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PERSONALITIES

LOUIS ALBERT BANKS, D.D.
Author of " The Christ Brotherhood," "Immortal Hymns
and Their Story," " Christ and His Friends," Etc.

NEW YORK : EATON & MAINS
CINCINNATI : CURTS & JENNINGS

Copyright by
EATON & MAINS,
1898.

Eaton & Mains Press,
150 Fifth Avenue, New York.

To
My Friend and Hero,
The Hon. William W. Smith,
This Volume is
Affectionately Dedicated
By the Author.

I. A Heroic Business Career  9
II. The Shepherdess of the Black Sheep  15
III. Capturing a Lawyer  20
IV. Elizabeth .Stuart Phelps's First Speech  26
V. The Peacemaker's Blessing  32
VI. Tunneling for a Soul  38
VII. The Pilot's Conversion  43
VIII. The Mother of "Ben-Hur"  49
IX. Diaz — the Apostle of Cuba  54
X. The Heroine of Alaska  60
XI. The Heroism of Forbearance  66
XII. Struggling Genius  71
XIII. Kindling the Gospel Fire in a Northern
Wigwam  76
XIV. The Heroine of the White Ribbon  82
XV. The Apostle to the Red Men  87
XVI. Up to Heaven on Wings of Song  92
XVII. On the Edge of a Crevasse  98
XVIII. Saint Content Wintergreen  104
XIX. The Father of Prohibition  no
XX. " The Good-luck House "  116
XXI. Sheldon Jackson's Night on the Deep  121
XXII. The First March of the Woman's Temperance
Crusade  127
XXIII. The Hour of Decision  133
XXIV. The Heroine of a Leper Colony  139

6 CONTENTS. PAGE
XXV. From Slave Kitchen to a College Presidency 146
XXVL The Birth of Liberty's Hymn  152
XXVII. The Heroism of the Pastor  158
XXVIII. " Mother Stewart's " First Glass  164
XXIX. The Call of God  169
XXX. " Mother Bickerdyke "  175
XXXI. The Heroism of the Plodder  181
XXXII. A Mission to the Rich  187
XXXIII. The Heroism of Faith  193
XXXIV. Clara Barton on the Battlefield  199
XXXV. The Last of the Hutchinsons  206
XXXVI. The Deaconesses' Sheet Fund  210
XXXVIL Grandpa Sampson's Mail Bag  215
XXXVIII. Before the King  220
XXXIX. A Hero from the Wigwam  226
XL. The Author of Memorial Day  233

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE
Hon. Wm. W Smith  io
Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth  15
Rev. Wm. N. Brewster  20
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward  26
Dr. William I. Fee  32
Helen Keller  40
Captain Josiah Johnson  43
Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace  50
Dr. Alberto J. Diaz  55
Mrs. A. R. McFarland  60
Dr. George Lansing Taylor  67
Rosa Bonheur, the Famous Artist  71
Rev. Egerton Ryerson Young  77
Miss Frances E. Willard  82
Bishop Whipple  88
Mrs. Mary A. Livermore  92
Dr. Fridtjof Nansen  9-3
Saint Content Wintergreen  T04
The Veteran Neal Dow in his Home at Portland, Me. . . in
Mrs. Alice N. Lincoln  116
Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D.D  122
Mrs. Thompson, of Hillsboro, 0  128
Dr. Jesse Bowman Young  133
Miss Mary Reed  140
Booker T. Washington  147
Mrs. Julia Ward Howe  153

8 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE
Theodore L. Cuyler, D.D  159
" Mother Stewart"  164
Rev. George C. Wilding, D.D  170
Mary A. Bickerdyke  176
Samuel Wilson Naylor  181
Miss Jane Addams  18S
Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman  194
Clara Barton  200
John Wallace Hutchinson  207
Mrs. Anna E. Hull  210
Rev. William Sampson  215
Mary Clement Leavitt  220
Chief Joseph  227
Mrs. John A. Logan  233

HEROIC
PERSONALITIES.

i.
A Heroic Business Career.
fi[OME forty years ago a young man be-
1^ gan his life work as a confectioner in
' the city of Poughkeepsie, N. Y. His
mother was a widow, and he had a very
small capital, but he was a brave-hearted
youth, and set himself to work with courage
and good will. He would make his candy
himself, and then, with his basket on his
arm, travel the round of the stores and any
private houses where his goods had been or
dered. He determined from the first that
his candy should always be the very best
he could make. He was scrupulously clean.
Although his clothes were plain, his linen
and his long white aprons were white as
snow. One day a gentleman complimented
him on the fact of his always being so neat
9

io HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
and clean about his person and business.
The boy flushed with pleasure under the
compliment, but answered, with a pride that
spoke volumes for his filial devotion, "That,
sir, is the work of my mother."

..,-•*-»

Hon. Wm. W. Smith.
The outward cleanliness of this youth was
only a suggestion of the inward purity and
wholesomeness of his strong young soul.
He early became a sincere Christian, and
made a solemn determination that, no mat-

A HEROIC BUSINESS CAREER. n
ter what was the result, he would live up to
his Christianity in all the business engage
ments of his life, and registered a vow that
if the time ever came when he either had to
lose business or sacrifice his Christian prin
ciple, it should be his business and not his
Christianity that should suffer.
A testing time came soon enough. One
of his friends, who was also one of the
richest young men in the community and
the best customer he had, came to his shop
one day and ordered ten pounds of brandy
drops. The young confectioner did not make
these, but he ordered them from New York
by express. Before they came, however,
his conscience began to trouble him. Was
he doing right in having a hand in selling
these brandy candies? He knew that the
young man who had ordered them would
give them out among the young men and
the young women of his acquaintance, and
it might be that more than one would get
their first taste of intoxicating drink in that
way, and no one could tell what sad result
would come of it. On the other hand, if he

12 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
refused to accommodate his customer, he
would no doubt lose his friendship and his
trade, and only drive him to some one else
who would procure the desired confections
for him. He could not sleep that night, and
the more he thought about it the more thor
oughly convinced he became that it was not
a Christian thing to in any way have part in
putting temptation in the path of another.
Having come to this conclusion, he acted
with promptness and firmness. When the
brandy drops came he immediately expressed
them back to the wholesale firm in New
York, and when the young man came after
them he frankly told him what he had done,
and why. As he expected, the young man
was very angry, and was full of contempt
for him on account of what he called his
" fanatical notions."
That was the parting of the ways for these
two young men. The poor young confec
tioner that stood by his principles has grown
to be a wealthy and honored citizen, while
the rich young tippler has long since gone
to a dishonored grave, eaten up by his sinful

A HEROIC BUSINESS CAREER. 13
lusts and appetites, as Herod was eaten of
worms. Our young hero maintained the same at
titude as his business enlarged and broad
ened. He became after a while a caterer,
and on his business cards, through all the
years, he has kept the plain and simple state
ment that not only will no wines and liquors
be furnished by him, but he will not permit
his employees to serve at a feast or dinner
where they are used. He has many times
lost thousands of dollars by this fidelity to
principle, but it has never tempted him to
swerve for a moment, and, perhaps, in the
long run, he has gained by it even finan
cially. His splendid fidelity to principle has
been a great object lesson to all who have
known him, and has helped by example and
influence to banish the punch bowl and the
wineglass from many a wedding feast and
public dinner in that part of the country.
When the great Poughkeepsie railroad
bridge was nearing completion a dinner was
given to the railroad men of the country at
that place. Our friend, as the leading

14 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
caterer of the region, was secured for the oc
casion. But as the time drew near and he
found they intended to use wines he refused
absolutely to have anything to do with it,
and so steadfastly did he abide by his pur
pose that the wines were banished.
A magnificent public park in Poughkeep
sie, an Old Ladies' Home building, and many
other monuments of his philanthropy bear
witness that his generosity is as conspicuous
a trait as his heroic devotion to principle.
Who can tell how wide is the influence for
good which such a business man spreads
through the community? Like Peter's heal
ing shadow, on whomsoever the influence of
such a man falls, its effect is to strengthen
him in purity and righteousness of life. All
honor to Hon. William W. Smith, the heroic
business man of Poughkeepsie !

SHEPHERDESS OF THE BLACK SHEEP. 15

II.
The Shepherdess of the Black Sheep.
EVERY now and again the world is bright
ened by some man or woman with a
soul daring enough to believe that when
heaven's Best came down to save earth's

Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth.
worst it was intended that we should follow
this example in our own lives.

16 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
One of the heroines of this diviner sort
who is helping to sweeten the sorrow of our
own time is Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth.
Mrs. Booth is a connoisseur, so to speak, of
"black sheep." If there are any so bad
that they are unlovable to the multitude of
good people, and forgotten and neglected
because of their sins, Mrs. Booth is likely to
seek them out, with a soul overflowing with
delight at the chance to do them good. In
stead of giving up as hopeless the prisoners
in our jails and penitentiaries she, inspired
by the optimism of Jesus Christ, has set her
self not only to carry the Gospel to them
while in prison, but to establish homes where
they may find a few days of Christian sym
pathy after their release and from which they
may go with kindly encouragement and hope
to some honest employment.
On May 24, 1896, Mrs. Booth held a meet
ing in Sing Sing, giving one of her heart
warming talks, and at the after-service asked
those who desired to seek salvation to rise
to their feet. Over fifty responded to this
appeal. Among those who rose was a young

SHEPHERDESS OF THE BLACK SHEEP. 17
German, who was deeply touched, and re
solved to lead a clean life in the future. It
was some two months afterward that he
was released from prison and came direct to
New York city. He had a little money,
which he had earned while in prison, and
he determined that he would look for work,
and after starting in life afresh would come
to Mrs. Booth and show her how he had ful
filled his promise. He went to Jersey City
and succeeded in getting employment. At
the end of two weeks, when he received his
pay, he invested all his money in such ar
ticles of clothing as he needed, leaving barely
enough to live on during the following week.
But when he went to work on Monday he
found that on account of "hard times" he
was to be laid off. This was a great disap
pointment. He searched for work for many
weeks, living on almost nothing, still keep
ing up a brave heart and being honest, until
he got down to his last cent and was a
pauper in the streets. Of course he thought
of Mrs. Booth, "his friend," but, as he told
her afterward, he could not make up his

18 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
mind to come to her after he had gotten so
low. For days he tramped the streets, sleep
ing on the wharves and steering clear of the
police, and at last one night started down
the Bowery, hardly knowing what took him
there. He had not gone very far when he
came to the Volunteers' Bowery Post, in the
window of which was a picture emblematic
of " Hope." This picture represents a man
in stripes sitting in his prison cell, with a
look of despair on his face, while in the
background stand two angels, one personat
ing " Hope " and the other " Love." The
moment his eye rested on the picture he
recognized it, and said, ' ' That is Mrs. Booth's
picture." He gazed at it for a while, and
all the words that Mrs. Booth had spoken in
the prison chapel came back to him — how
they must always feel that she was their
friend. He made up his mind to go and
see her. The following morning he went to
the headquarters of the Volunteers, told his
story, and had a talk with Mrs. Booth.
"Hope Hall "(Mrs. Booth's home for dis
charged prisoners) was "hot then formally

SHEPHERDESS OF THE BLACK SHEEP. 19
opened, but he, being a painter, was set to
work painting its interior. He worked faith
fully, and shortly after, when officers were
sent to take charge of the Home, was con
verted and has led a beautiful Christian
life ever since. He is now regularly em
ployed in a first-class position in New York
city. When he went out to seek his present
employment he went with a good recom
mendation from Mrs. Booth. After having
been gone for some little time he returned
to the office, where Captain Hughes, Mrs.
Booth's private secretary, was sitting at her
desk. The young lady asked him if he had
been successful, yet such a question was
scarcely necessary. He grasped her hand,
and said, "O, yes; I've got work!" She
immediately asked him what his wages
were, and, with a happy laugh, he answered,
"Why, Captain, I was so glad to get the
work I did not stop to ask."

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

A

in.
Capturing a Lawyer.
FEW years since, when a pastor in Boston,
Mass. , I became very much interested in
a young man who was just finishing his

Rev. Wm. N. Brewster.

theological course in the Boston University.
The young fellow was so enthusiastic, so

CAPTURING A LAWYER. 21
optimistic, so bubbling over with faith in
God and love for men, and so sure that God
was stronger than the devil, that it was a
delight to have fellowship with him. When
his theological course was completed he went
to Cincinnati, to begin his ministry in a plain
little chapel in one of the suburbs of that
city. There were few members in his little
church, and all of them were poor. The
outlook would have been very unpromising
to many young college men, but to my friend
the difficulties in the way only inspired him
to greater exertion. I shall never forget the
first letter I had from him after he reached
the field. It ran like this :
' ' My Dear Friend :
" I am on the ground at last, and am be
ginning to get the lay of the land. It seems
good after being in school so long to feel
that at last you are on the track and have a
fair chance at the race. I imagine that I
feel like a hound that has been chafing in
his kennel for a long time and is at last
turned loose, with the game in sight. The
ministry never seemed so precious and splen-

22 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
did to me as now, and, by the help of God,
I am determined to win victory for my
Master. I have been looking over my field
here, and am strangely impressed that my
success in getting a strong hold on this com
munity depends on my capturing for the
Lord the most prominent man there is in this
part of the city. The most widely-known
man here, and the man of most influence, is
Judge  , a distinguished lawyer of Cin
cinnati. Indeed, he is the most famous
criminal lawyer in this part of the country.
He has the reputation of being a hardened,
sinful man, and there is not the slightest
evidence to show that he has a thought of
becoming a Christian. Yet I feel that I must
win him, and do it at once. You may think
I am foolish about this, and I am astonished
at myself, but, after all, God is as willing to
save him as he is to save anyone else, and I
believe he is as willing to help me secure
this man's conversion as he was to help Paul
and Silas with the jailer at Philippi. Any
how, I am in for this one thing, day and
night, and scarcely think of anything else.
"Pray for me as you never did before, for
this means everything to me. If God gives
me this man in answer to my work and
prayer at the very beginning of my ministry,

CAPTURING A LAWYER. 23
I shall feel that everything is possible after
that."

This letter impressed me deeply. The
holy audacity of the man amazed me, and
I awaited future developments with most
prayerful interest.
About ten days later I received a second
letter, in which were these lines :
' ' I could stand it no longer, and so have
been to see Judge  . I just opened my
heart and told him all about it. I told him
I could hardly sleep or eat on his account,
but was praying for him all the time. Every
thing I intended to say went out of my head,
and I just blundered on, trying to tell him
how much he owed the Lord and what a
great chance there was for him to change the
whole community by swinging about and
giving his heart to Christ.
"He was the most astonished-looking
man I ever saw. He looked at me at first
like you have seen a great St. Bernard dog
look at a young puppy that runs up to him
on the street. Still, he was not offended,
but treated me kindly, and I believe God
will give him to me yet."

24 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
What a battle royal for a human soul ! On
one hand, the most successful criminal law
yer of the Ohio River Valley — a middle-
aged man, hedged about by evil associations
and chained by evil habits — on the other
hand this ruddy young David with his sling.
I did not hear from the battlefield again
for three or four weeks, and was becoming
anxious, when one morning I received a let
ter which began :
' ' ' Thanks be to God who giveth us the
victory through our Lord Jesus Christ ! '
Judge  sent for me to come and pray
with him last night. He was under deep
conviction, and was mourning over his sins.
He told me he had not had a moment's rest
since the day I first came to see him and told
him I was praying for him. I prayed over
him and cried over him, and I believe he is
happily converted to the Lord Jesus Christ.
He will make a public confession in the
church, and he and his wife will at once
unite with it. What a glorious day that will
be for this community ! My joy is beyond
words. I never can believe anything too
hard for God again."

CAPTURING A LAWYER. 25
Judge  became a power for good, and
was influential on many a platform in giving
his testimony for Christ.
I am sure you will not be astonished after
this incident to know that this heroic youth
is one of the most successful evangelistic
missionaries in China, where, in the popu
lous Hing-hua district, Rev. William N.
Brewster has led literally hundreds of the
natives to the foot of the cross.

26

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

IV.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's First Speech.
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS— or at
least that was her name before the
"Burglar" had moved "Paradise" —
who has led many of us along the glorified

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward.
path between the "Gates" and filled us
with a noble ambition to lead "A Singular
Life," has put the reading world under a

ELIZABETH S. PHELPS'S FIRST SPEECH. 27
new debt of gratitude by publishing, through
magazine and book, some Chapters from a
Life, and that life her own.
One of the most interesting sketches tells
of a day when she was riding through the
streets of Gloucester, where ' ' The Old
Maid's Paradise " was established, when,
noting an excited throng of angry men and
women, she inquired of two women talking
together at the street side what had hap
pened. The women looked at her rather scorn-
fullyat first, and one made answer : "Haven't
you heard? Why, it happened in  's
rumshop." After a moment's pause the
woman continued: "There's a man mur
dered there. He's just dead. Him and this
other feller had words, and he drove a knife
into him and out again three times. He's
stone dead, layin' there on the floor. See
the men folks crowdin' 'round to look at him !
If men folks will do such things, they must
expect such things to happen. I hope they
won't leave stick nor stone to that place, come
mornin' !"

28 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
" Was he a married man? "
" She lives up the block. And the young
ones." " How many? "
"Twelve."
' ' Has anybody been to see this poor crea
ture — the widow? Has any woman gone to
her?" "Hey? (Staring.) I guess not. Not that
I know of."
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps drove straight to
the house where the poor, grief -stricken
woman was wailing in the midst of her
children. After doing all that she could to
comfort her she went back home with a new
conception of the horrors that are caused by
the liquor traffic. She says herself of this
transformation : ' ' All my traditions went
down and my common sense and human
heart came up. From that day ' I asked no
questions, I had no replies,' but gave my
sympathy without paltry hesitation to the
work done by the women of America for the
salvation of men endangered or ruined by
the liquor habit."

ELIZABETH S. PHELPS'S FIRST SPEECH. 29
After thinking the matter over she came
to a conclusion most astonishing to all her
friends — that she would go on the next Sun
day and hold services in the rumshop where
the man had been murdered. All their
protestations fell on deaf ears, for she had
made up her mind, and nothing could turn
her from the new path of duty Providence
had seemed to make clear.
She visited the rumseller, and he was
more than willing to have her use his saloon,
for he hoped in that way that something of
the shadow of disgrace which hung over his
place might be lifted away.
"You'll say, won't you," pleaded the
dealer in death, " that this ain't my fault?
You'll tell 'em it might have happened any
where, won't you? Why, it might have
happened in a church — there's murders do !
You'll say so, won't you, ma'am?"
She did not commit herself as to what the
substance of her discourse would be, but se
cured the services of a lovely, gray-haired
Christian woman to assist her. Her heart
came near failing her at the last, and she

30 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
begged her helper to speak in her place.
The old lady gently but firmly refused.
Miss Phelps pleaded with her : " I never
opened my mouth in a public place in my
life. I shall drop of stage fright — and think
of the scene !"
When the hour arrived the saloon was
packed, and the overflowing crowd extended
out into the street. A few women came
with her to sing, but most of the hearers
were the kind of men who ordinarily fre
quented this saloon and others like it. The
great red stain in the floor, where the man
was murdered, was covered from sight by
the crowd.
They sang a hymn or two, the new tem
perance lecturer read a little from the Bible,
and then spoke the earnest words that were
in her heart, and came away. ' ' Those men
listened to us," says Mrs. Ward, " as if they
had never heard a message of mercy before
in all their lives and never might again. I
remember that some of them hung their
heads upon their breasts like guilty children,
and that they looked ashamed and sorry.

ELIZABETH S. PHELPS'S FIRST SPEECH. 31
But most of them met us in the eye, and
drank what we said thirstily."
That was her first speech, but not her last.
For this good work went on for three years,
and many a poor tempted man came to bless
the woman who had such a strange power
over him and his fellows. Often she was
accosted on the street by strange men, who
would detain her respectfully to say : " I
hear when you talk to folks they stop drink-
in'. I wish you'd talk to me!"

32

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

0

V.
The Peacemaker's Blessing.
NE of the sweetest of "the blessings"
in the Sermon on the Mount is the one
which declares ' ' Blessed are the peace-

Dr. William I. Fee.
makers : for they shall be called the children
of God." There is living in Ohio a minister

THE PEACEMAKER'S BLESSING. 33
of the gospel of peace whose whole life has
been one long work of peacemaking, not only
between sinful souls and their God, but be
tween man and his fellow. It would per
haps be no exaggeration to say that for the
past fifty years the most successful pastor in
winning souls in the Ohio River Valley is
Rev. Dr. William I. Fee, whose name is full
of fragrance throughout large parts of Ken
tucky, West Virginia, and Ohio. For con
siderably over half a century he has been
constantly preaching the Gospel, and God
has given him wonderful revivals every
year. He has been one of the most modest and
retiring of men through it all, but has at last
been persuaded to publish a volume, entitled
Bringing the Sheaves, in which are gathered
many striking incidents of his noble and
useful life. But turning away from many
stories more notable in some ways, I have
found this picture of the peacemaker to be
very charming in my own eyes :
There was a local preacher and a class
leader who had disagreed about some trivial

34 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
matter. For years they did not fellowship
with each other. Their friends became in
volved in their quarrel, and the entire circuit
suffered in consequence. Several efforts
had been made to settle the difficulty, but in
vain. Dr. Fee saw that nothing could so
insure the success of their revival efforts
at the annual camp meeting on which they
were entering as the making of peace be
tween these brethren. So getting them to
gether on the camp ground, he said, " Let us
go to the woods."
When they reached a secluded place he
asked them to kneel with him in prayer, and
he prayed earnestly that this difficulty might
be settled and they again become friends.
He told them of the injury which was being
done by this unfortunate affair, and the fear
ful responsibility which was upon them.
He said to the local preacher, " Brother W.,
will you state this case, just as you under
stand it, as fairly as possible ? "
He did so in a very candid manner.
Addressing his opponent, Dr. Fee said,
"Brother P., will you state your case fairly,

THE PEACEMAKER'S BLESSING. 35
just as you understand it, with your matters
of grievance, whatever they may be? "
He, with equal fairness, presented his
case. " Now," said Dr. Fee, pleasantly, " I ask
each of you one question. Brother W., do
you believe Brother P. to be an honest,
truthful man, and that he would not will
fully tell a falsehood? "
He said, " I do."
" Brother P., do you believe Brother W.
is an honest man, and that he would not
tell, willfully, a known falsehood? "
Said he, " I believe he would not."
Then said Dr. Fee, "Brother W., you
have stated your grievances ; Brother P. has
stated his. You have agreed to regard each
other as honest and truthful men. If this
be true, is there anything between you which
ought to keep you apart, and which will jus
tify you in involving almost an entire church
in a personal difficulty? "
They both said with some hesitancy,
" There is not."
"Are you mutually willing, before God,

36 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
to settle this difficulty here and now to the
best of your ability? "
Each of them replied, " We are."
Dr. Fee said, " Let us pray."
They kneeled down where they were, on
the leaves which covered the earth. The
doctor prayed, and then asked Brother W.
to pray. After clearing his throat a good
while, he began. His prayer was not very
fervent. Then he called on Brother P., and
he had but little spirit of prayer. But this
persistent peacemaker did not give up, but
after praying again himself, called on each
of them, one after the other, to pray again.
They did so, and were melted into tears.
They arose.
" Now, brethren," said the doctor, " sup
pose you shake hands with each other and
bury this difficulty forever."
Brother W. extended his hand to Brother
P. , who received it, but each of them looked
away from the other. Said the doctor,
' ' That will never do ! Look each other in
the face, and, with a 'God bless you! ' give
each other a hearty shake."

THE PEACEMAKER'S BLESSING. 37
They did so, and in a little while their
arms were around each other and they were
wonderfully blessed. When they returned
to the camp ground there was great rejoi
cing among the people. This reconciliation
was the beginning of a glorious revival.

38

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

VI.
Tunneling for a Soul.
f|Jf T has been my privi
lege to ride in a rail
way train through the
four greatest tunnels
in the world : the
Mullin tunnel, on the
Northern Pacific
Railroad in Montana ; the Hoosac tunnel in
Massachusetts ; through Mt. Cenis tunnel in
Italy ; and, greatest of all, through that mar
vel of engineering which hurls a train sheer
through the St. Gothard Alps, with six thou
sand feet of snow and ice above it.
But an infinitely more interesting and sig
nificant tunnel than either of these is the
tunnel from Helen Keller's finger tips, along
the line of her nerve, back into the brain
and heart that only a few years ago were
imprisoned in an Egypt-like darkness.
Not long since, on opening a daily paper,
I saw a series of headlines that caused the

TUNNELING FOR A SOUL. 39
tears to run down my cheeks, so profoundly
were my emotions stirred. The headlines an
nounced that Helen Keller had, the day be
fore, virtually passed the preliminary exam
ination for entrance to Radcliffe College, in
Cambridge, Mass. Perhaps I felt more
keenly on the subject because of the fact
that I was living in South Boston when
Helen Keller first came there from Alabama
for training under the protection of the Per
kins Institution for the Blind, and had been
from the first deeply interested in the brave
and self-denying efforts put forth to rescue
her from her lonely bondage.
Young people who have all their senses,
and yet have found their preparation for
college fraught with difficulties sufficient to
test their best energy and endurance, will
stand appalled before one who only a few
years ago was wrapped about by a double-
walled prison. Think of it ! Eyes and ears
both closed. Two of the ordinary windows
of life shut up and closely blinded. Only
one possible means of communication, and
that the nerve in the finger tip. Back along

4°

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

that nerve went the patient, persevering ef
fort of the teacher, knocking at the cell door
of an imprisoned soul. There was a soul
there well worth tunneling for. With en-

Helen Keller.
From a photograph by A. Marshall, Boston.
thusiasm and gladness it awoke to the new
knowledge and liberty that were offered it.
And now, a few years later, so heroically
has this liberated soul set herself to work to

TUNNELING FOR A SOUL. 41
conquer all obstacles that we have a young
girl whose acquirements would be more than
brilliant if no window of the soul had ever
been closed against her.
If she is near enough to anyone to put her
delicate finger tips on the lips, she receives
with accuracy everything spoken to her, and
replies in beautiful language and in softly
modulated tones, the sounds of which she
herself never hears.
She reache's forth after all knowledge pos
sible for mortals to know. She is tireless in
her explorations, and gives promise of an
intellectual triumph that shall be the marvel
of our time. Surely, all things considered,
hers is the palm for heroism among all
the young women of the present generation.
Edmund Clarence Stedman sings a beau
tiful ode to Helen Keller :

Mute, sightless visitant,
From what uncharted world
Hast voyaged into life's wide sea
With guidance scant?
As if some bark mysteriously
Should hither glide with spars aslant
And sails all furled.

42 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
But Helen Keller has not been willing to
leave the sails furled ; she has aroused her
self to meet every breeze that offered, until,
in spite of all obstacles, she is entering her
young womanhood with all sails spread to
the winds of life.
The Christian religion, with its love and
trust and hope, has come to Helen Keller's
mind and heart as naturally as the love of
mother or friends. To great-souled Phillips
Brooks was granted the rare privilege, a few
years since, of answering the questions of
her inquiring mind in regard to spiritual
things. The correspondence, which was
published at the time, was one of great in
terest. If it is a matter of so much importance to
carry the light of intelligence and love into
one human mind and heart that have been
shut about by imprisoning walls, how grand
is the opportunity of the Christian Church to
carry the Bible, and the civilization that fol
lows in its wake, to the millions in heathen
lands who are shut in by the dark walls of
their ignorance and superstition !

THE PILOT'S CONVERSION.

43

VII.
The Pilot's Conversion.
THERE is no more interesting character
about any of our great seaboard cities
than the ocean pilot. He goes out with
every passenger steamer, and the last fond

Captain Josiah Johnson.
notes and postal cards sent back to the loved
ones left behind are committed to his care.

44 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
When he drops over the deck's side into his
little boat, and waves his grave farewell,
all on board feel that they have cut loose
from home and are committed for weal or
woe to the mysterious paths of the sea.
No one is so earnestly looked for by both
captain and passengers on an incoming
steamship as the pilot, who brings with him
news from the great busy world, from com
munication with which the steamer has for
many days and nights been cut off. He is
the forerunner and prophecy of the harbor
not yet in sight ; an assurance that the voy
age is over, its dangers are passed, and the
desired haven will be soon at hand.
Of all the pilots on the Atlantic coast the
Sandy Hook pilots are of most interest, be
cause of the multitude of ships that come
and go to and from New York Harbor.
There are among the Sandy Hook pilots two
men who began their apprenticeship over a
half a century ago, in 1846. One of these
is Captain Josiah Johnson, of Brooklyn,
who, after five years' apprenticeship, was
licensed a pilot in 185 1, and has been in

THE PILOT'S CONVERSION. 45
constant service, going and coming past
Sandy Hook, for forty-six years.
Captain Johnson came to the sea by in
heritance, as his father served on the old
frigate Constitution in the War of 18 12. In
spite of his long term of service he carries
his sixty-five years with the air of a victor,
and his great, stalwart frame and bronzed
face and sturdy step are wonderfully youth
ful, although his hair and beard are white
as snow.
This veteran pilot has, naturally, in his
half-century of service, been in many a gale
and faced bitter storms. Three men in as
many awful hours of danger have been swept
overboard from the deck by his side to their
death. Many a schooner, disabled, his pilot-
boat has rescued from the teeth of the
storm, and captain and crew and owner have
owed life and property to his skill and cour
age. Numerous have been the wrecks from
which, in the nick of time, he has taken the
sailor who had lost hope and expected to
perish. Many a time Captain Johnson and
his crew on their pilot-boat have been out

46 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
for days in the bitter cold of a winter's
storm, until their clothing was sheathed in
ice, so that when they were at last permitted
to remove it, it would stand upright like an
iron frame. Yet on such nights and in such
storms he has hailed hundreds of ships and
guided them safely into the harbor without
the loss of a single charge committed to his
care in his lifetime of service.
My acquaintance with Captain Johnson,
however, did not begin upon the sea, but in
an evangelistic service in Brooklyn held un
der the leadership of Dr. J. Wilbur Chap
man, of Philadelphia. I noticed a large,
fine-looking man sitting in the audience,
and watched the eagerness with which he
seemed to listen to the Gospel message,
and was not surprised when the invitation
to seek Christ was given that his strong
hand was uplifted. Later, in the inquiry
room, I had the privilege of conversation
with him, and saw how, with the simplic
ity of a little child, he yielded his heart
to the Saviour, and was most happily con
verted. It was one of the greatest joys of

THE PILOT'S CONVERSION. 47
the meetings, after that, to watch the cap
tain's broad, weather-beaten face, which
beamed with ' ' a light that never was on sea
or land," as he listened to the gracious offers
of mercy and the rich promises of God's word.
One night he came to me at the close of
the evening service and told me that he
would have to go the next day, on his pilot-
boat, to meet an incoming vessel, and so
would be absent from the meetings. As he
grasped my hand to say good-bye his eyes
filled with happy tears, and he exclaimed :
' ' It will be the happiest trip I have ever made
past Sandy Hook; for this will be the first
time that the Great Pilot will be consciously
present with me."
Thank God, we may all have the Great
Pilot with us !
" Slacken no sail, brother,
At inlet or island,
Straight by the compass steer,
Straight for the highland.
" Set thy sail carefully,
Darkness is round thee,
Steer thy course steadily,
Quicksands may ground thee.

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
" Fear not the darkness,
Dread not the night,
God's word is thy compass,
Christ is thy light.
" Crowd all thy canvas on !
Out through the foam !
It soon will be morning
And heaven be thy home."

THE MOTHER OF "BEN HUR." 49

VIIL
The Mother of "Ben Hur."
ONE of the most queenly of living women
to-day is Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, of
Indiana, the widow of ex-Governor
David Wallace, of that State, and the noble
woman whose fidelity as a stepmother —
giving more than a mother's usual devotion
and tenderness — reared Lew Wallace to be
a distinguished general in the War of the
Rebellion, afterward Minister to Turkey,
and, greater than all, to have the qualities
of mind and heart that could produce Ben
Hur. This noble woman not only reared to
honorable fame her three stepsons, but also
six children of her own, and grandchildren
have kept her heart young in later years.
She exemplifies the "new woman" who
is yet to bless the world — a woman so large-
minded and broad-hearted as to keep a con
stant interest in public affairs without in any
way losing the gentleness and refinement of
her womanhood.

50 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
It is said of Mrs. Wallace that when her
husband became governor of his State she,
by virtue of her position and her rare men-

Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace.

tal qualities, might have been what is known
as a " leader " in social circles, but her soul
was too great to be satisfied with the little
round of social ceremonies and vanities ; she

THE MOTHER OF "BEN HUR.' 51
cared for society only as she found in it men
and women of grand ideas and heroic pur
pose. Her husband was a man of fine lit
erary culture, and together they enjoyed
every new book, every speech or sermon,
that came in their way. In this way their
evenings at home were almost ideal in their
domestic beauty. When the babies were
put to bed Governor Wallace would read to
her the latest political speech or newest book,
which they would discuss with the zest of
professional critics, Everything Governor
Wallace wrote — speech, essay, or argument
— was submitted to her for criticism or
approval. Though she knew nothing of
equity as taught in the books, he compli
mented her by saying that her unerring
sense of justice at once lighted upon any de
fect or discrepancy in jurisprudence, while
her fine literary taste was invaluable in re
gard to rhetorical symmetry. As her step
sons grew older she read law with them.
In that way she not only kept in splendid
fellowship with their young hearts, but be
came one of the best educated women in the

52 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
science of jurisprudence in the country.
Such a home picture realizes Tennyson's
poetic vision :
Two heads in council ; two beside the hearth ;
Two in the tangled business of the world ;
Two in the liberal offices of life;
Two plummets dropped for one to sound the abyss
Of science and the secrets of the mind.
In the long years liker must they grow ;
The man be more of woman, she of man.
He gain in moral height, nor lose
The wrestling thews that throw the world.
She, mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Till at the last she set herself to him
Like perfect music unto noblest words ;
Then comes the statelier Eden back to man,
Then reigns the world's great bridals, chaste and
calm,
Then springs the crowning race of human kind.
Mrs. Wallace is, as we would expect, a
woman of the largest charity and forbear
ance. Frances Willard relates that when,
in 1874, the Crusade clans gathered in Cleve
land for the organization of the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union, Mrs. Wallace
was nominated as chairman of the Com
mittee on Resolutions. Miss Willard, not
yet knowing Mrs. Wallace, moved that the
name of Mother Stewart, who had been so

THE MOTHER OF "BEN HUR." 53
closely identified with the Crusade, should
be substituted in her place. Immediately
after Miss Willard went to Mrs. Wallace,
to whom she had never spoken as yet, to
explain her action. That great-hearted
woman grasped her hand warmly, and
said, "When you know me better, my
friend, you will discover that in this sacred
cause I have lost sight of all personal con
siderations." What a magnanimous and chiv
alrous heart was disclosed in that utterance !
One of the most splendid tributes ever
given to any woman was paid to Mrs. Wal
lace by her stepson, General Lew Wallace,
on the occasion of their first meeting after
his immortal book, Ben Har, had been pub
lished. He asked her for her opinion on the
book. She replied, " O, my son, it is a nonesuch
of a story, but how did you ever invent that
magnificent character, the Mother?"
"Why, you dear, simple heart," he an
swered, with a kiss, ' ' how could you fail to
know that the original of that picture is
your own blessed self? "

54 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

IX.
Diaz — The Apostle of Cuba.
ONE of the most heroic souls that has come
to the front in connection with the
Cuban insurrection against Spain is
Diaz, the devoted Baptist minister, who, by
his unflagging energy, marvelous self-sac
rifice, and splendid ability as a preacher, has
gathered about him in the city of Havana a
church of nearly twenty-five hundred mem
bers and a congregation of eight thousand
souls. In Clarendon Street Baptist Church, Bos
ton, about six years ago, he told the story of
his conversion and the development of his
work as a minister. When he was converted
he immediately commenced his labors in his
own family. They were astonished and
troubled to hear him talking of Christ, the
Bible, and salvation, and were greatly op
posed to it, his mother refusing to listen to
him. Every member of the family was
against him, with the exception of a little

DIAZ— THE APOSTLE OF CUBA.

55

four-year-old sister, who, after hearing of
Christ, said, "I like that man, and will love
him." His mother was a Roman Catholic,

Dr. Alberto J. Diaz.

and very bitter against what he said. She
called him a Protestant, a heretic, a Jew.
She said, "I will not speak to you if you do
not come back to the church and the religion
I taught you." He tried to tell her about

56 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
Christ and his word, but she would not listen
to him; all she would say was, "If you are
my son and love me, you will leave that re
ligion and come back to the Catholic Church."
She knew very well that he loved her, and
what she said troubled him greatly. She
would not speak to him, though they lived
in the same house, for months. He trusted
in the Lord, however, and prayed constantly
for her conversion.
He was very much surprised one evening
to see her come in and take a seat in the
meeting. Her presence disturbed him, as
he thought she had come to reprove him be
fore the people, but, mastering his feelings,
he preached his usual sermon and then gave
the invitation to those who wished to become
members to stand up. His mother was one
of the four who arose. Now, he thought,
surely she intended to speak to him. Three
of the people stood on his right ; his mother
was on his left. Not knowing what she would
do, he turned and began to examine the
other three, hoping she would keep silent
and go away.

DIAZ— THE APOSTLE OF CUBA. 57
He was thus intently engaged when one
of the people said, "Mr. Diaz, there is your
mother standing over there ; why don't you
speak to her? "
Turning to her, he said, "Well, mother,
what are you doing here? "
"Alberto," said she, "don't you want me
in your church? "
"Yes, mother, we want you if you are
ready to receive the Lord Jesus Christ ; but
how is it that you have changed? " he asked,
in great surprise.
"Through the Lord Jesus Christ, whom I
have found in your Bible?" she answered.
Then she turned to the people and told of
the trouble they had had ; how she had not
spoken to her son for so long a time, but
when she had read her Bible and found the
way to salvation she could no longer resist
coming and joining them.
Diaz says : "When my mother was in my
own hands, and I was about to immerse her,
all the words that my tongue would give ut
terance to were, 'Lord Jesus, this is my
mother; have mercy.' "

58 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
After his mother came to the light his
greatest anxiety was for the conversion of
his father. He was a man of science, who,
absorbed in his studies, thought, like many
others, that religion was something good
enough for women and children, but nothing
for a man to have anything to do with.
The son approached him one day with
the Bible and said, "Father, don't you want
to read this book?"
"No," said he, "that book is too old. I
want something new."
Talking with his mother about it, she
asked, "Do you think, Alberto, that if father
reads the Bible, he will be converted?"
"Yes," said the young preacher; "if we
can only get him to read the Bible, he will
soon be converted."
"Then I will make him read the Bible,"
she exclaimed. So in about three or four
days, when Sunday came, she went to him.
"Father, won't you please read those three
or four verses for me ? I am in a great hurry,
and I want to know my lesson before I go to
Sunday school," she said.

DIAZ— THE APOSTLE OF CUBA. 59
The old scientist was very devoted to his
wife, and so he took her Bible and read the
verses she had pointed out to him. Under
various pretexts she kept him reading the
Bible for her. Early one morning, a little
while later, young Diaz awoke, and seeing
a light in the next room, thought some one
was sick, and going to see what was the mat
ter, was so surprised that he could not speak.
There sat his father reading the Bible at
four o'clock in the morning. He said to him,
"Father, what have you been doing here? "
"O, I have been reading this book," he
answered; "what time is it? "
"Four o'clock," replied the young man.
"Four o'clock! No; it cannot be more than
eleven." But the surprised and delighted son told
him it was really four o'clock, and asked how
he liked the book.
"I like this book," said the old man, "and
will go with you next Sunday."
He went to the church on the following
Sunday, was happily converted to Christ, and
entered upon a joyous Christian life.

6o

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

F

X.
The Heroine of Alaska.
IFTEEN years ago I was on board a
train on what was then the only rail
road in western Washington, making

Mrs. A. R. McFarland.

the journey from Portland, Ore., to the new
and straggling village which has since grown

THE HEROINE OF ALASKA. 61
into the ambitious young city of Tacoma.
It was a slow train, for the roadbed was
new, but the tedious hours lost their weari
ness to me after making the acquaintance
of one of my fellow-passengers who was on
her way back to Alaska to take up her mis
sion work among the Indians.
My new acquaintance was Mrs. A. R.
McFarland, Avho had gone to Alaska four
years earlier and devoted herself to the sav
ing of the young girls in that far-off land.
For more than a year this lady, delicately
reared and cultured, fitted to enjoy the re
finements of society, was the only white
woman in Alaska Territory, because she be
lieved it to be her duty and esteemed it her
privilege to teach her ignorant heathen sis
ters of the North the truths of that Gospel
which has lifted the burden from woman's
shoulders in every land where it has been
carried. I shall never forget the thrill of
admiration and reverence that went through
my heart as I listened to her story. I felt
myself to be in the presence of one of the
world's purest and bravest spirits.

62 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
Mrs. McFarland was not only for a long
time the only white woman in that vast and
lawless region, but she was for many months
the only Protestant missionary in Alaska.
In those days the people brought all their
troubles to her for solution. If they were
sick, they came to her as a physician ; if
death came to the wigwam, she was called
upon to take charge of the funeral. When
there was a quarrel in the family, and hus
bands and wives were estranged, she was the
peacemaker to settle their difficulties and
bring harmony again to the distracted fam
ily circle. In their simple property troubles
she was often judge, lawyer, and jury.
When feuds sprang up among the small
tribes she became peacemaker on a larger
scale and arbiter of their differences.
When the Christian Indians called a consti
tutional convention they paid a noble tribute
to her goodness and wisdom by electing her
chairman. She was often called upon to
interfere in cases of witchcraft ; and when
the vigilance committee among the miners
decided to hang a white man for murder

THE HEROINE OF ALASKA. 63
she was sent for to act as his spiritual ad
viser. Her fame followed the coast line to
the different tribes, and every canoe carried
some note of praise for the missionary.
Great chiefs left their homes and came long
distances that they might enter the school
of " the woman that loved their people."
Mrs. McFarland soon found, to her hor
ror, that the intelligence and blessing which
her school, with its teaching and hope,
brought to the girls only put them in
greater peril by making them more attract
ive to the wicked and lawless white men who
inhabited the Alaskan towns. Among a
people where heathenism crushes out a
mother's love and makes her willing to sell
her own daughter, soul and body, for a few
blankets or a canoe load of provisions, she
found that her brightest and most promising
pupils were in the greatest danger. As they
improved their advantages in the mission
school it manifested itself in their external
appearance. They began to comb their hair
more smoothly, to dress more neatly, and to
pay more attention to cleanliness in their

64 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
person ; their dull, heavy countenances be
gan to light up with intelligence ; and as
their attractions increased white men were
the more anxious to buy them for base pur
poses. Again and again Mrs. McFarland
had to interfere to save her schoolgirls from
lives of sin. This necessity was the cause
of her establishing an industrial training
school for Indian girls, where they lived to
gether in a " Home," into which she gath
ered such promising girls as were in danger
of being sold, and trained them up to be
the future Christian teachers, wives, and
mothers of their people.
The story of how she secured her first
girl for the " Home " illustrates the fearful
odds against which she had to contend and
the splendid heroism of her character.
Katy, one of the schoolgirls, fourteen years
of age, who had attended her mission school
from the commencement, was about to be
taken up the river and sold to the miners by
her mother. Mrs. McFarland, hearing of
it, started to visit the family, who lived on
an island. When she reached the point

THE HEROINE OF ALASKA. 65
where she usually crossed the tide was so
high she could not get over. By signs she
attracted Katy's attention, who came across
in a canoe. She was sent back for her
mother, who came over. There for an hour
and a half, seated on a rock by the shore, in
a pouring rain, Mrs. McFarland pleaded
with the heathen mother until she promised
not to take Katy away. But the next week
the mother broke her promise and tried to
compel her daughter to accompany her to
the mines. The canoe was prepared and
the mother took her seat ; the blankets, pro
visions, and younger children were in their
places, but the little girl lingered on the
shore, crying and begging most piteously.
Finally, when they would have put her in
by force, she straightened herself up and
said, " Mother, you may kill me, but I will
not go with you and live a life of sin." She
then ran into the woods and hid. When
her mother had gone she came out and
claimed Mrs. McFarland's protection. And
that was the way the first " Girls' Home "
in Alaska was started.

66 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

XI.
The Heroism of Forbearance.
WE are accustomed to think of the hero
as one who achieves his victories by
some positive and aggressive action.
It is often, however, as heroic to remain si
lent under unjust attack as it is to speak in
the face of opposition. There is a heroism
that bears as well as a heroism that performs.
David, on returning from one of his military
expeditions, declared that the heroism of
those who remained behind to care for the
baggage was as deserving as that of those
who went forth to battle, and in the division
of the spoils decided, " As his part is that
goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be
that tarrieth by the stuff."
An incident which occurred in the young
manhood of Dr. George Lansing Taylor,
the well-known preacher-poet, illustrates
this important phase of Christian heroism.
Dr. Taylor was growing up through boy
hood into manhood in Ohio when he became

THE HEROISM OF FORBEARANCE.

67

a Christian and joined the church, and, like
many another, had to suffer from his school
mates. The indignities were hard to bear,

Dr. George Lansing Taylor.
but he acquired at the very outset of his re
ligious experience a spirit of brotherly love,
even for those who abused him.
One day he was sharpening a pencil, when
a book slipped off the desk and fell upon

68 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
the floor. He bent over to pick it up, with
his large sharp jackknife open in his hand.
The boy who was his chief persecutor gave
his hand a kick which drove the knife into
it, gashing it fearfully. He shut -his hand
so tightly as to stop the flow of blood.
Then, rising, with no sign of anything hav
ing gone wrong, he asked permission to go
out. Crossing the street to the house of the
nearest doctor, he had the wound sewed up
and dressed.
The surgeon was very indignant. " Do
you know," said he, " you have come within
danger of losing the use of your right hand ?
Who was it that kicked you ? You can make
him smart for it. His father can be made
to pay well for such a job as that. Who
did it?"
But the plucky young fellow refused to
tell. He was far more anxious to do the
boy good than to have him suffer for his
meanness. And, though he had only to
mention his name to insure his being se
verely punished and probably expelled, he
never showed by word or look that he re-

THE HEROISM OF FORBEARANCE. 69
sented the injury. The love of Christ had
taken all resentment out of his soul.
Six or seven years later he had finished
his college course and had taken the princi-
palship of a school for the training of teach
ers. Among his pupils was the young man,
though older than himself, who had kicked
the knife into his hand. The result of young
Taylor's heroic forbearance had proved the
wisdom of Paul's advice in his letter to the
Romans : ' ' Avenge not yourselves, but
rather give place unto wrath : for it is written,
Vengeance is mine ; I will repay, saith the
Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed
him ; if he thirst, give him drink : for in so
doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his
head." This old-time enemy was now a
most devoted friend ; not one of the schol
ars was more faultlessly loyal than the man
who had once treated him so cruelly, but
who had been conquered by his forbearance.
After a time there was a great revival of
religion among the pupils of the school, and
many of them were converted. One after
noon this same young man asked Dr. Taylor

70 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
if he might talk with him a few minutes,
and when they were alone he inquired :
"Do you remember the time when I
nearly ruined your right hand by a brutal
kick?" Dr. Taylor replied that he remembered
the occasion very well.
" I had no idea of hurting you so badly,"
he continued, " but I hated you because you
had become a Christian. You never seemed
to resent it in the least, and now I want to
tell you that that jackknife has been stick
ing in my heart ever since. Lately the Lord
has been twisting it around until the agony
has become unbearable. I want you to for
give me and ask God to help me out of this
torment about my meanness."
And there alone together teacher and
pupil mingled their prayers at the mercy
seat, and the years of remorse were ended
and an era of joy and peace came to the
young man's soul. From that hour the two
young men were brothers in the sweetest
friendship. How rich the reward of his gen
tleness and forbearance !

T

STRUGGLING GENIUS.

XII.
Struggling Genius.
HE most interesting personality that hov
ers about the famous old forest and
palace of Fontainebleau, in France, is

Rosa Bonheur, the Famous Artist.
by no means to be selected from the ghosts
of the dead and historic past ; to many peo-

72 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
pie it is rather the very live and vigorous
Rosa Bonheur, who dwells at the estate of
By, near the village of Moret.
Rosa Bonheur passed her childhood in the
midst of the most exciting scenes. Her
little sister was born while the cannon were
booming in the Revolution of 1830. Just
before the door of her father's house the
Royal Guards mounted a piece of artillery,
which fired on the Place de la Bastille. The
little Rosa came very near being a victim of
the Revolution. Her father had climbed up,
and was standing on the inner bolt of the
door, in order to peer through the transom
at the fight which was going on outside.
When the cannon was fired the shock of the
explosion shook the door violently, throwing
him from his position, and he barely escaped
crushing the child to death in his fall.
For years after this the times were very
hard with the painter's family. Her father
had no work, and, in 1852, to make matters
worse, the cholera broke out. One of the
memories of this remarkable woman, that
she shudders even now to recall, is a vision

STRUGGLING GENIUS. 73
of carts upon carts, filled with dead bodies,
following one after another all day long.
Her mother died when she was still but a
little girl and left her in distressing loneli
ness. She began to paint very early, and
while her father was hunting everywhere
through the city of Paris for students to
whom he could give drawing lessons she
worked alone as best she could in a little
studio in the garret. One night when her
father returned home after his day's labor
he found her finishing her first oil painting
after nature — a handful of cherries. ' ' Why,
that's fine," he said, "and in future you
must work seriously."
Her love for animals was early developed,
and she would wander through the outskirts
of Paris, among the fields and farms and
dairies, making studies of cows, sheep, and
goats. Finally, she found a delightful little
corner of wild scenery near one of the parks,
and went and boarded for several months
with an honest old peasant woman. It is inter
esting and encouraging to every struggling
young person to know that Rosa Bonheur's

74 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
genius by no means relieved her of the
drudgery of the beginner in any great art.
Day after day she studied the rapid move
ments of animals, eagerly watching the
shimmer of their coloring in the sun. She
learned that each cow or horse or dog has an
individuality of its own as much as has a
human being, and formed the habit of
making separate studies of each animal.
The first picture she exhibited in the
Salon was in 1845, and was a modest little
canvas representing rabbits. Two years
later she won a gold medal. When the
young girl appeared before the Director of
Fine Arts, who, with many pleasant com
pliments, handed her the medal in the name
of the king, she, to his great surprise and
intense amusement, replied, "Thank the
king very much for me, and deign to add
that I intend to do better next time."
In 1893 the distinguished Due d'Aumale,
whose sad death the whole world regretted
as one of the tragic results of the terrible
fire in the Paris Charity Bazar, invited Rosa
Bonheur to be his guest at Chantilly, the

STRUGGLING GENIUS. 75
famous estate which the public-spirited duke
willed to the people of that land which had
honored him in his youth and exiled him in
manhood. The famous painter of ' ' The
Horse Fair" took with her her first poor
little medal, stamped with the effigy of Louis
Philippe, the Due d'Aumale's father. The
duke was greatly pleased, and smilingly re
marked, " It brought you good luck."
In addition to her undoubted genius, in
herited from her father, Rosa Bonheur owes
her marvelous success to that patient, honest,
plodding study which she conscientiously
gives to all her work, and that unsatisfied
spirit which is suggested in her answer to
the Director of Fine Arts, in her girlhood,
" I intend to do better next time! " The
world is better for Rosa Bonheur.

76 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

XIII.
Kindling the Gospel Fire in a Northern
Wigwam.
ONE of the most magnetic men with whom
it has ever been my privilege to con
verse is Rev. Egerton Ryerson Young,
the famous missionary to the Indians of Brit
ish Columbia. Mr. Young is one of those
dauntless souls who would win success
and fame in almost any department of life.
There is no such word as fail in his vocab
ulary. AVhen he undertook to carry the
Gospel to the Indians in their lonely wig
wams in the northern woods he put into the
work the same inventive genius, indomitable
purpose, and tireless fidelity that other men
have put into the building of railroads and
managing of armies and nations. But back
of his strong brain and immense energy
there is a heart full of love for Christ and
tender sympathy for the poor people to whom
he carried the glad news of salvation.
Mr. Young has the art of recounting his

KINDLING THE GOSPEL FIRE.

77

experiences with a peculiar breeziness per
taining to the woods where they were en
countered. One of his best stories is of a long

Rev. Egerton Ryerson Young.
journey which he made into the heart of the
wilderness in search of a tribe which he had
not visited before. He made this trip in a
canoe paddled by two Christian Indians.
When they reached the forest encampment
their welcome was not very cordial. The

78 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
Indians were soured and saddened; a great
many of their children having died with
scarlet fever, which had been brought into
their land, for the first time, by some white
traders the year before. With the exception
of an old conjurer or two, none openly op
posed him, but the sullen apathy of the
people made it very discouraging work to try
to preach or teach. However, he did the
best he could, and was resolved that, having
come so far and suffered so many hardships
to reach them, he would faithfully deliver
the message, and leave the results to Him
who had permitted him to be the first to visit
that land to tell the story of redeeming love.
One cold, rainy day a large number of the
people were crowded into the largest wigwam
for a talk about the truths in the great Book.
Mr. Young's faithful Christian canoeists
aided him all they could by giving personal
testimony to the blessedness of the great sal
vation ; but all seemed in vain. The com
pany sat and smoked in sullen indifference.
When questioned as to their wishes and pur
poses all he could get from them was, "As

KINDLING THE GOSPEL FIRE. 79
our fathers lived and died so will we."
Tired out and sad at heart, the missionary
sat down in quiet communion and breathed
a prayer for guidance and help in this sore
perplexity. In his extremity the needed
assistance came so consciously that he almost
exulted in the assurance of victory. Spring
ing up, he shouted out: "I know where all
your children are who are not among the
living! I know, yes, I do most certainly,
where all the children are whom death has
taken in his cold grasp from among us, the
children of the good and of the bad, of the
whites and of the Indians ; I know where all
the children are!"
Great, indeed, was the excitement among
them. Some of them had their faces well
shrouded in their blankets as they sat like
upright mummies in the crowded wigwam.
But when he uttered these words they
quickly uncovered their faces and mani
fested the most intense interest. Seeing that
he had at length got their attention, he went
on : " Yes, I know where all the children are.
They have gone from your camp fires and

80 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
wigwams. The hammocks are empty and
the little bows and arrows lie idle. Many of
your hearts are sad, as you mourn for these
little ones, whose voices you hear not, and
who come not at your call. I am so glad
that the Great Spirit gives me authority to
tell you that you may meet your children
again, and be happy with them forever. But
you must listen to his words which I bring
to you from his great Book, and give him
your hearts, and love and serve him. There
is only one way to that beautiful land, where
Jesus, the Son of the Great Spirit, has gone,
and into which he takes all the children who
have died; and now that you have heard his
message and seen his Book you, too, must
come this way if you would be happy and
enter therein."
While he was thus speaking a big, stal
wart Indian from the other side of the tent
sprang up and rushed toward him. Beating
on his breast, he said: "Missionary, my
hearty is empty, and I mourn much, for none
of my children are left among the living ;
very lonely is my wigwam. I long to see

KINDLING THE GOSPEL FIRE. 81
my children again, and to clasp them in my
arms. Tell me, missionary, what must I do
to please the Great Spirit, that I may get to
that beautiful land, that I may meet my
children again ? " Then he sank upon the
ground at Mr. Young's feet, his eyes over
flowing with tears, and was quickly joined
by others, who, like him, were broken down
with grief, and were anxious now for reli
gious instruction. To the blessed Book they
went, and after reading what Jesus had said
about little children, and giving them some
glimpses of his great love for them, Mr.
Young told them "the old, old story," as
simply and lovingly as he could. There was
no more scoffing or indifference. It was the
beginning of a blessed work which resulted
in the winning of nearly the entire tribe to
a happy experience of the saving love of
Christ. 6

82

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

XIV.
The Heroine of the White Ribbon.
SHALL never forget my first glimpse of
Frances Willard, the renowned leader of
the white ribbon hosts. She was making

\

Miss Frances E. Willard.

a tour of the Northwest in company with
Miss Anna Gordon, her inseparable other
self. She had come to Portland to attend a

HEROINE OF THE WHITE RIBBON. 83
convention, and as I was then pastor at Van
couver, Wash., seven miles away, on the
other side of the Columbia River, I deter
mined, if possible, to secure her for a meeting
the following Sunday night. I wrote her
that if she would come, I would secure the
largest hall in the place, and do such pre
liminary work as would insure the organiza
tion of a local Woman's Christian Temper
ance Union. She replied that she had to
speak at Portland on Sunday morning, but
if I would meet them with a carriage on
Sunday afternoon, they would come to .Van
couver and hold the meeting.
Vancouver was at that time, as it is now,
the military headquarters of the Department
of the Columbia, and General Nelson A.
Miles, now at the head of the United States
Army, was in command. I was on good
terms with Colonel Morrow, who was in
command of the local fort at Vancouver,
and on applying to him secured a govern
ment ambulance, four splendid great mules,
with a uniformed driver and guard of state
for the occasion. And so on that summer

84 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
Sunday afternoon, fifteen years ago, those
four mules and the government ambulance
appeared before Miss Willard's astonished
gaze as she sat awaiting us on the piazza of
a friend's house in Portland.
I do not believe Miss Willard will ever
forget that ride. It was very dusty and hot,
and the old ambulance, though a very for
midable piece of roadway furniture, was any
thing but an easy carriage to ride in. The
driver was on his mettle and bent upon show
ing off his mules, and the time we made
across the peninsula between the Willamette
and the Columbia Rivers was a caution.
Miss Willard and Miss Gordon adapted them
selves to the situation and took it all in good
part, but I think they were exceedingly
amused at the whole performance.
The meeting was a great success. The
largest hall in the town was packed to the
last person that could find standing room.
General Miles presided with great dignity ;
Colonel Morrow, Captain Henry Pierce, and
other army officers, with their wives, and dis
tinguished citizens crowded the platform.

HEROINE OF THE WHITE RIBBON. 85
Thurston Daniels, since lieutenant governor
of the State, was one of the ushers.
Miss Willard was at her best. I have
heard her many times since, and always
with admiration, but never when her play
ful wit, marvelous pathos, and persuasive
logic seemed to hold the audience with a
more profound spell than it did that night.
At the close of her address a vigorous
Woman's Christian Temperance Union of
more than sixty members was organized,
and both Miss Willard and Miss Gordon
felt amply repaid for the hot, dusty, and
uncomfortable ride in the government am
bulance that Sunday afternoon.
One of the secrets of Miss Willard's re
markable success is her willingness to adapt
herself to the situation of the hour, and do
whatever needs to be done at once at what
ever personal cost. This spirit is illustrated
in her work iu behalf of the Armenians.
While the prime ministers and diplomats of
half a dozen nations were standing about
fumbling their fingers and trying to per
suade the Sultan to be good and stop perse-

86 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
cutingthe Armenians — the murders going on
all the while — Miss Willard and her stanch
friend, Lady Henry Somerset, set themselves
to work to do the deed of sisterly kind
ness that was in their reach. They went to
Marseilles, where hundreds of fugitive Ar
menians were landing from every Eastern
ship, and set up a restaurant to feed these
hungry brothers and sisters. Theirs were
the first hands stretched out to help the
despairing immigrants as they landed on
European soil. Theirs were the sympathiz
ing faces into which the hopeless travelers
looked, and hoped and took courage again.
No wonder their restaurant soon came to be
known as " The Kitchen of Jesus Christ."

THE APOSTLE TO THE RED MEN. 87

XV.
The Apostle to the Red Men.
DR. CUYLER says that Bishop Westcott,
of Durham, England, once said to Miss
Smiley, " The most apostolic man I
ever met is your Bishop Whipple." A good
many of us believe that Englishman to be a
good judge of an apostle.
Bishop Whipple has been the life-long
friend of the American Indian. At the first
missionary meeting which he attended after
his consecration as a bishop one of the older
bishops said to him: " You are to speak to
night ; don't say anything about Indian
missions — they are a failure. You are a
young bishop and cannot afford to be thought
an enthusiast." Little did that conservative
bishop know the character of the man with
whom he was dealing. When Bishop Whip
ple came to speak he took the audience into
his confidence and frankly repeated the ad
vice that had been given him, and, taking
that for his text, he proceeded to deliver a

88 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
warm-hearted appeal for sending the Gospel
to the red men.
He never tires of telling stories of the
Indians, among whom he has preached so

Bishop Whipple.
long. Once, when he had distinguished
visitors at one of his missions, the Indians
prepared a pantomime for the entertainment
of the bishop and his friends. The chief,

THE APOSTLE TO THE RED MEN. 89
Wah-a-bouquot, asked him : ' ' Does your
English friend know the history of the
Ojibways? Would he like to hear it? " On
receiving an affirmative answer hecontinued :
" Before the white man came the woods and
prairies were full of game, the lakes and
rivers were full of fish, and the wild rice
was the Great Spirit's gift to the red man.
I will show you some of my people as they
were before the white man came."
The door of the house opened, and out
came an Indian dressed in skins and orna
mented with colored porcupine quills, and
by his side an Indian woman in a neat dress
of skins trimmed with fur.
The chief said : " My father, you see the
Indians such as they were before the white
man came. Shall I tell you what the white
man did for us? He said: 'You have no
houses, no firehorses, no firecanoes, no
books, no implements of toil ; give us your
land and we will make your people as the
white man.' The white man had a forked
tongue. I will show you what he gave
us."

90 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
Then came out a man with face be
smeared with mud, in a ragged blanket,
without leggings, and by his side an Indian
woman in a tattered calico dress. The
chief cried: "O God, is this an Indian?
How came it? " The Indian took out from
under his blanket a black bottle and said,
¦ " Iskotu-wabo (fire-water); the white man
gave it to us."
The chief then said: " Many moons ago
a pale white man came to see us. We hated
white men and would not listen. But each
year when the sun was so high we knew we
should see that white man coming through
the pines. We called a council. We asked :
' Why does he come? He does not trade.
He asks nothing from us ; perhaps the Great
Spirit sent him.' We did listen and took
that story to our hearts. Shall I tell you
what it has done for us? "
Then came out of the house an Indian in
a black frock coat, and by his side an Indian
woman in a black alpaca dress. The chief
said, "My friends, there is the only reli
gion in the world that can lift a man out of

THE APOSTLE TO THE RED MEN 91
the mire and tell him to call the Great Spirit
his Father."
A skeptical traveler who was present
grasped Bishop Whipple by the hand and
exclaimed, ' ' All the arguments I have read
in defense of Christianity are not equal to
what I have seen to-day!

92 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

XVI.
Up to Heaven on Wings of Song.
1HTARY A. LIVERMORE is one of the
^"1 few of those splendid personalities who
1 accomplished service of national inter
est and importance a generation ago, but have
gone on with ever-increasing enthusiasm
and freshness of spirit
into the new world of
to-day. Mrs. Livermore
threw her sublime en
ergy, immense store of
practical wisdom, and
boundless tenderness of

heart into caring for the
Mrs. Mary A. Livermore. . , -, , , ,
sick and wounded sol
diers during the dark days of the War of the
Rebellion. In her thrilling book, My Story
of the War, there is, perhaps, gathered more
heart-stirring incidents than are found in
any other volume which has grown out of
that historic period.
Here is one which reveals some of the

UP TO HEAVEN ON WINGS OF SONG. 93
characteristics of this great-hearted, heroic
woman :
She was one day nearing the completion
of her tour of a hospital ward, when she
paused beside the cot of a poor fellow on
whose face the unmistakable look of death
was settling.
" You are suffering a great deal," she
said. "O yes! O yes!" he gasped; "I am,
I am ; but not in body. I can bear that. I
don't mind pain — I can bear anything — but
I can't die ! I can't die ! "
" Why are you afraid to die? " she in
quired. " Tell me, my poor boy."
" I ain't fit to die. I have lived an awful
life, and I'm afraid to die. I shall go to
hell." She drew a camp stool to his bedside, and,
sitting down, put her hands on his shoul
ders, and spoke in commanding tones, as to
an excited child, "Stop screaming. Be
quiet. If you must die, die like a man, and
not like a coward. Be still, and listen to
me." And she proceeded to combat his fear

94 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
of death and his sense of guilt with assur
ances of God's willingness to pardon. She
told him of Christ's mission on earth, and
assured him that however great had been
his sins they would be forgiven of God, since
he was penitent and sought forgiveness.
She bade him repeat after her the words of
a prayer, which he did with tearful earnest
ness. She strengthened her assurances
by Bible quotations and illustrations from
the life of Christ, but she felt she was mak
ing little impression on the dying man. At
last the poor fellow exclaimed, " Can't you
get a minister? I used to belong to the church,
but I fell away. O, send for a minister! "
Mrs. Livermore was determined that
nothing should be left undone that might
bring comfort and salvation to the poor fel
low, and, on inquiry, found that the hospital
steward was also a minister, and soon had
him at the man's bedside. To him the
wounded soldier listened eagerly. After the
steward had talked with him a little, and
prayed with him, Mrs. Livermore inquired,
" Can't you sing? "

UP TO HEAVEN ON WINGS OF SONG. 95
Immediately, in a rich, full, clear tenor,
whose melody floated through the ward and
charmed every groan and wail into silence,
the steward sang hymn after hymn, all of
them familiar :
" Come, humble sinner, in whose breast
A thousand thoughts revolve.
" Love divine, all love excelling,
Joy of heaven, to earth come down.
" Jesus, Lover of my soul,
Let me to thy bosom fly.
" My days are gliding swiftly by,
And I, a pilgrim stranger."
All of these hymns were so well known to
the dying soldier that she saw he followed
the singer, verse after verse. The music
affected him as she had hoped. The burden
rolled from the poor boy's heart, and, in
feeble, tender tones, he said : " It's all right
with me, chaplain ! I will trust in Christ !
God will forgive me ! I can die now! "
"Sing on, chaplain!" Mrs. Livermore
suggested, as he seemed about to pause to
make reply. ' ' God is sending peace and
light into the troubled soul of this poor

96 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
boy through these divine hymns and your
heavenly voice. Sing on ; don't stop ! "
He continued to sing, but now chose a
different style of hymn and tune, and burst
forth into a most rapturous strain :
" Come, sing to me of heaven,
For I'm about to die ;
Sing songs of holy ecstasy,
To waft my soul on high.
" There'll be no sorrow there,
There'll be no sorrow there.
In heaven above, where all is love,
There'll be no sorrow there."
She looked down the ward and saw that
the wan faces of the men, contracted with
pain, were brightening. She looked at the
dying man beside her and saw, underneath
the deepening pallor of death, an almost
radiant gleam.
Then the chaplain was summoned away
by a call from his office. It was getting late
in the afternoon, for she had tarried a
couple of hours at this bedside, and her
friends came from other wards of the hospi
tal to say that it was time to return.
"Don't go; stay!" whispered the fast-

UP TO HEAVEN ON WINGS OF SONG. 97
sinking man. The words of the Master
rushed to her memory, "Inasmuch as ye
have done it unto one of the least of these,
ye have done it unto me," and she promised
to remain with him to the end. The end
came sooner than anyone thought. Before
the sun went down, with courageous heart
and rapturous face, he had put out to sea
for the immortal shore.
7

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

XVII.
On the Edge of a Crevasse.
fANSEN, the Arctic hero of the hour,
has almost every element that is adapted
to arouse the admiration and enthusiasm
of those who love the strong, the daring,
and heroic in mankind.
He is av man of splendid stature, and
trained as he has been from his childhood to
all the virtues of the athlete, he is one of the
most rugged and tireless specimens of phys
ical manhood the world affords to-day. He
has succeeded where other men failed, not
only because of his dauntless courage, but
because nature and training have fitted him
to perform feats of physical endurance that
few men in the world could accomplish.
Once, on his arrival in London, he min
gled in a great crowd at Buckingham Pal
ace, and pushed himself up to the front just
as the Princess of Wales arrived to hold a
drawing-room. As he was waving his hat
with the crowd in honor of the princess he

ON THE EDGE OF A CREVASSE. 99

Dr. Fridtjof Nansen.

100 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
felt a twitch at his watch chain and knew that
he was being plied by a pickpocket. But
Nansen had altogether too cool a head to let
such a little thing excite him, as would have
been the case with a smaller man ; he simply
dropped his left hand and let its giant-like
grip grasp the wrist of the thief. Without
even looking to see who it was he continued
to cheer and wave his hat aloft in his right
hand until the enthusiasm had subsided.
Then he quietly handed his prisoner over
to a policeman. Nansen said he merely
held the man tightly, but the miserable
wretch was howling with pain, and declared
that he would rather go to prison than have
his bones crushed.
Oil one occasion, when returning to camp
after an absence, they saw their canoes drift
ing from land with all their provisions and
necessaries of life. To reach the boats was
a matter of life or death. Not to reach them
was certain death. The great qualities of
the explorer came out quick as a lightning
flash, when, without a moment's hesitation,
he sprang into the ice-cold water and swam

ON THE EDGE OF A CREVASSE. 101
after the drifting canoes. He was chilled
to the bone, but he succeeded in his object,
and brought the canoes safely back to camp.
It was no group of weaklings that Nansen
had with him, either. One incident reminds
us of the story of David. On one occasion,
while dragging their sledges along a narrow
patch, they were suddenly confronted by a
polar bear, but Johansen, a fit companion
for Nansen, caught the great beast by the
throat and held him at arm's length, while
his chief sent a bullet through his heart with
his rifle.
Perhaps no twitter of birds ever fell more
sweetly on human ears than those which
Nansen describes in The First Crossing of
Greenland. As they were breakfasting in
their walled tent in the midst of the ice des
ert of the desolate North, they were aston
ished to hear, as they thought, the twittering
of a bird outside ; but the sound soon stopped,
and they were not at all certain of its reality.
But as they were starting again after their
one o'clock dinner that day they suddenly
became aware of twitterings in the air, and,

102 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
as they stopped, sure enough they saw a
snow bunting come flying after them. It
wandered around them two or three times,
and plainly showed signs of a wish to sit
upon one of their sledges. But the neces
sary audacity was not forthcoming, and it
settled on the snow in front for a few mo
ments before it finally flew away with an
other encouraging twitter.
Very welcome indeed was that little bird,
for it gave them a friendly greeting from the
land they were sure must now be near. Nan
sen says, ' ' We blessed it for its cheering song,
and with warmer hearts and renewed strength
we confidently went on our way." How
many such snow buntings of hope God sends
to cheer and warm the hearts of those who
face hardship and peril with unshaken in
trepidity and courageous purpose !
But even in sight of land they came near
losing their lives. As the wind came up
very strong in the afternoon they sought to
travel more rapidly by setting sail on their
sledges and using them as iceboats. Their
ships flew over the waves and drifts of snow

ON THE EDGE OF A CREVASSE. 103
with a speed that almost took their breath
away. After a time, as it was growing dusk,
Dr. Nansen ran ahead of the sledges on his
snowshoes to make sure that they should not
come to any sudden disaster. His prudence
saved their lives, for, as they were rushing
along through the dense driving snow, he
suddenly saw, in the general obscurity,
something dark lying right in their path.
He took it for an ordinary irregularity in
the snow, and unconcernedly steered straight
ahead. The next moment, however, he
found that they were on the edge of a chasm
broad enough to swallow sledges, steersman,
and passengers. A single moment later and
they would have forever disappeared, and
have been more completely lost to the world
than was the fated Dr. Franklin.

104

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

G

XVIII.
Saint Content Wintergreen.
ONTENT WINTERGREEN has come to
her sainthood through what most people
would call great tribulation, though she

Saint Content Wintergreen.
herself never thinks of it as such, and does
not dream that anything she has done would
look heroic in the eyes of anyone.

SAINT CONTENT WINTERGREEN. 105
Content Wintergreen was born seventy-
nine years ago in a little town in Central
New York. When she was still a child her
mother died, and her father brought his
family of three girls and a boy to try their
fortunes in the then small city of Brooklyn.
Sixty years ago Content Wintergreen found
the source of all true contentment in a sweet
fellowship with Jesus Christ.
The family were poor, and the girls early
sought to help bear the burdens of the house
hold by working in a tailor's shop or bring
ing their work home, as Content did after
a while, when the father was ill. One of the
sisters married and went away to enjoy the
happiness of her own home and family, but
as the other sister soon lost her health, Con
tent had no time to think of love affairs, save
to care for the loved ones of her own house
hold. The brother had grown up and gone
West, and on Content's frail shoulders fell
all the burden of the home.
The father died soon afterward, and
though that wrung her heart, she had not
time for morbid grief, for there was her in-

106 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
valid sister to provide for still. For four
teen years she wrought with her needle and
earned enough to care for them both, and
ministered with a mother's love and tender
ness to her sick companion, who was never
able to go beyond the door of their humble
room. During the last and most trying year of
her sister's illness a letter came from the
brother telling the sad news that he had been
stricken by a fatal disease and longed to come
home and die in the arms of some one who
loved him. There was not a moment's
hesitation. Content thought only of the
blue-eyed brother who had been the play
mate of her childhood, and in a most loving
letter she bade him come. This made three
mouths to feed instead of two, and a double
burden of nursing ; yet in recounting this
experience she says, "Those were very
happy days, after all. Though we were poor,
we loved each other and were so happy to
gether." The brother after a few months
passed away, and only a little later the sister,
too, faded out of life.

SAINT CONTENT WINTERGREEN. 107
' ' The only time I was ever tempted to
murmur," said Content, with a wistful face
¦ — and I knew by the far-away look in her
eyes that a picture of other days was passing
before her inner vision — "was when my
sister died. It was hard, the working all
day and the being up so much nursing her
in the night, but love made it light, and I
had cared for her so long that I think I felt
about her as a mother does for a crippled
child." During all these years of toil and nursing
Contents Wintergreen never for a moment
thought of excusing herself from Christian
work. For forty years she was one of the
most persevering and successful tract dis
tributors that Brooklyn has ever known.
She could not go to church much, and seldom
had time to seek out anyone for a personal
talk, but she never allowed herself to go out
of the room to the tailor's shop, or to the
grocer's, or to the market, without her little
bundle of tracts, which with gentleness and
skill she gave out here and there with a
kindly word of good cheer that made them

108 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
welcome. Many a home among the poor
was sweetened by the little visitor carried
into it from the market-place. In this way
Content Wintergreen introduced her divine
Lord and Master, whom she loved so well
and served so faithfully, to hundreds of
people. For a long time now Content has lived
alone, and on her next birthday she will have
reached her fourscore years. She is not able
to work much, and a kind relative pays her
room rent, and allows her four dollars a
month for living expenses ; out of that four
dollars she provides her provision and fuel
and clothing.
Her constant theme is the goodness and
mercy of God, and the abundance of his
blessings to her. Her desire to be a worker
for Christ is as strong as ever. A young
friend who had been for a long time taking
her the newspapers to read, on one occasion,
desiring a paper in which to wrap a parcel,
said to her: "Auntie Wintergreen, what be
comes of all the papers I bring? You never
seem to have any about here." The clear

SAINT CONTENT WINTERGREEN. 109
old saint flushed red like a schoolgirl caught
whispering, and stammered out: "I hope
you won't mind, but I save the papers up,
and every two weeks I take them down to
the jail. I thought I might perhaps do a
little good yet in that way."
Her face is wrinkled and worn, but her
soul is flushed with immortal youth, and in
the resurrection glory it will glow forever
with the peace of Him whom having not seen
she loves.

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

XIX.
The Father of Prohibition.
ONE evening, many years ago, a woman
came to the home of Neal Dow, in Port
land, Me., in great distress. She was
the wife of an intelligent, capable citizen,
with a large, promising family. He held a
government position, and executed the duties
of his office to the great satisfaction of the
department and of the public; but he had
one terrible habit, which grieved and morti
fied his family and friends and threatened
the loss of his office : it was periodical in
temperance. On his way back and forth
from his office to his house he passed a cer
tain liquor saloon, and was enticed into it.
On this occasion the wife was in great sor
row and fear. She said her husband had
been away from his desk and was now in
this saloon ; that if he did not at once return
to his employment, he would be removed
from office, and the family would be left in
shame and destitution.

THE FATHER OF PROHIBITION. in

The veteran Neal Dow in his home at Portland, Me.

112 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
Neal Dow went immediately to the saloon
and inquired for his neighbor. At first the
rumseller endeavored to conceal his cus
tomer, but Mr. Dow found him and re
quested the proprietor to sell him no more
liquor. He replied, "I must supply my custom
ers." " But, don't you see," said Mr. Dow,
" that this gentleman has a large family to
support? If he neglects to go to his office
to-morrow, he will lose his place. I beg of
you do not sell him anymore strong drink."
The rumseller then grew angry and said
he, too, had a family to support ; that he had
a license, and would sell to all who called
for it, and that he wanted none of Dow's
advice. Neal Dow's answer was : "So you have a
license, and support your family by the im
poverishment and ruin of other families?
With God's help I will try to change all
this! "
How he did change it all, how he sowed
Maine knee-deep in temperance literature,

THE FATHER OF PROHIBITION. 113
how he traveled and spoke and argued and
conquered, the whole world knows. But it
is doubtful if the present generation of
younger people has much conception of the
eloquence of which this man was capable
half a century ago. Mr. George H. Shirley,
at present a citizen of Brooklyn, and one of
Mr. Dow's faithful coadjutors in that great
campaign, says of him: " Many times have
we heard him pour forth the most scathing
invectives and the most brilliant utterances
against the traffic, and not hesitating to de
nounce the rumseller by name. These ora
torical efforts were equal to the best speeches
of Sumner or Phillips. I have often been
surprised that he escaped physical injury
from his opponents."
The secret of Dow's great success was his
utter fearlessness and his readiness to attack
the wrong wherever he found it, and his
keen feeling of personal responsibility for
every evil it was in his power to right. The
following incident sets forth this chief he
roic characteristic of the man :
Neal Dow was once passing down one of

114 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
the streets of Portland, when he noticed
a crowd of people, among whom was the
mayor of the city. In the center of the
group was a country lad crying. The lad
had been imposed upon by a noted horse
jockey of the town, who had got the boy
drunk and then induced him to swap the
horse he had driven into town for an old
plug. Upon hearing his story, telling the
boy to follow him with the jockey's horse,
Mr. Dow led the way to the latter's stable,
nearly a mile distant. Not finding the
jockey in, the old horse was turned into the
stable and Mr. Dow, with the country lad
still following, started back to town. On
the way they met the jockey. He was
driving in a wagon to which the lad's horse
was attached.
" That's my horse," said the boy.
Mr. Dow stepped into the road, took the
horse by the bridle, and, calling to one of
his employees who happened to be passing
at the time, told him to unharness the horse,
which he did, the irate jockey, meanwhile,
threatening to take the law on Mr. Dow,

THE FATHER OF PROHIBITION. 115
who replied, " You will always know where
to find me."
Then, telling the boy to take the horse,
he started again for the city, where the lad's
wagon had been left.
" Look a-here," said the jockey, as they
went, " what am I to do with my wagon? "
" Do what you like," said Mr. Dow. " It
is nothing to me."
As may be expected, the country lad was
full of joy and profuse with thanks. When
he had harnessed his horse he said to Mr.
Dow, " Now, what can I do for you? "
" Promise me not to drink any more."
And the boy did so.
Some three years afterward Neal Dow
was stopped by a countryman in the streets,
who, with mouth stretched on a broad grin,
said, pointing to a horse, " There he is. I
hain't drunk no more."

u6 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

XX.
"The Good-luck House."
BOUT eighteen years ago Mrs. Alice N.
Lincoln, a young lady of high culture
and refinement, with means at her com-

A

X.

Mrs. Alice N. Lincoln.
mand to live a life of ease and indifference
to the world's sorrows if she had so pleased,
became very deeply interested in the pitia-

"THE GOOD-LUCK HOUSE." 117
ble condition of many of the poorer people
in the tenement houses of Boston, and under
took with heroic determination to do what
was within her power to better their condi
tion. She hired a large house in the heart of
Slumdom. It contained twenty-seven tene
ments, and she paid one thousand dollars a
year rent for the first year and afterward
twelve hundred. The house had a bad rep
utation, morally, and had been for some
time under the ban of the police. At the
time she took it half the tenements were
empty, because of the degraded character of
the occupants. Its entries and corridors
were blackened with smoke ; the sinks were
in dark corners, and were foul and disease -
breeding; the stairways were innocent of
water or broom, and throughout the entire
house from top to bottom everything was
dirty and neglected. It was surely not an
attractive task to attempt to bring cleanli
ness and order out of such chaos, but this
resolute young reformer deliberately set her
self to perform the seemingly impossible.

uS HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
The interior was painted ; an improved
method of lighting and ventilating the sinks
was introduced ; fresh plaster replaced the
moldy wall paper in the entries, and wood
and coal closets were provided for each ten
ement on its own landing. Previously all
the fuel had been kept in the cellar. A few
of the worst tenants had to be removed, but
the majority, pleased with the new order of
things, were willing to accept the rules and
remain. Tenants were soon found for every
room ; and this house, which had been a
hive for fevers under the old regime of
greed, that did not care how dirty the ten
ants were so long as they paid their rent,
became, under the new rule of cleanliness,
so healthy that disease was almost unknown,
and was, and is to this day, known by the
tenants and the neighborhood generally as
"The Good-luck House."
During all these years Mrs. Lincoln has
collected her own rents, and kept everything
well under her own supervision. A close ac
count of all receipts and expenditures has
been kept. At the end of the first year the

"THE GOOD-LUCK HOUSE." 119
balance of cash in hand was $1 1 1 .67, or more
than eleven per cent on the investment. The
second year itwas still more profitable, the net
sum at the end of the year being $157.47.
Mrs. Lincoln still carries on the administra
tion of " The Good-luck House," and no
queen was ever treated with more genuine re
spect than she is there. She is regarded as a
most practical sort of patron saint to the in
stitution. Yet there is no element of char
ity suggested in her dealings with her
tenants. It is simply Christian justice. With
great care she seeks to help them retain
their self-respect, and treats them as fully
her equal in personal responsibility. The
rent is required to be paid regularly. One
rigid rule enforced upon all tenants is clean
liness. She pays for the weekly scrubbing
of the halls and stairways, but the tenants
are required to sweep them every day in
turn. The sinks and drains are kept clean.
All this has a marvelous effect on the home
habits of the inmates ; and I have seen as
clean and tidy rooms in "The Good-luck"
tenement house as I have seen anywhere,

120 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
and that, too, on days when they were
caught unawares, it not being the regular
rent day.
Mrs. Lincoln has a conscience, and justly
feels that if six per cent interest is enough
for business men to pay on money borrowed,
it is enough for poor people to pay on their
investments in rents, and so all the profits
above six per cent she puts into the bank as
an emergency fund, and from time to time
the tenants have been permitted to share
some unexpected pleasure from this surplus.

DR. JACKSON'S NIGHT ON THE DEEP. 121

XXI.
Sheldon Jackson's Night on the Deep.
ONE of the most heroic personalities of
modern times, and one who might fitly
be included in any group of heroic
spirits in any age of the world, is Rev.
Sheldon Jackson, D.D., who, in a higher
sense than any ecclesiastical power could
designate, is the Bishop of all Alaska. Dr.
Jackson has indeed been a father to the for
gotten and neglected tribes of that far-away
Arctic wonderland. He has not only trav
eled thousands of miles, and endured lone
liness and hardship to carry the Gospel to
the natives in their heathenism, but he has
been ever ready to thrust his persistent and
invincible personality between these poor
ignorant creatures and the cruel and rapa
cious human sharks who would prey upon
them. He has also been indefatigable in
his self-denying efforts to introduce the
reindeer into their impoverished land and
secure them from extinction by starvation.

122 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
Dr. Jackson's whole career in Alaska is
one heroic story, but here is a simple ac
count of one little missionary trip in a canoe

Rev. Sheldon Jackson, D.D.

which, for motive, exposure, and danger,
might well be put alongside of Paul's trip
when he was shipwrecked on his way to
Rome: At three o'clock in the morning they were
aroused , and were soon under way without any

DR. JACKSON'S NIGHT ON THE DEEP. 123
breakfast. This did not matter much, how
ever, as their entire stock of provisions con
sisted of a limited quantity of ship biscuit
and smoked salmon — biscuit and salmon for
breakfast, salmon and biscuit for dinner, and
straight salmon for a change for supper in the
evening. The Indians upon the trip only
averaged one meal in twenty-four hours. As
they were passing the mouth of a shallow
mountain stream the canoe was anchored to
a big rock. The Indians, wading up the
stream, in a few minutes with poles and
paddles clubbed to death some thirty salm
on, averaging twenty-five pounds each in
weight. These were thrown into the canoe
and taken along.
At noon they put ashore for their first
meal that day. Fires were made under the
shelter of a great rock. The fish, cleaned
and hung upon sticks, were soon broiling
before the fire. After dinner all hands took
a nap upon the beach.
At three in the afternoon they were again
under way. When night came the Indians
could find no suitable landing-place, and

124 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
paddled on until two o'clock next morning,
having made a day's work of twenty-three
hours. Finding a sheltered bay, they then
ran ashore. As it was raining hard, they
spread their blankets as best they could un
der sheltering rocks or projecting roots of
the great pines.
After a few hours of uncomfortable sleep
they again embarked Toward evening
they passed Cape Fox and boldly launched
out to cross the arm of the sea, and once out
they found the sea becoming so rough that
it was as dangerous to turn back as to go
forward. The night was dark, the waves
rolling high, and the storm beating upon
them. One Indian stood upon the prow of
the canoe all night, watching the waves and
giving orders. Every man was at his place,
and the stroke of the paddles kept time with
the measured song of the leader, causing
the canoe to mount each wave with two
strokes; then, with a click, each paddle
would at the same instant strike the side of
the canoe and remain motionless, gathering
strength for the next wave. As the billows

DR. JACKSON'S NIGHT ON THE DEEP. 125
struck the canoe it quivered from stem to
stern. In the morning they landed at an old de
serted Indian village, whose forest of totem
poles told of the heathenish rites and super
stitions from which he was trying to save
this wretched people. These horrid monu
ments of the past with their grinning faces
spoke to him only too plainly of savage
butcheries, horrible cannibal feasts, inhuman
torture of witches, and fiendish carousals
around the burning dead.
The Indians were so exhausted by the
labors of the past night that they were com
pelled to go ashore and get some rest. On
shore they tried to start a fire, but the driv
ing rain soon extinguished it. Taking his
regulation meal of salmon and hard tack,
Dr. Jackson spread his blankets under a big
log and tried to sleep. The beating storm
soon saturated the blankets, and he awoke
to find the water running down his back.
Rising, he paced up and down the beach
until the Indians were ready to move on.
After a rest of two hours, seeing no sign of

126 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
a lull in the storm, they reembarked on their
journey. Such journeys this heroic man was
willing to take that he might carry the
Gospel to his brethren whom he had never
seen before, and who had no more claim on
him than they have upon us. And yet how
hard it is for us sometimes to carry a mes
sage of hope and salvation to the neighbor
of our own color and tongue who has be
come disheartened and is perhaps perishing
for just the word of good cheer we can
speak. Thinking of Jackson's dark night
in the canoe, may we be inspired to go on
our errand for the Master this very day !

WOMAN'S TEMPERANCE CRUSADE. 127

XXII.
The First March of the Woman's Temperance
Crusade.
A BOY of sixteen, the son of Judge
Thompson, of Hillsboro, O. , came home
one night after listening to a lecture on
temperance by Dr. Dio Lewis, of Boston.
Finding his mother still up, he related to
her that iu the course of his remarks Dr.
Lewis had told how his own mother and sev
eral of her good Christian friends had united
in praying with and for the liquor sellers of
his native town until they had given up their
soul-destroying business, and then had said,
"Ladies, you might do the same thing in
Hillsboro if you had the same faith." After
ward he had put the matter to vote, and
more than fifty of the women by rising had
pledged themselves to make the effort.
"And now, mother," said the enthusiastic
boy, ' ' they have got you into business ; for
you are on a committee to do some work at
the Presbyterian church in the morning at

128

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

nine o'clock, and then the ladies want you
to go out with them to the saloons."
Judge Thompson had that evening re
turned from court in another county, and

Mrs. Thompson, of Hillsboro, 0.
being very tired, was resting on the sofa.
The mother and son, supposing that he was
asleep, had been talking in an undertone ;
but as the boy spoke about his mother going
to the saloons the judge suddenly roused

WOMAN'S TEMPERANCE CRUSADE. 129
up and exclaimed, ' ' What tomfoolery is all
that?" The boy slipped out of the room
and went to bed, while Mrs. Thompson as
sured her husband that she would not be led
into any foolish act by Dio Lewis or anybody
else. After he had relaxed into a milder
mood, though continuing to scoff at the
whole plan as "tomfoolery," she ventured
to remind him that the men had been in the
" tomfoolery" business along time, and sug
gested that it might be " God's will " that
the women should now take their part.
The next morning after breakfast, when
they were gathered in the sitting-room, the
boy came up, and laying his hand on his
mother's shoulder, inquired, "Mother, are
you not going over to the church this morn
ing? " As she hesitated and doubtless
showed in her countenance that she was
greatly perplexed, the boy said, "But, my
dear mother, you know you have to go."
Then her daughter, who was sitting on a
stool at her side, leaned over in a most tender
manner, and looking up in her face, said,
" Don't you think you will go? "
9

130 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
During the progress of this conversation
Judge Thompson had been walking the
floor in silence. Suddenly he stopped, and
placing his hand upon the family Bible that
lay upon his wife's work-table, he said,
"Children, you know where your mother
goes to settle all vexed questions. Let us
leave her alone " — going out of the room as
he spoke, the children following him.
Mrs. Thompson turned the key in the lock
and was in the act of kneeling down to pray
when she heard a gentle tap on the door.
Upon opening it she found her daughter
with her Bible open and the tears coursing
down her cheeks as she said, " I opened to
this, mother; it must be for you." She im
mediately left the room, and her mother sat
down to read with new insight the wonder
ful message of promise in the 146th Psalm.
Doubting no longer what her duty was,
she at once went to the Presbyterian church,
where quite a congregation had already
gathered. She was at once unanimously
chosen as the president, Mrs. General Mc
Dowell as vice president, and Mrs. D. K.

WOMAN'S TEMPERANCE CRUSADE. 131
Finner as secretary of the unique work which
they were to perform. They drew up ap
peals to druggists, saloon keepers, and hotel
proprietors. Then Dr. McSurely, the Presbyterian min
ister, who had up to this time occupied the
chair, called upon the new president to come
forward and take her place. She tried to
get up; but having never done any public
work, her limbs refused to act, and she sat
still. Wise Dr. McSurely looked around at
the men and said, " Brethren, I see that the
ladies will do nothing while we remain ; let
us adjourn, leaving this new work with God
and the women."
After the men had filed out and the door
was closed behind them new strength
seemed to come to Mrs. Thompson, and she
walked forward to the minister's table, took
the large Bible, and, opening it, told the
story of the morning in her own home.
After she had tearfully read the psalm and
commented on it, she called upon Mrs. Mc
Dowell to lead in prayer. Now, Mrs. Mc
Dowell, though a good Christian woman for

132 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
many years, had never in all her life heard
her own voice in prayer ; but she prayed that
morning as though Isaiah's " coal of fire"
had unsealed her lips.
As they rose from their knees Mrs.
Thotnpson asked Mrs. Cowden, the wife of
the Methodist minister, to lead in the singing
of the old hymn, "Give to the winds thy
fears ; " and turning to the rest of the women
she said, ' ' As we all join in singing this
hymn let us form in line, two by two, the
small women in front, leaving the tall ones
to bring up the rear, and let us at once pro
ceed to our sacred mission, trusting alone in
the God of Jacob." As they marched out
through the door of the church into the
street they were singing these prophetic
words : " Far, far above thy thought
His counsels shall appear,
When fully He the work hath wrought
That caused thy needless fear."
And thus was begun the first march of
that mighty crusade that proved to be a di
vine contagion which has spread to the ends
of the earth.

THE HOUR OF DECISION.

133

T

XXIII.
The Hour of Decision.
HERE is one hour forever sacred to
every earnest man who has, after the
years of childhood, consciously chosen

Dr. Jesse Bowman Young.
Christ for his Saviour and consecrated him
self to the service of God. Many a time on

134 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
the frontier in Oregon, at the great camp
meetings held in the leafy groves, I have
listened to the old men and women as with
tearful earnestness, and yet with buoyant,
joyous spirit, they told of that hour of hours
when they broke away from sin and chose
Jesus Christ to be the Captain of their sal
vation. I have an hour like that in my own mem
ory that I would not blot out for the price
of worlds. It was one night at a watch-
night service in a little Western college
chapel. It was almost midnight, and the
appeal to let the old year die with all the old
sins, and the new year bring in a new life
of righteous purpose, had been very clear
and strong. The audience were on their
feet singing, and some were going to the
altar in witness of their holy purpose. I
stood at the end of the seat next the aisle
and longed to go, but had not the courage,
until an old carpenter with one leg shorter
than the other, so that he limped painfully
at every step, came down the aisle with the
eye of a fisherman after souls. As he drew

THE HOUR OF DECISION. 135
near he laid his hand upon my shoulder and
said, " Louis, is it not time for you to go? "
The weight of the old man's limp pushed
me a step down the aisle, and on I went to
ward a Christian life. I have always said,
' ' It was the weight of the old man's limp
that did it."
It is such a story of decision, only one
with far more romantic and heroic surround
ings, that I started in to tell.
I have just been reading Jesse Bowman
Young's beautiful book, What a Boy Saw in
the Army, a rare and fascinating sketch of
what a boy saw of those weird and terrible
days of struggle. It was just before the
battle of Gettysburg, and this youth, who
had gone to the front, as did many another
from both North and South, while only a
lad, was lying in the grass in a very sober
mood, running his eye along the gathering
lines of men, now peering anxiously across
the landscape to the westward, noting the
woods behind which the Confederates were
concentrating their forces and wondering
why the battle did not open.

136 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
This boy had faced death on the battle
field many a time before, and it was not fear
that made him sober. It was God's call to
his conscience. Above all other meditations
— thoughts of home, of loved ones far away,
of the course of the battle — sounded in his
soul the question, " What about the future?
Suppose you are killed, what will become of
you? In a few moments the tempest will
break over this field, and you will have to
face it. You cannot now escape in any way
from this emergency. In the face of the
opening battle how about the future? Are
you ready to meet God and to face the issues
of another world? "
Lying there on the hillside, he was trou
bled and overwhelmed at the outlook. He
had been brought up in a religious home,
had been taught to be a Christian from
childhood ; but amid the roughness, the ex
posures, the grossness, and the dissipation
of army Hfe for nearly two years many of
these lessons and early impressions had
grown dim, and many of the admonitory
voices which had sounded a clear, strong

THE HOUR OF DECISION. 137
note at home had ceased to influence him.
Now, in a desperate emergency, with the
possibilities of death before him, his sins
rose up iu alarming array, and his neglected
soul was smitten with a sense of its needy
and suppliant condition. " O Lord, have
mercy on me !" was the single cry of his
broken heart as he sought to keep back the
tears, maintain his composure, and hide the
tumult which disturbed his breast. Then
he bethought himself of the Bible he car
ried, his mother's parting gift, the book
that he had neglected and slighted of late.
Turning to it and catching at it as a drown
ing man at a straw, he opened it at random.
The leaves parted at the 121st Psalm, and
his eyes fell, as he glanced at the page,
on these words, " The Lord shall preserve
thee from all evil : he shall preserve thy
soul." The utterance seemed like a direct reve
lation from the skies. The boy felt as though
there was One who had taken knowledge of
his destitute estate, his fears, his remorse,
his sorrow, his anxiety, his cry for help.

138 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
The words got hold of him, and he got hold
of the words with a grip that has never
ceased from that day to this. The vows
made in that hour of danger and trouble
were never forgotten. While brooding on
the passage so strangely applicable to his
time of peril and want his heart was light
ened, and at least a part of the burden was
rolled away. He had scarcely put up the
book and buckled on his sword before all
along the line the order ran, " Fall in,
men ! " and the battle was on.
Through days of struggle on the battle
field and days of waiting in camp, through
a life full of courage as pastor and editor,
that one hour in Rev. Dr. Jesse Bowman
Young's life has shone the most resplendent
of all.

THE HEROINE OF A LEPER COLONY. 139

XXIV.
The Heroine of a Leper Colony.
1T1TARY REED was an Ohio school-teacher,
Jjl and a good one, too. She taught ten
1 years and enjoyed her work, until
God's call came to her to carry the good
news of Christ and his salvation to her un
fortunate sisters in India. The call was so
clear that she could not resist it, and so,
thirteen years ago, she found herself in
charge of zenana work in Cawnpore. She
had but fairly become accustomed to her
daily service when she was taken very ill
and was sent to Pithora, a healthful spot in
the Himalayas, for recovery. Only three
miles from where she stopped was an asylum
for lepers, and her tender heart yearned in
sympathy for them when she learned of their
pitiful lot. Her health being restored, she
went back to Cawnpore, and there and in
Gonda put in five years of hard work, coming
home to America in 1890, to get her strength
again in her mother's home.

l4o HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

Miss Mary Reed.

THE HEROINE OF A LEPER COLONY. 141
While at home she began to suffer from a
peculiarly severe pain in her finger. A
strange spot also appeared on her cheek, low
down near the ear, and one day it came over
her like a flash that leprosy had fastened its
pitiless fangs in her body. She did not tell
her mother, but confided her secret to two or
three friends who could assist her in making
arrangements to go to that mountain retreat
at Pithora as a missionary to the lepers.
She bade her mother farewell, knowing it
must be farewell forever in this world, and
bravely set her face toward the East ; in her
tenderness not permitting the dear ones at
home to know of her disease until she had
reached India.
In order that she might be sure of her
fate she consulted eminent specialists in
London and Bombay, who confirmed her
worst fears. She was indeed a leper. But
with sublime Christian heroism she went to
her destiny not with a sad face, but bravely,
with strong confidence and earnest deter
mination to make the very most out of the
time that yet remained. A friend who

142 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
traveled with her on her journey writes
these beautiful passages :
' ' Here and there we held sweet hours of
communion, and I, who had been accustomed
to see missionaries seeking America in feeble
condition, could not refrain from asking if
it was right for her to return to India at an
unfavorable season, before her health was
established. Her lips quivered, but her
gentle, pleading voice grew steady as she
replied, ' My Father knows the way I go,
and I am sure it is the right way ; ' and at
another time she said, ' I am returning to
India under conditions such as no other mis
sionary ever experienced.'
' ' It was in Paris that she said one evening,
' If I thought it was right, and you would
promise never to speak of it until you heard
it in some other way, I should tell you my
story.' I told her if aught in me inspired
her confidence, that was the surest safeguard
of her secret.
"On memory's walls there will hang
while time lasts for me the picture of that
scene. A wax taper burned dimly on the

THE HEROINE OF A LEPER COLONY. 143
table beside her open Bible — that Book of all
books, from whose pages she received daily
consolation ; and while, without, Paris was
turning night to day with light and music
and wine, within, Mary Reed's gentle voice,
faltering only at her mother's name and com
ing sorrow, told the secret of her affliction.
"As my throbbing heart caught its first
glimpse of her meaning I covered my face
to shut out the swiftly-rising vision of her
future, even to the bitter end, and almost in
agony I cried out, ' O, not that ! Do not
tell me that has come to you ! ' . . .
" I come with sorrow to my last evening
with Miss Reed. I sat in the shadow, and
she where the full moon rising over the
snowy mountains just touched her pale,
sweet face with a glory that loved to linger.
Again I hear her voice in song :
" ' Straight to my home above
I travel calmly on,
And sing in life or death,
My Lord, thy will be done. '
' ' On the shores of lovely Lake Lucerne,
hand clasped hand for the last time on earth,

144 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
and with eyes blinded by gathering tears,
our farewells whispered : ' God be with you
till we meet again.' "
Miss Reed went directly to the leper
asylum at Pithora, and, although for a time
the disease made rapid progress, and she
suffered a great deal, she bore all without
murmuring. Her letters home were full of
the sublime confidence and unfading joy of
the Christ whose banner she is bearing to
victorious conquest among the poor lepers
of the Himalayas. Think of the glory of
the splendid triumphs of faith in this Amer
ican girl, ten thousand miles from home,
slowly dying from a terrible disease in a
leper colony in India, who could write home
one August morning sentences like this:
' ' I could not tie myself down to my writing-
desk this morning in quietness of heart till
I first sat down at my dear organ, and played
and sang, with all the thirteen stops out, ' I
am dwelling on the mountain where the
golden sunlight gleams.' "
What wonder that God has given Mary
Reed wonderful evangelistic power among

THE HEROINE OF A LEPER COLONY. 145
the lepers under her care, and that there are
constant conversions among those who be
hold her radiant face, and who breathe the
atmosphere of her joyous self-sacrifice !
10

1 46 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

XXV.
From Slave Kitchen to a College Presidency.
IT seems most fitting that the man who
above all others is the leader of the negro
race in America, and who appears to
have every element of safe and wise leader
ship, should be called Washington. As
George Washington was the father of his
country, Booker T. Washington gives great
promise of becoming, in a very real sense,
the father of his race in industrial freedom
in this country.
Vast sums of money have been consecrated
by Christian and public-spirited men and
women to bring light and hope to the mil
lions of the colored people. In response,
thousands of educated youth are coming out
of what a generation ago was a race of slaves ;
but of them all Booker T. Washington is
the first who has caught the ear of mankind,
and shown himself to have not only the graces
of the orator, but the sagacity, the prophetic
spirit, and the wisdom of the statesman.

FROM KITCHEN TO A PRESIDENCY. 147
His whole life, from the day of his birth
in a log-kitchen, where his mother was cook
for the farmhouse, reads like a romance.

Booker T. Washington.
In his boyhood he slept on a pallet on the
dirt floor of the kitchen where he was born,
and until the close of the war his body was
clothed simply in a tow shirt. He declares

148 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
that the hardest thing he ever had to do on
the plantation was to wear that tow shirt.
It was made of the roughest part of the flax.
The tow was so harsh and jagged that when
he put it on it was like having a hundred
pins sticking into his chest and back and
arms. It took him a full month to get a new
shirt broken in.
His first great ambition was born in his
heart by seeing a young colored man reading
a newspaper to a crowd of his friends, who
were listening eagerly and looking at the
reader with expressions of awe and reverence.
He saw that being able to read gave one a
higher position, and he at once wanted to
learn the' art. It was two years before he
had a chance, and that chance would have
amounted to nothing except to a hero. He
worked all day, and then walked five miles
to his teacher's house, and then back home
again. When he was fourteen years of age, and
while working in a coal mine, he overheard
some talk of General Armstrong's school for
colored boys at Hampton, Va. His ambition

FROM KITCHEN TO A PRESIDENCY. 149
at once flamed up with the purpose of goin&
to that school. He saved up twelve dollars,
and set out for Hampton. He did not know
where Hampton was, but, getting the general
direction, walked that way. He reached
Richmond, Va., without money, without
friends, and, having no place to stay at night,
he walked the streets until midnight, and
then, being quite worn out, crept under a
sidewalk and slept till morning.
This would have discouraged most boys,
but heroes like Booker Washington are not
easily discouraged. The next morning he
hired out to work on a ship that was unload
ing pig-iron. He worked on this ship
through the day, and slept under the side
walk at night, till he had earned money
enough to reach Hampton, where he arrived
with fifty cents in his pocket.
He applied at once to General Armstrong
for an opportunity to work his way through
the school. That great man sent him to the
lady principal. She gave him a room to
sweep. He swept it and dusted it three
times in order to make sure of an entrance

150 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
into the school. Pretty soon the principal
came in, and, putting her finger on the wall
and looking in the cracks, said, " I guess
you'll do for janitor."
At those words the young man's heart
leaped for joy. He took care of four or five
class rooms — swept and dusted them and
built the fires. He rose at four o'clock in
order to get his work done and have time to
study his lessons.
He would have been a lawyer, save that
the noble purpose of General Armstrong was
absorbed by his sensitive nature, and this
turned him to be the teacher and the leader
of his people.
Perhaps the supreme occasion of Booker
T. Washington's life up to this time — su
preme because it was the crisis from which
he emerged to world-wide reputation and
honor — was his great oratorical triumph at
the Atlanta Exposition. An eye witness
wrote of it :
"There was a remarkable figure — tall,
bony, straight as a Sioux chief, high fore
head, straight nose, heavy jaws, and strong,

FROM KITCHEN TO A PRESIDENCY. 151
determined mouth, with big, white teeth,
piercing eyes, and a commanding manner.
The sinews stood out on his bronzed neck,
and his muscular right arm swung high in
the air with a lead pencil grasped in the
clinched brown fist. His voice rang out clear
and true, and he paused impressively as he
made each point. Within ten minutes the
multitude was in an uproar of enthusiasm.
Handkerchiefs were waved, canes were
flourished, hats were tossed in the air.
The fairest women of Georgia stood up
and cheered. It was as if the orator had
bewitched them."
It was the chivalry of the white South
cheering the speech of a black man. It was
a scene worthy of the greatest artist !
God bless Booker T. Washington and his
great institution at Tuskegee ! And may the
poet's prophecy, which he quoted at the close
of his great speech at the unveiling of the
Shaw Monument in" Boston, be abundantly
realized in his beloved Southland :
" They are rising, all are rising —
The black and the white together."

152 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

XXVL
The Birth of Liberty's Hymn.
1 SHALL never forget an afternoon in the
Boston Theater on the occasion of an
author's readings given in aid of a
fund for the Longfellow Memorial. Of the
splendid group that were gathered on the
platform to read from their own writings
three of the stars of the greatest magnitude
have been transferred to the sky above the
sky. James Russell Lowell was a most striking
figure that afternoon, and read, in addition
to a short poem of his own composed for
the occasion, Longfellow's "Building of
the Ship." He was not a good reader from
the elocutionist's point of view, but that
splendid head is photographed on my mind,
and the tones of his voice come back as
though I heard them yesterday.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, cheerful as al
ways, shed gladness from face and eye as
a bouquet of lilies exhales fragrance. His

THE BIRTH OF LIBERTY'S HYMN. 153
reading of " Dorothy Q." gave universal de
light. George William Curtis, the last of that
trio of translated literary saints, read from

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe.
" Prue and I " with a graceful dignity which
clothed him like an atmosphere.
Among those who still remain none was
received with more expressions of pleasure,

154 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
and perhaps no reading aroused more en
thusiasm, than Julia Ward Howe and her
rendering of " The Battle Hymn of the Re
public." On another occasion I enjoyed her own
story of how that immortal production was
conceived : It was in those stormy times of
1 86 1, when, in company with Dr. S. G.
Howe, her heroic husband, than whom a
more daring and benevolent man America
never produced, Mrs. Howe was visiting
Washington. The city was surrounded on
every side by soldiers, and they had been
compelled to make their way to the capital
through lines of guarding sentries. One
day, in company with Dr. James Freeman
Clarke and his wife, Dr. and Mrs. Howe
were escorted out to the front to see the
army, but were driven back by a sudden at
tack on the part of the enemy. Mrs. Howe
was greatly impressed by the long lines of
soldiers and the devotion and enthusiasm
which they evinced. They were singing as
they marched "John Brown's Body." James
Freeman Clarke, seeing Mrs. Howe's deep

THE BIRTH OF LIBERTY'S HYMN. 155
emotion, which was mirrored in her intense
face, said :
" You ought to write some new words to
go with that tune."
" I will," she earnestly replied.
She went back to Washington, went to
bed, and finally fell asleep. She awoke in
the night to find her now famous hymn
forming in her brain. It took such tremen
dous hold upon her that she could not wait
until morning, but got up and wrote it down
in the gray dawn. What sublime and
splendid woi'ds she wrote ! There is in
them the spirit of the old prophets. Noth
ing could be grander than the first line :
" Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
In the second verse one sees through her
eyes the vivid picture she had witnessed in
her afternoon's visit to the army :
" I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling
camps ;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and
damps ;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring
lamps :
His day is marching on."

156 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
In the last two verses there was a trium
phant note of daring faith and prophecy that
was wonderfully contagious, and millions of
men and women took heart again as they
read or sang it and caught its optimistic
note:" He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call
retreat,
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment
seat :
O be swift, my soul, to answer Him ! be jubilant, my
feet— Our God is marching on ! "
This hymn, which was destined to have
such world-wide appreciation, won its first
victory in Libby Prison. It was printed in
the newspapers, and a copy of a paper con
taining it was smuggled into the prison, where
many hundreds of Northern officers and sol
diers were confined, among them being the
brilliant Chaplain, now Bishop, McCabe.
The chaplain could sing anything and make
music out of it, but he seized on this splen
did battle hymn with a frenzy of delight. It
makes the blood in one's veins boil again with
patriotic enthusiasm to hear him tell how

THE BIRTH OF LIBERTY'S HYMN. 157
the tears rained down strong men's cheeks
as they sang in the Southern prison, far
away from home and friends, those wonder
ful closing lines :
"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the
sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me :
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men
free, While God is marching on."

158 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

XXVII.
The Heroism of the Pastor.
THE life of a true Christian minister is like
an iceberg at sea, in that by far the
largest portion of it is hid from the
public gaze. When one thinks of the hero
ism of a minister he is likely to think only
of his faithfulness to conscience and the
Gospel in his public sermons or addresses.
There is room enough for heroism there,
and there have been many conspicuous ex
amples of such courage in the past, and, de
spite occasional criticisms, I do not believe
there is any reason to fear that there is a
letting-down in courageous fidelity on the
part of the Christian ministry.
The greatest temptation that comes to the
minister to be easy and indulgent and lack
ing in perfect faithfulness is in the opportu
nities of pastoral work. More souls are won
or lost in hand-to-hand or face-to-face strug
gles than in the public congregations. The
temptation to be a pleasant friend, a genial

THE HEROISM OF THE PASTOR.

'59

companion, a good fellow, and nothing
more, to the members of his congregation
is a most insidious one to many ministers of
the Gospel. One may be all these and yet

Theodore L. Cuyler, D.D.
have in addition the crowning grace of he
roic loyalty to the great mission of his life —
to save the souls of his people ; to win them
to and keep them in personal fellowship with
Jesus Christ.

160 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
One of the most honored and conspicuous
examples of such heroism is witnessed in
the career of that Nestor of the American
pastorate, Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler. This
is the more marked in Dr. Cuyler's case be
cause he has all those qualities which would
be likely to tempt one away from what many
men regard as the drudgery of pastoral
work. His brilliant service in the Christian
press is known and read of all men. He is
at once the most voluminous and brilliant
of all the contributors of religious articles
to the newspaper press of the past genera
tion. He has always been in great demand
as a preacher and platform speaker. And
that, in the face of all this, he has held him
self steadily, day by day, through his long
pastoral career, to faithful pastoral visita
tion, in which he has sought with infinite
tact and sympathy, and yet with fearless
honesty, to warn and rebuke and win men
to Christ, is an illustration of the highest
heroism. The result is that there is many a home
in Brooklyn to-day where the family altar

THE HEROISM OF THE PASTOR. 161
established, and where Christ reigns su
preme, that never could have been captured
even by Dr. Cuyler's vivid and forceful
sermons, but was stormed and won by
that persistent personality that rang the
door bell again and again, and reinforced
the truth proclaimed on the Sabbath by pun
gent, heart-searching conversation. Many
and many a young man in the ' ' City of
Churches " has said to me, while his face
glowed with a tender light, " I am one of
Dr. Cuyler's boys ; " and when these " boys "
have come to be grayheaded grandsires,
long after the good doctor is wearing his
crown in heaven, they will still recall with
loving reminiscence the pastor who knew all
their names in the big church and made all
the children feel that they were his boys and
his girls.
In a conversation about pastoral work the
good doctor once said to me that, while a
sermon scattered like a shotgun, private con
versation could be sent straight to its mark,
like the ball from a rifle. He relates how
he once spent an evening in a vain endeavor

i6a HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
to bring a man to a decision for Christ. As
he was about to take his departure the gen
tleman whom he had been seeking to win
took him up stairs to the nursery to show
the faithful pastor his beautiful children in
their cribs. This was the doctor's golden
opportunity. After looking on the little
sleepers for a moment with loving admira
tion he turned to his host and said, tenderly,
" Do you mean that these sweet children
shall never have any help from their father
to get to heaven ? ' ' The arrow went straight
to its mark. The man was deeply moved,
and in a few weeks became an active mem
ber of the church.
Another instance shows Dr. Cuyler's min
gled tact and courage in seizing upon an
opportunity to carry his point for the good
of a man's soul. He had called on a rich
merchant in New York on a very cold win
ter evening. As the door opened for him
to leave the piercing wind swept into the
hallway, and he said, " What an awful night
for the poor! " The merchant shivered at
the remark, and, asking him to wait a

THE HEROISM OF THE PASTOR. 163
moment, stepped to his library and brought
back a roll of bank bills, saying, " Please
hand these for me to the poorest people you
know." A few days later Dr. Cuyler wrote
to the merchant, expressing the grateful
thanks of some poor families whom his
bounty had relieved in their great distress,
and added, " How is it that a man who is
so kind to his fellow-creatures has always
been so unkind to his Saviour as to refuse
him his heart ? " That single sentence was
blessed of God to the merchant's salvation.
He immediately sent for Dr. Cuyler to come
and talk with him, and at once gave his
heart to the Master. He has been a most
valuable and gracious Christian man ever
since. He assured Dr. Cuyler that he was
the first person that had talked to him about
his soul in nearly twenty years. The hero
ism of the pastor did more than a thousand
sermons had been able to do to win him to
open loyalty to Christ.
The best part of it all is that this kind of
heroism is within the reach of every living
ambassador of the Lord.

164

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

XXVIII.
"Mother Stewart's" First Glass.
ALTHOUGH Mrs. Thompson, of Hillsboro,
N O., is known as the mother of the
X, Woman's Christian Temperance Union,

' Mother Stewart.'

the famous "Mother Stewart," of Spring
field, in the same State, who was known in the
days of her prime as " The Wendell Phillips

"MOTHER STEWART'S" FIRST GLASS. 165
in Petticoats," was the immediate cause of
the term, "Temperance Crusade," which
clung to the early stages of the movement of
the women for ' ' God and home and native
land." One saloon in Springfield was just oppo
site one of the leading churches, and from the
house where " Mother Stewart " was living
she could see the throng of men going there
in defiance of law. The preacher could
stand in his pulpit and see the people passing
into the saloon during his sermon, and yet
none of the men took hold of the matter to
get evidence against the saloon keeper and
make him obey the law. The incident that
stirred "Mother Stewart " up to act for her
self was the sight of a man carrying a sweet-
looking babe in his arms as he went into the
saloon on Sunday morning to get his dram.
" If I had a disguise, I would go in there,"
she said, and asked her landlady if she could
furnish her one. The woman thought a
moment, and then replied, "Yes, I can;"
and brought a large waterproof circular that
enveloped her to her feet. She took off her

1 66 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
glasses, put back her hair, and donned the
outfit. She looked like a very respectable
old Irish woman. As she passed out she
turned to the lady and her daughter and
said, " O, now pray for me as you never
prayed before in your lives! "
' ' Mother Stewart " says she was not think
ing of danger, but felt buoyed as if she was
treading on the air. She passed the third
door before reaching the saloon where the
drinking was going on. There were young
men standing at the counter drinking, and
some older men sitting about the place.
She desired to make two cases at the same
time against the saloon keeper — one for sell
ing distilled liquors by the glass to be drunk
on the premises, under the State law, and
the other for selling on Sunday, under the
city ordinance. But she was afraid to ask
for whisky or brandy, lest she might be
suspected as a spy. She asked the bartender
if she could have something to drink. He
asked what she wanted. At a venture she
asked if he had any sherry wine. He set a
bottle and two small glasses on the counter.

"MOTHER STEWART'S" FIRST GLASS. 167
one having a little water in it. She did not
understand what the water meant ; still, she
picked up the bottle and started to pour out
the wine, but as her hand trembled, and as
she wanted to implicate the saloon keeper as
much as possible, she requested him to pour
it out for her, remarking that she felt rather
badly. So he poured it out for her and she
asked the price, and he said a dime, which
she laid down, and, picking up the glass,
walked out.
On the Tuesday evening following that
Sunday morning ' ' Mother Stewart " spoke in
the church opposite the saloon to an audience
that packed it to the doors. Taking her
glass of wine, she exhibited it to the people
and told the story, " How I bought my first
glass of liquor."
That was the beginning of the Temper
ance Crusade in the city of Springfield,
which reached large proportions and did a
great amount of good. It was the editor of
the Journal, of Dayton, O., who named the
new movement. He wrote: " One woman
in Springfield is disturbing the whole city —

1 68 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
not an unusual thing for a woman to do,
however, as they have in times past changed
the course of whole empires. The lady to
whom we refer is Mrs. Stewart, who is on a
Temperance Crusade against liquor selling.
She is determined to banish the trade from
Springfield, and has got herself reinforced
by a battalion of resolute women who are
making it hot for the saloon keepers."
And so it was out of the heroism of one
motherly woman that the famous phrase,
" The Temperance Crusade," was born.

THE CALL OF GOD.

XXIX.
The Call of God.
rfOMEHOW, somewhere, some time, God
lfj speaks to everyone of us, calling us
* out of our indifference, to give him our
hearts. We may refuse, for we are not
mere machines, but we do so at our peril.
He does not call us all in the same way.
The call came to Samuel as a little child, in
the old Jewish tabernacle, in the midnight.
It came to Moses, on the back of Mount Ho-
reb, as he herded his father-in-law's sheep.
It came to Elisha as he was plowing in the
field. It came to Paul on the highway at
noon. I have recently listened to a story of such
a call that came to a boy on the bottom of
the Ohio River, with the soiled current flow
ing above him, when he was in imminent
danger of his life. A group of lads were in
swimming where the Ohio cuts along the
line of West Virginia. They were diving
from the deck of a small boat or float near

170

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

the shore, endeavoring to dive as far down
stream as possible without coming up for
breath. Just beyond them, farther out in

Rev. George C. Wilding, D.D.
the river, were a half dozen large coal
barges or scows. One of the lads, the hero
of our present story, dived from the deck
of the float, and, full of ambition to excel

THE CALL OF GOD. 171
all the other divers of the company, aimed to
go directly down the river with the current ;
but in some way he turned slightly toward
the right hand. When his breath was
about exhausted, and he began to feel that
he must come to the surface for air, he began
to rise, and came upward rapidly. To his
surprise and horror his head struck against
something hard.
He soon realized that he was beneath one
of the large coal barges. The blow had
confused him, and he could not determine
which way he had come. It flashed rapidly
through his mind that there was an area of
coal barges in three directions and open
water in the other ; but which was the direc
tion of escape he could not make out. Like
lightning came the thought that there were
three chances for death and but one for life,
and that he was uncertain as to the way of
life. During these quick minutes, or rather
seconds, of electric-like thought there un
rolled before the eyes of his soul a vivid
panorama of his entire moral life up to that

172 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
moment. There did not seem to be haste.
He saw it in itemized detail ; nothing seemed
to be omitted, and the most trivial events
stood out with marvelous clearness; each
act and thought of selfish gratification, of
disobedience, of wantonness — none were
missing. And all these accusing deeds were
revealed in their proper moral environment
and background. No one will ever be more
clearly self-condemned on the day of judg
ment, when an assembled world is gathered
before the great white throne, than was
that West Virginia lad struggling face to
face with death at the bottom of the Ohio
River that summer afternoon.
It is amazing to him, grown now to a man
of middle age, to remember how easily and
clearly he could study and analyze all this,
as, with every faculty alert, he was intently
planning for safety and deliverance. He
felt if he could only know which way the
current was flowing, he would soon find his
way out. Suddenly he remembered having
read somewhere that the current of a stream
flows stronger at the bottom than at the top.

THE CALL OF GOD. 173
He instantly acted on his thought, and
quickly dived to the bottom of the river.
He at once thrust his fingers into the soft
sediment, and he could, by slowly turning
his hands around, feel the movement of the
current between his fingers. The sensation
of that current sent the blood tingling
through his veins, for with it came the
chance for life. He now knew the way to
the shore. Gathering himself for the effort,
he struck out with all his remaining
strength. When he came to the surface he
was in the open air. There were the green
trees, the blue sky, the fresh air, and the
splash and cries of the noisy boys. How
beautiful it all looked, and how melodious
that babel of sounds !
He swam feebly to the shore and crawled -
upon a sunny sandbank in a collapsed con
dition. He swam no more that day, but
soon walked home a thoughtful, wiser, and
much older boy. He recognized the call of
God, and he has followed it from that day.
That lad to-day is Dr. George C. Wilding,
the eloquent and popular pastor of Hedding

174 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
Church, in Jersey City. He has been a wide
traveler, and once climbed to the snow
capped peak of Mount Hood and looked far
and wide over the glorious panorama of for
est and river and mountains of the Northern
Sierras; but Dr. Wilding still claims that
the highest vision-point and the widest out
look of his life was obtained, not from the
pinnacle of Mount Hood, but beneath a coal
barge in the muddy bottom of the Ohio
River.

•MOTHER BICKERDYKE." 175

XXX.
"Mother Bickerdyke."
THE HEROINE OF THE GRAND ARMY OF THE
REPUBLIC.
[ARY A. BICKERDYKE, universaUy
known as " Mother Bickerdyke," the
unchallenged heroine of the Grand
Army of the Republic, for whom every sol
dier has a tender place in his heart, is still
living, doing what she can for " the boys, "
in Bunkerhill, Kan. A letter from her,
breathing the spirit of a generation ago, lies
before me while I write.
' ' Mother Bickerdyke " was called of God to
her work as truly as ever minister was called
to the pulpit, or leaders were reared up by
Divine Providence for a great people. Her
marvelous work for the wounded soldiers
was a labor of love, and her heroism was
born of self-sacrificing devotion that knew
no limit.
After the battle of Shiloh ' ' Mother Bick
erdyke " was found one day by one of the

176

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

surgeons wrapped in the gray overcoat of a
Confederate officer, for she had disposed of
her shawl to some poor fellow who needed
it. She was wearing a soft slouch hat,

:-m am Hm

Mary A. -Bickerdyke.
having lost her usual shaker- bonnet. Her
kettles had been set up, the fire kindled
underneath, and she was dispensing hot soup,
tea, crackers, and other refreshments to the
shivering, fainting, wounded men.
" Where did you get these articles? " the

"MOTHER BICKERDYKE." 177
surgeon inquired, ' ' and under whose au
thority are you at work? "
She paid no heed to his questions, and
probably did not hear them, so completely
absorbed was she in her work of mercy.
Watching her with admiration for her skill,
administrative ability, and intelligence — for
she not only fed the wounded men, but
dressed their wounds in many cases— the
doctor approached her again :
"Madam, you seem to combine in your
self a sick-diet kitchen and a medical staff.
May I inquire under whose authority you
are working? "
Without pausing in her work she blurted
out, " I have received my authority from the
Lord God Almighty ; have you anything that
ranks higher than that?" As a matter of
fact, she held no position whatever at that
time. She was only a volunteer nurse, and
had not yet received an appointment; but
her answer revealed the real spirit and pur
pose of the noble woman.
" Mother Bickerdyke " was always great in
an emergency. While stationed at Memphis
12

173 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
she found that the people in the enemy's
country were charging enormous prices for
milk and eggs, and that the most useless
produce was being received for hospital
supplies. One day she exclaimed to the
doctor : ' ' Do you know we are paying fifty
cents for every quart of milk we use? and do
you know it is such poor stuff — two thirds
chalk and water — that if you should pour
it into the trough of a respectable pig at
home, he would turn up his nose and run off,
squealing in disgust? "
"Well, what can we do about it? " asked
the doctor.
" If you'll give me thirty days' furlough
and transportation, I'll go home and get all
the milk and eggs that the Memphis hos
pitals can use."
' ' Get milk and eggs ! Why, you could
not bring them down here if the North
would give you all it has. A barrel of eggs
would spoil this warm weather before it
could reach us ; and how on earth could you
bring milk? "
" But I'll bring down the milk and egg

"MOTHER BICKERDYKE." 179
producers. I'll get cows and hens, and we'll
have milk and eggs of our own. The folks
at home, doctor, will give us all the hens
and cows we need for the use of these
hospitals, and jump at the chance to do it.
You needn't laugh or shake your head! " as
he turned away, amused and incredulous.
" I tell you the people at the North ache to
do something for the boys down here, and I
can get fifty cows in Illinois alone, for just
the asking."
" Pshaw ! pshaw ! " said the doctor, " you
would be laughed at from one end of the
country to the other if you should go on so
wild an errand."
" Fiddlesticks! who cares for that? Give
me a furlough and transportation, and let
me try it."
When " Mother Bickerdyke" was in that
mood there was only one way out, and North
she went. She was escorted as far as St.
Louis by several hundred cripples, every one
of whom had lost either a leg or an arm.
These she saw placed in hospitals, and then
went to Chicago. Jacob Strawn, a big-

180 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
hearted farmer, with a few of his neighbors,
gave her a hundred cows at once. In a week
after her call rang out the rooms of the
Sanitary Commission in Chicago were trans
formed into a huge hennery.
Before her thirty days' leave of absence
was ended "Mother Bickerdyke" returned
to Memphis in triumph, amidst the lowing of
a hundred cows and the cackling of a thou
sand hens. Contrabands were detailed to
take charge of them ; and after that there
was an abundance of fresh milk and eggs for
the use of the hospitals.
"Mother Bickerdyke " has by no means
lost her interest in the old soldier since the
war. Mary A. Livermore relates how she
expostulated with the dear old woman for
getting wet on a stormy day in trying to be
friend an old soldier who had been arraigned
in the police court on charge of drunken
ness. The old heroine bridled in a minute,
and retorted, "Mary Livermore, I want
you to understand that so long as an old
soldier is top of ground he can be sure of
two friends — God and me."

THE HEROISM OF THE PLODDER. 181

T

XXXI.
The Heroism of the Plodder.
O my mind there is on the face of the
globe no grander specimen of the hero
than a boy in that awkward epoch when

Samuel Wilson Naylor.
he can find no place for his hands and his
trousers are never long enough to cover his
legs, in the midst of pinching poverty, with

182 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
seemingly no chance for education or culture,
who, in such discouraging conditions, fights
with clinched teeth his toilsome way through
the academy and college and professional
school, and stands, ten years later, a splen
didly-educated, broadly - cultivated, noble
Christian man of the world.
I am going to tell the story of one such
hero, because he is a type of thousands of
boys and girls in every State of the Union
who have heroic stuff in them.
Samuel Wilson Naylor began his fight for
an education in 1883, in Washburn College,
at Topeka, Kan., in the preparatory depart
ment. His family lived on a farm, and for
the first half year he boarded at home and
went to and fro, five miles every day, and
looked after the farm chores night and
morning. The rest of the year he did cler
ical work for a man who gave him in pay
ment a humble room and two meals a day.
The third meal, during that time, was al
ways in demand, but was ever a doubtful
quantity, and sometimes did not appear.
As he had not been able to take Latin

THE HEROISM OF THE PLODDER. 183
during his first year's course, he made up the
entire year's work in that language while
following a plow during the summer vaca
tion. During 1884 he kept "bachelor's
hall " with a young neighbor, the two boys
doing their own cooking. In 1885 he was
elected mail carrier by the students, and
earned enough in this service to pay his
board. In 1886-87 he was elected steward of the
boarding club, which again paid for his
board. He was also, this year, the business
manager of the college paper, and handled
it with such care and efficiency that, in ad
dition to paying all his own way, he was
able to refund some money which he had
borrowed of relatives during the previous
years. During 1888 he continued his con
nection with the college paper and was sec
retary of the Senate Committee of the State
Legislature, for whom he worked only out-
of-school hours. In his senior year, 1889,
in addition to the business management of
the paper, he was United States Census enu
merator.

1 84 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
Note that during these years, while he
was supporting himself by this hard work,
he was by no means lagging in his studies.
He won the highest honors in the society
debate at the oratorical contest.
In 1890 he went to the Boston University
School of Theology. During the first year
he was assistant book agent, steward of the
boarding club, and occasionally supplied the
pulpit of some village church. In 1891 he
supported himself in the same way as the
previous year, and during the latter part of
the year, with three others, organized the
Boston University Settlement, which is yet
a flourishing institution in the old historic
North End of Boston. In 1892 he was field
secretary of the University Settlement, which
secured his support at the University, and he
closed that year by carrying off the honors
as the chosen orator of his class.
Let no one imagine that there was no
chance for social recognition or literary work
under these trying circumstances. In these
years he was several times president of a
literary society ; was president of the college

THE HEROISM OF THE PLODDER. 185
Young Men's Christian Association during
his entire collegiate course of four years ;
delegate to Moody's Summer School, North-
field, Mass. ; and during his senior year was
corresponding secretary for the Student Vol
unteer Movement for Kansas.
At the end of this ten years' constant cul
tivation of his mind and heart he was in
debt only two hundred dollars. This was
soon wiped out, and after two years in the
pastorate, desiring still further to fit himself
for usefulness, he spent a year in foreign
travel, visiting Egypt, the Upper Nile, and
making a long tour in the Holy Land. He
made almost the entire round in Europe on
his bicycle, traveling in that economical way
over two thousand miles.
Now, this was not genius at all — simply a
straightforward, honest lad, with pluck and
determination and genuine Christian spirit,
who knew how to plod and dig, and who
would not be proud of his log-book as I have
given it to you. Every church he may serve
in the days to come will feel the buoyant
strength that he has gained by these years

186 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
of "blessed drudgery." God bless all the
homespun heroes who are making their
brave fight for a cultured and larger per
sonality !

A MISSION TO THE RICH. 187

XXXII.
A Mission to the Rich.
IT may well be doubted if there is any
more thoroughly Christlike work for
humanity being accomplished in our time
than that which clusters about the social
settlements in some of our large cities. The
very conception is in the spirit of Him who
was rich and yet for our sakes became poor ;
who put aside the glory of heaven and came
down to earth, bringing all His resources of
nobility of character, of patience and gentle
ness of soul, to shed them as a flower does
fragrance for the poorest and weakest and
meanest of humankind. So the social
settlement, placed purposely in the very
heart of the slums, where human life is
hardest to bear and a glimpse of anything
pure and holy is rare indeed, is peopled
usually by men and women of culture and
refinement, many of whom leave homes of
luxury and wealth and for Christ's dear
sake deny themselves the happiness of

188 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
associations to which they have been born
and reared in order that by personal example
and contact they may make the Christ-life

Miss Jane Addams.
seem possible and beautiful to the most
hopeless of their brothers and sisters.
One of the most remarkable of these efforts
to bring Christianity incarnate into the'
heart of poverty and sin is Hull House,

A MISSION TO THE RICH. 189
Chicago, and the angel of Hull House is
Miss Jane Addams. It is now ten years
since this institution was founded, and it
has become one of the great institutions of
the city.
Miss Addams's first idea in starting the
work was not so much to help the poor as to
, ,help the rich. Her large soul ached for the
pitiful idleness of many wealthy society girls
who seemed to have no worthy object in life,
and who sadly needed to be brought into
practical sympathy with their fellow-crea
tures. It has always been her belief that
the work of Hull House benefits the teachers
and workers quite as much as it does the
poor people for whom the service is
rendered. Some of the most enthusiastic
and effective workers in this Christlike serv
ice are young women who up to the time
of their becoming interested in this work
had led merely frivolous lives. It has devel
oped and ennobled and glorified them as
much as it has blessed any of the wretched
girls to whom they have ministered with such
tenderness and devotion.

190 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
These young women have found that
every gift and talent they possess can be
brought somewhere into play in this new
work. One girl who has been all her life
accustomed to the highest world of fashion,
and who is an expert in social matters, has
displayed a remarkable ability in imparting
graceful and elegant manners to young street
hoodlums. Another young college girl ut
terly annihilated the taste for dime novels
among the slum boys by a course of talks on
the Legends of Charlemagne and his Pal
adins, which she made so interesting that
these urchins, who had never heard an his
torical lecture in their lives, listened breath
less and fascinated. Roland was the hero
whose adventures particularly delighted
them. After the narration of his death the
boys hung about the room disconsolate. At
last one remarked, sorrowfully, "Well, it is
no use coming any more, Roland's dead! "
But Hull House is not dead ; its devoted
workers are alive to their finger-tips, and
there are brought fresh out of the treasuries
of the minds and hearts of these self-sacrifi-

A MISSION TO THE RICH. 191
cing women things new and old that capture
the imagination and hold the affection and
enthusiasm of the vigorous young life that
would be otherwise running wild into evil.
The whole object is to present the possibil
ities of a Christian life, pure and noble,
beautiful and gracious, before eyes to whom
such a life is unknown.
Like all other good things, Hull House
has been a growth. Ten years ago it con
sisted of only two young women, who rented
a few rooms in a building that they shared
with a desk manufactory. But a wonderful
transformation has been wrought. First,
the desk factory vanished, and Miss Addams
and Miss Starr, with their fellow-residents,
occupied the whole of the old-fashioned Hull
homestead. Then a wing was added, con
taining club rooms and lecture halls and
gymnasiums ; then another wing at the rear
for a restaurant and public bakery, where
soups, cooked meats, and other edibles could
be had all ready to take home for less than
the price of buying and preparing the raw
material. Then a children's house was built

192 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
to accommodate the day nursery, the kinder
garten, and the picture gallery. This great
mass of buildings, with all its beehive of
earnest workers and gracious influences, has
been the outcome of the intelligent love and
good will of two Christian women.
Are there not other men and women of
wealth, of college breeding, of rich gifts of
conversation, or of teaching, or of helpful
fellowship, who are weary of simply eating
and drinking and keeping themselves sleek
and comfortable like a fat ox, who will take
courage and heart at this glimpse of a won
derfully rich investment in humanity? For,
after all, the richest investment one can
make in this world, the one that is sure to
pay back the largest dividends on the capital
put in, is an investment in humanity. No
other soil is so fertile, or will yield such
speedy and satisfactory return.

THE HEROISM OF FAITH. 193

XXXIII.
The Heroism of Faith.
DR. J. WILBUR CHAPMAN, the well-
known evangelist, belongs to the roll
of honor on , which is inscribed the
modern " Heroes of the Faith." Dr. Chap
man's dominant characteristic is the heroic
quality of his faith. He firmly believes
that God is able and willing, at any moment,
to save any man, rich or poor, learned or
ignorant, and instantly transform him from
a penitent sinner to a righteous saint. A
great many people profess to believe that ;
but when a man really does believe it, and
goes about the world living up to his faith,
he is a hero.
Dr. Chapman has great success in reach
ing men. He is such a simple, straightfor
ward, manly man himself that men believe
in him at first glance. At a young men's
meeting in Saginaw, Mich., two or three
years since, Dr. Chapman was urging men
to an immediate decision for Christ. Colonel
13

i94

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

Bliss, an ex-member of Congress, and one
of the wealthiest and most influential citi
zens of the State, had but just entered the
room when the impassioned appeal of the

Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman.

evangelist, " Do it now! Do it now! " fell
on his ears. With a sudden impulse, mak
ing a decision on the instant, Colonel Bliss
arose and simply said, " I will." The whole

THE HEROISM OF FAITH. 195
question of his salvation was settled. The
battle he had been waging for years was
won. Before a great assemblage of men in
Detroit, a few weeks later, he gave this tes
timony : "I was deeply convicted in my
early life — but the war came on. I enlisted
and stifled my convictions for the time
being. Then I was taken prisoner, and de
termined that if I was only released, I would
be a Christian. My release came, and I
said, ' I will wait till the war is ended ' — and
that came to pass and I was still undecided.
Then I said, ' I must give my attention to
business, and after I have made a compe
tency I will be a Christian.' I achieved that,
but I still delayed. Every day it seemed to
grow more difficult, and I had almost lost
hope. My conversion seemed an impossi
bility. But one night I heard Dr. Chapman
say the three words, ' Do it now ! ' And I
said, ' That is a message for me,' and with
a tremendous effort I stood up and said, ' I
will ! ' Immediately I received a blessing.
God certainly revealed himself to me, and
from that day I have been more than happy.

196 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
And, gentlemen," he said to the five thou
sand men present, ' ' if you would have the
easiest time — the safest time — in fact, God's
time to be saved, I repeat the words, ' Do it
now ! ' "
Colonel Bliss has been a most devoted,
enthusiastic Christian ever since.
A very different man was John Pearl,
who for thirteen years had scarcely drawn
a sober breath, and for the same length of
time had not been in the church, except oc
casionally to attend a funeral. His family
had been broken up through his sin, and he
had led as dissolute a life as one could pos
sibly follow. All his earnings were spent
in the saloons; he was profane, and sinful,
in fact, in almost every way common to
man. People who knew him thought him
hardly worth saving, and so he had been
practically forsaken, by Christians.
Dr. Chapman was holding revival meet
ings in Greenbush, just across the river from
Albany, N. Y. One evening John Pearl
was sitting in a saloon when some one said,
" Chapman is preaching in the Presbyterian

THE HEROISM OF FAITH. 197
church to-night." This arrested Pearl's at
tention, and he said, " I'll go and hear him."
The bystanders laughed at the idea of old
John Pearl going to church, but he started
out. When he reached the church his cour
age failed him. He said to himself, " No
one will want me. I am nothing but a poor
drunkard. I am dirty and almost in rags."
And so he hurried away to the saloon. But
God would not let him go, and he was soon
back again at the church door. Almost
before he knew it he was in the church and
in the second pew from the front. For a
part of the service he seemed stupefied ; then
he began to give the truth his attention, and
when the invitation was given his was the
first hand lifted. In the after meeting he
was the first to fall upon his knees ; there
God met him, and he was wonderfully con
verted. John Pearl became a member of the
church, and has been a faithful, loyal fol
lower of Jesus Christ ever since. Only once
has he been tempted to drink. One day the
devil made a dead set for his soul. It

198 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
seemed as if the tiger thirst for strong drink
would drive him wild, but, like Joseph in
Potiphar's palace, he fled from the face of
his temptation, and, going home, he cried
unto God for deliverance. His cry was
heard, and from that day until this he has
been entirely free from the appetite for
strong drink. His life seems to flow on as
sweetly and securely as if he had never
known thirteen years of misery and wretch
edness. I have chosen these two cases, standing
in such strong contrast, out of the thousands
of men who have been led to Christ through
the charming brotherliness and heroic faith
of Dr. Chapman's ministry.

CLARA BARTON ON BATTLEFIELD. 199

XXXIV.
Clara Barton on the Battlefield.
THE heroism of Miss Clara Barton in
going to Armenia to carry relief to the
persecuted Christians of that devoted
land in an hour so dark with danger that
strong men feared to trust themselves in the
power of the inhuman Turk, was so conspic
uous as to make in itself a reputation wor
thy of a lifetime of service.
It is well, however, for the younger por
tion of our readers to have their attention
called to the fact that Miss Barton's fearless
service in Armenia was but the mature
flowering of a heroic life. The War of the
Rebellion brought to the front no character
more conspicuously brave and self-denying
than hers.
Dr. Brockett, in his Heroines of the Rebel
lion, relates a circumstance which occurred
during the battle of Fredericksburg that
strikingly illustrates the courage of Miss
Barton in the presence of danger. In the

200 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
skirmishing of the 12th of December, the
day preceding the great and disastrous bat
tle, a part of the Union troops had crossed
over to Fredericksburg, and after a brief

Clara Barton.
fight had driven back a body of Confeder
ates, wounding and capturing a number of
them, whom they sent as prisoners across
the river to Falmouth, where Miss Barton
as yet had her camp. The wounded Con
federates were brought to her for care and

CLARA BARTON ON BATTLEFIELD. 201
treatment. Among them was a young offi
cer, mortally hurt. Though she could not
save his life, she ministered to him as
well as she could, partially stanching his
wound, quenching his raging thirst, and
endeavoring to make his condition as com
fortable as possible. Just at this time an
orderly arrived with a message from the
medical director of the Ninth Army Corps,
requesting her to come over to Fredericks
burg and organize the hospitals and diet
kitchens for the corps. The officer heard
the request, and, beckoning to her, for he
was too weak to speak aloud, he whispered
a request that she would not go. She re
plied that she must do so ; that her duty
to the corps to which she was attached re
quired it. " Lady," he replied, " you have
been very kind to me. You could not save
my life, but you have endeavored to render
death easy. I owe it to you to tell you
what a few hours ago I would have died
sooner than have revealed. The whole ar
rangement of the Confederate troops and
artillery is intended as a trap for your

202 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
people. Every street and lane of the city
is covered by our cannon. They are now
concealed, and do not reply to the bom
bardment of your army because they wish
to entice you across. When your entire
army has reached the other side of the
Rappahannock and attempts to move along
the streets it will find Fredericksburg only
a slaughter pen, and not a regiment of
it will be allowed to escape. Do not go
over, for you will go to certain death ! "
While her tender sensibilities prevented
her from adding to the sufferings of the
dying mau by not apparently heeding
his warning, Miss Barton did not on ac
count of it forego for an instant her in
tention of sharing the fortunes of the
Ninth Corps on the other side of the river.
The poor fellow was almost gone, and,
waiting only to close his eyes to the bat
tlefields of earth, she crossed on the frail
bridge and was welcomed with cheers by
the Ninth Corps, who looked upon her
as their guardian angel. She remained
with them until the evening of their re-

CLARA BARTON ON BATTLEFIELD. 203
treat, and, with the fidelity of a faithful
sea captain, who is always the last to leave
his vessel in time of shipwreck, she refused
to return until all the wounded men of the
corps in the hospitals were safely across
the river.
At another time Miss Barton arrived in
the rear of the battle and found that the
army medical supplies had not come. The
small stock of dressings was exhausted, and
the surgeons were trying to make bandages
of corn husks. Miss Barton opened to them
her stock of dressings, and proceeded with
her companions to distribute food among
the wounded and fainting. When her bread
was all gone she took the meal in which her
bottles of medicine had been packed and
began to make gruel. When this was ex
hausted she searched the cellar of a farm
house near by and discovered three barrels
of flour and a bag of salt which the Confed
erates had hidden the day before. Kettles
were found about the house, and she pre
pared to make gruel on a large scale, which
was carried in buckets and distributed along

204 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
the line for miles. Although the battle
raged fiercely, and her face became as black
as a Negro's and her lips and throat parched
with the smoke, she kept her place mixing
the gruel until nightfall ended the battle.
But darkness only brought new terror to the
suffering, for as the night closed in the sur
geon in charge at the old farmhouse looked
despairingly at a bit of candle, and said it
was the only one on the place ; and no one
could stir till morning. A thousand men
lay around dangerously wounded and suffer
ing terribly from thirst, and many must die
before the light of another day. It was a
fearful thing to die alone and in the dark,
and no one could move among the wounded
for fear of stumbling over them. Then it
was that Miss Barton's forethought and
womanly housekeeping shone out. She
gladdened the eyes of the astonished sur
geon by bringing out thirty lanterns and an
abundance of candles which she had thought
fully provided for just such an emergency.
But for those lanterns many a life would
have gone out in the darkness that night

CLARA BARTON ON BATTLEFIELD. 205
that by their aid was saved to bless home
circles after the war was ended.
It will take Clara Barton a long time after
she gets to heaven to greet all the people
who have been comforted and blessed by
her heroic life.

206 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

XXXV.
The Last of the Hutchinsons.
OF all that heroic group in which Phillips
and Lovejoy and Garrison and Whittier
and many others were shining stars
there was no more unique inner circle than
what was known as " The Hutchinson Fam
ily." They were not orators, but they were
sweet singers, who were able to send the
gospel of liberty into many a heart that was
locked and barred against the most persua
sive key of public speech.
Mr. John Wallace Hutchinson, the last
left on earth of that truly brave and pictur
esque group, has recently published a Story
of the Hutchinsons, brimful of fascinating
reminiscences of a brave and romantic time.
Mr. Hutchinson tells this story of Henry
Clay: It was in the year 1848, and "The
Hutchinsons " were in New York giving
concerts. Jesse, one of the brothers, wrote
a new song of Mr. Clay, entitled " Harry
of the West," and the present survivor wrote

THE LAST OF THE HUTCHINSONS. 207
the music for it. This song was prepared
on their way to New York, and was first
sung on the boat between New Haven and
that city.

Zl cm
John Wallace Hutchinson.
While in New York they were invited by
Captain Knight, of the then new and famous
ship, Henry Clay, to go on board his vessel.
Complying, they went into the captain's

208 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
cabin, and, standing in a group, they struck
up their new song. They had hardly fin
ished when an alderman of the city who was
on board said to them, enthusiastically,
' ' You must go and sing that song to Henry
Clay this afternoon."
Going ashore, they soon arrived at the
hotel, where a great reception was taking
place. The mayor, his chief counselors,
and their distinguished guest were just
about taking their wine at the banquet when
the singers were ushered in. The mayor at
once arose, announcing their presence, and
asked them to sing an appropriate selection.
The four brothers sang :
" Come, brothers, now let's hurry out
To see our honored guest,
For lo, in every street they shout,
Brave ' Harry of the West.'
" For th' glorious day is coming near
When wrong shall be redressed,
And freedom's star shine bright and cleat
On ' Harry of the West.'
" Then hail, all hail, thrice-honored sage,
Our most distinguished guest !
We'll venerate thy good old age,
Brave ' Harry of the West.' "

THE LAST OF THE HUTCHINSONS. 209
While they were singing this song Mr.
Clay's eyes opened and his chin dropped
with surprise. At the close he arose and
came to them, saying, " What can I do to
repay you for this great honor you have
conferred upon me? " Subsequently he sent
his wine down to them, but the brave young
Hutchinsons sent him back word that they
were teetotalers and could not drink with
him. It took a good deal more courage to
do that in 1848 than it would now. On re
ceiving their reply Henry Clay arose from
the table for the second time, and, leaving
the circle of politicians about him, walked
across the room, the observed of all observ
ers, and said to the young singers, " If I
were a young man like yourselves, I'd be a
teetotaler too."
John Wallace Hutchinson has remained
faithful to his temperance principles through
all the years, and his handsome head, as
splendid as Nathaniel Hawthorne's, often
graces the platform of a temperance meeting.
14

210 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
XXXVI.
The Deaconesses' Sheet Fund.
THERE are many kinds of heroism. The
most common kind and the sort that is
most readily appreciated is the dashing,

Mrs. Anna E. Hull.

aggressive onslaught on the enemy — some
picturesque undertaking like Sheridan's

THE DEACONESSES' SHEET FUND. 211
ride from Winchester, a scene which lends
itself easily to the canvas of the painter,
the tongue of the orator, or the pen of the
poet. Then there is another sort that we
can all easily understand — the heroism of
self-sacrifice. There is also the quieter, but
none the less sublime, heroism of the saint
in the bondage of affliction — one with a soul
large and strong and full of divine longing
for the performance of noble deeds and
splendid achievement, that is shut in like
Joseph in the Egyptian dungeon, or Paul in
Nero's prison in Rome, or some fragile
woman chained to her sick bed through
weary months of lingering illness.
There is a heroism of still another kind —
it is the heroic spirit exhibiting itself in lit
tle things that may help to sweeten human
existence. I have just discovered a woman
illustrating this remarkably helpful sort of
heroism. Mrs. Anna E. Hull is the large-souled
and genial-natured secretary of the Young
Woman's Christian Association in the city
of Cleveland, O. She is one of those strong,

212 HEROIC PERSONALTIES.
warm natures which seem to gather as they
go through youth and middle age rich
sheaves of experience and wisdom, which it
is their joyous ability to impart to the
young, who find in them friend and leader.
I remember that in one of Phillips Brooks's
great sermons he says that every experience
of trial and grief we pass through in life
and come out, by the strength of God, victo
rious we are given the key to that trial, and
are ever after able to unlock it and show
the way through to others. When I see a
woman like Mrs. Hull, about whom young
girls who are away from home and mother
and the guarding associations of home life
flock for sympathy and wisdom, I seem to see
in her cultivated, sympathetic helpfulness
the shining keys hanging at the girdle that
are able to unlock many a doorway that
seems forbidding and lead trembling feet
through in safety to the brighter life be
yond. Mrs. Hull was at a Home Missionary
meeting not long ago, and she heard a little
talk given by one of the nurse deaconesses

THE DEACONESSES' SHEET FUND. 213
concerning a poor sick woman whom she
was nursing. The woman was very worthy,
but extremely poor, not even having sheets
for the bed. The deaconess went on to re
late how often it was the case in the homes
of the very poor that the luxury of clean
sheets was unknown, even in cases of severe
illness. The statement of the deaconess was a
revelation to Mrs. Hull. She had known,
of course, that the very poor must suffer
many privations ; but it had not occurred to
her that here and there through the city
were many sufferers who in times of hot
fever and painful restlessness never knew
the soothing comfort that comes from draw
ing cool, spotless sheets over the fevered
body. As the good woman listened to the
story of the deaconess she remembered that
at that very moment there were some fine
sheets lying in her trunk, souvenirs from
her own happy housekeeping days now gone
by, and she felt ashamed that they should
be folded away in camphor while God's poor
children suffered for need of them.

214 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
She immediately went home and took the
sheets out and sent them at once to the
Deaconess Home. Then she put a box on
her writing desk and marked it " The Dea
conesses' Sheet Fund," and the money that
can be spared goes into it, and her friends
add to it as they can, and every time enough
is gathered to buy a pair of sheets they are
purchased and hemmed and go on their way
of loving ministration. God bless the Sheet
Fund and multiply the people who shall en
deavor with the same heroic cheerfulness to
attack the lesser demons that afflict poor hu
manity !

GRANDPA SAMPSON'S MAIL BAG. 215

F

XXXVIL
Grandpa Sampson's Mail Bag.
OR more than twenty years Rev. William
Sampson has been the chaplain and su
perintendent of the Children's Aid So-

Rev. William Sampson.
ciety and Industrial School and Home in the
city of Cleveland, O. He was an old man
when he came, but these twenty years of

216 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
caring for little children have freshened
him and renewed his youth, so that, though
the almanac says he is eighty-three, the glow
of immortal youth is on his heart and in his
eyes. There is no work more fascinating or
more full of promise and hope for the future
than that which ministers to the needs of
poor and homeless children. Every little
child that comes into a home like this has
some interesting story. Drunken parents
and other evils degrade and bring many
families to poverty and wretchedness. Al
though surrounded with vice and misery, the
child is not to blame. In other cases the
mother dies and the father is unable to keep
the children together. Because of these and
many other reasons little waifs are thrown
out, and, like the Master who loves them,
have no place to lay their heads. In his
spirit, in his dear name, William Sampson
exults with a mother-like tenderness over
every such child with as much eagerness as
a gold miner who has found a precious
nugget.

GRANDPA SAMPSON'S MAIL BAG. 217
In this home they are taught habits of
cleanliness, civility of manners, respect for
age, and the sanctity of religious worship,
together with such industries as are adapted
to their capacity. Over five thousand chil
dren have received instruction and help in
the years that are gone, and over twenty-six
hundred of these boys and girls have been
placed in good homes in different parts of
the country, where they have had a fair
chance for noble lives.
These lads and lasses, happily placed in
good homes, out on the farms and in the
villages of the great West, shower their lov
ing letters on this good man who has been
such a benediction to them. I have been
peering into this mail bag, and the letters
are so fresh and redolent of breezy farm-life
and sincere childish affection that one can
not wonder that Grandpa Sampson renews
his youth as he reads them. Here is one
from a boy, from which I take these lines :
" I had a swamp that brought me $7.25. I
put it to corn and potatoes, and had four
teen bushels of corn and twenty bushels of

218 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
potatoes." Then he adds something about
the pure life of that country settlement.
' ' I want to tell you about my surroundings.
There is not a man in this locality who has
any bad habits, such as drink and profane
language." Not a bad place that for a
young lad of fourteen !
Here is a little girl who bubbles over
with : "I am happy as a bird, and I go to
school every day, and I have such a good
teacher. I sold my lamb and I got three
dollars for it ; now I have got four dollars
and twenty cents."
Here is a pathetic little touch in a letter
from a little colored boy : ' ' How many chil
dren have you? How many colored boys
and girls? I am trying to be good, grand
pa, so that when I die I may meet you in
heaven." All through these letters, and at the close
of every one of them, there are expressions
like these: " Love to you, grandpa; " "I
love you, and would like to have your pic
ture ; " "I shall always have pleasant mem
ories of you, you dear Grandpa Sampson; "

GRANDPA SAMPSON'S MAIL BAG. 219
" Thank God that he raised up Grandpa
Sampson! " " Lots of love to grandpa! "
and so on with ever-varying phrase, but
breathing the same spirit of gratitude and
love. This mail bag is Grandpa Sampson's con
stant garden of delight. I never see him
without thinking how happy this old Christ
like hero will be in heaven, where so many
children are gathering every year.

HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

XXXVIII.
Before the King.
O society of. modern times has done so
much to develop American women and
arouse in them the heroic qualities as
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

Mary Clement Leavitt.
Mary Clement Leavitt was the first mes
senger to carry the White Ribbon banner

BEFORE THE KING. 221
around the world, and proclaim its total-ab
stinence gospel in far-away lands. She once
told me a most interesting story of her visit
to the King of Siam : Mrs. Leavitt had been
in Siam for some time, but had had no op
portunity to see the king, as his majesty
was absent from the city. Just before her
departure, however, the king returned, and
within six hours he sent her a messenger,
saying that he would give her an audience
at six o'clock next day, and ordering Mr.
Bradley, the English interpreter, the son of
an American missionary, to attend and in
terpret the conversation. Everything in
Siam goes by order, and not by request.
Mrs. Leavitt arrived at the exact moment,
and was shown into an anteroom decorated
with armor from many countries. The new
Italian Minister was with his majesty, so
they had to wait a few minutes. Presently
they passed up into a room of pinkish
tinge, ornamented with gold; a smiling
young gentleman came toward the tem
perance orator, and taking her by the hand,
led her to the center of the room and

222 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
into the immediate presence of the King of
Siam. The king spoke English well and under
stood it perfectly ; but he would not converse
in a language that his courtiers could not
understand, so he talked in Siamese through
an interpreter.
Their conversation immediately began on
the purpose of her mission around the world.
The king agreed with Mrs. Leavitt that it
would be well for his kingdom if never a
drop of liquor should enter it again. He
was himself a total abstainer, but even his
example had not been enough to keep his
half-brothers (there were about seventy of
them) from following the bad example of
the foreign diplomats. When the White
Ribboner suggested to him that he might
make total abstinence a prerequisite for
promotion, his majesty, with a smile and
a peculiar look around upon the thirty-five
or forty courtiers who were in attendance,
said : " I have never thought of that. I will
meditate upon it, and I think I will act upon
it." In reply to her query, if he could not

BEFORE THE KING. 223
prohibit the introduction of liquor into his
country, he said it would be easy enough
with China, whence most of it came, but
with regard to England and France it would
require deep thought and great diplomacy,
or the greatest evils would be brought upon
him. Speaking of Christianity, the king turned
to her and said, " But your Christian religion
allows the use of intoxicating liquor ; how,
then, can you work for its entire suppres
sion?" She explained the new line along
which she was working and in which she
thoroughly believed, to which his majesty
responded : " I am very glad to hear this, for
I have often wondered why a religion so su
perior to all others, except as to drink, should
fall below ours [the Buddhist] and the Mo
hammedan in that particular. It is much to
be hoped that this new view will prevail,
and that all missionaries will teach it, espe
cially in Buddhistic countries."
The king had learned his English from
the Bible as his text-book under the in
struction of Mr. Bradley, an American mis-

224 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
sionary. It appeared to Mrs. Leavitt that
he believed the Christian religion to be the
true one, and that he wished to see it spread
in his kingdom, for he said often to the mis
sionaries : ' ' Teach as many women and chil
dren as you can. It is a good religion for
women and children. " He was far too
astute a man not to know that the religion
which was taught to women and children
would permeate everywhere, but the tenure
by which he held his throne was the vow he
had taken on himself to support the religion
of Buddha.
At the time of Mrs. Leavitt's visit the
present king was only a lad of twelve years,
and was said to be a very gifted boy. It is
her opinion that if he inaugurates as many
reforms as his father did, the kingdom will
approach the status of a Christian country.
Up to the time of his father's reign all
who came into the presence of the King of
Siam were required to come creeping on
hands and knees ; but immediately after his
coronation when the people came before
him in this way he took the first one, who

BEFORE THE KING. 225
happened to be his uncle, by the hand and
lifted him up, and forbade anyone ever
again to come before him in that manner.
He said, " I am your king, and expect your
obedience; but I am a man, and must not be
worshiped." Mrs. Leavitt's spirituelle face and earnest
eyes, in which shines the fire of an undying
energy, bring to mind the promise in the
Book of Proverbs concerning the diligent
soul, that such an one ' ' shall stand before
kings." 15

226 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.

XXXIX.
A Hero from the Wigwam.
THE appearance of Chief Joseph, who is
perhaps the most famous American In
dian now alive, at the Grant Memorial
exercises in New York city recalled to my
mind very interesting personal reminis
cences. Chief Joseph and myself are na
tives of the same splendid mountain region
in the Northwest, and, though he is a num
ber of years older, through all my boy
hood I had a great admiration for him, and
have often seen him in his younger man
hood, when he was as fine a specimen of the
plains chieftain as could be imagined. Ab
sence from the Western mountains has given
me a sort of fellow-feeling with Chief Jo
seph. When I read some years since of his
plea to the army officers, made at a time
when he was confined down in the flat, sickly
Indian Territory, ' ' Give me just one little
mountain and I will die content! " I could
not restrain the tears of sympathy.

A HERO FROM THE WIGWAM.

227

Joseph fought for that which the white
man calls patriotism when it has been
crowned with success. His father received
all the early explorers and settlers with un-

Chief Joseph.
suspicious generosity and in the spirit of a
broad, manly fellowship. The Nez Perces
prided themselves on having received Lewis
and Clarke, Bonneville, Fremont, and other

228 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
white men with the hand of friendship, and
on never having falsified their promises.
Up to the time of Joseph's outbreak, though
a number of Nez Perces had been killed by
white men, only one white man had ever
fallen at the hand of a Nez Perce.
Joseph's father joined with the other in
dependent chiefs in a formal treaty, con
cluded in the Walla Walla Valley in 1855,
by which the Indians gave up all claims to
certain large tracts of land. Old Joseph en
tered into this contract on the express stip
ulation that the Wallowa and Imnaha Val
leys should remain to him and his children
forever. Soon the white men wanted these
valleys, and another treaty was made with
several chiefs, but Joseph refused to have
anything to do with it, and was not even
present; but these valleys that had been
guaranteed to Joseph on the honor of the
United States Government were by this new
treaty taken from him. Joseph's own para
ble, by which he illustrated the cruel injus
tice of this treatment, cannot be improved
upon . Said he : "A man comes to me and

A HERO FROM THE WIGWAM. 229
says, ' Joseph, I like your horses, and I want
to buy them.' I say, ' I do not want to sell
them.' Then he goes to my neighbor and
says, ' Joseph has some good horses, but he
will not sell them,' and my neighbor says,
' Pay me and you may have them.' And he
does so, and then comes to me and says,
' Joseph, I have bought your horses.' "
Despite all justice and reason, marauders
poured into this beautiful country, the home
of his youth, and United States troops were
sent to compel Joseph and his people to re
move to a strange reservation. Imagine the
agony of brave-hearted men and women in
an emergency like that ! Yet with a break
ing heart Joseph concluded to move. In
his own language he says : "I said in my
heart that rather than have war I would
give up my country. I would give up
everything rather than have the blood of
white men upon the hands of my people."
It was not easy for Joseph to bring his •
people to consent to move. The young men ,
wished to fight. At this time Chief Joseph
rode one day through his village with a

230 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
revolver in each hand, saying he would shoot
the first one of his warriors who should re
sist the government. Finally they gathered
together their herds of cattle and horses and
began to move. A storm came and raised
the river so high that some of the cattle
could not be taken across. Indian guards
were put in charge of the cattle left behind.
White men attacked these guards and drove
away the cattle. Joseph could no longer
restrain his men ; that was the birth of the
Nez Perce Indian war.
Nothing in the history of modern warfare
surpasses in daring, genius, and bravery the
exploits of Joseph, the Nez Perce chief.
General O. O. Howard, who conducted the
great pursuit, pays the highest possible
tribute to his generalship. Joseph, after
being defeated in a bitterly-contested battle,
led his great caravan of two thousand horses
or more, on which were women and chil
dren, the aged, the wounded, the palsied,
and blind, by a seemingly impossible trail,
interlaced with fallen trees, through the
most rugged mountains to the Bitter Root

A HERO FROM THE WIGWAM. 231
Valley, where, with the cool wisdom of a
Von Moltke or a Grant, he made a treaty of
forbearance with the inhabitants, passing
by settlements containing banks and stores,
and near farms rich with stock, but taking
nothing and hurting no one. So he pushed
on ; he crossed the Rocky Mountains twice,
the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers, and
was within one day's march of Canada when
he was taken.
During all this time the United States
Government had thousands of soldiers in
the field, under veteran officers, and had
spent many millions of dollars in coping
with this brave young hero.
Yes, why not say hero? If we were read
ing of Roman or Grecian wars, we should
certainly consider it something magnificent
in a race that had been trodden under foot
for a hundred years that it was still able to
compel such respect for its patriotic devotion
to home and kindred.
If Joseph had been of less noble spirit, he
need never have suffered capture. He him
self says : ' ' We could have escaped if we

232 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
had left our wounded behind. We were un
willing to do this." And then he adds, with
bitter sarcasm, " We had never heard of a
wounded Indian recovering while in the
hands of white men." A little company
did slip away and escaped across the line.
When the government sent a commissioner
over there to ask them to come back a squaw
named " The-one-that-speaks-once," wife of
" The-man-that-scatters-the-bear," stood up
in the council and said : "I was over at
your country. I wanted to raise my chil
dren over there, but you did not give me
any time. I came over to this country to
raise my children and to have a little peace."
I hope that Joseph may grow old grace
fully, and that it may be true of him that
"at evening time there shall be light.7

THE AUTHOR OF MEMORIAL DAY. 233

r

XL.
The Author of Memorial Day.
URELY no one thing has done so much
to soften the bitterness which civil war
left in our country as the beautiful

Mrs. John A. Logan.
ceremonies connected with Memorial Day.
As the years have gone on, and every Me-

234 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
morial Day the Southern soldiers have been
more and more wont to cover the graves of
their dead f oemen with wreathes of Southern
flowers, and again and again gray-haired
veterans from both the ' ' Blue and the
Gray" have met beside the Hudson to do
honor to the great commander who at Ap
pomattox said, "Let us have peace," the
cold mists of suspicion and distrust have
blown away, until again we see eye to eye.
Mrs. John A. Logan, the wife of the he
roic volunteer general, and herself a brave
personality, has given me the story of the
conception of Memorial Day. In company
with Colonel Charles L. Wilson, of Chicago,
then editor of the Chicago Journal, his niece,
Miss Anna Wilson (now Mrs. Horatio May,
of Chicago), and a Miss Farrar, Mrs. Logan
made a trip in March, 1868, to Richmond for
the purpose of visiting the fortifications
and battlefields around that city. General
Logan was to have accompanied them, but
could not leave his duties in the House of
Representatives to do so, as some important
measure was pending at that juncture.

THE AUTHOR OF MEMORIAL DAY. 235
When they returned they reported to him
all that they had seen during their visit.
Among other things Mrs. Logan was par
ticularly impressed by the evidences of des
olation and destruction which she witnessed
everywhere, but which seemed to her to be
particularly emphasized by the innumerable
graves which filled the cemeteries, many
of which were those of Confederate soldiers.
In the summer before they had all been
decorated by wreaths of flowers and little
flags, all of which were faded, but which
seemed to the tender-hearted woman to be a
mute evidence of the devotion and gratitude
of those people to the men who had lost
their lives for their cause.
In speaking of this General Logan said
that it was not an original custom with the
people of the South ; that the classics are full
of descriptions of the customs of the ancients
in decorating the graves and cinerary urns
of their dead ; and that he considered it a
most beautiful custom and one Avorthy to be
copied, and, as he was then commander-in-
chief of the Grand Army of the Republic,

236 HEROIC PERSONALITIES.
that he intended issuing an order, asking the
entire people of the nation to inaugurate the
custom of annually decorating the graves of
the patriotic dead as a memorial to their
sacrifice and devotion to country.
He issued the first order for May 30th,
1868, and it was so enthusiastically received
and generally observed that he decided
to cause it to be a national holiday by a joint
resolution of Congress, and to make it one
of the duties of the commanders of the Grand
Army of the Republic to issue an order
every year for its observance. And through
his efforts this was accomplished, and has
passed into history and made a beautiful
custom perpetual.
Mrs. May is now the only living member,
besides Mrs. Logan, of the party whose visit
to Richmond was the immediate cause of a
general call for a Memorial Day. General
Chipman was then adjutant-general of the
Grand Army of the Republic, and General
Logan sent for him, and they talked the
matter over, and the order was signed by
General Logan and General Chipman as his

THE AUTHOR OF MEMORIAL DAY. 237
adjutant-general of the Grand Army of
the Republic. It was then the intention,
also, to secure an appropriation every year
from Congress to publish the proceedings of
Memorial Day, so as to compile in that way
the patriotic addresses that might be made ;
but they became so voluminous that it was
found impracticable ; and hence there was
but one volume issued, this being entitled
National Memorial Day. It was edited by
Major Faehtes, who is also now dead.
It will thus be seen that Memorial Day
was born out of a partnership between a
woman's tender heart and a man's noble
purpose. It is also sweet to reflect that
South and North united at its birth. The
Southern mourners were the first to cover
the graves of their dead with flowers, and
their Northern brothers to call to it national
attention and make the custom as wide as
the country.

BOOKS BY DR. LOUIS ALBERT BANKS.

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ing the sinful." — A uthors Pre/ace.
Heroic Personalities, illustrated. i2mo,cioth, 200pp., $1.00.
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to everyday folk the glorious everyday truths of the Scripture.
The People's Christ. A Volume of Sermons and Other
Addresses and Papers. l2mo, cloth, 220 pp., $1.25.
Their manner of presenting Christian truth is striking.
Christ and His Friends. A Collection of Revival Sermons,
Simple and Direct, and Wholly Devoid of Oratorical Arti
fice, but Rich in Natural Eloquence, and Burning with
Spiritual Fervor. i2mo, cloth, gilt top, 390 pp., $1.50.
The author has strengthened and enlivened them with many illustra
tions and anecdotes.
The SalOOn-Keeper'S Ledger. The Business and Financial
Side of the Drink Question. 121110, cloth, 129 pp., 75 cents.
Among the items treated are : The Saloon Debtor to Disease, Private
and Social Immorality, Ruined Homes, Lawlessness and Crime, and
Political Corruption.
White Slaves ; or, The Oppression of the Worthy Poor.
Fifty illustrations. l2mo, cloth, 327 pp., $1.50.
The Rev. Dr, Banks has made a personal and searching investigation
into the homes of the poorer classes, and in White Slaves the results
are given. 239

The Fisherman and His Friends. i2mo, cloth, gilt top,
365 pages, $1.50.
A companion volume to Christ and His Friends^ consisting of thirty-
one stirring revival discourses, full of stimulus and suggestion for minis
ters, Bible class teachers, and all Christian workers and others who desire
to become proficient in the supreme capacity of winning souls to Christ.
They furnish a rich store of fresh spiritual inspiration, their subjects being
strong, stimulating, and novel in treatment, without being_ sensational or
elaborate. They were originally preached by the author in a successful
series of revival meetings, which resulted in many conversions.
Hero Tales from Sacred Story. The Romantic stories of
Bible Characters Retold in Graphic Style, with Modern
Parallels and Striking Applications. Richly illustrated
with 19 full-page half-tone illustrations from Famous
Paintings. i2mo, cloth, gilt top, 279 pp., $1.50.
" One cannot imagine a better book to put into the hands of a young
man or young woman than this."
Seven Times Around Jericho. i2mo, buckram, 134 pp.,
75 cents.
Seven strong and stirring temperance discourses, in which deep en
thusiasm is combined with rational reasoning — a refreshing change from
the conventional temperance arguments. Pathetic incidents and stories
are made to carry most convincingly their vital significance to the subjects
discussed. They treat in a broad manner various features of the question.
ThC Honeycombs Of Life. A Volume of Sermons. i2mo,
cloth, 397 pp., $1.50.
Most of the discourses are spiritual honeycombs, means of refresh
ment and illumination by the way. Ihe volume is well laden with evan
gelical truth and breathes a holy inspiration. This volume includes Dr.
Banks's memorial tribute to Lucy Stone and his powerful sermon in regard
to the Chinese in America, entitled " Our Brother in Yellow."
Revival Qdiver. A Pastor's Record of Four Revival Cam
paigns. 121110, cloth, 254 pp., $i-5o«
This book is, in some sense, a record of personal experiences in revival
work. It begins with " Planning for a Revival," followed by " Methods
in Revival Work." This is followed by brief outlines of some hundred or
more sermons. They have points to them, and one can readily see that
they were adapted to the purpose designed. 1 he volume closes with " A
Scheme of City Evangelization." It seems to us a valuable book,adapted
to the wants of many a preacher and pastor.
Sermon Stories for Boys and Girls, wmo, cloth, 218 pp.,
$1.00.
" The sermon stories which make up this volume have been gathered
out of the current of life, and told in my own way to the children of the
congregations where I have ministered from time to time."
— A uthor's Preface,
An Oregon Boyhood. i2mo, cloth, 173 pp., $1.25.
Dr. Banks takes his^ readers into an entirely new field in An Oregon-
Boyhood^ in which he gives the present generation a description of the
scenes and adventures of boyhood and youth in that far Western country.
240

YALE UNIVERSITY

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