The Minute Man of the Frontier Part 2

There died in Beloit, recently, the Rev. Jeremiah Porter, a man who had been a home missionary. His field was at Fort Brady before Chicago had its name. His church was largely composed of soldiers; and when the men were ordered to Fort Dearborn, he went with them, and organized what is now known as the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. This minute-man lived to see Chicago one million two hundred thousand strong.

We should have lost the whole Pacific slope but for our minute-man, the glorious and heroic Whitman, who not only carried his wagon over the Rockies, but came back through stern winter and past hostile savages, and by hard reasoning with Webster and others secured that vast possession for us. As a nation we owe a debt we can never repay to the soldiers of the cross at the front, who have endured (and endure to-day) hards.h.i.+ps of every kind. They are cut off from the society which they love; often they live in dugouts, sometimes in rooms over a saloon; going weeks without fresh meat, sometimes suffering from hunger, and for a long time without a cent in the house. Yet who ever heard them complain? Their great grief is that fields lie near to them white for the harvest, while, with hands already full, they can only pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth more laborers.

Often there is but one man preaching in a county which is larger than Ma.s.sachusetts. He is cut off from libraries, ministers' meetings, and to a large extent from the sympathies of more fortunate brethren, and is often unable to send his children to college. These men still stand their ground until they die, ofttimes unknown, but leaving foundations for others to build on.

One place visited by a general missionary was so full of reckless men that the station-agent always carried a revolver from his house to the railway station. A vile variety show, carried on by abandoned women, was kept open day and night. Sunday was the noisiest day of all. Yet in this place a church was formed; and many men and women, having found a leader, were ready to take a stand for the right.

I am not writing of the past; for all the conditions that I have spoken of exist in hundreds, yes, thousands, of places all over the land. One need not go to the far West to find them; they exist in every State of the Union, only varying in their types of sin.

Visiting a home missionary in a mining region within two hours' ride of the capital, in a State not four hundred miles from the Atlantic, I found the man in one of the most desolate towns I ever saw. The most prosperous families were earning on an average five dollars a week, store pay. All were in debt. When the missionary announced his intention of going there, he was warned that it was not safe; but that did not alter his plans.

The first service was held in a schoolhouse, the door panels of which were out and not a pane of gla.s.s unbroken. A roaring torrent had to be pa.s.sed on an unsteady plank bridge, over which the women and children crawled on hands and knees. It was dark when they came. The preacher could see the gleam of the men's eyes from their grimy faces as the lanterns flickered in the draughts. He began to preach. Soon white streaks were on the men's cheeks, as tears from eyes unused to weeping rolled down those black faces. At the close a church was organized, a reading-room was added, and many a boy was saved from the saloon by it. Yet, strange to say, although the owners (church members too) had cleared a million out of those mines, the money to build the needed church and parsonage had to be sent from the extreme East.

Hundreds of miles eastward I have found men living, sixty and seventy in number, in a long hut, their food cooked in a great pot, out of which they dipped their meals with a tin dipper. No less than seventy-five thousand Slovaks live in this one State, and their only spiritual counsel comes from a few Bible-readers. Ought we not then, as Christians, to help those already there, and give of our plenty to send the men needed to carry the light to thousands of places that as yet sit in the darkness and the shadow?

HOW THE HOME MISSIONARY BEGINS WORK IN THE NEW COMMUNITY.

_First_, pastoral visiting is absolutely necessary to success. The feelings of newcomers are tender after breaking the home ties and getting to the new home, and a visit from the pastor is sure to bring satisfactory results. Sickness and death offer him opportunities for doing much good, especially among the poor, and they are always the most numerous.

Some very pathetic cases come under every missionary's observation.

Once a man called at the parsonage and asked for the elder, saying that a man had been killed some miles away in the woods, and the family wanted the missionary to preach the funeral sermon. The next morning a ragged boy came to pilot the minister. The way led through virgin forests and black-ash swamps. A light snow covered the ground and made travelling difficult, as much of the way was blocked by fallen trees. After two hours' walking the house was reached; and here was the widow with her large family, most of them in borrowed clothes, the supervisor, a few rough men, and a county coffin.

The minister hardly knew what to say; but remembering that that morning a large box had been sent containing a number of useful articles, he made G.o.d's providence his theme. A few days after, the box was taken to the widow's home. When they reached the shanty they found two little bunks inside. Her only stove was an oven taken from an old-fas.h.i.+oned cook-stove. The oven stood on a dry-goods box.

The missionary said, "Why, my poor woman, you will freeze with this wretched fire."

"No," she said; "it ain't much for cooking and was.h.i.+ng, but it's a _good_ little heater."

A few white beans and small potatoes were all her store, with winter coming on apace. When she saw the good things for eating and wearing that had been brought to her, she sobbed out her thanks.

In the busy life of a missionary the event was soon forgotten, until one day a woman said, "Elder, do you recollect that 'ar Mrs. Sisco?"

"Yes."

"She is down with a fever, and so are her children."

At this news the minister started with the doctor to see her. As they neared the place he noticed some red streaks gleaming in the woods, and asked what they were.

"Oh," said the doctor, "that is from the widow's house. She had to move into a stable of the deserted lumber camp."

The c.h.i.n.ks had fallen out from the logs, and hence the gleam of fire.

The house was a study in shadows--the floor sticky with mud brought in with the snow; the _debris_ of a dozen meals on the table; a lamp, without chimney or bottom, stuck into an old tomato-can, gave its flickering light, and revealed the poor woman, with nothing to s.h.i.+eld her from the storm but a few paper flour-sacks tacked back of the bed.

Two or three chairs, the children in the other bed, the baby in a little soapbox on rockers, were all the wretched hovel contained.

Medicine was left her, and the minister's watch for her to time it. He exchanged his watch for a clock the next day. By great persuasion the proper authorities were made to put her in the poorhouse, and she was lost to sight; but there was a bright ending in her case.

About a year after, a rosy-faced woman called at the parsonage. The pastor said, "Come in and have some dinner."

"I got some one waiting," she said.

"Why, who is that?"

"My new man."

"What, you married again?"

"Yes; and we are just going after the rest of the traps up at the shanty, and I called to see whether you would give me the little clock for a keepsake?"

"Oh, yes."

Away she went as happy as a lark. Less than two years from the time she was left a widow, a rich old uncle found in her his long-lost niece, and the woman became heiress to thousands of dollars.

Sometimes dreadful scenes are witnessed at funerals where strong drink has suddenly finished the career of father or mother. At the funeral of a little child smothered by a drunken father, the mother was too sick to be up at the funeral, the father too drunk to realize what was taking place, and twice the service was stopped by drunken men. At another funeral a dog-fight began under the coffin. The missionary kicked the dogs out, and resumed as well as he could.

At another wretched home the woman was found dying, the husband drunk, no food, mercury ten degrees below zero, and the little children nearly peris.h.i.+ng with cold. The drunken man pulled the bed from under his dying wife while he went to sleep. His awakening was terrible, and the house crowded at the funeral with morbid hearers.

In one town visited, a county town at that, the roughs had buried a man alive, leaving his head above ground, and then preached a mock funeral sermon, remarking as they left him, "How natural he looks!"

As the nearest minister is miles away, the missionary has to travel many miles in all weathers to the dying and dead. Visiting the sick, and sitting up with those with dangerous diseases, soon cause the worst of men not only to respect but to love the missionary; and no man has the moulding of a community so much in his hands as the courageous and faithful servant of Christ. The first missionary on the field leaves his stamp indelibly fixed on the new village. Towns left without the gospel for years are the hardest of all places in which to get a footing. Some towns have been without service of any kind for years, and some of the young men and women have never seen a minister.

There are towns.h.i.+ps to-day, even in New York State, without a church; and, strange as it may seem, there are more churchless communities in Illinois than in any other State in the Union. Until two years ago Black Rock, with a population of five thousand, had no church or Sunday-school. Meanwhile such is the condition of the Home Missionary Society's treasury that they often cannot take the students who offer themselves, and the churchless places increase.

All kinds of people crowd to the front,--those who are stranded, those who are trying to hide from justice, men speculating. Gambling dens are open day and night, Sundays of course included, the men running them being relieved as regularly as guards in the army.

In purely agricultural districts a different type is met with. Many are so poor that the men have to go to the lumber woods part of the year. The women thus left often become despondent, and a very large per cent in the insane asylum comes from this cla.s.s.

One family lived so far from town that when the husband died they were obliged to make his coffin, and utilized two flour-barrels for the purpose.

So amid all sorts and conditions of men, and under a variety of circ.u.mstances, the minute-man lives, works, and dies, too often forgotten and unsung, but remembered in the Book; and when G.o.d shall make up his jewels, some of the brightest gems will be found among the pioneers who carried the ark into the wilderness in advance of the roads, breaking through the forest guided by the surveyor's blaze on the trees.

There are hundreds of people who pierce into the heart of the country by going up the rivers before a path has been made. In one home found there, the minute-man had the bed in a big room down-stairs, while the man, with his wife and nine children, went up steps like a stable-ladder, and slept on "shakedowns," on a floor supported with four rafters which threatened to come down. But the minute-man, too tired to care, slept the sleep of the just. Often not so fortunate as then, he finds a large family and but one room. Once he missed his way, and had to crawl into two empty barrels with the ends knocked out. Drawing them as close together as he could, to prevent draughts, he had a short sleep, and awoke at four A.M. to find that a house and bed were but twenty rods farther.

In a new village, for the first visit all kinds of plans are made to draw the people out. Here is one: The minute-man calls at the school, and asks leave to draw on the blackboard. Teacher and scholars are delighted. After entertaining them for a while, he says, "Children, tell your parents that the man who chalk-talked to you will preach here at eight o'clock." And the youngsters, expecting another such good time as they have just enjoyed, come out in force, bringing both parents with them. The village is but two years old. At first the people had the drinking-water brought five miles in barrels on the railroad, and for was.h.i.+ng melted the snow. Then they took maple sap, and at last birch sap; but, "Law," said a woman, "it was dreadful ironin'!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TYPICAL LOG HOUSE.

_Page 46._]

Here was a genuine pioneer: his house of logs, hinges wood, latch ditto, locks none; a black bear, three squirrels, a turtle-dove, two dogs, and a c.o.o.n made up his earthly possessions. He was tired of the place.

"Laws, Elder! when I fust come ye could kill a deer close by, and ketch a string of trout off the doorsteps; but everything's sp'iled.

Men beginning to wear b'iled s.h.i.+rts, and I can't stand it. I shall clear as soon as I can git out. Don't want to buy that b'ar, do ye?"

In this little town a grand minute-man laid down his life. He was so anxious to get the church paid for, that he would not buy an overcoat. Through the hard winter he often fought a temperature forty degrees below zero; but at last a severe cold ended in his death. His good wife sold her wedding-gown to buy an overcoat, but all too late; and a bride of a twelvemonth went out a widow with an orphan in her arms.

Yet the children of G.o.d are said to add to their already large store four hundred million dollars yearly, and some think of building a ten-million-dollar temple to honor G.o.d--while temples of the Holy Ghost are too often left to fall, through utter neglect, because we withhold the little that would save them. We shall never conquer the heathen world for Christ until we have learned the way to save America. Save America, and we can save the world.