If you can get down and pray about a barrel of whiskey, and say when you
sell it, 'O Lord God, let this whiskey be blessed to the world,' it is
probably honest!"
On his return to America, Mr. Moody was eagerly welcomed. Philadelphia
utilized an immense freight depot for the meetings, putting in it ten
thousand chairs, and providing a choir of six hundred singers. Over four
thousand conversions resulted. In New York the Hippodrome was prepared
by an expenditure of ten thousand dollars, and as many conversions were
reported here. Boston received him with open arms. Ninety churches
co-operated in the house-to-house visitation in connection with the
meetings, and a choir of two thousand singers was provided. Mr. Moody,
with his wonderful executive ability and genius in organizing, was like
a general at the head of his army.
Chicago received him home thankfully and proudly, as was her right. A
church had been built for him during his absence, costing one hundred
thousand dollars.
For the past ten years his work has been a marvel to the world and,
doubtless, to himself. Great Britain has been a second time stirred to
its centre by his presence. His sermons have been scattered broadcast by
the hundreds of thousands. He receives no salary, never allowing a
contribution to be taken for himself, but his wants have been supplied.
A pleasant home at his birthplace, Northfield, has been given him by his
friends, made doubly dear by the presence of his mother, now over eighty
years old. He has established two schools here, one for boys and another
for girls, with three hundred pupils, trained in all that ennobles life.
The results from Mr. Moody's work are beyond computing. In his first
visit to London a noted man of wealth was converted. He at once sold his
hunting dogs and made his country house a centre of missionary effort.
During Mr. Moody's second visit the two sons at Cambridge University
professed Christianity. One goes to China, having induced some other
students to accompany him as missionaries; the other, just married to a
lord's daughter, has begun mission work among the slums in the East End
of London.
The work of such a life as Mr. Moody's goes on forever. His influence
will be felt in almost countless homes after he has passed away from
earth. He has wrought without means, and with no fortuitous
circumstances. He is a devoted student of the Bible, rising at five
o'clock for study in some of his most laborious seasons. He is a man
consecrated to a single purpose,--that of winning souls.
* * * * *
Mr. Moody died at his home at East Northfield, Mass., at noon, Friday,
December 22, 1899. He was taken ill during a series of meetings at
Kansas City, a few weeks previously, and heart disease resulted from
overwork. He was conscious to the last. He said to his two sons who were
standing by his bedside: "I have always been an ambitious man, not
ambitious to lay up wealth, but to leave you work to do, and you're
going to continue the work of the schools in East Northfield and Mount
Hermon and of the Chicago Bible Institute." Just as death came he awoke
as if from sleep and said joyfully, "I have been within the gate; earth
is receding; heaven is opening; God is calling me; do not call me back,"
and a moment later expired. He was buried Tuesday, December 26, at Round
Top, on the seminary grounds, where thousands have gathered yearly at
the summer meetings conducted by the great evangelist.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
In Gentryville, Indiana, in the year 1816, might have been seen a log
cabin without doors or window-glass, a dirt floor, a bed made of dried
leaves, and a stool or two and table formed of logs. The inmates were
Thomas Lincoln, a good-hearted man who could neither read nor write;
Nancy Hanks, his wife, a pale-faced, sensitive, gentle woman, strangely
out of place in her miserable surroundings; a girl of ten, Sarah; and a
tall, awkward boy of eight, Abraham.
The family had but recently moved from a similar cabin in Hardin County,
Kentucky, cutting their way through the wilderness with an ax, and
living off the game they could obtain with a gun.
Mrs. Lincoln possessed but one book in the world, the Bible; and from
this she taught her children daily. Abraham had been to school for two
or three months, at such a school as the rude country afforded, and had
learned to read. Of quick mind and retentive memory, he soon came to
know the Bible wellnigh by heart, and to look upon his gentle teacher as
the embodiment of all the good precepts in the book. Afterward, when
he governed thirty million people, he said, "All that I am or hope to
be, I owe to my angel mother. Blessings on her memory!"
[Illustration: ABRAHAM LINCOLN.]
When he was ten years old, the saintly mother faded like a flower amid
these hardships of pioneer life, died of consumption, and was buried in
a plain box under the trees near the cabin. The blow for the girl, who
also died at fifteen, was hard; but for the boy the loss was
irreparable. Day after day he sat on the grave and wept. A sad, far-away
look crept into his eyes, which those who saw him in the perils of his
later life well remember.
Nine months after this, Abraham wrote a letter to Parson Elkins, a good
minister whom they used to know in Kentucky, asking him to come and
preach a funeral sermon on his mother. He came, riding on horseback over
one hundred miles; and one bright Sabbath morning, when the neighbors
from the whole country around had gathered, some in carts and some on
horseback, he spoke, over the open grave, of the precious, Christian
life of her who slept beneath. She died early, but not till she had laid
well the foundation-stones in one of the grandest characters in history.
The boy, communing with himself, longed to read and know something
beyond the stumps between which he planted his corn. He borrowed a copy
of Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and read and re-read it till he could
repeat much of it. Then some one loaned him "AEsop's Fables" and
"Robinson Crusoe," and these he pored over with eager delight. There
surely was a great world beyond Kentucky and Indiana, and perhaps he
would some day see it.
After a time Thomas Lincoln married a widow, an old friend of Nancy
Hanks, and she came to the cabin, bringing her three children; besides,
she brought what to Abraham and Sarah seemed unheard-of elegance,--a
bureau, some chairs, a table, and bedding. Abraham had heretofore
climbed to the loft of the cabin on pegs, and had slept on a sack filled
with corn-husks: now a real bed would seem indeed luxurious.
The children were glad to welcome the new mother to the desolate home;
and a good, true mother she became to the orphans. She put new energy
into her somewhat easy-going husband, and made the cabin comfortable,
even attractive. What was better still, she encouraged Abraham to read
more and more, to be thorough, and to be somebody. Besides, she gave his
great heart something to love, and well she repaid the affection.
He now obtained a much-worn copy of Weem's "Life of Washington," and the
little cabin grew to be a paradise, as he read how one great man had
accomplished so much. The barefoot boy, in buckskin breeches so shrunken
that they reached only half way between the knee and ankle, actually
asked himself whether there were not some great place in the world for
him to fill. No wonder, when, a few days after, making a noise with some
of his fun-loving companions, a good woman said to him, "Now, Abe, what
on earth do you s'pose'll ever become of ye? What'll ye be good for if
ye keep a-goin' on in this way?" He replied slowly, "Well, I reckon I'm
goin' to be President of the United States one of these days."
The treasured "Life of Washington" came to grief. One stormy night the
rain beat between the logs of the cabin, and flooded the volume as it
lay on a board upheld by two pegs. Abraham sadly carried it back to its
owner, and worked three days, at twenty-five cents a day, to pay
damages, and thus made the book his own.
The few months of schooling had already come to an end, and he was
"living out," hoeing, planting, and chopping wood for the farmers, and
giving the wages to his parents. In this way, in the daytime he studied
human nature, and in the evenings he read "Plutarch's Lives" and the
"Life of Benjamin Franklin." He was liked in these humble homes, for he
could tend baby, tell stories, make a good impromptu speech, recite
poetry, even making rhymes himself, and could wrestle and jump as well
as the best.
While drinking intoxicants was the fashion all about him, taught by his
first mother not to touch them, he had solemnly carried out her wishes.
But his tender heart made him kind to the many who, in this pioneer
life, had been ruined through drink. One night, as he was returning from
a house-raising, he and two or three friends found a man in the ditch
benumbed with the cold, and his patient horse waiting beside him. They
lifted the man upon the animal, and held him on till they reached the
nearest house, where Abraham cared for him through the night, and thus
saved his life.
At eighteen he had found a situation in a small store, but he was not
satisfied to stand behind a counter; he had read too much about
Washington and Franklin. Fifteen miles from Gentryville, courts were
held at certain seasons of the year; and when Abraham could find a spare
day he walked over in the morning and back at night, listening to the
cases. Meantime he had borrowed a strange book for a poor
country-lad,--"The Revised Statutes of Indiana."
One day a man on trial for murder had secured the able lawyer, John A.
Breckenridge, to defend him. Abraham listened as he made his appeal to
the jury. He had never heard anything so eloquent. When the court
adjourned the tall, homely boy, his face beaming with admiration for the
great man, pressed forward to grasp his hand; but, with a contemptuous
air, the lawyer passed on without speaking. Thirty years later the two
met in Washington, when Abraham Lincoln was the President of the United
States; and then he thanked Mr. Breckenridge for his great speech in
Indiana.
In March, 1828, the long-hoped-for opportunity to see the world outside
of Gentryville had come. Abraham was asked by a man who knew his honesty
and willingness to work, to take a flat-boat down the Mississippi River
to New Orleans. He was paid only two dollars a week and his rations; and
as a flat-boat could not come up the river, but must be sold for lumber
at the journey's end, he was obliged to walk the whole distance back.
The big-hearted, broad-shouldered youth, six feet and four inches tall,
had seen in this trip what he would never forget; had seen black men in
chains, and men and women sold like sheep in the slave-marts of New
Orleans. Here began his horror of human slavery, which years after
culminated in the Emancipation Proclamation.
Two years later, when he had become of age, Abraham helped move his
father's family to Illinois, driving the four yoke of oxen which drew
the household goods over the muddy roads and through the creeks. Then he
joined his adopted brothers in building a log house, plowed fifteen
acres of prairie land for corn, split rails to fence it in, and then
went out into the world to earn for himself, his scanty wages heretofore
belonging legally to his father. He did not always receive money for his
work, for once, for a Mrs. Miller, he split four hundred rails for every
yard of brown jeans, dyed with white walnut bark, necessary to make a
pair of trowsers.
He had no trade, and no money, and must do whatever came to hand. For a
year he worked for one farmer and another, and then he and his
half-brother were hired by a Mr. Offutt to build and take a flat-boat to
New Orleans. So pleased was the owner, that on Abraham's return, he was
at once engaged to manage a mill and store at New Salem. Here he went by
the name of "Honest Abe," because he was so fair in his dealings. On one
occasion, having sold a woman a bill of goods amounting to two dollars
and six and a quarter cents, he found that in adding the items, he had
taken six and a quarter cents too much. It was night, and locking the
store, he walked two or three miles to return the money to his
astonished customer. Another time a woman bought a half pound of tea. He
discovered afterward that he had used a four-ounce weight on the scales,
and at once walked a long way to deliver the four ounces which were her
due. No wonder the world, like Diogenes, is always looking for an honest
man.
He insisted on politeness before women. One day as he was showing goods,
a boorish man came in and began to use profanity. Young Lincoln leaned
over the desk, and begged him to desist before ladies. When they had
gone, the man became furious. Finding that he really desired to fight,
Lincoln said, "Well, if you must be whipped, I suppose I may as well
whip you as any other man," and suiting the action to the word, gave
him a severe punishing. The man became a better citizen from that day,
and Lincoln's life-long friend.
Years afterward, when in the Presidential chair, a man used profanity in
his presence, he said, "I thought Senator C. had sent me a gentleman. I
was mistaken. There is the door, and I wish you good-night."
Hearing that a grammar could be purchased six miles away, the young
store-keeper walked thither and obtained it. When evening came, as
candles were too expensive for his limited wages, he burnt one shaving
after another to give light, and thus studied the book which was to be
so valuable in after years, when he should stand before the great and
cultured of the land. He took the "Louisville Journal," because he must
be abreast of the politics of the day, and made careful notes from every
book he read.
Mr. Offutt soon failed, and Abraham Lincoln was again adrift. War had
begun with Blackhawk, the chief of the Sacs, and the Governor of
Illinois was calling for volunteers. A company was formed in New Salem,
and "Honest Abe" was chosen captain. He won the love of his men for his
thoughtfulness of them rather than himself, and learned valuable lessons
in military matters for the future. A strange thing now happened,--he
was asked to be a candidate for the State Legislature! At first he
thought his friends were ridiculing him, and said he should be defeated
as he was not widely known.
"Never mind!" said James Rutledge, the president of their little
debating club. "They'll know you better after you've stumped the county.
Any how, it'll do you good to try."
Lincoln made some bright, earnest stump speeches, and though he was
defeated, the young man of twenty-three received two hundred and
seventy-seven votes out of the two hundred and eighty cast in New Salem.
This surely was a pleasant indication of his popularity. It was a common
saying, that "Lincoln had nothing, only plenty of friends."
The County-surveyor needed an assistant. He called upon Lincoln,
bringing a book for him to study, if he would fit himself to take hold
of the matter. This he did gladly, and for six weeks studied and recited
to a teacher, thus making himself skilled and accurate for a new
country. Whenever he had an hour's leisure from his work, however, he
was poring over his law-books, for he had fully made up his mind to be a
lawyer.
He was modest, but ambitious, and was learning the power within him. But
as though the developing brain and warm heart needed an extra stimulus,
there came into his life, at this time, a beautiful affection, that left
a deeper look in the far-away eyes, when it was over. Ann Rutledge, the
daughter of his friend, was one of the most intelligent and lovely girls
in New Salem. When Lincoln came to her father's house to board, she was
already engaged to a bright young man in the neighborhood, who, shortly
before their intended marriage, was obliged to visit New York on
business. He wrote back of his father's illness and death, and then his
letters ceased.
Mouths passed away. Meantime the young lawyer had given her the homage
of his strong nature. At first she could not bring herself to forget her
recreant lover, but the following year, won by Lincoln's devotion, she
accepted him. He seemed now supremely happy. He studied day and night,
eager to fill such a place that Ann Rutledge would be proud of him. He
had been elected to the Legislature, and, borrowing some money to
purchase a suit of clothes, he walked one hundred miles to the State
capitol. He did not talk much in the Assembly, but he worked faithfully
upon committees, and studied the needs of his State.
The following summer days seemed to pass all too swiftly in his
happiness. Then the shadows gathered. The girl he idolized was sinking
under the dreadful strain upon her young heart. The latter part of
August she sent for Lincoln to come to her bedside. What was said in
that last farewell has never been known. It is stated by some that her
former lover had returned, as fond of her as ever, his silence having
been caused by a long illness. But on the twenty-fifth of August, death
took her from them both.
Lincoln was overwhelmed with anguish; insane, feared and believed his
friends. He said, "I can never be reconciled to have the snow, rains,
and storms beat upon her grave." Years after he was heard to say, "My
heart lies buried in the grave of that girl." A poem by William Knox,
found and read at this time, became a favorite and a comfort through
life,--
"Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
Mr. Herndon, his law partner, said, "The love and death of that girl
shattered Lincoln's purposes and tendencies. He threw off his infinite
sorrow only by leaping wildly into the political arena." The memory of
that love never faded from his heart, nor the sadness from his face.
The following year, 1837, when he was twenty-eight, he was admitted to
the bar, and moved from New Salem to the larger town of Springfield,
forming a partnership with Mr. J. P. Stuart of whom he had borrowed his
law-books. Too poor even yet to pay much for board, he slept on a narrow
lounge in the law-office. He was again elected to the legislature, and
in the Harrison Presidential campaign, was chosen one of the electors,
speaking through the State for the Whig party. To so prominent a
position, already, had come the backwoods boy.
Four years after Ann Rutledge's death, he married, Nov. 4, 1839, Mary
Todd, a bright, witty, somewhat handsome girl, of good family, from
Kentucky. She admired his ability, and believed in his success; he
needed comfort in his utter loneliness. Till his death he was a true
husband, and an idolizing father to his children,--Robert, Willie, and
Tad (Thomas).
In 1846, seven years after his marriage, having steadily gained in the
reputation of an honest, able lawyer, who would never take a case unless
sure he was on the right side, Mr. Lincoln was elected to Congress by an
uncommonly large majority. Opposed to the war with Mexico, and to the
extension of slavery, he spoke his mind fearlessly. The "Compromise
measures of 1850," by which, while California was admitted as a free
State, and the slave-trade was abolished in the District of Columbia,
the Fugitive Slave Law was passed, giving the owners of slaves the right
to recapture them in any free State, had disheartened all lovers of
freedom. Lincoln said gloomily to his law partner, Mr. Herndon, "How
hard, oh, how hard it is to die and leave one's country no better than
if one had never lived for it!"
His father died about this time, his noble son sending him this message,
"to remember to call upon and confide in our great and good and merciful
Maker, who will not turn away from him in any extremity. He notes the
fall of the sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads; and He will not
forget the dying man who puts his trust in Him."
In 1854, through the influence of Stephen A. Douglas, a brilliant
senator from Illinois, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, whereby
those States were left to judge for themselves whether they would have
slaves or not. But by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, it was expressly
stated that slavery should be forever prohibited in this locality. The
whole North grew to white heat. When Douglas returned to his Chicago
home the people refused to hear him speak. Illinois said, "His arguments
must be answered, and Abraham Lincoln is the man to answer them!"
At the State Fair at Springfield, in October, a great company were
gathered. Douglas spoke with marked ability and eloquence, and then on
the following day, Abraham Lincoln spoke for three hours. His heart was
in his words. He quivered with emotion. The audience were still as
death, but when the address was finished, men shouted and women waved
their handkerchiefs. Lincoln and the right had triumphed. After this,
the two men spoke in all the large towns of the State, to immense
crowds. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill worked out its expected results. Blood
flowed in the streets, as pro-slavery and anti-slavery men contested the
ground, newspaper offices were torn down by mobs, and Douglas lost the
great prize he had in view,--the Presidency of the United States.
When the new party, the Republican, held its second convention in
Philadelphia, June 17, 1856, Abraham Lincoln received one hundred and
ten votes for Vice President. What would Nancy Hanks Lincoln have said
if she could have looked now upon the boy to whom she taught the Bible
in the log cabin!
An incident occurred about this time which increased his fame. A man was
murdered at a camp-meeting, and two young men were arrested. One was a
very poor youth, whose mother, Hannah Armstrong, had been kind to
Lincoln in the early years. She wrote to the prominent lawyer about her
troubles, because she believed her son to be innocent. The trial came
on. The people were clamorous for Armstrong to be hanged. The principal
witness testified that "by the aid of the brightly shining moon, he saw
the prisoner inflict the death-blow with a slung shot."
After careful questioning, Mr. Lincoln showed the perjury of the
witness, by the almanac, no moon being visible on the night in question.
The jury were melted to tears by the touching address, and their
sympathy went out to the wronged youth and his poor old mother, who
fainted in his arms. Tears, too, poured down the face of Mr. Lincoln, as
the young man was acquitted. "Why, Hannah," he said, when the grateful
woman asked what she should try to pay him, "I shan't charge you a cent;
never." She had been well repaid for her friendliness to a penniless
boy.
The next year he was invited to deliver a lecture at Cooper Institute,
New York. He was not very well known at the East. He had lived
unostentatiously in the two-story frame-house in Springfield, and when
seen at all by the people, except in his addresses, was usually drawing
one of his babies in a wagon before his door, with hat and coat off,
deeply buried in thought. When the crowd gathered at Cooper Institute,
they expected to hear a fund of stories and a "Western stump speech."
But they did not hear what they expected. They heard a masterly review
of the history of slavery in this country, and a prophecy concerning the
future of the slavery question. They were amazed at its breadth and its
eloquence. The "New York Tribune" said, "No man ever before made such an
impression on his first appeal to a New York audience."
After this Mr. Lincoln spoke in various cities to crowded houses. A Yale
professor took notes and gave a lecture to his students on the address.
Surprised at his success among learned men, Mr. Lincoln once asked a
prominent professor "what made the speeches interest?"
The reply was, "The clearness of your statements, the unanswerable style
of your reasoning and your illustrations, which were romance, and
pathos, and fun, and logic, all welded together."
Mr. Lincoln said, "I am very much obliged to you for this. It throws
light on a subject which has been dark to me. Certainly I have had a
wonderful success for a man of my limited education."