was twenty-five years of age, but I looked much younger--probably not
more than eighteen to the casual glance. Though I had made every effort
to save money, I had not been successful, for my expenses constantly
outran my little income, and my position as preacher made it necessary
for me to have a suitable wardrobe. When the time came to enter college
I had exactly eighteen dollars in the world, and I started for Albion
with this amount in my purse and without the slightest notion of how I
was to add to it. The money problem so pressed upon me, in fact, that
when I reached my destination at midnight and discovered that it would
cost fifty cents to ride from the station to the college, I saved that
amount by walking the entire distance on the railroad tracks, while my
imagination busied itself pleasantly with pictures of the engine that
might be thundering upon me in the rear. I had chosen Albion because
Miss Foot had been educated there, and I was encouraged by an incident
that happened the morning after my arrival. I was on the campus, walking
toward the main building, when I saw a big copper penny lying on the
ground, and, on picking it up, I discovered that it bore the year of my
birth. That seemed a good omen, and it was emphatically underlined by
the finding of two exactly similar pennies within a week. Though there
have been days since then when I was sorely tempted to spend them, I
have those three pennies still, and I confess to a certain comfort in
their possession!
As I had not completed my high-school course, my first days at Albion
were spent in strenuous preparation for the entrance examinations; and
one morning, as I was crossing the campus with a History of the United
States tucked coyly under my arm, I met the president of the college,
Dr. Josclyn. He stopped for a word of greeting, during which I betrayed
the fact that I had never studied United States history. Dr. Josclyn at
once invited me into his office with, I am quite sure, the purpose of
explaining as kindly as he could that my preparation for college was
insufficient. As an opening to the subject he began to talk of history,
and we talked and talked on, while unheeded hours were born and died.
We discussed the history of the United States, the governments of the
world, the causes which led to the influence of one nation on another,
the philosophical basis of the different national movements westward,
and the like. It was the longest and by far the most interesting talk I
have ever had with a highly educated man, and during it I could actually
feel my brain expand. When I rose to go President Josclyn stopped me.
"I have something to give you," he said, and he wrote a few words on
a slip of paper and handed the slip to me. When, on reaching the
dormitory, I opened it, I found that the president had passed me in the
history of the entire college course! This, moreover, was not the only
pleasant result of our interview, for within a few weeks President and
Mrs. Josclyn, whose daughter had recently died, invited me to board with
them, and I made my home with them during my first year at Albion.
My triumph in history was followed by the swift and chastening discovery
that I was behind my associates in several other branches. Owing to my
father's early help, I was well up in mathematics, but I had much to
learn of philosophy and the languages, and to these I devoted many
midnight candles.
Naturally, I soon plunged into speaking, and my first public speech at
college was a defense of Xantippe. I have always felt that the poor lady
was greatly abused, and that Socrates deserved all he received from her,
and more. I was glad to put myself on record as her champion, and my
fellow-students must soon have felt that my admiration for Xantippe was
based on similarities of temperament, for within a few months I was
leading the first college revolt against the authority of the men
students.
Albion was a coeducational institution, and the brightest jewels in
its crown were its three literary societies--the first composed of
men alone, the second of women alone, and the third of men and women
together. Each of the societies made friendly advances to new students,
and for some time I hesitated on the brink of the new joys they offered,
uncertain which to choose. A representative of the mixed society, who
was putting its claims before me, unconsciously helped me to make up my
mind.
"Women," he pompously assured me, "need to be associated with men,
because they don't know how to manage meetings."
On the instant the needle of decision swung around to the women's
society and remained there, fixed.
"If they don't," I told the pompous young man, "it's high time they
learned. I shall join the women, and we'll master the art."
I did join the women's society, and I had not been a member very long
before I discovered that when there was an advantage of any kind to be
secured the men invariably got it. While I was brooding somberly upon
this wrong an opportunity came to make a formal and effective protest
against the men's high-handed methods. The Quinquennial reunion of all
the societies was about to be held, and the special feature of this
festivity was always an oration. The simple method of selecting the
orator which had formerly prevailed had been for the young men to decide
upon the speaker and then announce his name to the women, who humbly
confirmed it. On this occasion, however, when the name came in to us,
I sent a message to our brother society to the effect that we, too,
intended to make a nomination and to send in a name.
At such unprecedented behavior the entire student body arose in
excitement, which, among the girls, was combined with equal parts of
exhilaration and awe. The men refused to consider our nominee, and as a
friendly compromise we suggested that we have a joint meeting of all the
societies and elect the speaker at this gathering; but this plan also
the men at first refused, giving in only after weeks of argument, during
which no one had time for the calmer pleasures of study. When the joint
meeting was finally held, nothing was accomplished; we girls had one
more member than the boys had, and we promptly re-elected our candidate,
who was as promptly declined by the boys. Two of our girls were engaged
to two of the boys, and it was secretly planned by our brother society
that during a second joint meeting these two men should take the girls
out for a drive and then slip back to vote, leaving the girls at some
point sufficiently remote from college. We discovered the plot, however,
in time to thwart it, and at last, when nothing but the unprecedented
tie-up had been discussed for months, the boys suddenly gave up their
candidate and nominated me for orator.
This was not at all what I wanted, and I immediately declined to serve.
We girls then nominated the young man who had been first choice of our
brother society, but he haughtily refused to accept the compliment.
The reunion was only a fortnight away, and the programme had not
been printed, so now the president took the situation in hand and
peremptorily ordered me to accept the nomination or be suspended. This
was a wholly unexpected boomerang. I had wished to make a good fight for
equal rights for the girls, and to impress the boys with the fact of our
existence as a society; but I had not desired to set the entire student
body by the ears nor to be forced to prepare and deliver an oration
at the eleventh hour. Moreover, I had no suitable gown to wear on so
important an occasion. One of my classmates, however, secretly wrote to
my sister, describing my blushing honors and explaining my need, and my
family rallied to the call. My father bought the material, and my
mother and Mary paid for the making of the gown. It was a white
alpaca creation, trimmed with satin, and the consciousness that it
was extremely becoming sustained me greatly during the mental agony of
preparing and delivering my oration. To my family that oration was the
redeeming episode of my early career. For the moment it almost made them
forget my crime of preaching.
My original fund of eighteen dollars was now supplemented by the
proceeds of a series of lectures I gave on temperance. The temperance
women were not yet organized, but they had their speakers, and I was
occasionally paid five dollars to hold forth for an hour or two in the
little country school-houses of our region. As a licensed preacher I
had no tuition fees to pay at college; but my board, in the home of the
president and his wife, was costing me four dollars a week, and this was
the limit of my expenses, as I did my own laundry-work. During my first
college year the amount I paid for amusement was exactly fifty cents;
that went for a lecture. The mental strain of the whole experience was
rather severe, for I never knew how much I would be able to earn; and
I was beginning to feel the effects of this when Christmas came and
brought with it a gift of ninety-two dollars, which Miss Foot had
collected among my Big Rapids friends. That, with what I could earn,
carried me through the year.
The following spring our brother James, who was now living in St.
Johnsbury, Vermont, invited my sister Mary and me to spend the summer
with him, and Mary and I finally dug a grave for our little hatchet and
went East together with something of our old-time joy in each other's
society. We reached St. Johnsbury one Saturday, and within an hour of
our arrival learned that my brother had arranged for me to preach in a
local church the following day. That threatened to spoil the visit for
Mary and even to disinter the hatchet! At first she positively refused
to go to hear me, but after a few hours of reflection she announced
gloomily that if she did not go I would not have my hair arranged
properly or get my hat on straight. Moved by this conviction, she joined
the family parade to the church, and later, in the sacristy, she pulled
me about and pinned me up to her heart's content. Then, reluctantly, she
went into the church and heard me preach. She offered no tributes after
our return to the house, but her protests ceased from that time, and we
gave each other the love and understanding which had marked our girlhood
days. The change made me very happy; for Mary was the salt of the earth,
and next only to my longing for my mother, I had longed for her in the
years of our estrangement.
Every Sunday that summer I preached in or near St. Johnsbury, and toward
autumn we had a big meeting which the ministers of all the surrounding
churches attended. I was asked to preach the sermon--a high
compliment--and I chose that important day to make a mistake in quoting
a passage from Scripture. I asked, "Can the Ethiopian change his spots
or the leopard his skin?" I realized at once that I had transposed the
words, and no doubt a look of horror dawned in my eyes; but I went on
without correcting myself and without the slightest pause. Later, one of
the ministers congratulated me on this presence of mind.
"If you had corrected yourself," he said, "all the young people would
have been giggling yet over the spotted nigger. Keep to your rule of
going right ahead!"
At the end of the summer the various churches in which I had preached
gave me a beautiful gold watch and one hundred dollars in money, and
with an exceedingly light heart I went back to college to begin my
second year of work.
From that time life was less complex. I had enough temperance-work and
preaching in the country school-houses and churches to pay my college
expenses, and, now that my financial anxieties were relieved, my health
steadily improved. Several times I preached to the Indians, and these
occasions were among the most interesting of my experiences. The squaws
invariably brought their babies with them, but they had a simple and
effective method of relieving themselves of the care of the infants
as soon as they reached the church. The papooses, who were strapped to
their boards, were hung like a garment on the back wall of the building
by a hole in the top of the board, which projected above their heads.
Each papoose usually had a bit of fat pork tied to the end of a string
fastened to its wrist, and with these sources of nourishment the
infants occupied themselves pleasantly while the sermon was in progress.
Frequently the pork slipped down the throat of the papoose, but the
struggle of the child and the jerking of its hands in the strangulation
that followed pulled the piece safely out again. As I faced the
congregation I also faced the papooses, to whom the indifferent backs
of their mothers were presented; it seemed to me there was never a time
when some papoose was not choking, but no matter how much excitement or
discomfort was going on among the babies, not one squaw turned her head
to look back at them. In that assemblage the emotions were not allowed
to interrupt the calm intellectual enjoyment of the sermon.
My most dramatic experience during this period occurred in the summer of
1874, when I went to a Northern lumber-camp to preach in the pulpit of
a minister who was away on his honeymoon. The stage took me within
twenty-two miles of my destination, to a place called Seberwing. To my
dismay, however, when I arrived at Seberwing, Saturday evening, I found
that the rest of the journey lay through a dense woods, and that I could
reach my pulpit in time the next morning only by having some one drive
me through the woods that night. It was not a pleasant prospect, for
I had heard appalling tales of the stockades in this region and of the
women who were kept prisoners there. But to miss the engagement was not
to be thought of, and when, after I had made several vain efforts to
find a driver, a man appeared in a two-seated wagon and offered to take
me to my destination, I felt that I had to go with him, though I did not
like his appearance. He was a huge, muscular person, with a protruding
jaw and a singularly evasive eye; but I reflected that his forbidding
expression might be due, in part at least, to the prospect of the long
night drive through the woods, to which possibly he objected as much as
I did.
It was already growing dark when we started, and within a few moments we
were out of the little settlement and entering the woods. With me I
had a revolver I had long since learned to use, but which I very rarely
carried. I had hesitated to bring it now--had even left home without it;
and then, impelled by some impulse I never afterward ceased to bless,
had returned for it and dropped it into my hand-bag.
I sat on the back seat of the wagon, directly behind the driver, and for
a time, as we entered the darkening woods, his great shoulders blotted
out all perspective as he drove on in stolid silence. Then, little by
little, they disappeared like a rapidly fading negative. The woods were
filled with Norway pines, hemlocks, spruce, and tamaracks-great, somber
trees that must have shut out the light even on the brightest days.
To-night the heavens held no lamps aloft to guide us, and soon the
darkness folded around us like a garment. I could see neither the driver
nor his horses. I could hear only the sibilant whisper of the trees and
the creak of our slow wheels in the rough forest road.
Suddenly the driver began to talk, and at first I was glad to hear the
reassuring human tones, for the experience had begun to seem like a bad
dream. I replied readily, and at once regretted that I had done so,
for the man's choice of topics was most unpleasant. He began to tell me
stories of the stockades--grim stories with horrible details, repeated
so fully and with such gusto that I soon realized he was deliberately
affronting my ears. I checked him and told him I could not listen to
such talk.
He replied with a series of oaths and shocking vulgarities, stopping his
horses that he might turn and fling the words into my face. He ended
by snarling that I must think him a fool to imagine he did not know
the kind of woman I was. What was I doing in that rough country, he
demanded, and why was I alone with him in those black woods at night?
Though my heart missed a beat just then, I tried to answer him calmly.
"You know perfectly well who I am," I reminded him. "And you understand
that I am making this journey to-night because I am to preach to-morrow
morning and there is no other way to keep my appointment."
He uttered a laugh which was a most unpleasant sound.
"Well," he said, coolly, "I'm damned if I'll take you. I've got you
here, and I'm going to keep you here!"
I slipped my hand into the satchel in my lap, and it touched my
revolver. No touch of human fingers ever brought such comfort. With a
deep breath of thanksgiving I drew it out and cocked it, and as I did so
he recognized the sudden click.
"Here! What have you got there?" he snapped.
"I have a revolver," I replied, as steadily as I could. "And it is
cocked and aimed straight at your back. Now drive on. If you stop again,
or speak, I'll shoot you."
For an instant or two he blustered.
"By God," he cried, "you wouldn't dare."
"Wouldn't I?" I asked. "Try me by speaking just once more."
Even as I spoke I felt my hair rise on my scalp with the horror of the
moment, which seemed worse than any nightmare a woman could experience.
But the man was conquered by the knowledge of the waiting, willing
weapon just behind him. He laid his whip savagely on the backs of his
horses and they responded with a leap that almost knocked me out of the
wagon.
The rest of the night was a black terror I shall never forget. He did
not speak again, nor stop, but I dared not relax my caution for an
instant. Hour after hour crawled toward day, and still I sat in the
unpierced darkness, the revolver ready. I knew he was inwardly raging,
and that at any instant he might make a sudden jump and try to get the
revolver away from me. I decided that at his slightest movement I must
shoot. But dawn came at last, and just as its bluish light touched the
dark tips of the pines we drove up to the log hotel in the settlement
that was our destination. Here my driver spoke.
"Get down," he said, gruffly. "This is the place."
I sat still. Even yet I dared not trust him. Moreover, I was so stiff
after my vigil that I was not sure I could move.
"You get down," I directed, "and wake up the landlord. Bring him out
here."
He sullenly obeyed and aroused the hotel-owner, and when the latter
appeared I climbed out of the wagon with some effort but without
explanation. That morning I preached in my friend's pulpit as I had
promised to do, and the rough building was packed to its doors with
lumbermen who had come in from the neighboring camp. Their appearance
caused great surprise, as they had never attended a service before.
They formed a most picturesque congregation, for they all wore brilliant
lumber-camp clothing--blue or red shirts with yellow scarfs twisted
around their waists, and gay-colored jackets and logging-caps. There
were forty or fifty of them, and when we took up our collection they
responded with much liberality and cheerful shouts to one another.
"Put in fifty cents!" they yelled across the church. "Give her a
dollar!"
The collection was the largest that had been taken up in the history of
the settlement, but I soon learned that it was not the spiritual comfort
I offered which had appealed to the lumber-men. My driver of the
night before, who was one of their number, had told his pals of his
experience, and the whole camp had poured into town to see the woman
minister who carried a revolver.
"Her sermon?" said one of them to my landlord, after the meeting. "Huh!
I dunno what she preached. But, say, don't make no mistake about one
thing: the little preacher has sure got grit!"
IV. THE WOLF AT THE DOOR
When I returned to Albion College in the autumn of 1875 I brought with
me a problem which tormented me during my waking hours and chattered on
my pillow at night. Should I devote two more years of my vanishing
youth to the completion of my college course, or, instead, go at once
to Boston University, enter upon my theological studies, take my degree,
and be about my Father's business?
I was now twenty-seven years old, and I had been a licensed preacher for
three years. My reputation in the Northwest was growing, and by sermons
and lectures I could certainly earn enough to pay the expenses of the
full college course. On the other hand, Boston was a new world. There I
would be alone and practically penniless, and the opportunities for work
might be limited. Quite possibly in my final two years at Albion I could
even save enough money to make the experience in Boston less difficult,
and the clear common sense I had inherited from my mother reminded me
that in this course lay wisdom. Possibly it was some inheritance from my
visionary father which made me, at the end of three months, waive these
sage reflections, pack my few possessions, and start for Boston, where I
entered the theological school of the university in February, 1876.
It was an instance of stepping off a solid plank and into space; and
though there is exhilaration in the sensation, as I discovered then and
at later crises in life when I did the same thing, there was also an
amount of subsequent discomfort for which even my lively imagination
had not prepared me. I went through some grim months in Boston--months
during which I learned what it was to go to bed cold and hungry, to
wake up cold and hungry, and to have no knowledge of how long these
conditions might continue. But not more than once or twice during the
struggle there, and then only for an hour or two in the physical and
mental depression attending malnutrition, did I regret coming. At that
period of my life I believed that the Lord had my small personal affairs
very much on His mind. If I starved and froze it was His test of my
worthiness for the ministry, and if He had really chosen me for one of
His servants, He would see me through. The faith that sustained me
then has still a place in my life, and existence without it would be an
infinitely more dreary affair than it is. But I admit that I now call
upon the Lord less often and less imperatively than I did before the
stern years taught me my unimportance in the great scheme of things.
My class at the theological school was composed of forty-two young men
and my unworthy self, and before I had been a member of it an hour I
realized that women theologians paid heavily for the privilege of being
women. The young men of my class who were licensed preachers were given
free accommodations in the dormitory, and their board, at a club formed
for their assistance, cost each of them only one dollar and twenty-five
cents a week. For me no such kindly provision was made. I was not
allowed a place in the dormitory, but instead was given two dollars a
week to pay the rent of a room outside. Neither was I admitted to the
economical comforts of the club, but fed myself according to my income,
a plan which worked admirably when there was an income, but left an
obvious void when there was not.
With characteristic optimism, however, I hired a little attic room on
Tremont Street and established myself therein. In lieu of a window
the room offered a pale skylight to the February storms, and there
was neither heat in it nor running water; but its possession gave me a
pleasant sense of proprietorship, and the whole experience seemed a high
adventure. I at once sought opportunities to preach and lecture, but
these were even rarer than firelight and food. In Albion I had been
practically the only licensed preacher available for substitute and
special work. In Boston University's three theological classes there
were a hundred men, each snatching eagerly at the slightest possibility
of employment; and when, despite this competition, I received and
responded to an invitation to preach, I never knew whether I was to be
paid for my services in cash or in compliments. If, by a happy chance,
the compensation came in cash, the amount was rarely more than five
dollars, and never more than ten. There was no help in sight from my
family, whose early opposition to my career as a minister had hotly
flamed forth again when I started East. I lived, therefore, on milk and
crackers, and for weeks at a time my hunger was never wholly satisfied.
In my home in the wilderness I had often heard the wolves prowling
around our door at night. Now, in Boston, I heard them even at high
noon.