“My only worldly ambition was to make my way as a blacksmith, but
one day there came to me in a flash the thought that I must go to
America, where I would have to bow to no class, but would be as good
a man as any. Many times in my life these sudden burstings of light,
half thought, half feeling, have come to me; and, when they do come, I
cease to reason about the matter. I simply obey the impulse with all
the power of my will. It would have taken tremendous difficulties to
have kept me from embarking for this country after the flash came, and
so, one fine spring morning in 1850, I and my little family, with our
small store of worldly goods, went aboard the old ship ‘Roscius,’ made
ourselves as comfortable as we could in the steerage, and a month later
were in New York.
“I had made up my mind to settle in the vicinity of Philadelphia, and
there I soon found work at the anvil. It was lucky I did, for, when we
reached our destination, my whole capital amounted to only about twenty
dollars. We made ourselves a little home, and I worked at my trade for
the next nine years, except during the panic of 1857, when I carried
the hod and broke stone on the turnpike for a dollar a day. Meanwhile,
I was preaching o’ Sundays, again at nothing a Sunday. In 1859, I was
asked to devote myself altogether to preaching,—to go to Chicago as
a minister to the poor. Well, I went. I said good-by forever to the
anvil, in whose ringing voice I had heard so many years the old sermon
on the nobility of work.”