws works unceasingly to express themselves in word and deed, in books and buildings, in property and institu- tions. Men, like germs, look very much alike as they go about their respective affairs, but when time shall have been given for their natures to build a body about them we see that one has become a lion, one a reptile, one a pig and one a man. Now as we study the life of Wm. P. Jacobs and see it taking its own distinctive shape we mark certain divergencies between this youth and others. The greatest thing about this boy was that he wanted to give himself away. He believed a thing that could only be proven in that way. He believed that if a man would not seek great things for himself but for God he could tap the fathomless reservoir of power and with it build orphanages or colleges or churches or cotton mills or character ; but of the five only character mattered. To do this he knew it would be necessary to develop every trait of greatness and this must be done by meet- ing all that life held for all in a godlike way. This would call for tears and disappointment and every troublous thing that the life of mankind offered. But it would bring one great compensating joy — he could burn and hence be a flame that would show how life could be made beautiful and wonderful with the light of God. 22 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS And that was what he wanted to be and do more than anything else in the world, to be a friend of God, and do the works of God. As soon as he saw it he went out, sold all that he had and bought it. It brought a joy beside which the comforts and pleasures of ordinary life seemed misery. Thus early his life may be summed up in one sen- tence. It gave him more pleasure to get a letter from God than to deposit the check pinned to it. And when we first begin to read his mind he is gathering up evidence to prove that God really wrote the letter. So in the late days of his sixteenth year he took his motto and chose his ideal in these memorable words : " Those words are still sounding in my ears — ' Seekest thou great things for thyself, seek them not.' It has always been one of my dreams to be distinguished ; I have always been seeking great things for myself, to be honoured, loved and respected of all has been my greatest ambition, and is it wrong to wish, to strive for these ? Are these great things ? Will striving for them be seeking great things for myself ? The answer, I fear, is ^ Yes ! ' though I would not have it so. ' Seekest thou great things for thyself, seek them not,' and the divine command must be obeyed. I will not seek great things for myself. I will seek them for God. I will strive to lay all my laurels at Jesus' feet and say to Him, ' Lord, they are Thine.' I will not be an indifferent preacher, a medium man. I will strive and try not to gain great things for myself but to gain them for God." It is characteristic of all great souls that with a con- suming desire they long to drink of the cup whereof CHOOSING THE GOAL 23 Jesus drank and be baptized with His baptism. In its increasing frequency, if it can be made to increase, is to be found the universal solvent of all human prob- lems. The text of all such lives is that first text which our boy of sixteen heard once and whose thought he followed with an utter abandon of servitude — " Seekest thou great things for thyself ? Seek them not ! " This is the mantle which he wore, his raiment white and glistening. Like the ancient mantle of Elijah, it falls to the ground waiting for some Elisha to reach for it. And, as then, so now the Great Law holds that when Jehovah would take His prophet up to heaven by a whirlwind he is ready to give this richest gift to any man who wishes it and is able to see its former wearer when he is taken away. And, as was Elisha, so are we wise enough to know that this gift is his spirit which ever remains when the bodies and words of prophets are gone, visible only to those who have eyes to see. For the most marvellous as well as the most important thing about any great life is the spirit in which its work is done, comprising as it does his sweetest goal. He may build orphanages or colleges or churches ; these are but accidents. The man who sees them does not see the man's work, much less the man. The spirit of his life, invisible, intangible, inaudi- ble, determines these forms of its expression. It tells the quality of his purpose, the depth of his power, the fineness of his principles. In what spirit did he wel- come labour ; in what spirit did he take defeat ; in what spirit did he face the storm ; in what spirit did he en- dure reverses ; in what spirit did he give ; in what spirit did he take ; in what spirit did he think of enemy or friend, of profit or loss ; of comfort or pain ? 24 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS There are but two questions that need be asked to reveal the character of a man : How did he look on gold, and how did he look on God ? And those two are one question. It is as if a man who had found the way to true hap- piness walked up and down the highways of life urging all to come with him. The multitude note the peace of his brow, the joy of his eyes, the certainty of his step. They watch the wonders he performs and are astonished at the greatness of the works that bear witness to the truth of his message. They themselves would like to be able to do these great things, wear these beautiful laurels and bear these high honours, a few would even be willing to sacrifice their comfort and pleasures for them but they are equally estopped from following him who feared the selfishness of the honour and glory equally with the selfishness of ease and profit. Only here and there is there a man who can even see the kingdom of heaven in which he lived or recognize this altruism and self-denial as the very chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof, things desirable in themselves and means whereby God speaks to man. It was this life and this path that our boy of sixteen chose as his. He asked a hard thing. ** Love took up the harp of life and struck on all the chords with might, Struck the chord of self which trembling passed in music out of sight." So his goal stood revealed for he was plainly drunk with devotion to God. He would perfect himself in six languages, English, Latin, Greek, French, German and the " mellifluous Hebrew," because he might need CHOOSING THE GOAL 26 /i«wu4^i« dittos.* f^-^j(zU^. 'y;C ^y>*^ ^^~v^ucu^ 'fev-w^ «,««« 9teu:s;v~^ ^^^l- <^ ovrfo vx^-, ^^5;j^, ^ ^,^1^ ff ^^i:^i^"/''f/r4 fiji^(t>^ oMMU^L A page from a little book on « The Alphabet " which he wrote when about seventeen years old. 26 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS them in serving God. He wanted a good library to serve God. He took exercise that he might keep well for God. He would try to live by fixed principles, for a man without them or who did not adhere to them could not be a credit to his God. He planned to be good for God. Everything was for God and he wanted God so ! " I do wish I was a better boy," he exclaimed. " I wish that God was my God, that Jesus was my Saviour and that I was His son, that I dwelt in the bosom of Him whose ' love sticketh closer than a brother.' O God, be my God ! " And this beautiful picture of his college life early re- vealed him standing an astonished gazer on the marvels of life and Providence. The world was very wonder- ful. It seemed so wonderful to him to live ! What a glorious thing it would be if he could become a grad- uate of Columbia Seminary ! Here is a youth who wanted a shorthand book so badly in his sixteenth year that in his poverty he could only exclaun, " I wish I had a dollar," writing : " Last night was so beautiful a night that even now I seem to see it as I did when I and Johnny Caldwell were walk- ing up to the college together. Orion flamed over our heads in deadly combat with the Bull ; while Sirius gleamed near us with unwonted luster. Luna, bright and full as the day when the evening stars sang to- gether, shone over the eastern horizon driving before her the double winged Saturn with his seven moons. Here and there a fleecy cloud floating slowly along re- sembled a distant milky way, while all around was as quiet as the day when Adam and Eve, the father and mother of all living, sat alone in Paradise. O ! it was CHOOSING THE GOAL 2Y a lovely sight, a sight worthy of its Creator and to me only needed the moonlit field and the glassy lake to hold me in quiet rapture." He was doing, therefore, an exceedingly dangerous thing, this admirer of God, for he was ready fatuously to follow Him. Something was sure to happen when this boy got out in the world, either a catastrophe or a glory. He was going to risk his life on so foolish a thing as faith and so tenuous a path as prayer. Could it end in anything but disillusionment? And how seriously he took life, even each minute of it. He cannot quite consent to his love of chess, the time consumer. '' O fures," he exclaimed, " latrones, O tyrannos crudelissimos quorum consilio mihi umquam periit hora " which illustrates equally his fear of losing an hour and his love of Latin. Time seemed to him to go so fast. It would be such a short while before col- lege days would be over and then life itself was but a bit longer. Like all great minds he had become bur- dened by the consciousness of the brevity of life. Hence his craving for usefulness. He looked forward with delight to serving others. " I long to preach ! " he writes. " I love, too, to hear Father's sermons, and 1 only wish that he had a country parsonage and church. I do hope that if God shall make of me a minister that He will place me to work in some quiet country place. Surely then my lines would have fallen to me in pleas- ant places. I do most ardently desire to become a min- ister and to labour to do God's service, but O Lord, Thou know est me that I am the most unworthy of all Thy servants.'* He determined, " God willing, the chief end and aim of my life should be, to be of service and glory to my 28 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS Maker, to love Him and do His bidding, to be a man, free, active, unselfish as a generous youth ; bold, zeal- ous, honest, unflinching as a man. I will be a servant and adorer of my Maker ; always relying on Him to the utmost." These were the main elements in the spirit of Wm. F. Jacobs, rising Junior of Charleston College, in the year 1859. It had been a year replete with interest and toil. Since his last birthday he had grown three inches taller and gained twelve pounds in weight, and felt confident of his improvement also along other lines. The sum- mer he had spent on Edisto Island with friends of his father's so pleasantly that ever afterwards he was to call it " my beloved Edisto." In November he received through Mr. Woodruff, his brother in the bonds of phonography, an offer from Dr. Gibbes of the Caro- linian of fifty dollars for three weeks' reporting of the sessions of the Senate in Columbia, which he accepted. Once there, he visited the theological seminary. He was glad he went for there he met four students, " Buist, Banks, Law and George Petrie, whom I have not seen for four years. Tom (Law) explained every- thing about the seminary." Later he had a long, friendly letter from Tom Law. They were to be in the seminary together and he hopes that they are to be good friends all through life. This was the year also of his father's remarriage. One evening his father called him into his room and said, '* Willie, how would you like a mother ? " He was dumfounded. The spirit in which he met her was characteristic : " Father arrived in Charleston to-day," he wrote in CHOOSING THE GOAL 29 his diary, *^ with Mother, and a very nice mother she is. I am sure I will love her, yes, for I love her now with all my heart. She looks just like Father's proper wife. Oh, may she love me as truly as I do now love her. As soon as she had taken possession of her room, Father called me in and said, * Willie, is this Mother or Miss Carrie Lee ? ' What could I answer but ' Mother ' ? Yes, she shall love me and I her. I have to go to col- lege to-morrow although I think that I ought not to. Why ? Because I don't want to. Our lesson too is all about stars and constellations, when a far brighter star has just entered my hemisphere and it requires all my observation." He loved his father, whose life-story was so like and yet so unlike his own. He notes that he seemed to have inherited his father's tastes more than had any other of the children. " Father has expressed his de- sire," he adds, " that I shall become his representative. God grant that I may be a worthy representative and help me to do my best ! " Always, God ! And in this year, very early in it, there occurs a sen- tence written parenthetically in his diary that is full of beautiful prophecy. " Kemember," he writes, " I am a lover of children ! " He loved so many things, this youth of seventeen, books, singing, sermons, museums, phonography, stars, travel, chess, father, Bible, life, churches, colleges, God — and little children. m VOICES FEOM THE DEEP To know my Lord doth love me, 'Tis all my heart would know; For He is Heaven above me, And He is Earth below. THE faces of children are generally associated with the future but their finest associations lie with the past. The stranger who meets your little boy sees nothing in his face but a fair promise of coming days. It is the friend who really interprets. Your friend sees him and says at once, " He is like his father." Your wife's friend sees him and exclaims, " How like he is to his mother ! " Your father's boyhood companion happens by and notes the resemblance to his grandfather. And some day an aged relative comes, one who had known his great-grandfather, and it seems to him that the features of the ancient dead have reappeared. JS'ow the interesting part about these resemblances is that they are all there ! If we are "a part of all the men whom we have met," how much more are we a part of all the ancestors who have begotten us. So it comes to pass that there are ancient voices cry- ing to us out of the depths of our souls, and a thing 30 VOICES FROM THE DEEP 31 that a man did three generations ago may rule our mood of to-morrow. As the spirit unfolds these sub-spirits appear, these older memories. They mingle with the environment of to-day, its admonitions, its teachings, its influences. They wax or wane in power as the years pass. Eventu- ally, modified by circumstances, they are more or less fused into a dominant passion, the fixed ideal of a life, and are in turn transmitted to generations to come. Scientists, and all who read their works, recognize the term "Sport." A sport is a variation in the line of descent. Like begets unlike by seeming chance. New and dissimilar characteristics appear. A new combina- tion of elements has taken place. Hence a Shakespeare. From the depths of his soul three spirits were con- stantly calling upon Wm. P. Jacobs to follow them— the spirits of the Creator, the Preserver and the Saviour. The last was the first to develop and showed itself in his desire to be a Christian and a minister. The second followed quickly, expressing itself in the recording care of the historian whose diary would gather up each little daily happening and preserve each passing me- mento and whose library would be full of well-kept records and bound volumes of reports. The third was the last and perhaps the deepest passionate cry. It bade him create ; at first as an author and later as a founder of churches, colleges, and orphanages. One of these voices was well known in his family history ; the voice of the minister. His father was a minister and in the line of his paternal ancestry there had been no man who was not preacher, teacher or printer back to that dim figure of whom his father had told him, who left England with the Puritans and be- 32 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS came professor in the University of Leyden, changing his English James to the Latin Jacobus. Doubtless also from his father came much of that f |0 ^IHihriaiL No. I. JULY, 1859. VolTT OUR SALUTATORY, In casting forth a new sheet into the already well- filled world of periodicals, the Editors have in view the propagation of Chess, as well as the pleasure and pro/it of itheir patrons, of whom they solicit, simply, tJie obs^^r- i^an<^e of the Golden Rule- They would endeavour, faithfully, to discharge their allotted tasks j and in order 4o do so, satisfactorily, they need, and consequently re- quest, ori^lnQt contributions to their Editorial di-awers. The services of Mr. W. P. J , in the lUcrart/y and of Mr. 0. A. M , in the scientific departmeat have been engaged; to whom all communications must be ad« dressed. To all unacquainted with the celebrated gamCt a series of Chess articles is promised, giving elementary and advanced instruction, suitable alike to amateur and beginner, and to all, they would ssiy-^-colcuIate upon the fjfreat improvement of our page ! First page of Vol, I, No. i, of his first magazine venture. fine precision and care w4th which he kept preserving the record. But that voice of the Creator which kept expressing itself in the cry for authorship, increas- VOICES FROM THE DEEP 33 ing ever in volume and intensity, the desire to be a poet, a maker, a doer of the things of which his muse dreamed, whence, from what depth of His invisible unknown came that voice ? And here we must remember a thing that may seem to be very far away but is really very near. The order is yearning— prayer— answer. And he who gives one gives all. ' During the years 1860 and 1861 he was distinctly a reporter and author. As the former he witnessed the ill fated Democratic Convention in Charleston in the spring of 1860 and reported the Legislature in Colum- bia :and Charleston in the fall of 1860, the Secession Convention in the last month of the same year and the first General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Church in Augusta the following year. As an author he was the writer of a number of fugitive poems for the News and Courier and the Field and Fireside, of more serious articles for the Southern Presbyterian and the Courier, and of a number of booklets. His plans for future literary works were nothing short of astonishinof. In all this he was ever mindful of two things : the tick of the clock and the throne of God. " I am nearly nineteen," he writes. " Ten years will make it twenty-nine, thirty-nine, forty-nine, fifty-nine. Say I do arrive at fifty-nine, which is far more than I ever will do. I must die then. Let me work then- the night is near at hand. Day is added unto day t year to year ! But death cometh. " Therein we hear the voice of the JSTovember winds whom the dead leaves follow one by one. It is Youth facing Death— astounded. 34 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS Then the Ime-bred spirit of the minister answers from the Innermost and he exclaims, " I love to con- fide, to trust in God ! I love everything — life seems so fresh. God grant that my life may be devoted to Him/' If we follow the story of his life during these two years we find them full of interesting happenings which toss him here and there in the world as if to teach him of what sort of stuff life is composed. The opening days of '60 found him busy at his books working hard in the prospect of soon becoming a Senior. This was to be a year which he later called " The bright year of my life." He is living with his father in Charleston and does not know that their family life is soon to end. He is even more a devotee of phonography which has become a support as well as a delight and is even in correspondence with Benn Pit- man, who publishes a note from him in his PJiono- grajphic Magazine. He is trying to learn to sing, hoping some day to be a " tenor vocalist." He is be- ginning to write for the papers and planning to spend his vacation on his " beloved Edisto." He is often thinking, earnestly thinking of the future and asking strange questions of his soul. Then suddenly Fate opens a crack in the door through which he is to pass. The Democratic Convention met in Charleston to nominate a President of the United States. Its failure to do so unitedly was about to precipitate the War be- tween the States. One Monday, realizing that a historic scene was to be observed in the Convention hall he obtained his ticket and hurried to the galleries in " time to hear several VOICES FROM THE DEEP 35 speeches and to see Alabama, South Carolina, Missis- sippi, Texas, Florida, Arkansas and Georgia withdraw from the Convention " amid tremendous applause. Of this scene our prescient young reporter writes : "In future days I can say how that I pressed in among others to this Democratic Convention. I saw the grave and reverend heads of the people, political Ticket of Admission to the Charleston Convention of 1861. fathers, in grave convention assembled, to deliberate on the tottering affairs of the nation. I partook of the terrible contentions and confusions which universally prevailed — I saw this great Republic tottering to its foundation stone." J This was in April and early May. When July came we find the ministerial spirit strengthening its voice. He is planning to go out as a missionary under the auspices of the Sunday School Union, and strange feel- ings and fears are in his heart. He doubts his fitness for the work but will pray for aid and enlightenment. Perhaps God will help him in time of need. And thereafter came a wonderful vacation month on Edisto, saddened only by his knowledge that his father, having received a call to the Fairvie^^ Church near 36 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS Marion, Alabama, and having accepted it, would no longer be near him to watch over his studies. " When I return to Charleston," he writes, " I will have no home. I must board as a stranger in an old familiar place. How sad ! I will be passing away — but a little while and I shall know it no more. But this earth is nothing more than a short abiding place. We must die to make way for others, but there is room enough for all in heaven. Father goes to Fairview to-day. ' Parting, oh, parting, parting is pain.' God bless thee, my father ! Thou hast always trusted in Him. He will aid thee now. Thou hast taught me where to gain consolation. Thou hast always loved and aided me. Oh ! how can I repay thee for all thy kindness ? I will not try, I would rather be in thy debt. Gratitude, oh ! how sweet to be grateful to thee. God bless thee, my father, God bless thee." Thereafter events moved rapidly. His kst term at college begins and this boy, of whom his father once said that he could not do wrong except by accident, buckles down to hard work, sa^ang : " What is life worth but to serve ? " And then a curious little incident occurs. Dis- tressed at the necessity of being supported by a father who has many other responsibilities and limited means, we find him in prayer for work which he calls help. " Oh, God, give me something to do ! " he cries. " Show me where I may find work. Answer me for Jesus' sake." And then the days pass. Perhaps he forgot the prayer of September 29th. He even writes, " All my brightest anticipations have been dashed. I had ex- pected to report the present session of the Legislature, VOICES FROM THE DEEP 37 but I have tried in vain ; and the Synod, but that too is dashed." But one morning, November 29th, he was astonished by hearing his name called and a " Telegraphic Des- patch " was handed to him. It was from Columbia and read, " Come up immediately and report for me ! " We shall remember this happening. It is typical of them both. The Legislature, which met in Columbia, soon ad- journed, on account of a severe smallpox epidemic, to Charleston, where, on the twentieth of December, it passed the fateful Ordinance of Secession, our reporter scattering the printed resolutions upon the eager crowds outside. Describing the scene, he says, "The Resolution read : " * An Ordinance to dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina and other states united with her under the compact entitled " The Constitution of the United States of America." " ' We, the people of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby de- clared and ordained— That the Ordinance adopted by us in Convention, the 23d day of May, in the year of our Lord 1788, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified and also all Acts or parts of Acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying amend- ments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed and that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States under the name of the " United States of America" is hereby dissolved.' " At seven minutes after one the vote was taken on the Ordinance, ' As name by name fell upon tlie ear of 38 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS the silent Assembly, the brief sound was echoed back without one exception in that whole grave body — Aye ! ' Scarcely had the President announced the vote unanimous before the people assembled without sent up one universal shout of triumph and men and children ran from street to street heralding the glad tidings. All the stores were closed, bands of soldiers were immediately parading and crowds were gathered everywhere to hear and tell the news. The Mercury extras were seized with an eagerness unparallelled in the annals of the Charleston Press. At 6 : 30 the Con- vention again met and proceeded in a body to the Secession (Institute) Hall to ratify the Ordinance. At the foot of the stairs they were joined by the Senate and House of Representatives and the three bodies took their seats, from which six months before their repre- sentatives had seceded. An old gray-headed man was brought forward to supplicate the throne of grace and Dr. Bachman poured out his whole soul in it. The President then read the Ordinance and when he had finished it, the whole audience rose and gave tremen- dous applause. One by one the delegates went up and signed the Ordinance and when the last was added President Jamison said, ' I do, therefore, declare South CaroUna to be a separate and independent common- wealth.' Every man, woman and child leaped up, hats flew high in air, and cheer after cheer echoed and reechoed from floor to roof, from side to side, until exhausted it fell down in one long, loud cadence of re- joicing. It was the noblest moment of my life. Even now, while I write, my blood thrills with excitement at the thought. The same scene was enacted in the street. General Martin, by the light of a street lamp, VOICES FROM THE DEEP 39 read the ordinance to the crowd where it was met with similar enthusiasm. Thus ended the glorious 20th of December." With such exciting scenes he closed " The brightest year of my life," amid uncertainty and doubt and loneliness and labour, with the vast war cloud blacken- ing overhead. And he feared as he entered into the cloud. Had he known how to discern the signs of the time he would have heard the rumbling of the deep forces which were moving to change the whole scenery of the stage and set his life amid the poverty and de- spair from which its finest message was to come. He would have seen the messengers of God hurrying hither and thither sprinkling the ashes of woe everywhere with that completeness in which was largely to lie the meaning of his whole career. He would have felt the whirr of martial wings rushing to ruin the achieve- ments of the mind and hand of the Old South leaving a pathway among them open only to him who could walk by faith. The dark chapter in his nation's novel was about to be written and he was to be a letter in it. A letter raised and illumined in gold. lY HOMEWAED FEOM HOME The waiting soul is sick for work to be ; The eye looks, languid, at slow-passing days ; The heart beats wearily each systole, And frets at opportunity's delayed pace. Yet fill, O Soul, with hope Thy faithless gloom, For to Thee, hoping not, Thine hour shall come. " 1 A URY me on my face," said Diogenes. Being 1"^ asked " Why ? " he replied : ^' Because in a JL^ little while everything will be turned upside down ! " And so it was in 1861. With the war enthusiasm at fever heat it was but natural that the Senior class at Charleston College should present a petition to their faculty setting forth the impossibility of their doing justice to their work on account of the intensity of the patriotic fires in their souls and asking for immediate possession of their diplo- mas. This they did, every member of their class sign- ing it. Scarcely had it been done before the war began, the fateful adventure of the Star of the West precipitating it on the ninth of January. Then followed a rapid breakup of ties and relation- ships. JSTo further serious work was done at college until examinations came in early March. He attended the last meeting of the Chrestomathic Society that he 40 HOMEWARD FROM HOME 41 loved so well, sad at the thought that his school days were over. For the last time as a student he went through museum and library and heard Dr. Smyths preach in the dear old Second Presbyterian Church. Then he writes the names of his classmates tenderly in his diary and ends his college life. Shortly thereafter he left Charleston for his father's pastorate at Fairview, where he arrived on his nine- teenth birthday. Here he spent an uneventful summer reading and writing and thinking and planning. It was a summer of constant wrestling with resolutions and frequent complainings at his inability to keep them. He finds time, however, to study farming at this country manse and describes his present earthly horizon thus : " I purpose raising a fine supply of blackberries and seeing if I cannot in some manner improve the breed. I pray God above all other earthly comforts to grant me a sweet wife, an affectionate charge and a good chance at gardening. With these I think that I could lead a peaceful and contented life and rest in God for all things else." And here also, ever observant of the heavens, he en- joyed, unconsciously, an experience rarel}'' given to mortals. With characteristic interest and care he tells the story of it in his journal : "About a week ago when I happened to arrive home at midnight, I noticed in the east a streak of light beginning in the horizon and well defined almost to the zenith. What was it ? Was it the zodiacal light or was it in reality the ring around the earth which was lately spoken of as discovered by the United States Expedition in Japan ? Again another visitor has ap- 42 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS peared in our skies— a large comet. Of this little vis- itant I may speak again, as I have not yet seen it." " The great comet is now visible just under the con- stellation of the Great Bear. What thoughts does that bright streak of light bring over me — thoughts of the immensity of space, strange thoughts on the inhabitants of those other worlds — remembrances of the fact that it is not only on earth that there is life and motion — startling thoughts of the unsearchable greatness of God and of our ineffable littleness, and of Christ's great con- descension. The nucleus of this comet is very bright, brighter than a star of the first magnitude, silvery light. Its tail is as straight as an arrow and gradually grow- ing wider and less bright in its extent of twenty or thirty degrees. What comet is it ? About this time in 1858 I saw a comet, brighter indeed than this but not so long. What mysterious travellers are these ? How naturally superstitious thoughts cluster around them. " The comet is waning in the distance. It seems that the appearance which I mentioned the other night as having been the zodiacal light was in reality this comet. It was then, according to Dr. Gibbes, eighty degrees in length ; its head was in the horizon." " The comet of 1861," says Camille Flammarion, the great French astronomer, "passed at 273,000 miles from us on January 30th and it is almost certain, ac- cording to the most trustworthy calculations and ob- servations of M. Liais, that the earth and the moon passed through its tail at six o'clock that morning (Paris time). In fact neither the earth nor moon per- ceived it, only a slight Aurora Borealis was seen as if the tail itself were simply an am^ora. The encounter HOMEWARD FROM HOME 43 SUNDAY, July 7ih. 1861. (Xruo^mt^ Ctr^eA. i— « I fix ^ : /I % 5^0^«^- fiJ^cwOepjg, /lICSw^'^ *^^^ Page from Diary, July 7, 1861, illustrating comet through whose tail the world passed without knowing it. 44 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS was only really known and calculated after the passage." This experience of passing through a comet's tail without knowing it was one that he never forgot. On the last Christmas that he spent on earth he told it to his grandchildren in Atlanta. It was on the eighth of August that he received a let- ter from Dr. Smythe testifying that " Wm. P. Jacobs is a most acceptable member of the Second Presbyterian Church of Charleston and believed to be a most worthy and divinely directed candidate for the sacred office of the ministry," of which he said, " How very little does he know about me ! " And while complaining to himself of his laziness he planned to write three books ; one was to be a versifica- tion of the historical Scriptures, a second consisted of a series of articles on the Evidences of Christianity as evident in the sciences, and the third was to be a book on authorship. Slowly the long vacation passed as he tried a plan found in the Spectator that he should set down every- thing of consequence done during a day for later examination. The following was "Trial week" and afterwards "Perseverance week" then "Study and Prayer week," and "Useful week" and "Sermon week " (he only wrote two pages of it), and " week." Afterwards the comet and preparations to enter Columbia Seminary. Yet during this vacation time many things were happening in his soul. His interest in literature grew, expressing itself in poems, stories and articles for maga- zines and newspapers. He busied himself translating the Shorter Catechism into Greek, German and Latin. HOMEWARD FROM HOME 45 In his first month of solitude he heard the news of firing on Fort Sumter and the beginning of the war. He read many books of travel and wanted to follow Stephen's footsteps in Egypt and stand on the summit of Cheops' great pyramid some day. He heard his father preach the baccalaureate sermon before the graduating class of Marion Female Seminary with de- light, and of himself says, " I am now throwing away the best moments of ray life, when my eyes are not weak and I am not feeble." In the middle of August his father received a call to Laurensville, S. C, the county seat of Laurens County, nine miles from a little place called Clinton, and decided to accept it. This was the first tiny thread that Providence had prepared wherewith to guide him to his destiny. At length September came and one daybreak he reached Columbia, in company with George Petrie, recently a classmate of Sidney Lanier's and Ed Green's at Oglethorpe University, and rode with him up to the seminary. A few other brethren came in during the day, among them "my good old friend, Tom Law." *' It is the habit here," he writes, " to call all the stu- dents ' Brother.' Of course I find this rather difficult but not altogether impossible. Those I love most I find it hardest to * Brother.' " This was on the seventeenth of September. On Tuesday morning following the students were ex- amined on Personal Piety. "Little enough could I give to satisfy them," he thought, " but still my name was enrolled." So he entered upon his theological career, with Brother Todd, from Laurensville, telling him that he could find any number of places near there wherein to 46 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS show forth the talent that was in him ; with Brother H offended because he would not listen to long yarns on the Sabbath but insisted on reading the New Testament to all who would tell them ; complaining ever that his spirituality was weak and planning to write a book on some consoling topic of religion to leave for his posterity. Of this last he writes a hope which was a prophecy. " I want it to be small," he says, "and yet my whole life to be spent in elaborating it so that every word will be worth printing and every sentence a gem, and yet I wish it so fixed that if I die next month (year) it will be ready for publication. I want to leave something to posterity, so that even in my death I may be useful to my fellow men. I hope that this will not turn out to be a mere idle chimera of my imagination." On the thirtieth of October he made his first appear- ance before the faculty as a public speaker only to be criticized unmercifully. His matter was poor, his man- ner bad, his pronunciation unsatisfactory, his position wretched. He received no syllable of praise. Only George Petrie said that he liked his speech. There seemed to be very little hope for him as a preacher. But he would try to do better next time. In November he passed the terrible ordeal of Pres- bytery after Dr. Howe had proposed his name. His college examination was the thing he most feared. Dr. Leland gave him the first five verses of Luke's gospel to read and the first paragraph of I Cicero against Cataline. After this followed such searching questions as "What is Natural Philosophy?" " What is Astronomy?" "Is Chemistry a useful Science?" ^' What is a Satellite ? " " What is the Solar System ? '? HOMEWARD FROM HOME 47 On motion of Dr. Howe the examination was " Sus- tained." The same month he finished reading through the ISTew Testament in the original Greek for the first time in his life. In this month also he preached his first sermon. This is his story of it : " At the request of Brother Otts I went up to Tekoa, a mission station on the Charlotte road, to preach. Just after breakfast I hurried over to the depot and got on some cars which were about to leave. I soon found, however, that I had not got on the passenger train but on one carrying up soldiers. I knew, however, when I reached Tekoa, by Killian's mill-pond, and, though the cars were at full speed, I had no intention of going up to Charlotte, so off I jumped, ' flying squirrel fashion,' and down I came full length. I jumped up, however, and found that my neck was not broken and went over to the church. I conducted the Sunday School and got on very successfully until the very close, when the choir leader, who was singing ' Old Hundred,' gave out and 1 was obliged to sing alone the last two lines, though I had never sung a line unaided before in my life. I believe I changed the tune completely before I got to the end. I was very cold in the pulpit — chilled, chat- tering, and, though my sermon was written, I managed to get considerably wound up on ' Jesus wept, and the Jews said, " Behold how he loved him ! " ' After serv-^ ice, however, I felt very cold and exhausted and walked over to Mr. Killian's, and he gave me a glass of black- berry wine, which relieved me. I thank God that He enabled me to do as well as I did. There were two or three out of the twenty present who seemed to listen 48 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS with a great deal of attention. I managed to get home— Tutus Mente et corpore." With the closing month of the year came the meet- ing of the first General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Church which convened in Augusta, Ga., on December third. He was engaged to report the Assembly for the Southern Presbyterian, by Dr. Adger, who offered him fifty dollars for his services in that capacity. Nor did Dr. Adger leave him unaided. *' Dr. Adger," he writes, " is making Dr. Palmer, the Moderator, act parliamentarily and yet very much not so. He made a little speech the other day in which he suggested that it would be of much service to the reporter if he would call out the name of each mem- ber as he rose. Dr. Palmer, though he has no right to know that there is a reporter in the house, has, on one or two occasions, turned to me and said, *That is Dr. , Mr. Jacobs.' I ought to feel flattered. Judge S said to me yesterday, 'The gentleman who spoke last was Judge S ,— it is well to know these little things.' I assured him that I knew his title and would give it to him. Mr. R said to me, ' Take a good look at me, Mr. R , I intend to make a speech some day and I want you to know me. You'll remember it ? ' ' Yes, sir, a little better than you think. There is a great deal of human nature in men ! ' " This first meeting of his Assembly made a deep im- pression on him who was thus flung into the very midst of things at the very outset of his ministerial career. It gave him great pleasure to meet many friends of his father and he was thus early made to feel at home in his father's house. He noted carefully the leaders of HOMEWARD FROM HOME 49 the Assembly, — " Dr. Palmer," he wrote, " is beautiful, Dr. Thornwell is strong. Dr. Palmer is polished, Dr. Thorn well wonderfully earnest, Dr. Palmer is refined in thought, Dr. Thornwell is broad, deep, clear." He was interested when a Mr. Frierson, of Tennessee, asked for some of his photographic reports, making him write in it, — " Wm. P. Jacobs to the Tennessee Historical Society," and saying that it would some day be of great value to them, and he was saddened by reports of the great fire which swept through Charleston lowering the venerable head of the old Circular Church, the proud Cathedral and Institute Hall, mother of Secession. " And thus," he tells his diary, " have I again arrived at the termination of another year — a year fraught to me with even richer experi- ences than the last — a year wonderful in changes to myself and our family. This year has closed forever to me my college life and has made me an artium baccalaureus. In this year I have gained rich ex- perience in life — have passed through one of the most eventful periods in the history of the country. I have seen stars fall one by one from the flag of the once glorious United States. A new nation has arisen upon the earth, the Confederate States of America, and I am a citizen of it — proud indeed of the honour. A bloody year to our land has this been. The first echo of the mighty struggle was sounded in my ears on the 8th of January. ISTews of thrilling interest has continually flown on lightning wings along the wire — at Sumter, at Bethel, Springfield, Belmont, Port Royal, Manassas, Leesburg and Drainsville the hosts of contending nations have met and fought and bled, and Southern arms have won the field by God's strong aid. 50 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS " But not less important to me also has been this year. I have stood since the lirst day of January last on the ever sounding banks of the Atlantic and watched its proud waters lash a new Republic's shores. I have sped over the wide prairies of Alabama and floated adown its majestic river. I have stood too in sight of the wondrous mountains at Lithonia and have gazed adown the ever rolling waters of the Savannah. " But in another aspect my life has been marked by this year. In it I have begun my lifelong studies — things new and strange — and have met minds of other men and learned to know them. Happy the thought that I have made some friends this year. *' I have been received as a candidate for the gospel ministry and have preached my first sermon — besides doing other first things ; not least important, I have written my first book and had it printed. I have done much in the publishing line and I have attended and reported the first Presbyterian General Assembly. " Many other things could I mention which God has done for me, but are not these enough ? And now the year is gone. Have I profited from my year's ex- perience ? To me a solemn question is this. " A year is gone — a year nearer to that bourn from whence no traveller returns. Oh, Lord, so teach me to number my days that I may apply my heart unto wisdom. Farewell to 1861." In this resume of the year we see revealed the man- ner of youth he was — a youth who watched life, noting all its changes and counting them wonderful; a his- torian feeling himself unknown and alone though he was a part of all the vast drama whose story and stag- ing he witnessed ; a traveller, watching hill and valley HOMEWARD FKOM HOME 51 and longing to see the lands beyond the mountains, the cities beyond the seas ; a student who loved study for what it brought him of the Father's wisdom- treasures ; a printer whose first tiny " Book of Reptiles " set and printed by himself as a youth of fifteen, con- taining seven hundred and twenty-eight words on twelve 2^x4 inch pages, has expanded and grown into poems and stories and ambitious book-hopes; a time- keeper, numbering his days that he might apply his heart unto wisdom, and a patriot. We expand that word into a paragraph. Far back in December, 1858, his father being a slaveholder, when a student of sixteen he w^rites in his diary,—" I have come to the conclusion that slavery at best is a diabolical practice." Almost a year later, three days after he had entered a telegraph office for the first time in his life, he describes a violent debate in the Senate of South Carolina, which he was reporting, on the subject of Harper's Ferry, and adds : " I was awfully a Secessionist but now I am a strong Unionist. I would not see one quill plucked from the wing of that proud bird which is emblazoned over our Senate hall." But when his state seceded and battle came with the customary stories of horrible atrocities, his heart and prayers followed his new flag. The reader must have already noted that Love was the charmed word of his vocabulary and he loved South Carolina. THE WAY TO BETHANY Speak of the woods that darken, here, my way, Thou dear old memoried road to Enoree. Interpret to my heart the wondrous play Of wisdom on the path One builds for me. Tell of the bridging of a thousand streams, The passing of the mountains, undelayed ; Of bird-thronged meadows, spread for him who dreams, The River, waiting, when the end is made, And then, beyond the Mill, the Bridge, and then The Land to which He calls — "Whither, O builder of the Ways of Men, Whither — beyond the Falls ? IT is an exceedingly difficult thing to see God but it can be done. Heraclitus used to say that "knowledge of divine things was for the most part lost to us by in- credulity." It is this difficulty of seeing them that renders us incredulous of their existence. As life runs on, for a long time w^e seem to have around us only the homely, familiar sights that, in our ignorance, we are pleased to call common, till the change comes and, suddenly, the inexpressible glory of what God has been doing is upon us. There is something very strange about life. We learn after the event. It is from change that wisdom comes. So to-day we can look back to that Sabbath morning in May, 1862, on a young, inexperienced and unknown 52 THE WAY TO BETHANY 63 minister riding on a borrowed horse to fill an ordinary appointment at an ordinary country church and see around his head something of a halo, as if the old red and muddy road led upward somewhere to an ineffable glory. For is there anything more fascinating than watch- ing what happens to a man who truly gives himself to God? Powers invisible, inaudible, intangible begin at once their work of transforming the common into the ro- mantic, the sinful into the holy. They light the way- side bushes with the flames of God. One by one all things swing into a line of progress towards something that Some One sees Somewhere. Nothing is ever again unimportant. An accent may decide a destiny. And so it was with the young man who was going to preach the second sermon of his life at Bethany that day. Some one had once suggested his father's name for the headship of the Laurensville Female Seminary, to which position he had been later elected. Upon his acceptance, as his custom was, he began preaching in weak and vacant churches thereabout. Among these was Bethany. When one day his son from the semi- nary came home on a visit, never having preached but once before in his life, he pitched him out in this water to swim by himself. All this was simple enough, com- mon enough, humble enough, and it was done so quietly that the youth could suspect nothing ulterior in it. Indeed when he wrote of it in his diary this is all he saw : " Early this morning, being Sunday, at Father's re- quest, I got Brother Riley's horse to fulfill Father's ap- pointment at Bethany, ten and one half miles distant. 54 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS The day being very cloudy, I found the ride there very pleasant though quite fatiguing. After riding five miles I stopped to inquire the way and was told by an FRIDAY. D«e«mb«r "inih, 1661. l4wvo 1^^-U^ %''^'"*^ ^^ *^*^~^ **^ o\ ^ cA* ^-i^T^ o-^i/T*. ^-^-^ A»**^ ^ y^S^ o-»x^^ '^*-«e7 A page from his Diary, March 24, 1879. Compare this draw- ing with the fulfillment of his prayer ; over forty buildings occupied by nearly four hundred children and teachers. 144 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS is cowardice to long so to be in Heaven with Mary. Oh, my God, give me strength." Now when the Author had seen the vast sorrow in which His hero mourned, He bethought Him of the finest touch of all that the story might be perfect and its tragedy add meaning to meaning. It was not enough that he should suifer as other men, but now, while his heart was sore and his soul in need of com- fort, he must touch the hot u^on of jealousy and feel the cold steel of enmity. So would his life ever speak a word in season to him who might later be weary. " The breezes have blown gently for the orphanage for a long long time," he writes in that very month, *' but now there comes a furious counterblast from the charging us with all manner of deceit and fraud. It would trouble me sadly if it were true. Blessed Master, I lay this work at Thy feet. Destroy me or this work, if so be Thy will. It is Thine, I am Thine. Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." " I am sometimes as full of sorrow as I can hold when I think of my dear, precious, dead wife. Lord, help me to bear this." " The papers, especially in county, are after me and the orphanage because we have tried to get the people to contribute to its support. I am very uncer- tain as to the best course to pursue. I think I shall be compelled to reply, and yet of all things in the world, I most despise a newspaper controversy. The accuses me of fraud, etc., the of incompetency. I know not why the blessed Master has allowed this avalanche to descend upon me just at this particular time, when my heart is smarting under a heavy sorrow, but I know that He can make even the wrath of man THE EOD OF HEKMES 145 to praise Him. May He give me wisdom in this trying hour that I may not err. I shall, to the best of my ability, write out a short reply in as gentle a way as I can for the paper. As to the , I know not what to do, for their attack is so evidently malicious and done behind my back, they not having sent me a copy of their paper." And here we come across a strange fact and a strange law : All birth is in pain. Each new life, each new in- stitution must win its way by struggle. It should not be otherwise. They who would teach must be taught, and this is the only school for character. What is better in life than the struggle ? Who would wish to win a race by walking ? So come these days of storm to cause great oaken hearts to grow ; these hours of fire that the spirit may be tempered as steel, these precious moments of trial that glory may crown so fine a spiritual victory. And so in these sad weeks the Author gave him this to write about also that there might be nothing lacking to test the power of the rod: *' One of the greatest burdens I have to bear is the reviling of the orphanage and its work by brother ministers, I thank God that they speak falsely. His favour is better far than that of men. . . ." "I have just received an insulting communication from Rev. , reiterating his charge that the or- phanage is a humbug and a swindle. I am, of course, greatly pained by it but God has so greatly blessed my labours of late that it was needful that I should be taken down a bit, lest I should glory above measure. Just see what God has done for you during this past twelve months : " 1st. He has added thirty members to your church. 146 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS " 2d. Among these your own son. " 3d. He has supported the orphanage, putting more funds in your hands than ever before for the care of the children. "4th. He has given you $1,000 for Faith Cottage, and $500 additional for the endowment. "5th. He has blessed and enlarged the Sabbath School, crowning your efforts to give it a home with great success. " 6th. He is now prospering the plans for the build- ing of your Mission Chapel. " 7th. He has enabled you to buy a new press for Out Monthly and has enlarged its sphere of usefulness. " 8th. He has honoured you by your election to the position of reporter to the General Assembly. " And now perhaps He would add to your blessings by giving you this thorn in your side ; for it is written * Woe unto you, when all men speak well of you ! ' " " Heavenly Father, help me to be patient under this cursing of Shimei, and reckon it also to me for good." And so she left him in the little village saying softly to himself, " It seems a long, long time, Mary, that I have to wait. There is a whole lifetime to come in first " — as one who reads a good novel and, wondering whether the dark chapter will ever end, counts the many pages of the story yet remaining. She would not see the after days of honour and triumph, not even little Faith Cottage, whose corner stone was so soon to be laid, nor would her human eyes view any of that rapid industrial development which would transform this crossroads village, without even a bank, into a thriving little city with every modern con- venience. To her God gave the ineffable glory of THE ROD OF HERMES 147 labouring and suffering and dying in the dark chapter, and of being loved forever for it. For during all the years to come her spirit with his would walk arm in arm through the remaining pages of the book, whose every syllable she would light with the living sacrifice she had made. He would reach out his hands for her and, intangibly, he would feel her pressure. Calling her name, she, inaudibly, would an- swer. Countless times he would look for her and, in- visibly, she would come. And when the long, long time had been spent and the whole lifetime had come in first, when the little pastor whose loves had made him great had gone to her, leaving sorrow and black- ness in his turn upon the hearts of many who sorrowed, those who looked sadly through his secretest desk would find her hand still touching his, her voice speak- ing to him and her face smiling at him from a tiny package of faded love-letters written to him in the long, long ago. And one of them ended thus : " May God bless and keep you, darling husband, until you get home." But he did not know that part of the plot as he sadly took up his burden again. His was that ancient darkness of eyes blinded by the sudden transition from brilliancy to blackness. Only he felt that the wand could transmute his dross into gold. And that w^hich he would himself do he prayed also for others : " My little Thornwell is two years old to-day," he wrote on February 15, 18Y9. "Poor little fellow, had it not been for him his mother would have been alive to-day. May he make noble use of a life purchased at such a price." xiy FOE THAT FUTUEE Till this I learned, that he who buildeth well Is greater than the structure that he rears, And wiser he who learns that Heaven hears Than all the wordy wisdom's letters spell. THERE is nothing quite so delicious in life as to watch God bring things to pass. The blow has fallen — the disaster has come, the struggle is long, and hard, and, oh, so wearisome ! The sources of aid have failed one by one, and one by one the bright hopes have faded, when — so swiftly, as quiet — a voice speaks out of the cloud. There are no words wherewith to express that infi- nite longing for help which this man felt that the beau- tiful dream might come true. He was toiling and suffering and praying when the vicious attacks came to threaten all his hopes. The result of seven years of toil seemed jeopardized by them, and as these base charges circulated here and there in the papers and pulpits and pews they seemed to be swearing his very soul away with their false testimony. How could a just God permit such a thing ! Then one day a man heard of them and his face flushed with indignation that there should be found on earth any so vile as to attack even a little unknown minister, working for God and his orphans. It roused in him that fine counterblast of soul that would bring 148 FOR THAT FUTURE 149 aid to the lover of children. So he told another of it, a woman whom he knew to be good and generous, and one happy day in June there came singing through the mails a check for one thousand dollars for the little folks at Thornwell who had so loyal a champion. It was a new name and an unknown signature as of a gift out of the vast Beyond, which indeed it was, from Within the Shadow where stood one watching, caring for His own. Thus was it proven once more that while " the day is Thine, the night also is Thine." The name signed to the check was that of Mrs. Cyrus H. McCormick, that blessed woman whose lovely benefactions, touched by the magic wand, were to make all that he hoped for possible. Now began the beautiful years of expansion in which the prayers heard in secret were to be rewarded openly. Through the long night he had believed that the sun would rise, and lo, — the dawn ! But somehow, with the coming of the large sums, whose pennies have become dimes and whose dimes have grown into dollars, we feel just a little homesick for the old want and poverty, the counting of the coppers as if they were gold, the eager joy over the dimes, the mingled astonishment and happiness over a hundred dollar check. For there is something pathetic in the faith of poverty which the faith of wealth matches only with grandeur. Courage that does not deal in amounts shines best in the dark. Faith is beau- tiful in inverse proportion to figures involved, as in direct proportion it is sublime. The glory of this man had been that he had been given no talent at all to work with but had kept believing he had been given one, and out of that faith he had made ten other 150 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS talents. Ten times nothing had built an orphanage and was about to build a college. Sheer love of God had done the thing. An abandon of unselfishness had mothered it. Faith that is ever allowed to suffer and made to triumph, a confidence in the Father that was serene in the storm and undiramed in the night, a soul that was content but never satisfied, an ever growing group of men and women who kept feeling the warmth of his fire and drawing near thereunto with wonder and praise, buildings rising from the ground to witness that silent lips have moved in secret ; these are but a few features of the delightful drama which the Play- wright was staging in a spot so ideally commonplace that it would be universally meaningful. " For there is a future," he knew, " after the door is opened into the black earth, and for that future I am living and working.'' The story of his life in the years 1880 to 1884 is the record of a steadily unfolding work, progressing from darkness into light. The first day of each month he wrote out his plans in detail, adding his prayer for their accomplishment and later checked them off one by one as having been done. By July of 1879 he had moved his own little family into the attic of the first building of the orphanage and had hauled the first load of rock to begin the new boys' home, which was to be, and be called Faith Cottage. The same month he noted with joy that the five Presbyterian families connected with his church when he assumed the pastorate had increased to thirty. He is ever thinking of their welfare. In September they are occupying the new Sunday School room built in the shape of a T and he is thinking how nice it will be to erect a neat and pretty library room FOR THAT FUTURE 151 for tte young men of Clinton. As 1880 opens he is planning to buy a new Universal job press for his printing office. Soon his father was called to the pastorate of the Presbyterian church on James Island, and Miss Pattie Thornwell has collected enough money to paint the Sunday School room. It was in such ordinary, insignificant things that he kept looking for God — and found Him. As spring opens he writes that he wants to do " as laborious work this month for the dear Lord as is pos- sible," as part of which he starts work for a chapel at Rockbridge, three miles west of Clinton. He is de- lightfully surprised a little later to learn that Dr. Woodrow has nominated him as Assembly Reporter and that he has been elected unanimously. The corner-stone of the second building of the or- phanage, Faith Cottage, was laid on July 28th, the twenty-fifth anniversary of his church, whose member- ship had increased from exactly one hundred to exactly one hundred and fifty in the last ten years. There is the same steady progress in little things that seem brilliant because of inner light in the follow- ing year, 1881. In January he sells his home and plans to build a new one nearer the orphanage. Faith Cottage is opened on February 21st, and he has dreamed a new academic building as absolutely neces- sary to the progress of his work by early in June. Yet his work is not confined to the orphanage, but on June 21st he resolves to build a Presbyterian college in Clinton, *' If it takes always to do it." He notes the beautiful comet of 1881 in the northern skies, and on July 24:th he and Mr. Bell are at Rockbridge. He is preaching his first sermon there and is gratified over 152 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS the accomplishment of this work which he had first planned ten years ago. It was this same year that saw both a Baptist and Methodist church organized in Clin- ton, of which he says : " It will be necessary for me to work harder than I ev^er did before to secure the foun- dations of my church. The movement to establish two new churches at Clinton unsettles the members. It almost creates a panic. But God, in His mercy, will, in the course of a year or two, bring us out brighter than ever. Now, our church succeeds because it is the only church. Hereafter, it must succeed because it is the best church. I am determined to throw my efforts around the college and orphanage. They are to be the bulwarks of Presbyterianism here in giving us a Sunday School, prayer-meeting and congregation." Later, in 1882, he began his work on the orphanage seminary, the new academic building with its chapel and class rooms and library and little museum and with its high steeple, — the most beautiful building in Clinton. *'I shall trust and trust, and so the work shall be done," he says. At the same time the church building is being remodelled, and on August 20th his college got its charter. He spent a beautiful vacation in June with his father on James Island, and when fall comes Sim Whaley came to take charge of the orphanage farm, and Miss Annie Starr, matron, left, to be succeeded by Mrs. Boyd. Thus his life was made up of toiling for the one purpose in many forms. " I love dearly this work for the orphans," he writes, " but I love still more my preaching work." In 1883, on another trip to Charleston, he saw elec- tric lights for the first time, and having returned re- "Home" for thirty-six years FOR THAT FUTURE 163 freshed and invigorated from his vacation v^ith his father, he seriously considers the erection of a wood- working estabhshment, a sort of technical school for the boys of the orphanage. In April he introduced to his Presbytery Sam Ful- ton, the first of the orphanage boys to become a minister, as a candidate for that holy ofiice, and bap- tized the child of Mollie Clatworthy, little Willie Lee Holmes, the first orphanage child, during the closing prayer of the Presbytery. April finds the church tower being built and work on the seminary being pushed for the first commence- ment of Clinton College, which, when it did come, found his daughter, Florence, in the graduating class, the first to receive a diploma. Colonel Ball pre- sented it. The orphanage seminary was dedicated in July of the same year, Dr, J. H. Thorn well preaching the ser- mon, and Governor Thompson later presided at a great meeting at the orphanage, in which he said things so beautiful about the " Little Minister " and his orphan- age that it made him hang his head in shame and take revenge by praising the Governor. It is a singular fact that the most famous utterance of Emerson is not to be found in any of his poems or essays but was saved from a note-book of one of his students and seems to have been a chance remark made in the course of a lecture. It was to this effect : That if any man would do a thing better than it had ever been done before, even if it were only to make a better mouse trap than his neighbour, though he lived in a wilderness, the world would make a beaten pathway to his door. This is what happened at Clinton. 154 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS So in November he starts work for his new college building. " Lord help me ! " he exclaims. " Oh, how many ten thousand times have I uttered that prayer ? Yea, Lord, help me, then the big job will be over," he adds, "and we shall be ready for the next step,"— a characteristic of his, that the greater his achievement the greater his dream. In December of 1883 there occurred one of those typical events in his life, which was a perfect illustra- tion of how that strange providence which we call God was teaching him His will. December 1st came, but no funds with it. "Thus far in December," he writes, " which hitherto has been our harvest month, we have received almost nothing for the orphanage. I am greatly distressed about it. Up to this date we have, for all causes, hardly received $150, and we are in sore straits. Lord, Thou didst send us $1,000 each December for years past, and now, O Lord, our bur- dens and responsibilities are heavier and Thou sendest us nothing. Lord, Lord, send help speedily. We need Thy aid in great measure." This was written on December 10th, and on Decem- ber 27th we find these words in his diary : " God has permitted us to have a delightful and a blessed Christmas. The children had a beautiful Christmas and good behaviour. On Christmas night I received $125 in a letter and in addition $400 (!) for a special work. I do not yet know what we shall use it for, but I want it to go either to the endowment fund or to some special building work. I had prayed for $300 last week and again for $600 this week. I have received both. Our receipts for this month have al- ready overrun $1,000 besides at least $200 in pro- FOR THAT FUTURE 165 visions. O God, out of my whole soul I thank Thee. The nightmare of debt has been cleared away and now we are ready for new things." So that when 1884: comes he is planning a new build- ing, with kitchen and storehouse and laundry and wind- mill, which he is to call the Beehive. In the summer Mrs. Liddell comes to replace " Miss Pattie " as teacher at the orphanage, she having decided to get married and move to Indiana, and Mrs. Simon ton comes to succeed Mrs. Boyd as matron, and then while Sam Fulton is planning to go to the seminary and is *' preaching" his first sermon in Clinton, while they are raising money for the college and work is begin- ning on the Beehive, Mrs. Cyrus H. McCormick sends her check for $1,200, which is later to be increased, to build a whole home for his orphans by herself ! And so at the close of 1884, the twentieth year of his only pastorate, he names over the great gifts of God to himself. There were the church, now over two hundred strong, nearly furnished and steepled. Our Monthly slowly but surely growing, labours in Presby- tery and Synod, the orphanage, the corner-stone laying of whose original home, on his tenth anniversary, had been preceded by three hard years of money raising, to which there had now been added a home for boys (Faith Cottage), an academic building (the seminary), a kitchen-laundry building (the Beehive), and now the new home for boys (McCormick Home), and lastly the Great New Job (the college). And as he named them over, adding yet his own home and Rockbridge Chapel to them, and even the digging of the flower pit and the old laundry which had been turned into the workshop and Mr. Scott's house, he wrote this sentence, under- 156 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS scoring and double spacing it : " So here I begin to make an effort to prove tliat a little village churcli may hecome a tower of strength y But that was only the brilliant, social meaning of those twenty years in which the little village church was also the scenery in the background staged for the setting forth of a deeper truth. That was his masterly purpose, as it was also His. But if one in the audience is entitled to judge, the greater purpose was to tell the old story in a new way ; to whisper again the love of a Father to children who are very young and very weak, to set anew a human soul on fire that he might glow with God, to reveal His abiding presence, who really will do as much for anybody anywhere, who will do as much for Him. " Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus," the old church men used to say when they would describe the universal faith. " That which ever, everywhere, by all " is believed. That is also the rule whereby prayers are answered. It is an old saying that to reward folly would be to people the world with fools. Similarly to play favourites in prayer answering would be to people the world with the lazy and inefficient. When God answers pra3^er He answers qualities which everywhere, ever, by all should be possessed. Each such case is a deed-parable, each of them is a ^' Yes " from Jehovah w^ho never fails to answer the question of faith proceeding on her dangerous way, though He hide His answer among passing events so secretly that he who would count his mercies must search for them. It matters, indeed, whether a little village may become " a tower of strength " or not but who can measure the infinite significance of one " Yes " from the sky ? FOR THAT FUTURE 157 Shortly after the beginning of 1885, that fine old missionary preacher, Rev. Zelotes Lee Holmes, died. His had been the happy privilege of founding the little mission church at Clinton and the church was saddened by the news of his death. In May following, the orphanage office had received its first typewriter and the president was becoming proficient in its use. He was forty -three years old and had founded an orphanage and a college by hand and kerosene, but only because typewriters and electric lights had not yet been possible, for his abiding char- acteristic was to take immediate advantage of any new improvement. The same month he made a trip to Washington and shook hands with President Cleve- land. His children spent the summer vacation with their Grandfather Jacobs on James Island and when they returned he writes : " The children are all back with me and dearer to me than ever. O God, bless my children. I give them every one to Thee. Do with them as seemeth good in Thy sight ! Oh, how eagerly I long for some of my boys to enter the ministry." He was not to wait long to have that prayer an- swered. In June of the very next year his son. States, had about made up his mind to do that very thing. " Oh, that God would keep him in that mind," his father exclaimed, "and enable him to love the Lord more and more." In September one of his blessings came in the guise of a calamity, for the front wall of the new college building gave way, happily without loss of life, neces- sitating a repair bill of only seventy-five dollars, which was quadruply oversubsqribed. In October the faculty 158 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS of the college was chosen, Rev. R. P. Smith at the head as president. As the opening day approached, he felt, in his own words, as if " I have now laid pretty much the foundation of all the work I expect to do in life. But every department of it is to be pressed on to a higher fulfillment of plans. I have to make a college out of our college — a noble charity out of the orphan- age, a splendid church out of my church, a better paper out of Our Monthly^ and to be a leader in Presbyterial labours." Yet he was almost immediately at his old construct- ive task again, urging Mr. M. S. Bailey to give Clinton a bank, and getting ready to twist the Seaboard Air Line out of its course so that his " city " might have another railroad. On February 15th ('86) he hauled the first load for his new printing oifice, and at last, on his forty -fourth birthday, on March 15, 1886, his col- lege was happily opened. " This day," he writes, " by the goodness of God, I was enabled to set in order the Presbyterian College of Clinton, South Carolina. At 9 : 30 A. M., in the presence of eighty or more students and the six teachers, I offered the first prayer ever offered in the house and solemnly gave it to the Lord. At 3 p. M. we met in the college chapel, the pupils of the orphanage being present, and I addressed the as- sembly as to the * Manner of the Kingdom.' We also had addresses from Mr. Smith and Mr. Barnes. After this I succeeded in persuading the association to resolve to raise one thousand dollars to complete the house, and surely it will be done." In those last few words is re- vealed a charming characteristic of this man who kept steadily winning great victories. It was his apprecia- tion of little victories, "Each baby was to him an FOR THAT FUTURE 159 adult, potentially. It was a little college but it would grow. All men who had ever amounted to much had done so. He refused to deny himself a great future by failing to trust a little present. And so we come to the close of the fierce struggle period of his life. For forty-four years he has been passing through poverty, obscurity, danger, and every conceivable discouragement. Single-handed, with a broken sword he had faced every enemy bitterly known to those who contend for the ideal thing. He had developed a magnificent courage and a faith that knew, in this arena where the mighty depend wisely on the One alone. Fear and hope and prayer and trust and gratitude and love had wrought their blessed ministry in his soul, had expressed themselves in his life, and henceforth, because he had played his part so well that he knew not how well he had played it, his Lord was to set him in a broad place. Like John of old, he was ready now to be shown to Israel. XY <'FOR THY SAKE^' Thus, silent, I have heard the Voiceless speak. The Formless I have seen walk by my side, And I have touched the hand of One, my guide, Whom all the vy^orld could find if it would seek. THERE is this very beautiful thing about one's love for God : If a man really loves God he loves everything that God has made. This would seem to be the universe. It was for that reason that Wm. P. Jacobs loved to travel, which love had lured him on from his earliest days. Only a few commonplace trips had come into his life but he saw much in them, and they gave him that greater joy which is born of an unlimited admira- tion for and gratitude to God. One cannot understand even his attachment to Clinton without remembering that Jesus Christ was as real and as near to him as Faith Cottage. He took his religion so seriously that it did to him what its custom is, it made him uniquely great. Now for many long years he had planned a trip to Europe. During his boyhood days it had been his dream and while, for a score of years, he struggled in poverty and debt the dim hope of it cheered and tanta- lized him alternately. The time had come now to save for it. 160 ''FOR THY SAKE" 161 So one day he set aside his first five dollars. He would begin if it took "always." But He had other uses for that five dollars, although it was the only five dollars in the house at the time. For a poor old, broken-down Presbyterian came that evening to see him, and being invited to stay all night told so sad a story that he was given that live dollars to pay his way to Charleston. In doing it the giver said to his Friend : " Lord, I give this to this poor man for Thy sake. Eepay me if Thou seest I need it." It was a sweet and daring challenge to Him who once said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." And when the answer came, a few days later, it was in sixtyfold measure. For he received a letter from Mrs. McCormick, the good angel by whom He sent, containing a check for three hundred dollars with the request that he use it in a trip to Europe ! It was very wonderful. But then one should not ex- pect a God to repay kindness in a niggardly measure. Here was a man who was actually more interested in working for God than he was in working for him- self. One of the most astonishing sentences in his whole diary he had penned, when, in May, 1881, he began building his own new home. "I have begun work on my house," he v^^rote, " but for some reason I do not take the pleasure in it that I would if it were for some suitable purpose connected with the orphan- age." He was utterly absorbed in his spiritual adven- ture and is it surprising that he should be so fascinated when the next entry reads : " Such things as this have happened to me over and over again these many years. Last week at each of the three mails, I did not receive 162 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS a single cent for the orphanage. It is true that we did not need the money and so this did not distress me. But on Monday morning my mind was greatly exer- cised with the longing for a future life, and Satan sug- gested a hundred doubts. My soul was darkened. Then I prayed the Lord for a clear light, asking Him to give me ocular proof. I thought of what He said to Ahaz and then I asked that the sign should be, that at each mail this week I should receive one letter con- taining aid for the orphanage. JSTow, it often happens thus — I will get eight or ten letters with money one mail, and nothing for several mails thereafter, but this week though I received many letters, yet at each mail / received just one money letter. What a good God is mine. Hundreds of times Thou hast given me the thing I asked." And now He had given him a thing he had not asked, a trip to the wonder-lands of the old world. As if to crown his going with added love, his congregation made up a little purse for him also. He was the first Clintonian to " go abroad," as he was the first to build a two-story house, or a steepled church, or to plan a bank or a cotton-mill, or to set type and print a paper, or to write a poem, or build an orphanage or college. He was Christian civilization set down in a little obscure, dilapidated, crossroads piece of a place. For twenty- two years he had poured out his best thoughts, noblest ideals and finest purposes there as if God were present and bushes could burn in any desert, and now he leaves for the fulfillment of a darling wish borne on the gen- erosity of friends near and far. The bread that he had cast upon the waters he had found, after many days. To trace the route and tell the story of his trip is ''FOR THY SAKE" 163 not the important thing, but again it is his spirit that attracts our attention, ever cherishing his new experi- ences and training them also to serve his purposes. Of course he visited the Stockvrell Orphanage and heard the great Spurgeon in his tabernacle, counting him hardly the equal of Girardeau or Palmer as an orator and thinker. Of the orphanage he writes : " It is far larger than I thought and I am delighted with it. The buildings are grand in their way, everything in perfect order and very neat. The children looked healthy and were to start on their month's vacation (I am always getting in just in the nick of time). Spurgeon has fine playgrounds for his children— they attend the tabernacle preaching— are a good set of children— don't fight (?). I like his cottage arrangement. He keeps the children till fourteen, and then the girls stay two years longer to help in domestic work. I don't like that or his dormitory plan, but the work is splen- didly done from his point of view, that is, the English." He sat in the old stone chimney seat where Shake- speare the boy sat, " and caught no inspiration." " One despairs after seeing Oxford," he exclaimed, thinking doubtless of the five thousand dollar beginning of his own college. He thought the music at St. Paul's, where Canon Liddon preached, was superb, but " dear me, I am no Episcopalian ! " He heard Dr. Joseph Parker in the City Temple. " Spurgeon attacked Evo- lution, but Parker seemed to think it but a part of a not understood plan." He visited the National Art Gallery and the Kensington Art Museum and, of course, Westminster Abbey. He liked touring England, but " in all my tramp I have not seen a watermelon, or a peach, or a banana, or a darky. And while I recog- 164 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JA(X)BS nize all I see, there are multitudes of things I do not see. I have not seen rice or hominy since I left home. If this absence of things I love is to go on for a month or so, I'll get homesick." Afterwards came Holland with its quaint communities and windmills, and Belgium, including something more than Brussels, and then we find him on the Rhine. " I too am enthusiastic henceforth over the beautiful, populous, antique, wonderful Rhine." He found Heidelberg ablaze with banners, for the Crown Prince, Frederick William, was in towm and it w^as the five hundredth anniversary of Heidelberg University, so rooms being at ten dollars the day his visit was short. He took courage again about his college, however, thinking that it would have buildings better than Heidelberg before its serai-centennial. It pleased him to note that in Germany they seemed to know what corn is but no mules nor darkies nor turkey buzzards nor watermelons. He turned on his heel at Milan, having seen the wonderful cathedral there and noted the difference between Catholic Italy and bonny Eng- land or happy, contented Germany. He came back by Mont Blanc, Berne, Geneva. " We thought the ascent of the Alps unutterably grand," he wrote, " as we came in from Italy, but lan- guage fails me to describe the miles on miles that fol- loAved. Every combination to thrill the heart of an enthusiast over nature was there. The snow-covered mountains, tremendous cliffs, waterfalls till it was weariness to count them, beautiful lakes — (Zug and Lucerne), quaint, high-perched villages, sharp eyries for the eagle, cliffs and crags and boulders, plains strewn with mighty masses of brecchia, foaming torrents, the "FOR THY SAKE^' 165 quaintly dressed people, the oft-recurriDg tunnels — so that we would dash out of a mountain to hang for a few moments in dizzy space and then right into the darkness of night again. I never can forget this day's experiences ! I have walked where God has wrought His miracles of power, and I have seen the stupendous works of man made in the image of God." Thence to Paris, where he found letters from home ! In Paris he, by chance, wandered into the Catholic church from which the tocsin for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew sounded. '* No wonder I felt ill at ease ! " he exclaimed later. Of Paris he says, " I have seen no court-house like the Hotel de Yiile of Brussels ; no cathedral like that in Milan ; no museum like that in London ; no street as picturesque as Princess Street in Edinburgh ; no raib^oad so majestic as the St. Got- thard ; yet Paris, in its way, is first of all the cities I have seen,— but the women are only men in France." And thence home : " The first sight that greeted my eye was a darky ! the next was a great fruit store and plenty of bananas ! And the streets were so muddy ! And oh, what immensity of telegraph wires ! and what a variety of architecture ! " And the next thing to greet him was news of the earthquake ! Charleston had been severely shaken and the whole Appalachian Seaboard felt tremors of greater or less severity for months thereafter. At Clin- ton there had been no damage but much fright. He had a royal reception at the first prayer-meeting after his arrival. He found that Mr. Scott had finished painting the McCormick Home and that the plastering on the second floor of the college building was finished. He wrote the story of the Great Trip in the little 166 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS diary with its memory leaves of flowers brought from Europe, hawthorne from Stratford on Avon, a leaf from Shakespeare's tree, pressed flowers from Brunig Pass and Mont Blanc, an ivy leaf from old Heidelberg, and settled down to sermons, and funerals, and wed- dings, and endeavouring to raise money to finish plaster- ing another floor of the college and to feed and clothe little orphan children in the name of Jesus. His college opened on September 22d with seventy pupils ! It pleased him and he exclaims : " I have a greater and heavier work to do in this college than even in the orphanage ! " Perhaps he was thinking of Oxford and Heidelberg. And having seen and measured both he had not despaired. XVI NOONDAY He, a greedless man and needless, Sanctified the sod, For a deedless church and creedless Struck, with budded rod, In a heedless world and redeless Glowed with God. ON March 15, 1887, Wm. P. Jacobs was forty- five years old and at the height of his physical and intellectual power. For twenty-three years he had been the pastor of the Clinton Church. It had been the sword wherewith he had struck for his ideals. He had been labouring with no instrument not universally possessed nor was his God a new one. Yet things had kept happening with him that were and are exceedingly uncommon ; though they always happen under the same conditions. It was the old story of the laboratory experiment which may be performed with equal certainty in Clinton or London if only the same reagents are used. In the clear white light of his midday sun we may well look upon this character, so utterly unique and so amazingly blessed of God, asking of the record an explanation of his power and remem- bering that God plays no favourites. We sketch briefly the movement of his personal his- tory during this noonday period from 1887-1894 in- clusive. As 1889 opens we find him writing from his 167 168 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS new desk in the printing office, calling that day a " Stathmos in my journey towards the great work of the future, my literary and theological efforts." This was his one beautiful dream that he did not ever find time to realize. Gifted with a pen that could write with either tears or blood he used it in winning bread for his orphans, life for his college and souls for his church. " I have been very busy all this month," he writes, " answering letters received for the orphanage. I love this work. It is intensely practical but the Master seems to have appointed me to it. I would rather be engaged upon literary work, work which would require more freedom from interruption than I get now, where so many people want to see me on all sorts of things and so many odds and ends of jobs have to be attended to. But I must begin. The years are speeding by. I am reading a good deal, mainly travels and lighter theology and history. It rests me to read such and gives me bright, fresh ideas for Sunday work." In April his daughter surprised him with the news of her engagement to Mr. Wm. J. Bailey, son of his lifelong friend, M. S. Bailey. " Am I growing old ? " he asks. '' Am I soon to have a daughter married ? " The following month he was sent as a commissioner to the Assembly in St. Louis where he was plunged into the midst of the intense debate on Organic Union with the Northern Church. Shortly after his return his son Ferdinand was graduated from his college. " How quickly time passes," he murmurs. *' Eternity will soon be here ! " The year is filled out with the custom- ary duties in church and orphanage and college. In September he writes : NOONDAY 169 " Our college has opened splendidly. We have ninety already and the probability is for a still greater increase of patronage. I am sure that we will have over a hundred this year. In the orphanage and college there are now nearly one hundred and fifty young people. This is a large number for me to be respon- sible for. I have a noble field for work. How often I recall the talk with Dr. G — — in 18Y3, when he tried to convince me that I should seek a broader field of labour than poor little Clinton, and I replied that their souls were as much worth saving as any, anywhere. Blessed be my Master, who has rewarded me and is doing for me more abundantly than I dared then to ask. And there are yet things before us, — what, I cannot say, but there is growth for my little church in every department." As the year closes he is already seriously considering the advisability of giving up his church work and de- voting all his time to " The Church of the Fatherless." As the following year opens he speaks of prospects brighter than ever and of harder and better work. But soon calamity is upon him. In March Mr. W. B. Bell, faithful elder and long-time treasurer of both church and orphanage, died. President Smith resigned his position at the head of the college. Mr. Watts left the management of the orphanage farm. North Carolina began talking of emulating his example by founding an orphanage of their own, thus cutting off his income from that great Synod. '' God speed them," he prayed. In March he devoted six hours of each of four days to writing the story of the orphanage in a little booklet, ** The Lord's Care ; " and in April he is delighted over the reception of his son Ferdinand as a candidate for 170 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS the gospel ministry by the Presbytery. On May 2Sth the corner-stone of Memorial Hall was laid. It was a new triumph and responsibility towards which his attitude was, — " What a call the Lord's blessing is to an increased activity. ... I can do anything with Thee to strengthen me ! " By the middle of August he had secured a new president for the college, Prof. J. W. Kennedy, and on September 12th his daughter was married. In the very first month of 1889 he bought five shares of building and loan stock which he calculated would amount to $1,000 by 1896, when he was hoping to enjoy '' the one great pleasure of my life — a trip to the Holy Land." In April he was happy over giving his second son, States, to the ministry. That same spring came the first serious break in his health. His general condition was bad and his throat failed. It w^as necessary to have an operation on it and for months thereafter he was prohibited from speaking publicly. He gave up Rockbridge permanently. In May he dedicated Memorial Hall and that same day he received a telegram from Mrs. McCormick offering another building. What a contrast to those three long years of anxious struggle during which he painfully collected the money for his first building. In June Erskine College conferred on him the degree of D. D. In September his dream of many years is beginning to be realized and Clinton seems in a fair way to get another railroad. In September he is sick in bed and for the first time in twenty-five years failed to get to Presbytery. Ferdinands Sr. and Jr., his father and son, filled his pulpit for him. Grading on the big new rail- road began, the splendid trunk line, the Georgia, Caro- NOONDAY lYl lina and Northern, that was to connect New York and Clinton and Atlanta, but it was not so wonderful a day as when the little Laurens railroad ran up to the very heart of Clinton in that other miracled hour of the long ago. On January 6, 1890, Prof. W. S. Lee, his splendid coadjutor in the high school and college, died, and in March Dr. Boozer was critically ill. One night the prayer-meeting interceded mightily for his recovery. On the vfay home the pastor stopped by his home and was told that a sudden change for the better had just taken place. He steadily recovered. In April our orphanage and college builder is planning a modern stone church building for his flock, costing not less than $20,000, with electric or gas lights and every modern convenience. Such was the result of the days of struggle to get enough money to paint the Sunday School room. In June he notes happily his son Ferdi- nand's success in raising funds for the erection of a new college building. The same month his second son. States, is graduated from college, and with his diploma wins the Essayist's Medal. By this time Clinton has a full thousand inhabitants ! In July came his visit to New York and Niagara, which he "did" thoroughly though his ill health pre- vented the fullest enjoyment. Upon his return the new railroad (the " G. C. & N.") was running its engines into town. " God grant that it may be for Plis glor}^ and the good of His cause here," was his prayer. The Christmas Sabbath of that year saw his son States preaching for him. "God help the lad," he prayed. Eight of his members were now studying for the ministry ! 172 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS In February of 1891 he received a heavy blow in the death of President J. W. Kennedy, whose splendid ability and great popularity had steadied the work of the college. The same month his son Ferdinand was chosen professor of Biblical and religious literature in the institution. He notes this with pleasure, re- marking that in certain lines the boy had greater abil- ities than his father. In May he dug the foundation for the Nellie Scott Library at the orphanage, and in July was nursing States who had come down with typhoid fever in Bishop ville. On September 9th he married Ferdinand to Miss Elliott Duckett of Clin- ton. In 1892 he entered upon his fiftieth year of life, which found him busy finishing the Nellie Scott Library and beginning the Technological School for Boys. In April his friend, Gus Smyth, wrote pledging two thousand dollars for the Augustine Home, a me- morial to his little son. The autumn brought a delight- ful trip to Barium Springs Orphanage, the new institu- tion of the Synod of North Carolina, modelled after and inspired by Thornwell, where he dedicated two buildings, receiving a beautiful tribute of thanks from the Synod of North Carolina for his touching address. Shortly afterwards he established the Mission Training School at the orphanage for the purposo of efficiently training young women for foreign and home mission work. On his fifty-first birthday he was happy over the purchase of the Southern Presbyterian by a company of his own congregation and its removal to Clinton. This event completed the making of his town the Presbyterian center of the state. The little village NOONDAY 173 church had indeed become a tower of strength even as he had prayed and planned. On July 9, 1893, he appeared on the streets of Clin- ton for the first time on his bicycle, a machine which for the next decade was to be invaluable to him in his pastoral visiting as well as orphanage work where the covering of distance without buggy, horse or auto- mobile was necessary. On August lYth he visited the World's Fair at Chicago, continually on the lookout for new ideas that might help Clinton or the orphans. On November 30th he buried Mr. Green, the last link remaining of his official corps of thirty years before, and the same autumn organized the first class of the New Mission Training School with a membership of three, Miss Ella Bell, Miss Janie Duckett and Miss Maggie Burleyson. Eighteen-ninety-f our found him busy gathering funds for the purchase of a Babcock press with his son Dil- lard in charge of his printing office and serving as general assistant in all the other orphanage work. He was delighted with " the way the lad takes hold." The death of his father on March 11th was the great sorrow of the year, which was not without its other sore trials. In September he united his youngest sister, Bessie, and Prof. Chas. E. Little of the Peabody College for Teachers in wedlock, and in November travelled a thousand miles to preach one sermon, dedicating the new church of his son States at Columbus, Mis- sissippi. In all these years he kept hard at work on matters large and small. " To be holy, to be useful, to be wise, I am after these three ! " he declared, and when troubles assailed him in church and orphanage and during this 174 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS period, especially in the college, he wrote in his little memorandum book the famous words of Shaftesbury : "Let no man despair in a good cause; let him per- severe, persevere, persevere ! " Such were the simple, ordinary events of noonday life told as a chronicle. There would appear to be nothing remarkable about them. But there was. Take for example an ordinary day's work. Let him tell the story of it : " This day, rose in a heavy rain ; read the "Word ; then breakfast and worship ; letters written ; proofs corrected ; articles for Our Monthly ; got Ferdie off for Princeton, N. J. ; then a visitor, next — three hours' session of the faculty ; dinner ; the sick children all visited ; the workmen started on two build- ings ; a visit to our dying Brother Milner ; then to Mrs. Jones' ; then to Mrs. Vance's and Florence ; then to see Hale Shands who is ver}'- ill ; then to the college and Memorial Hall ; supper ; took the children to the Baptist Church; after that, a call at the McCormick Home, and at 10 p. ^i. answered a summons to see Mr. Little's dying child ; numberless other little things. NOONDAY 175 That is a sample of my day's work, and I am still entertaining a house full of work, and enjoying my vacation ! " This again, while perhaps a trifle fuller day than those of most men, would seem to the casual observer to have nothing unusual in it. But there was. For when we examine it carefully, it is as if a micro- scope were turned on common sand and a million diamond-brilliaut surfaces appeared. *'I asked the Lord," he writes on one such day, "the first day of this week, to direct me by an act of Provi- dence, as to whether a certain matter I had committed to Him would be cared for by Him, and whether I must trust that His disposition of it would be for my good, the good of His work committed to me, and of all concerned. I asked Him to give His answer — yes — by sending me this week some special sum of money at such time and in such way as that my mind would be surely convinced. " On Monday, Tuesday, no such evidence came. " This day, the 20th, is also the twenty-second anni- versary of my marriage. It is the very day that I ex- pected the business to be settled. This evening I received three letters enclosing $20, $20 and $20.22 respectively. This and no more. I consider it a wonderful and exact answer to my inquiry and hence whatever the cause of events may be as to the business I put under His care, I shall say — Deus, lux mea, Salvator mens. Dirigit mihi vias." And when we examine the results of such days they seem equally amazing, for in this forgotten crossroads village philanthropy and education and religion have 1Y6 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS found such growth as already to have attracted the attention of the State and the Church. " God has blessed me wonderfully," he gloats as if over old gold, " in turning the thoughts of so many of my young people to the gospel ministry. Kichols Holmes, just licensed, was first a member of my church. Dent Brannen, Sam Fulton, — just ordained for Japan, Clark Jennings, Ed Milner, my own son Ferdie, all those within the year past, and now I hear that Sam Byrd, Darby Fulton, Willie Jennings all have the same under advisement. . . . O God, direct them and enable me to advise them aright. . . . How earnestly I have desired to make the orphanage a great medium of entrance to the ministry and the college its co-worker. The Lord is giving me my desires. Who could doubt such a God ? " All this can have but one meaning : that there is in life, in nature, in history an Organizing Power whose purpose is definite and whose will is ascertainable. This Power is specially benevolent to those who seek to know and do His will. All that He has made. He is, and He is infinitely more conscious of us than we are of Him. Included in His purpose are all events of our tiny lives and the thoughts of myriad planets like and unlike ours, for He is as infinitely little as He is infinitely large. His are the thoughts, the emotions, the deeds of all mankind. He is the fear that we have of Him and the love we feel for Him. He is the prayer we breathe for help and the answer to that prayer as He is also the anxiety that it might not be answered. All these are but parts of His Providence in which He has ordained the singular law that certain answers always follow certain prayers. ]S"ote the beauti- NOONDAY 177 f ul circle of it : To a chosen soul He gives a great desire, the expression of which is toil and prayer and faith that the dream may come true. That is why faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Its coming true is regarded as the answer, the part that God played in the affair. It was all His. And the fine object of it is not to build churches nor orphanages nor colleges but souls. He seems to be ever trying to make something in His own image. All His rewards and punishments point to that end. Such are all answers to prayer, including those so quick and vivid as to seem to be words spoken from heaven. By them He reveals Himself, setting His stamp of approval upon certain types of character and conduct. He seems to delight in our watching Him and becoming conscious of His presence in our and all affairs. This is what is called " seeing God," who is just as visible as the wind and as audible as the storm and as tangible as the tornado. So we come to the purpose of this book which is to view a soul whom the Power signally favoured, from which favour we may argue approval and from which approval we may take example. XVII THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER How like to her who ventured to the door Of Persian palace, driven and afraid, Not knowing how she for the times was made To wield the sceptre that she trembled o'er, THERE came a little child once to the Thorn- well Orphanage and wandered over the beautiful wooded grounds and through the happy comfortable homes. She heard the matron's motherly words and the sweet laughter of the children. She saw the whirring machinery in the Tech and the pretty exhibits in the Museum, and watched the boys and girls thronging the schoolrooms and playgrounds. She felt the wonderful spirit of love and sympathy everywhere and learned of how a Father's hand pro- vided for His own each day their daily bread. And over all and in all this beautiful mechanism of love she discovered " Doctor," who raised the money and directed the life and interpreted the meaning of her wonderful new found world, and one day, that her conviction might be verified, she asked of a teacher the question : " Is Doctor God ? " A wise teacher would have pondered that illuminat- ing question a long, long while and then answered : '' Yes." To do things is wonderful but to see God in them is a surpassing glory. 178 THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 1T9 What is the interpretation of it all, from the stand- point of Jehovah, if a man may write so boldly ? It was not for the sake of this particular orphanage surely, that such things were done as we have seen and shall see and such as our little wanderer saw. Other or- phanages dot the land — they are common enough — filled with children as much His as those at Thorn well. He is no more interested in those at Clinton than others elsewhere. The key lies in the goal of life which is to know God. It would seem that He is ready to reveal Himself to those who are fit for that revelation. It is a matter of spiritual condition containing certain pro- portions of faith, loyalty, love, prayer, purity, persist- ence, power and an utter abandonment of selfishness. This is the problem in spiritual mathematics difficult, but soluble. The objects involved are incidental only. It may be worked out in orphans or college students or dollars or conversions indiscriminately just as the same rule holds in addition whether it concerns oranges or grapefruit. For example : when we read the following paragraph in a man's diary we know we are viewing a certain type of soul. " I have been much worried about our college lately. The teachers certainly have not the spirit of faith. They tell us expressly that they are looking for money and unless they can get the money they will not serve us. That lot had better arrange to leave. O Lord, send consecrated men and women here. " I have served the people of Clinton for twenty-five years without demanding a guaranteed salary and all has worked well." We are impressed, as the story of this midday period 180 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS of life is revealed, with the attitude of this soul to all that he saw. For example, knowing how long he had looked forward to seeing the World's Fair at Chi- cago in 1893, we can sympathize with this sigh of relief : " I rejoice that the World's Fair is to be closed on Sun- day. I can go now. I would not have done so with a good conscience otherwise. In fact, I could not have agreed to go at all." Such feeling did not spring from narrow-mindedness but from a loyalty to his chief, so intense as to elimi- nate all joy in persons or things who were slackers. And note the last sentence in this paragraph from his diary : " The crowd was simply immense. It was the big- gest crowd I ever saw or ever expect to see again — 165,681 paid admissions, besides 30,000 free passes. Possibly over 200,000 in all. It was human heads as far as the eye could reach. I am simply overwhelmed by the massiveness of the multitude. What will it be in God's great day ! " When that sad morning came on which he learned of the death of his father there came with it another op- portunity to look down into the deeps, as the great waves swept the ocean's bottom on their parting, and see the foundations of his life. See how naturally though sorrowfully his thoughts wend their way towards the throne : " On yesterday morning at Sunday School, with 250 pupils and teachers around me, I was stunned by a tele- gram handed me, by whom I know not, telling me that on Sabbath morning at 12 : 30 ray dear old father was suddenly summoned to his glorious reward. THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 181 " I am so, so sorry to part with him. No man on earth is as dear to me as he is, and yet I could not call him back. His work on earth is ended and now he has gone to his exceeding great reward. Dear old Father, how tenderly I loved you ! It is very hard to think that I will see yoa and speak with you no more on earth. My heart yearns to you. Alas ! Alas ! Little thought I when we parted in Atlanta after that evening meal, that we were to meet no more this side of the eternal throne. But I shall meet you there, my father. The wheels of time's chariot fly swiftly. I am already on the down grade and the way will seem very short when it is all over. Lord, help me to live that I may know how to die." Three years before he had visited Yorkville, his birthpla.ce, where his father had lived and toiled, founding the Presbyterian Church there, from which he went to accept the professorship of Mathematics and Astronomy in Oglethorpe University. Of this visit he says : *' I spent one evening in hunting up the sites in Yorkville connected with my infant days. I found the house where I was born, the one in which Father taught school, the one in which he boarded when first he went to Yorkville, the Bratton house in which my mother died, the court-house where Father preached when first he began his work, the little old church which was built first, where I was baptized by God-fearing Bishop, and the house (Mr. SimriFs) where I spent a year after Mother's death. It is surprising that so many of these houses remain. They interested me deeply." " I was told by Brother English that mine is the first 182 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS name occurring on the baptismal record of the York- ville church and that those early records are in Father's handwriting." " I have a good father," he had once written in his journal when, in boyhood days, he had received some simple favour from his hand. It was always a pleasure to the son to know that the last summers of the father's life had customarily been spent with him in Clinton, his " Summer Home." Thither he w^ould come from Nashville in the late spring, bringing the gentle bene- diction of a kindly holiness to the many who waited annually for his coming with " Grandma." When the bonds of fourscore tied him to the armchair he loved, he would sit for hours reading his Greek Testament or some volume on metaphysics or astronomy and at in- tervals tell stories to his grandchildren. It was from his gracious lips that one of them heard first of Ogle- thorpe University and her former glory, of her wonder- ful quarter-century of service until her death at Gettys- burg, of her great white Doric pillars and beautiful chapel and orrery by which any student might see for himself how God twirled His planets about the sun. And though they were spoken in the last hour before sunset those words yet abide in light. It is interesting also to note the attitude of our country pastor to his Synod when in his opinion the Synod was wrong. Never a word of criticism or re- buke, only that quiet determination : " They shall not pass!" All Synods, Presbyteries, Assemblies, and other church courts were to him sacred means to an end, but ever only means. And so when the Synod de- clined his college, knowing that the thing he had made was the gracious handiwork of God, he wrote : THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 183 " Brother Murray brought up the college and tried to get it ' adopted ' but failed. I think it best to leave that matter alone. We had better trust in the Lord than the Synod of South Carolina." And of a similar sort was the man who could face a fierce ecclesiastical contest thus : " Organic union has been the one all-absorbing topic at this Assembly. It is going to convulse our whole church and I fear rend it with violence and passion. S — -, P and others are bitter in their opposition to it and proclaim their purpose to tear the church in pieces rather than to submit to it. This is not the spirit of God. '' My own views are that if the Northern Church will yield to a plan for a separate African Assembly and will clearly assert the unpolitical character of the church, I can conscientiously unite with them, but in the meanwhile, so great are the obstacles in the way, when the question comes up in the Presbytery I will vote against it, believing that more effective work can be done by two Presbyterian denominations than by one. Lord, save Thy church from disaster." And when a country pastor spends a month among the great, wealthy churches of New York City and comes back with so fine a difference in his heart as he hereinafter expresses, we recall that Moses, Elijah and Paul were taught of God in the Wilderness : " One thought has forced itself on me, that the pastors (in New York) have circumscribed spheres of labour, do not go outside of it, and when the three or four hundred who are in their care leave the city, their homes are empty and they go too ; while hundreds of thousands of practical heathen surge past their church 184 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS doors. Surely there is some better way than this and by the grace of God I am determined to count every man, woman and child in Clinton as under my care un- less I know him to be a Methodist or Baptist. The strangers who go to church I will care for. So help me, oh, my Father." And with what words should we describe the broad- minded charity of the man who could say " God speed them" when a group of leaders separated a whole wealthy and liberal state from among his supporting synods as he did time and time again when other or- phanages sprang up like sturdy little oaks around the parent tree ? He took delight in them as if it were good that God should work as mightily through others as through himself. He was not even jealous when the Baptists, many of whom had been supporting Thornwell, established their own institution. Of this he writes : " The Baptist Orphanage is to be located at Green- wood. It will be near and I will often have the privi- lege of visiting them. There is a need for it and I think it will rather tend to increase the zeal of Presby- terians for our work here." But we are certainly getting a " close up " on the very heart of a man when we find that he considers his children as well as himself the property of God. They were given to him but he immediately gave them back. When his God called his two oldest sons to the ministry delight was in his exclamation, " I have two more boys, O God, take them also ! " He seemed to be so pleased with his life of poverty and sacrifice that he would have his children enjoy them as if he had found some sweet compensation that he would have them THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 185 also taste. When his son, States, was taken with typhoid fever he wrote : "I am sitting in the Phoenix Hotel, Bishopville, Sumter County, looking out on level fields and a few frame buildings in the foreground. It is God's holy Sabbath. This morning I preached to the Bishopville Presbyterians in the town hall. But it was not for that I came here. States is ill with typhoid fever and I am summoned to be near him. His case is not, by any means, a very bad one, but it is slow and the disease is insidious, but I long ago put my children in God's hands. They belong to Him. I trust them to Him, even while I pray most earnestly for their recov- ery. I learned when little Ida died that there were worse things than death. ISTevertheless, Almighty Father, give my boy a long and useful life." So this interesting thing happened that he was ever ready, by necessary sacrifice, to give his children any- thing that made for their spiritual, religious or educa- tional welfare but he was no more interested in worldly glory or prosperity for them than for himself. His was a spirit of service to God and the less said about it the better. Consequently great honours came which he always looked on with suspicion lest he might seem to have ^sought them for himself or for his children. Hear him as he glories : " I glory in the sorrows, trials and burdens of these eighteen months as well as in their rewards. Thou didst cause me to see great and sore travail but Thou hast also greatly comforted me. I have seen Thy work here prosper and I have come through much darkness into much light." " O Lord, help me, I pray, and bless me and give 186 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS me peace as Thou seest I have need. Help me more and more to do Thy will. Help me to be a better man, to have more courage for my work, to labour with all my might. Thou art gracious in many things, Thou wilt be more gracious yet." " Give me strength, Lord, it is my prayer. Give me a happy heart full of great joys in believing. In this will I have glory continually. Amen." From all of which it will be seen that his idea of happiness was a combination of toil, sorrow, comfort, battle, victory, pain and reward but most of all service of God. He thought it pleasanter to be with God in trouble than without Him in joy. He had long since given himself away, now he could give those he loved : " I was very busy all of last week attending Presby- tery at Laurens. It was particularly interesting to me, as during its progress Ferdie was ordained to the gospel ministry. The same week States was examined and will shortly be ordained pastor at Edgefield Court House by the South Carolina Presbytery. Both my boys will take their first seat in Synod in their old home, Clinton. God be with them. I have two other sons that I have given Thee, O Lord." . . . '' Corn well Jennings, one of my orphan boys, was also received. So two of my orphan boys are now in process of manufacture as preachers of the Gospel." And then later : " It is very good indeed of my dear Lord to accept Thorn well as a candidate for the ministry. My heart is full. I have been grateful beyond expression that my children have grown up in that faith. To train them without a mother's tender care is no easy task, especially when other such great causes have rested on THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 187 me. God be praised for His goodness to me in this thing. It is in answer to prayer." It was inevitable that, having given himself and all he had away, there should come times when he needed much help. Yet in all the thirty-two volumes of his closely written diary, covering the whole long period from 1858- 1917 inclusive, there is no record of his ever offering a prayer for his own advancement in glory or wealth. But for others he was such a beggar as God loves. And his theory of prayer was not one of beautiful coin- cidences but of personal answer to definite appeal. " I have another wonderful story to relate," he writes in 1892. "Last evening I was greatly troubled over our receipts for the support fund. We were $130 behind our receipts for March of last year and but a few dollars received since ten days ago. Last night I carried my trouble to God and I prayed in this way,— ' Lord, men say that there is no use to ask special things of Thee and to set a special time ; they would discourage even Thine elect from prayer. Lord, give me a hundred dollars to-morrow and make our receipts for this March equal those of last March. I do not ask this. Lord, to test the power of prayer. Grant it, and my poor faith will be made stronger. Refuse it, and it will be all right, my Master. But, O Lord, for Thy poor children's sake, refuse it not.' " " The first letter received this morning contained a one hundred dollar hill. "Another wonderful coincidence? Not so, my Master, there is no chance in this life. It is all law and order." This was an example worked out in dollars. We turn to another worked out in souls. 188 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS " I earnestly prayed God a few months ago that the result of my year's work, as it is the fiftieth of my life, would be the addition of fifty members. Blessed be His holy name. The prayer has been answered and more than, fifty have been granted me. This is another special and peculiar answer to prayer. This is the first year in my ministry that I have received so many. But God has answered so many of my prayers that I know not how to remember with special and solitary instances." This story was written in December, 1891. The next chapter was penned in January, 1893. " On Friday night, the last night of Dr. Guerrant's services, and before any one had expressed a purpose to become a Christian, I suddenly remembered my prayer of last year to God to give me fifty souls in commemoration of my fiftieth anniversary. Then it occurred to me to say, ^ Why not again now ? Is it too much to ask ? Is the Lord's arm shortened that it cannot save ? ' I remembered that twenty-four had thus far been joined with us this year, and so I said to God — ^ Lord, give me the other twenty -six to be added to these.' Was it an accident that at the meeting of the session yesterday morning just twenty-six were re- ceived on profession of faith? Oh, Abraham, thou mightest have saved all Sodom, hadst thou but dared one more perad venture." It is well to get his own mental attitude towards these and similar incidents. " How wonderful are God's dealings with my church," he exclaims, " in the past year. We received our sixtieth member yesterday and I think there will be more next year. For two successive years this little THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 189 church is to be at the head of the roll for niembers received in our Synod ! My pastorate is bringing forth ' fruit in old age.' Then how glad to be able to say that no other church in our whole Southern Assembly has so many candidates for the ministry as mine! Blessed be my Master. It is hard to realize that this is the little mission church of thirty years ago. Work and the blessing of God and perseverance towards a prescribed end have done it, but mainly the blessing of God. I want every day to thank Him. He has made my life a marvellous success, along the line I chose ! And I feel that He will be with me in all things till Jesus comes." We have here then a man who believed in prayer very much as he believed in language and never dis- counted it as the means of communication between spirit and Spirit. Had some one referred to his answers as beautiful coincidences he would doubtless have smiled and suggested that it was just as difficult to arrange beautiful coincidences as it is to answer prayers. Really, what is the difference ? Being convinced of this stupendous thing who that knew him would not have known that sooner or later he would turn his beautiful instrument, like a revealing telescope, upon the stars. From the boyhood days to the very end he had but one great passion, the longing for the Eternal Life. But so much sweeter and deeper are his own words that none others should obscure their beauty : " I can truly say that there is no earthly prospect that I ever set for a moment over against the promised glory. My desire for health and life is that I may do God's will and advance His cause. Sometimes I feel 190 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS as if the promise of eternal life were too good to be true, too wonderful, too soul thrilling ; and I am cast down with fears that I may not inherit it, but I feel sure of one thing, that my fears are born of an intense yearning that the promises of the blessed book may be realized in my case. Lord, give me surcease of these useless fears, and best of all give me daily proof, as Thou hast in the past, that Thou carest for me." And next we find an astonishing thing. It was as if a man with a newly discovered telescope were to turn it for the first time on the abyss of space asking of Neptune, '* Art thou there ? " Did he long to know whether he should live again, and would God answer prayer ? Then why not ask Him? " Three months ago I asked the Lord to assure me of eternal life by doing four wonderful things for me. First, to restore my health, and this He has so far done that I seem to myself to be whole and well ; second, to free the college of debt, and this also He has done by removing every cent of indebtedness and leaving a balance in the treasury ; third, by doing some wonder- ful thing for the orphanage; His reply was to give me $1,000 endowment, $350 for the clock and $3,000 for the Harriet Home, to give Our Monthly its largest receipts and the whole orphanage work $14,000 ; fourth, to bless my church in some special way and since then He has had five of my young men (one, my own son) enter the ministry (and He hasn't done yet !). It seems to me that I have the clearest right to believe. First, that God hears my prayers; second, that He has in store for me eternal life, and greater privileges and blessings than these can no man ask. As to the mercies THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 191 of this year, they are beyond measure. My heart magnifies her Lord and makes her boast in Him ! '' " I have been studying for two years the ministry of prayer," he writes later. " Two years ago it was my own life that seemed endangered and then how eagerly I studied things about the hereafter. It was a problem over which I fought — this problem of eternal life — and the real presence of God with believers. I can truly say that I gained much light but there was much yet to learn. For three weeks, alas, I have been in constant prayer for the life of the two girls, Lula and Maggie. All was going against them and me, and I had an idea half formed that I was not to be heard. I pled by every thought I could conceive that God would help me. And God did hear me. On the 26th the tide be- gan to turn. But that day, suddenly, our little Ida was cut down. The work was quickly done. I hardly had time to cry 'Lord, spare my child!' But the Lord had meant that child's death to be the great lesson that I needed. She did not die, she was trans- lated ! For while I sat by her, her little pale face lit up with the radiance of heaven. * The angels have come into this room,' she said. I turned involuntarily to see them. * They are passing over to the side of my bed, there by you. Oh, they are so beautiful, so beau- tiful, and they have come for me ! ' How can I de- scribe the sweet peace that rested on the child's face ? It was seraphic. Moreover it impressed me so utterly with the assurance of the reality of her vision that I was astonished at the dullness of my vision. The Master sent His shining ones to carry the little orphan home, — His own little child. " So the Lord has given me at last what I have long 192 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS been seeking for. I have not found it in my heart to weep for little Ida though my tears have run in streams as I have recalled that scene. Nothing in all my life has so touched me. Henceforth, death will have been shorn of much of its terror. The Angels of God have stood by me, and lifted almost out of my arms their little treasure." And so we find him at the noontide hour a man who loved other people — and especially God, and wanted to spend his life serving them, because his eyes were fixed on that far distant Why ? from which all philosophers and philanthropists have drawn their inspiration. The ultimate Goal of Things drew him from home to home in his pastoral calls and as he went his dreams dwelt in his words and his words won their sweet way into a heart or two here and there. It is not that church or that college or that orphan- age or that town that He is interested in. It is that spirit. On the one side: safety, comfort, wealth, ease, glory; on the other: danger, trouble, poverty, toil, glory ; thus does the shepherd-rod of God continually divide the sheep from the goats. And in the heat of his midday burden, at the even age of fifty years, he sits down to write — of himself, his life, his experiences, his God. And this is what he says: " I am this day fifty years of age. I cease to-day to climb the hill of life and start down the declivity. I have passed the * dead line.' It is meet for me to pause here and make a few reflections and resolutions. " I am not going to look backward to-day. Often have I done that in the past, measuring step by step THE SOUL OF A SOLDIER 193 the work and way the Master sent me. I look forward and press on. " I do not know how long I am to live. If it be to fourscore or even fourscore and ten, every day of it shall be spent in Thy service, O God. I am deter- mined to know no rest till the end come. " Every year I will begin new studies and undertake new works. I may die this day, but if I do not die till I am ninety, this I set to my seal, that I shall busy myself about my Master's work while I have my being. I may be in time laid aside from this or that sort of duty,— God only knows,— yet will I find some sort, so help me God and keep me steadfast. " I find myself in fairly good condition physically to-day. The next ten years I will choose to make a better ten than those just behind me. Gray hairs are coming fast. Let them come. I will not care. But I must let in no droning, no whining. '' Yet I look forward to a goal. To live eternally with Christ is the unutterable longing of my soul ! There is no desire that I have that is for a moment comparable with that. It is everything with me and as the years fly past the longing grows stronger and stronger. O God, all powerful ! in Thine own good time grant me eternal life in Thy presence where there are pleasures forevermore. "To-day, on the 15th of March, we opened the Nellie Scott Library and also threw out the foundation dirt for the Technical School. " I received some pleasant souvenirs of my fiftieth birthday. " Why should a man be counted old at fifty ? For my part I feel that I can do better work than ever. I 194 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS notice that my imagination is not so brilliant, and that I am not as fond of using illustrations as I once was, but I prefer to hammer away at a given point till I get it sharpened for use. " Neither am I afraid ^ of that which is high.' My plans increase and enlarge in number. There are broader views to be taken of things and I love to take them. I find myself desirous of impressing my views upon large masses of men. Once I was content with bringing my little church to think with me. " Still, I love this little town. I am delighted to see it grow and to know that I have given it two such in- stitutions as the college and the orphanage. God has enabled me to prove that a faithful worker in a village church may make his little field a tower of strength to all the state. Moreover, the faithful win honour. I have no talent. I have only faithfulness and common XVIII BUILDIKG THE NEW CHUECH Aye, like to him who trusting, cast his net As One commanded forth into the deep, "Wherein the master loves and yearnings sleep, Wherewith the lines that lift the world are wet ! IN the mind of the minister there are few joys to equal the building of a House for God. When, far back in the sixties, the city youth came to take up his work in the country village and saw the bare walls of his unattractive building there doubtless mingled with his sense of poverty a prayer and determination to erect, some day, a fitting temple for Jehovah. Just as we find him proposing to build a cotton mill ten years before the business men of the village took his advice, so from the beginning he yearned for an efficient and suitable church building. Yet there was that about the old church raising its tall white spire so high as to overlook the beautiful oak grove in front, that would not let it go without a pang of grave regret. There, on July 13, 1862, the slight, boyish seminary student had, as if by chance, preached his first Clinton sermon. Thither he had come two years later to be their first pastor and the only resident minister of the only church in the village. Through the long black night of reconstruction days they had comforted one another in her pews and over old- fashioned communion tables until the dawn came even as the great book on the pulpit stand had promised. 195 196 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS Thither also he had first led his little family of orphans, then called " Jacobs' Folly," by day and by night, and thither his first " college boys " had gathered when his " college " was the joke of the state, and there they had found faith of such a sort that they were not dis- mayed. In that old wooden building great sermons had been preached and hundreds upon hundreds of souls converted, as the Power showed him how to take ordinary folks and make ministers and missionaries and professors and college presidents out of them, though it had to be done in what was called when he came to it: " The Hell-hole of South Carolina." So this little forgotten and forsaken country church had come to know and be known by all who loved high purpose and fine resolve and its very poverty of adornment emphasized its message. As the years passed over his head the temples of the young minister whitened and his eyes grew dim yet his youthful dream did not de- part. He still craved that for which he had so long prayed and kept talking about it. So one day in 1895 a woman died and left seven hundred dollars to " the new church." The Ladies' Aid Society took it in charge and began adding to it. The old story was to be told again — faith—prayer— work. By 1899 he was writing in his diary, " but the special year's work shall be for the new church building." So he began work and immediately found that to be true which the chorus in Antigone sang many centuries before : '•'■ One law holds ever good, That nothing comes to life of man on earth. Unscathed throughout by woe." BUILDING THE NEW CHURCH 197 For there were those who wanted to move the church to another and, as they said, more central location, and to this the other part would not hear. " The new church will not be built in my time ! " he exclaimed in dismay. In the Hotel Ingleterra, Habana, on March 15, 1900, his fifty -eighth birthday, he writes in his journal his surrender of the hope which he had cherished for a long, long while and considered this end of his life-dream a signal from above that the time had come to resign his church. And all the while at his little home town the Power was working out His perfect plan. The ladies kept adding dollar to dollar. The men could not forget that picture he had drawn for them in stone. Soon the differences were amicably composed and on March 6, 1901, the first stone was laid in the foundation of the new church. " I am a boy yet ! " he exclaimed on the day he was fifty-nine. " I will make this my best year ! " And he just about did it. His little country church that was, now began to feel its power. They actually gave $2,000 for all regular causes during that year and $3,000 to the new church, the best year in its history ! And the following July, as if to remind him of the favour God had shown him, Miss Ibby Fulton, the last of the original members of his church, died at the age of ninety-four years. For himself he had just taken his first ride in an automobile and was saying, " It is very hard to make this young heart and old body of mine keep step with each other." Three more long years were consumed in building that church and as regularly as the days passed the form of an old man now often tired and noticeably 198 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS gray was seen each afternoon passing in and out among the workmen, worrying over every detail and correcting anything that he found wrong. Dollar by dollar they raised the money to rear its granite walls and provide its oaken seats and at last it was ready for the meeting of the Synod of South Carolina in the fall of 1904. It had taken nine years of active propaganda to do it and five years of hard toil and a whole lifetime of dreaming — which made it all the more meaningful and precious. Then three more years passed and at last he wrote in his diary : " By God's good grace we dedicated our church to- day. The total cost, including everything, was $21,- 000. There remains $34 in the treasury ! The day was ideal ; the congregation crowded the church and schoolroom. Cornelson's sermon was good. And God has given me to-day the last one of my ' condi- tions ' on which I based my purpose to remain as a pastor. " 1st. The church debt was paid. " 2d. The money for a mill pastor secured. " 3d. A church membership raised to four hundred. " 4th. My salary better paid. "5th. Four hundred actually present at Sunday School. " There were four hundred and sixteen (!) at Sunday School to-day." All his life long he pra37^ed and worked and then watched to see what would happen. ISTow beautiful things always happen under such circumstances. But does their beauty lie in the coincidence of request and BUILDING THE NEW CHURCH 199 reply or in the object and the eye ? Is the wonderful element in it the actual fact of answer or the ability to see that fact ? What does it matter how many prayers God answers if nobody sees Him do it ? A great author once said of his manuscript, '* It may well wait a century for a reader as God has waited six thousand years for an observer ! " This power to see God ; to know Him ; to glorify Him ; to enjoy Him, is this not indeed the chief end of man ? Viewing this remarkable life that we have been studying, what finer truth may we say of it than that it was his delight to look for God. And with the practised eye of the scout-master he discovered His familiar footprint in the forest of human affairs. This was his glory that having a pure heart he saw God. XIX IN THE LATEE YEAES Ah, little brook, thy waves and mine Break ever towards the open sea, Nor stone may bar, nor meadowed kine A hindrance be. We beachward bear our portioned sand, The boom of breakers in our ear, O Harbour of the Fatherland, He waits us, There. THAT is indeed a singular law under which each generation raises monuments to the prophets of the past and crosses for those of the present, yet it has been followed by each age from the beginning. And the same spirit of hypocrisy is responsible in the one case as in the other. The leader inevitably calls down the curses of the blind upon his head. ]S'ot being able to see so far as he, they account his dreams as follies and his faiths as fictions. After- wards when these have been wrought out in stone and mortar, in facts and successes, another generation gathers up the stones thrown at him and builds a monu- ment over his grave. When the new leader comes who sees still ^further he receives the same treatment, first persecution then apotheosis. It is a habit of civiliza- tion. With William Plumer Jacobs the days of persecu- tion had passed and those of honour and emolument had come. He feared these far more than the former 200 IN THE LATER YEARS 201 years of insignificance and mockery though he wel- comed the power and influence they brought and pro- ceeded to coin them for his orphans. The little band of admirers he had in the beginning had grown to a great host of true friends. Once in the early years, a distinguished Doctor of Divinity, pastor of one of the large and wealthy churches of South Carolina, was jesting at Synod over *' little Willie Jacobs' orphan house " which he was at that time beginning when a bystander said, " Doctor, you're the famous pastor of a great church now but that ' orphan house ' will pre- serve his memory long after you've been forgotten ! " In Clinton, during the early days, among his own sup- porters and friends was a wealthy scoffer whose son and daughter were later cared for by the orphanage their father had fought. And in a neighbouring town the man who had published in his paper the attacks and accusations of '79 was preparing to write a $5,000 legacy into his will for the orphanage, because a rela- tive had received its help to such admirable advantage. Thus was wisdom being justified of her children. Yet even the wisdom of the older man went not without question among the brethren. In 1895 he writes that " We offered our college to the Synod and were refused. Yery fickle is the favour of princes and Sjmods 1 " He loved them, but, for help, he preferred God. And his preference was well founded, for won- derful things kept happening ; " beautiful coincidences " following earnest supplication. In December of the same year, Mrs. McCormick gave $5,000 for the Edith Home, a memorial to her daughter. In April Mrs. Lees gave $2,500 to beautify and remodel the first building which now became the Lees' Home of Peace. 202 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMEE JACOBS " I have never asked God for anything but that He gave it to me ! " he exclaimed. The following year his two sons, Ferdinand and States, bought the Southern Fresh ytei'ian^ thus delight- ing his heart by increasing the prospect of its remain- ing in Clinton permanently. In May of '99 he located Eiverside Cottage on the Enoree where for the follow- ing sixteen summers he was to spend many happy vaca- tion hours with his children. That June the Virginia Home was progressing and the corner-stone of the Anita Home was laid, both gifts of Mrs. McCormick and both named for her daughters. And then when the year closed he found that God had given him seventy-five additions to his church, the most fruitful year of his ministry, to date, combining this spiritual blessing with the two new buildings at the orphanage, several gifts to the endowment fund, and the starting of his new church. Only the college failed to prosper, waiting for a turn of the tide. His health also troubled him, his voice having failed again but " I find that when I do my duty the Lord accepts it all the same," he notes, cheerily. The burden of building the new church bore heavily on him during this and the three succeeding j^ears. He constantly hoped to preach his first sermon in it on the fortieth anniversary of his first sermon in Clinton (July 13, 1862). At the spring meeting of Presbytery he had the pleasure of introducing four of his orphan boys as candidates for the ministry. The following year (1902) Mrs. Lees died, leaving $10,000 to the orphanage. This was the largest sum ever received up to that date. And then, on the thirtieth anniversary of his resolve to found the or- phanage, Henry K. McHarg, learning of the work IN THE LATER YEARS 203 through Judge A. A. Phlegar, a long time friend, gave $25,000 to the endowment! This, combined with other sums, made a thousand dollars for each year and as much as had been given to the endowment in all the previous thirty years ! It was a great way to celebrate a courageous resolution of an unknown village minister. He who seeth in secret was rewarding openlj^ The following year saw the same steady progress. It was also a year of travel and one of intense sorrow. During a trip to the U. S. A. Assembly at Los Angeles, one of his orphanage daughters was accidentally killed by an explosion in the steam laundry. The news of it was in the first letter he received on his arrival at the Assembly and he immediately left, too sad to take further part in the great gathering. The record of his sorrow in his journal tells how " Even the children on the train grew silent with wonder at the old man with tears running down his cheeks " as his train sped home- ward. In June he saw New York again and Northfield and New England, on a trip to perform the wedding cere- mony of his youngest son, at that time his assistant in the orphanage, to Miss Maud Lesh of Newton Center, Massachusetts. His next trip was to the St. Louis Ex- position the following year. Then came the singular catastrophe of two fires, the only two serious ones during his whole lifetime at the orphanage, one destroy- ing Memorial Hall and the other the " Seminary," or Academic Building, both occurring tlie same month and within nineteen days of each other. But as they burned the sparks flew over the wires, and the hearts of the thousands of friends of Thornwell were fired also, so that soon Memorial Hall was built anew and a 204 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS more beautiful church took the place of the seminary. Such was the depth of the love they two had built in the hearts of their friends. The following year, 1905, he was enabled to begin another building, the Georgia Home, built by Georgia friends, of Georgia brick and Georgia lumber, trimmed with Georgia marble, used by Georgia boys, and being a little piece of Georgia set down in Georgia love on the Thornwell Campus. While this was happening he was turning over to others the further control of the destinies of his college. The following Sunday he chose as his text, " I have loved Thee with an everlast- ing love." It hurt him greatly to think this severance was wise, and he wondered whether his resignation of the church should not follow. The beginning of 1906 found him in Miami and when he returned the workmen began tearing down the old church building in which he had preached over forty years. Before the year had ended two good gifts came to him, one the McCall legacy enabling him to buy the old college building for his own Academic Hall, and the other assuring him of a new home for his orphans, the Silliman Cottage. His church also kept growing steadily, the morning services averaging over five hundred. So the years passed, each being a record of progress, of prayers, and of blessed purposes fulfilled. The HoUingsworth Home and the Florida Cottage were the gifts of 1910, and in 1911 came the famous trip to Atlanta on which the entire orphanage went to take part in the Presbyterian Jubilee and give their many Atlanta friends an opportunity to see the children face to face. Of this journey he wrote : IN THE LATER YEARS 205 "A very remarkable thing has happened. The orphanage has been transferred bodily. Herein is the mystery of modern enterprise ! Great ! It took, how- ever, great preparation to get things straight. Matrons and children were all busy. And on Saturday (yester- day) morning we brought 240 of the household over on the Seaboard Air Line. A great crowd met them at the Atlanta Station. Five carloads of children poured out into the arms of their friends. It was a day of days ! Fifty-two automobiles were there and in a very few minutes they were loaded with a happy, merry, joyous crowd and whirled out through Atlanta to Mr. J. H. Honours', miles into the country. There they had a splendid lunch tendered them, which they enjoyed to the full, and were thence distributed to their friends and to the sights of Atlanta. My resting- place was with Thornwell, whither I was taken by Mrs. Honour. Thornwell gave a reception that night — a supper. Dr. Burrell was there, who is to preach to-day, and my good friends Mr. Sam Inman, John Egan, Frank Inman, J. K. Orr, J. K. Ottley, Professor Matheson (President of the Tech), and others, and we sat up till 11 : 45. To-day I spent at the Central Church and Sunday School, and preached at the North Avenue Church to-night. . . . ". . . Well, we reached home last eve after a famous journey. We will never forget it. The Charleston trip of 1902 was a great one but the Atlanta trip was a greater, for our dear orphans were made much of in what was the greatest gathering of Presbyterians in the South. They occupied the plat- form (amazing thing !), they furnished most of the music, singing one piece alone. Thornwell certainly 206 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS arranged a fine program. I enjoyed Dr. Burrell's sermon greatly. I was on the platform and had the honour of pronouncing the benediction. ". . . In the afternoon we gathered for a special orphanage event in the Central Presbyterian Church, with nearly two thousand people present. The orphans filled the center tier of seats and their choir was the choir of the occasion. I conducted the exercises, draw- ing them out in Scripture passages and songs, and I gave the people the story of the founding of the or- phanage. After the services we had a regular ovation, and not least of those who came up to give a loving grip were the old girls — Mary, Bessie, Lucy Feebeck, Jim Moffett (I hadn't heard of him for twenty years), Walter Chamblee, Lillian Nelson, and dear Cassie Oliver, Louise Happoldt, Kate Upchurch, Ella Harper, and yet others. God bless them. It was a day to be remembered in heaven. . . . ". . . The return trip was great. What a meet- ing we had in the waiting room a.t the S. A. L. in Atlanta— the singing— Dr. Holderby's prayer— the Ra, Ra, Ra's— and on the train, Conductor Seal decorated to the point of agony. Well, it is over, but the in- fluence will long continue with the little folks." His eyes gave him increasing anxiety, but he kept praying for fifty souls during that year and received sixty. "I shall have to find some way of working without eyes or ears," he exclaimed, " but it will be a fight. I believe in fighting to the end ! " The follow- ing year was made notable by the meeting of the Synod in his church. He was elected moderator and immediately resigned, being unable either to hear or see. IN THE LATER YEARS 207 But neither prevented 1912 from being a notable year in the life of the orphanage. Beautiful among the days of that year was the one on which Mrs. J. H. Lesh gave the Lesh Infirmary where little orphan sufferers could be nursed back to life and health again. The Sam Jones Cottage, the Sherrard Cottage, and the Florida made the year a blessed one also. These all were being built or about to be begun on April 14th, that fateful Sabbath morning of the sinking of the Titanic. In the following May, on the memorable 28th, he assisted in installing his successor, Rev. Frank Dudley Jones, as pastor of his church, the story of which is reserved for later mention. The following year (1913) found him busy building the Lesh Infirmary, the Florida Cottage, and the Tom Jones Memorial Museum. The reader pauses as he notes this last to reflect upon the picture he recalls of a little boy in Charleston wandering through the aisles of the Museum there. He had gotten it at last ! In May, 1913, he was present at the great Pan Presbyterian Pentecost in Atlanta, opening the first union mass meeting of the four assemblies with prayer, meeting literally thousands of his friends and adding the blessing of his presence to that great gathering. The year of the first World War came to injure his receipts and raised the cost of living for his three hun- dred children. It was the beginning of the last scene of his life drama. During a great war he had come to Clinton, and during a great war he was to leave^, yet his faith shone out with the needed brightness. He immediately asked God for a notable gift during 1914 to bear witness of His continual and increasing love. Instantaneously the answer came but he knew it not. 208 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS A letter brought the announcement that a lady in Georgia had left ^10,000 to the Synod of Georgia to found an orphanage in that state, and should the Synod not find the way clear so to do the entire sum was to go to Thornwell. All during the following year he kept worrying over this beautiful thing that God was MA? OF CUNTON,S.C The Clinton of 1913. doing for him. Was he about to lose the support of the generous hearted Synod of Georgia without whose help he saw no way to continue his orphan work on the present scale ! He had asked for a notable gift and had received a notable calamity. So, at least, it seemed to him who did not know how the Synod of Georgia would decline to found another orphanage, loving Thornwell too well to subtract from her support. Thus a whole m THE LATER YEARS 209 state was to endorse the gift with her love. Down to Florida he was driven to heal the hacking cough that had seized him. *' I am coughing all the time," he wrote, " but I am also thanking God for His good- ness I " The death on July 12th of his adopted daugh- ter, Mollie, saddened him greatly. He had not for- gotten how his own mother had been adopted by the sainted Dr. Wm. S. Plumer, his own name bearing wit- ness to it. Taken by and large it was a sad year and trying. A beautiful chapter in it was his presence in Atlanta on January 21, 1915, at the laying of the corner-stone of Oglethorpe University, taking part in the exercises and adding his blessing to that memorable occasion. This institution, Oglethorpe University, might almost be spoken of as another school of his founding, for it was born of his spirit of service and faith and passed through the same dark hour of abuse and attack. Founded originally in the thirties of the eighteenth century, for many years it had done its great work numbering LeConte, and Talmadge and Woodrow as well as his own father, among its teachers, and a host of able men among its alumni, including Sidney Lanier one of the seven immortals of American literature! Destroyed by the war between the states, for a half century It had slept beneath the gray ashes of fratri- cidal strife until the work of refounding it was begun by his youngest son in Atlanta, that it might become the great Southern Presbyterian University, drawing Its support and resources from and distributing its blessings to the whole South and nation. He saw in it no danger of rivalry to his own college but quickly gave It his money, his prayers and his support. It 210 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS took him far back into tlie past when he read the at- tacks made upon the infancy of this great enterprise. Having himself learned not to fear any form of eccle- siastical politics or institutional jealousy, he wrote to its young president not to be afraid and recalled, as if it had now become a blessed memory, the calumnies and slander that were once his portion. In Our Monthly (October, 1916) he set forth his own spirit of rivalry in kindness rather than jealousy, thus : " We had the pleasure quite recently of being in a very great and wonderful audience of Presbyterian people. Over five thousand were present. The meet- ing was held in the Auditorium of Atlanta. It was an outpouring of the great Presbyterian forces in the most Presbyterian city in the South. Their purpose was to thank God for the opening of Oglethorpe University. Two hours were spent in exercises suited to the occa- sion. The President of the United States honoured the assembly with a special telegraphic message. The Mayor of the great city of Atlanta, himself the founder of a great university, was present and addressed the body. Our own theological seminary in Columbia, through its president, Dr. Whaling, brought greet- ings. Oglethorpe will become a feeder of this semi- nary. If those who kick at this institution had been present they would certainly have halted before they gave another kick. One cannot easily kick down a mountain. The Oglethorpe movement is growing. Its plans are magnificently beautiful. Its success is com- mensurate with the hopes of the founders. That it is to succeed is sure. Atlanta is behind the movement. Its people are gratified with the beginning of things. You will hear more of Oglethorpe. IN THE LATEK YEARS 211 " While in private conversation the president of Oglethorpe said that he regarded the Emory Uni- versity as one of their greatest assets. It would help make of Atlanta a university city. It would naturally attract a large body of the finest men of the South to it, and would give to Oglethorpe a stronger hold on Presbyterian patronage. Hearing these things led us to think how utterly short sighted is institutional jeal- ousy. When Thorn well Orphanage was founded it had the whole Southern Church at its back. Very naturally when another orphanage was started it cut off many interested friends from the number of its subscribers. The president of Thorn well felt for a little while that it was a pity the field should be divided. He knows better now. The fellowship and companionship of other institutions has given Thornwell a warmer place in the hearts of its patrons while the growth of the church has increased the number of its patrons many fold. As to the orphans, they are reaping the benefit. Every Synod in the South now has its institution either singly or in copartnership. A few churches and Sab- bath schools in other than our own field still stand by Thornwell. Children come to us from at least ten dif- ferent Synods. We get no help from beyond the waters but we do get* help from almost every state in the Union. This is only a relic of our ancient inher- itance, but we believe it is the blessing of God upon the fact that those who love and maintain the Thornwell Orphanage have laid aside from their hearts jealousy of others. Institutions under the care of our Almighty Father cannot die. He will not let them live if they chei'ish malice^ or hatred^ or jealousy toioards other ivorhers in His own field. This is the meaning of the 212 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS Master's saying ' Forbid them not ; he that is not against us is for us.'" This was one reason why he was so universally loved: no jealousy, no pulling of the wires of ec- clesiastical politics, no packing of Presbyteries or As- semblies to carry action adverse to a rival ; instead, a definite refusal to have a rival because of a great, gen- erous heart that wanted to help, not to surpass his brother. Is it any wonder that, immediately upon his death, a fund was started at Oglethorpe to build a memorial to him into the life of the University of whose board of directors he had become a member. Thus shall it ever be done unto the man whom the King delighteth to honour. The following year saw the ending of many familiar companionships. "I find that I cannot see now to read at all," he wrote, " but I can preach. I did it twice to-day ! " The last entry of his journal in his own handwriting is on November 14th. ^' Nearly blind," he records laconically. Afterwards came the operation for cataract on one of the two eyes they had dimmed, which was followed in turn by eight weeks of anxious watching for light that was not to come. Through the story of these eventful years runs the golden thread of the Great Discovery. No pen may describe these happenings so well as his own, found here and there in his diary written in fresh and glow- ing words as he stood in the presence of the event itself. While they are of the same sort as the others elsewhere found in this story and are set dovm as only selected samples of many similar occurrences they form tb© ohi^f valtt© of all the outward triumphs ol wbioh William P. Jacobs at various ages IN THE LATER YEARS 2l8 they are the interpretations. Here are some of tiie more astonishing. " Notwithstanding the pleasant absence from home and neglect of office work, and notwithstanding the heavy increase that I had in our receipts for the past four months, I find that already we are beyond $1,000 for this month and I still hope for a little increase. The exact prayer I offered was for $1,000 anyway, and for $1,200 if the Lord could give it. He has sent me $1,050 for support, $62 for machinery, $50 for furni- ture, making a total of $1,162, and one day yet to hear from. (Before Saturday ended I had received the $1,200.) *' Last month I asked the Lord for $1,200. He gave me $1,226. I have again to thank God for having, in a very peculiar manner, answered my prayers and such prayers that it seemed to me the direct result w^as this answer. I asked $888. He gave me, reserving the answer to the last moment, $913. The circumstances were such that this could not have been accidental. God's hand was in it and no other. I am satisfied. " Three days ago I asked the Lord to cheer me with some large gift for endowment, and to put it then in some one's heart to give it. To-day I received the gift from a new source of $500 for the endowment ! On the first day of June I asked for $900 this month for the support fund. I have already received it ! " God has already given me all I asked for July and more. It is wonderful how this blessed Lord remem- bers. He keeps me under the shadow of His wing. My prayers are utterly worthless as literary produc- tions. I just go to God and say, * Lord, give me $1,067 for this month,' and He gives me $1,167. That is all 214 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS there is of it. I always fix my request for more than I need and I always have given me more than I ask I rejoice in the Lord. I glory in His holy name. I received $10.04 to-day. I received $86.25 yesterday. So it comes, in sums great or small. '' On June 14th I prayed (see date) for $1,000 from some source for this cause. On July 14th, I received it ! Well, God is good, and this is a wonderful way that He has. Of course it was all ^ accident.' Bosh ! How can so many accidents happen ? I have had thou- sands of these ' accidents ' in my experience. Some- how or other they make me very happy. When I think about them I think of the almighty love that grants our accidents. " The Lord answered a prayer for me yesterday that I had forgotten I had offered. Three weeks ago I asked that before February ended He would make the cash in hand $1,000, as we needed that to pay for the land we are about to buy. Yesterday He sent me the little balance of $G5 needed to fill out the amount. How good God is ! " On the morning of the 19th I earnestly prayed God to send me through Mrs. McCormick $500 more for the Gordon Cottage. At that same hour she mailed a check to me for $500 for that purpose. I had not written to her for a month. " I wonder if it would be possible for the dear Lord to give me $1,800 this month. " I want to thank God for His goodness in showing me that it is possible to give me $1,800 I asked for and $98 besides, and that over and above all receipts from endowment this year set apart to a definite purpose. " The Lord's name is to be praised. This morning I IN THE LATER YEARS 215 had $1,500 in hand for the support fund. I was saying to myself — for ouce is my boasting vain ! Alas, the Lord is rebuking the vain glory of His servant. When my mail came in it helped me wonderfully. There was a single check for $400 and others that brought me nearly to $2,300. Then there was a tap on the door. A young man asked to see me privately and handed me $300 ! I had received my $2,500— more than that. I had $175 returned to another fund that I had borrowed from to make out my $1,500. I turned over to the treasurer $2,675. In a single day I had received $1,175 as against $l,5uO for twenty-nine days preceding. How wonderfullj^ God has helped ! He has always shown Himself to be marvellous in mercies. I rejoice in Him. But this is not all. I had asked the dear Lord that He would have the McOall legacy, which goes to our per- manent fund, paid also. It came in promptly. It is with this sum that we will be able, if it is so deter- mined, to purchase the old college building. So with this last day of Novem.ber I am glad of heart. We had a fine gathering at the Thanksgiving service. Neville preached. " Well, the Lord has dealt bountifully with me. He gave me the $2,500 I pleaded for. We closed the month with $4,300 in the treasury. It is a most myste- rious thing He is doing in and through and for me. My heart is glad in Him. This year is a 3^ear of mercies. " I want to thank God out of my whole heart for His most gracious answer to my prayer. He has sent me up to this moment $6,175 for the support fund. I prayed for $6,000 most earnestly. He has answered me with a large and liberal hand. Oh, how good God is ! He certainly is good to me. I glory in His name. He 216 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS will do all things right and best. I also received ;^700 on the endowment, and ^200 on the Georgia cottage fund, and ;^200 on other funds. In all ;$1 2,000 came into my hands. I understand that the college received a gift of ^3,000. " I earnestly desired ^2,000 this month. I prayed and laboured for ^$1,500 and I got just exactly that. I wish I had faith to believe that I could get ^2,000 in June, but I fear my faith is not sufficient. I will pray for ;^2,000 but confidently expect ^1,500. *' God is dealing kindly with me and is giving me the ;$2,000. It is simply w^onderful. I had no hope of getting this sum. It has just come streaming in. " I thank God for ^2,000 in June for the orphanage I He hath heard my prayer. Last year the June re- ceipts were ;^1,346. " The Lord marvellously answered one of my prayers yesterday, bringing to me a gift of ^300 not only from the man I asked Him to move, and for the very sum 1 asked, but at the very time of the prayer. Incidentally this answer to prayer will bring the answer to yet an- other, for it will result in giving me this month the sum of money for which I petitioned our bountiful Bene- factor. " I found to my surprise and delight that the Lord had given me all I asked for and ^10 more. I asked Him for $2,222. He gave me $2,232, for which I most gratefully thank Him. My heart is glad when I think how grandly He serves me. Why did I fix that singu- lar sum ? — just because I asked Him to give me a living proof that His answer to my prayer was a living proof of His presence and not an accident. " As it has been a good while since I had made re- m THE LATER YEARS 217 ceipt of any large gift, I asked the Lord on Tuesday last to give to the support fund ^100, or more, in one gift before Saturday, and in such way as He thought best. He sent me on Friday twenty barrels of flour worth ^100, or more,— the most acceptable gift, and in the most acceptable way in which He could have sent it ! I asked Him to do this to evidence His loving care over the orphans. Under all the circumstances I am sure this was a miracle. I do not know who the donor was. It is God's gift, pure and simple." As we read this amazing record we begin to under- stand his own comment on the way God answered his prayers. " He always does," he writes. " It is very wonderful." XX MOVING HIS COLLEGE As if it were a precious thing to this then hold thou fast ; "Who wrote the first line of thy life will also write the last. And if the final chapter leaves thee lonely in thy loss, Yet know, His was the greatest life who bore the greatest cross. THE supreme law of God is to learn the truth, to love it, to follow it, to worship it and it only. And though intellects differ both in form and content, producing different beliefs and con- victions, fear not. For all are true, there is no discord to those who know the key to the harmony. And to God each is alike good if only the supreme love be for the truth, and the supreme gift of unselfish devotion to it be given. One must go back a long way to appreciate the pang of terror which struck the heart of Wm. P. Jacobs when he learned that there was a movement on foot to move his college from Clinton to some other point in South Carolina. His college represented that part of his life which laboured in pure truth and was his con- tribution to the intellectual life of his church and com- munity. It was practically the same thing as to propose to take away his son or his daughter or anything he loved devotedly. He had made that college by toil and prayer. Under the blessing of God he had brought it up out of nothingness, while men laughed 218 MOVING HIS COLLEGE 219 at him for trying. Furthermore, to move it from Clin- ton was to mar the lesson his life had taught " that a little country church could be made a tower of light and strength." His orphanage was the light of philan- thropy, his college of philosophy, as his church of re- ligion, and was it not as philosopher, philanthropist and preacher that he wished to be remembered ? Any one who had seen him nurse the little high school into a college for the sake of teaching this lesson would know at once that to remove the college any- where was robbery. But the contest came on ; for other towns, once the matter had been mentioned, had offered handsome bonuses and there seemed much to be gained for the school in the eyes of those who favoured it. Great sums had been raised in sister towns and many advan- tages offered. Of course there was hot local opposition to the scheme and the founder and quarter-century president of its Board of Trustees protested, but all to no avail. Whether or no, the thing must be done. " I have found out that the Presbyterian Church is ungrateful," he writes in June, 1905, " after the manner of other republics. Our college is to be taken from us by the Board of Trustees, that we ourselves provided for. It is a shameful thing and one that makes me hang my head. I resigned my presidency of the Board after all these twenty-five years of service and received in return not one word of kind commenda- tion, not one syllable of regret, not one expression of encouragement ; but as pay for all my services only the throwing open the sale of the college to the highest bidder. " The college will continue here next year and then 220 THE LIFE OP WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS it leaves us. What will I do ? I have already decided that our college association will take steps to continue Clinton College. We will claim for it the history of the past. Our session will open in 1907. It will be our twenty-seventh year. We will find a man equal to the task of reorganization. For once, our dependence is on the Lord." Yet this was a new and untried field of dependence on Him and it remained to be seen whether his trust would be in vain. " My trust is in the Lord," he writes. " He is doing, He always has done the thing for me that was best. I trust Him out of a full heart." . . . " . . . Well, this also is decided, that if the col- lege is moved to Chester, or Anderson, or anywhere else it will leave Clinton College behind. Lord, keep Thou Thy hand upon this move and guide for the best." If he really meant that, he was to have a strangely beautiful experience. For of one thing those may be sure who know all about God ; that they know nothing at all about Him. He is always different though He be always the same. It seems to be His delight, if one may so speak, to be found faithful in new ways and to beautify His providences by variety of incident. For lo, a strange thing happened, even that for which the founder of the college for years had prayed. It was as if God had answered his prayers for his or- phanage one by one as offered and had now determined to answer those for his college all in a heap. *' A wonderful thing has happened," he exclaimed. *' Clinton has actually subscribed ^$10,000 for the college. It will probably be increased to ;^1 5,000 and it may go to ;^25,000. I earnestly hope so. This looks as if MOVING HIS COLLEGE 221 Clinton were going to keep the college ! Still there is no telling Avhat prejudices may do. Clinton (et ego ipse) has some cordial enemies. Still it is easy to see what we can do, if it is determined that Clinton College shall continue." But the Power was not yet done. The Board of Management must be changed. Clinton should no longer control the college. The Presbvterians of the state must do that. Then at any time the college could be done with as they pleased. It was to become the property of other people than Clintonians. The Presbyterians of the state were to own it. They, therefore, should settle its location. If they wanted it elsewhere let them move it. All this was a bitter pill to one who was praying earnestly against it. "The college will be bid for by Yorkville, Chester, Bennettsville, Sumter," he notes, " and possibly Ander- son. So much rancour has been developed here that the Board will doubtless move it anyway. Clinton is a house divided against itself. ^ Our leaders ' are new men and we old friends are set aside severely. It is my policy to sit still. I am for peace, but when I speak they are for war. So I won't speak." " The very close future seems to reveal me as doing the resigning act. I must give the church a new pastor. My life henceforth narrows to the orphanage and to my family. I will not resign in a storm. I want every- thmg to be peaceful and full of good will when I step down and out." So the harder he prayed the worse it got. Yet if he had taken down a very old book in his library he could have read the gtory of St. Augustine and his Mother Monioa who pmyicl with all thi tmdev ©mo- 222 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS tions of a mother's heart that her young son might be spared the temptation of voluptuous Rome and kept from its polluting touch. Yet God against her suppli- cations let him go directly there. But imagine her de- light when he met there St. Ambrose of Milan and by him was taught to love God. Thus her petition was denied but her prayer was answered. It is an old way of His and one easily forgotten. " I think we might as well stop saying ' If the college is moved.' It is now — 'When the college is moved.' If Columbia decides to bid for it, or Anderson, to one or the other it will go. And Anderson is going to bid." So he feels in September, 1905. But on one thing he had not reckoned, the effect of forty years of high thinking and noble example and earnest preaching in a community of Scotch-Irish people. Clinton was now aroused. If Bennettsville could bid, why not they ? Who was this Columbia that would take away their child ? And the little vil- lage soon found some of its reserve strength. It seemed impossible but it was happening. This hopeless dere- lict of forty years ago was now bidding for its college against the wealthiest and most cultured centers of the state. Was God trying to say anything to him in that fact, something of encouragement and praise ? Who had wrought this transformation but he, through God? "The Clinton people have, with great enthusiasm, subscribed ^20,000 to secure the college, in addition to ^20,000 of other property." . . . "... But Bennettsville has raised ^20,000 more." "... I will wait and see." So he stood still m^ 3a w the salvation of God, and MOVING HIS COLLEGE 223 a new chapter was added to his interpretation of Divine Providence, as Euripides said long ago : ** What else is wisdom, what of man^s endeavour, Of God's high grace, so lovely and so great? To stand, from fear set free, to breathe and wait, To hold a hand uplifted over hate, Shall not such loveliness be loved forever ? '' Then came the denouement ; he wrote it thus : " Well, thank God, the college matter is settled and settled right. Clinton rose up in her strength and resolved that she would have the college. Thirty or more of us went down to Columbia on Thursday. The Board met at eight o'clock in the seminary chapel. Each of the five towns competing for the cause was heard. Kev. Mr. Parrott spoke for the Clinton delega- tion. He certainly fired up finely. The old chapel heard more applause than it ever heard before. The whole meeting was a grand one. Eennettsville, York- viile, Sumter, and Chester were all competing for the prize. All the next day the Board was in session. At 7 P. M. Clinton won out and the vote was made unani- mous. I thank God. There was a regular love feast. All of us made up with each other, and now the one great idea is to make the college a most worthy and noble institution. I left Columbia at 1 A. M. and reached home at 5 a. m., tired and sleepy. The town has coA^ered itself with glory. ^ My'' college is noio the staters college — and I am proud! I trusted everything to God and triumphed. God bless and prosper the college ! Clinton is having great times over her 224 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS Truly it was as the ancient chorus sang : '* There be many shapes of mystery And many things God makes to be, Past hope and fear ; And the end men looked for cometh not ; And a path is there where no man thought j So hath it happened here ! " XXI GIVING UP THE CHUECH Do you hear the sound of Fall in the wind ? Do you mark the fear of the leaf ? Do you feel the kiss of the mist ? Do you mind The brown of the shock and the sheaf ? Go gather all thy harvests home ; The cold will come ! IN every well-ordered life there is the great desire. It is the string binding together all the beads of victory. It is the goal towards which our foot- steps turn, light with joy, weary with woe. And as Phaedra said centuries ago : ** Some grow too soon weary and some swerve To other paths, setting before the Eight, The diverse, far-off image of Delight." It was not so with the youth who was shunted off by Providence into the little hope of a place called Clinton. He had many dreams but one was more recurrent than the rest. He had many intentions but of them all one was the most insistent. He wanted to preach. It was his joy. He really counted it a privi- lege. All that he was and wanted to be found ex- pression in it. The preacher's dressy long coat, white tie, stiff collar, black shoes and hat — these symbols of his office he took to naturally nor ever willingly changed them. He looked his part. Games such as 225 226 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS tennis, golf, baseball, football, be neitber played nor took deligbt in. Time was too precious, days too sbort. So wben be found an obscure crossroads town, witb- out otber cburcb or minister, bimself being tbe pastor of all, be was satisfied. Wben, on tbe day be preacbed bis first sermon tbere, a man was found killed in front of bis cburcb, tbe place suited bim tbat mucb better. Wben be saw barrooms flourisbing and gambling tbe favourite amusement, be was satisfied as to bis call. Tbese people needed a preacber and tbat was bis business. So be set to work with prayer and consecrated toil, and a revival followed as already described. All aflame as be was, it was but natural for tbe neigbbourbood to come and watcb tbe fire. His congregations grew. His cburcb enlarged. He wanted to preacb to cbildren also and soon be was superintendent of a flourisbing Sunday Scbool. Tbe people liked tbe manner of it. Not tbat bis college words or city accent appealed to tbem, nor bis modesty tbat at times seemed almost timidity, but tbey bad felt tbe tbrall of that tbing wbicb bas made every orator since tbe world began — earnestness. Tbis boy migbt be mistaken but be was certainly not afraid of tbe wildest waves of Galilee. They watched bim as he set out, hearing a voice from afar to walk on tbe waters. It was with small steps tbat he first began, a tiny Sunday Scbool, tbe first in all the neigbbourbood, a collection in church (that took a long time to win their favour), and then a toy print- ing press, a tiny high scbool, and a little home for a few orphans. As these things grew and the wonder of them accumulated, men were prone to see them rather GIVING UP THE CHURCH 227 than the thing that made them, as one gazes upon the towering eucalyptus, forgetting the hidden cambium. But he never forgot. He knew wherein his life con- sisted. Did he come to forsaken Clinton ? It was to preach. Did he found a Sunday School, a church, a college, a paper, an orphana^ge ? It also was to preach. These all were only incidental to his main purpose which was to deliver a message from the King. And his throne was the cheap pine pulpit in the plain old church. For forty-seven years he reigned there, and for six more among his orphans. From it he interpreted his life, and all lives, but oftenest The Life. From it he breathed such a benediction as one feels when he is conscious of the presence of God. As the Sabbaths passed and the church, and the Sunday School, and the magazine, and the college, and the orphanage grew — so with them also grew those who listened to his words. In spirit they grew, and in years. The young passed into age, and the aged into eternity. It seemed only a little while before he was marrying the little children whom he baptized yester- day. And one day the first flake of snow fell on his head. Another followed and soon his hair was white. As time passed the voices of his people must needs reach him as though muffled by an ever growing distance, and the darkness that might not be denied fell upon his eyes. He remembered his strength as a dream of long ago and knew that the time had come for him to lay aside his scepter. So, shortly after they began tearing aw^ay the old church where he had reigned for forty years, he offered his resignation. The little congregation of fifty had now grown to five hundred and, though they knew 228 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS everything he told them of his failing strength to be true, they tenderly refused his request. That was in 1907, on August 11th, and he took it as a good omen of promise that he might yet be able to finish out his full half-century of service as their pastor. For two more years he laboured and the Power kept blessing his work. His congregation of citizens, college boys, and orphanage children had passed the five hundred mark and even the new church was taxed to seat them. More and more it had become evident that first the Sunday Schools and then the congregations of orphans and townspeople should best be divided for their mu- tual good. The final separation he describes : " This day. May 11, 1909, was an epoch in the history of the Thorn well Orphanage. The teachers and pupils were organized into a church. The services were held on Tuesday night. Dr. Law presiding. One hundred and sixty- three members were enrolled. The name of Thornwell Memorial was selected. So another of my long cher- ished plans has been carried out. The First Church retains three hundred members. For the present no change will be made in the hour of worship until our Sabbath School is organized. The church school will be fearfully depleted and they will have to work. It will take wisdom now to guide the ship aright." And then one day, August 10, 1909, in Washington, hearing and seeing poorly, he was struck by a carriage, so severe a blow as to fracture his shoulder and render him unconscious and helpless. Kind friends carried him to the hospital and soon his loved ones were about him. As he slowly recovered his strength he found that all his physical resources had lessened. Especially GIVING UP THE CHUKCH 229^ was his deafness increased. The accident had hap- pened m the forty.fifth year of his pastorate. On the preceding May 28th he had written : "Forty-five years ago, this day, I was ordained to the gospel ministry and made pastor over the three httle churches of Clinton, Shady Grove, and Duncan's Creek, seventy-three souls in all ! The churches or- g^nized out of the Clinton church alone are Clinton iirst, 333 members; Thorn well Memorial, 163- Eock- bridge, 23; Clinton Second, 12; and Sloan's Chapel (coloured), about 25. These are all well located and eventually will grow. I propose giving five more years of good work to the Clinton First Church, if God will, before I lay down the pastorate. I would prefer mak- ing the change now to the Thornwell Memorial, but whatever is for the good of the cause I will obediently But it was hard to say good-bye. Nor was it within the power of his people to know how he yearned for the privilege of continuing to be their pastor. To give up his pulpit seemed not far different from ffivine- ud his life. To leave them was to die. ^ 6 F Yet knowing that the time had come, he took the next step : "This afternoon I am to be installed pastor of the Thornwell Memorial Church. This is the last link of the Cham devised so long ago by me, the idea being complete separation between the First Church and the orphanage with a view to loosing me from the pastorate of the former. My accident in Washington has hurried my resignation, showing as it did the tenderness of the people for me. But I am now so sorely afflicted with deafness, which has been greatly increased by the 230 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS accident, that I feel incompetent to do pastoral work, and unless there is improvement my duty to resign will be so clear that there will be absolutely no alternative." And so the throne room was changed but it was still a sceptered kingdom and a tireless old ruler wielded his power. Within a month he was writing : " On Sunday I conducted the morning worship at the orphanage assembly room. I preached at 11 a. m. and conducted the communion. I attended both Sab- bath Schools ; I moderated three meetings of sessions, received ten members, and conducted the baptism serv- ice. I am proud of m}^ day's work." It was two more years before the parting came. Then, like some Moses who was going apart to view from higher mount the Promised Land before his translation hour ; like some Elijah who, all knew, was to be taken from them that day in fire and glory, he prepared to say good-bye. And he wrote in his diary : " It is hard to say good- bye." " I have at last, led I trust by the same kind hand that has guided me ever, been enabled by His grace to lay down the pastorate of my beloved charge, the First Presbyterian Church of Clinton. The session met. I told them my physical condition, my inability to discharge the duties of the pastorate, and handed them my resignation. I need not say that this is a bitter trial. I have loved the church most tenderly. I have given it my soul. But I realize that my work- ing days as a pastor are over and that I must yield to the inevitable. The congregation is called to meet and accept it — two weeks from to-day. I will have the rest quickly done and before the first of August the GIVING UP THE CHUKCH 231 tie will be severed. Even as I began my ministry so I end It here— with J6$a iv v4naroi^ o^q>r With this royal shout of joy he had begun his journal of work in Clinton a haif-century before It had changed but slightly in all those years, adding little by little the note of triumph. "As I think of my poor eyes and their waning sight my hope is God. I feel happy that I have had the courage to give up the pastorate of the First Church. I am happy because it was right for me to do it,— and yet what regrets come to me as I think of the long lifetime of service ended. It means to me as nothing else could,— the coming end. A few more years and then I shall know even as also I am known." It is well to go into his heart and walk up and down m It at this supreme moment of his life, this hour of self-abnegation. Conscious as ever of his meaning to the world we may still see that realization m his words as he writes : " In presenting my resignation to you of the pastoral charge I have had in my hands for these forty-seven years, it is only natural that I should do so with great emotion. When I came to you forty-seven years ago, your fathers and mothers received me as if I had been their own son. As the years passed by I was still more tenderly connected with them, by uniting them and their children after them in marriage, by laying in the grave those who were near and dear to you, and by receiving into the kingdom of God more than a thou- sand souls. But even a long life must end its course at last ; the time has come when I can no longer serve you efficiently, and when I must ask you to sever the tie that I had hoped would only be broken by death. 232 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS In asking you to unite with me in going before Presby- tery with a request for a dissolution of the pastoral re- lation between us, I am not influenced solely by the pressure of other work now resting upon me, nor by the feeling that my health is suffering from double labours, but rather by the fact that no matter how we think of it, it is ever impossible for one man to do two men's work, and do it well. For several years past I have recognized my inability faithfully to discharge my pastoral duties. I found that I was unable though not unwilling to do all the work that ought to be done, and that the church was suffering and indeed suffering severely because of it. Yery much against my wishes, but driven thereto by my own ideas of pastoral re- sponsibility, I have been compelled to take this step. I could bear to suffer myself, but I could not bear to see the church of Christ suffer. In giving up the work among you I am giving up the object for which I have lived for all these years." Then the congregation looked upon their dear old preacher and knew that he was right, though every word was one of pain that he had written them. They thought of his three hundred orphans and considered their duty to them. In the gentleness of love they accepted his resignation and the most inspiring village pastorate in the history of America was ended. " I preached my farewell sermon to-day," he wrote on August 27, 1911, " Ephesians 3 : 14-19. It was a very hard task to do. I then walked down out of the pulpit and out of the back door. No one on earth knows how much it hurts, and yet I am glad. The long expected has come at last. So comes also the en- trance within the veil." GIVING UP THE CHURCH 233 But there was One who walked with him. He also had foreseen this hour, He who never forgets nor fails. He knew how this old broken-down servant of His had toiled for Him in an utter abandon of unselfishness. He had watched him for four decades as he refused to take a salary from the orphanage depending on the little ill-paid remuneration from the church he loved. He had looked over his shoulder one day and watched him write these words in his diary : "The Board voted me ;^100 per month salary last June to begin July 1st. I am taking this and placing it to the president's salary and pension fund. I will place the interest to the principal till it reaches ^10,000 and will then resign the church and retire on a pen- sion ! which will be the interest of that fund — amount- ing from ;^50 to $60 a month and will be enough." And then during his illness in 1902 : "Notwithstanding the fact that from July 18th to January 1st I did no pastoral visiting, I find to my sur- prise that my salary is paid in full for the first time (on January 1st) perhaps for twenty years. Well, it encourages me. My church is alwaj^s faithful, and financially speaking I am ' passing rich ' on ^150 a year." And this also but yesterday : " I am back home improved somewhat in symptoms, but feeling like an old wreck, yet with the soul within me that is that of the gay bark, all sails set, and skim- ming along the salt sea. In truth I am wanting to do all things and yet am able to do nothing." And having seen all this He had acted. One day a man in Atlanta, John Eagan was his name, thinking, by whose impulse he may or may not 234 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS have known, that it was time to provide an endowment for the president's chair at Thornwell, wrote as much to the president and offered ;$5,000 on condition that the remainder necessary be given by the end of that ye3ii\ Then the good true friend whose heart He had so often touched, Mrs. Nettie F. McCormick of Chicago, added the necessary ^20,000, conditioning her gift upon the interest of the sum going to Wm. Plumer Jacobs during the remainder of his life and thereafter to the Thornwell Orphanage. And so it turned out that God had kept it all for him, adding interest to principal, because he trusted in Him. " I have found out " — so he had written years before — " that if I work for God, He will take care of me ! " XXII THE BATTLE WITH DEATH Gone the past days, come the last days, Come the Autumn days once more. Short the light time, long the night time, On the lake we floated o'er ; But the face-dreams, all the grace-dreams Light us to the other shore. THERE is a beautiful chorus in the Bacchae of Euripides, translated by Gilbert Murray, which runs : ^' Happy he, on the weary sea Who hath fled the tempest and won the haven ; Happy whoso hath risen free Above his striving, for strangely graven Is the orb of life, so that one and another In power and wealth doth outpass his brother ; And men in their millions float and flow, And seethe with a million hopes as leaven. And they win their Will or they miss their Will, And the hopes are dead or are pined for still j But whoso doth know. As the long days go, That to live is joy, hath found his heaven.^^ It is this joy of living that we find in all great souls which constitutes their highest ecstasy and their deepest woe ; for as on the one hand it fills the dullest moment with interest, on the other it accentuates the sensitive- ness of the soul gazing upon the inevitable end. Who 235 236 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS that has lived long on earth has not felt the force of those silent walls inimitably described by Poe as they, so quietlj^ and surely, draw together until their victim is crushed. For death begins to come long before old age. At the topmost point of the speeding bullet's arc the descent begins. At the hottest point of its cosmic fire the sun commences to cool. At the very moment when a man is strongest and most virile he begins to die. And as the quality of matter may be determined by the way it takes fire so may the souls of men be de- scribed by the way they take death. Some dully, as an ox that is slaughtered ; some bitterly, as if abused by a friend ; some afraid with a terror unspeakable as if it were an unnameable horror ; and some face it as a noble antagonist with whom each step is to be disputed, an enemy indeed but a teacher withal. Of such a sort was Wm. P. Jacobs. Perhaps the highest point of happiness in his life came in his thirty-seventh year. His church was steadily getting on her feet ; his orphanage was happily though anxiously founded; his magazine was at last safe ; his high school was secure ; his health was at the best it ever attained ; his heart was brave and strong ; beautiful dreams were in his soul and around him in a Christian home his wife and children were gathered. Then, on January 16, 1879, there came the first great catastrophe and with Theseus over Phaedra he mourned : '' My children motherless and my home undone, Since thou art vanished quite ; Purest of hearts that e'er the wandoring sun Touched, or the star-eyed splendour of the night. '^ THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 237 He was just about half through his life when half of his life went away. Thenceforth the Great Sadness settled upon him. Very little did he say about it but very much did he grieve, and in his journal no anni- versary of that dark date came without a line in memory of her love and in hope of the ultimate re- union. From that day, though they came slowly yet very surely, the enemy forces gathered about the citadel of his strength and his life was in a state of siege. The first point of definite attack was his voice which nearly failed him for many months completely and at intervals thereafter until the end. His general health was never good. Even from his boyhood he was often sick. As a lad at college his eyes kept paining him and his deaf- ness was at its incipient stage. Physically he was very poorly equipped from the beginning and he knew it but was resolved to make every year count. In the closing decade of the nineteenth century two other blows feU heavily : the death of his father of which we have already read and that of his " mother " which came in 1899. Of this last he writes : "I have been away in Nashville to see my poor old dymg mother— at least ray mother for these forty-two years. She died on the 17th of June and is to be buried to-day in this town of Clinton. "So ends a long, lovely, useful life. Dear old Mother, how much you loved me ! I was not your own child but you never seemed to know the difference. You are in the presence now of the King of Glory and of all you love. We shall meet again. Mother, in the best of all countries. Till then, farewell." As the century ended he seemed to realize that the 238 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS new lustrum was to be for him one of a losing fight with death. " I v/ant to live a little while in this won- derful twentieth century of which I have heard so much," he exclaimed, and then more soberly : " The new day, The new year. The new century. " The first word I uttered in public service this year was Jesus. May that word be the guiding thought of this year for me. " At midnight I prayed God for His presence and the gift of eternal life. At cock-crow and at daybreak I prayed for the same. " I am living in a new age. Since last night I seem to have closed up the lids of a mighty volume. I am saying farewell to the years gone. This is year one of the twentieth century." And in that new century the same strange com- pulsion of God was upon him. The Presence kept urging him on and on and on, even in old age, to new fields of endeavour. " That is the reason I keep working and planning," he testifies. " God is with me and for His sake and because of His presence I shall work for them till I die. I have a feverish desire to do much, very much. Humbly trusting Him, I shall press on, and on, and on. My craving is for eternal life ! I do not know how it is to come. I have no proof but the divine word and the divine presence that I shall live again. But I hang my life on that hook. It bears me up. It is strong." From now on we see a terrific struggle. Death, — THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 239 slow, creeping, remorseless death, the kind of a death that will not hurry, that cannot be made to hurry, kept nagging him, browbeating him, tantalizing him, threat- ening him, choking him, taking away from him first this means of consciousness and then that ; sapping his vitality, destroying his senses, as if Some One intended to test the quality of that man to see whether he was indeed the sort He had intended to make him. And of all this His subject was fully conscious : " The years are going by and I am growing older. Often the longing comes into my heart to live life over again. The days have swept by me, till now even my children are bended and their brows are furrowed. I am nearing my sixtieth birthday. For years the same catarrhal trouble that made me deaf in one ear has raged incessantly with its ringing bells and beating drums. Through my head admonitions are plentiful that my youth is gone, my vigorous manhood well spent, and the day of the ascension not far away. But oh, how busy I am ! Two hundred children call me Father and look to me for guidance. I need strength from the source of all strength, and indeed He will not fail me." There are men whose lives are valuable out of all proportion to anything they may have said or written or done. In a world where " conduct is three-fourths of life " the quality of the living is paramount. Neither Providence, which is the will of God, nor purpose, which is the will of man, permits many lives to excel all others. Once perhaps in a generation these com- bine to create a situation where the common light of day is eclipsed and the corona of a vast sun-life may be studied. It may be noted that in each case it is darkness that does it. 240 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS Indeed the deeper the gloom of the overhanging shadow, the livelier became the interest of the man within in the source and meaning of that blackness. The less he had left the more he had given. *' I never lie down to rest now but that two thoughts come to me with great power," he tells us. " One is the shortening years that I must spend on earth. The other is an intense longing while I am here to break through the wall that stands between this world and the next. There surely is an indubitable way, some- where, some means by which the soul and its creator may deal with each other. If the ether bears a wire- less message across the ocean so that the two who con- verse, though invisible, are yet really in touch, there should be, there must be an equally palpable though as yet undiscovered avenue of approach to God. Perhaps at present a charged wire would not be more deadly to the body than would a breaking away of the wall of partition to the soul. But that such a way will yet be safely opened to the children of men, I doubt not. Till that way is made manifest what folly to seek, as some do, to communicate with departed spirits. We surely could find out God before we find these frail things called men. " Oh ! to know God, to know God ! " So that was what this struggle with death was bringing him ! Then surely it was not wholly a robber. It is a holy hour when we are privileged to look into the inner deeps of the soul of a great and true man searching for the light in the final darkness. To live is a thing so infinitely beautiful that there is nothing a man would take in exchange for it. Yet he says : " I am not asking for long life. He knows I want it THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 241 for His sake and for the furtherance of the good things for which He has bidden me work. But that is for Him to decide. JS'o part of my unconditioned prayer is a plea for length of days. I leave that with sincerest joy in His hands. I am sure He will give it to me if it is for the best." Dr. W. C. Gray, long time editor of the Continent^ wrote once that the first sensation of a man who dis- covered that he had grown old was a shock of sur- prise. So when the sixtieth birthday of our subject came he tells his journal ; " My plans are as though I were to live a hundred years. My preparations are as though I had reached the last year of my life. The spirit of immortal youth is as strong in me as ever. It seems impossible that I should die. I look with amazement at myself in the glass and I wonder if it be truly I, this image of an old fellow that I see there ! Sometimes I think that this sentiment is born of the conviction that I shall never die — that even now I am living in eternity — the God of life dwelling in me. So my sixtieth birthday shall be as was my fiftieth, my fortieth, my thirtieth — a look- ing steadily forward. I have no time to look back. There is work, a great amount of it ahead." So the years passed and each day grew darker, each voice softer and lower until one day : "I left Macon for Atlanta at 4 a. m. Met Dr. C in his office at eleven o'clock. V^ery kindly and gently he told me that the trouble with my eye was cataract and that I was doomed to blindness or a severe operation in that eye. He urged me ' just to bear it patiently and not have an operation, depending on the other eye for service.' I trust in God. I have no 242 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS doubt but that the touch of the Master's hand can cure me, as it did many another in his time, so I am to en- dure blindness in one eye and deafness in one ear and the eye and ear infinitely valuable even if not much ac- count. I am intending to put my physical foes in my Lord's hands. I shall fight them to the bitter end. Lord, be my portion. Thou art my helper and I trust in Thee." So he closed the year as he himself described it with one eye and half an ear — but then they were enough. Thus, failing, he deepened the meaning of his life to all. In 1908 his sixty-sixth birthday came. Having burnt his candle fiercely and it being a shorter candle than most he was already over seventy. As he takes stock of his days he writes : " This is my sixty -sixth birthday. It makes me very serious when I think of how swiftly I approach the time of old age. I do not fear death. My certain trust is in the unfailing right hand of my dear Lord. I do not know about the eternal life but I believe ! and to my Lord Jesus be the glory. "I am not, however, planning or preparing for death. Per contra, for a vigorous, active, useful life. I shall fight clean down to the end against every physical ailment and shall scheme that every day shall be one of vigour and activity. I just decline to be anything else than a blessing to the world. It is very true that I must lay aside some of the work. I do, but it shall be mine to see that others who take it up move off on right lines and do it better than I." All his lifetime, he said once, he had been pressed by the thought that this life is for work and eternity for rest. And even Riverside, with its summer vaca- THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 243 tion quiet, worried him a little unless pencil and paper were near at hand and messengers constantly going back and forth from Clinton. His vacations were only variations of work. There was something singularly prophetic in the lines he wrote on the morrow of his next birthday, for they were penned just seven years before his last on earth, his year of darkness : '' I have just received * Eobert Hardy's Seven Days ' — only seven days to live. I am now asking—-* What shall I do effectively for the Lord in the next seven years f To-morrow is my sixty-seventh birthday. I have been wanting to be an active pastor in my dear church until my fiftieth pastoral year ends— May 28, 1914. Five years more." It is interesting to note how intimate a relationship his spiritual life and blessings had with his physical health. Because of the one he was constantly en- couraged as to the other. Because God was with him he felt new vitality and power : " I am altogether unwilling to believe that I am old or that there is to be any termination to my usefulness and so I am pressing right on to larger endeavour. I have carried out so m.any of my proposals that I have gotten firmly persuaded with David — ' The Lord is on ray side ! ' and in His strength I shall go on to four- score years and ten, which would give me a lifetime still before me." But this did not suit his antagonist. There must be some new stroke different from the slow failing of eyes, and ears, and vital organs, for it was quite evident that if these were his only weapons the battle would be too long. Came the accident at Washington and since the 244 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS office of this chapter is to uncover a wonderful soul fighting a marvellous battle with the arch-enemy of all mankind, we ask him to tell it in his own words. " Just four weeks ago this day I was knocked down in the street, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, and run over by a surrey with four people in it. With a broken shoulder, lacerated side, a bleeding throat and a dozen minor wounds, lying on the pavement of a strange city one would look for no comfort, yet com- fort there was. Strangers summoned the ambulance and got me to the emergency hospital in an unconscious condition. Then I spent two wretched days and nights, and one morning on opening my eyes I found Dillard standing by my side. It w^as as though I had seen an angel from heaven. His practical eye soon saw my needs and got me into fine shape and into a private room and gave me perfect attendance. Nurses, order- lies, doctors, all made the days and nights more com- fortable. I spent eight days in the hospital and was then brought home. Florence and MoUie had reached Washington the next day after Dillard and oh ! how sweet their ministrations were. Nobody ever had better children than God has given me. They brought me safe home, home ! home ! Day by day, with lov- ing care far beyond my dreams, my dear children and the noble people of Clinton have watched over me, nursed me, fed me, ministered to me, sent me loving messages. My children from far and near and friends I never heard of have sent the tenderest of messages. I have had the pleasure of seeing my dear brothers and sisters Henry and Mamie Sperry, Charles and Bessie Little and all their children. So I have been brought to this day with an arm fast bound to my side, and am THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 245 sitting on my front piazza in the early morning for the first time. I will go over to morning prayers. I want to go over to Florence's for dinner. I feel the thrill of returning health. Thank God, I have not murmured nor complained. The dear Lord has been with me. With more pain than in all my lifetime before, I have yet felt how good and merciful He is. It was worth it all to have such showers of blessings. My broken collar bone still pains me and I write with difficulty, but I am getting to my work again. "On Sunday last I went down to the Thornweli Memorial to be present at the organization of the or- phanage Sabbath School. Our First Church Sabbath School was also organized on the same day. The com- bined schools made a showing of four hundred and fifty pupils— the largest ever." From all which it would appear that death could get very poor comfort from his feat. " I am not well," he exclaims, " but I am glad of heart. My life has been ever under divine protection. Oh, it is a great thing to know God and I know Him ! " So there must needs be another stroke. The other eye must go. " I have just seen Dr. Parker," he writes in Charles- ton in March, 1911, " and he has sentenced me. The trouble in my eye, as in the other, is cataract. Well, God's will be done. And yet I pray Him to do the best thing for me. He knows what it is. After a while my sight possibly may be restored by an opera- tion. In the meantime I will give much time to God's word— until I can read no more. I will preach as never before and I will trust myself wholly into the hands of the dear Lord. It will be a year at least be- 246 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS fore I can have the operation. It comforts me to think that some good and skilled physician, even such a one as the dear Lord Himself, may yet help me by his wonderful skill. In God will I trust. To Him be praise." " There is really no reason why I should get ready to die yet. Though as to that, I do not need to get ready. I have been ready for forty years past." Now we watch him, old, sick, blind, deaf and wonder if he is discouraged by pain and weakness. What good can religion do such a man ? He answers : " Threatened as I am with loss of sight and hearing, and without teeth with which properly to masticate my food, and that too at the threshhold of my seventy -first year, when most men lay their burdens down, it would seem as if I should be ready to turn over my tasks to younger hands. And yet at all these calamities I laugh. This soul of mine is just about as young as ever ; nor can it understand what has happened to its poor encasement that it wabbles so, and does such poor service." So far there doesn't seem to be much of a sting about death. Even the total darkness of the blind could only bring him the dread of not being able to work : " How beautiful the world is and how happy I am that I am alive and am still able to work. I dread the days of darkness, when I can no longer work, but am hoping for those good times when, with all my loved ones, I will be forever happy and forever young. " I wonder if any living man is as happy in his work as I am. I dearly love it. I thank God dearly for having permitted me to do what I have done as His steward and His ambassador. My life is now in the THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 247 late evening but I am as happy as a boy in the recall of the joys of yesterday." In March, 1915, he was seventy-three years of age as years are measured but a decade older in decreasing activity. The intensity of the struggle had grown but he had reasons of his own for wishing to reach a greater age. " For my children's sake I want to pass my eightieth year. It will encourage my children. They will see that life is possible even with a very poor, infirm body, and that life is worth while in old age. My friends sent me in many flowers and sweets. I am very glad that the flowers came. They are appropriate to my spring-time birthday." The very next month he noted the end of a good servant that had for many years helped him in all his laborious tasks. " I have had a sad heart all day, all because I have parted with a dear old friend. All the light in my left eye has faded out,— the one covered with a cataract. But, thank God, I can still see with my right eye. I can still use it for reading, and that is a great and won- derful comfort. How long it will last me and whether the other can be given back to me fills me with anxiety, but I will wait for God's time, fully assured that when He has shut me off from hope and happiness here He will give me a great and wide door into His kingdom. But to-day brought me pleasure too. I preached well, with a good clear, strong voice, two good sermons. I received three members into the church, so beginning the year well. O Lord, help Thou me." So, when one of his sons published a volume of poems he selected this as the one he felt 248 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS Five little panes of dusty glass, And an unmeasured universe await ! Yet, beautiful, O ye lovely forms I see. And passing sweet, O luscious fruits I taste, And charmed voices, rapturing words I hear, And odours winged with Heaven's breaths I smell, And touch ! O God, what wondrous things are these I touch ? Five little panes of dusty glass j mist, O mystery ! And brief the time, ah me, so short the time, To taste, to smell, to touch, to hear, to look Through such confused, dusty, dazed ways. So long a while between the moments when, One (a Shadow dimly seen and heard) Doth wipe away the smudges from the panes. So many half-lit worlds to see. So many muffled voices hear, Such countless forms of things to feel, Such breaths, breast- warmed of Heaven's draught, Such untried sweets to taste of, but — Only a momentary glance, Through five tiny, smeared panes of glass ! Yet, O so beautiful ! The odour of them is a universe ! So fair their favours, so entrancing sweet they seem, So pleasing is their voice, so good the touch of all — 1 crave one pane the more, One crystal pane — and then — O worlds, O Infinite, O God ! THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 249 Silence and darkness — the two beautiful senses going slowly I Each year, fewer words and lower ; each day, a lesser light. And the books, the time had come to tell them farewell, these lifelong companions so silent but with such compelling voices. Of them he writes : "I have in my library some three thousand books. These have become in part a history of myself. I have lived in the books and they have been absorbed in me. For the most part they are good and useful books, and I am desirous that in some suitable way they should be kept together and made a monument to ray memory. Old dry books are a very suitable memorial of an old, dried up man. I want my children to see to this. There are quite a number that are valuable. There is the only complete set of Our Monthly in existence. My shorthand library is perhaps the best in the South. I have coftiplete files of the Minutes of the Assembly and of Enoree Presbytery. I have a complete set of the Southern Presbyterian Hemew. My theological library contains the ancient orthodox views. I have about twenty volumes of my own mother's and five hundred to six hundred of my father's, some books from Dr. Thorn well's library. On the whole the collection is unique and it ought not to be scattered. A hundred years hence it would be an object lesson. My hope is that the Thorn well Orphanage may have a great library building some day, and that one room may he set apart as a Meinorial Room of the founder of the orphanage and that my hoohs may he a part of the furnishing of that room. This is only a little of my folly, but even wise men are foolish at times." That was a sad, sad day on which he knew that he had read his last line. JSTor could another interpret 250 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS their message through ears that could not hear. He whom God had loved so well and to whom so many favours had been shown was now exalted above most of the favoured few in that he was chosen to show forth the marvellous spirit of man battling with death and losing by slow degrees, yet all the while happily teaching in the dim light of the gloaming, listening in the ever deepening silence for God. And for her also — " Just fifty years ago this day," he wrote on April 20, 1915, " I was married to Mary Jane Dillard ! Oh, how I loved her ! And now the years that have passed, filled as they have been with struggles and successes, almost terrify me. I look forward but the sun is riding low and the horizon is full of dust. Yet beyond the sun is the welcome into a fairer day and the return to love and trust immeasurable." From that hour it had been a lonely fight. His children growing up left him with only his orphans. Though son and daughter lived in Clinton and repeat- edly offered him their homes he would not have it so. It was as if he accepted the challenge of death and would fight it out, man to man, until the end. In such a state he could only spend most of his time lifting up his prayer for the presence and blessing of God. It seemed to take the place of a mass of work. He kept planning and building, saying, ^' Ambitious projects in an old man may not seem wise but he who lives in eternity never grows old." Even poor receipts for his orphans could not terrify him. " I am sending for six more little children," he says. " I always do this when supplies run short." In 1913 he became practically stone deaf, and in 1916, as the light grew dimmer and dimmer, his writing in his diary became more and more O O THE BATTLE WITH DEATH 251 irregular until, in a hand that disclosed his inability to see the lines of the page, he wrote, on November 14, 1916, the last entry in his own handwriting: " Nearly blind, I go to Dalton on Friday to the Synod of Georgia." And there, to a Synod that, having adjourned, waited to hear his last message until his belated train came, he committed his orphans, and though he could not see their tears nor hear their prayers for him and them, he knew that all would be well. Back to Atlanta he went, happy in the hope that the operation on his eye would restore his sight. The operation was performed on the twenty-first but it was not successful. The darkness deepened. The great hope vanished. He was blind. But unconquered. As soon as his health permitted, he left Atlanta and went busily at work again. He wanted to preach, for the time might be short. He had a book to write. The investments of the orphanage must all be looked after. New concrete sidewalks must be built, — oh, there were so many things to be done and so short a while to do them in ! And besides if he was to die it must be at work, not while being nursed even by his children, in a far-off city. So to work he went — back to preaching and to editing, to the holding of meetings of the session, to his orphans' Sunday School and to writing his book on immortality. When spring came he went up to his last Presbytery, his church of the orphans reporting three hundred and thirty-six on the roll, the largest in the county and one of the largest in the Presbytery. When commencement days came in June the receipts for the year showed ;^70,000, the largest in the history 252 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS of the orphanage and the endowment fund had almost reached ;^200,000. The same month he made a trip to Beaufort and a severe cold settled on his lungs. In August he went over on a little outing, his last trip to visit his children in Atlanta. Then he hurried back to his home — to his church with its session, every member of whom would lead in public prayer ; to his preaching and work. Sunday, September 9th, came. He made it a very busy Sabbath. Sunday School in the morn- ing, two preaching services, a meeting of his session, visits to his orphan children, a Sabbath typical of the thousands like it he had spent in the same good cause. Tired at last, he laid himself down that night in peace to sleep — in the Perfect Silence, in the Deep Darkness. And his battle with death was ended. He had won ! w XXIII THE SOUL OF A SCHOOL And when to what unimaged lea, On what weird wave I ride, In midst of what vast mystery. On swell of what new tide, If One who waits by fiotsamed sea Should draw me to His side — On that strange beach should stoop for me — I shall be satisfied. HEN a man dies he loses everything except his life. Those who come after him divide his pos- sessions. Even his personal effects pass eventually into hands he never knew, or they are destroyed by purpose or accident. His reputation diminishes ; his glory fades ; hour by hour his memory perishes ; only his life abides. Forgetting the assurance of confident words where- with we speak of the future life we write now of this hour and this earth. We view institutions and know them to be persons. They breathe, they move, they live. And their souls are the souls of some who were or are ; who breathed into them the breath of life until they became living spirits. That is what Emer- son meant when he said that every institution is but the lengthened shadow of one man, and Carlyle when he described history as the life stories of the world's great men. So institutions are begotten in the wild 253 254: THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS ecstasies of passionate love of will for Will, of dream for Dream, of spirit for Spirit. Thus three great chains bind a soul to its school — one is the attitude of the creator to that which he has made, one is the devotion of the inventor to that which he has dreamed and one is the love of a father for his child. And these three are one. For the soul of dreamer, creator and father passes into the school, in- forms its buildings, breathes softly over its campus and becomes the atmosphere, the spirit of the institution. The ideal building is a man. In an educational building, for example, every lineament of the ideal character should be drawn in its face. Honesty should be there with all its vast contempt for veneer and shod- diness ; Reliability should be there with its durability as of stone ; Permanence should be there speaking of to-morrow when the present is yesterday ; Dignity should be there to weave its outlines into every life that comes within its pale ; Reverence should be there with its upward pointing hand — all these should be read in its face as in the face of a man, and every other quality of the ideal expressing in structural strength and archi- tectural beauty a personality distinct and perfect. Im- perfections in a millionaire's palace are permissible, but not in an institution whose perpetual office is to teach, to make character, to beget children after its kind. So the spirit of a man is revealed in the institution he founds, and after he has gone that spirit abides ; it was his life given to it. It lives after he dies by the will of a successor of kindred spirit and similar soul. Therefore, as we look at the Thornwell Orphanage, we view really its founder. He is more plainly seen there than in his church which came to him in form THE SOUL OF A SCHOOL 255 and creed from out of the ages, or in his college which he soon committed to the hands of others. It was into Thornwell Orphanage that he breathed the spirit of his life. How shall we characterize that spirit ? It was so human and so divine, its elements so manifold that one is puzzled looking for a point of entrance to its under- standing until he suddenly is startled by its face. For the outlines read there, in campus, and building, and catalogue, and discipline, and school and church, and design, and purpose are the features of its father. As his soul had expressed itself in his own face so also in the face of tixis home of the fatherless, his dreams and hopes, his prayers and high ambitions, his tender love for the helpless, his mighty devotion to God had found another form of revelation. And as we study those features these are the things we read in them : We see a man who believed that orphans should be educated as well as clothed. This was the new idea which he injected into orphan-care in America. The fact that a child was fatherless did not, in his opinion, deprive it of the right to think and learn. Hitherto orphan homes had taken the form of great barracks into which hundreds of the unfortunate parent less were huddled until they could be bound out or adopted. This is still what an orphanage means in the greater part of America. This man built homes for his or- phans better in every way than that he built for him- self and his own children. He found for each home a mother. He built schools for them and provided teachers and libraries and museums and added a technical school where iron and wood-working and 256 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS printing and cobbling were taught them. To these he added a farm and a dairy so that dollars might be saved as well as a school of agriculture founded. For the girls^he provided classes in housekeeping, cooking, sew- ing, laundering, canning, covering every feature of their future home life. And having taught them to think and to work he added playgrounds for fun. We see a man who believed that religion is just as important as any other food. Having built a church tower so high that it dominated the village, he built another so high that it dominated the orphanage. He loved no landscape without such a principal motif. As a consequence no child, no person ever entered the Thorn well Orphanage who was not soon saturated with its atmosphere which was ever heavily laden with prayer and hymns and Bible texts. With these the day began and with these it ended. Each morning, often beneath only the starlight of winter, at 6 : 60 o'clock Eastern time, the children, having finished their breakfast in Memorial Hall, marched to the semi- nary chapel to pray and praise. Prayer-meeting came on Thursday night ; blessings before each meal ; Sunday School and two church services on each Sabbath ; these were the external manifestations of the internal fires. He never tired of them and the children grew to love them so that when they had left their home for the inevitable journey into the world the outer life seemed strangely insipid and meaningless, lacking in depth and ideal. For it was his purpose to give his children schools mental, and manual, and moral not only, but to add yet this highest gift — God. So it came to pass that a new thing appeared under the sun, an orphanage that was a home and school THE SOUL OF A SCHOOL 257 built and operated for the orphans and in order to make plainer the meaning we add, not for the officers and teachers. Of course in such an institution no child was bound in any more than he was bound out. No legal tie forced the little fatherless inmate of Thorn- well either to come or to go. He might come when there could be found room for him. He could go when he pleased to leave the love and kindness and joy he found there. Nor was he exploited a^ an orphan. 1 his last he forgot in the discovery that he had a Father who was on earth as often as He was in heaven In relying on that Father he found himself amply pro- vided for both as to funds and family; since it seemed that those whom he had lost he would some day have again. All this the teachers taught him, having been heraselves taught. Every rule they lived by, every law they worked by, every ideal they thought by was for ruled the greatest among them became servants of pointed; on it all counsel centered. The Thornwel Orphanage was not built in order that many offl et bTl w r f ^''; ''^^"^ """^ P-^«°-' be p^rotected by law and custom from over much labour, but that little milt Teal fh^""f '"^'^ ""^^ "^^^^^ -^ therefrom s^mSiarvTbi? T*""" ^'"^'^ '^g'"°'°&' ^« ^s old STe Lo d t"'.v 'IT'' ^PP--»gly. - the fear and L .1'' ^^'' ^'^^ P^P^^^ ^^ ga^-e himself and he expected a similar gift from all about him. It was the little boy again wandering among museums and hbraries and bookstores and churches and orphan homes of the ancient city by the sea and planning to 258 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS give himself to God. The orphanage was one way in which he did it. For he reconstructed his life there. Was it the col- lege that he loved and the dear old Chrestomathic Society ? He built one. Was it the quiet alcove of the Charleston library, rich with the stores of past wisdoms ? He built one. Was it a museum that seemed very precious as he remembered the happy hours he had spent poring over rare coins or studying the outlines of ancient dinosaurs? He built one, and having spent a long life in collecting such coins gave them to it. Was it a church with a tower like St. Michael's that floated ever in his vision and a ceme- tery with their white memorials clustered around it ? He built one. All that God gave him he gave back to God. And in giving it he expressed in form of stone and timber the pure and gentle spirit of the truly great. It is often thought of the light of certain radio active substances that it consists of infinitely minute particles of the incandescent substances emitted at a high rate of speed so that a beam of such light is a part of the substance. Such was the light on his campus, coming as it did direct from his own flaming soul. JSTo wonder that other leaders and other denomina- tions were soon following in his footsteps as nearly as they might. They heard, and came, and saw and went away and built likewise. They liked his cottage sys- tem ; they liked his technical school and farm, and manual training courses — for both boys and girls ; they liked all absence of legal bonds and the love that was substituted instead ; they liked the insistence on the educational idea throughout and the religious tone THE SOUL OF A SCHOOL 259 everywhere ; they liked the faith and courage that had made all these possible. Therefore, scattered here and there through sixteen Southern and many Eastern and Western states, similar institutions sprang up following this working model until many times over his prayer was answered : " Lord, ever be mindful of us and help the children. When I am gone, raise up one like-minded to do this work that it may go on forever ! " And into all this work he carried a soul as sweet and pure as a woman's. Here is a prayer taken from his private journal, flooding its page with light. " I love Him because He has heard my prayers. I ought also to thank Him more than I have for having kept me pure from my infancy to this day, fitting me for the charge of so many girls and women as are under my protection. Never once have I broken His law of purity nor have I ever taken His name in vain nor have I ever once been under the influence of liquor, — nor once have I taken that which was not mine, since I learned the right. I have never bet or played a game of cards. I thank God for all this." Such was the soul of his school. XXIV LIFE AND LEAVES To roam, to rest, to reverie, whither Speedeth mortal swallow ; Shoreward, see ! from every-hither Wings o'er crest and hollow ! To love he fares and every-thither Love doth follow. THERE is a strange law whereunder we live by whose ruling all that we have is bought with a price. If we want muscle we must work, if we wish brains we must think ; even God gives nothing away. Occasionally some man finds a pearl of great price and straightway goes and sells all that he has and buys it. Such a man was W. P. Jacobs. Through all his lifetime he was obsessed with the idea of God. As a little boy we find him actually loving God, with a love deeper and more intense than that he felt for father or mother, or the " noble art of phonography." It never occurred to him that any other life was possible for him than the one he was going to live, wherein he gave all he had and received whatever God was pleased to give. So he adopted as his life motto : " Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not." With it he began and with it he ended his days. The record of his life is the record of one who 260 LIFE AND LEAVES 261 abandoned all hope of honour or preferment, whose friend was poverty, and whose companion sacrifice. Those who knew him best think of him as a man who had no pleasures except those associated with either re- ligion or education. The things most men are inter- ested in as fads failed to interest him. After a while he gave up his home itself and made his abode with the orphans. His manner of life among them was like their own. He arose regularly at about six each morn- ing and after dressing by a fire he himself had built read his Greek and Hebrew Testaments until breakfast at 6 : 30. In this way he was able to finish the perusal of his Greek Testament fifty-seven times and of the Hebrew an unrecorded number. In the winter cold and darkness, or in the dewy morn of summer he ate his breakfast with the orphans and thence, still under the stars in winter, he went with them to chapel wor- ship. By 7 : 30 the service was over and he was on his way to his office, and there for some four hours he breathed through the mails. A round of the orphan- age campus followed his " work hour," then dinner with the children, and thereafter reading and pastoral visit- ing. Came supper and family prayers and the evenings were spent in study by his own fireside with the orphan children, and his own by blood, gathered around him. This, with slight modification, was his habit of life for nearly a half-century. To do it he renounced his chances of fame in pulpit, his dreams of ease in litera- ture, his opportunities of wealth in business. These he gave up for God. What was his reward ? During his lifetime more money was given him than the richest men in the county had. He left an estate valued at nearly a million dollars, consisting of a beau- 262 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACX)BS tiful stone church, a college for orphans with some forty buildings on its campus of over a hundred acres and its farms of several hundred more, endowed in the amount of a couple of hundred thousand dollars ; a classical college whose assets were valued at approach- ing a third of a million dollars ; these and many other possessions of lesser note. All of these were his during his lifetime, which is as long as any of us own any- thing, to have and to hold and to enjoy with grateful heart, a lifetime which almost reached the limit of fourscore years, not by reason of strength so much as of courage. Furthermore, he enjoyed his possessions more than if they had been cotton mills or railroads, got more pleasure from them and a deeper satis- faction. His investments paid him well, in character developed, souls made safe, ministers and missionaries commissioned, helpless lives sheltered from suffering and want, dividends of such a sort that the joy of them abides. Over a thousand human beings entered his church during his ministry and millions felt the attrac- tion of his life by reason of this beautiful thing that he had done. By means of this wealth it was given him to replace weakness with strength, blindness with sight, fear with courage, and disbelief with faith. He cared for and educated a thousand boys and girls who other- wise would have been taught in the other school, and the doing of it gave him the intensest pleasure, so rich, so genuine, so divine, that the tiny section of his for- tune saved by and devoted to himself alone seemed utterly insipid and fruitless. This great wealth of work and accomplishment was part of his reward. But only a part, for richer and greater w^as another gift offered only to those who have given all. His life LIFE AND LEAVES 263 he also left, a wonderful legacy, given away to any who would have it. For it is not houses, nor lands, nor gold, that count in the final estimates of values but thought and devotion and deed. We should truly " count time by heart throbs ; they live most who think most, feel the noblest, act the best." We can do with- out big money but we cannot do without great lives ; we can dispense with big buildings but we cannot dis- pense with examples of ideal conduct. They are too sadly rare. And so it seems that when occasionally a man acts as if religion and God were real, as if self was to be lost sight of and the Power seen, only, there comes slowly but very surely into his life a strength, a grace, and a glory that is as it were a very halo of God. Such lives are ever greater than their results and infinitely more valuable. Large things are not to be confused with great things. It is the motive that characterizes the man. It is a life like this that gives a clue to the ultimate goal of civilization. They are rare now but they will come in ever increasing num- bers. They are to our present age what the ability to see once was to our primordial ancestors. It is not in the founding of orphanages, or colleges, or churches, that the fundamental purpose of such a life is to be found, but in being something. These things are like the seats in a classroom — they are necessary but they are not what the student is there for. One hardly dares to guess the mind of Providence, but it looks as if the Power, when a generation has become deedlessly unconscious of Him and His promises, sets such a man up like some lamp with gas-illumined mantel as an ex- ample of how beautiful even the simplest life msiy become when the flame of God fires the humble earth 264 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS that contains it. Nor should we forget that whether it be the final victory or the craving that drives towards its attainment, both are God. And their value lies in the innate conviction felt by the wisest who see them, that they differ from other lives by being an advance in the direction along which human life is to develop, the ultimate goal of the years. Like the highest wave of the incoming tide they mark the present but not the final limit of the flood. Only by them can one tell whether the tide ebbs or flows. The privilege of living such a life is a prize to be grasped after. It is the finished product of the world-factory, as Henry Drummond would say, not where men make things but where things make men. And to this man who gave away his life there came another beautiful return gift— no less a thing than the marvellous privilege of living, itself, of knowing and thinking and believing things not common among the sons of men. One forgets the honours that came to him, the D. D.'s and LL. D.'s, the compliments and in- vitations, the appointments and distinctions, " baubles " he called them in remembering the real gifts, the strange fears, the beautiful faiths, the victorious cour- age. To have lived deeply, to have known disaster as a comrade with whom one has sojourned in the pit ; to have walked arm in arm with woe ; to have sat down at the table alone with poverty, to have believed in the dawn at midnight, to have dreamed of summer amid the chill of a wintry storm and withal to have been patient with the men who could not see nor understand, this is to live. His richest gifts were agonies and dreams, toilings and lonelinesses, aspirations and soli- tudes of desire wherein he and God walked toerether. LIFE AND LEAVES 266 wherefrom they two went forth to victory. A night of blood, thereafter a college ; an agony of sacrifice, and therefrom an orphanage ; a meditation upon God in the night season, and the next day a revival ; a quiver in the darkness of fear, and out of the cloud the Voice of Victory ! So when the account is cast up at the end, it is as He said it would be. "Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it." In the back yard of his home lot, within a stone's throw of the orphanage campus, there yet stands a beautiful and stately white oak tree. For many dec- ades its tender pink leaves have signalled the coming springs. Under its spreading branches the wayfarer has sought comfort from the sun all summer long ; when the fall came its limbs have murmured beneath the swift autumnal gale and the winter snows and annual February freeze have not spared its branches. Whether in spring or autumn, in winter or summer, it has stood steadily and easily, because it was firmly set by a thousand roots and filaments in the earth beneath. From the waters that are under the earth it draws, even in the driest summer, the hundred and more gal- lons which its many leaves evaporate invisibly each day into the air. From the unseen deeps the water comes and into the unseen heights it goes, he who rests beneath knowing not of either. As it is with the oak, so it was with its master. A scion from the Florist's garden he was set out where another willed. There he took root and, growing, did his work. It happened to be in a place called Clinton, into whose soil his roots were deeply sunk. But he was neither of Clinton, nor for Clinton, nor by Clinton, 266 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS though he loved Clinton more than any other spot in the world. From far-off springs he drew his life ; to far-off heights he sent his toils. Perhaps the most dis- tinctive contribution he made to the world was in lift- ing the orphan asylum into an educational institution. The cottage system, in which a mother cares for a small number of children, the church life into which each child is drawn, the school with steadily rising grades even through college, these were combined on his campus, for the first time in the history of America. The life-blood for these, the money wherewith nearly forty buildings were constructed to embody this idea came from far-off springs, as came his orphans to bene- fit from them, from the lands to which they also re- turned. From Chicago came buildings and large en- dowment gifts, from Boston and Atlanta, and New York, but not from Clinton. The power that built the Thorn well Orphanage had no special relation to its en- vironment excepting only to love and bless it. Xow this is perhaps the most astonishing and significant thing in his whole life. It was his dream to build a little forsaken village church into a tower of light and strength. Upon his tiny Sunday School, and church, and high school, and orphanage of the seventies he lavished all the love of a great soul and all the faith of a will that could not be denied. By seme strange process of spiritual law he gathered from afar the power wherewith to make his dreams come true. Was it prayer that did it, or toil, or an unusual genius, or a spiritual telepathy that could move the Great Soul and the lesser souls needed to complete the electric circuit of his prayer-spirit ? Forty buildings of stone, and brick, and cement, and only a pen to explain them ; LIFE AND LEAVES 267 five hundred acres of woodland and meadow, and only a printing-press to buy them ; a thousand orphans fed and clothed and educated, and only a prayer to pay the bills ! It is well for those who would take courage from such an example that no local pride or profit shai'ed largely in the doing of it. From this we can understand the more easily what he meant when he referred to his last will and testa- ment as a long document " for such a simple thing as leaving this world," and this although he had more to leave than most. His church which was his life had to be given up and his college which was his soul he would see no more. The happy faces of his orphans would fade and their voices die away forever. Friends he had, and loved ones, and admirers by the thousands, all these must be left, and the museum which he liked well to arrange, wondering all the while whether an- other hand as loving would so tenderly touch its speci- mens when he was gone. All these he must leave, not forgetting his collection of rare coins nor his famous phonographic library — yet he thought it a simple thing to leave them. And though he went suddenly there was nothing left behind that needed to be explained. He had done his work so well that the things he made did not require his presence to live. When, the day after he was laid to rest, the faithful treasurer of the orphanage opened the safe he found every investment listed and labelled and all the precious endowment safe, not a worthless stock or bond among them. Through- out the whole campus the work of the institution pro- ceeded as naturally as the order of nature herself. It was all ready for his successor. No controversy was on, no danger was imminent, no explanations were 268 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS necessary, no orders were needed. In his library he had gathered his history, in his diary he had poured out his soul, in the stone of church and college and or- phanage he had crystallized his dreams. It was simple enough. All could see and understand. So he came to the end of a perfect day full of work and service and with the fruits of a long life about him, fruits gathered of springs deep down underground and of airs wafted from afar, he left for the lands wherefrom his help had come. The chief characteristic of his life had been its eter- nity. That made it a simple matter to die. He had all his life long loved and cultivated traits of thought and feeling and conduct that are pei^nanent, abiding, and everlasting. That made the change from Clinton to the Yast Abroad less marked. The tran- sient, the temporary, the passing vanity had no part in him. That made it, even as he said, " a simple thing to leave this world." He had lived the " Eternal Life " and it is characteristic of the Eternal Life that it cannot end. Every death is romantic, how sweetly his ! But to see the halo of it one must go back to the sad dark days of the seventies when only the bravest could keep hope alive ; must recall the beautiful dreams of his young manhood; must think of the tiny high school and church and orphanage. Then the days pass swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and one bright beauti- ful day in September an old man is being borne to his long home and the mourners go about the streets. The long funeral procession leaves the church of a great orphans' home and school, the wonder and love of the whole South. In it are the faculty and students of a stalwart young college growing under the administra- LIFE AND LEAVES tion of strong and helpful hands. As it passes the corner of his home lot, hundreds of high school chil- dren whom he was to address at their opening now deferred in his memory, join their numbers and sorrows to the train that moves on to the cemetery which his church gave to the town decades before. These all surround his grave with others from distant parts, the greatest funeral gathering in the history of the town. Between these two hours there is a great gulf fixed — the hour of eager, self-sacrificing struggle and that of honoured tribute and glory. The former is the life, the latter the leaves. And somehow, standing by the grave, our thoughts go back, far back to a little boy in a great city. We see him as he goes here and there from museum to orphan's house, from college to Courtenay's, thinking, lonely, wrapped in dreams of life and time, wonder- ing all the while what the future has in store for him, eager only to drink of that cup which would intoxicate him with God. We see him as he enters his father's home and School for Young Ladies at the close of a long day's work at college, books in hand, telling about the past, and the stars, and the noble art of phonography. He is probably coughing if the day is cold and he wears glasses because without them his eyes hurt him so. He is thinking far thoughts of distant days whose dim im- penetrable forms summon him forward. He is not afraid to go, for his purpose is fixed. His heart beats faster at the thought of a strange and beautiful resolve as his lips murmur softly : " Seekest thou great things for thyself ? Seek them not." XXV HIS SUCCESSOE Some dawning, ruby-lit for coming day, Uprising from the unmeasured sea of night. The palms shall pierce, at last, the misty gray, And Thou at morn, a migrant, shalt alight With those who followed, to the Final Lea, The Lure that led them o'er the Lonely Sea, There, where the Summer calls to all who love her; Is this thy so great faith, my Golden Plover ? Then, swiftly, for the Autumn cometh fast ; And, surely, for the Winter maketh sure ; With such an urge within me as thou hast ; With such a voyage before me to endure ; Though night and storm and cloud my way should cover, I, also, shall arrive, golden plover ! AS we watch this man with his back against the wall fighting off Death with one hand while he kept busily working with the other we real- ize that we are looking upon a high and holy tragedy. Grimly determined to work on to the very end, it was as if the Power would test him to see how much cour- age he had gathered from ten thousand mercies and how much faith from ten thousand starlit nights. First He added weakness to a body that had never been strong, sapping his force at this point and at that until defense after defense gave way and guard after guard deserted. His throat failed and his speaking voice, the preacher's favourite glory, left him. Yet with his cracked and quavering tones he taught the 270 HIS SUCCESSOR 271 tears of his people to flow. When the daughters of music had thus been brought low the grinders ceased because they were few, leaving weakness and sickness and every form of malnutrition in their stead. His form bent before the winter storm, but the old lion crept not back before the tigers of a newer age. As long as he could see and hear he could fight for his goal. So the Power muffled the voices of earth, though it took a sharp and dangerous accident to do it the more quickly, as if He would find out how fine a piece of steel He had tempered or else set up again by life's pathway "a man to be wondered at." As word came less clearly and frequently from without he turned to his eyes for comfort and deepened his thought and purpose within by printed page and meditation. Then the Power, all but satisfied, said, "Let there be no light," and those that looked out of the windows were darkened. Thereafter a strange thing happened. The man redoubled his efforts, saying : " The day was Thine, the night also is Thine ! " Without health, without hearing, without sight, this aged wisp of a man fought on for God, doing a work so heavy and so great that when he was gone whole states had to be searched for his successors, until one night after a day of heavy labour and rich reward, his gray and tired head was pillowed in a deep and lasting sleep. And the battle with Death was ended. Quietly, as the dawn was breaking, He came who had always been near and the man who had wanted to work till the end was awakened. " Cassie ! " he called, " Cassie ! " and the little nurse, his own orphan child now grown into womanhood, hastened as often before to his side. " Cassie ! " 272 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS But it was not Cassie at all into whose arms he fell back, but into the arms of the Power. " Wonderful, beautiful expanse — expanse ! " his great teacher for whom he had named his orphanage had cried when he also had at last been freed. But upon this man's lips no other cry came, only, " Cassie ! " " Cassie ! " He had once said that if ever a monument should be erected to him he craved a rough-hewn ashlar with these words engraved thereon : " The Child." And again he added : " If they would explain my life let them write on my memory stone — ' He loved God and little children ! ' " Perhaps that was why they only were present when the end came, just God and one of his little children. But it was dawn. Then the news of his rapture went abroad. It had long been expected, yet how sudden it seemed ! As the black-faced types told of it and the wires trembled its story, his earthly honour-day was ushered in. From all over the nation hundreds of telegrams hurried their witness of some far-distant grief. In the great cities of a score of states the black head lines spread their sadness and dismay. True friends in many a past des- perate fight hastened to be with him in his last hour on earth. The great of the commonwealth, the dis- tinguished, the powerful, the wealthy, the good paused to pay him tribute. About his bier with moistened eyes and words of praise were that good friend and comrade, the former governor of his state ; the Stated Clerk of his Assembly, his lifetime co-labourer; the pastor of his church ; the president of his college, and many other men of high and holy office. From his HIS SUCCESSOK 273 simple home they bore him to the chapel he had built for the orphans and there they comforted themselves with gentle words of interpretation and praise. There where he had so often craved an audience for his Christ a vast congregation gathered to do him reverence. He who for more than a half-century had treasured the name of each comer to his services, numbering them weekly in his diary, now knew not — or shall we say watched ? — how great an audience turned aside to do him honour. After it was done the long procession followed him on foot, as the manner of the village is, to the cemetery which his early church had given to the town where they laid him by her side from whom he had so long a time been absent. And so it came to pass even as he had said : " Just twenty-iive years ago, this day, my darling wife was taken from me. She reminded me of it early this morning, in a dream. " I have never forgotten her. I never will nor can I. I hope to spend an eternity enjoying her love and presence. Heaven has more of love in it than earth." " The good gray head that all men loved " shall be seen no more on earth. ISTo more shall the hesitating step of him who needed strength fall upon his study floor. She who would seek comfort in her accustomed way from his lips must forever be content with recall- ing the phantom words of memory and all that he loved and treasured, his books, his boys and girls, his Bible, his birds in the museum, and his bells in memo- rial tower, these and all their like are delivered into other hands. And we look searchingly about saying, Who will succeed him ? To whom shall we go now for inspira- 274 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS tion and for that fine interpretation of life's mysteries ivhich only those can give who have met its toils and pitfalls victoriously ? Looking upon this long life of usefulness and service mellowed by so many experiences of sorrow and softened by the sadness of the years, we ask, " Who will succeed him ? " Of course the only answer is : Whoever wishes to. The mysteriously beautiful thing about this life lies not in the results : a college, a church, an orphanage, but in the quality of life and thought and feeling that made them its normal and necessary expression. The result was visible, consisting of buildings and endow- ments and persons organized into congregations, or classes, or homes. The life was secretly grown from hopes high and holy ; from terrors vivid and fearful ; from love, deep and abiding ; from struggles and woes and joys. It was this invisible quality of life wrought out in the crucible of the experiences of battle and dream and prayer that constitutes his real life-work and his legacy to those who come after him. The great achievement of Columbus at the Court of Ferdinand and Isabella was not the Nina^ the Pinta, and the Santa Maria^ but the foam- wrought track across the Atlantic that any sailor might thereafter follow. Perhaps the fallacy into which the average human being most easily falls in contemplating the works of great men is to regard the things they create as their gifts to the world. This is making a stove of Franklin, or a phonograph of Edison. It is as if in thinking of Shakespeare we saw only his Globe Theater. Every truly great man is a trail-blazer. His work is not in the bark that he strikes from the trees but in the trail, and his real successor does not keep blazing the same trees HIS SUCCESSOR 276 but pursues the path by the same spirit into the never- ending Beyond. We shall miss the meaning of this life if we regard a church, a college, an orphanage, as its measure and glory. These are only the normal and necessary re- sults of something far greater than they — a motive, the quality and power of which should alone be the object of our regard. The church was once a thought, the orphanage a sentiment, the college a simple resolution. Faith is ever greater than its reward. And we are persuaded, as we look back over that three-quarters of a century, that the most wonderful thing visible is not a town redeemed, nor a church multiplied, nor a college founded, nor an orphanage built, nor any nor all of these combined, but a life^ far surpassing them in beauty, more important in results and rarer in perfectness and power. If we would find his successor, therefore, we must go back to the bare, upper room to which the young min- ister had come in the last year of the great strife between the brothers, and recall again his fateful resolution to give all to God ; to toil, to pray, to love, to hope, to be- lieve, to win. No glory was there, nor honour, no back- ing nor popular acclaim, no certainty of victory — only a great need, a great purpose, and a great prayer. But one person in all the world knew whether the young minister would succeed or not — and He was silent ! Thus in a little dilapidated, crossroads town, with- out post-office, or railroad, or bank, or mill, or library, or printing-press, or hotel, or public utility, or institu- tion, save only barrooms and gambling houses, a town that had never had a resident pastor of any denomina- tion and that boasted only one little square wooden 276 THE LIFE OF WILLIAM PLUMER JACOBS church, without even a melodeon in it, this youth whose chief interest was God and whose chief asset was faith faced a steadily declining population, a regularly decreasing business, and a spirit of hopeless- ness and apathy ; this college lad whose loves had been the retired alcoves of libraries, and relics of quiet museums, and the silent messages of rare old coins. And as he prayed the Power who stood by his side, so attentive and so near, lifted the veil of the future in His old familiar way whereby He has taught His seers to see that which is to come, and lo, a little railway engine came puffing its busy way up from the City by the Sea, bringing a neat little printing-press and some pretty fonts of new types. "With them also came a tiny high school which kept growing and growing until it w^as a college of many halls echoing the shouts of thousands of students. As if by the grace of a fairy a house full of little children grew slowly up out of the earth and then others and others and — he could not count the number of them for listening to the glad laughter of their orphan occupants. Then over his old dilapidated town a steeple slowly rose, with just the faintest resemblance to St. Michael's, and a pulpit came into it, and an organ, and chandeliers, so that they could have services at night and see how to read the hymns, and then it suddenly vanished, while as from a dissolving view there slowly grew a beautiful stone church, commodious, well-appointed, efficient, and handsome. And while he gazed on it wonderingly a great engine rushed past hurrying its heavy train from metropolis to metropolis but staying its journey at this happy little city of libraries and mills and churches and lovely, cultured people. HIS SUCCESSOR 277 He turned, delighted from his vision to tell of it, to those who stood near, but they only laughed at him for the Dreamer that he was. But like all the Lonely Great he treasured up in his heart all the things that had been shown him, knowing that he had seen further than they. Though no other eyes had distinguished them in the far blue haze of the future he knew that these things wer^e. And this was the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. And now we know that he did well to believe, in Him who taught him and in them whom he taught and in that Better Thing which ever comes in answer to the call of courageous, toiling faith as comes the spring, hearing the mellow bells of the first yellow jasmine who having sounded her call leaves the rest to God. The milk-white blood-root has no fear in her heart of the chill wind of winter, counting it a privilege to feel the plash of cold rain on her cheek. The light shines in the darkness, unafraid, preferring the night to the day for that the need of his rays therein is the greater. And the man whose soul was quickened by that Energy from which all things proceed knew that without dark- ness and winter, vrithout coldness and death, the beauti- ful dream, of dawn, of spring, of life, could never come true. And it was his desire to do his Dream. " Thine was the prophet's vision, thine The inspiration, the divine Insanity of noble minds That never falters nor abates, But labours and endures and waits Till all that it foresees, it finds And what it cannot find, creates ! *' BOOKS FOR MEN ROBERT E. SPEER, D.D. Merrick Lectures, 1917, ■ — ' ' — — Ohio Wesleyan Untverstty The Stuff of Manhood Some Needed Notes in American Character, net $1.00. Br, Speer holds that the moral elements of mdlvidual char- acter are inevitably social and that one service which each man must render the nation is to illustrate in his own life and character the moral qualities which ought to character- ize the State. To a discussion of these ideals and some sug- gested methods of their attainment. Dr. Speer devotes this stirring, uplifting book. CORTL AND MYER S, D.D. _ Minister of • " Tremont Temple, Boston Money Mad i2mo, cloth, net 50c. The fearlessly-expressed views of a popular pastor and preacher on the all-important question of Money. Dr. Myers shows how a man r\iay make, save, spend, Ciud gi-ve money without doing violence to his conscience, or his stand- ing as a member of the Church of Christ. CHARLES REYNOLDS BROJVN, D.D. Yale University Five Young Men Messages of Yesterday for the Young Men of To- day. i2mo, cloth, 75c. Dean Brown's literary output is always assured of wel- come and a large reading. His new work is specially suitable to students in college, or young men in business or in the home. But the general reader of almost any type, will be able to find something of value in this latest yolume from the pen of a recognized writer of light and leading. DEWITT McMURRAY of the Dallas Daily News The Religion of a Newspaper Man i2mo, cloth, net $1.50. "Every one of the chapters sparkles with a thousand gems that Mr. McMurray has dug out of obscure as well as better- known hiding-places and sprinkled in among his own thoughts His quotations — and there are literally thousands of themi — are exquisitely timed and placed,"— \S':?n«g^e/(i Republican. BURRIS A. JENKINS, D.D. The Man in the Street and Religion i2mo, cloth, net $1.25. **In a convindng and inspiring way and in a graceful style, the author presses home this truth, the result of years of trained study of human nature. The book is the ki^vi that 'the man in the street' well enjoy." — Boston Globe. LIGHT ON THE GREAT WAR JAMES A. MJCDONALD, LL.D. Editor Toronto Globs The North American Idea The Cole Lectures for 1917. i2mo, cloth, net $1.25. The famous Canadian editor enjoys an established and justly-earned reputation. In trenchant and stirring phrase Dr. McDonald discusses the growth and development of that spirit of liberty, just government, and freedom of individual action, in the light of its relation to the Great World War. EDJVARD LEIGH PELL, P.P . Author of" Troublesome ' —————— Religious Questions'' What Did Jesus ReallyTeach About War? i2rao, cloth, net $1.00. Unquestionably war is a matter of conscience. JBut in Dr. Pell's opinion what America is suffering from just now is not a troubled conscience so much as an untroubled conscience. That is why this book does not stop with clearing up trouble- some questions. ARTHUR!. BROWN, P.P. AuthororUnitv and Missions'' ■ ^' The foreign Alissionary," etc. Russia in Transformation l2mo, cloth, net $1.00. Years may pass before New Russia will settle down to stability of life and administration. ^leanwhile we may be helped to understand the situation and have a deeper sym- pathy with Russian brethren, if we study the conditions lead- ing up to the Revolution and mind ourselves of fundamental characteristics which will undoubtedly affect New Russia re- gardless of the immediate outcome. The book is most timely. R. A. TORRET, P.P. Supt. Los Angeles Bible Institute The Voice of God in the Present Hour i2mo, cloth, net $1.25. A new collection of sermons by the famous pastor-evan- gelist. They contain stirring gospel appeals and also special messages of enheartenment for those who find themselves perplexed and bewildered by the war conditions existing in this and other lands. JAMES M. GRAY, P.P. Dean of the " Moody Bible Institute, Chicago Prophecy and the Lord's Return l2mo, cloth, net 75c. What is the purpose of God in connection with the present International cataclysm. Does prophecy deal with the world to-day. The author, Dean of the Moody Bible Institute, of Chic?,go, is well-knoA\Ti as a Bible student and expositor, whose writings find appreciation throughout the Christian world. Dr. Grey's chapters have unusual interest at this time. NEW EDITIONS S. HALL YOUNG Alaska Days with John Muir Illustrated, i2mo, cloth, net $1.15 "Do you remember Stickeen, the canine hero of John Muir's famous dog story? Here is a book by the man who owned Stickeen and who v/as Muir's companion on that ad- venturous trip among the Alaskan glaciers. This is not only a breezy outdoor book, full of the wild beauties of the Alas- kan wilderness; it is also a living portrait of John Muir in the great moments of his career." — New York Times, S. R. CROCKETT Auth»r of " Silv» Sa»d," etc. Hal 'o the Ironsides : ^ ^if^romweu ^^* Illustrated, i2mo, cloth, net $1.25. "Crockett's last story. A rip-roaring tale of the days of the great Oliver —