The life of a milkman is a busy one, but I found time to mumble my Greek roots as I trotted in and out of the cellars. My grammar, when weather permitted, was tied open to a bottle in the cart.
From the milk-wagon I went to a publishing house. They had advertised for a man with some literary ability, and I had the effrontery to apply. I drove the milk-cart in front of the publishing-house door, and, with my working clothes bespattered with milk and grease, I applied personally for the job.
"What are your qualifications?" the manager asked.
"What kind of work do you want done?" I asked in reply. I found that they were going to make a new dictionary of the English language, but their method of making it obviated the necessity for scholarship. They had an 1859 edition of Webster and a lot of the newer dictionaries, and Webster was to be the basis of the new one, and we were to crib and transcribe from all the rest. I was the third man employed on the work.
My salary to begin with was ten dollars a week. The word "salary" had a fine sound; it is more refined than "wages," though it was less than my pay as a milkman. After working a month, I had the temerity to outline a plan for a dictionary which would necessitate the most profound scholarship in America. This plan was laughed at, at first, but finally adopted, and it took seven years and millionsof dollars, and hundreds of the best scholars in the United States and foreign countries to complete the work. They raised my salary from $10 a week to $100 a month; but when an opening came to work as a missionary among the Bowery lodging houses at $60 a month, I considered it the opportunity of a lifetime, and in 1890 entered my new parish—the Bowery.
The Bowery is one of the most unique thoroughfares of the world. The history of the cheap lodging houses, to which I was commissioned to carry the gospel, is one of the most interesting phases of the Bowery's history. Ex-inspector Thomas Byrnes has described the lodging house of the Bowery as "a breeding place of crime." He probably did not know that the cheap lodging house had its origin in a philanthropic effort. It was in 1872, somewhere on the edge of a financial panic, that the first lodging house of this type was organized by two missionaries—Rev. Dr. A.F. Shauffler and the Rev. John Dooley. The Young Men's Christian Association of the Bowery found a lot of young men attending its meetings who were homeless, and their endeavour to solve this problem resulted in the fitting up of a large dormitory on Spring Street. Somebody—Ex-inspector Byrnes says a Mr. Howe—saw a business opportunity in the philanthropy and copied the dormitory.
There were from sixty to seventy of them on the Bowery when I began my work. These I visitedevery day of the week. There was a glamour and a fascination about it in the night-time that held me in its grip as tightly as it did others. What a study were the faces—many of them pale, haggard; many of them painted! How sickly they looked under the white glare of the arc lights that fizzled and sputtered overhead! Many of its shops have been "selling out below cost," for over twenty years.
I did not confine myself to the Bowery, but went to the small side streets around Chatham Square. They were also filled with cheap lodging houses. The lowest of these were called "bunk houses." Only one of the bunk houses remains. That is situated at No. 9 Mulberry Street. It is there to-day, little altered from the day I first entered it over twenty years ago. The price for lodging ranges from seven to fifteen cents, but fifteen cents was the more usual price.
My headquarters at first was the City Mission Church on Broome Street, called "The Broome Street Tabernacle," and to it I led thousands of weary feet. The minister at that time was the Rev. C.H. Tyndall, a splendid man with a modern mind; but I filled his tabernacle so full of the "Weary Willies of the Bowery" that Mr. Tyndall revolted, and as I look back at the circumstance now, he was fully justified in his revolt. Mr. Tyndall was doing a more important work than I was, more fundamental and far-reaching. He was touching the family life of thecommunity and he saw what I did not see—that our congregations could not be mixed; that my work was spoiling his. I did not see it then. I see it now. So I betook myself to another church, and this other church got a credit which it did not deserve, for they had no family life to touch. It was a church at Chatham Square, and its usefulness consisted in the fact that it was situated where it could catch the ebb and flow of the "tramp-tide."
I spent my afternoons in the lodging houses, pocket Bible in hand, going from man to man as they sat there, workless, homeless, dejected and in despair. I very soon found that there was one gospel they were looking for and willing to accept—it was the gospel of work; so, in order to meet the emergency, I became an employment agency. I became more than that. They needed clothing and food—and I became a junk store and a soup kitchen.
After six months' experience in the work, I had a story to tell. It was very vivid, and I could always touch the tear glands of a congregation with it, and stir their hearts; so I went from church to church, uptown and out of town and anywhere, and told the story of my congregation on the Bowery. The result was not by any means a solution of my problem, nor of the tramp problem, but carloads of old clothes, and money to pay for lodgings. There wassuch a terrific tug at my heartstrings all the time that I never had two coats to my own back, or a change of clothing in hardly any department. As for money, I was, as they were, most of the time penniless! Everything I could beg or borrow went into the work.
At the close of the first year, the results were rather discouraging. I got a number of men work, but very few had made good. Hundreds of men had been clothed, fed and lodged, but they had passed out of my reach. I knew not where they had gone. Scarcely one per cent. ever let me know even by a postal card what had become of them, or how they fared, and yet my work was called successful.
Sunday afternoons, with a baby organ on my shoulder and a small group of converts and helpers following closely behind, I went down the Bowery and held meetings in about half a dozen houses. I did most of the speaking, but urged the converts to tell their own stories at each service. I have said that I was never interfered with or molested in the work, and the following incident can hardly be called an exception. A broken-down prize fighter, slightly under the influence of liquor, tried to prevent us from holding a meeting one afternoon. I reasoned with him.
"You don't seem to know who I am," he said. I confessed my ignorance.
"Well," he said, "I'm Connelly, the prize fighter!"
"Then you're what your profession calls a 'bruiser'."
"Sure!" he replied.
"Probably you are not aware, Mr. Connelly, that the Bible has something to say about bruisers."
He explained that, being a Roman Catholic, his Bible was different from mine, and he did not think there were any bruisers in his Bible.
"Oh, you are mistaken, Mr. Connelly. This is your Bible I have with me"—and I produced a small Douey Bible, and turning over the pages in Genesis I read a passage which I thought might appeal to him:
"'The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head.' I suppose you know who the woman was, Connelly."
"The Holy Virgin?" he inquired.
"Yes; and the serpent is the Devil, and he has been pouring firewater into you and has been making you say things you would not otherwise say. As for the seed of the woman, that is Jesus Christ; and this Douey Bible of yours tells you that Jesus Christ is able to bruise the head of the old serpent in you, which is the Devil." That sounded rather reasonable to the retired prize fighter, and he quieted down and we proceeded with the service.
The society for which I worked, occasionally sent down visitors to be shown around the lodging houses, and often I took them in there myself; but the thinggrew very distasteful to me, for I never got hardened or calloused to the misery and sorrow of the situation, and it seemed to me eminently unfair to parade them.
About the last man I took around was Sir Walter Besant. I dined with him at the Brevoort House one night, and took him around first to one of the bunk-houses and then to various others, and also into the tenement region around Cherry Street.
"Keep close to me," I told Besant as we entered the bunk house, "don't linger;" so we went to the top floor. The strips of canvas arranged in double tiers were full of lodgers. The floor was strewn with bodies—naked, half naked and fully clothed. We had to step over them to get to the other end. There was a stove in the middle of the room, and beside it, a dirty old lamp shed its yellow rays around, but by no means lighted the dormitory. The plumbing was open, and the odours coming therefrom and from the dirty, sweaty bodies of the lodgers and from the hot air of the stove—windows and doors being tightly closed—made the atmosphere stifling and suffocating.
After stepping over the prostrate bodies from one end of the dormitory to the other, the novelist was almost overcome and when we got back to the door he begged to be taken to the open air. When we got to Chatham Square, he said—"Take me to a drugstore." Besant knew the underworld of London as few men of his generation knew it, buthe had never seen anything quite so bestial, so debauched and so low as the bunk-house on Mulberry Street.
It seems strange to me now that after having tramped the streets of New York with the unemployed and after having shared their misery, disappointment and despair, that I should, as a missionary, have entirely forgotten it, and that after years of experience among them, I should still be possessed of the idea that men of this grade were lazy and would not work if they had it. One afternoon in a bunk-house I was so possessed of this idea that I challenged the crowd.
"You men surely do not need any further evidence of my interest in you," I remarked. "All that I have and am belongs to you; but I cannot help telling you of my conviction: that most of you are here because you are lazy. Now, if any man in the house is willing to test the case, I will change clothes with him to-morrow morning and show him how to find work."
The words had scarcely escaped my lips when a man by the name of Tim Grogan stood up and accepted the challenge.
I made an appointment to meet Grogan on Chatham Square at half-past five the next morning. Before I met him, I had done more thinking on the question of the unemployed than I had ever done in my life. I balked on the change of clothingarticle in the agreement—and furnished my own. Two or three men had enough courage to get up early in the morning and see Tim off—they were sceptical about my intention.
The first thing that we did was to try the piano, soap and other factories on the West Side. From place to place we went, from Fourteenth to Fifty-ninth Street without success. Sometimes under pretence of business and by force of the power to express myself in good English, I gained an entrance to the superintendent; but I always failed to find a job. We crossed the city at Fifty-ninth Street and went down the East Side. Wherever men were working, we applied. We went to the stevedores on the East Side, but they were all "full up." "For God's sake," I said to some of them, but I was brushed aside with a wave of the hand. I never felt so like a beggar in my life. Tim trotted at my heels, encouraging me with whimsical Irish phrases, one of which I remember—
"Begorra, mister, the hardest work for sure is no work at all, at all!"
In the middle of the afternoon, I began to get disturbed; then I decided to try a scheme I had worked over for hours. "Keep close to me, now, Tim," I said, as I led him to a drugstore at the corner of Grand Street and the Bowery.
"Sir," I said to the clerk, "you are unaccustomed to giving credit, I know; but perhaps you mightsuspend your rule for once and trust us to the amount of five cents?"
"You don't talk like a bum," he said, "but you look like one."
I thanked him for the compliment to my language, but insisted on my request.
"Well, what is it?" asked the clerk with somewhat of a sneer.
"I am hungry and thirsty. I have looked for work all day and have utterly failed to find it. Now I have a scheme and I know it will work. Oxalic acid eats away rust. If I had five cents' worth, I could earn a dollar—I know I could."
He looked curiously at me for a moment, and said with an oath:
"By—! I've been on the Bowery a good many years and haven't been sold once. If you're a skin-game man, I'll throw up my job!"
I got the acid. I played the same game in a tailor-shop for five cents' worth of rags. Then I went to a hardware store on the Square and got credit for about ten cents' worth of brickdust and paste. I took Tim by the arm and led him across the west side of Chatham Square. There used to be a big drygoods store on the east side of the Square, with large plate-glass windows, and underneath the windows, big brass signs.
"Nothing doing," said the floorwalker, as I asked for the job of cleaning them; nevertheless, when heturned his back, I dropped on my knees and cleaned a square foot—did it inside of a minute.
"Say, boss," I said, "look here! I'm desperately hard up. I want to make money, and I want to make it honestly. I will clean that entire sign for a nickle."
It was pity that moved him to give me the job, and when it was completed, I offered to do the other one. "All right," he said; "go ahead."
"But this one," I said, "will cost you a dime."
"Why a nickle for this one and a dime for the other?" he asked.
"Well," I said, "we are just entering business. In the first case I charged you merely for the work done; in the second, I charge you for the idea."
"What idea?" he inquired.
"The idea that cleanliness is part of any business man's capital."
"Well, go ahead."
When both signs were polished I offered to do the big plate-glass windows for ten cents each. This was thirty cents below the regular price, and I was permitted to do the job. Tim, of course, took his cap off, rolled his shirtsleeves up and worked with a will beside me. After that, we swept the sidewalk, earning the total sum of thirty-five cents. We tried to do other stores, but the nationality of most of them was against us; nevertheless, in the course of the afternoon, we made a dollar anda half. I took Tim to "Beefsteak John's," and we had dinner. Then I began to boast of the performance and to warn Tim that on the following Sunday afternoon I should explain my success to the men in the bunk-house.
"Yes, yes, indeed, yer honour," said Tim, "y're a janyus! There's no doubt about that at all, at all! But——"
"Go on," I said.
"I was jist switherin'," said Tim, "what a wontherful thing ut is that a man kin always hev worruk whin he invints ut."
"Well, that's worth knowing, Tim," I said, disappointedly. "Did you learn anything else?"
"There's jist one thing that you forgot, yer honour."
"What is it?" I asked.
"Begorra, you forgot that if all the brains in the bunk-house wor put together they cudn't think of a thrick like that—the thrick of cleaning a window wid stuff from a dhrugstore! They aint got brains."
"Why haven't they?"
"Ach, begorra, I dunno except for the same raisin that a fish hasn't no horns!"
We retraced our steps to the drugstore and the tailor-shop and the hardware store, and paid our bills and I handed over what was left to Tim.
This experiment taught me more than it taughtTim. It made a better student of me. I had investigated the cases of a hundred men in that same bunk-house—their nationality, age and occupation—and I had tried to find out the cause of their failure. And my superficial inquiry led me to the conclusion that the use of intoxicating liquor was the chief cause.
The following table shows the trade, nationality and age of one of our Sunday audiences in the B—— bunk-house. The audience numbered 108, and were all well-known individually to the Lodging House Missionary.
TradeEngineer1Waiter1Watchman1Labourers17'Longshoremen7Junkmen3Mechanics3Coal Heavers18Street Peddlers4Beer Helpers2Knife Grinders4Tailors4Cooks2Cigar Makers2Upholsterer1Painter1Butcher1Shoemakers6Gardeners3Gilder1Jeweler1Oysterman1Bronzer1Truckman1Firemen2Last Maker1Farmer1Thieves and Bums of various grades18Total108
NationalityGermans52Americans19Irish22English4Swedish2Austrians2Scotch2Welsh1French2Greek1Cuban1Total108
AgeBetween 20 and 3021Between 30 and 4030Between 40 and 5029Between 50 and 6020Between 60 and 708Total108Average age, 41 years
Despite my experience with Tim Grogan, I diagnosed the condition of these men as being entirely due to strong drink. I went back over the ground and investigated with a little more care the causes that led them to drink, and this was the more fruitful of the two investigations. I wondered why men would not even stick at a job when I got them work. A careful investigation led me to the belief that, when a man gets out of a job once, he loses just a little of the routine, the continuity, the habit of work, and it is just a little harder to apply himself when he begins again. If a man loses a job two or three times in a year, it is just as many times harder to go on with a regular job when it comes. Lack of regular employment is the cause not only of the physical disintegration, but of the moral disintegration also; so, these men who had been out of employment so often, actually could not stick at a job when they got it. They were disorganized. A few of them had the stamina to overcome this disorganization. I found the same to be true in morals. When a man made his first break, it was easier to make the second, and it was as easy for him to lose a good habit as to acquire a bad one.
The same thing holds good in what we call charity. A terrific soul-struggle goes on in every man and woman before the hand is put out for the first time. Self-respect is a tremendousasset, and people hold on to it as to their very souls; but when a hand is held out once and the community puts alms therein, the fabric of self-respect begins to totter, and the whole process of disintegration begins.
I made my headquarters, while a lodging-house missionary, in the Mulberry Street bunk-house. It was only a block from Chatham Square, and central. The first thing I did was to clean it. I proceeded with soap and water to scrub it out, dressed in a pair of overalls. While performing this operation, a tall gaunt figure lurched into the room with his hands in his pockets—a slit for a mouth, shaggy eyebrows, rather small eyes. He looked at me for a moment as if in astonishment, and then he said:
"Hello, bub, what's de game?"
"I'm a missionary," I answered.
"Ye are, eh?"
"Yes. When I finish cleaning the floor, I am going to attempt to clean up some other things around here."
"Me too, hey?"
"Yes; don't you think you need it?"
He laughed a hoarse, gutteral laugh, and said:
"Don't get bughouse, boss. Ye'd wind up just where ye begun—on the floor."
This man, who was known in the bunk-house as "Gar," was known also by the names of "McBriarty" and "Brady." He had been in the army, but they could not drill him. He had spent fifteen years in State's Prison for various offences, but for a good many years he had been bungling around in cheap lodging houses, getting a living by his wits. He was the toughest specimen of a man I ever saw. There was a challenge in him which I at once accepted. It was in his looks and in his words. It was an intimation that he was master—that missionaries were somewhat feeble-minded and had to do with weak people. I was not very well acquainted with the bunk-house at the time, but I outlined a plan of campaign the major part of which was the capture of this primordial man. Could I reach him? Could I influence and move him to a better life? If not, what was the use of trying my theological programme on others? So I abandoned myself to the task. I knew my friends and the officers of the missionary society would have considered it very ill-advised if the details of the plan had been known to them, so I slept in the bunk-house and stayed with him night and day. Of course, I would not have done it if I had not seen beyond him: that if I could gain this man, I would gain a strategic point. He himself would be a great power in the bunk-house; first of all, because he was physically fit. He was selectedbecause he could pitch any two men in the house out of it; and even from a missionary's point of view, that was important. He resented at first my interference, but gentleness and love prevailed, and he finally acquiesced.
The hardest part of the plan was to eat with him in an underground restaurant where meals cost five and ten cents a piece. When he was "tapering off," I went with him into the saloons. He visited the cheap fake auction-rooms and would buy little pieces of cheap jewelry occasionally and sell them at a few cents' profit. These things nauseated me. There was no hope of finding this man any work. He did not want work, anyway; could not work if he had it.
He tried, during the first week that I was with him, to disgust me; first with his language and then with his actions. He put the lights out in the dormitory one night, and in the darkness pulled three or four men out of the bunks, cuffed them on the side of the head and kicked them around generally. He thought this was the finishing touch to my vigil. When the superintendent came up and lit the lamp again, he had an idea that it was the bouncer and came over to his cot, which was beside mine, and found him snoring. When all was quiet, the bouncer said to me:
"What did ye tink of it, boss, hey?"
"Oh," I said, "that was a very tame show, and utterly uninteresting."
"Gee!" he said, "you must have been a barker at Coney Island."
The test of my theology on him proved a failure. The story of the prodigal son was a great joke to him. He said of it:
"Say, bub, if you ever strike an old gazabo as soft as dat one, lemme know, will ye?" Prayer to him was "talking through one's hat."
In a few weeks he straightened up and began to give me very fine assistance in the bunk-house. His change of mind and heart almost lost him his job, for he lost a good deal of his brutality—the thing that fitted him for his work. In ushering insubordinate gentlemen downstairs, he did it more with force of persuasion than with the force of his shoe. He continued my campaign of cleaning, and decorated the kalsomined walls with chromos that he bought at one penny apiece. He was a psychologist and would have probably been surprised if anybody had told him so. He could tell at once the moral worth of a lodger; so he was a very good lieutenant and picked out the best of the men who had reached the bottom—and the bunk-house was the bottom rung of the social ladder. Every day he had his story to tell—of the newcomers and their possibilities. His conversion was a matter of slow work. Indeed, I don't know what conversion meant in his case. It certainly was not the working out of any theological formula that I had preached to him.
The telling of this man's story in churches helped the work a great deal. It was the kind of thing that appealed to the churches—rather graphic and striking; so, unconsciously we exploited him. We could have gotten a hundred dollars to help a man like this—whose life after all was past or nearly past—to one dollar we could get for the work of saving a boy from such a life!
Among the most interesting characters that I came in contact with in those days was Dave Ranney; he is now himself a missionary to the Bowery lodging houses. I was going across Chatham Square one night, when this man tapped me on the shoulder—"touched me"—he would call it. He was "a puddler from Pittsburg," so he said.
"Show me your hands," I replied. Instead, he stuck them deep into his trouser pockets, and I told him to try again. He said he was hungry, so I took him to a restaurant, but he couldn't eat. He wanted a drink, but I wouldn't give that to him. He walked the streets that night, but he came to me later and I helped him; and every time he came, he got a little nearer the truth in telling his story. Finally I got it all. He squared himself and began the fight of his life.
Another convert of the bunk-house was Edward Dowling. "Der's an old gazabo here," said the bouncer to me one day, "and he's got de angel goods on him O.K." He was a quiet, reticent old manof sixty, an Irishman who had served in the British Army in India with Havelock and Colin Campbell. He had bought a ranch in the West, but an accident to one of his eyes forced him to spend all his money to save the other one. He drifted in to New York, penniless and without a friend. Seeing a tinker mending umbrellas one day on the street, he sat down beside him and watched the process. In that way he learned something of the trade.
One Sunday afternoon when I was rallying a congregation in the bunk-house, I found him on his cot, reading the life of Buffalo Bill. I invited him down to the meeting, but he politely refused, saying that he was an Episcopalian. The following Sunday he did come, and his was the most striking spiritual crisis that I had ever seen. His conversion was clean-cut, definite and clear; it was of a kind with the conversion of Paul on the way to Damascus. He was an exceedingly intelligent man, and could repeat more classic poetry by heart than any man I have ever known. He came out from that brown mass of human flotsam and jetsam on the Sunday afternoon following his conversion, and told them what had happened to him.
The lodgers were very much impressed. It was in the winter-time. The old man earned very little money at his new trade, but what he had he shared with his fellow-lodgers. The bouncer told me that the old tinker would buy a stale loaf for a few cents,then in the dormitory he would make coffee in tomato cans and gather half a dozen of the hungriest around him, and share his meal with them—plain bread soaked in unsweetened coffee. Sometimes he would read a few verses of the Bible to them, and sometimes merely say in his clear Irish voice: "There, now, God bliss ye!"
Dowling, Tinker and ColporterDowling, Tinker and ColporterA Veteran who Served in India under Havelock and Colin CampbellToList
Dowling, Tinker and ColporterA Veteran who Served in India under Havelock and Colin CampbellToList
At this time he was living on a dollar a week, but every morning he had his little tea-party around the old stove, his word of greeting, and his final word of benediction to the men he had selected to share in his bounty as they slunk out of the bunk-house to begin the day.
Later, he had a large-type New Testament out of which he read a verse or two every morning at the meal. Very soon the three hundred lodgers began to look upon him with a kind of awe. This was not because he had undergone a radical change, for he had always been quiet, gentle and civil; but because he had found his voice, and that voice was bringing to them something they could not get elsewhere—sympathy, cheer and courage.
In the tenement region, particularly in the little back alleys around Mulberry Street, he mended pots, kettles, pans and umbrellas—not always for money, but as often for the privilege of reading to these people messages of comfort out of his large-type New Testament.
Going down Mulberry Street one morning in thedepth of winter, I happened to glance up one of those narrow alleys in "the Bend," and I noticed my friend standing at a window, his face close to a broken pane of glass and his large New Testament held in front of him a few inches from his face. His tinker's budget was by his feet. The door was closed. In a few minutes he closed the book, put it into his kit, and as he moved away from the window, I saw a large bundle of rags pushed into the hole.
"What have you been doing?" I inquired.
He laughed. "There, now, God bliss her," he said. "I put a rib in an umbrella for her, but she said the house was too dirty to read the Bible in, so she let me read it through the broken window."
All that winter he tinkered and taught. All winter the little ragged audiences gathered around him in the morning; and often at eventime when he retreated into a quiet corner to be silent and rest, he found himself the centre of an inquiring group of his fellow-lodgers.
Instead of uniting himself to the mission, as such men usually do after their conversion, I advised him to join one of the prominent churches of the city, in the downtown district. I thought it would be good for the church. But we both discovered our mistake later. He was utterly out of keeping with his surroundings. The church he joined was an institution for the favoured few—and Dowling was a tinker.
His diary of that period is before me as I write, and I am astonished at the great humility of this simple-minded man.
He had been asked by the minister of his church to call on him; but his modesty prevented him until hunger forced him to change his mind. After starving for three days, he made up his mind to accept that invitation, and reveal his condition to the well-to-do minister of this well-to-do church. He was poorly clad. It was a very cold winter day. The streets were covered with slush and snow. On his way he met an old woman with a shawl around her, a bedraggled dress and wet feet.
"My good woman," said Dowling, "you must be very cold, indeed, in this condition."
"Sir," she answered, "I am cold; but I am also starving of hunger. Could you afford me one cent to get some bread?"
"God bliss ye, dear friend," he said, "I have not been able to taste food for three days myself; but I am now on the way to the house of a good friend, a good servant of the Lord; and if I get any help, I will share it with you. I am a poor tinker, but work has been very slack this last week. I have not earned enough to pay for my lodging."
The diary gives all the details, the corner of the street where he met her, the hour of the day.
A servant ushered him into the parlour of his "good friend, the servant of the Lord." Presentlythe reverend doctor came down, somewhat irritated, and, without shaking hands, said:
"Dowling, I know I have asked you several times to call, but I am a very busy man and you should have let me know. I simply cannot see you this morning. I have an address to prepare for the opening of a mission and I haven't the time."
"No handshake—no Christian greeting," records the tinker's diary; and the account closes with these words: "Dear Lord, do not let the demon of uncharitableness enter into my poor heart."
He became a colporteur for a tract society, and was given as territory the towns on the east side of the Hudson River. Tract selling in this generation is probably the most thankless, profitless work that any human being could undertake. The poor old man was burdened with a heavy bundle of the worst literary trash of a religious kind ever put out of a publishing house. He was to get twenty-five per cent. on the sales; so he shouldered his kit, with his heart full of enthusiasm, and began the summer journey on foot. He carried his diary with him, and although the entries are very brief, they are to the point.
"August 29. Sold nothing. No money for bread or lodging.God is good.Night came and I wassotired and hungry. I went into a grove and with a prayer of confidence on my lips, I went to sleep. A clock not far away struck two. Then, rain fell intorrents and a fierce wind blew. The elements drove me from the grove. A constable held me up. 'I am a servant of God, dear friend,' I said. 'Why doesn't he give you a place to sleep, then?' he answered. 'God forgive me,' thinks I to myself, 'but that is the same unworthy thought that was in my own mind.' I went into a building in course of erection and lay down on some planks; but I was too wet to sleep."
Next day hunger drove him to work early. He was turned from one door after another, by saints and sinners alike, until finally he was so weak with hunger that he could scarcely walk. Then he became desperate to a degree, and his diary records a call on another reverend doctor.
This eminent divine had no need for religious literature, nor had he time to be bothered with beggars. Dowling records in his diary that he told the minister that he was dropping off his feet with hunger and would be thankful for a little bread and a glass of water. It seems almost incredible that in a Christian community such things could happen; but the diary records the indictment that those tender lips in life were never allowed to utter—it records how he was driven from the door.
He had letters of introduction from this rich tract society, and again he presented them to a minister.
"A very nice lady came," says the record. "Igave my credentials, explained my condition and implored help.
"We are retired from the active ministry," the woman said, "and cannot help you. We have no further use for religious books."
A third minister atoned for the others, and made a purchase. This was at Tarrytown. On another occasion, when his vitality had ebbed low through hunger and exposure, he was sitting on the roadside when a labourer said, "There is a nigger down the road here who keeps a saloon. He hasn't got no religion, but he wants some. Ye'd better look him up." And he did. The Negro saloon-keeper informed him that being a saloon-keeper shut him and his family from the church.
"Now," he said, "I am going to get Jim, my barkeeper, to look after the joint while I take you home to talk to me and my family about God." So they entertained the tinker-preacher, and the diary is full of praise to God for his new-found friends. The Negro bought a dollar's worth of tracts, and persuaded the colporteur to spend the night with them.
With this dollar he returned to New York, got his tinker's budget, and went back to his missionary field. If people did not want their souls cured he knew they must have lots of tinware that needed mending; so he combined the work of curing souls with the mending of umbrellas and kitchen utensils, and his period of starvation was past. His businesswas to preach the new vision and tinker for a living as he went along.
"September 12," reads the diary, "I found myself by the brook which runs east of the mountain. I had a loaf of bread and some cheese, and with a tin cup I helped myself to the water of the brook. The fragments that remained I put in a bundle and tied to the branch of a tree by the roadside. On the wrapper I pencilled these words: 'Friend—if you come across this food and you need it, do not hesitate to eat it; but if you don't need it, leave it for I will return at the close of the day. God bless you.'"
At eventime he returned and was surprised at the altered shape of the bundle. He found that two beef sandwiches and two big apples had been added, with this note: "Friend: accept these by way of variety. Peace to thee!" This gives occasion for another address of prayer and gratitude to God for His bountiful care. By the brookside he took supper, and then began the ascent of the hill. After a few hours fruitless search for the road, he "got stuck," in the words of the diary. Finding himself in a helpless predicament, he gathered grass and dry leaves around him and prepared himself for the night.
"Psalms IV. 8 came to my mind," he said, "and I took great comfort in the words—'I said, I will both lay me down in peace and sleep, for Thou, Lord, makest me dwell in safety!'"
He woke next morning and found the earth covered with hoar frost, which suggested to him: "Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow."
One of my duties while engaged as a missionary on the Bowery was to render reports of the work done for the missionary society. The society had a monthly magazine and it was through that medium that they got the greater part of their support.
In one of my reports I told the story of a London waif. The story made such an impression upon the superintendent that he thought I was romancing, and said so. My best answer to that was to produce the boy, and I produced him. The boy told his own story. Then it was published in a magazine and produced a strong impression. I think an extra edition had to be printed to supply the demand.