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.”
[Illustration: ELIJAH KELLOGG’S HOME AT HARPSWELL, MAINE.]
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.