and of their instruction, young Kellogg, with his frank and susceptible
nature, should not have been stimulated to intellectual effort, and to
moral earnestness, and that he should not have retained in subsequent
life some impress from their vigorous and scholarly and noble
characters. How much he owed them in the direction and the development
of his powers we may not say. It is never possible to measure, or to
estimate exactly, the total influence of a teacher’s life and work
upon his pupils. It acts often in ways that do not disclose themselves
to our perception; it touches the young men at points and moments of
which we do not know the responsive or the repelling significance; it
often produces effects which are the very opposite of what we should
predict; it falls into the ground and dies, as it were, and years
afterward springs up and bears fruit in a form so changed that we do
not recognize the seed in the resulting harvest; it is often hidden in
the hearts of the young men, and works by way of impulse or restraint
so subtly that they themselves are not conscious of it; and so we can
never tell to what extent a young man’s character has been formed or
modified by the influence of his teachers. But there is certainly some
indication of Mr. Kellogg’s own estimate of what he owed to college
instruction and stimulus in the ardent and unwavering affection which
he always exhibited for his Alma Mater, and which was abundantly
reciprocated in the reverent honor accorded to him by the college, and
by all its students and alumni. At the one-hundredth anniversary of the
college, in 1894, there were more than a thousand graduates assembled
at the banquet in a mammoth tent on the campus. Mr. Kellogg had, with
some difficulty, been persuaded to be present. He was, of course,
called upon for a speech; and when he rose to respond, every graduate,
young and old, in the great company was instantly on his feet, cheering
and shouting a glad salute. It was a touching and memorable ovation,
and the flush of troubled happiness that flitted across his bronzed
and wrinkled face was something long to be remembered, as was also his
glowing tribute of affection for the college, which was his answer to
the welcome of his brethren.
In Mr. Kellogg’s student days the chief literary interest and activity
of the undergraduates, and no small part of their more formal social
life, centred about two societies, the Peucinean and the Athenæan.
Between these two societies there was intense rivalry in securing
accessions from among the more desirable members of newly entering
classes, in public exhibitions and anniversary exercises, and in the
distribution of college and class honors. Each society possessed a
considerable library of carefully selected books, and each held regular
weekly meetings for literary exercises consisting of essays, poems,
declamations, and debates. Kellogg was an active and esteemed member
of the Peucinean society, and contributed not a little to the interest
of its meetings in the several features of their literary programmes.
Mr. Henry H. Boody, of the class of 1842, and subsequently professor of
rhetoric and oratory in the college from 1845 to 1854, recalls the fact
that at the meetings of the Peucinean society, “we used to consider
a poem by Kellogg as a very rare treat,” and then adds that perhaps
“our liking for the man influenced our judgment as to the merit of his
productions in that line.” However that may be, it is evident that his
gifts of tongue and pen were freely exercised during his undergraduate
days, and that the charm of them was felt and acknowledged by his
college associates.
In Mr. Kellogg’s Junior year a literary magazine, the second venture of
the kind at Bowdoin, was projected by some of the students, and made
its first appearance, under the name of the _Bowdoin Portfolio_, in
April, 1839. Its advent was heralded, in a manner somewhat figurative
and characteristic of the time, by an editorial note, of which the
following are some of the first sentences:--
“A short time since, as we were sitting quietly in our room discussing
the common topics of the day, we were suddenly surprised and pleased
by the entrance of a comely youth, of an ideal nature, that is, made
up of the immaterial mind, but who had embodied himself in a visible
form. He was arrayed in a neat, simple garb, evidently preferring pure
simplicity to ostentatious splendor, and wishing to attract notice,
not so much by a showy dress and gorgeous outward appearance, as by
the spiritual within, made clear and comprehensible by the outward
representation. On his front he bore the name of ’Bowdoin Portfolio,’
and in communing with him we found a most entertaining and agreeable
companion. He was just making his debut into the literary world, and it
was with modesty and timidity that he declared to us his intentions of
speedily making his bow, and paying court to the public.”
There is no indication that Mr. Kellogg was connected with the
editorial board of the _Portfolio_, but there are contributions from
him in three of the seven numbers that were published, and all his
contributions are of verse. This fact recalls the testimony that has
been quoted as to the pleasure with which his poems were received at
the meetings of the Peucinean society. Altogether it seems as if,
during his college days, his tastes led him to the cultivation of
poetry, and as if the impression he made upon his college mates was
rather by his verse than by his prose.
One of the poems in the _Portfolio_ is a clever translation of a Latin
epitaph upon a moth miller which “came bustling through the window
directly into the editorial taper, and fell lifeless upon the sheet of
paper.” A part of the epitaph in Kellogg’s verse is as follows:--
“Whose greatest crime was to intrude
Upon a Poet’s solitude;
Whose saddest fortune was to fly
In a Poet’s lamp, and cheated die.
Ah! punishment to rashness due,
How certain! and how direful too!
The silly Moth thus seeking light
Is overwhelmed in shades of night;
So Youth pursuing Pleasure’s ray
O’ertakes grim Death upon the way!”
The Latin of the epitaph is of that obvious kind which an American
college boy is likely to write, and there is really more distinction in
Kellogg’s translation than in the original.
The other poems contributed by Kellogg to the _Portfolio_ are entitled,
“The Phantoms of the Mind,” and “The Demon of the Sea.” They are both
vigorous in sentiment and correct in form, and the opening lines of the
latter remind us of the author’s early, and, indeed, lifelong passion
for the sea:--
“Ah, tell me not of your shady dells
Where the lilies gleam, and the fountain wells,
Where the reaper rests when his task is o’er,
And the lake-wave sobs on the verdant shore,
And the rustic maid, with a heart all free,
Hies to the well-known trysting-tree;
For I’m the God of the rolling sea,
And the charms of earth are nought to me.
O’er the thundering chime of the breaking surge,
On the lightning’s wing my pathway urge,
On thrones of foam right joyous ride,
’Mid the sullen dash of the angry tide.”
It is not altogether fancy that recognizes in such lines as these
hints of the impetuous and stirring rhetoric of Mr. Kellogg’s later
prose, especially on occasions when his deepest feelings were moved,
and he spoke of love and duty, of character and destiny, of life and
immortality, out of the fulness of his conviction, and with the ardor
and eloquence of his sensitive and poetic nature.
So passed his college days, in the keen enjoyment of generous
comradeship, in the instinctive indulgence of his fondness for fun and
frolic, in the cheerful acceptance of the burden of defraying his own
expenses, in manly fidelity to the appointed studies of the course,
and in the voluntary and congenial exercise of the literary gifts with
which he was endowed, and through which he has made so many of us his
debtors. And through it all he preserved the unaffected simplicity and
purity of heart, the reverence for truth, and the consideration and
charity for his fellows, which were the winning characteristics of his
whole life.
* * * * *
Mr. Kellogg’s theological training in immediate preparation for the
ministry was received at Andover Theological Seminary from 1840 to
1843. The intellectual and social conditions which prevail at the
professional school are quite unlike those of the college. It does not
have the same atmosphere of venerated tradition and compelling custom,
nor is it the scene of a life so varied and buoyant. The students are
older, more sedate, and more intent upon the special studies of the
place. They have passed through the period of boyish effervescence and
frolic, of ardent and generous comradeship, of steadfast friendships
and changing schemes of life, of relative unconcern for what lies
beyond the horizon of the college world--and the period is not to be
repeated. They are committed to common pursuits and ambitions, and are
sobered by the duties and responsibilities of life to which they are
sensibly drawing near.
In his college life Mr. Kellogg found the material for a series of
sparkling stories, evidently as congenial to himself as they have been
interesting to his readers; but of life in the seminary he has given
us no picture. This is not to the discredit of the honored school of
theology to which he went, nor does it imply that he did not enter
into its studies and its life with heartiness and joy, but it is a
natural result of the distinction which has been suggested between the
college and the professional school. The picturesque nook or landscape
attracts the pencil or the brush of the artist, but his choice does
not discredit the thousand scenes of field and pasture and hill and
woodland which he passes by as unsuited to his artistic purpose.
It is enough to mention the names of Moses Stuart, Bela Edwards,
Leonard Woods, Ralph Emerson, and Edwards Park, to show that Mr.
Kellogg was as fortunate in his teachers at the seminary as he
had been at the college. They were men of profound learning, of
stimulating influence, of consecrated character, and of great and
deserved reputation. They could not fail to quicken and enrich both
his intellectual and his spiritual nature, and to send him forth fully
instructed, as well as profoundly eager, to preach with persuasiveness
and power, as he did preach for nearly half a century.
It was while he was a student in the seminary that Mr. Kellogg wrote
the famous declamation, “Spartacus to the Gladiators,” as well as
some others, almost equally famous, of the same general character.
It was written for one of the prescribed rhetorical exercises of the
course, at which the writer or speaker was publicly criticised by
members of the student body, and also by the professor in charge. Mr.
Kellogg, always timid at the prospect of open and formal criticism of
his writing or speech, greatly dreaded the ordeal, and resolved to
write something which should so interest his hearers by its unusual
subject-matter as to divert their minds from the thought of criticism.
His scheme was completely successful. The students listened with
breathless attention, and were dumb when the speech was concluded.
To the inquiry of Professor Park if there were any criticisms to be
offered, not a voice was raised; and the professor himself remarked
that though there were some things, perhaps, that might be said in
criticism, yet it was so admirable a specimen of masterful rhetoric
that he should say nothing. It has been considered so much of a
masterpiece in its kind, that at Andover they still point out No. 20
Bartlett Hall as the room in which it was written.
[Illustration: HOUSE ON CUMBERLAND STREET, PORTLAND, MAINE, IN WHICH
ELIJAH KELLOGG LIVED WHEN A BOY.]
There is an unmistakable dramatic quality in the conception and speech
of “Spartacus,” as there were hints of such a dramatic quality in
some of Mr. Kellogg’s sermons in later years, and it is interesting
to note that, in his Senior year at Andover, he wrote a “dialogue,”
or brief play, called “The Honest Deserter,” which was performed by
the Philomathean Society of Phillips Academy. The occasion of its
presentation was considered of so much interest and importance that an
elm tree was planted in the Phillips yard in commemoration of the event.
When in his Senior year as a theological student Mr. Kellogg went to
Harpswell to preach for some weeks, his personality and his preaching,
his love of the sea and his kindly human qualities, so won the hearts
of the Harpswell people that they besought him to return to Harpswell
after his graduation, and become their pastor. To their urgent request
he yielded, being himself much attracted by the people and their home
by the sea. It was in 1844 that he was publicly installed over the
church, and the official tie of pastor to the Harpswell church was
severed only by his death.
EARLY HARPSWELL DAYS
WILMOT BROOKINGS MITCHELL
Harpswell, Maine, is a seaboard, almost a sea-girt, town. It is
made up of a long, narrow neck of land and forty islands, some
containing hundreds of acres, others almost entirely covered by the
tide. Indenting the shore of this peninsula and the larger islands
are sheltered inlets of deep water well suited to the building
and harboring of ships. Hither came, during the first half of the
eighteenth century, from Boston, Scituate, York, and other settlements,
men and women of Puritan stock and Puritan ways of thinking; and here
grew up large families, hardy and God-fearing, some farmers, but most
of them fishermen, sailors, and ship-builders.
Elijah Kellogg could not long attend Bowdoin College, only a few
miles distant, without being attracted to these sea-going people of
Harpswell; for Kellogg was born with webbed feet. When hardly out of
the cradle, family tradition has it, he went to sail in Back Cove,
Portland, with a sugar-box for a boat and his shirt for a sail. As a
youngster he would often steal to the Fore Street wharves to watch
the ships, and he was never so happy as when listening to the yarns
which the sailors spun. He says of himself, “At ten years of age I
began to climb the rigging, and at fifteen went to sea.” His years in
the “fo’c’sle,” with all their perilous and disagreeable tasks, only
intensified his love for the water. As a Freshman he took supreme
delight in sailing with a good comrade, on a Saturday afternoon, in his
little cat-rigged boat, the _Cadet_, among the islands of Casco Bay.
One of these half-holiday expeditions affected, as it happened, his
whole after-life. The _Cadet_, belated by wind and tide, ran ashore
on Birch Island, and “Captain” Kellogg and crew, supperless and
weary, sought shelter at the house of Captain John Skolfield. Mr.
Kellogg never forgot how cosily the light from the house that evening
shone through the hop vines growing over and around the windows. The
hospitable islander gave the wayfarers a warm welcome and a plentiful
supper; for which hospitality, before the evening ended, Kellogg, full
of stories of college and the sea, made his host feel well repaid.
Thus began his acquaintance with the Birch Islanders,--the Skolfields,
Curtises, and Merrimans,--an acquaintance which was to ripen into
a life-long friendship. The men on this island, hardy, powerful,
and fearless, at once became heroes in the admiring eyes of this
venture-loving student. After this he spent many happy hours building
boats, gunning and fishing with Captain John, or spinning yarns and
reading aloud with “Uncle Joe” Curtis,--a man who read every book he
could get hold of and who remembered everything he read.
From Birch Island to Harpswell Neck, where Eaton’s store and the
church were located, is but a short row; there Kellogg often went to
buy something for his boat, or to worship on the Sabbath. Before long
he had many friends and admirers upon the mainland; for these people
had but to see the sharp-eyed, brown, wiry “colleger,” and hear his
stories, or listen to his earnest and eloquent exhortations in the
prayer-meeting, in order to love him. It was with them, as well as
with him, love at first sight; and by the time he was a Sophomore they
had plighted troth. Learning that he was to study for the ministry,
they must have him for their preacher; and he, half jokingly perhaps,
told them if he lived to get through the seminary and they built a new
church, he would come to preach for them.
After graduation at Bowdoin, Kellogg began the study of theology at
Andover. When his course at the seminary was near its close, Professor
Thomas C. Upham, who had been so stanch a friend of the Harpswell
church that Mr. Kellogg once said it owed its very existence to him,
came to Andover with a message from the Harpswell people that the
timber for the new church was on the spot, and they still wanted him
for a preacher. The bearer of the message evidently saw in the young
preacher the salvation of the Harpswell church; for he reënforced this
reminder of the promise Kellogg had made in his student days by the
emphatic prophecy that God would curse him as long as he lived if he
did not go. Influenced somewhat by these prophetic words, but probably
much more by his love for the place and the people and the opportunity
he saw of doing good, he turned away from a call to a much larger
church and went to Harpswell, where, as he said many years later, he
found that “obedience is sweet and not servitude.”
Although Mr. Kellogg, in response to this informal invitation, began at
once to supply the pulpit in the old church, a formal call to settle as
pastor was not extended to him until the next year. The reason for this
becomes apparent upon an examination of the church records.
The original Harpswell church and parish were at this time passing
through a transition period. Formed in 1751, the parish was at first
identical with the town. The preacher’s salary and other church
expenses were assessed by the town officers as taxes. But later, other
churches having been built and other denominations having sprung up,
many citizens objected to being taxed for the support of the minister,
and some absolutely refused to pay such taxes. A troublesome question
concerning the control and ownership of the first church building also
arose between the town and the parish. Accordingly the supporters of
the Congregational church organized a new society and erected a new
church building.
This church was dedicated September 28, 1843. For this dedication the
following poem was written by Mr. Kellogg:--
“Here, ’mid the strife of wind and waves
Upon a wild and stormy sod,
Beside our fathers’ homes and graves,
We consecrate a house to God.
“Here, on many a pebbly shore,
Old Ocean flings his feathery foam,
And close beside the breaker’s roar
The seaman builds his island home.
“’Mid giant cliffs that proudly breast
And backward fling the winter’s spray,
’Mid isles in greenest verdure dressed,
’Tis meet that rugged men should pray.
“Its spire shall be the last to meet
The parting seaman’s lingering eye,
The first his homeward step to greet,
And point him to a home on high.
“Here shall the force of sacred truth
Defeat the Tempter’s wildest rage,
Subdue the fiery heart of youth
And cheer the drooping strength of age.
“And when the watch of life is o’er
May we, where runs no stubborn tide,
No billows break, nor tempests roar,
In Heaven’s high port at anchor ride.”
The records show that on April 25, 1844, with Professor Upham as
moderator, it was “moved and voted that the church of the Centre
Congregational Society in Harpswell do hereby invite and call Mr.
Elijah Kellogg to settle with them as their pastor in the Gospel
ministry and [do agree] to pay [him] by subscription $300 a year for
four years from the first day of June, 1844.” This call to what proved
to be a long and fruitful pastorate Mr. Kellogg, on May 4, 1844,
accepted in these simple and earnest words: “Brethren and Beloved: I
have considered your call to settle with you as a minister of the New
Testament. It appears to me to be the will of God pointed out by his
providence that I comply with your invitation, which I accordingly do,
praying that it may be a connection full of blessed fruits both to
pastor and people.”
[Illustration: ELIJAH KELLOGG’S CHURCH AT HARPSWELL, MAINE.]
The new pastor was ordained on June 18, 1844. He entered with
enthusiasm into his work. Among these rugged farmers, fishermen, and
sailors, he sought in all ways to expound and exemplify the teachings
of Him who many years before taught the fishermen of Galilee. On the
Sabbath he preached sermons so interesting and eloquent that people
came in boat loads from the islands to hear his words; and he entered
familiarly and sympathetically into the home life of his parishioners.
“His little boat might be seen in all weathers flitting to and fro
between mainland and islands as he made the circuit of his watery
parish in visits of friendship or of consolation, to officiate at a
marriage or a funeral. He was heartily welcome in every home, for he
knew their domestic life, and seemed to be a part of it; and he talked
of the sea and of Him who made it in a way that brought him close
to the hearts of his people, and made religion seem a natural and
practical and important part of daily life. He rebuked wrong-doing,
recognized and applauded every good act or effort, composed differences
between neighbors, helped in manual toil, comforted the afflicted, gave
to the poor,--and all in such a simple, unconventional, and genuine
fashion, that his people felt that he was one of them, only better than
the rest.[1]”
[1] From an address by Professor Henry L. Chapman, delivered at the
Maine State Congregational Conference, September, 1901.
The pastor of the early forties was often formal, arbitrary, and
autocratic, seeking to drive rather than to lead his flock. Between
pastor and people there was too often a great gulf fixed. But this
humorous, unpretentious, sincere man did not hold himself as of finer
clay than his people. He liked to plant and reap with his parishioners.
To pull rockweed and pitch hay and chop wood, to swing the flail and
hold the plough, were not beneath his dignity.
One Sunday during these first years of his pastorate, just after
reading the usual notices, he said: “Widow Jones’s grass, I see, needs
mowing. I shall be in her field to-morrow morning at half-past four
with scythe, rake, and pitch-fork. I shall be glad to see all of you
there who wish to come and help me.” The next morning found a good crew
of men and boys in the field ready for work. Among them was a man six
feet two in his stocking-feet and weighing some 250 pounds. Captain
Griggs we will call him. As they were working up the field near each
other, the captain said, “Parson, I am going to cut your corners this
morning.” The little wiry parson, who had served a good apprenticeship
upon his uncle’s farm in Gorham, whet his scythe and kept his counsel.
The big captain didn’t cut any of his corners that day. Indeed, the
story goes that before noon the man who thought that he could mow
around the parson, dropped under a tree, exhausted by the terrific pace
that Kellogg set.