service: no minister of them all so punctilious as Higgins in respect to
reverent conduct. The preacher is in earnest and single of purpose. The
congregation is compelled to reverence. "Boys," says he, in cunning
appeal, "this bunk-house is our church--the only church we've got."
No need to say more! And a queer church: a low, long hut, stifling and
ill-smelling and unclean and infested, a row of double-decker bunks on
either side, a great glowing stove in the middle, socks and Mackinaws
steaming on the racks, boots put out to dry, and all dim-lit with
lanterns. Half-clad, hairy men, and boys with young beards, lounge
everywhere--stretched out on the benches, peering from the shadows of
the bunks, squatted on the fire-wood, cross-legged on the floor near
the preacher. Higgins rolls out a cask for a pulpit and covers it
with a blanket. Then he takes off his coat and mops his brow.
Presently, hymn-book or Testament in hand, he is sitting on the pulpit.
"Not much light here," says he, "so I won't read to-night; but I'll
_say_ the First Psalm. Are you all ready?"
Everybody is ready.
"All right. '_Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of
the ungodly,_' boys, '_nor standeth in the way of sinners._'"
The door opens and a man awkwardly enters.
"Got any room back there for Bill, boys?" the preacher calls.
There seems to be room.
"I want to see you after service, Bill. You'll find a seat back there
with the boys. '_For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous; but the
way of the ungodly,_' gentlemen, '_shall perish._'"
There is a prayer, restrained, in the way of the preacher's church--a
petition terrible with earnestness. One wonders how a feeling God
could turn a deaf ear to the beseeching eloquence of it! And the
boys sing--lustily, too--led by the stentorian preacher. An amazing
incongruity: these seared, blasphemous barbarians bawling, _What a
Friend I Have in Jesus!_
Enjoy it?
"Pilot," said one of them, in open meeting, once, with no irreverence
whatsoever, "that's a damned fine toon! Why the hell don't they have
toons like that in the shows? Let's sing her again!"
"Sure!" said the preacher, not at all shocked; "let's sing her
again!"
There is a sermon--composed on the forest roads from camp to camp: for on
those long, white, cold, blustering roads Higgins either whistles his
blithe way (like a boy) or fashions his preaching. It is a searching,
eloquent sermon: none other so exactly suited to environment and
congregation--none other so simple and appealing and comprehensible.
There isn't a word of cant in it; there isn't a suggestion of the
familiar evangelistic rant. Higgins has no time for cant (he says)--nor
any faith in ranting. The sermon is all orthodox and significant and
reasonable; it has tender wisdom, and it is sometimes terrible with naked
truth. The phrasing? It is as homely and brutal as the language of the
woods. It has no affectation of slang. The preacher's message is
addressed with wondrous cunning to men in their own tongue: wherefore
it could not be repeated before a polite congregation. Were the preacher
to ejaculate an oath (which he never would do)--were he to exclaim, "By
God! boys, this is the only way of salvation!"--the solemnity of the
occasion would not be disturbed by a single ripple.
"And what did the young man do?" he asked, concerning the Prodigal;
"why, he packed his turkey and went off to blow his stake--_just
like you!_" Afterward, when the poor Prodigal was penniless: "What
about him _then_, boys? _You_ know. _I_ don't need to tell you. You
learned all about it at Deer River. It was the husks and the hogs
for him--_just like it is for you!_ It's up the river for you--and
it's back to the woods for you--when they've cleaned you out at Deer
River!" Once he said, in a great passion of pity: "Boys, you're
out here, floundering to your waists, picking diamonds from the snow
of these forests, to glitter, not in pure places, but on the necks of
the saloon-keepers' wives in Deer River!" There is applause when the
Pilot strikes home. "That's damned true!" they shout. And there is
many a tear shed (as I saw) by the young men in the shadows when,
having spoken long and graciously of home, he asks: "When did you
write to your mother last? You, back there--and you! Ah, boys, don't
forget her!"
There was pause while the preacher leaned earnestly over the blanketed
barrel.
"Write home to-night," he besought them.
"_She's--waiting--for--that--letter!_"
They listened.
XIV
THE SHOE ON THE OTHER FOOT
The Pilot is a fearless preacher--fearless of blame and violence--and
he is the most downright and pugnacious of moral critics. He speaks
in mighty wrath against the sins of the camps and the evil-doers of
the towns--naming the thieves and gamblers by name and violently
characterizing their ways: until it seems he must in the end be done
to death in revenge. "Boys," said he, in a bunk-house denunciation,
"that tin-horn gambler Jim Leach is back in Deer River from the West
with a crooked game--just laying for you. I watched his game, boys, and
I know what I'm talking about; _and you know I know!_" Proceeding:
"You know that saloon-keeper Tom Jenkins? Of _course_ you do! Well,
boys, the wife of Tom Jenkins nodded toward the camps the other day,
and, 'Pshaw!' says she; 'what do I care about expense? My husband has
a thousand men working for him in the woods!' She meant you, boys! A
thousand of you--think of it!--working for the wife of a brute like
Tom Jenkins." Again: "Boys, I'm just out from Deer River. I met ol'
Bill Morgan yesterday. 'Hello, Bill!' says I; 'how's business?'
'Slow, Pilot,' says he; 'but I ain't worryin' none--it'll pick
up when the boys come in with their stake in the spring.' There you
have it! That's what you'll be up against, boys, God help you! when
you go in with your stake--a gang of filthy thieves like Jim Leach and
Tom Jenkins and Bill Morgan!" It takes courage to attack, in this
frank way, the parasites of a lawless community, in which murder may be
accomplished in secret, and perjury is as cheap as a glass of whiskey.
* * * * *
It takes courage, too, to denounce the influential parishioner.
"You grown-up men, here," Higgins complained to his congregation,
"ought to give the young fellows a chance to live decent lives. Shame to
you that you don't! You've lived in filth and blasphemy and whiskey
so long that maybe you don't know any better; but I want to tell
you--every one of you--that these boys don't want that sort of thing.
They remember their mothers and their sisters, and they want what's
_clean!_ Now, you leave 'em alone. Give 'em a show to be decent. And
I'm talking to _you_, Scotch Andrew"--with an angry thump of the
pulpit and a swift belligerent advance--"and to _you_, Gin Thompson,
sneaking back there in your bunk!"
"Oh, hell!" said Gin Thompson.
The Pilot was instantly confronting the lazy-lying man. "Gin," said
he, "you'll take that back!"
Gin laughed.
"Understand me?" the wrathful preacher shouted.
Gin Thompson understood. Very wisely--however unwillingly--he apologized.
"That's all right, Pilot," said he; "you know I didn't mean
nothin'."
"Anyhow," the preacher muttered, returning to his pulpit and his
sermon, "I'd rather preach than fight."
* * * * *
Not by any means all Higgins's sermons are of this nature; most are
conventional enough, perhaps--but always vigorous and serviceable--and
present the ancient Christian philosophy in an appealing and deeply
reverent way. I recall, however, another downright and courageous display
of dealing with the facts without gloves. It was especially fearless
because the Pilot must have the permission of the proprietors before he
may preach in the camps. It is related that a drunken logger--the
proprietor of the camp--staggered into Higgins's service and sat
down on the barrel which served for the pulpit. The preacher was
discoursing on the duties of the employed to the employer. It tickled
the drunken logger.
"Hit 'em again, Pilot!" he applauded. "It'll do 'em good."
Higgins pointed out the wrong worked the owners by the lumber-jacks'
common custom of "jumping camp."
"Give 'em hell!" shouted the logger. "It'll do 'em good."
Higgins proceeded calmly to discuss the several evils of which the
lumber-jacks may be accused in relation to their employers.
"You're all right, Pilot," the logger agreed, clapping the preacher
on the back. "Hit the ---- rascals again! It'll do 'em good."
"And now, boys," Higgins continued, gently, "we come to the other
side of the subject. You owe a lot to your employers, and I've told you
frankly what your minister thinks about it. But what can be expected of
you, anyhow? Who sets you a good example of fair dealing and decent
living? Your employers? Look about you and see! What kind of an example
do your employers set? Is it any wonder," he went on, in a breathless
silence, "that you go wrong? Is it any wonder that you fail to consider
those who fail to consider you? Is it any wonder that you are just
exactly what you are, when the men to whom you ought to be able to
look for better things are themselves filthy and drunken loafers?"
The logger was thunderstruck.
"And how d'ye like _that_, Mister Woods?" the preacher shouted,
turning on the man, and shaking his fist in his face. "How d'ye like
_that_? Does it do _you_ any good?"
The logger wouldn't tell.
"Let us pray!" said the indignant preacher.
Next morning the Pilot was summoned to the office. "You think it was
rough on you, do you, Mr. Woods?" said he. "But I didn't tell the
boys a thing that they didn't know already. And what's more," he
continued, "I didn't tell them a thing that your own son doesn't
know. You know just as well as I do what road _he's_ travelling; and
you know just as well as I do what you are doing to help that boy along."
Higgins continued to preach in those camps.
* * * * *
One inevitably wonders what would happen if some minister of the
cities denounced from his pulpit in these frank and indignantly
righteous terms the flagrant sinners and hypocrites of his congregation.
What polite catastrophe would befall him?--suppose he were convinced
of the wisdom and necessity of the denunciation and had no family
dependent upon him. The outburst leaves Higgins established in the
hearts of his hearers; and it leaves him utterly exhausted. He mingles
with the boys afterward; he encourages and scolds them, he hears
confession, he prays in some quiet place in the snow with those whose
hearts he has touched, he confers with men who have been seeking to
overcome themselves, he writes letters for the illiterate, he visits
the sick, he renews old acquaintanceship, he makes new friends, he yarns
of the "cut" and the "big timber" and the "homesteading" of other
places, and he distributes the "readin' matter," consisting of old
magazines and tracts which he has carried into camp.
At last he quits the bunk-house, worn out and discouraged and downcast.
"I failed to-night," he said, once, at the superintendent's fire.
"It was awfully kind of the boys to listen to me so patiently. Did
you notice how attentive they were? I tell you, the boys are _good_
to me! Maybe I was a little rough on them to-night. But somehow all
this unnecessary and terrible wickedness enrages me. And nobody else
much seems to care about it. And I'm their minister. And I yearn to
have the souls of these boys awakened. I've just _got_ to stand up
and tell them the truth about themselves and give them the same old
Message that I heard when I was a boy. I don't know, but it's kind
of queer about ministers of the gospel," he went on. "We've got two
Creations now, and three Genesises. But take a minister. It wouldn't
matter to me if a brother minister fell from grace. I'd pick him out of
the mud and never think of it again. It wouldn't cost _me_ much to
forgive him. I know that we're all human and liable to sin. But when an
ordained minister gets up in his pulpit and dodges his duty--when he
gets up and dodges the truth--why, bah! _I've got no time for him!_"
XV
CAUSE AND EFFECT
This sort of preaching--this genuine and practical ministry consistently
and unremittingly carried on for love of the men, and without prospect
of gain--wins respect and loyal affection. The dogged and courageous
method will be sufficiently illustrated in the tale of the Big Scotchman
of White Pine--to Higgins almost a forgotten incident of fourteen years'
service. The Big Scotchman was discovered drunk and shivering with
apprehension--he was in the first stage of _delirium tremens_--in a low
saloon of White Pine, some remote and God-forsaken settlement off the
railroad, into which the Pilot had chanced on his rounds. The man was
a homesteader, living alone in a log-cabin on his grant of land, some
miles from the village.
"Well," thought the Pilot, quite familiar with the situation, "first
of all I've got to get him home."
There was only one way of accomplishing this, and the Pilot employed it;
he carried the Big Scotchman.
"Well," thought the Pilot, "what next?"
The next thing was to wrestle with the Big Scotchman, upon whom the
"whiskey sickness" had by that time fallen--to wrestle with him in
the lonely little cabin in the woods, and to get him down, and to hold
him down. There was no congregation to listen to the eloquent sermon
which the Pilot was engaged in preaching; there was no choir, there
was no report in the newspapers. But the sermon went on just the
same. The Pilot got the Big Scotchman down, and kept him down, and
at last got him into his bunk. For two days and nights he sat there
ministering--hearing, all the time, the ravings of a horrible delirium.
There was an interval of relief then, and during this the Pilot gathered
up every shred of the Big Scotchman's clothing and safely hid it. There
was not a garment left in the cabin to cover his nakedness.
The Big Scotchman presently wanted whiskey.
"No," said the Pilot; "you stay right here."
The Big Scotchman got up to dress.
"Nothing to wear," said the Pilot.
Then the fight was on again. It was a long fight--merely a physical thing
in the beginning, but a fight of another kind before the day was done.
And the Pilot won. When the Big Scotchman got up from his knees he took
the Pilot's hand and said that, by God's help, he would live better
than he had lived. Moreover, he was as good as his word. Presently White
Pine knew him no more; but news of his continuance in virtue not long ago
came down to the Pilot from the north. It was what the Pilot calls a
real reformation _and_ conversion. It seems that there is a difference.
* * * * *
We had gone the rounds of the saloons in Deer River, and had returned
late at night to the hotel. The Pilot was very busy--he is always busy,
from early morning until the last sot drops unconscious to the bar-room
floor, when, often, the real day's work begins; he is one of the
hardest workers in any field of endeavor. And he was now heart-sick
because of what he had seen that night; but he was not idle--he was still
shaking hands with his parishioners in the bar-room, still advising,
still inspiring, still scolding and beseeching, still holding private
conversations in the corners, for all the world like a popular and
energetic politician on primary day.
A curious individual approached me.
"Friend of the Pilot's?" said he.
I nodded.
"He's a good man."
I observed that the stranger was timid and slow--a singular fellow, with
a lean face and nervous hands and clear but most unsteady eyes. He was
like an old hulk repainted.
"He done me a lot of good," he added, in a slow, soft drawl, hardly
above a whisper, at the same time slowly smoothing his chin.
It was a pleasant thing to hear.
"They used to call me Brandy Bill," he continued. He pointed to a
group of drunkards lying on the floor. "I used to be like that,"
said he, looking up like a child who perceives that he is interesting.
After a pause, he went on: "But once when the snakes broke out on me
I made up my mind to quit. And then I went to the Pilot and he stayed
with me for a while, and told me I had to hang on. I thought I could
do it if the boys would leave me alone. So the Pilot told me what to
do. 'Whenever you come into town,' says he, 'you go on to your
sister's and borrow her little girl.' Her little girl was just four
years old then. 'And,' says the Pilot, 'don't you never come down
street without her.' Well, I done what the Pilot said. I never come
down street without that little girl hanging on to my hand; and when she
was with me not one of the boys ever asked me to take a drink. Yes," he
drawled, glancing at the drunkards again, "I used to be like that.
Pretty near time," he added, like a man displaying an experienced
knowledge, "to put them fellows in the snake-room."
Such a ministry as the Pilot's springs from a heart of kindness--from
a pure and understanding love of all mankind. "Boys," said he, once,
in the superintendent's office, after the sermon in the bunk-house,
"I'll never forget a porterhouse steak I saw once. It was in Duluth.
I'd been too busy to have my breakfast, and I was hungry. I'm a big
man, you know, and when I get hungry I'm _hungry_. Anyhow, I wasn't
thinking about that when I saw the steak. It didn't occur to me that I
was hungry until I happened to glance into a restaurant window as I
walked along. And there I saw the steak. You know how they fix those
windows up: a chunk of ice and some lettuce and a steak or two and some
chops. Well, boys, all at once I got so hungry that I ached. I could
hardly wait to get in there.
"But I stopped.
"'Look here, Higgins,' thought I, 'what if you didn't have a cent
in your pocket?'
"Well, that was a puzzler. 'What if you were a dead-broke lumber-jack,
and hungry like this?'
"Boys, it frightened me. I understood just what those poor fellows
suffer. And I couldn't go in the restaurant until I had got square with
them.
"'Look here, Higgins,' I thought, 'the best thing you can do is to
go and find a hungry lumber-jack somewhere and feed him.'
"And I did, too; and I tell you, boys, I enjoyed my dinner."
It is a ministry that wins good friends, and often in unexpected places:
friends like the lumber-jack (once an enemy) who would clear a way for
the Pilot in town, shouting, "I'm road-monkeying for the Pilot!" and
friends like the Blacksmith.
Higgins came one night to a new camp where an irascible boss was in
complete command.
"You won't mind, will you," said he, "if I hold a little service for
the boys in the bunk-house to-night?"
The boss ordered him to clear out.
"All I want to do," Higgins protested, mildly, "is just to hold a
little service for the boys."
Again the boss ordered him to clear out: but Higgins had come prepared
with the authority of the proprietor of the camp.
"I've a pass in my pocket," he suggested.
"Don't matter," said the boss; "you couldn't preach in this camp
if you had a pass from God Almighty!"
To thrash or not to thrash? that was the Pilot's problem; and he
determined not to thrash, for he knew very well that if he thrashed the
boss the lumber-jacks would lose respect for the boss and jump the
camp. The Blacksmith, however, had heard--and had heard much more than
is here written. Next morning he involved himself in a quarrel with the
boss; and having thrashed him soundly, and having thrown him into a
snowbank, he departed, but returned, and, addressing himself to that
portion of the foreman which protruded from the snow, kicked it heartily,
saying: "There's one for the Pilot. And there's another--and another.
I'll learn you to talk to the Pilot like a drunken lumber-jack. There's
another for _him_. Take that--and that--for the Pilot."
Subsequently Higgins preached in those camps.
XVI
THE WAGES OF SACRIFICE
One asks, Why does Higgins do these things? The answer is simple:
Because he loves his neighbor as himself--because he actually _does_,
without self-seeking or any pious pretence. One asks, What does he
get out of it? I do not know what Higgins gets. If you were to ask
him, he would say, innocently, that once, when he preached at Camp Seven
of the Green River Works, the boys fell in love with the singing.
_Jesus, Lover of My Soul_, was the hymn that engaged them. They sang it
again and again; and when they got up in the morning, they said: "Say,
Pilot, let's sing her once more!" They sang it once more--in the
bunk-house at dawn--and the boss opened the door and was much too amazed
to interrupt. They sang it again. "All out!" cried the boss; and
the boys went slowly off to labor in the woods, singing, _Let me to
Thy bosom fly!_ and, _Oh, receive my soul at last!_--diverging here and
there, axes and saws over shoulder, some to the deeper forest, some
making out upon the frozen lake, some pursuing the white roads--all
passing into the snow and green and great trees and silence of the
undefiled forest which the Pilot loves--all singing as they went,
_Other refuge have I none; hangs my helpless soul on Thee_--until
the voices were like sweet and soft-coming echoes from the wilderness.
Poor Higgins put his face to the bunk-house door and wept.
"I tell you, boys," he told us, on the road from Six to Four, "it was
_pay_ for what I've tried to do for the boys."
Later--when the Sky Pilot sat with his stockinged feet extended to a red
fire in the superintendent's log-cabin of that bitterly cold night--he
betrayed himself to the uttermost. "Do you know, boys," said he,
addressing us, the talk having been of the wide world and travel therein,
"I believe you fellows would spend a dollar for a dinner and never
think twice about it!"
We laughed.
"If I spent more than twenty-five cents," said he, accusingly, "I'd
have indigestion."
Again we laughed.
"And if I spent fifty cents for a hotel bed," said he, with a grin,
"I'd have the nightmare."
That is exactly what Higgins gets out of it.
* * * * *
Higgins gets more than that out of it: he gets a clean eye and sound
sleep and a living interest in life. He gets even more: he gets the trust
and affection of almost--almost--every lumber-jack in the Minnesota
woods. He wanders over two hundred square miles of forest, and hardly
a man of the woods but would fight for his Christian reputation at a
word. For example, he had pulled Whitey Mooney out of the filth and
nervous strain of the snake-room, and reestablished him, had paid his
board, had got him a job in a near-by town, had paid his fare, had taken
him to his place; but Whitey Mooney had presently thrown up his job
(being a lazy fellow), and had fallen into the depths again, had asked
Higgins for a quarter of a dollar for a drink or two, and had been
denied. Immediately he took to the woods; and in the camp he came to be
complained that Higgins had "turned him down."
"You're a liar," they told him. "The Pilot never turned a lumber-jack
down. Wait till he comes."
Higgins came.
"Pilot," said a solemn jack, rising, when the sermon was over, as he
had been delegated, "do you know Mooney?"
"Whitey Mooney?"
"Yes. Do you know Whitey Mooney?"
"You bet I do, boys!"
"_Did--you--turn--him--down?_"
"You bet I did, boys!"
"_Why?_"
Higgins informed them.
"Come out o' there, Whitey!" they yelled; and they took Whitey Mooney
from his bunk, and tossed him in a blanket, and drove him out of camp.