Chapter III: Part 3

But sinners had to be brought to repentance ordinarily. They rarely came unsought, like this poor wayfarer, and thus Mr. Kellogg and his helpers always found plenty to do. It was an inspiring scene when the leader and his “body-guard” set out for the prayer-meeting upon the receiving-ship _Ohio_ or returned therefrom. In going, they usually met at the Young Men’s Christian Association, proceeding thence via “Foot and Walker’s line,” two by two, keeping step to the music of their own voices. “The Old Mountain Tree,” “A Life on the Ocean Wave,” and many other popular songs of the day, as well as hymns, were sung. Among the favorite hymns was “Say, brothers, will you meet us?” It had that stirring chorus, “Glory, glory, hallelujah.” This was sung a great deal, and it finally became the foundation of the famous “John Brown Song,” to the rhythm of which thousands marched in the great war for the nation’s life.

No small part of Mr. Kellogg’s success in this work came from his intimate knowledge of the seaman’s nature. Sailors are in many ways peculiar, and in order to be of service to them a worker must proceed understandingly. They regard themselves as in a measure set apart from their fellow-men. One of them once wrote:--

“I am alone--the wide, wide world
Holds not a heart that beats for me;
I’ve seen my brightest hopes grow dim,
As fades the twilight o’er the sea.”

That Mr. Kellogg understood this loneliness and had a large sympathy for the men “that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters,” these eloquent words of his well show: “In respect to the great mass of seamen, they neither own land, build houses, nor rear families. They neither give nor receive those sympathies and attentions which create among men a mutual dependence and attachment. When they are sick, no circle of neighbors and friends watch by their bedside and minister to their necessities, but the walls of the hospital, if on shore, receive them and conceal their sorrows from observation. No kindred follow them to the grave and erect the memorial stone. They are not, in the expressive language of Scripture, ’gathered unto their fathers,’ but they are buried on the shores of foreign lands, or amid the everlasting snows of the pole, or in the abyss of ocean, slumbering in nameless sepulchres and mausoleums of the mighty deep. Like the winds that bear and the waves that break around them, they are the visitors of every clime, the residents of none.... The knowledge of the community at large in respect to seamen is too often gleaned from the exaggerated descriptions of novelists.... Every man has in his heart home feeling. It is an old-fashioned thing. He drew it in with his mother’s milk. He learned it at his father’s knees. Even sailors are men. They did not spring from the froth of the sea, like Venus. They had mothers and fathers that loved them and prayed for them. It is the heart makes home. It is the heart makes friends in the world. The heart makes heaven.”

Sailors are ever among the bravest of the brave. Great as is the appreciation of the American people of the bravery of the men who lined up behind the guns of our warships in the great war which kept the Union whole, it is not half great enough.

Neither can we overestimate their loyalty in all great crises of the nation’s history. It was President Lincoln who pointed out the fact that in all the general defection of the first period of secession not a single common seaman proved false to his flag.

In a prayer-meeting at the Mariners’ Church while the war was in progress a landsman lamented its effect upon the “Jackies.” A man-of-war’s man arose and said: “What is war to me? What is war to my shipmates? It brings no increase of peril--only another kind. We have always faced danger and death and disease. What is it to me whether danger comes from storms or from batteries? I can kneel down between the guns and pray as well as in my room at the Sailors’ Home.”

For patriotism and bravery wherever shown, Mr. Kellogg had the greatest admiration. Besides the large number of landsmen connected with his church who entered the service, over two hundred of the inmates of the Sailors’ Home joined the army and more than six hundred the navy during the war. With many of these, Mr. Kellogg kept in touch through frequent correspondence, and looked after their personal needs. He loved them all. He often sent necessities and delicacies to his“boys” at the front. In one of the early battles,[3] one of the young men of whom mention has been made as receiving arms at his hands in a Sunday evening prayer-meeting was wounded. He at once visited the hospital to which the young man had been taken, secured a furlough for him, provided him liberally with necessities, brought him to Boston, and sent him to his home in Maine for a visit to his father and mother.

[3] Here, again, the reference is to Mr. Kimball.--W. B. M.

The results of Mr. Kellogg’s great work for seamen were often not apparent. His sailor parishioners were scattered throughout the world. In speaking of this, he once said: “If a person on shore is converted, it immediately becomes known to a church of perhaps six hundred members; if he leads a devoted Christian life, his influence is felt by thousands. But these Harlan Pages of the ocean, who pray with messmates, speak good words to shipmates in the middle watch, maintain a Christian life on board frigates which have been compared to floating hells enlivened once in a while by a drowning--who writes their memoirs? What stone records their virtues? What periodical chronicles their death? They slip quietly to heaven unnoticed and unknown. Their bier is a plank across the lee gunwale, their mausoleum the ocean, their epitaph is written in water. And when the report circulates in the forecastles of different vessels, some old sailor, dashing a tear from his eye with his shirt-sleeve, exclaims to his shipmates, ‘Well, he has gone to heaven. He saved my soul, and he would have saved the whole ship’s company if they had listened to him.’”

The visible results of Mr. Kellogg’s work, however, were from the first encouraging. During the winter of 1858, the great revival was fully felt. Many were brought to Christ. The next year the interest continued, not only at the church and the Sailors’ Home, but at sea. At the Home 276 signed the temperance pledge and 95 were converted. Good work was also done at the hospital in Chelsea. That winter word was received that four members of the Mariners’ Church were holding prayer-meetings on board the _Hartford_, flagship of the squadron then in Chinese waters, and that a lieutenant, the fleet surgeon, a ship’s doctor, a gunner, two midshipmen, six petty officers, and twenty-five seamen had been converted. Prayer-meetings were then being held upon fifteen other men-of-war. The next year also showed good results. In 1861, Mr. Kellogg was able to report seventy-four conversions at the Sailors’ Home, fifty-five on the receiving-ship _Ohio_, twenty-eight at the hospital in Chelsea, thirty-seven at sea, and a number at the church. Statistics show the conversion of 725 during his ministry of eleven years.

The high esteem in which Mr. Kellogg was held by the other clergymen of Boston was well expressed in 1862 by Dr. Todd of the Central Church. Speaking at an annual meeting of the society from which Mr. Kellogg was forced to be absent by a serious attack of lung fever, Dr. Todd said:-- “I regret exceedingly the absence to-day of one who is the life and soul of this work in this city, whose treasured experience, given in his racy way, is wont to enliven this anniversary. I regret exceedingly the cause of his detention. But I may take advantage of his absence to bear some slight testimony to the preciousness of the influence which he is exerting. Apart from his successes among seamen, for which he is eminently qualified by the characteristics of his nature, as well as the tastes of his heart, he is diffusing an untold influence in other spheres. I presume that there is not an evangelical clergyman in this city who cannot gratefully trace among his people, and especially among the young men of his congregation, the quickening and healthful influence of the pastor of the Mariners’ Church.”

A year later the decline in the merchant marine began to be seriously felt. It was said to be due to the sale of a large number of vessels to the English and the change in destination of others, many going to England and the Continent which formerly would have come to Boston and New York. This diversion of commerce was believed to be due to the prevailing high rates of exchange. Then, of course, a great many of the men who had manned our merchant vessels had been absorbed by the army and navy. Just before this decline began, a competent authority had estimated that throughout the world at least one hundred and forty thousand merchant vessels of all kinds were afloat, manned by a million men, and that one-third of these were under the flag of the United States.

These changes in our commerce and this falling off in American seamen greatly lessened the number of inmates at the Sailors’ Home, and seriously weakened the Mariners’ Church. Then, too, a new element had occupied Fort Hill and the adjacent streets. The growth of business was crowding people southward and westward, comfortable homes giving way to commercial establishments. These things, together with an intention which Mr. Kellogg had long cherished of entering upon a literary career, caused him to think seriously of resigning his position. During the summer of 1865 he did so, and was soon after succeeded by the Rev. J. M. H. Dow.

The foregoing is but a glimpse of Elijah Kellogg’s work in Boston. In its entirety, that work is known only to God and the Recording Angel. Its influence was widely felt upon sea and land. Thousands of sailors upon lonely waters were made happier by it, and up among the hills, under the trees, at many a farm-house window, sad faces that looked out and watched for their dear ones’ coming brightened at the remembrance that they had been led to Christ through the efforts of this seaman’s friend.

Mr. Kellogg was a saintly, lovable man, and but for his modesty, shunning, as he often did, the leading churches of the day, because of what he termed their “starch and formality,” he would have been named and known among the great preachers of his time.

AS SEEN THROUGH A BOY’S EYES

WILLIAM OLIVER CLOUGH

When and under what circumstances I made the acquaintance of the Rev. Elijah Kellogg I do not now recall. The place, however, was Boston, and I persuade myself that the time was the winter of 1856-1857, during what was mentioned in the newspapers of that day as the “Finney revival.” I was then an errand boy in a jewelry store, a member of the Park Street Church Sunday-school and congregation, and spent many of my evenings out--for I slept in the store--at the rooms of the Young Men’s Christian Association, then in Tremont Temple. It was probably at the last-mentioned place that Mr. Kellogg came into my life, and now, looking back over the years that have passed, I acknowledge that I have cause for gratitude that I did not resist the love and friendship that he generously bestowed upon me.

Those of us, his friends and admirers, who recall the dignified manners and solemn utterances of the good old clergyman of our grandfathers’ days--on whose approach to the old homestead we fled like a brood of frightened chickens--do not find in him a counterpart. He was like yet unlike them, and it was the unlikeness that attracted young people to him and compelled them whether they would or no to follow where he led. It was that he had been a boy--the old school clergyman never gave evidence of such weakness--and that it seemed no condescension on his part to be a boy again with boys, when by so being he could keep them out of mischief and as he was wont to say “headed up the stream.” More than this he knew how to “get at boys.” He had a purpose in it all. Many boys did not in my boyhood days--and I assume that they are the same in all generations--take kindly to being told that unless they turned over a new leaf and joined the church they would surely go to the devil. Mr. Kellogg knew this and was ever on the watch to discover their plans and ambitions, and, apart from sermons,--for he could get them in in the proper place,--encourage them to strive for success, while incidentally warning them of the pitfalls in their path. In a word, he had an intuitive knowledge of the character of the person upon whom he would impress the better way of life, and knew just how much religious talk he would stand and still come to him with his burdens and for advice. His attitude always seemed to be that religion--as men profess it--was in a large degree dependent upon education in honesty and sincerity of purpose in the things that are nearest at hand, in the affairs of everyday life, that if the twig were but rightly bent, thus the tree would incline. He was indeed a reverend schoolmaster.

Hardly a week passed between the date I have tried to fix and the time I left Boston in 1870, when, if Mr. Kellogg was in the city, I did not meet him somewhere in his wanderings. I do not recall that I ever attended services at the Mariners’ Church on Summer Street, over which he was for many years pastor, on a Sunday morning or afternoon. Sunday evening was the time. It was then that the larger half of the Park Street Church boys and girls ran away, as the annoyed deacons put it, and went to Mr. Kellogg’s meeting. No matter what the weather happened to be or what the attractions were at home, the young people into whose lives Mr. Kellogg had forged his way went where he was to be found. They had done their duty by their own church, and they must do their duty by Father Kellogg; and so it happened that year after year the Seaman’s Bethel was crowded to overflowing on Sunday night, the middle of the house being reserved for Jack, and the wall pews for the boys and girls. Incidentally, and always in the right place, the preacher gave us the advice that was withheld in social and friendly intercourse. In an up-to-date way of expressing it, he “got it all in.”

Father Kellogg, having followed the sea in his youth, had a good many odd ways of saying things that were pleasing to us. Here are some that I now recall:--

The writer said to him one day: “The deacons at Park Street are greatly offended because you take us away from them on Sunday night, and have expostulated with us.” “That reminds me of an old couple in our state” (“our” is accounted for by the fact that the writer is a native of Gray), he replied. “The wife was a strapping woman of more than two hundred pounds and the husband was a little fellow of not much over one hundred pounds. She abused him past the endurance of a block. Her tongue was forever going. She gave him no rest, no peace. Some one said to him, ’Why don’t you turn about and give her as good as she sends?’ and he replied, ’Oh, but it amuses her and it doesn’t hurt me any!’ And that is how it is with the deacons and me. The boys and girls will come to the Bethel just the same.” He was right about it.

Father Kellogg was standing in his accustomed place one night in front of the pulpit, watching the ushers and showing anxiety through fear that sittings would not be found for all comers, when, after looking about, he pointed to one of the pews, and this is what he said:-- “Six persons may be comfortably seated in those wall pews. There are only five in that pew. Why won’t you take another reef in your mainsails, ladies, and accommodate one more?” The ladies blushed and reefed.

One night, when temperance was the theme, he paused, and directing his conversation to some boys who were whispering, remarked: “I sometimes wonder how it will be with young men who cannot behave in Boston, where there are so many policemen to watch them, when they get into that far country where there are no policemen. You’d better cast anchor, boys.”

This anecdote is on the writer. My companion was one of the young ladies of Park Street, and I was feeling just a bit proud of myself. We were on hand in time, and had good seats against the wall. Distress came upon me by reason of new and tight-fitting shoes. I had slipped them off and put them under the seat, and was as peaceful and contented as a bug in a rug. Presently the crowd came, and there was a demand for seats. Spying other boys and me, this is how he fixed us: “Here, John, Thomas, Ezra, Henry, and William, come this way and sit on the pulpit steps.” All the other boys started. I kept my seat. I was in a fix. Then he spoke a second time. “Come, come, no hanging back!” Taking the shoes in my hand, I went as directed. The boys and girls laughed, and he comforted me by saying: “I sat on the pulpit steps many a time when I was a boy. It didn’t hurt me, and it won’t hurt you.”

One night just before the benediction he said very earnestly: “I wish the congregation would exhibit less haste to be dismissed. When the last verse of the hymn is being sung, you throw your books into the rack with a nervous thud that sounds like the ’ram-cartridge’ of a regiment of raw militia. Kindly hold the books in your hands until after the benediction.”

On one occasion when he was talking about politeness as apart from selfishness, this is how he got back at some of us, “Now I suppose if you were travelling in a crowded horse-car, and a tired mother with a baby in her arms, or a feeble old man with bundles in his hands, got aboard, you would give up your seat even if you had paid for it--but I happen to know that there are some of your elders who won’t do it.” I never knew whom he fired that shot at.

A transient man (speaking in meeting one night) bemoaned the fact that some of the tunes to which hymns were sung were theatre refrains, and unholy. “What!” exclaimed Father Kellogg, “you wouldn’t give all the good music to the devil, would you?” The stranger sat down.

One cold, blustery day Father Kellogg came to the store on Milk Street where I was employed, with a tale of sorrow. He had discovered a sick family. There was no food or fuel in the house, and he had no money in his purse. He must raise $3 immediately. Every one contributed on the instant, and he obtained nearly $4. There was a tear in his eye when he went out, and probably having in mind that some of us were theatre-goers or billiard-players, or something else--he turned to me, and remarked aside, “Old Satan will be about $4 short to-night!”

It should not be understood from the foregoing that my recollection of Father Kellogg and my admiration for him are based on and began and ended with a few little anecdotes incidental to evening meetings at the church over which he was the honored pastor. I knew him in the broad field, the world. He frequently spent an hour of the evening with me at the store which was my only home, and where half the evenings in the week I was alone as watchman after closing hours; here he often related his experiences as a sailor--much of which was afterward woven into his stories--and corrected the compositions I had written as a student at the Mercantile Library Association then located on Summer Street. More than this, he knew most of the boys and young men of the association, and dropped in occasionally to hear them speak his declamations and to encourage them in their studies. Later he was wont to call at my boarding-place, as he did at boarding-places of other homeless young men in that great city, to look after me and make me feel that some one cared for me. In those years I went occasionally with him and others to his week-day meetings at the Marine Hospital in Chelsea to“help out in the singing,”--as he was pleased to put it,--and to more other places than it would be interesting to mention here. On most of these occasions he “stood treat” on soda or ice-cream somewhere on the tramp, and, as I now discover, was always endeavoring to keep us interested and out of reach of temptation. In after years and following my departure from Boston, I used to find him at the Athenæum on Beacon Street where--after giving up his church duties--he spent most of his time when writing his books. These meetings were the joy and pride of my life, and from them I always obtained new courage to persevere in my profession. And here let me say that of all the boys of 1857-1870 I know of but one who has made a misfit of life; and over his misfortunes I throw, as I know Father Kellogg would were he still among us, the broadest mantle of charity.

Of Father Kellogg as an earnest and inspired preacher, a consecrated man with a message to men, and of his greatest sermons, others may speak. He was a modest and unassuming man who did not recognize in himself his full power to move and convince men. Physical fear stood in the way. He often expressed himself as greatly embarrassed when officiating over large and fashionable congregations, and he said to me, following his magnificent discourse in a series of meetings at Tremont Temple, that when he approached the desk, his knees shook so that he feared he should fall in his tracks. However this may have been, he got control of himself before he had spoken twenty-five words. All of embarrassment fled before the earnestness of his words and purpose. It was--and I speak with the knowledge that many others consider his sermon on the “Prodigal Son” his masterpiece--one of the greatest efforts of his life. He realized that he was in contrast with Dr. Stone, Dr. Manning, Dr. Kirk, Dr. Neal, and others, and that he must give the best he had. The sermon made a deep impression upon all his hearers.

It was a comparative parallel of a brook and the career of man in weird and forceful language, in imagery that was entrancing, in striking passages, and with the lesson every moment in the foreground,--man and brook at their sources, the place of their birth.

_Morning._ He dwelt upon its beauty at sunrise, and the secluded depths of the forest, and sought the birthplace of the brook. Then with the child and the tiny stream he lingered and dwelt in graceful, dreamy thought, in which he compared their purity, pondered upon the dangers and pitfalls beyond, half undecided whether to venture farther or cease to be. Having determined that it would be cowardly to resist destiny, he followed the murmuring stream, listened to its complaints and made note of its troubles. It was the career of man. As it flowed on, and he wandered beside it, he listened to the song of birds, the murmuring wind, and found himself in harmony with things divine. Anon, the scene changed, the harmony was broken, the temptation to recklessness was observed on every hand. The little brook had increased in strength and commenced its complaining. It was being bruised against boulders, rushed over logs and through chasms, over ledges, alongside of marshes and across the quicksands of meadows, under water-wheels and bridges, thrown mercilessly over precipices and dashed against every substance in its path.

_Noonday._ He mused with it, gathered admirers about it and discovered that it entered into partnership with other streams as men and women enter into the partnerships of life. He listened to its whispered songs by day and sought its harmonies by night, he sympathized with its fault-finding because of the impurities which flowed into it from cities and villages, admired it when it became a broad expanse, and enforced the lesson of man’s journey through life.

_Evening._ Standing on the shore of the ocean, the tide receding, he gazed far out toward the horizon, and in descriptive beauty I cannot reproduce, saw the river meet and mingle with the sea, losing its identity; saw the streets of shining gold, the great white throne and the crown for those who are faithful unto death.

The outline of one other of Father Kellogg’s great sermons still lingers in my mind and attracts my thought. Paragraphs from it are discoverable in the stories he wrote late in life. It was prepared for the purpose of presenting the cause of the Seaman’s Friend Society before a great convention in the Boston Music Hall. He was to speak to a cultured audience of men and women from all parts of the state, and in the presence of some of the best scholars and thinkers in his own profession. He felt that he would be criticised in comparison with other speakers, and was therefore determined to do himself and his alma mater credit, and withal present his cause, so as to reach the hearts and pocketbooks of his hearers. I did not hear the sermon at its original delivery, but later he used it for the same purpose in the churches. I heard it at Park Street, and was so attracted and impressed by its beauty of language and eloquence when spoken by him that I went to the Mount Vernon Church when he delivered it there. This gives the impression it left upon my mind.

Through the career of one sailor, learn of many. He pictured the child in the cradle, the love and hope of a doting mother; followed him to school, saw him develop in mind and muscle; sailed cat-boats, set lobster-traps, and dug clams with him. He talked and dreamed with him about other lands and climes beyond the boundary of their vision, and entered into his hopes and ambition to become the master of a ship. Passing briefly over his coasting voyages, he portrayed him in port surrounded by sharks and bad women, and in the whirl, where if he listens and yields to the tempter, he becomes lost to himself and a sorrow to the mother who bore him. He spoke of his needs, of the associations that should environ him, the necessity for a snug harbor home in every port, and then, when an able seaman, he accompanied him on a voyage to a foreign land.

Then he presented, in vivid colors, beautiful, weird, and awful pictures of the sea such as no man who has not witnessed them may discover in the storehouse of his knowledge. The vessel drifts to-day in a calm; there is little to do on shipboard, and so, half homesick, the sailor looks upon the glassy deep as in a mirror, and sees faces and forms of those he loves. Meantime, there are omens that indicate a coming storm, and anxiety is depicted on every face. Night and the storm! Then the awful picture of the raging deep; the vessel climbing mountain waves and anon pitching into the trough of the sea; the dark and ominous clouds, the angry winds, the mingled prayers and supplications of the crew; the promises of a better life if spared to reach land, the wreck, the rescue,--all in vividness, in rapid and burning oratory that held a landsman as in a vice, moved him to tears, and blotted from his mind all else save the speaker and his theme. Into port, far from home and kindred, and the old story of forgetfulness of promises when in the presence of temptations, and, in conclusion, a masterly plea for pecuniary aid from those who had it in their hearts to better the sailor’s environments.

During the war of the rebellion, Father Kellogg’s patriotism and zeal for the cause of his country was of the most pronounced type. Whenever a regiment from Maine was due to march through the streets of Boston, whether outward or homeward bound, his affection for the old home and the boys of his state, excited him beyond self-control. He met the command, if informed of its coming, at the railroad station, crossed the city with it, remained close to the ranks and at every halt talked with and cheered the boys. He made speeches to several regiments, when reviewed on the Common, and on one occasion--I was present to greet a cousin in the ranks--he broke down completely, and wept like a child. It was pretty safe to say after the departure of a regiment from Maine that Mr. Kellogg had not a “penny to his name.” He made speeches and offered prayers at the unfurling of the flag, and spoke parting words of affection and advice to seamen of his congregation and young men of his Sunday evening meetings, many of whom “died with their wounds in front.”

The last of my several visits with Father Kellogg at his home at North Harpswell was on August 5, 1899. On my journey thither, I talked freely with the driver of the hired carriage--G. W. Holden, a brother of the mystic tie--and said to him: “I should think the people of such an up-to-date place as this would demand a younger preacher, more of a society man than Mr. Kellogg.” He became enthusiastic at once and replied: “Why, bless you, brother, the people of this place are all of one mind in this matter. Like myself they had rather hear Mr. Kellogg say ’amen,’ than the finest sermon any younger minister could possibly preach. Why, people come from far and near to hear him, and every now and then he has a request from some of them to deliver his discourse on the ’Prodigal Son.’ It is a most remarkable sermon. I could hear it twice a year, and hunger for a third.”

But here we were at the end of our pilgrimage, at the very door of his residence. It was nine miles from the boat-landing, half a mile from the main highway through a strip of woods, and in a romantic and secluded spot; an old-fashioned, unpainted farm-house of the fathers, with large, high-studded rooms, and furnishings after the fashion of the city. Everything bespoke comfort.

Mr. Kellogg met me at the door with warm greeting, and when he made out my identity through the mists of years, embraced me with the enthusiasm of a child, put his arms about my neck and kissed me upon the cheek. It was the same warmth and affection with which he greeted the old Park Street Church crowd of young people in good old times. “Come in! come in!” and then our tongues were loosed and it was a race for life, for my visit was necessarily to be brief, to see who could do the most talking. I think--mind you, reader, I am not positive about it--that he did the most of it; at any rate he conjured with names of old-time companions and friends whom I had forgotten, but whose faces and forms were instantly upon the screen before me, and spoke with tenderest affection of boys and girls, old men and matrons, whom we had known and loved, and who have long since paid the debt of nature. Oh, that the living of the good old times could have joined me on that pilgrimage!

He told me it was his purpose to proclaim“glad tidings” to men while life lasted; that he had engaged to preach the next year; that he expected to officiate on Sunday at Bowdoin College, and that his health was such--deafness being his only apparent infirmity--he had reasonable hope of becoming a centenarian. He recalled incidents innumerable with which I am familiar, and related with manifest pleasure that the deacons of Park Street undertook to put a stop to the “running away” of their young people on Sunday nights, and, with merriest twinkle of the eye, said, “their lectures fell on stony ground. Some of the young people replied that they were born in the Bethel, others that they were looking for a chance to sing, and there were a few--and I fear you were one of the number--who always turned up where the girls were. Anyhow, I had the crowd, and I loved every one in it as though he were my own.”

Then, in softened accent, as though he feared he had wronged those deacons in thought and spirit, he said practically this: “Ah, but those same deacons were good and true men. They were sympathetic, they were liberal to a fault, and I never went to one of them for aid in my work to return empty-handed. Then there was my old friend, Alpheus Hardy, of the Mount Vernon Church. I verily believe he would have turned all he had in the world over to me had I solicited it.”

The conversation ran on and on in changing moods. I feared that Brother Holden and our lady travelling companion would begin to think themselves in for a half-day of steady waiting, and so I began to break away. This was the hard part of it all. He clung to me and put his arms about me, urged me to dismiss the driver and sleep under his roof, and finally exacted a promise that I would come again next year, if in that vicinity, and tarry longer. Our adieus were then spoken, and he stood upon the porch and waved his hand in parting.

All that I have here written is, as I view it, a eulogy on the character and career of Father Kellogg, and yet I may be pardoned, considering my long acquaintance, tender attachment and admiration for the man, if, as attorneys put it, I sum up:--

He was one of nature’s noblemen; he was incapable of deceit; he lived a life above reproach. His one great purpose was to make himself useful to the human family. To this end he sought out boys who were liable to go astray, and it may be said in all seriousness, and with impressive emphasis, that he succeeded in the mission to which he was consecrated. The seed he sowed ripened in the lives of those in whom it was planted, and, granting that each in turn confers the same blessing upon his children, Father Kellogg’s influence must continue on and on to future generations, making the world wiser and better because he has lived in it. His gentle chidings, his forgiveness of seeming neglect, his patience when troubles were upon him, his sympathy for those who were in sickness, sorrow, need, or any other adversity, his hopefulness when in financial stress, his devotion to his invalid wife, his anxiety for his children, his unselfishness, his never failing cheerfulness and steadfast faith in God, his submission by which he ever discovered the silver lining in the dark cloud, his determination to preach the Gospel to the end of his days,--all, all, have lodgment in my heart; and so, when I think of him, it is not as of one dead, but one who lives, lives in the affections of kindred and friends, in beneficent influence still abroad in the world, in deeds: not dead, not dead:--

“There is no death,
The stars go down to rise upon a brighter shore.”

Kellogg the Author

WILMOT BROOKINGS MITCHELL

“If the gods would give me the desire of my heart,” exclaims Thackeray in _The Roundabout Papers_, “I should write a story which boys would relish for the next few dozen of centuries.” This is a glorious immortality which Thackeray desires for his boys’ story. Generously have the gods dealt with that author whose writings for boys have been relished even a quarter of a century.

Of the stories and declamations of Elijah Kellogg the past at least is secure. What boy reader did not relish “Good Old Times” and “Lion Ben”? What schoolboy has not“met upon the arena every shape of man or beast that the broad empire of Rome could furnish, and yet never has lowered his arm”? The schoolboy of the future will be of different stuff from the schoolboy of the past if, when declaiming to his mates on a Friday afternoon, he does not begin in subdued tones and stand, like Regulus, “calm, cold, and immovable as the marble walls around him,” and end in guttural tones and in a fine frenzy with “the curse of Jove is on thee--a clinging, wasting curse.” “Spartacus to the Gladiators,” the first of Mr. Kellogg’s eleven declamations, was written, as has already been said,[4] in 1842, for one of the rhetorical exercises at Andover Seminary. At this exercise there was present a Phillips Academy boy, John Marshall Marsters. Some years afterward, when Marsters was to take part in the Boylston Prize Speaking at Harvard College, he secured from Mr. Kellogg a copy of “Spartacus.” In this, as in many similar competitions, it proved a prize-winner; and it so won the admiration of Mr. Epes Sargent, one of the judges, that he first published it, in 1846, in his “School Reader.” Since then no school or college speaker has been deemed complete unless it included“Spartacus to the Gladiators.”

[4] See page 47.

“Regulus to the Carthaginians” Mr. Kellogg wrote at Harpswell for his friend, Stephen Abbott Holt, then a student at Bowdoin College, who first declaimed it in the Junior Prize Speaking, August 25, 1845; and it was first published in 1857 in Town and Holbrook’s Reader. Most of his other declamations were written for _Our Young Folks_, and similar magazines.

As school and college declamations, these have seldom, if ever, been surpassed. Vivid in description, stirring in sentiment, alive with action, dramatically portraying concrete deeds of heroism, they are especially attractive to school and college boys. Nearly all of these, it will be noticed, deal with ancient characters and events. From the time Mr. Kellogg began to prepare for college in his father’s study, he was exceedingly fond of the ancient classics. He had in his library at the time of his death 235 volumes of the classics of Greece and Rome. Well versed in Greek and Roman history and mythology, he could fittingly extol the patriotism of Leonidas and Decius; bewail the woes of the Roman debtor; incite the gladiators to revolt; and appeal to the Roman legions, or curse the Carthaginians through the mouth of Icilius or Regulus.

With the exception of a few bits of verse written while he was an undergraduate and printed in the college paper, _The Bowdoin Portfolio_, “Spartacus” was the first of Mr. Kellogg’s writings to be published. During the twenty-three years between 1843, when he became pastor of the church at Harpswell, Maine, and 1866, when he resigned as pastor of the Mariners’ Church in Boston, he wrote very little that was printed: “Regulus,” an ode for the celebration of Bowdoin’s semi-centennial in 1852, and a sermon, “The Strength and Beauty of the Sanctuary,” preached at the dedication of the Congregation Chapel, St. Lawrence Street, Portland, Maine, in 1858. After 1866, after Mr. Kellogg was more than fifty years old, came that rather remarkable period of story-writing. Uncommon is it for a story-writer not to begin his career until after he has lived two score years and ten. That Mr. Kellogg could tell a tale, however, in a way to interest boys, his college mates discovered during his undergraduate days; for those well acquainted with him in college, as they have recorded their recollections of young Kellogg, seldom fail to mention that “he was very fluent in talk, exceedingly interesting as a conversationalist, and an excellent story-teller.”

For some time before his resignation from the pastorate of the Mariners’ Church he had been thinking of trying his hand at a boys’ story, and in January, 1867, the first chapter of his first story was printed in _Our Young Folks_, a magazine published in Boston by Ticknor and Fields. This story, “Good Old Times,” at once became popular with the young readers of this magazine. It is one of the best stories that Mr. Kellogg ever wrote. It is largely a narrative of facts--the story of Hugh and Elizabeth McLellan, the great-grandfather and great-grandmother of Elijah Kellogg, in their struggle at the beginning of the eighteenth century to cut a home for themselves out of the forest wilderness of Narragansett No. 7, where the town of Gorham, Maine, now is. Of Scotch-Irish descent, young, brave, and resolute, “strong of limb, strong in faith, strong in God,” this couple left their home in the north of Ireland to escape persecution, poverty, and famine. They braved the terrors of the sea and the savages to found a home in the new country. Accustomed as they had been in Ireland to regard a landowner as the most fortunate of men, they deemed it a rare privilege to secure land in Narragansett No. 7, by paying “but little money and the balance in blood and risk and hardship.” They gladly dared the privations of a savage wilderness to obtain some soil they could call their own.

Little wonder is it that the story of how they did this proves of interest to the boys of New England; it is the story of what their own grandfathers and great-grandfathers endured, enjoyed, and achieved. Here, to be sure, they read of no fairyland peopled with elves and sprites, with ogres and goblins; here is no fairy godmother with glass slippers and pumpkin coaches, but a land of flesh-and-blood men and women, of real boys and girls, of Indians with war-whoops, and tomahawks, and scalping-knives--all true, but all enchanted by the wand of the story-teller. What better fun for the boy reader than to join this resolute family as they set out from Portland, and go with them into the primeval forest; Elizabeth on horseback with a babe in her arms leading the way, little ten-year-old Billy just behind driving the cow, and Hugh with a pack on his back, a musket slung across his shoulders, and another child in his arms, acting as rear-guard. Here in the woods were hard work, peril, and poverty; but here, too, were all kinds of interesting things for a boy to see and do. To help build the log house, shingle it with hemlock bark, and stuff the chinks with clay and brush; to see Hugh make the big “drives” and prepare for the “burn,” an exciting and important event in the making of a forest home; to watch the fire as it rushed through the clearing, and to lie in wait, gun in hand, near the woods and watch the “raccoons, woodchucks, rabbits, skunks, porcupines, partridges, foxes, and field mice ’on the clean jump,’ all running for dear life to gain the shelter of the forest, while a great gray wolf, which had been taking a nap beneath the fallen trees, brought up the rear”--this was rare sport. To wear leggings and breeches of moosehide; to gather spruce gum and maple sap; on moonlight nights to shoot the coons that were stealing the corn; to see the men cut and haul the masts, those immense trees upon which the king’s commissioner had put the broad arrow, those trees so large that upon the stump of one of the largest, so said Grannie Warren, a yoke of oxen could turn without stepping off--this was fun indeed for little Billy. What boy, as he reads the story, does not wish that he were the son of a pioneer, even if the corn and meat did now and then get so scarce that the McLellans were obliged to dine upon hazelnuts, boiled beech leaves, and lily roots. In those good old times, men and boys were not forced to betake themselves to tents and camps to get away from our “modern conveniences,” to test their resourcefulness and ingenuity in devising ways and means to secure food and shelter. From the boy’s point of view that pioneer life was one long, glorious vacation of “camping out.”

And then there were the Indians, who, whatever else they did, kept the life of that day from becoming tame and commonplace. They furnished, when friendly, no end of entertainment for the youngsters. What fun the boys had playing beaver in Weeks’s brook, and how delicious the venison was when roasted by old Molly the squaw! Under the instruction of friendly Indians, Billy learned to give the war-whoop, to hurl the tomahawk, and to acquire great skill with the bow. If he could not, like Robin Hood, cleave a willow wand at a hundred yards, he could “knock a bumblebee off a thistle at forty.” And when Billy was fast coming to man’s estate, the Indians, instigated by the French, dug up the hatchet that had been buried for nineteen years; then there was a call for all the coolness, cunning, and heroism that this pioneer life had developed in boy or man; then Beaver, as the Indians called Billy, and his savage playmate, Leaping Panther, were compelled to pit against each other their prowess and cunning. Narragansett No. 7, right in the Indians’ trail, was the scene of many an encounter, often bloody and disastrous in those days, but more exciting than a Captain Kidd expedition when looked back upon through the eyes of the twentieth-century boy. Driving the oxen, with a gun resting on the top of the yoke, planting and reaping and every moment expecting to hear the war-whoop, creeping serpent-like through the grass and stealing noiselessly under an overhanging bank in order to discover an Indian ambush--the story of all this arouses the heroic in a boy’s nature.

After “Good Old Times,” from Mr. Kellogg’s pen the books came thick and fast,--the Elm Island stories, the Forest Glen, the Pleasant Cove, and the Whispering Pine series,--so that by 1883 there were twenty-nine in all.

While writing these books, the author lived in Boston, on Pinckney Street, during the winter, often supplying neighboring pulpits, and spent the summer at his Harpswell home. His favorite workshop was the Boston Athenæum. Here he often wrote from morning till evening. One of his college mates has said: “Kellogg when in college was strenuous and persistent in whatever he undertook. I remember when he was composing a poem or preparing an essay, he gave his whole soul to it; his demeanor showed that he was absorbed in it and absent-minded to everything else, until that one thing was done.” This power of concentration now stood him in good stead. Often he worked upon his stories fifteen hours a day. Upon his “Sophomores of Radcliffe” he spent a year and a half; but by making his days long and concentrating his thought upon the one task before him, he was sometimes able to turn out a book in three months.

The style in which these books are written is not faultless. The participles are sometimes“dangling” or “misrelated.” The uses of“most” and “quite,” of “and which” and the “historical present,” are not always according to the rhetorician’s rules. Flaws may also be picked with the way some of the characters are introduced, transitions made, and statements repeated. But considering the number of stories the author wrote in these sixteen years, such mistakes are surprisingly few. Mr. Kellogg had an ear sensitive to the flow of a sentence and a memory in which words stuck. The rhythm of his prose is noticeably good and his vocabulary excellent. Well acquainted alike with farmers and sailors, with mechanics and students, he could put fitting words into the mouth of each. The language of his characters does not stultify them: his carpenters are not fishermen; his sailors are not landlubbers; his farmers are not caricatures. He knew well the “down-east” vernacular. In the use of the dialect--if such it may be called--of rural New England, Tim Longley and Isaac Murch can give points even to Hosea Biglow.

All of these books are not of the same merit, and concerning them boys’ opinions differ. Next to “Good Old Times,” perhaps the Elm Island and the Pleasant Cove stories are most after a boy’s heart. An island far enough out at sea so that the dwellers thereon cannot easily supply their wants and consequently have to use inventiveness and daring, is an interesting element in any story, whether it be“Robinson Crusoe,” “Masterman Ready,” or “Lion Ben.” Although not a tropical land abounding in cocoanuts, turtles, and parrots, Elm Island affords abundant opportunity for boys’ play and boys’ work. “Does such an island really exist?” writes a mother to the author. “No,” he replied, “only in my own imagination.” And yet for many boys it does exist. There is no need to describe Elm Island to the boys of New England. They have trod every foot of it and know its every nook and cranny. They know that it is six miles from the Maine coast, “broad off at sea,” and that in the early days fishermen used to land there and make a fire on the rocks and take a cup of tea before going out to fish all night for hake. They have looked admiringly upon its rich coronal of spruce, fir, and hemlock, the large grove of elms on its southern end, and the big beech tree which often has in it as many as ten blue herons’ nests at one time. They can tell you of its precipitous shores, its remarkable harbor, its beautiful cove into which runs the little brook where come the frostfish and smelts, and where the wild geese, coots, whistlers, brants, and sea-ducks galore come to drink. That big rock where the waves roar hoarsely is White Bull; and this smaller one, white with the foaming breakers, is Little Bull.

They know that “it was a glorious sight to behold and one never to be forgotten in this world or the next, when the waves, which had been growing beneath the winter’s gale the whole breadth of the Atlantic, came thundering in on those ragged rocks, breaking thirty feet high, pouring through the gaps between them, white foam on their summits and deep green beneath, and--when a gleam of sunshine, breaking from a ragged cloud, flashed along their edges--displaying for a moment all the colors of the rainbow.... And how solemn to listen to that awful roar, like the voice of Almighty God!”

This island and the neighboring mainland Mr. Kellogg peopled with likable and interesting characters. Strong, good-natured Joe Griffin, beneath whose hat is ever hatching a practical joke, Uncle Isaac Murch, full of Indian lore, skilled in the use of tools, always able to look at things from a boy’s point of view, Captain Rhines, John Rhines, Charlie Bell, and old Tige Rhines are dear to many a boy’s heart. And Lion Ben, powerful, overgrown, agile, slow-tempered, warm-hearted Lion Ben! Almost as soon could a boy forget Leather-Stocking as forget Lion Ben.

Situated as was Narragansett No. 7 some ten miles inland, in “Good Old Times” Mr. Kellogg had but little to say of sailors and the sea. But Elm Island and its sea-loving people afforded him large opportunity to use the knowledge of ships and seamen gained during the three years he had sailed before the mast, or the twenty he had ministered to sailors in Harpswell and Boston. He knew all the pleasures which the sea and shore afford inventive, resourceful boys like John Rhines and Charlie Bell. Fishing and swimming, making kelp siphons, spearing flounders, shooting coot and geese, building boats and sailing them into the teeth of the gale--no author has told of these more entertainingly. Mr. Kellogg loved the sea dearly and knew the words and ways of sailors well. “Here,” says a reviewer, “is an author who knows just what he is writing about. He never orders his sailors to lower the hatch over the stern or coil the keelson in the forward cabin.” He liked nothing better than to build an “Ark” or a “Hard-Scrabble,” load her with lumber and farm produce, man her with Griffins and Rhineses, a snappy crew of home boys, who would “scamper up the rigging racing with each other for the weather earing,” and sail away to the West Indies. Through hurricanes, blockades, or pirates, they would sail with colors flying, reach their port in safety, sell their cargo for a handsome profit, and come back laden with coffee, molasses, and Spanish dollars to gladden the hearts of the dwellers on Elm Island and in Pleasant Cove.