The Minute Man of the Frontier Part 9

"Oh, no! you are mistaken; he is a very pious young man--opens school with prayer, and attends all our meetings; and I know it is not put on to please the trustees, for they are not that kind of men." But it _was_ the same man, minus the devil, "for behold he prayeth."

At another place I preached in a little log schoolhouse. Close to my side sat a man who would have made a character for d.i.c.kens. He had large, black, earnest eyes, face very pale, was deformed, and, with a little tin ear-trumpet at his ear, he listened intently. I was invited by his mother to dine with them. I found, living in a little house roofed with bark, the mother and two sons. One of the boys was superintendent of the Sunday-school. I was surprised at the first question put by my man with the ear-trumpet,--

"Elder, what do you think of that sermon of ----'s in Chicago? I have always been bothered with doubts, and that unsettled me worse than ever."

Who would have thought to hear, away up in the woods, in such a house, from such a man, such a question? I tried to take him away from ---- to Christ. After dinner he opened a door and said, "Look here."

There, in a little workshop, was a diminutive steam-engine, of nearly one-horse power, made entirely by himself; the spindles, shafts, steam-box, and everything finished beautifully. The shafts and rods were made with much pains from large three-cornered files. He was turning cant-hook and peevy handles for a living, and to pay off the debt on their little farm. The brother had a desk and cabinet of his own make, which opened and shut automatically. I was delighted. They were hungry for books and preaching. Are not such people worth saving?

These conditions existed over twelve years ago, but they are as true to-day in all parts of the newer frontiers. Meanwhile some of the above churches have become self-supporting, and are supporting a minister in foreign lands.

XVI.

BLACK CLOUDS WITH SILVER LININGS.

In a former chapter I was just starting for the copper regions. Come with me, we will board the train bound for Marquette.

For some miles our way ran through thick cedar forests; then we reached a hard-wood region where we found a small village and a number of charcoal kilns; a few miles farther on, another of like character.

Then, with the exception of a way station or siding, we saw no more habitations of men until we reached the Vulcan iron furnace of Newberry, fifty-five miles from Point St. Ignace. The place had about 800 population, mostly employed by the company.

Twenty-five miles farther on we reached Seney, where we stayed for dinner. This is the headquarters for sixteen lumber camps, with hundreds of men working in the woods or on the rivers, year in and year out. They never hear the gospel except as some pioneer home missionary pays an occasional visit. There are some 40,000 men so employed in Northern Michigan.

After another seventy-five miles we glided into picturesque Marquette, overlooking its lovely Bay, a thriving city of some 7,000 population, the centre of the iron mining region. Here we had to wait until the next noon before we could go on.

Our road now led through the very heart of the iron country.

Everything glittered with iron dust, and thousands of cars on many tracks showed the proportions this business had attained. We have been mounting ever since leaving Marquette, and can by looking out of the rear window see that great "unsalted sea," Lake Superior.

We soon reached Ishpeming, with its 8,000 inhabitants. A little farther on we pa.s.sed Negaunee, claiming over 5,000 people, where Methodism thrives by reason of the Cornish miners. After pa.s.sing Michigamme we saw but few houses.

Above Marquette the scenery changes; there are rocks, whole mountains of rocks as large as a town, with a few dead pines on their scraggy sides; we pa.s.s bright brown brooks in which sport the grayling and the speckled trout. Sometimes a herd of deer stand gazing with astonishment at the rushing monster coming towards them; then with a stamp and a snort they plunge headlong into the deep forest. Away we go past L'Anse, along Kewenaw Bay, and at last glide between two mighty hills the sides of which glow and sparkle with great furnace fires and innumerable lamps shining from cottage windows, while between lies Portage Lake, like a thread of gold in the rays of the setting sun; or, as it palpitates with the motion of some giant steamboat, its coppery waters gleam with all the colors of the rainbow.

Just across this narrow lake a royal welcome awaited us from the pastor of the First Congregational Church of Hanc.o.c.k. This fine church is set upon a hill that cannot be hid. The audience fills the room, and pays the closest attention to the speaker. They had the best Sunday-school I ever saw. Everything moved like clockwork; every one worked with vim. In addition to the papers that each child received, seventy-five copies of the _Sunday School Times_ were distributed to the teachers and adult scholars. The collection each Sunday averaged over three cents a member for the whole school, to say nothing of Christmas gifts to needy congregations, and memorial windows telling of the good works in far-off fields among the mission churches. It was my privilege to conduct a few gospel meetings which were blessed to the conversion of some score or more of souls who were added to the church.

Thirteen miles farther north, and we were in the very heart of the Lake Superior region. It had been up-hill all the way. We went on the Mineral Range narrow gauge railway; but at broad-gauge price, five cents a mile, and no half-fare permits; so we were thankful to learn the little thing was only thirteen miles long.

Here we are in Calumet. At the first glance you think you are in a large city; tall chimney stacks loom up, railways crossing and recrossing, elevated railways for carrying ore to the rock-houses, where they crush rock enough to load ten trains of nearly forty cars per day, for the stamping-works of the Calumet and Hecla Company. You cannot help noticing the ma.s.sive buildings on every hand, in one of which stands the finest engine in the country--4,700 horse-power--that is to do the whole work of the mines. Everything about these great shops works easily and smoothly.

At the mine's mouth we look down and see the flashing of the lights in the miners' hats as they come up, twelve feet at a stride, from 3,000 feet below; hear the singing as it rolls up from the hardy Cornish men like a song of jubilee. Come to the public school and listen to the patter of the little feet as nearly 1,600 children pour out of their great schoolhouse, and you will be glad to know there are good churches here for training the little ones. Calumet, Red Jacket, and its suburbs cannot have much less than 10000 inhabitants.

But here comes the minister of the Congregational church, with a hearty Scotch welcome on his lips as he hurries us into the snug parsonage, and makes us forget we ever slept in a ba.s.swood house part.i.tioned with sheets. Here, too, we stayed and held a series of meetings. This is one of the few frontier churches that sprung, Minerva-like, full armed for the work. Never receiving, but giving much aid to others, it has increased. Here, too, I found another best Sunday-school. In this school on Sunday are scattered good papers as thick as the snowflakes on the hills; and the 300 scholars have packed away in their hearts over 52,000 verses of the Bible, that will bring forth fruit in old age. It is rich, too, in good works--one little girl gave all her Christmas money to help build the parsonage.

Over a hundred of the young people came out in the meetings, and signed a simple confession of faith; fifty of them went to the Methodist church, the rest remained with us.

From this place we go to Lake Linden, on Torch Lake, where are the stamping-works of the Calumet and Hecla mines. This company have some 2,000 men in their employ, and expend some $500,000 per year on new machinery and improvements. Everything in this place is cyclopean; ten great ball stamps, each weighing 640 lbs., with other smaller ones, shake the earth for blocks away as their ponderous weight crushes the rocks as fast as men can shovel them in. Each man works half an hour, and is then relieved for half an hour. Over 300 carloads of ore are required daily to keep these monsters at work, day and night the year round, except Sundays. A stoppage here of an hour means $1,000 lost.

One stands amazed to see the foundations of some new buildings--bricks enough for a block of houses, 2,000 barrels of Portland cement and trap-rock are mixed, the whole capped off with Cape Ann granite. Two wheels, 40 feet in diameter, are to swing round here, taking up thousands of gallons of water every minute.

XVII.

SAD EXPERIENCES.

Fourteen years ago I attended fifty-one funerals in twenty-one months.

This large number was due to the fact that toward the south and west the nearest minister was ten miles off, north and east over twenty miles; and though there were only some 450 souls in White Cloud, we may safely put down 3,000 as the number who looked to this point for ministerial aid in time of trouble.

The traveller by rail pa.s.ses a few small places, and may think that between stations there is nothing but a wilderness, for such it often appears. He would be surprised to learn that one mile from the line, at short intervals, are large steam-mills with little communities--forty, fifty, and sixty souls.

Here and there are many of the Lord's people, who, overwhelmed by the iniquity they see and hear, have hung their harps upon the willows, and have ceased to sing the Lord's song. They feel that if some one could lead, they would follow; and the call for help is imperative, if we take no higher grounds than that of self-protection. Hundreds of children are growing up in ignorance, and will inevitably drift to the cities. It is from these sources that the dangerous cla.s.ses in them are constantly augmented.

It is hard to believe that in our day, in Michigan, should be found such a spiritual lack as the following incident reveals. One night just as I was falling asleep, a knock aroused me. A man had come for me to go some five miles through the woods to see a poor woman who was dying. The moon was shining when we started, and we expected soon to reach the place. But we had scarcely reached the forest when a storm broke upon us. The lightning was so vivid that the horse came to a stand. The trees moaned and bent under the heavy wind, and threatened to fall on us. No less than seven trees fell in that road some few hours later. Our lantern was with difficulty kept alight, so that we made but little progress; for it was dangerous to drive fast, and, indeed, to go slow, for that matter. We spent two hours in going five miles. As we were fastening the horse, I heard cries and groans proceeding from the house, and was met at the door with exclamations of sorrow, and, "Oh, sir, you are too late, too late!"

This was an old, settled community of farmers; some eight or ten men and women at the house, some of whom have had Christian parents, and yet not one to pray with the poor woman or point her to the Lamb of G.o.d.

Did they think I could absolve her? Did they look upon a minister as a telegraph or a telephone operator, whom they must call to send the message?

We often read of the overworked city pastor, and the contrast of his busy life with the quiet of his country brother. But the contrast does not apply to the home missionary who has a large field, as most of them have. Let me give some incidents of one week of home missionary experience. On Sat.u.r.day, a funeral service. Sabbath, two Sunday-schools and preaching. Monday, I visited a poor Finnish woman, suddenly bereft of her husband, who had been fishing on Sunday in company with three others--a keg of beer which they took with them explained the trouble. Tuesday, attended the funeral, closing the service just in time to catch the train to reach an appointment nine miles off. Friday, received a telegram to come immediately to a village, where a man was killed in the mill. While there, waiting for the relatives, expected on the next train, another telegram came from home, calling me back instantly.

Yet we cannot stop, for the work presses. Did we not know that the Lord is above the water floods, we should be overwhelmed.

I am tempted to write a few lines about a family that came to Woodville just before Christmas. It consisted of a mother, son-in-law, three daughters, and two sons. Before they had secured a house their furniture (save a stove and a few chairs) was burned. They were very poor, and moved the few things they had left into two woodsheds, one of which was lower than the other, so that after the end of one was knocked out there was a long step running right across the house. Now, fancy a family of six in here in winter time, with no bedsteads, a table, and some broken chairs and stove, and you can imagine what sort of a home it was. The widow felt very despondent, hinted about being tired of life, and mentioned poison. One morning, after drinking a great quant.i.ty of cold water, she turned in her bed and died. The coroner's jury p.r.o.nounced it dropsy of the heart, and waived a _post-mortem_ examination.

I felt much drawn toward the children during the funeral service, and spoke mainly to them. They seemed to drink in every word, and I believe understood all.

Three weeks later a daughter lay dying of diphtheria. She called the doctor, and told him she was going home to live with Jesus, and was quite happy. One week from that time a son followed, twelve years of age. He also went quite resigned. I shall never forget the scene presented at this time; the dark room, the extemporized bedsteads, the wind playing a dirge through the numerous openings, the man worn out with night-work and watching, stretched beside the coffin, the dead boy on the other bed, two more children sick with the same disease.

People seemed afraid to visit them. I gave the little ones some money each time I went. The little four-year-old, a pretty boy, said,--

"You won't have to give any for Willie this time, I have his."

Death seemed to have no terrors for the little ones. I talked to them of Jesus, and told them he was our Elder Brother and G.o.d was our Father. The little boy listened as I talked of heaven, and seemed very thoughtful. In another week, to a day, I was there again. The little fellow was going too; and now he said,--

"I want you to buy me a pretty coffin, won't you? and put nice leaves and flowers in it. I am going to heaven, you know, and I shall see my brother. Jesus is my brother, you know."

And so he pa.s.sed away like one falling to sleep. I could not but think of the glorious change for these little ones, now "safe in the arms of Jesus." From a hut to a mansion, from hearing the hoa.r.s.e, gruff breathing of the mill to the chanting of the heavenly choirs, from the dark squalor and rags to see the King in his beauty, to hunger no more, to thirst no more, neither to have the sun light on them nor any heat, to be led to living fountains of waters, to have all tears wiped from their eyes--who would wish them back?

I remember in one case a man whose wife had run off with another man, and had left him with two boys, one an idiot. The poor little child was found dead under the feet of the oxen, and when the funeral took place the man with his remaining son came through the woods and across lots to the cemetery, while a man with the coffin in a cart came by the road. The only ones at the funeral were these two and the carter, with myself.

I visited one home where nine out of eleven were down with diphtheria.

Two young girls in a fearful condition were in the upper rooms; nothing but horse-blankets were hung up in the unplastered rooms, but they did not keep out the snow. The father and the man who drove were the only ones beside myself at this funeral. In one family four died before the first was buried.

It made me think of the plague in London, and the man tolling the bell and crying, "Bring out your dead." Scarlet fever, small-pox, and typhoid were epidemic for some time, and it was then the people began to appreciate the services of the minute-man.

Some cases were rather odd, to say the least. One night a boy was lost. I suggested to his mother that he might be drowned, and that the pond ought to be searched. Her reply was amazing: "Well, if he's drownded, he's drownded, and what's the use till morning." Here was philosophy. Yet at the funeral this woman was so punctilious about the ceremonies that, seeing a horse which broke into a trot for a few steps, she said "it didn't look very well at a funeral to be a-trottin' hosses."