SUMMERING AT SARATOGA AND MOHONK.
_Bishop Haven.--Dr. Schaff.--President McCosh_.
To the laborious pastor of a large congregation some period of
recuperation during the summer is absolutely indispensable. The cavalry
officer who, when hotly pursued by the enemy, discovered that his
saddle-girths had become loose, and dismounted long enough to tighten
them, was a wise man, and affords a good example to us ministers.
It was my custom to call a halt, lock my study door (stowing away my
pastoral cares in a drawer) and go away for five or six weeks, and
sometimes a little longer. A sea voyage was undertaken during half a
dozen vacations, but during a portion of forty-two summers I "pitched my
moving tent" in salubrious Saratoga, and a part of twenty-one summers
was spent on the heights of Mohonk.
As this volume is issued in London as well as in New York, I will
mention some things in this chapter for my British readers with which
many of my own fellow-countrymen may be already familiar. There were
several reasons that induced me to select Saratoga early in my ministry
as the best place to spend a part of the summer vacation. It is the most
widely known the world over of any of our American watering places and
is an exceedingly beautiful town. Its spacious Broadway, lined with
stately elms, is one of the most sightly avenues in our land; and some
of the superb hotels that front upon it fulfill the American demand for
"bigness." The most attractive spot to me has always been the beautiful
park that surrounds the famous Congress Spring, and to which every
morning I made my very early pilgrimage for my draught of its sparkling
water.
The park covers but a few acres, but it is a continuous loveliness. When
its rich, soft greensward--worthy of Yorkshire or Devonshire--was
sparkling with the dew, and the fountains were in full play, and the
goodly breeze was singing through the trees, it was a place in which to
chant Dr. Arnold's favorite hymn:--
"Come, my soul, thou must be waking;
Now is breaking
O'er the earth another day;
Come to Him who made this splendor,
See thou render
All thy feeble strength can pay."
The second reason for my choice of Saratoga was the variety of the
wonderful medicinal waters, and their renovating effects. "I can winter
better," said Governor Buckingham, "for even a short summer at
Saratoga," and my experience was quite similar. I honestly believe that
those waters have prolonged my life. In addition to the many health
fountains which have been veritable Bethesdas to multitudes, the dry,
bracing atmosphere is perfumed and tempered by the breezes from the pine
forests of the Adirondack Mountains. While some are attracted to
Saratoga by the waters and others by the air, I found both of them
equally beneficial. As far as its social life is concerned, there are,
as in all summer resorts, two very different descriptions of guests. One
class are devotees of fashion, who go there to gratify the "lust of the
eye, and the pride of life." They drive by day and dance by night; but
some devotees of pleasure have yielded too much to the ensnarements of
the gaming table and the race course. There is another and a more
numerous class made up of quiet business men and their families,
clergymen, college professors and persons in impaired health, who go for
recreation or recuperation. From this latter class, and in some measure
indeed from the former also, the churches of the town attract very large
congregations. It has been my privilege to deliver a little more than
two hundred sermons in Saratoga, and there is no place in which I have
found that a faithful and practical presentation of the "word of life"
is more eagerly welcomed. It is no place to exhibit a show sermon on
dress parade, but it is the very one in which to press home the word on
hearts and consciences, to arouse the impenitent, to give tonic truth to
the weak and the weary, to afford the word of comfort to the sorrowing
and soul-food to the many who hunger for the heavenly manna. I have
already narrated some of my pleasant experiences in preaching at
Saratoga, and I could add to them several other interesting incidents.
For about thirty summers, and occasionally in the winter, I found a
happy home at Dr. Strong's "Remedial Institute" on Circular Street. This
is a family hotel during the summer, and a sanitarium during the
remainder of the year. Every morning the guests assemble for worship,
and the intolerable trio of fashion, frivolity and fiddles, has never
invaded the refined and congenial atmosphere of the house. My host, Dr.
Strong, is an active member of the Methodist Church in that town, and
naturally a large number of ministers of that denomination are his
summer guests. This was very pleasant for me, for, although I am loyally
attached to my own "clan," yet I have a peculiarly warm side for the
ecclesiastical followers of the Wesleys, and am some times introduced in
their conferences as a "Methodistical Presbyterian." At Dr. Strong's I
met many of the leading Methodist ministers, and was exceedingly
"filled with their company." I met, among others, the sweet-spirited
Bishop Jaynes, who always seemed to be a legitimate successor of the
beloved disciple John. If Bishop Jaynes recalled the apostle John, let
me say that the venerated father of my kind host and the founder of the
Sanitarium, the late Dr. Sylvester S. Strong, was such an impersonation
of charming courtesy and fervid spirituality that he might be a
counterpart of "Luke the beloved physician." He was an admirable
preacher before he entered the medical profession. Bishop Peck was a
very entertaining companion and most fraternal in his warmheartedness.
He was a man of colossal proportions, and it was quite proper that he
was appointed to the charge of the churches in the wide regions of
California and Oregon. When he came thence to the General Conference, he
presented his protuberant figure to the assembly, and began with the
humorous announcement, "The Pacific slope salutes you!" On that same
"slope" I discovered last year that Methodism has outgrown even the
formidable proportions of my old friend Dr. Peck.
At Saratoga I first met the eloquent Apollos of American Methodism,
Bishop Matthew Simpson. Those who ever heard Henry Clay in our Senate
chamber, or Dr. Thomas Guthrie in Scotland, have a very distinct idea
of what Simpson was at his flood-tide of irresistible oratory. He
resembled both of those great orators in stature and melodious voice, in
graceful gesture, and in the magnificent enthusiasm that swept
everything before him. Like all that type of fascinating speakers--to
which even Gladstone belonged--he was rather to be heard than to be
read. It is enough that a Gospel preacher should produce great immediate
impressions on his auditors; it is not necessary that he should produce
a finished and permanent piece of literature. Bishop Simpson was the
bosom friend of Abraham Lincoln, and on more than one occasion he knelt
beside our much harassed President and prayed for the strength equal to
the day of trial.
Among all the guests there was none to whom I was more closely and
lovingly drawn than to Bishop Gilbert Haven. None shed off such splendid
scintillations in our evening colloquies on the piazzas. Haven was not
comparable with his associate, Bishop Simpson, in pulpit oratory, for he
was rarely an effective public speaker on any occasion, but in
brilliancy of thought, which made him in conversation like the charge of
an electric battery, and in brilliancy of pen, that kindled everything
it touched, he was without a rival in the Methodist Church--or almost in
any other church in the land. Consistently and conscientiously a
radical, he always took extreme ground on such questions as negro
rights, female suffrage, and liquor prohibition, and he never retreated.
Underneath all this impulsive and impetuous radicalism he was thoroughly
old-fashioned and orthodox in his theology--as far from Calvinism as any
Wesleyan usually is. He did delight in the doctrines of grace with his
whole heart, and it is all the more grateful to me, as a Presbyterian,
to pay this honest tribute to his deeply devout and Christ-like
character. I knew him when he was a student in the Wesleyan University
at Middletown--somewhat rustic in his ways, but a bold, bright youth
hungry for knowledge. In 1862 he published a series of foreign letters
in the _New York Independent_, which Horace Greeley told me he regarded
as most remarkable productions. During the summer of that year I was
watching the sun rise from the summit of the Righi in Switzerland, and
was accosted by a sandy-haired man in an old oilcloth overcoat who asked
for some explanation about the mountain within our view. At the foot of
the Righi I fell in with him again, and was struck with his original and
vigorous thought. The same evening he marched into my room at the
"Schweitzer-Hoff," dripping with the rain, and introduced himself as
"Gilbert Haven." We ministered to the few Americans whom we could find
in Lucerne, and held a prayer meeting on the Sabbath evening in Haven's
room for our far-away country in her dark hour of distress. On that
evening began a friendship which waxed warmer and warmer until death
sundered the tie for a little while; the same hand that sundered can
reunite us.
I am under a strong temptation to give my reminiscences of many notable
persons whom I was wont to meet at Saratoga, such as the urbane
ex-President Martin Van Buren, and that noble Christian statesman,
Vice-President Henry Wilson, and the cheery old poet John Pierpont, and
the erudite Horatio B. Hackett, of Newton Theological Seminary and the
level-headed Miss Catherine E. Beecher, and the gifted Queen of the
great temperance sisterhood, Miss Frances E. Willard, and General
Batcheler, the able American Judge, at Cairo, and that extraordinary
combination of courage, orthodox faith, and brilliant platform eloquence
the late Joseph Cook, of Ticonderoga. I would like also to attempt a
description of the gorgeous "Floral Festivals," which are celebrated in
every September, when the streets of the town blaze with processions of
vehicles decorated with flowers, and the sidewalks and house-fronts are
packed with thousands of delighted spectators; but if "of making many
books there is no end," there ought to be a proper end in the making of
a book. In the course of my life I may have done some very foolish
things, and quite too many sinful things, but I have always endeavored
to avoid doing too long a thing, if it were possible.
During the last twenty-three years I have spent a portion of almost
every summer at Mohonk Lake Mountain House, a hostlery equally
celebrated for the culture of its guests and charms of its scenery. It
is situated on a spur of the Shawangunk Mountains, about six miles from
New Paltz, on the Wallkill Valley Railway. Its discoverer and proprietor
is Albert K. Smiley, who was for many years president of a Quaker Ladies
Academy in Providence, R.I., and is a gentleman of fine scholarship and
varied attainments. He is quite equal to discussing geology with
Professor Guyot (from whom one of the highest hilltops near his house is
named), or art with Huntington, or botany or landscape gardening with
Frederick L. Olmstead, or theology with Dr. Schaff, or questions of
philanthropy with General Armstrong or Booker T. Washington.
The distinctive character of the house is that there is a notable
absence of what is regarded as the chief attractions of some fashionable
summer resorts. Neither bar nor bottles nor ball-room nor bands are to
be found in this Christian home;--for a home it is--in its restful and
refining influences. The young people find no lack of innocent enjoyment
in the bowling alley or on the golf links, in the tennis tournaments or
in rowing upon the lake, with frequent regattas. Instead of the midnight
dance the evening hours are made enjoyable by social conversation, by
musical entertainments, by parlor lectures and other interesting
pastimes. The Sabbath at Mohonk realizes old George Herbert's
description of the
"Sweet day so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky;"
Not a boat is loosened from its wharf on the lake; not a carriage is
geared up for a pleasure drive, and many a guest has learned how a
Sabbath spent without the introduction of either business cares or
frivolities may be a joyous refreshment to both body and soul. The
spacious parlor is always crowded for the service of worship on every
morning during the week and also on the Sabbath. I can testify that on
the three-score Sabbaths when I have been called upon to conduct the
services, I have never found a more inspiring auditory.
It is no easy thing to put the external beauties of Mohonk upon paper.
The estate covers four thousand acres, and is intersected with about
fifty miles of fine carriage drives. The garden, which contains a dozen
acres, is ablaze during the most of the season with millions of
flowers--many of them of rare variety. As the glory of Saratoga is its
springs, of Lake George its islands, of Trenton Falls the amber hue of
its waters, so the glory of Mohonk is its rocks. The little lake is a
crystal cup cut out of the solid conglomerated quartz. Its shores are
steep quartz rocks rising fifty feet perpendicularly from the water. The
face of "Sky Top" is heaped around with enormous boulders some thirty
feet in diameter. In among them extend rocky labyrinths which can be
explored with torches. On every hand are immense masses of Shawangunk
grit hurled together over the cliff as if with the convulsions of an
earthquake. Upon these acres of rock around the lake grow the most
luxuriant lichens and the forests in June are efflorescent with laurels
and azalias. The finest point of vantage is on Eagle Cliff; I have
climbed there often to see the sun go down in a blaze of glory
behind the Catskill Mountains. The three highest peaks of the
Catskills--Hunter, Slide, and Peekamoose--were in full view, in purple
and gold. Beneath me on one side was the verdant valley of Rondout; on
the other side the equally beautiful valley of the Wallkill. In the dim
distance we could discover the summits of the mountains in Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
When I took Newman Hall, toward sunset, to a crag or cliff overlooking
the lake, he said to me: "Next to Niagara I have seen nothing in America
equal to this."
Mohonk has been a favorite summer resort of many of the most
distinguished people in our land. The Honorable Rutherford B. Hayes,
after his retirement from the presidential chair, loved to find
recreation in rowing his boat on the lake, and in making the ascent of
Sky Top. President Arthur came there during his term of office; and the
widow of General Grant, after spending a fortnight there, pronounced it
the most fascinating spot she had ever seen on this continent Among all
the guests who made their summer home there, none contributed more to
the intellectual enrichment of the company than my revered Christian
friend, Dr. Philip Schaff. No American of our day had such a vast
personal acquaintance with celebrated people. Dr. Schaff was the
intimate friend of Tholuck, Neander, Godet, Hengstenberg, and Dorner; he
was one day in familiar conversation with Dean Stanley in the Abbey and
another day with Gladstone; another day with Dollinger in Vienna, and
another day with Dr. Pusey at Oxford. The promise, "He shall stand
before kings," was often fulfilled to him. The veteran Kaiser William
had him at the royal table, and gave him intimate interview. The King
and Queen of Denmark came on the platform to congratulate him after one
of his eloquent speeches, and the Queen of Greece was one of his
correspondents. He shook hands with more ministers of all
denominations, and of all nationalities than any man of this age. He
was as cordially treated by Archbishop Canterbury as he was by Bismarck
at Berlin or the old Russian Archpriest Brashenski. Dr. Schaff was a
prodigy of industry. During half a century he was the foremost church
historian of this country; he led the work of the Sabbath Committee, and
was the master spirit of the Evangelical Alliance. He edited a volume of
hymnology, and wrote catechisms for children; he filled professors'
chairs in two seminaries and lectured on ecclesiastical history to
others. He published thirty-one volumes and edited two immense
commentaries; he was the president of the Committee on Biblical
Revision, and he crossed the ocean fourteen times as a fraternal
internuncio between the churches of Europe and America. His prodigious
capacity for work made Dr. Samuel Johnson seem an idler, and his varied
attainments and activities were fairly a match for Gladstone.
To those of us who knew Dr. Schaff intimately, one of his most
attractive traits was his jovial humor and inexhaustible fund of
anecdotes. When I made a visit to California--journeying with him to the
Yosemite--his endless stories whiled away the tedium of the trip. How
often when he sat down to my own, or any other table, would he tell how
his old friend, Neander, when asked to say grace at a dinner, and roast
pig was the chief dish, very quaintly said: "O, Lord, if Thou canst
bless under the new dispensation what Thou didst curse under the old
dispensation, then graciously bless this leetle pig. Amen!"
Another eminent scholar who was wont to seek recreation at Mohonk was
the venerable President McCosh, of Princeton University. Since Scotland
sent to Princeton Dr. John Witherspoon to preside over it, and to be one
of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, she has sent no
richer gift than Dr. James McCosh. For several years before he came to
America he was a professor in the Queen's College at Belfast. Passing
through Belfast in 1862, I looked in for a few moments at the Irish
Presbyterian General Assembly, which was convened in Dr. Cook's church,
and said to a man: "Whom can you show me here?" Pointing to a tall,
somewhat stooping figure, standing near the pulpit, he said: "There is
McCosh." I replied: "It is worth coming here to see the brightest man in
Ireland." What a great, all-round, fully equipped, many-sided mass of
splendid manhood he was! What a complete combination of philosopher,
theologian, preacher, scholar, and college president all rolled into
one! During the twenty years of his brilliant career at Princeton he
displayed much of Jonathan Edwards' metaphysical acumen, of John
Witherspoon's wisdom, Samuel Davies' fervor and Dr. "Johnny" McLean's
kindness of heart; the best qualities of his predecessors were combined
in him. He came here a Scotchman at the age of fifty-seven, and in a
year he became, as Paddy said, "a native American."
To my mind the chief glory of Dr. McCosh's presidency at Princeton was
the fervid interest he felt in the religious welfare of his students. He
often invited me to come over and deliver sermons to them, and
occasionally a temperance address; for he was a zealous teetotaler and
prohibitionist, and I always lodged with him at his house. As I turn
over my book of correspondence I find many brief letters from him. In
the following one he refers to the remarkable revival in the college in
the winter and early spring of 1870:
COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY, PRINCETON, Jan. 9, 1873.
_My dear Dr. Cuyler:_
In the name of the Philadelphian Society, and in my own name, I
request you to conduct our service on the day of prayer for
colleges, being Thursday the 30th of January. It is three years, if
I calculate rightly, since you performed that duty for us. That
visit was followed by the blessed work in which you took an active
part. May it be the same this year! The college is in an
interesting state: we have a great deal of the spirit of study;
there is a meeting for prayer every night except Friday; the class
prayer meetings are all well attended, in some of the classes as
many as sixty present; but we need a quickening. I do hope you will
come. Our habit is an address of half an hour or so at three PM in
the college chapel, and a sermon in one of the churches, especially
addressed to students, but open to all in the evening. Of course,
you will come to my house, and live with me. Yours as ever,
James McCosh.
To hundreds of the alumni of Princeton this letter will stir the
fountain of old memories. They will hear in it the ring of the old
college bell; they will see the lines of students marching across the
campus to evening prayer and into the chapel. Upon the platform mounts
the stooping form of grand old "Uncle Jimmie," and in his broad and not
unmelodious Scotch accents he pours out his big, warm heart in prayer.
With honest pride in their Alma Mater, they will thank God that they
were trained for the battle of life by James McCosh.
The limits of this narrative do not allow me to tell of all my
delightful "foregatherings" with that venerated Nestor of American art,
Daniel Huntington; and with General James Grant Wilson with his
_repertoire_ of racy Scotch stories; and with my true yoke-fellows in
the Gospel, Dr. Herrick Johnson, Dr. Marvin R. Vincent, and Dr. Samuel
J. Fisher--and with a group of infinitely witty women who regaled many
an evening hour with their merry quips and conundrums. The unwritten law
which prevails in that social realm is: "Each for all, and all for each
other."
Mr. Smiley had been for some years a member of the United States Indian
Commission, and his experience in that capacity had awakened a deep
interest in the welfare of the remaining Aborigines, who had too often
been the prey of unscrupulous white men who came in contact with them.
About sixteen years ago he conceived the happy idea of calling a
conference at Mohonk of those who were conversant with Indian affairs
and most desirous to promote their well being. His invitation brought
together such distinguished philanthropists as the veteran ex-Senator
Henry L. Dawes, General Clinton B. Fisk, General Armstrong, the founder
of Hampton Institute; Merrill E. Gates, Philip C. Garrett, Herbert Welsh,
and that picturesque and powerful friend of the red man, the late Bishop
Whipple of Minnesota. The discussions and decisions of this annual
Mohonk Conference have had immense influence in shaping the legislation
and controlling the conduct of our national government in all Indian
affairs. It has helped to make history.
The great success of this conference, which meets in October of each
year, led my Quaker friend, Smiley, eight years ago, to inaugurate an
"Arbitration conference" for the promotion of international peace. It
was a happy thought and has yielded a rich fruitage. About the first of
every June this conference brings together such men and women of "light
and leading" from all parts of our country as ex-Senator George F.
Edmunds of Vermont, the Rev. Edward Everett Hale of Boston, the Hon.
William J. Coombs, the Hon. Robert Treat Paine, Dr. B.F. Trueblood, John
B. Garrett and Joshua L. Bailey, Colonel George E. Waring, Hon. John W.
Foster, Chief Justice Nott, Warner Van Norden, and a great number of
well known clergymen and editors have read able papers or delivered
instructive addresses on that ever burning problem of how to turn swords
into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks.
I especially sympathize with the spirit of this Arbitration conference,
not only because I abominate war _per se_, but because I firmly believe
that among the grievous perils that confront our nation is the mania for
enormous and costly military and naval armament--and also the policy of
extending our territory by foreign conquests. The high mission of our
Republic is to maintain the fundamental principles initiated in our
Declaration of Independence--that all true government rests on the
consent of the governed. It is an impious profanation of our flag of
freedom to make it the symbol of absolutism on any soil. In the conflict
now waging for true American principles, I heartily concur in the views
of the late Benjamin Harrison, who was one of the most clear-sighted
and patriotic of our Presidents. Just before his death I addressed to
that noble Christian statesman a letter of heartfelt thanks for the
position he was taking. With the following gratifying reply which I
received, I conclude my chapter on peace-loving "Smiley-land":
INDIANAPOLIS, Dec 26, 1900
_My dear Dr. Cuyler_.
I can hardly tell you how grateful your letter was to me, or how
highly I value your approval. My soul has been in revolt against
the doctrine of Congressional Absolutism. I want to save my
veneration for the men who made us a nation, and organized the
nation under the Constitution. This will be impossible if I am to
believe that they organized a government to exercise from their
place that absolutism which they rejected for themselves. The
newspaper reports of my Ann Arbor address were most horribly
mangled, but the address will appear in the January number of the
_North American Review_. Allow me, my dear friend, to extend to you
the heartiest thanks, not only for your kind words, but for the
noble life which gives them value.
With all good wishes of the Christmastide,
Most sincerely your friend,
BENJAMIN HARRISON.