1832-1845
Our family Bible, in the record just between the Old and the New
Testaments, has this entry: "Thomas DeWitt, Born January 7, 1832." I was
the youngest of a family of twelve children, all of whom lived to grow
up except the first, and she was an invalid child.
I was the child of old age. My nativity, I am told, was not heartily
welcomed, for the family was already within one of a dozen, and the
means of support were not superabundant. I arrived at Middlebrook, New
Jersey, while my father kept the toll-gate, at which business the older
children helped him, but I was too small to be of service. I have no
memory of residence there, except the day of departure, and that only
emphasised by the fact that we left an old cat which had purred her way
into my affections, and separation from her was my first sorrow, so far
as I can remember.
In that home at Middlebrook, and in the few years after, I went through
the entire curriculum of infantile ailments. The first of these was
scarlet fever, which so nearly consummated its fell work on me that I
was given up by the doctors as doomed to die, and, according to custom
in those times in such a case, my grave clothes were completed, the
neighbours gathering for that purpose. During those early years I took
such a large share of epidemics that I have never been sick since with
anything worthy of being called illness. I never knew or heard of anyone
who has had such remarkable and unvarying health as I have had, and I
mention it with gratitude to God, in whose "hand our breath is, and all
our ways."
The "grippe," as it is called, touched me at Vienna when on my way from
the Holy Land, but I felt it only half a day, and never again since.
I often wonder what has become of our old cradle in which all of us
children were rocked! We were a large family, and that old cradle was
going a good many years. I remember just how it looked. It was
old-fashioned and had no tapestry. Its two sides and canopy were of
plain wood, but there was a great deal of sound sleeping in that cradle,
and many aches and pains were soothed in it. Most vividly I remember
that the rockers, which came out from under the cradle, were on the top
and side very smooth, so smooth that they actually glistened. But it
went right on and rocked for Phoebe the first, and for DeWitt the last.
There were no lords or baronets or princes in our ancestral line. None
wore stars, cockade, or crest. There was once a family coat-of-arms, but
we were none of us wise enough to tell its meaning. Do our best, we
cannot find anything about our forerunners except that they behaved
well, came over from Wales or Holland a good while ago, and died when
their time came. Some of them may have had fine equipages and
postilions, but the most of them were sure only of footmen. My father
started in life belonging to the aristocracy of hard knuckles and
homespun, but had this high honour that no one could despise: he was the
son of a father who loved God and kept His commandments. Two eyes, two
hands, and two feet were the capital my father started with.
Benignity, kindness, keen humour, broad common sense and industry
characterised my mother. The Reverend Dr. Chambers was for many years
her pastor. He had fifty years of pastorate service, in Somerville,
N.J., and the Collegiate Church, New York. He said, in an address at the
dedication of the Brooklyn Tabernacle, that my mother was the most
consecrated Christian person he had ever known. My mother worked very
hard, and when we would come in and sit down at the table at noon, I
remember how she used to look. There were beads of perspiration along
the line of her grey hair, and sometimes she would sit down at the
table, and put her head against her wrinkled hand and say, "Well, the
fact is, I'm too tired to eat."
My father was a religious, hard-working, honest man. Every day began and
closed with family worship, led by my father, or, in case of his
absence, by Mother. That which was evidently uppermost in the minds of
my parents, and that which was the most pervading principle in their
lives, was the Christian religion. The family Bible held a perfect
fascination for me, not a page that was not discoloured either with time
or tears. My parents read out of it as long as I can remember. When my
brother Van Nest died in a foreign land, and the news came to our
country home, that night they read the eternal consolations out of the
old book. When my brother David died that book comforted the old people
in their trouble. My father in mid-life, fifteen years an invalid, out
of that book read of the ravens that fed Elijah all through the hard
struggle for bread. When my mother died that book illumined the dark
valley. In the years that followed of loneliness, it comforted my father
with the thought of reunion, which took place afterward in Heaven.
To the wonderful conversion of my grandfather and grandmother, in those
grand old days of our declaration of independence, I trace the whole
purpose, trend, and energies of my life. I have told the story of the
conversion of my grandfather and grandmother before. I repeat it here,
for my children.
My grandfather and grandmother went from Somerville to Baskenridge to
attend revival meetings under the ministry of Dr. Finney. They were so
impressed with the meetings that when they came back to Somerville they
were seized upon by a great desire for the salvation of their children.
That evening the children were going off for a gay party, and my
grandmother said to the children, "When you get all ready for the
entertainment, come into my room; I have something very important to
tell you." After they were all ready they came into my grandmother's
room, and she said to them, "Go and have a good time, but while you are
gone I want you to know I am praying for you and will do nothing but
pray for you until you get back." They did not enjoy the entertainment
much because they thought all the time of the fact that Mother was
praying for them. The evening passed. The next day my grandparents heard
sobbing and crying in the daughter's room, and they went in and found
her praying for the salvation of God, and her daughter Phoebe said, "I
wish you would go to the barn and to the waggon-house for Jehiel and
David (the brothers) are under powerful conviction of sin." My
grandparent went to the barn, and Jehiel, who afterward became a useful
minister of the Gospel, was imploring the mercy of Christ; and then,
having first knelt with him and commended his soul to Christ, they went
to the waggon-house, and there was David crying for the salvation of his
soul--David, who afterward became my father. David could not keep the
story to himself, and he crossed the fields to a farmhouse and told one
to whom he had been affianced the story of his own salvation, and she
yielded her heart to God. The story of the converted household went all
through the neighbourhood. In a few weeks two hundred souls stood up in
the plain meeting house at Somerville to profess faith in Christ, among
them David and Catherine, afterward my parents.
[Illustration: DAVID TALMAGE. CATHERINE TALMAGE. (_The Parents of Dr. T.
DeWitt Talmage_)]
My mother, impressed with that, in after life, when she had a large
family of children gathered around her, made a covenant with three
neighbours, three mothers. They would meet once a week to pray for the
salvation of their children until all their children were
converted--this incident was not known until after my mother's death,
the covenant then being revealed by one of the survivors. We used to
say: "Mother, where are you going?" and she would say, "I am just going
out a little while; going over to the neighbours." They kept on in that
covenant until all their families were brought into the kingdom of God,
myself the last, and I trace that line of results back to that evening
when my grandmother commended our family to Christ, the tide of
influence going on until this hour, and it will never cease.
My mother died in her seventy-sixth year. Through a long life of
vicissitude she lived harmlessly and usefully, and came to her end in
peace. We had often heard her, when leading family prayers in the
absence of my father, say, "O Lord, I ask not for my children wealth or
honour, but I do ask that they all may be the subjects of Thy converting
grace." Her eleven children brought into the kingdom of God, she had but
one more wish, and that was that she might see her long-absent
missionary son, and when the ship from China anchored in New York
harbour, and the long-absent one passed over the threshold of his
paternal home, she said, "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in
peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." The prayer was soon
answered.
My father, as long as I can remember, was an elder in churches. He
conducted prayer-meetings in the country, when he was sometimes the only
man to take part, giving out a hymn and leading the singing; then
reading the Scriptures and offering prayer; then giving out another hymn
and leading in that; and then praying again; and so continuing the
meeting for the usual length of time, and with no lack of interest.
When the church choir would break down, everybody looked around to see
if he were not ready with "Woodstock," "Mount Pisgah" or "Uxbridge." And
when all his familiar tunes failed to express the joy of his soul, he
would take up his own pen, draw five long lines across the sheet, put in
the notes, and then to the tune he called "Bound Brook," begin to sing:
As when the weary traveller gains
The height of some o'erlooking hill,
His heart revives if 'cross the plains
He eyes his home, though distant still;
Thus, when the Christian pilgrim views,
By faith, his mansion in the skies,
The sight his fainting strength renews,
And wings his speed to reach the prize.
'Tis there, he says, I am to dwell
With Jesus in the realms of day;
There I shall bid my cares farewell
And He will wipe my tears away.
He knew about all the cheerful tunes that were ever printed in old "New
Brunswick Collection," and the "Shunway," and the sweetest melodies that
Thomas Hastings ever composed. He took the pitch of sacred song on
Sabbath morning, and kept it through all the week.
My father was the only person whom I ever knew without any element of
fear. I do not believe he understood the sensation.
Seated in a waggon one day during a runaway that every moment threatened
our demolition, he was perfectly calm. He turned around to me, a boy of
seven years, and said, "DeWitt, what are you crying about? I guess we
can ride as fast as they can run."
There was one scene I remember, that showed his poise and courage as
nothing else could. He was Sheriff of Somerset County, N.J., and we
lived in the court house, attached to which was the County Jail. During
my father's absence one day a prisoner got playing the maniac, dashing
things to pieces, vociferating horribly, and flourishing a knife with
which he had threatened to carve any one who came near the wicket of his
prison, Constables were called in to quell this real or dramatised
maniac, but they fell back in terror from the door of the prison. Their
show of firearms made no impression upon the demented wretch. After
awhile my father returned and was told of the trouble, and indeed he
heard it before he reached home. The whole family implored him not to
go near the man who was cursing, and armed with a knife. But father
could not be deterred. He did not stand outside the door and at a safe
distance, but took the key and opened the door, and without any weapon
of defence came upon the man, thundering at him, "Sit down and give me
that knife!" The tragedy was ended. I never remember to have heard him
make a gloomy remark. This was not because he had no perception of the
pollutions of society. I once said to my father, "Are people so much
worse now than they used to-be?" He made no answer for a minute, for the
old people do not like to confess much to the boys. But after awhile his
eye twinkled and he said: "Well, DeWitt, the fact is that people were
never any better than they ought to be."
Ours was an industrious home. I was brought up to regard laziness as an
abominable disease. Though we were some years of age before we heard the
trill of a piano, we knew well all about the song of "The
Spinning-Wheel."
Through how many thrilling scenes my father had passed! He stood, at
Morristown, in the choir that chanted when George Washington was buried;
talked with young men whose fathers he had held on his knee; watched the
progress of John Adams's administration; denounced, at the time, Aaron
Burr's infamy; heard the guns that celebrated the New Orleans victory;
voted against Jackson, but lived long enough to wish we had another just
like him; remembered when the first steamer struck the North river with
its wheel-buckets; was startled by the birth of telegraphy; saw the
United States grow from a speck on the world's map till all nations dip
their flag at our passing merchantmen. He was born while the
Revolutionary cannon were coming home from Yorktown, and lived to hear
the tramp of troops returning from the war of the great Rebellion. He
lived to speak the names of eighty children, grand-children and
great-grand-children. He died just three years from the day when my
mother sped on.
When my father lay dying the old country minister said to him, "Mr.
Talmage, how do you feel now as you are about to pass the Jordan of
death?" He replied--and it was the last thing he ever said--"I feel
well; I feel very well; all is well"--lifting his hand in a benediction,
a speechless benediction, which I pray God may go down through all the
generations--"It is well!"
Four of his sons became ministers of the Gospel: Reverend James R.
Talmage, D.D., who was preaching before I was born, and who died in
1879; Reverend John Van Nest Talmage, D.D., who spent his life as a
missionary in China, and died in the summer of 1892; Reverend Goyn
Talmage, D.D., who after doing a great work for God, died in 1891. But
all my brothers and sisters were decidedly Christian, lived usefully and
died peacefully.
I rejoice to remember that though my father lived in a plain house the
most of his days, he died in a mansion provided by the filial piety of
his son who had achieved a fortune.
The house at Gateville, near Bound Brook, in which I was born, has gone
down. Not one stone has been left upon another. I one day picked up a
fragment of the chimney, or wall, and carried it home. But the home that
I associate with my childhood was about three miles from Somerville,
N.J. The house, the waggon-shed, the barn, are now just as I remember
them from childhood days. It was called "Uncle John's Place" from the
fact that my mother's uncle, John Van Nest, owned it, and from him my
father rented it "on shares." Here I rode the horse to brook. Here I
hunted for and captured Easter eggs. Here the natural world made its
deepest impression on me. Here I learned some of the fatigues and
hardships of the farmer's life--not as I felt them, but as my father and
mother endured them. Here my brother Daniel brought home his bride. From
here I went to the country school. Here in the evening the family were
gathered, mother knitting or sewing, father vehemently talking politics
or religion with some neighbour not right on the subject of the tariff,
or baptism, and the rest of us reading or listening. All the group are
gone except my sister Catherine and myself.
My childhood, as I look back upon it, is to me a mystery. While I always
possessed a keen sense of the ludicrous, and a hearty appreciation of
fun of all sorts, there was a sedate side of my nature that demonstrated
itself to the older members of the family, and of which they often
spoke. For half days, or whole days, at a time I remember sitting on a
small footstool beside an ordinary chair on which lay open "Scott's
Commentaries on the Bible." I not only read the Scriptures out of this
book, but long discourses of Thomas Scott, and passages adjoining. I
could not have understood much of these profound and elaborate
commentaries. They were not written or printed for children, but they
had for my childish mind a fascination that kept me from play, and from
the ordinary occupations of persons of my years.
So, also, it was with the religious literature of the old-fashioned
kind, with which some of the tables of my father's house were piled.
Indeed, when afterwards I was living at my brothers' house, he a
clergyman, I read through and through and through the four or five
volumes of Dwight's "Theology," which must have been a wading-in far
beyond my depth. I think if I had not possessed an unusual resiliency of
temperament, the reading and thinking so much of things pertaining to
the soul and a future state would have made me morbid and unnatural.
This tendency to read and think in sacred directions was not a case of
early piety. I do not know what it was. I suppose in all natures there
are things inexplicable. How strange is the phenomenon of childhood days
to an old man!
How well I remember Sanderson's stage coach, running from New Brunswick
to Easton, as he drove through Somerville, New Jersey, turning up to the
post-office and dropping the mail-bags with ten letters and two or three
newspapers! On the box Sanderson himself, six feet two inches, and well
proportioned, long lash-whip in one hand, the reins of six horses in the
other, the "leaders" lathered along the lines of the traces, foam
dripping from the bits! It was the event of the day when the stage came.
It was our highest ambition to become a stage-driver. Some of the boys
climbed on the great leathern boot of the stage, and those of us who
could not get on shouted "Cut behind!" I saw the old stage-driver not
long ago, and I expressed to him my surprise that one around whose head
I had seen a halo of glory in my boyhood time was only a man like the
rest of us. Between Sanderson's stage-coach and a Chicago express train,
what a difference!
And I shall always marvel at our family doctor. Dear old Dr. Skillman!
My father's doctor, my mother's doctor, in the village home! He carried
all the confidences of all the families for ten miles around. We all
felt better as soon as we saw him enter the house. His face pronounced a
beatitude before he said a word. He welcomed all of us children into
life, and he closed the old people's eyes.