"MEET ME BY MOONLIGHT."
There were two steamers on Lake Erie that were twins. They were, in
their time, and not so long ago, models of steamboat architecture;
elegant as palaces, and in every respect as nearly alike as builders
and artists could make them. Their names were _Northern Indiana_
and _Southern Michigan_. The writer and "his next best friend"
took passage upon one of them bound East. It was a mid-summer night.
The moon at the full, and her ladyship did what all poets, since moons
and poets were, have said she did--made day, "only a little paler" and
lovelier, and what not. The steamer was running her sister's trip, that
sister having met with an accident. The damage being repaired, it was
proposed that, when the twins met on this voyage, the passengers should
be transferred from each to the other, the sisters wheel about and
retrace the wake they had just made, and so the advertised trips for
the season would come all true again.
The sea was as nearly a sea of glass as it ever is. The moon rode high
in the heavens. It was just midnight when we saw the sister coming,
decked with white and colored lights alow and aloft, like a queen of
"the barbaric East" in all her jewelry. The lights from two stories of
windows streamed out upon the air. The music of the band was heard. It
looked like a city adrift, and beautiful and airy as a dream. Our deck
was thronged with passengers, who saw themselves in the approaching
apparition as _others_ saw them. They were looking upon the steamer's
counterpart and double.
The two neared each other, came alongside in the middle of the sea, the
planks were put out fore and aft, and the transfer of passengers and
baggage began. There were two steady currents of human life meeting and
passing on the gangway. Age, youth, beauty, fashion, wealth, poverty.
Bright lamps shone all around, and the moon over all. People looked in
each other's eyes, glanced at each other's faces, as they met for an
instant, sometimes gravely, sometimes with a smile, that nevermore in
all this world would meet again. Now and then a pleasant word was
uttered between strangers, but generally the two processions were
silent, almost thoughtful. It was a scene at once beautiful and
impressive. The occupants of State Room B in the _Northern Indiana_
found themselves occupants of B again in the _Southern Michigan_. The
passengers in the upper cabin of the one found all unchanged in the
upper cabin of the other. "The places that once knew them should know
them no more forever." The transfer was effected with less confusion
than in a congregation leaving a church. The bells rang a parting
chime. The steamers wheeled, each upon her own route. We had died out
of one world into another. It was a picture of life and of death on the
moonlit sea. Such as it was, can I ever forget it?
The memory of the first steamer you ever saw comes dimly out, like a
smoky old picture. Let us say it was the steamer _Nile_, with a
bronze-faced old sea-dog for captain; the steamer _Nile_, with two
gold crocodiles on the bow for a figure-head; the steamer _Nile_
at her dock in Buffalo, and "up" for the City of the Straits. The rush
of crowds and steam, the farm-wagons laden with household gods and
goods that were backed over the broad gangway; the shy country horses
that were pulled and pushed aboard; the Mrs. John Rogerses, "carrying
one for every ten" by the old rule of addition; the score of sheep,
frightened out of their little wits, huddled together forward; the
sailors coiling lines and chains; the close, dim cabins lined with
berths; "the walking-beam" working slowly up and down; the faint, hot
smell of steam and oil; the wheezy way with the machinery; the little
leaks of steam and water here and there that snuffed and hissed, above
and below, as if everything about the craft were alive and generally
uneasy.
Then came the clang of the bell and the voice of the first mate, "All
ashore that's going!" The captain in position on the hurricane deck; a
tinkle of bells in the engine-room; the rasp of the lines the sailors
pull in with a will; a general jail delivery of steam; leviathan moves;
she is off; the flags unroll to the wind; the band on deck strikes up
"Charley over the Water;" the great crowd of men and women and horses
and drays upon the deck gets the size of a swarm of bees on an
apple-tree limb; then a mere handful of hornets; then out of sight.
Every time the wheels come about, the boat shakes as Cæsar shook with
that Spanish fever of his, when he called Titinius; up stairs and down
stairs an incessant rumbling and tumbling that make things jingle. You
are fairly at sea; the air is fresh and clear, as if just made. The
_Nile_ was a grand affair in her day, but as Egyptian as the New
York Tombs. She laid her bones on the Michigan beach one terrible
night; and her old commander, ill ashore, lived just long enough to
hear of it.
Who were aboard? Elder Alfred Bennett, for one--not Reverend, nor yet
New Jersey Bishop--but _Elder_ Bennett, with a head like Humboldt's,
and holding more of celestial geography than the great Baron knew of
earthly--a lion of the tribe of Judah. Of all titles for Baptist
clergymen, "minister" seems to me the simplest and most suggestive. It
associates them with "the ministering spirits" of whom we read, and
whom we believe in. Take a young fellow from Hamilton or Rochester, who
never tarried six weeks at Jericho, and call him Elder, as his country
brethren and sisters always will, and there is an amusing incongruity
about it, as if the old proverb, "the child is father of the man," had
come literally true, and the downy Elder's father were a little boy
somewhere, about big enough to figure in the Millennial group of the
leopard and the lamb.
Father Bennett was bound for Michigan. He would see that accomplished
Christian gentleman, Dr. Comstock. He would see that noble preacher and
large-hearted man, Rev. John I. Fulton; he would see Elder Powell, one
of the Thirteen who gave a dollar apiece, and so founded Madison
University. He would return to Utica, and meet that admirable Editor,
Dr. A. M. Beebee, of the New York "_Baptist Register_;" in youth,
office-mate with Washington Irving, the man of Sunnyside; in manhood,
the thorough, consistent, able Christian editor. He would consult with
Dr. Nathaniel Kendrick, that giant in the churches; with Professor
Hascall, who took Madison University into an upper chamber, as the
disciples gathered, and kept it till its name was strong enough to go
abroad, and was worked for and prayed for all at once, as the "Ham.
Lit. and Theo. Sem." Elders Card and Cook would come down to meet him
from the North Woods; Elders Galusha and Moore and Hartshorn from the
West. They would all attend some Association together, and Elder John
Peck, as clean-hearted as an angel, always had a word to say. He was
one of the great noble provocatives to good works, and had he never
achieved anything himself but that, the "well done, good and faithful
servant!" would have been the verdict. But Elder Peck never _could_
say "Association." You can shut your eyes and hear him: "the brethren
of the _As-so-sa-shun_ will please to give their attention." All
these--Elder Powell, perhaps, excepted--have gone away to the Great
Convention of the church triumphant.
Are people's memories getting shorter? Does anybody remember how Dr.
Kendrick used to begin one of his old heart-of-oak sermons? How he
towered up behind the low pulpit, like a Lombardy poplar behind a
fence? How that two-story head of his reminded you of the portrait
of Oberlin! The first words came slowly and ponderously. Those
silver-rimmed spectacles shone around his eyes. He laid out his work by
the day, and not by the job. He told you of "the damning demerit of
sin." He climbed rugged Sinai like a stout mountaineer. By-and-by away
went the spectacles. He warmed and softened to the work. His words came
fast. He descended Sinai and went away to Gethsemane. And when he was
through, and occasionally it took him a long time, you felt that you
had heard a man of remarkable power, who had yet a store of it in
reserve--a man who could handle the doctrinal sledge with one hand, and
never strain a muscle.
Dr. Kendrick, like many of that class of old divines--as witness Dr.
Backus, of Hamilton College--had a world of ready wit, that flashed out
unexpectedly from the soberest of mouths. One day of the dead days, the
Doctor was conducting a class in Moral Philosophy, and he asked a
student if a man could tell a lie to a brute. The student _thought_
not, and so put his foot in it and _said_ "not." "Once," said the
Doctor, in his deliberate way, "I visited a ministering brother in the
western part of this State. In the morning he took a halter, and went
into the pasture to catch his horse. He hollowed an empty hand and
extended it. The horse pricked up his ears at the prospect, came up,
thrust his nose into the barren hand and was captured. Some time after,
I was called to sit in council in that same region. The minister
alluded to stood charged with having made misrepresentations to his
fellow-men. I am sorry to say the allegations were proved true. _I_ had
seen him practice deception upon a quadruped. _They_ had heard him tell
a falsehood to a biped. Now," added the Doctor, "were the two acts
alike, or did the hind legs of the quadruped kick out the brains of the
intent?" The class laughed, but the student didn't say!