XXII.

"The breaking waves dashed high,"

without the tears coming to these eyes; and one sight of Burial Hill buries all hard thoughts I might have about their stern rule. They were fitted for the times they lived in, and we must see to it that we do our part in our time.

In my first field I well remember being startled at a tiny girl singing out, "Hello, Elder!" and on looking up there was a batch of youngsters from the Sunday-school playing croquet on Sunday afternoon. "Hello!" said I; and I smiled and walked on. Wicked, was it not? I ought to have lectured them? Oh, yes! and lost them. Were they playing a yearafter? Not one of them. And, better still, the parents, who were non-churchgoers, had joined the church.

The saloons and stores were open, and doing a big business, the first year; but both saloons and stores were closed, side-doors too, after that. Some of the saloon-keepers' boys, who played base-ball on Sunday, were in the Sunday-school and members of a temperance society. These saloon-keepers, and men who were not church-members, paid dollar for dollar with the Christians who sent missionary money to support the little church; and not only that, but paid into the benevolences of the church from five to twenty-five dollars. There is no possible way so good of getting men to be better as to get them to help in a good cause. I know men who would not take money that came from the saloon; but I did. I remembered the words, "The silver and the gold are mine," and Paul's saying, "Ask no question for conscience' sake." We might as well blame the Creator for growing thebarley because of its being put to a bad use, as to blame a man for using the money because it came from a bad business. Men ought to use common sense, even in religious things.

When a man hitches up his horse on Sunday morning and drives fifty miles that day and preaches four times, we admire his zeal. There are some who will not blame him if he hires a livery rig, who would condemn him if he rode on the street-cars or railway. I well remember a good man, who was to speak in a church a few miles away, saying to me, "How shall we get there?" I said, "The street-cars go right past the door."

"Oh! I can't ride in a street-car."

"Why? Make you sick?"

It never came into my head that the man meant he could not ride on Sunday in a street-car.

"I will tell you," said he, "what we will do. I will get a livery rig."

I was much amused, and bantered him, and said,—

"I don't know about breaking the Sabbath fifty per cent. I am willing to plead limited liability with a hundred others in the street-car."

Just then a man drove up with a buggy who had been sent for us. It seemed to take a load off my friend's mind. Now, there are men who would condemn a man for this, and say he should walk; and I know men who walk ten and twelve miles on Sunday. If that is not work I do not know what is. This month I saw an article in a paper condemning the young people who had to ride on Sunday to reach their meeting. The writer would not have them travel, even in an emergency. I wonder when the Pilgrims would have reached us on that basis. It is a far cry from the Mayflower to the Lucania. Is the Sabbath greater than its Lord? I was told of one preacher who was so particular that he sent word that no appointment must be made for him that involved street-car or railway travel. So a horse wasdriven ten miles to fetch him, and ten miles to take him back. When the horse reached his stable that night he had travelled forty miles to keep this man from breaking the Sabbath. Who gave these brethren the right to work their horses this way, and break the Sabbath? If Moses had a man stoned to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath, what right have you to be toasting your shins over a register that your man-servant must keep going evenly or catch it? In short, what right has any man to tamper with one of the commandments to suit himself, and place the remainder higher than love to his neighbor?

So long as the frontier Sabbath is what it is, it will be lawful to do good on the Sabbath day. Far be it from me to undervalue the Sabbath. I value it highly, but I value freedom more. The man who rides in his carriage to church has no right to condemn my riding in the street-car, and he who rides in the street-car has no right to judge the man on the train."Who art thou that judgest another man's servant?" "One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." "Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."

OLDEST HOUSE IN THE UNITED STATESOLDEST HOUSE IN THE UNITED STATES, SANTA FÉ, NEW MEXICO.Page 220.

The South-west is different from all other parts of the country. The Anglo-Saxon is everywhere else in the ascendant. Here the Latin races are dominant. It is astonishing to find so many oldest churches all over the country. The superlative is a national trait. We have either the oldest or the youngest, the greatest or the smallest, or the only thing in the world. However, it is almost certain that the oldest church and house are to be found in Santa Fé. The Church of San Miguel was built seventy years before the landing of the Pilgrims, and the house next to the church fifty years. It is the oldest settled, is the farthest behind, has the most church-members per capita, and is the most ignorant and superstitious part of the land. In one part Mormonism holdssway. In the other, Roman Catholicism of two centuries ago is still the prevailing religion.

It is a curious fact; but in this latter respect the North-east and the South-west almost join hands; for Lower Canada sent us Old France, and the South-west remains Old Spain. Here, as a man travels through Western Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, only his Pullman car, and especially his Pullman porter, makes him realize that he is in America. In the eastern part of Texas the buzzards fill the air as they are hovering over the dead cattle. In the western part the dead cattle dry up and are blown away. Meat keeps indefinitely. There are no flies there, few insects, and the flowers are almost odorless, perhaps on account of the lack of insect-life. The very butcher-signs look strange. Instead of the fat, meek ox on a sign, we have a mad bull charging a Spanish matador.

Here comes a Mexican with a fifty-dollar hat on his head, and fifty cents wouldalmost buy the rest of his clothes. He marches by with the strut of a drum-major. The best streets and the finest houses are often not homes. The plains look as if they would not keep a cow alive; and yet here in the South-west we find some of the finest grazing-lands in the world, although it takes twenty-five acres to feed a cow. But what of that? the acres are unlimited. The black-tailed antelope are seen running from your train; while the prairie-dog sits, like all small things, barking impudently, or, with a few electric twists of his little tail he dives below, where a rattlesnake and an owl keep his house in order, i.e., keep the population down so that the progeny would not kill all the grass, and so starve at last; with himself would go the cattle; so the economy of nature keeps up its reputation everywhere. As some have said, when salmon are scarce hens' eggs become dear; for the otter takes to the land and kills the rabbits, and the weasel, finding his stores low, visits the hen-coops—and up goes the price of eggs.

The minute-man in the South-west has a big field. He is often hundreds of miles from his next church. He preaches to the cowboys one day, to the Digger Indians or the blanket variety the next. He is off among the miners, and sometimes in less than four hours he must change from the cold mountain air to the heat which requires two roofs to the house in order to keep it cool enough. He eats steak that has come one thousand miles from the East, although ten thousand cattle are all about him. He passes a million cows, and yet has to use condensed milk for his coffee or go without.

He finds himself in the midst of the grandest scenery on the continent. In his long journey he often finds himself sleeping on the plain outside the teepees of his red brother, rather risking the tarantulas, lizards, and rattlers that may come, than the thousands of smaller nuisances that are sure to come if he goes under cover. He is in the midst of a past age; and as he visits the pueblos, he would not be surprisedto see De Soto come forth, so Spanish are his surroundings. The adobe building prevails everywhere, cool in summer, warm in winter, and in this climate well nigh indestructible.

The priesthood are centuries removed from those of the East. Here he will meet with men living in the Middle Ages, beating their backs with cactus until the blood streams, and often dying under self-inflicted blows. We often hear of America having no ruins, no ancient history. This may be so in regard to time; but in regard to conditions we are in the time of Boadicea of the ancient Briton, and in the South-west are ruins of buildings that were inhabited when William was crowned at Westminster. So great are the States of the South-west that the counties are larger than New England States; and you may be stuck in a blizzard in northern Texas, while people in the southern portion are eating oranges out-doors with the oleanders for shade-trees.

I will close this chapter with a descriptiongiven me in part by the Rev. E. Lyman Hood, who was Superintendent of Missions in the South-west until he was broken down by his arduous toil.

One evening he found himself at the opening of an immense cañon, on the lofty tops of which the snow was perpetual. Sheltered beneath its mighty walls, flowers of semi-tropical luxuriance flourished, and birds of gorgeous plumage flitted here and there; while humming-birds, like balls of metal, darted among the flowers. A little silver streamlet ran down the cañon until lost in the blue distance; and here our minute-man stood lost in reverent admiration. The sun was going down in pomp of purple and gold; and the little stream changed its colors with the clouds, until in a moment it became black; a cold wind came down the cañon, the flowers closed their petals, and with a twitter here and there the birds went to roost. And then our minute-man looked up aloft, where the sun still gilded the great cañon's shoulders until they glowedlike molten metal, and kissed the forehead of an Indian who stood like a statue waiting the sun's setting. Another moment and it was gone, and our Indian stood like a silhouette against the sky, when he at once wheeled toward the east, and, stooping, lit a fire; then drawing his ragged blanket around him, prepared to watch all night until the sun came up in the eastern horizon, watching for the return of his Saviour Montezuma. And thus far he has watched in vain.

A strange fact,—a poor tribe still waiting and watching for a Saviour in a land where there are over twenty million church-members, some of whom ride past him in their palace-cars to take a palatial steamer, and travel thousands of miles to find a soul to save. Over twelve denominations striving in Mexico to win souls, and scarcely a thing done for the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans in our own land, and over forty tribes of Indians. And all this in the year of our Lord 1895.

I want to picture out in this chapter one of the hardest fields the minute-man has to labor in. I think there are greater inequalities to be found in our land than in any other, at least a greater variety of social conditions. Times have changed much in the last twenty-five years. The consolidating of great business concerns has made a wide gulf between the employer and employee such as never before existed outside of slavery.

It is not true to say that the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer; for the poor could not be poorer. There never was a time when men were not at starvation-point in some places. We have to-day thousands of men who never saw the owner of the property that they work upon. There is a fearful distance betweenthe gentlemen and ladies in their four-in-hand turnout and the begrimed men who come up into the daylight out of our great coal-mines, or those who handle the heavy iron ore. I have seen men whose hands could be pared like a horse's hoof without drawing the blood, who were going back to Germany to stay,—men who had been lured over by the promise of big wages, who, as they said, averaged "feefty cent a day." I have seen sixty and seventy men living in a big hut, with two or three women cooking their vegetables in a great iron kettle, and dipping them out with tin ladles. I have seen little boys by the score working for a few cents a day, and four, five, and seven families living in one house, and where all the pay was store-pay, and did not average five dollars a week, and where it was not safe to walk at night, and murder was common,—and you could find within a few miles cities where there were men who would say that the whole of the above was a lie.

When I first talked on these regions, I could think of nothing else; and some good men advised me not to tell of what I had seen. It smacked too much of socialism, they said. I remarked, "You will hear of starving, bloodshed, and riot from that region before long." And so they did. The State troops were called out more than once. And here in the midst of this misery our minute-man went. Before the mines were opened, a little stream of clear water flowed between green banks and through flowery meads; cattle dotted the meadows, and peaceful farm-houses nestled under the trees. But all this was soon changed. The green sod was turned up, the clear stream became a muddy, discolored torrent, and wretched little houses took the place of the farm-houses. Low saloons abounded. Our minute-man was warned that his life would be in danger. On the other hand, he was offered three times the salary he was getting as a missionary if he would become a foreman. But the man is oneof the last of that noble army of pioneers that count not their life dear.

When our man tried to find a place to preach, there was none save an old dilapidated schoolhouse. The window-sashes were broken, the panels of the door gone. The place was beyond a little stream, which had to be crossed upon a log. It was nearly dark before his audience arrived. The women, much as they wanted to go, were ashamed of the daylight. Many of the young girls had on but one garment. The men were a rough-looking lot. The place was lighted with candles in lanterns, the flames of which fluttered with the draughts, and gutters of tallow ran down. What a contrast to the church a few miles away, where the seats were cushioned, and a quartet choir sang, "The Earth is the Lord's," with a magnificent organ accompaniment! What a gulf between these poor souls and those who came in late, not because of poor clothes, but because of fine ones! And yet I suppose they did not perceive it, perhaps theydid not know. But it does seem to me that when men hear that "The Earth is the Lord's," it ought to make them think how small a proportion of earth they will make when mingled with the dust from which they came.

But to return to our meeting. Our man is not from the colleges, but is a rare man (don't misunderstand me. Nothing is so much needed to-day as well-educated men; and I am not one of those who think that it spoils a razor to sharpen it); and he has not spoken long before the tears fall fast, and many a poor fellow who once sang the songs of Zion comes home to his Father's house. Still, they tell our man it is not safe for him to come; but he does; and under great difficulties he builds a church and parsonage. And then he tries to have a reading-room. Naturally he thinks that the man who is making so much money out of the earth will help him. He offers twenty-five dollars, which our minute-man spurns. He is going to give double that out of his meagre salary,and tells the man so; but the man's excuse is that he pays four hundred dollars a year towards the church music. Think of that. And he pays to hear that "The Earth is the Lord's," and still does not hear. The little room is built and furnished without his help, and saves many a poor fellow from drink.

Our man has several other places to preach in, each worse than the other. In one town it is on Sunday afternoon, but he has to wait for the room until the dance is over. In another town he builds a church; and to this day may be seen the bullet-holes near the pulpit, where men have shot at him, hoping to kill their best friend. As he is passing along the street one day with a companion, a man runs across the road from a saloon, plunges a knife into the heart of the man who is walking with our minute-man, and he drops dead in his tracks. Amid such scenes as this our hero still works. He has been the means of stopping more than one strike; and one wouldthink that the rich companies would at least give more than they do to help these men at the front, who would make Pinkerton's men and State troops unnecessary.

In the meantime the men are here. Can we expect that these men, coming from their huts on the Danube,—seeing our fine houses, the American workingmen's children well clothed and attending school,—are going to be content? Do we want them to be? The worst thing that could happen to them and ourselves would be for them to be content with their present condition. No greater danger could menace the Republic than thousands of Europeans coming here to live, and remaining in their present condition. We condemn them for coming and underworking our men; and we condemn them when they want more, and are bound to get it.

Many say, "Keep them out." But there are several things in the way. Rich corporations, mine-owners, and railways arebound to get them. And would you keep the men from which we sprung in overcrowded Europe, while we have a continent with but seventy millions? Is there any real love in that which sends a missionary to Europe to save souls on the Don, that will not let their bodies live on the Hudson? Do we believe that "The Earth is the Lord's"? Let me close this chapter with a quotation from Roger Williams's letter to the Town of Providence:—

"I have only one motion and petition which I earnestly pray the town to lay to heart, as ever they look for a blessing from God on the town, in your families, your corn and cattle, and your children after you. It is this, that after you have got over the black brook of some soul bondage yourselves, you tear not down the bridge after you, by leaving no small pittance for distressed souls that come after you."

We hear much about the dangerous foreigners that come to us, but little about the dangerous native. There is not a type, whether of poverty or ignorance, but what we can match it. Leaving out the negro, we have over ninety per cent Anglo-Saxon in the South. Here we find a strange lot of paradoxes,—the most American, the most ignorant, the most religious, the most superstitious, and the most lawless. Take the lowest class of Crackers, and we have the whole of the above combined, with millions of mountain whites to match. Yet in this same South land are the most gentlemanly, and the most lady-like, and the most hospitable people in the country. The Cracker classes are descendants of the English, but what kind of English? The offscouringsof prison and dockyards, sent over to work on the plantations before slave labor was introduced.

The mountain whites are the descendants of the Scotch-Irish. As many people seem to think this means a Scotch parent on one side and an Irish upon the other, it may be well to state that the Scotch-Irish are the descendants of Scotch people who immigrated to Ireland. But it ought not to be forgotten that the mountain whites are the descendants of Scotch-Irish of two centuries ago, a very different people from the Scotch-Irish of to-day. Here in the mountains we find some three millions, often without schools, and waiting sometimes for years for a funeral sermon after the person has been buried. Towns can be found over seventy years old organized with a court-house and no church.

"Yes," they say, "the Methodists started one some years ago; but the Baptists threw the timber into the Cumberland, and sence then we ain't had no church."

Here one of our minute-men had two horses shot under him, and another missionary was nearly killed.

Here you may find families of twenty and more, living in a wretchedly constructed house, on bacon and corn-meal, hoe-cakes, and dodgers. I started once to stay over night in one of these houses. As we came near to the place, I found that my host was a school-teacher. He had taught twenty-two schools. He meant by this that he had taught that many years. The kitchen was as black as smoke could make it; the butter was stringy, caused by the cows eating cotton-seed; and my seat a plank worn smooth by use, with legs which stuck up through it, which would have been better had they been worn more. I suppose in some way I involuntarily showed my feelings; for the woman noticed it, and said, "Yer oughter put up with one night what we uns have ter all the time."

I said "That's the trouble; I could when I got used to it."

The room I slept in had a hole in the end that you could drive a span of horses through. It had been left for a chimney. As I found out that the day before a rattlesnake had come into the house, and the good woman had to defend herself with the fire-poker, I did not sleep so well as I might. The possibility of a rattler in the dark, and no poker handy, filled me with uneasy thoughts; but as people get up with the sun, the time passed, and I was glad to get back to civilized life.

I noticed that the cotton was ridged up with concave rows of earth, which was covered with rank weeds. This was done to keep the water from running off too quickly. I asked whether sage would not hold the ridges as good as weeds. "Oh, yes!" they said, and it brought a dollar a pound; but they had never thought of that.

Some of the States do not have seventy school-days in the year; and the whole South to-day has not as many publiclibraries as the State of Massachusetts. A man needs perfect health to enjoy some of the pastoral work which he must do if he intends making a success among the mountain whites. One thing should never be forgotten. The poor whites of the mountains were loyal to the Union, and out from this type came the greatest American we have had, Abraham Lincoln.

Here, then, is plenty of material to work on,—families big enough to start a small church, and who do not send to England for pug-dogs for lack of progeny. Here is the rich fields, and here must the race be lifted before the millions of blacks can have a chance. Education must be pushed; and then will come a period of scepticism, for this people are fifty years behind the times.

Several people were sitting on a large veranda; and one man, a preacher lately from Texas, was telling us of his visit. Among other things he spoke of the cyclone-pits, and said, "Seems to me, brother, a man can't have much faith inGod who would go into a pit. I would not; would you?"

"No," replied mine host. "Men seem to me to be losing faith. I once raised a woman up by prayer that three doctors had given up. Aunt Sally, have ye any of that liver invigorator? I kind of feel as if I needed some."

Here was a man who had prayed a woman out of the jaws of death, calling for liver medicine. None of them seemed to see the incongruity of it. One good old deacon that I knew horrified his pastor, who was a strong temperance man, by furnishing the communion with rye whiskey. The old man meant all right; but he had neglected to replenish the wine, and thought something of a spirituous nature was needed, and so brought the whiskey.

It is a fact worth noting, that we have to-day, in the year 1895, millions of men living in conditions as primitive as those of the eighteenth century, while in the same land we are building houses whichare lighted and heated with electricity; that some men worship in houses built of logs, without glass windows, and others worship in buildings that cost millions; that in the former case men have lived in this way for over two hundred years, and the latter less than fifty since the Indian's tepee was the only dwelling in sight; that to-day may be seen the prairie schooner drawn by horses, oxen, or mules, and in one case a horse, a cow, and a mule, the little shanty on wheels, the man sitting in the doorway driving, and his wife cooking the dinner. But so it is. We have all the varieties of habitation, from the dugout of the prairie to the half-million summer cottage at Bar Harbor; and from a single Indian pony, we have all kinds of locomotion, up to the vestibuled palace on wheels.

That I may not seem to be over stating the condition of the mountain whites, and the dangers among our own people, I close with a quotation from Dr. Smart's Saratoga address:—

"Let me tell you of just one experiment of letting a people alone, and its result. Shall we trust that American institutions and American ideas, that the press and schools, will ultimately Americanize them? In the eastern part of Kentucky, in the western part of North Carolina and West Virginia, there is a section of country about the size of New Hampshire and New York,—one of the darkest spots on the map of the South. The people living there have been there for over a hundred years, and are of Scotch-Irish extraction. Whole counties can be found in which there is not a single wagon-road. Most of the houses are of one story, without a window, or only a small one; and the door has to be kept open to let in the light. I have it from good authority that when the first schoolmistress went there to teach, she stipulated that she should have a room with a window in it, and a lock to the door. Very few of the people can read or write. They have no newspapers, no modern appliances for agriculture, no connection with the world outside and around them. This is the land of the 'moonshiner.' They love whiskey, and so they manufacture it. The pistol and bowie-knife are judge and sheriff. Bloodshed is common, and barbarism a normal state of society. These men were not slaveholders in the times before the war. They were as loyal to the Union as any others who fought for the old flag, and they served in the Union army when they got a chance.When Bishop Smith in a large and influential meeting spoke of them, he touched the Southern and Kentucky pride, especially when he pointed out what a moral and spiritual blot they were upon the South. Now, why are they there a hundred years behind us in every respect? Why are they sunk so low? Simply because they have been let alone. They are just as much separated from this land, without any share in its marvellous progress, as if a Chinese wall had been built around them. They have been let alone; and American institutions, American schools, and the American press, have flowed around them and beyond them without effect."

Until a few years ago I knew little or nothing of mill-towns or lumber-camps. I had seen a saw-mill that cut its thousand feet a day when running, and it was generally connected with some farm through which ran a stream. It was a very innocent affair. But in 1889 I saw for the first time the great forests of pine, and became acquainted with part of the immense army of lumbermen. Michigan alone had at that time some forty thousand; Wisconsin has as many; Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana are now engaged in a vast work; and when we add the great States of Oregon and Washington, with their almost illimitable forests, we feel that we are speaking within bounds when we say an immense army.

The one great difficulty of the problem is the transitory character of the work—like Count Rumford's stoves, if they could only have been patented and money made out of them, every house would use them; so if the lumber village had come to stay, many a church would have gone in and built. But more than once a man in authority has said, "Oh, I have looked that field over, and it won't amount to much." No one who has not had experience in the field can form any adequate idea of its vastness or its crying needs. The one great trouble of the whole question is the massing of so many men away from the softening influence of wife and mother. It is unnatural; and nature's laws, as sacred as the Decalogue, are broken in unnatural crimes, and sins unknown to the common run of men.

The lumber business may be divided into three distinct classes of workers,—the mill-men, the camp-men, and the river-men. The last are the smallest company, but the hardest to reach. Theyflit from stream to river, from the river to the lake, from scenes of sylvan beauty to the low groggery—and worse. Their temporary home is often made of blackened logs papered withPolice Gazettes, which come in vast numbers, and form the largest part of their not very select reading. Books of the Zola type, but without their literary excellence, are legion. Good books and good literature would be a boon in these camps.

To give you an idea of the rapid march of the lumber-camp, come with me into the primeval forest. It is a winter day. The snow is deep, and the lordly pines are dressed like brides in purest white; one would think, to look at their pendent branches, that Praxiteles and all his pupils had worked for a century in sculpturing these lovely forms. Not a sound is heard save our sleigh-bells, or some chattering squirrel that leaps lightly over the powdery snow; a gun fired would bring down a harmless avalanche. It is a sight of unsurpassed beauty innature's privacy; but alas, how soon the change!

An army of brawny men invade the lovely scene. Rude houses of logs are quickly erected; and men with axe and saw soon change the view, and with peavey and cant-hook the logs are loaded and off for the rollway. Inside the largest house are bunks, one above another; two huge stoves with great iron cylinders, one at each end, give warmth; while in picturesque confusion, socks and red mackinaws and shirts hang steaming by the dozens. There is a cockloft, where the men write their letters, and rude benches, where they sit and smoke and tell yarns till bedtime. In a few weeks at the farthest the grand old forest is a wreck; a few scrubby oaks or dwindling beech-trees are all that are left. The buildings rot down, the roofs tumble in, and a few camp-stragglers trying to get a living out of the stumpy ground are all that are left; and solitude reigns supreme.

On stormy days hundreds of the mengo into the nearest village, and sin revels in excess. In many a small town, mothers call their little ones in from the streets, which are soon full of men drunken and swearing, ready for fight or worse. At such times they hold the village in a reign of terror, and often commit crimes of a shocking nature, and no officer dares molest them. A stranger coming at such a time would need to conduct himself very discreetly or he would get into trouble. A volume might be filled with the outrageous things done in these small lumber-towns. Ireland is not the only place that suffers from absentee landlords.

The condition of the children is pitiable, brought up in an atmosphere of drunkenness and debauchery; swearing as natural as breathing; houses packed so closely that you can reach across from one window to another. The refuse is often emptied between the houses; diseases of all kinds flourish, and death is ever busy. Eight or ten nationalities are often found in these towns,—men who cannot spelltheir names, and men who went to St. Paul's and admired Canon Liddon, or New York men that went to Beecher's church.

Here a house which cost less than a hundred dollars, and inside of it an organ costing one hundred and twenty-five dollars, and a forty-dollar encyclopædia. The next house is divided by stalls like a stable, with bed in one, stove in another, and kitchen in the third. With a population as mixed as this, and in constant flux, what, you ask, can the church do? I answer, much, very much, if you can only get a church there; but when the church which gives much more than any other gives but a quarter of a cent per day per member, is it any wonder that hundreds of churchless lumber-towns call in vain for help from the sanctuary? Some small villages can be found where every family is living in unlawful relations.

Now, remember this, the lumberman is made of the same clay that we are, and it is his environment that brings to the frontthe worst that is in him. He is reached by practical Christianity as easily as any other man. The shame and reproach belong to us for neglecting him, and there is no other way that we so dishonor him whom we call Master as to say his commands are not practicable. Is it asking too much from the rich men who get their money by the toil of these men, that out of their millions they should spend thousands for the moral welfare of those who make them rich? And yet too often they do not even know their own foremen, and in many cases have never visited the property they own.

I once asked a rich lumber-man for a subscription for missions, saying I was sorry he was not at the church when I took up my collection. "Jinks! I am glad I was not there," he said; "I gave away ten dollars Saturday night."

Now, this man had been cutting off from his land for thirty years, and had just sold a quarter of a million dollars' worth of it, and still had land left. Buton the other hand, be it known that the men in these villages who make no profession of religion actually give dollar for dollar with the Christian church-members to sustain the frontier churches. Saloon-keepers, and often Roman Catholics, help to support the missionary church.

The mission churches of the lumber regions are like springs in the desert, but for which the traveller would die on his way; and thousands of church-members scattered from ocean to ocean were born of the Spirit in some one of these little churches that did brave work in a transient town.

To do work in these places aright, one must drop all denominational nonsense,—be as ready to pray and work with the dying Roman Catholic as with a member of his own church, and do as I did,—lend the church building to the priest, because disease in the town would not permit of using the private houses at the time, and so help to fill up thegap between us and the old mother that nursed us a thousand years.

In every new town, in every camp, should be a standing notice, "No cranks need apply."

Here is a brawny man who does not like the church. He hates the name of preacher, and threatens that he had better not call at his house. Scarlet fever takes his children down. The despised preacher, armed with a basket of good things, raps at the door. Pat opens it. "Good-morning, Pat. I heard your little ones were sick, and my wife thought your wife would have her hands full, and she has sent a few little things—not much, but they will help a little, I hope."

The tears are in Pat's eyes. "Come in, Elder, if you are not afraid, for we have scarlet fever here."

"That is the very reason I came, my boy;" and Pat is won. The very man that swore the hardest because the elder was near, now says, "Don't swear, boys; there's the elder."

Yes; and when men have heard that the new preacher has helped in the house stricken with small-pox or typhoid, he has the freedom of the village, or the camp, and is respected. And so the village missionary does some good in the mill-town. But what is one man among so many? See this little place with less than five hundred population. Two thousand men come there for their mail, and the average distance to the next church is over twenty miles; and one man is totally inadequate to the great work before him.

These villages and camps ought to have good libraries, a hall well lighted, innocent amusements, lectures, and entertainments, and in addition to this, an army of men carrying good books and visiting all the camps; and there is nothing to hinder but the lack of money, and the lack of will to use it in those who have abundance. I lately passed through a lumber-town of seven thousand inhabitants. Four or five millionnaires lived there. One had put up an $80,000 training-school,another a memorial building costing $160,000. This is the other extreme. But up to date the lumber-regions have been shamefully neglected, and thousands of boys and girls are growing up to drift to our great cities and form the dangerous classes, fitted for it by their training. It is better to clear the water-sheds than to buy filters, and the cheapest policeman of the city is the missionary in the waste places of our land.

Some years ago it is said that a man lost his pig, and in searching for it he found it by hearing its squealing. The pig had fallen in a hole; and in getting it out, the man saw the rich copper ore which led to the opening of the Calumet and Hecla mines, and more recently the Tamarack. More ore per ton goes into the lake from the washing than comes out of most mines. So rich is this ore that very few fine mineral specimens are found in the mines. Millions of money have been expended in developing them, and millions more have come out of them.

With such richness one would expect to find the usual deviltry that abounds in mining regions; but such is not the case. In the early days, the mines were workedon Sunday in the Keweenaw region; but through the resolute stand of two Scotchmen, who would not work on Sunday, the work was stopped on Saturday night at twelve o'clock, and resumed again Monday at twelveA.M.And this was found to be a benefit all round, as it generally is. I knew of a salt-well where the man thought it must be kept going all the time; but one Sunday he let it rest, and found that, instead of coming up in little spits, it accumulated, so that, as he said, it came "ker-plump, ker-plump."

When the little church was first started in Calumet, the projectors of it were asked how much money they would want from the society to help them. The answer was, a check for two hundred dollars for home missions. Knowing this, I was not surprised to find good churches, good schools, good society, a good hotel, and as good morals as you can find anywhere. Not a drop of liquor is sold in Calumet. This shows what may be done by starting right; and there is no occasionfor a mining-camp to be any worse except through criminal neglect of the owners.

We pass on to the new mines farther west, and what do we find? Saloons packed twenty in a block, dance-houses with the most degrading attachments, scores of young lives sacrificed to man's lust, the streets dangerous after dark, and not pleasant to be on at any time. The local newspaper thus heralded a dog-fight at the theatre, "As both dogs are in good condition, it will prove one of the most interesting fights ever seen on this range."

Here is the copy of an advertisement: "At the Alhambra Theatre. Prize-fight, thirty rounds or more. Prize, $200,00. Don't mistake this for a hippodrome. Men in fine condition. Plucky. Usual price."

Here is another: "Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, balloon ascension. A lady from the East will go up hanging by her toes. At a great height she will dropdeeds of lots, the lucky possessor only to write his or her name to own the lot. Persons coming from a distance, and buying lots, will have railroad money refunded. Men leaving work, and buying, their wages paid. Everybody come and have a good time. Remember the date's Saturday, Sunday, and Monday."

Here pandemonium reigned. What a place to raise a family! Thousands of little children were growing up under these awful conditions. I have gone up the lake more than once when innocent young girls were on the boat, expecting to find places at the hotel, only to meet with temptation and ruin; some committing suicide, some becoming more reckless than the brutes that duped them.

The harbor could be reached only by daylight, and with vessels of light draft; and no sooner were they unloaded than they steamed off again, not to return for a week. Thus there was no way for these unfortunate girls to get back if they wished, for it was a dense forest for thirtymiles to the nearest railway point, in the meanwhile, worse than death came to those who fell into the clutches of such fiends in human shape.

One man, the chief owner there, threatened the bold rascals; but they said they would build their house upon a raft and defy him. He said, "I will cut you loose." They snapped their fingers at him, burnt his hotel, and shot him. Did this go on in the dark? No; the Chicago and Minneapolis and St. Paul's newspapers wrote it up. I spoke of it until warned I must not tell such awful things: it would be too shocking.

Into such awful places our minute-man goes, and takes his family too. It is hard work at first, but little by little sin must give way before righteousness. It is strange that Christian men and women can draw incomes from these mines, and feel no duty towards the poor men who work for them. I met one such man upon the steamer coming from Europe. He had been over twicethat season. He had made his thousands, and was going back with his family to travel in Egypt, and leave his children with their nurses at Cairo.

He admitted everything I told him about the condition of things on his own property; and in answer as to whether he would help, said, "No; it's none of my funeral." How any man could walk those streets, and see fair young girls drunk at nineA.M., and in company with some of the worst characters that ever disgraced humanity, and not feel his obligations to his Lord and fellow-man, is more than I can understand.

The awful cheapness of human life, the grim jokes upon the most solemn things, could only be matched in the French Revolution. I saw in one store, devoted to furniture and picture-frames, a deep frame with a glass front, and inside a knotted rope, and written underneath, "Deputy-sheriff's necktie, worn by —— for murdering Mollie ——" on such a date. This was for the sheriff's parlor.

Hard times have made a great change since I walked those streets. The roar of traffic has given place to the howl of hungry wolves that have prowled among the deserted shanties in midday in search of food; and the State has had to supply food and clothing to the poor, while my man, who had made his thousands, was studying the cuneiform inscription, in Egypt. It ought to make him think, when he sees the mummies of dead kings being shipped to England to raise turnips, that some day he will have a funeral all his own.

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