Chapter XXXII: The Pioneer Wedding 318 (2)

One of the mightiest factors in human life to-day is the language we use. Three centuries ago there were about 6,000,000 using it; to-day 125,000,000 speak the English tongue. The Duke of Argyle was once asked which was the best language. He said, "If I want to be polite I use the French, if I want to be understood I take the English, if I want to praise my Maker I take the Gaelic, my mother-tongue." Foreigners coming here think in their own language, even though they may be able to speak in ours; gradually they come to think in English, but still they dream in their mother-tongue; at last they dream, think, and speak in the language of the land, and become homogeneous with the nation.

God's greatest gift to this New World is the foreigner. The thought came to me while on my way to Savannah: Why did not the discoverers of the Western Hemisphere find a higher civilization than the one they left? Why should God have kept so large a portion of the world hidden from the eyes of Europe for thousands of years? Had he not some grand design that in the fulness of time he would lead Columbus, like Abraham of old, to found a new nation?

Take your map and find those States which the stream of immigration has passed by, and in every case you find them behind the times. Strange how prejudice warps our vision! Jefferson said, "Would to God the Atlantic were a sea of flame;" and Washington said, "I would we were well rid of them, except Lafayette." Strange words for a man who would not have been an American had his ancestors not been immigrants. Hamilton, the great statesman, was an immigrant. Albert Gallatin the financier, Agassiz the scientist, and thousands of illustrious names, make a strong list. One-twelfth of the land foreigners!--but one-fourth of the Union armies were foreigners too.

WHAT THEY BECOME.

When Linnæus was under gardener, the head gardener had a flower he could not raise. He gave it to Linnæus, who took it to the back of a pine, placed broken ice around it, and gave it a northern exposure. In a few days the king with delight asked for the name of the beautiful gem. It was the Forsaken Flower.

So there are millions of our fellow-men in Europe to-day, in a harsh environment, sickly, poor, and ready to die; but when they are transplanted, they find a new home, clothes, food, and, above all, the freedom that makes our land the very paradise for the poor of all lands. These immigrants have made the brown prairie to blossom as the rose, the wilderness to become like the garden of the Lord. They drove the Louisiana Lottery out of North Dakota; they voted for temperance in South Dakota. Their hearts beat warm for their native land, but they are true to their adopted country.

The mixture of the nationalities is the very thing that makes us foremost: it has produced a new type; and if we but do our duty we shall be the arbitrator of the nations. There is no way to lift Europe so fast as to evangelize her sons who come to us. Sixteen per cent go home to live, and these can never forget what they saw here; did we but teach them aright, they would be an army of foreign missionaries, fifty thousand strong, preachers of the gospel to the people in the tongue in which they were born, and thus creating a perpetual Pentecost.

One other great fact needs pointing out. The discovery of this land was by the Latin races; and yet they failed to hold it, lacking the genius for colonization for which the Anglo-Saxon is pre-eminent. During the last fifty years, over 13,000,000 immigrants have come to this land. Great Britain sent nearly 6,000,000; Germany, 4,500,000; Norway and Sweden, 939,603; Denmark, 144,858; the Netherlands, 99,522; Belgium, 42,102. Here we have over 11,000,000 Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, and Scandinavian, of the 13,000,000, and almost half of them speaking English, while Italy, Russia, Poland, France, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, and all other nations sent but 1,708,897 out of the 13,296,157. And we must note also that nearly all of the Latin races came within the last few years; so that we were a nation 50,000,000 strong before many of them came, and eighty per cent of all our people speak English.

No nation ever drove out its people without loss, as witness Spain and France with their Protestants and Huguenots. England took them, and they helped to make her great. Often when a nation has actually been conquered in war, she in turn conquers her victors and is made better. Germany conquered Rome; but Roman laws and Roman government conquered the invaders, and made Germany the mother of modern civilization. Norsemen, Danes, and Saxons invaded Britain, and drenched her fields in blood. The Normans brought their beef, their mutton, and their pork, but the English kept their oxen, sheep, and swine; and eventually from the Norman, Dane, and others came the Anglo-Saxon race. England has four times as much inventive genius as the rest of Europe, but America has ten times as much as England; and why? Because added to the English colony is all Europe; and in our own people we have the practical Englishman, the thoughtful German, the metaphysical Scot, the quick-witted Irishman, the sprightly Gaul, the musical and artistic Italian, the hardy Swiss, the frugal and clear-headed Swede and Norwegian; and all united make the type which the world will yet come to, the manhood which will recognize the inherent nobility of the race, its brotherhood, and the great God, Father.

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V.

THE ODDITIES OF THE FRONTIER.

As the waves of the sea cast up all sorts of things, so the waves of humanity that flood the frontiers cast up all sorts and conditions of men. To go into a sod house and find a theological library belonging to the early part of the century, or to hear coming up through the ground a composition by Beethoven played on a piano, is a startling experience; so are some of the questions and assertions that one hears in a frontier Sunday-school.

I remember one old man who was in class when we were studying that part of the Acts of the Apostles where the disciples said, "It is not reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables;" the old fellow said, "I have an idee that them tables was the two tables of stone that Moses brought down from the Mount." This was a stunner. I thought afterwards that the old man had an idea that they were to leave the law and stick to the gospel; but still it did not seem right to pick out men to serve the tables if that was what he meant.

Another would be satisfied with nothing but the literal meaning of everything he read. So when I explained to the class the modern idea of the Red Sea being driven by the wind so as to leave a road for light-laden people to walk over, the old man was up in arms at once, "Why," said he, "it says a wall;" and no doubt the pictures which he had seen in his youth, of the children of Israel walking with bottle-green waters straight as two walls on either side, and the reading of a celebrated preacher's sermon, where it spoke of the fish coming up to peep at the little children, as if they would like a nibble, confirmed the old man in his views.

In vain I told him that a wind that would hold up such a vast mass of water would blow the Israelites out of their clothes; still he stuck to his position until I asked him whether, when Nabal's men told him that David's men had been a wall unto them day and night, he thought that David had plastered them together?

He said, "No; it meant a defence," and apparently gave in, but muttered, "It says a wall, anyway."

Another man told me that if a man cut himself in the woods, there was a verse in the Bible so that if he turned to it and put his finger upon it, the blood would at once stop running; and he wanted to know whether I knew where to find it. I told him I was very sorry that I did not know.

On the other hand, you may find a man with a Greek Testament, and well up in Greek, making his comments from the original. Here a Barclay & Perkins brewer from London, who has plunged into the woods to get rid of drink, and succeeded. Here a family, one of whom was Dr. Norman McLeod's nurse, and a playmate of the family. Another informs you he preached twenty-five years, "till his voice give out;" and here a Hard-shell Baptist, who "don't believe in Sunday-schools nohow."

The minute-man at the front needs to be ready for all emergencies, for he meets all kinds of original characters. One of the most successful men I ever heard of was the famous Father Paxton described by the Rev. E. P. Powell in the _Christian Register_ in a very bright article from which I quote:--

When "blue," I always went down to the Depository, and
begged him for a few stories. He rode a splendid horse, that
was in full sympathy with his master, and bore the
significant name, Robert Raikes. There were few houses
except those built of logs, and these were not prejudiced
against good ventilation. He laughed long and loud at his
experience in one of these, which he reached one night in a
furious storm. He was welcomed to the best, which was a
single rude bed, while the family slept on the floor, behind
a sheet hung up for that special occasion. Paxton was so
thoroughly tired that he slept sound as soon as he touched
the bed; but he half waked in the morning with the barking
of a dog. The master of the house was shaking him, and
halloing, "I say, stranger! pull in your feet or Bowser 'll
bite 'em!" Stretching out in the night, he had run his feet
through the side of the house, between the logs; and the dog
outside had gone for them. The time he took in pulling in
was so trifling as to be hardly worth the mention.

Those who know little of frontier life can have no idea of
the difficulties to be met by a man with Paxton's mission.
There was one district, not far from Cairo, that was ruled
by a pious old fellow who swore that no Sunday-school should
be set up "in that kidntry." Some one cautioned "the
missioner" to keep away from M----, who would surely be as
good as his word and thrash him. M---- was a Hard-shell
Baptist, and owned the church, which was built also of logs.
He lived in the only whitewashed log house of the region.
Instead of avoiding him, Father Paxton rode up one day, and
jumping off Robert Raikes, hitched him to the rail that
always was to be found before a Southern house. Old M----
sat straddle of a log in front of his door eating peaches
from a basket. Paxton straddled the log on the other side of
the basket, and helped himself. This was Southern style. You
were welcome to help yourself so long as there was anything
to eat. The conversation that started up was rather wary,
for M---- suspected who his visitor was. Pretty soon Paxton
noticed some hogs in a lot near them. "Mighty fine lot of
hogs, stranger!"

"And you mought say well they be a mighty fine lot of hogs."

"How many mought there be, stranger?"

"There mought be sixty-two hogs in that there lot, and they
can't be beat."

Just then a little boy went up and grabbed a peach.

"Mought that be your young un, stranger?" asked Paxton.

"As nigh as one can say, that mought be mine."

"And a fine chap he be, surely."

"A purty fine one, I reckon myself."

"How many young ones mought you have, my friend?"

"Well, stranger, that's where you have me. Sally, I say,
come to the door there! You count them childer while I name
'em--no, you name 'em, and I'll count."

So they counted out seventeen children. Paxton had his cue
now, and was ready.

"Stranger, I say," he said, "this seems to me a curious kind
of a kidntry."

"Why so, stranger?"

"Because, when I axed ye how many hogs ye had, ye could tell
me plum off; but when I axed ye how many children ye had, ye
had to count right smart before ye could tell. Seems to me
ye pay a lettle more attention to your hogs than ye do to
your childer."

"Stranger," shouted M----, "ye mought sure be the missioner.
You've got me, sure! You shall have the church in the
holler next Sunday, and me and my wife and my seventeen
shall all be there."

True to his word, he helped Paxton to establish a school.
When I was in St. Louis, there was a Sunday-school
convention there. A fine-looking young man came up to Father
Paxton, who was then in charge of the Sunday-school
Depository, and said,--

"Don't ye know me, Father Paxton?"

"No," said Paxton; "I reckon I don't recall ye."

"Well, I am from ----; and I am one of the seventeen
children of M----. And I am a delegate here, representing
over one hundred Sunday-schools sprung from that one."

VI.

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.

Perhaps no man gets such a vivid idea of the dark and bright sides of frontier life as the general missionary. One week among the rich, entertained sumptuously, and housed with all the luxuries of hot air and water and the best of cooking; and then, in less than twelve hours, he may find himself in a lumber-wagon, called a stagecoach, bumping along over the wretched roads of a new country, and lodged at night in a log house with the wind whistling through the chinks where the mud has fallen out, to sit down with a family who do not taste fresh meat for weeks together, who are twelve miles from a doctor and as many from the post-office.

Nowhere in the world can a man so soon exchange the refinements of civilized life for one of hardship and toil as in a new country. Our minute-man must share with the settler all his toils, and yet often forego the settler's hope. The life among frontiersmen is apt to unfit a man for other work. His scanty salary will not allow many new books, and often his papers are out of date. The finding of a home is one of the worst of hardships. Let us start with the missionary to the front; our way lies through a rich valley. The moon is at her full, and we pass fine farms. The scent of the hay floats in at the car windows; fine orchards surround the houses, while great flocks of sheep are seen feeding, and herds resting, comfortably chewing the cud.

But morning comes, and we must change cars. We are in a city of 80,000 people, with 498 factories with 15,000 employees, where a few years ago a few log houses only were in sight. As we change cars we change company too. We left the train at a Union Station, with its green lawns and trim garden, to find a station with old oil-barrels around it, the mud all over everything, the train filled with lumbermen, with their red mackinaw shirts and great boots spiked on the bottoms, and a comforter tied around the waist.

A few women are on the train, often none at all. Our new road is poorly ballasted, and the train bounces along like a great bumble-bee. The men are all provided with pocket-pistols that are often more deadly than a revolver. At the first station--a little mouse-colored affair, sometimes without a ticket-agent--we notice the change. The stumps are thick in the fields; many of the houses have the building-paper fluttering in the wind; the streets are of sawdust. You can see the flags growing up from the swamp beneath. The saloons are numerous; and as the train is a mixed one in more senses than one, abundant time is given while shunting the freight-cars for the men to reload their pocket-pistols and get gloriously drunk.

"Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious."

And so on we go again for forty miles, when all leave the train but one solitary man, who lies prostrate in the car, too big for our little conductor to lift, and so he goes to the terminus with us. It is getting late, and the last ten miles are through a wilderness of dead pines, with here and there a winding line of timothy and clover that has sprung up from seeds dropped by the supply teams. But presently we see a pretty stream with bosky glades, and visions of speckled trout come up; then an immense mill, and a village of white houses with green Venetian blinds, and a pert little church. We had expected some good deacon to meet us and take us home to dinner; but, alas! no deacon is waiting, or dinner either for some time. For out of eight hundred people only five church-members can be found, four of them women.

It well nigh daunts the minute-man's courage as he sees the open saloons, the big, rough men, the great bull-terriers on the steps of the houses. The awful swearing and vile language appal him, and the thought of bringing his little ones to such a place almost breaks his spirits; but here he has come to stay and work. The hotel is his home until he can find a house for his family. There is but one place to rent in the town, and that is in a fearful condition. It is afterwards whitewashed and used as a chicken-coop. But at length a family moves away, and the house is secured just in time; for the new schoolmaster is after it, and meets the man on the way with a long face.

"You got the house?"

"Yes."

"What can I do? my goods are on the way!"

"Oh, they will build one for you, but not for a preacher."

"No, they won't. Could I get my things in for eight or ten days?"

"Oh, yes." The minister is so glad to get the place that he feels generous. But the good man stays eleven months; and he has besides his wife and child, a mother-in-law, a grandmother-in-law, a niece, a _protégée_, and a young man, a nephew, who has come to get an education and do the chores. They are all very nice people, but it leaves the minute-man and his wife and four children with but three rooms. The beds must stand so that the children have to climb over the head-boards to get at them. The family sit by the big stove at their meals, and can look out on the glowing sand and see the swifts darting about; while in the winter the study is sitting-room and playground too.

But this is luxury. Often the minute-man must be content with one room, for which the rent charged may be extortionate. Even then he must keep his water in a barrel out in the hall. In cold weather perhaps it must be chopped before getting it into the kettle.

I knew of one man who lived in a log house. It had been lathed and plastered on the inside, and weather-boarded on the outside, so that it was very warm, and so thick that you could not hear the storms outside, which raged at times for days together.

One day late in March a fearful snowstorm arose, and for three days and nights the snow came thick and fast. Luckily it thawed fast too. On the fourth day there was need for the minute-man to go for the doctor, who lived some miles away. On the road he engaged a woman to go to his house, where her services were in demand. After he had summoned the doctor the good man took his time, and reached home in the afternoon. He was greeted by a duet from two young strangers from a far land.

Night closed in fast; the house was so thick that no one suspected another storm; but on going out to milk the cow, it was storming again, and the man saw he had need to be careful or he would not find his way back from the barn, though it was only a few yards away.

When he reached the house, the good lady visitor, who had insisted that she could not stay later than evening, gave up all hope of getting home that night. She stayed a fortnight! For this time the storm raged without thawing, and for three nights and days the snow piled up over the windows, and almost covered the little pines, in drifts fifteen feet deep. Not a horse came by for two weeks.

Once another man started in a storm on a similar errand; but in spite of his love, courage, and despair, he was overwhelmed, and sinking in agony in the drift, he never moved again. When the storm was over, the sun came out; and what a mockery it seemed! The squirrels ran nimbly up the trees, the blue jays called merrily; but the settlers looked over the white expanse, and missed the gray smoke that usually rose from the little log shanty.

The men gathered to break the roads; the ox-team and snow-plough were brought out, and the dogs were wild with delight as they ploughed up the snow with their snouts, and barked for very joy; but the men were sorrowful, and worked as for life and death. Half way to the house the husband was found motionless as a statue, his blue eyes gazing up into the sky. The men redoubled their efforts, and gained the house. The stoutest heart quailed. A poor cat was mewing piteously in the window. And when at last the oldest man went in, he found mother and new-born child frozen to death.

VII.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN THE SOUTH.

The South has two kinds of frontier,--that which has never been settled, and once thickly settled parts that have grown up to wild woods and wastes since the war. In old times the slave had a half-holiday on Saturday, which custom the colored brother still keeps up; and a more picturesque scene is not to be found than that presented by a town, say of three thousand inhabitants, where the county has seven colored people to one white.

Never was such a motley company gathered in one place,--old men with grizzled heads, all with a rabbit-foot in their pocket, a necklace for a charm around their necks, their bronzed breasts open to view; old mammies with scarlet bandannas; young belles of all shades--here a mulatto girl in pale-blue dress and pointed shoes, her waist as disfigured as any Parisian's, there a mammoth, coal-black negro driving a pair of splendid mules.

Here is an original turnout; it was once a sulky. The shafts stick out above the great ears of the mule; the seat has been replaced by an old rocking-chair; the wheels are wired-up pieces of a small barrel that have replaced some of the spokes, while fully half the harness is made up of rope, string, and wire. The owner's clothes are one mass of patchwork, and his hat is full of holes, out of which the unruly wool escapes and keeps his hat from blowing off.

The sidewalk presents a moving panorama unmatched for richness of color. As we leave the town, we ride past plantations that once had palatial residences, whose owners had from one to three thousand slaves, the little log cabins arranged around and near the house. In many cases the houses are still there, but dilapidated.

Here, where each white person was once worth on an average thirty thousand dollars, to-day you may buy land for a dollar an acre, with all the buildings. It is a lovely park-like country, with clear streams running through meadows, branching into a dozen channels, where the fish dart about; and the trees shade and perfume the air with their rich blossoms, and the whole region is made exquisitely vocal with the song of the peerless mocking-bird. Here, too, the marble crops out from the soil, and some of the richest iron ore in the world, all waiting for the spirit of enterprise to turn the land into an Eldorado.

To be sure, there are obstacles; but the Southern man of to-day was born into conditions for which he is not responsible, any more than his father and ancestors before him were responsible for theirs. And those that started the trouble lived in a day when men knew no better. Did not old John Hawkins as he sailed the seas in his good ship Jesus, packed with Guinea negroes, praise God for his great success? So we find the men of that day piously presenting their pastor and the church with a good slave, and considering it a meritorious action.

Time, with colonies settling in the new South, will yet bring back prosperity without the old taint, and keep step with all that is good in the nation. It cannot be done at once. I knew an energetic American who had built a town, and thought he would go South, and at least start another; but, said he, "I had not been there a week when I felt, as I rocked to and fro, listening to the music of the birds, and catching the fragrance of the jessamine, that I did not care whether school kept or not."

There is no great virtue in the activity that walks fast to keep from freezing. We owe a large portion of our goodness to Jack Frost.

Dr. Ryder tells a story of one of our commercial travellers who had been overtaken by night, and had slept in the home of a poor white. In the morning he naturally asked whether he could wash. "Ye can, I reckon, down to the branch." A little boy belonging to the house followed him; for such clothes and jewellery the lad had never before seen. After seeing the man wash, shave, and clean his teeth, he could hold in no longer, and said,--

"Mister, do you wash every day?"

"Yep."

"And scrape yer face with that knife?"

"Yep."

"And rub yer teeth too?"

"Yep."

"Wal, yer must be an awful lot of trouble to yerself."

Civilization undoubtedly means an awful lot of trouble.

VIII.

ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN.

The frontier is the place to find all sorts of conditions and also of men. Monotony is not one of the troubles of the minute-man. He is frequently too poor to dress in a ministerial style, and quite often he is not known until he begins the services. This sometimes leads to the serio-comic, as witness the following:--

Our man was looking over a portion of the country where he wished to locate, and in making the necessary inquiries he asked many questions about homesteads and timber claims. Notice having been given that there would be preaching at the schoolhouse, the people assembled; and while waiting for the preacher, they discussed this stranger, whom they all thought to be a claim jumper. He certainly was not a very handsome man. They proposed to hang him to the first tree. Trees were scarce there, and possibly that fact saved him. He came up while they were talking, entered the schoolhouse, and from the desk told them he was the preacher, and was going to settle among them. Here was a promising field, where people were ready to hang a man on their way to church. It is a fact that where we find people ready for deeds of this kind we have the material for old-fashioned revivals of the Cartwright type.

When Jesse James was shot, it was easy to find a man to preach a sermon full of hope to the bereaved relations, and to crown the ruffian with martyrdom.

The minute-man has some hair-breadth escapes. He comes upon a crowd of so-called vigilants, who have just hanged some men for horse-thievery; and, as he has on store-clothes, he narrowly escapes the same fate. In one instance he was able to prove too late that they had hanged an innocent lad; and in that case the poor boy had not only pleaded his innocence but had explained that he was tired, and had been invited to ride by the gang who had stolen the horses, the men themselves corroborating his story; but it did not avail; and the poor boy was strung up, and a mother's heart was broken in the far East. Often these border ruffians act from unaccountable impulse, just as the Indians would torture some captives and adopt others from mere whim.

It is an awful commentary on the condition of things on our frontiers, that a man has a better chance of escape when he has murdered a fellow creature than when he has stolen a horse. And yet in this year 1895, I have seen a man who was trying in vain to sell a horse for $1.50.

To illustrate how much more valuable life is than gold, a minister relates this anecdote of a California miner who, to save a young girl in a shipwreck, threw his belt of gold away and saved her life. After the meeting was over a matronly woman came up to him and said, "Sir, I was the young girl the miner saved." Or he enters a log house, and finds a beautiful woman and her no less beautiful daughter, and soon learns that, a few years before, they were moving among the brilliant throng that surround royalty in Europe; and in that little room the mother has the dress and some of the jewels in which she was presented to Queen Victoria. He finds them in the little log house, apparently contented; but there is a romance and a mystery here that many would like to unravel. Or, maybe, he enters the neat frame house of a broken-down Wall-street stockbroker, who with the remnants of his fortune hopes to retrieve himself upon his one hundred and sixty acre homestead, and who, with his refined and cultured family, makes an oasis in the desert for the tired missionary.

In the winter he sometimes rides a hundred miles to Conference, and time and again is upset as he attempts to pass through the immense drifts. His harness gives way when he is miles from a house; and he must patch it up as best he can from the other harness, and lead one horse. He must learn to ride a tricking broncho, to sleep out on the prairie, to cover himself with a snowdrift to keep from freezing, and in case of extremity to kill his horse and crawl inside, perhaps barely to escape with his life as the warm body changes into a refrigerator. If he lives in a sod house, he must often put the sheets above his head to keep away the lizards that crawl out as the weather becomes warm, and an occasional rattler waking up from his torpid winter sleep. At times the rains thaw his roof out, and it drops too; and then he must reshingle with sod.

Often he is called to go forty and fifty miles to visit the sick, to sit up with the dying, and to cheer their last moments. He can and does do more useful work when attending the poor and sickly than in any other way. Many a family has been won through the devotion of the minute-man to some poor little sufferer.

One day he meets a man hauling wood with a pair of wretched mules. The man is dressed in blue denim, the trousers are stuffed into boots that are full of holes. A great sombrero hat is on his head. By his side is a beautiful young woman. She is the wife. He finds on inquiry that the man has been a brilliant preacher, writer, and lecturer; yet here, two thousand miles from his Eastern home, he is hauling railway ties for a living.

I once visited a family living in a house so small that the kitchen would barely hold more than one person at a time. There was a sick man there, whom I used to call upon two and three times a week. In order to turn himself, he had a leather strap hung from the rafters. The woman of the house was of a cruel disposition. She was the second wife of the sick man's brother, and had a daughter who was about thirteen years of age, but who was large for her years. I used to find this child working about in her bare feet and singing, "I'm so glad that my Father in heaven." And I felt quite encouraged, as the child had a bad reputation.

One day this girl came to the parsonage and brought a silver napkin-ring, saying it was a New Year's gift, and that her mother was sorry she could not have engraved upon it "For my dear _pasture_." My wife said we ought not to take it; but I replied,--

"Yes; these people get fair wages, and would feel offended."

So we kept it. Some days after, as two men were felling a large pine-tree which was hollow at the base, they were surprised to see albums, bracelets, napkin-rings, combs, spoons, and other articles falling out. About this time a saleswoman had been missing just such things from her counter; and it was soon discovered that my youthful convert was a first-class kleptomaniac, equal to any city thief of the same class. Her mode of operation was to call the woman's attention to something on the shelf behind her; then taking anything within reach, and with an "Oh, how pretty!" she would decamp.

I met the mother on my way to visit the sick man. "O Elder!" she said, "I am in a peck of trouble. That gal of mine has cleared off on a raft with a lumberman, and she has been stealing too. What shall I do?"

As I knew that the woman had tied the girl's tongue with whip-cord, and beaten it with birch bark until it bled, to cure her of lying, I said, "You had better send her to the Reform School." It appeared afterward that the man who had run off with the girl was a minister's son; and he said in court he had taken pity on the girl, and wanted to save her from the cruelty of her mother. The girl was sent to the Reform School at Adrian, but not before she had given the sheriff the slip, and taken another girl with her, getting as far as Rochester, N. Y., before she was recaptured.

Sometimes in these frontier towns the sermon is stopped in a most unexpected way. I remember one good man preaching on Jacob. An old woman, who was sitting on the front bench, became deeply interested; and when the minister said, "When the morning came, Jacob, who had served all these long years for his wife, found not the beautiful Rachel, but the weak-eyed Leah," the old lady broke out with "Oh, my God, what a pity!" That ended the discourse, and the benediction was omitted.

In another back settlement a young student was preaching on the Prodigal Son. "And what, my friends, would you have done had your son come home in that way after such conduct?" The answer was prompt, "I would have shot the boy, and saved the calf."

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IX.

THE SOUTH IN SPRINGTIME.

"You are going the wrong time of the year," was the reiterated warning of friends who heard that I was to make a Southern trip. Experience proved them to be as far astray as if they had warned one from going North in June; for the May of the South is the June of the North. Nature was revelling in her fullest dress, making a symphony in green,--all shades, from the pale tint of the chinquapin and persimmon, to the deep indigo of the long-leafed pine, and the tender purple green of the distant hills,--a perfect extravaganza of vegetable growth.

The weather was delicious; from the south and east came the ocean air, and from the north and west the balsam-laden ozone of the mountains, every turn in the road revealing new beauties. The cool Southern homes, with their wide verandas covered with honeysuckle, and great hallways running right through the house, often revealing some of the daintiest little pictures of light and shade, from apple or china tree varied with the holly, the Cape jasmine, and scuppernong vines, the latter often covering a half-acre of land, while chanticleer and his seraglio strutted in proud content, monarch of all he surveyed. High on a pole hung the hollowed gourds, homes for the martins and swallows. The mistress sat at her sewing in the shady porch, while out beyond, under a giant oak, with gracefully twined turban and brilliant dress, the sable washerwoman hung out her many-colored pieces, making altogether a scene of rural beauty seldom surpassed.

What joy to sit in the ample porch and look over the great cotton-fields with their regular rows of bluish green, variegated by the tender hue of the young corn, and a dozen shades of as many species of oak, while the brilliant tulip-tree and the distant hills, now of softest blue, contrasting with the rich, red ochre of the soil, make up a picture never to be forgotten. Cooled by the breezes that sweep through the porch, one dozes away an hour of enchantment. The negroes with their mules, in the distance, in almost every field, add to its piquancy, and often, floating on the wind, come wild snatches in weird minor notes the broken rhythm of their old Virginia reel, performed with the rollicking exuberance of the race.

The reader must not suppose that all Southern homes answer to the above description. Thousands of houses are without a porch or any shade save that which nature gives. The chimneys are built on the outside, sometimes of stone, sometimes of brick or of clay, while layers of one-inch slats hold the chimney together; but, as a rule, so prodigal is nature that a vine of some kind will entwine around their otherwise bare and severe outlines, and make them, like some dogs, homely enough to be handsome.

Although these poorer houses are devoid of all artificial attempts to beautify, they are frequently built near a great oak and the dense china-tree for shade, while wild fruits of many kinds grow promiscuously about. In every hedgerow, and within a stone's throw of nearly every country home, will be found partridges, wild pigeons, and all sorts of small game, with plenty of foxes to keep it in reasonable bounds, while every household has a number of hounds and curs for the foxes. But with all the varied beauty of the scene, the New Englander constantly misses the well-kept lawn,--for here bare ground always takes the place of grass,--and there are no village green and fine shaded roads, and that general neatness which distinguishes the rural scenes of "the Pilgrim land."

A few words about the people. They are as warm-hearted as their climate; the stranger is greeted with such invitations as these: "Come in;" "Take a chair;" "Have some of the fry;" "Have some fresh water." They are up with the sun--family prayer by five, A.M.; breakfast half an hour later; dinner at one; supper at seven; to bed by dark. The churches are plain, costing seldom more than eight hundred or one thousand dollars; doors on all sides opposite each other to allow for a good circulation of air. A pail of water stands on a form near the pulpit. The church generally stands in a grove or the forest itself.

The people are very fond of preaching. The whole family, from the oldest to the youngest, go; and one may often see the mother at the communion with a little one at the breast. Sometimes eleven or more of a family will occupy a wagon filled with oak-splint chairs.

It takes one back thirty years ago to the West, as one stands at the church-door and sees the people flocking in through winding roads in the woods, the sunlight and shadow dancing upon the moving teams that shine like satin in the bright morning air. The dogs are wild with delight as they start a covey of partridges, and make music in the deep shadows of the woods. Here a group of young men and maidens are drinking at the spring.

The preacher often is a jack-of-all-trades--sometimes a doctor, getting his degree from the family medicine-book; and strange to say, though an ardent believer in faith-cure, and with marvellous accounts of cures in answer to prayer, yet prescribing a liver invigorator when that organ is in trouble. Some of these men are natural orators, and with their bursts of eloquence often hush their hearers to holy awe and inspiration. They have one book, and believe it. No doubts trouble them. Higher criticism has never reached them. Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch is unquestioned. Moses and no other, to them, wrote the five books, including the account of his own burial. They know nothing of pre-exilic Psalms or Greek periods of Daniel; but all preach Jesus, no matter whence they draw their text. In an instant they make a short cut for Calvary.

One brother, over eighty years of age, walks fifteen miles, and preaches three times. Some of his sermons take two hours in delivery, without the aid of a scrap of note; and the talk for days after is on the sermon. No quarterlies, monthlies, or weeklies lie at home to divert. No lecturer strays to that region. Here and there is a village house with an organ or a piano, and, of course, a paper.

I am speaking of the rural South,--and nearly all the South is rural, nearly all American, even the cities, with few exceptions, and the operatives are Southern, and mostly from the farms; so that one may find a city whose operatives live in another State, across a river, in a community numbering nearly seven thousand souls, and most of them keeping pigs and a cow (or, rather, not keeping them, for they roam at their own sweet will down grassy, ungraded streets). In such a place one meets old ladies of quite respectable appearance, with the little snuffing-stick in their mouths, or a pipe; and here one small grocery shop may sell two hundred dozen of little tin snuff-boxes in a month! There are cities in the South where you will find as fine hotels and stores as any on the continent. But from any such city it is only a step to the most primitive conditions.

Let me describe a characteristic night scene near a large city. My friend met me at the depot with his little light wagon and diminutive mule, and we started for the homestead. Our road lay between banks of honeysuckle that saturated the air with its rich perfume; wild-goose plum, persimmon, bullice, and chinquapin (the latter somewhat like a chestnut, but smaller), huckleberries on bushes twelve feet high, called currants there, lined the road on either side. The house was surrounded by the _débris_ of former corn-cribs and present ones; stables were scattered here and there in picturesque confusion. One end of the house was open, and had been waiting for years for its chimney; there was shrubbery of every kind all about. I had the usual hearty welcome and supper, and then attended the inevitable meeting in the grove.

In the glare of the setting sun everything seemed indescribably wretched; but it was May, and night came on apace. The stars in the deep blue glowed like gems; and then the queen of night on her sable throne threw her glamour over the scene, and the stencil-marked ground became a fairy scene. High perched upon a mighty oak the mistress of the grove rained music on the cool night air,--first a twitter like a chaffinch, then an aria worthy of Patti, then the deep notes of the blackbird, then a whip-poor-will, then a grand chorus of all the night-birds.

A short breathing-spell, and off on another chorus, and so the whole night through. When we awoke the music still poured from that wondrous throat of the American mocking-bird. How calm, how peaceful, was the scene, how pure the air! The lights went out from neighboring cots, and the heavenly hosts seemed to sing together once more the song of Bethlehem--but alas! Herod plots while angels sing. Not far off is another little house with its small outbuildings. This night it is occupied by a mother and three children. The father is away attending a religious meeting. The servant who usually sleeps in the house when the man is away gives a trifling excuse and sleeps in the shed. Before retiring she quietly unfastens the pin which holds the shutter. At midnight the mother is awakened from her troubled sleep and sees the shadow of a man, and then another shadow, and still another. The children shrink to the back of their bunk. Oh, what a triple crime was enacted under that peaceful sky! Morning came. The mocking-bird still sang, and cheered the returning husband. But alas, it was a mocking song for him; for instead of pleasant welcomes, he found his wife delirious, and his children cowering like hunted partridges in a neighbor's house. The frenzied husband, soon joined by friends made furious by the atrocious crime (so common in the South), soon hunted the ravishers of the little home; and when the moon arose the next night, the beauty of the scene was marred by three black corpses swinging from a bridge.

X.

THE NORTH-WEST.

The first impression a man has of the North-west is like Pats in St. Patrick's Cathedral,--"Begorra, it's bigger inside than out."

Take the map, and see what a little thin strip the upper peninsula of Michigan makes. Now start on the best train at St. Ignace in the morning, and it is eight at night before you reach the copper regions or the Gogebic Range. When I lived in St. Ignace, and the connections were poor, it took two days to travel from that port to Calumet. If we went by water we had to sail forty miles east before we doubled Point Detour; and then we threaded our way among scenes of beauty equal to the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence. Every mile of the way is alive with historic interest. In St. Ignace lie the bones of Father Marquette; across the Straits, Mackinaw City, where the terrible massacre occurred, spoken of by Parkman; midway, is Mackinaw Island, called by the Indians The Great Turtle.

Here to-day on the Island are the old block forts, and here the little iron safe in which John Jacob Astor kept his money when in the fur-trade. Full of natural beauty, to-day the past and present crowd one another. Here are Indians, half-breeds, and Americans, and modern hotels. There are no mosquitoes; for the Island is but three miles in diameter, and the wind blows too strong for them. Here you may find the lilac in full bloom on the Fourth of July, and in the fall delicious blue plums that have not been hurt by the black knot. The daylight is nearly eighteen hours long in midsummer. The people are sowing oats when the southern farmers in the State are thinking of cutting theirs. In April, near Grand Rapids, I picked the arbutus. In early May, at Vanderbilt, I picked it again, and saw pure white snow in patches in the woods. Later in May I saw it again north of the Straits of Mackinaw, and in June I found it in the Keweenak Peninsula. At Hancock I saw a foot of snow compressed under the cordwood, and some between buildings not exposed to the sun. On account of the lateness of the season, pease escape the bugs, which are elsewhere so destructive; and thousands of bushels of seed are sent every year to the upper Peninsula.

But to return to St. Ignace. It is so unlike any other American town, that I did not wonder at an old lady of over ninety, who was born there, speaking of her visit to Detroit as the time when she went to the States. Here the old Catholic church dates back to the early days of French settlement. The lots run from the water-front back. Your Frenchman must have a water-front, no matter how narrow. So the town was four miles long, and composed mostly of one street, which followed the water-front; and although there were four thousand people living there in 1884, and we had a mayor, the primeval forest came right into the city.

The only house I could get was new,--so new that we moved in while the floors were still wet. The lumber in it was green, and we could not open the sashes for months; but before winter came, the shrinkage caused the windows to rattle like castanets. To get our furniture there, we had to cross the railway tracks twice,--once the regular road, and then the branch which ran to the great furnace at the point. And yet so new was everything in this old town, that our street had not been graded, and our wagons had to cross land where they sunk up to the axles. A few miles up the road the deer, the wolves, and black bear lived; and no less than eleven deer were seen in the road at one time near Allenville. We moved in the month of June, and put up our base-burner, and started the fire.

The climate is delicious from June to October; the air and waters are as clear as crystal. You can see fish forty feet below you, and the color of the pebbles at the bottom. There is an indescribable beauty about these northern shores; the tender green of the larch-fir, or tamarack, the different shades of blue-green among the cedars, the spruce, hemlock, and balsam, mixed with the lovely birch, and multi-colored rocks, make up some of the loveliest scenery on the continent. Little islands, so small that but one or two trees can find root, up to the islands that take hours to steam by, while the streams team with trout and grayling, the lakes with white-fish, muskalonge, and mackinaw trout and herring. Thousands of men are engaged in the fisheries, and millions of dollars are invested.

You sit at your door, and can see the home and people of old France, with their primitive canoe, and at the same time see propellers of three thousand tons' burden glide stately by.

XI.

A BRAND NEW WOODS VILLAGE.

It does not take long to build a new village on the prairie,--the hardest work, the clearing of the ground, is already done; but here in the dense forest it is a different thing, even when the railway runs through it. First the men go in, and begin to clear the ground. It is virgin soil, and not an inch of ground but has something growing. Giant maples--some of them bird's-eye, some curly--are cut down and made into log heaps; black walnuts are burned up, that, made into veneer, would bring thousands of dollars.

Such was the state of things within twelve years. To-day it is different. The settler will take a quarter section, bark the trees to find the desired kind, cut them down, and leave for another section. Rich companies came in, and began to devastate the forests to make charcoal, until the State had to make a law that only a certain number of acres in the hundred may be cut.

In some few cases women will go with their husbands, and sometimes one woman will find herself miles and miles away from another. I visited one such house; and while the good woman was getting the dinner ready, I strolled about and took notes. On the rude mantel-shelf, I saw some skulls, and asked what kind of an animal they belonged to. She said,--

"Oh! them's beavers' skulls. My! I wish we had some beavers here now; I would make you some beaver-tail soup."

"Why, did you have them here since you came?"