ask, as you see the great number of children around her, whether they
are all hers: she courtesies and says, "Me no spik Inglish;" but by
pantomime you make her understand, and she laughingly says, "Yah,
yah;" and you think of Russell's song,--
"To the West, to the West, to the land of the free,
Where Mighty Missouri rolls down to the sea;
Where a man is a man, if he's willing to toil,
And the humblest may gather the fruits of the soil.
Where children are blessings, and he who has most,
Has aid for his fortune, and riches to boast;
Where the young may exult and the aged may rest--
Away, far away, to the land of the West!"
Their train is a slow one; it is side-tracked for the great fliers as
they reach a single-track road.
The very cattle-trains have precedence of them. We watch their train
as it reaches the great brown prairie; a little black shack or two is
all you can see. The very tumble-weeds outstrip their slow-moving
train; but after many weary hours they reach the end of the road, so
far as it is built that day; it will go three miles farther to-morrow.
As yet there are no freight-sheds, and they camp out on the prairie.
The cold stars come out, the coyotes' sharp bark is heard in the
distance, blended with the howl of the prairie wolf. Some of them dig
holes in the side-hill, and put their little ones in them for the
night. Tears come into the eyes of the mothers as they think of home
and relatives beyond the seas.
And there we will leave them for twelve years, and then on one of our
transcontinental palaces on wheels we will follow the immigrant trail.
Where they passed black ash-swamps and marshes and scattered homes, we
go through villages with public libraries; where they touched the
brown prairie, we view a sea of living green; where they took five
days, we go in two; where they stepped off at the end of the road, we
stop at a junction whose steel rails run on to the Pacific or the Gulf
of Mexico; where they made the shelter for their little ones in the
ground, we find a good hotel, a city alive to the finger-tips,
electric cars on the streets, an opera-house, and a high school just
about to keep its commencement. On the street we notice some people
that appear somewhat familiar, but we are not sure. When we spoke to
them twelve years ago they said with a courtesy, "Me no spik Inglish;"
but now without a courtesy they talk in broken English. The man has
lost his big beard, his clothes are well-made; the wife is no longer
like a bag of meal with a string around it. No; with a daily hint from
Paris, she has all the feathers the law allows.
They are making for the high schoolhouse, and we follow them. A chorus
of fifty voices, with a grand piano accompaniment, is in progress as
we take our seats, after which a boy stands forth and declaims his
piece. We should never know him. It is one of our tow-headed
youngsters from the wharf. The old father sits with tears of joy
running down his wrinkled face. He can hardly believe his senses. He
remembers when his grandsire was a serf under Nicholas, and it seems
too good to be true. But he hears the neighing of his percherons under
the little church-shed; and by association of ideas his fields and
waving grain, his flocks, herds, and quarter section, rise before his
mind's view, and he opens his eyes to see his favorite daughter step
on the platform dressed in white, and great June roses drooping on her
breast; and the old man's eyes sparkle as his daughter steps down
amid a round of applause as she says in the very spirit of old
Cromwell, "Curfew shall not ring to-night."
And this is real. It has been going on for a quarter of a century.
States with whole counties filled with Russians voting, and being the
banner counties to have prohibition in the State's Constitution; or,
like North Dakota, with nearly seventy per cent foreign voters,
driving the lottery from them when needing money sorely. Men and women
who could scarcely speak the English language living to see their sons
senators and governors.
All the dismal prophecies about ruin from the immigrant are disproved
as one looks over Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas to-day; and
instead of having a great German nation on this side of the Atlantic,
as one writer predicted, we have in the great agricultural States some
of our stanchest American citizens.
One of the mightiest factors in human life to-day is the language we
use. Three centuries ago there were about 6,000,000 using it; to-day
125,000,000 speak the English tongue. The Duke of Argyle was once
asked which was the best language. He said, "If I want to be polite I
use the French, if I want to be understood I take the English, if I
want to praise my Maker I take the Gaelic, my mother-tongue."
Foreigners coming here think in their own language, even though they
may be able to speak in ours; gradually they come to think in English,
but still they dream in their mother-tongue; at last they dream,
think, and speak in the language of the land, and become homogeneous
with the nation.
God's greatest gift to this New World is the foreigner. The thought
came to me while on my way to Savannah: Why did not the discoverers of
the Western Hemisphere find a higher civilization than the one they
left? Why should God have kept so large a portion of the world hidden
from the eyes of Europe for thousands of years? Had he not some grand
design that in the fulness of time he would lead Columbus, like
Abraham of old, to found a new nation?
Take your map and find those States which the stream of immigration
has passed by, and in every case you find them behind the times.
Strange how prejudice warps our vision! Jefferson said, "Would to God
the Atlantic were a sea of flame;" and Washington said, "I would we
were well rid of them, except Lafayette." Strange words for a man who
would not have been an American had his ancestors not been immigrants.
Hamilton, the great statesman, was an immigrant. Albert Gallatin the
financier, Agassiz the scientist, and thousands of illustrious names,
make a strong list. One-twelfth of the land foreigners!--but
one-fourth of the Union armies were foreigners too.
WHAT THEY BECOME.
When Linnæus was under gardener, the head gardener had a flower he
could not raise. He gave it to Linnæus, who took it to the back of a
pine, placed broken ice around it, and gave it a northern exposure. In
a few days the king with delight asked for the name of the beautiful
gem. It was the Forsaken Flower.
So there are millions of our fellow-men in Europe to-day, in a harsh
environment, sickly, poor, and ready to die; but when they are
transplanted, they find a new home, clothes, food, and, above all, the
freedom that makes our land the very paradise for the poor of all
lands. These immigrants have made the brown prairie to blossom as the
rose, the wilderness to become like the garden of the Lord. They drove
the Louisiana Lottery out of North Dakota; they voted for temperance
in South Dakota. Their hearts beat warm for their native land, but
they are true to their adopted country.
The mixture of the nationalities is the very thing that makes us
foremost: it has produced a new type; and if we but do our duty we
shall be the arbitrator of the nations. There is no way to lift Europe
so fast as to evangelize her sons who come to us. Sixteen per cent go
home to live, and these can never forget what they saw here; did we
but teach them aright, they would be an army of foreign missionaries,
fifty thousand strong, preachers of the gospel to the people in the
tongue in which they were born, and thus creating a perpetual
Pentecost.
One other great fact needs pointing out. The discovery of this land
was by the Latin races; and yet they failed to hold it, lacking the
genius for colonization for which the Anglo-Saxon is pre-eminent.
During the last fifty years, over 13,000,000 immigrants have come to
this land. Great Britain sent nearly 6,000,000; Germany, 4,500,000;
Norway and Sweden, 939,603; Denmark, 144,858; the Netherlands, 99,522;
Belgium, 42,102. Here we have over 11,000,000 Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic,
and Scandinavian, of the 13,000,000, and almost half of them speaking
English, while Italy, Russia, Poland, France, Austria, Switzerland,
Hungary, Spain, Portugal, and all other nations sent but 1,708,897 out
of the 13,296,157. And we must note also that nearly all of the Latin
races came within the last few years; so that we were a nation
50,000,000 strong before many of them came, and eighty per cent of all
our people speak English.
No nation ever drove out its people without loss, as witness Spain and
France with their Protestants and Huguenots. England took them, and
they helped to make her great. Often when a nation has actually been
conquered in war, she in turn conquers her victors and is made better.
Germany conquered Rome; but Roman laws and Roman government conquered
the invaders, and made Germany the mother of modern civilization.
Norsemen, Danes, and Saxons invaded Britain, and drenched her fields
in blood. The Normans brought their beef, their mutton, and their
pork, but the English kept their oxen, sheep, and swine; and
eventually from the Norman, Dane, and others came the Anglo-Saxon
race. England has four times as much inventive genius as the rest of
Europe, but America has ten times as much as England; and why? Because
added to the English colony is all Europe; and in our own people we
have the practical Englishman, the thoughtful German, the metaphysical
Scot, the quick-witted Irishman, the sprightly Gaul, the musical and
artistic Italian, the hardy Swiss, the frugal and clear-headed Swede
and Norwegian; and all united make the type which the world will yet
come to, the manhood which will recognize the inherent nobility of the
race, its brotherhood, and the great God, Father.
[Illustration: A TYPICAL SOD HOUSE.
_Page 61._]
V.
THE ODDITIES OF THE FRONTIER.
As the waves of the sea cast up all sorts of things, so the waves of
humanity that flood the frontiers cast up all sorts and conditions of
men. To go into a sod house and find a theological library belonging
to the early part of the century, or to hear coming up through the
ground a composition by Beethoven played on a piano, is a startling
experience; so are some of the questions and assertions that one hears
in a frontier Sunday-school.
I remember one old man who was in class when we were studying that
part of the Acts of the Apostles where the disciples said, "It is not
reason that we should leave the word of God and serve tables;" the old
fellow said, "I have an idee that them tables was the two tables of
stone that Moses brought down from the Mount." This was a stunner. I
thought afterwards that the old man had an idea that they were to
leave the law and stick to the gospel; but still it did not seem right
to pick out men to serve the tables if that was what he meant.
Another would be satisfied with nothing but the literal meaning of
everything he read. So when I explained to the class the modern idea
of the Red Sea being driven by the wind so as to leave a road for
light-laden people to walk over, the old man was up in arms at once,
"Why," said he, "it says a wall;" and no doubt the pictures which he
had seen in his youth, of the children of Israel walking with
bottle-green waters straight as two walls on either side, and the
reading of a celebrated preacher's sermon, where it spoke of the fish
coming up to peep at the little children, as if they would like a
nibble, confirmed the old man in his views.
In vain I told him that a wind that would hold up such a vast mass of
water would blow the Israelites out of their clothes; still he stuck
to his position until I asked him whether, when Nabal's men told him
that David's men had been a wall unto them day and night, he thought
that David had plastered them together?
He said, "No; it meant a defence," and apparently gave in, but
muttered, "It says a wall, anyway."
Another man told me that if a man cut himself in the woods, there was
a verse in the Bible so that if he turned to it and put his finger
upon it, the blood would at once stop running; and he wanted to know
whether I knew where to find it. I told him I was very sorry that I
did not know.
On the other hand, you may find a man with a Greek Testament, and well
up in Greek, making his comments from the original. Here a Barclay &
Perkins brewer from London, who has plunged into the woods to get rid
of drink, and succeeded. Here a family, one of whom was Dr. Norman
McLeod's nurse, and a playmate of the family. Another informs you he
preached twenty-five years, "till his voice give out;" and here a
Hard-shell Baptist, who "don't believe in Sunday-schools nohow."
The minute-man at the front needs to be ready for all emergencies, for
he meets all kinds of original characters. One of the most successful
men I ever heard of was the famous Father Paxton described by the Rev.
E. P. Powell in the _Christian Register_ in a very bright article from
which I quote:--
When "blue," I always went down to the Depository, and
begged him for a few stories. He rode a splendid horse, that
was in full sympathy with his master, and bore the
significant name, Robert Raikes. There were few houses
except those built of logs, and these were not prejudiced
against good ventilation. He laughed long and loud at his
experience in one of these, which he reached one night in a
furious storm. He was welcomed to the best, which was a
single rude bed, while the family slept on the floor, behind
a sheet hung up for that special occasion. Paxton was so
thoroughly tired that he slept sound as soon as he touched
the bed; but he half waked in the morning with the barking
of a dog. The master of the house was shaking him, and
halloing, "I say, stranger! pull in your feet or Bowser 'll
bite 'em!" Stretching out in the night, he had run his feet
through the side of the house, between the logs; and the dog
outside had gone for them. The time he took in pulling in
was so trifling as to be hardly worth the mention.
Those who know little of frontier life can have no idea of
the difficulties to be met by a man with Paxton's mission.
There was one district, not far from Cairo, that was ruled
by a pious old fellow who swore that no Sunday-school should
be set up "in that kidntry." Some one cautioned "the
missioner" to keep away from M----, who would surely be as
good as his word and thrash him. M---- was a Hard-shell
Baptist, and owned the church, which was built also of logs.
He lived in the only whitewashed log house of the region.
Instead of avoiding him, Father Paxton rode up one day, and
jumping off Robert Raikes, hitched him to the rail that
always was to be found before a Southern house. Old M----
sat straddle of a log in front of his door eating peaches
from a basket. Paxton straddled the log on the other side of
the basket, and helped himself. This was Southern style. You
were welcome to help yourself so long as there was anything
to eat. The conversation that started up was rather wary,
for M---- suspected who his visitor was. Pretty soon Paxton
noticed some hogs in a lot near them. "Mighty fine lot of
hogs, stranger!"
"And you mought say well they be a mighty fine lot of hogs."
"How many mought there be, stranger?"
"There mought be sixty-two hogs in that there lot, and they
can't be beat."
Just then a little boy went up and grabbed a peach.
"Mought that be your young un, stranger?" asked Paxton.
"As nigh as one can say, that mought be mine."
"And a fine chap he be, surely."
"A purty fine one, I reckon myself."
"How many young ones mought you have, my friend?"
"Well, stranger, that's where you have me. Sally, I say,
come to the door there! You count them childer while I name
'em--no, you name 'em, and I'll count."
So they counted out seventeen children. Paxton had his cue
now, and was ready.
"Stranger, I say," he said, "this seems to me a curious kind
of a kidntry."
"Why so, stranger?"
"Because, when I axed ye how many hogs ye had, ye could tell
me plum off; but when I axed ye how many children ye had, ye
had to count right smart before ye could tell. Seems to me
ye pay a lettle more attention to your hogs than ye do to
your childer."
"Stranger," shouted M----, "ye mought sure be the missioner.
You've got me, sure! You shall have the church in the
holler next Sunday, and me and my wife and my seventeen
shall all be there."
True to his word, he helped Paxton to establish a school.
When I was in St. Louis, there was a Sunday-school
convention there. A fine-looking young man came up to Father
Paxton, who was then in charge of the Sunday-school
Depository, and said,--
"Don't ye know me, Father Paxton?"
"No," said Paxton; "I reckon I don't recall ye."
"Well, I am from ----; and I am one of the seventeen
children of M----. And I am a delegate here, representing
over one hundred Sunday-schools sprung from that one."
VI.
LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.
Perhaps no man gets such a vivid idea of the dark and bright sides of
frontier life as the general missionary. One week among the rich,
entertained sumptuously, and housed with all the luxuries of hot air
and water and the best of cooking; and then, in less than twelve
hours, he may find himself in a lumber-wagon, called a stagecoach,
bumping along over the wretched roads of a new country, and lodged at
night in a log house with the wind whistling through the chinks where
the mud has fallen out, to sit down with a family who do not taste
fresh meat for weeks together, who are twelve miles from a doctor and
as many from the post-office.
Nowhere in the world can a man so soon exchange the refinements of
civilized life for one of hardship and toil as in a new country. Our
minute-man must share with the settler all his toils, and yet often
forego the settler's hope. The life among frontiersmen is apt to unfit
a man for other work. His scanty salary will not allow many new books,
and often his papers are out of date. The finding of a home is one of
the worst of hardships. Let us start with the missionary to the front;
our way lies through a rich valley. The moon is at her full, and we
pass fine farms. The scent of the hay floats in at the car windows;
fine orchards surround the houses, while great flocks of sheep are
seen feeding, and herds resting, comfortably chewing the cud.
But morning comes, and we must change cars. We are in a city of 80,000
people, with 498 factories with 15,000 employees, where a few years
ago a few log houses only were in sight. As we change cars we change
company too. We left the train at a Union Station, with its green
lawns and trim garden, to find a station with old oil-barrels around
it, the mud all over everything, the train filled with lumbermen, with
their red mackinaw shirts and great boots spiked on the bottoms, and a
comforter tied around the waist.
A few women are on the train, often none at all. Our new road is
poorly ballasted, and the train bounces along like a great bumble-bee.
The men are all provided with pocket-pistols that are often more
deadly than a revolver. At the first station--a little mouse-colored
affair, sometimes without a ticket-agent--we notice the change. The
stumps are thick in the fields; many of the houses have the
building-paper fluttering in the wind; the streets are of sawdust. You
can see the flags growing up from the swamp beneath. The saloons are
numerous; and as the train is a mixed one in more senses than one,
abundant time is given while shunting the freight-cars for the men to
reload their pocket-pistols and get gloriously drunk.
"Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious."
And so on we go again for forty miles, when all leave the train but
one solitary man, who lies prostrate in the car, too big for our
little conductor to lift, and so he goes to the terminus with us. It
is getting late, and the last ten miles are through a wilderness of
dead pines, with here and there a winding line of timothy and clover
that has sprung up from seeds dropped by the supply teams. But
presently we see a pretty stream with bosky glades, and visions of
speckled trout come up; then an immense mill, and a village of white
houses with green Venetian blinds, and a pert little church. We had
expected some good deacon to meet us and take us home to dinner; but,
alas! no deacon is waiting, or dinner either for some time. For out of
eight hundred people only five church-members can be found, four of
them women.
It well nigh daunts the minute-man's courage as he sees the open
saloons, the big, rough men, the great bull-terriers on the steps of
the houses. The awful swearing and vile language appal him, and the
thought of bringing his little ones to such a place almost breaks his
spirits; but here he has come to stay and work. The hotel is his home
until he can find a house for his family. There is but one place to
rent in the town, and that is in a fearful condition. It is afterwards
whitewashed and used as a chicken-coop. But at length a family moves
away, and the house is secured just in time; for the new schoolmaster
is after it, and meets the man on the way with a long face.
"You got the house?"
"Yes."
"What can I do? my goods are on the way!"
"Oh, they will build one for you, but not for a preacher."
"No, they won't. Could I get my things in for eight or ten days?"
"Oh, yes." The minister is so glad to get the place that he feels
generous. But the good man stays eleven months; and he has besides
his wife and child, a mother-in-law, a grandmother-in-law, a niece, a
_protégée_, and a young man, a nephew, who has come to get an
education and do the chores. They are all very nice people, but it
leaves the minute-man and his wife and four children with but three
rooms. The beds must stand so that the children have to climb over the
head-boards to get at them. The family sit by the big stove at their
meals, and can look out on the glowing sand and see the swifts darting
about; while in the winter the study is sitting-room and playground
too.
But this is luxury. Often the minute-man must be content with one
room, for which the rent charged may be extortionate. Even then he
must keep his water in a barrel out in the hall. In cold weather
perhaps it must be chopped before getting it into the kettle.
I knew of one man who lived in a log house. It had been lathed and
plastered on the inside, and weather-boarded on the outside, so that
it was very warm, and so thick that you could not hear the storms
outside, which raged at times for days together.
One day late in March a fearful snowstorm arose, and for three days
and nights the snow came thick and fast. Luckily it thawed fast too.
On the fourth day there was need for the minute-man to go for the
doctor, who lived some miles away. On the road he engaged a woman to
go to his house, where her services were in demand. After he had
summoned the doctor the good man took his time, and reached home in
the afternoon. He was greeted by a duet from two young strangers from
a far land.
Night closed in fast; the house was so thick that no one suspected
another storm; but on going out to milk the cow, it was storming
again, and the man saw he had need to be careful or he would not find
his way back from the barn, though it was only a few yards away.
When he reached the house, the good lady visitor, who had insisted
that she could not stay later than evening, gave up all hope of
getting home that night. She stayed a fortnight! For this time the
storm raged without thawing, and for three nights and days the snow
piled up over the windows, and almost covered the little pines, in
drifts fifteen feet deep. Not a horse came by for two weeks.
Once another man started in a storm on a similar errand; but in spite
of his love, courage, and despair, he was overwhelmed, and sinking in
agony in the drift, he never moved again. When the storm was over, the
sun came out; and what a mockery it seemed! The squirrels ran nimbly
up the trees, the blue jays called merrily; but the settlers looked
over the white expanse, and missed the gray smoke that usually rose
from the little log shanty.
The men gathered to break the roads; the ox-team and snow-plough were
brought out, and the dogs were wild with delight as they ploughed up
the snow with their snouts, and barked for very joy; but the men were
sorrowful, and worked as for life and death. Half way to the house the
husband was found motionless as a statue, his blue eyes gazing up into
the sky. The men redoubled their efforts, and gained the house. The
stoutest heart quailed. A poor cat was mewing piteously in the window.
And when at last the oldest man went in, he found mother and new-born
child frozen to death.
VII.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN THE SOUTH.