AFTER A STORMAFTER A STORM, GUTHRIE, OKLAHOMA TERRITORY.Page 306.
The cyclone, however, is no joke. Nevertheless, it performs some queer antics. One cyclone struck a house, and left nothing but the floor and a tin cuspidore. The latter stood by a stove which weighed several hundredweight, and which was smashed to atoms.
In another house a heavy table was torn to pieces, while the piano-cover in the same room was left on the piano. In one house all had gone into the cellar, when they remembered the sleeping baby. A young girl sprang in, and got the baby; and just as she stepped off, the house went, and she floated into the cellar like a piece of thistle-down. A school-teacher was leaving school, when she was thrown to the ground, and every bit of clothing was stripped from her, leaving her without a scratch.
FIRST CHURCH AND PARSONAGE, ALVA, OKLAHOMA TERRITORYFIRST CHURCH AND PARSONAGE, ALVA, OKLAHOMA TERRITORY.Page 307.
Perhaps the most remarkable escape was a few years ago in Kansas City. When a young school-teacher reached home, her mother said, "Why did you not bring your young brother?" She hastened back; and as she reached the room where her brother was, she grasped him around the waist, and jumped out of the window just as the building was struck. She was carried two blocks, and dropped without injury to either of them. These things are hard to believe, but no one will be lost who does not believe them.
But to return to our journey. We had three churches to dedicate in three days, two on one day. And here let me say, a church could be organized every day in the year, and not trespass on any one's work. We could see the little building loom up on the horizon, appearing twice its size, as things do on the prairie with nothing to contrast them with, for the houses were almost invisible. The place was crowded, so that the wagon-seats were brought in; and a very affecting sight itwas to see the communion-wine brought in a ketchup bottle. The people were good, but very poor, although nearly all owned horses, for in that country this is no sign of wealth.
After a few hours' drive, we came to our second church. The prairie here was broken up by small cañons, interspersed with streams, and was quite pretty. A grocery and a blacksmith-shop, the latter opened Tuesday and Thursday only, comprised the village. A small house where the proprietor of the store lived, and the church, were all the buildings one could see. The people were very cordial and intelligent. The daughters of mine host were smart, handsome girls, that could do almost everything,—ride a wild broncho, and shoot a rattler's head off with a bullet, and yet were modest, well-dressed, and good-mannered young ladies.
I was taken down stairs cut out of the clay, and covered with carpet, into a room the sides of which were the cañon. It looked out over the great expanse. Thebeds were lifted up so as to form walls around the room, and take up less space.
After a bountiful supper, I looked at the church, which stood on a sightly hill. I wondered where the people were coming from, but was told it would be filled. It was on a Thursday night. I looked over the prairie; and in all directions I saw dark spots in motion, that grew larger. I said, "They appear as if rising from the ground."
"Well," said mine host, "most of them are."
By eight o'clock three hundred were there, most of them bringing chairs; by 8.30, there were four hundred; at 9 o'clock, by actual count, five hundred people crowded in and around the door of the church. It was a sight never to be forgotten, to see this great company start off across the prairie in the full moonlight. I spoke to some of them, saying, "Why, you were out at the afternoon meeting."—"Yes," said the man, "I should have come if we had to ride a cow all the wayfrom Enid." This was a place thirty miles away. This church was built by the people, one man working for a dollar a week and his dinner, the farmers working his farm for him while he was at the building.
AT A CHURCH DEDICATIONAT A CHURCH DEDICATION.Page 310.
The church had not yet received its chairs, and was seated with boards laid across nail-kegs.
Here our minute-man preaches in houses so small that the chairs had to be put outside, and the people packed so thickly that they touched him. It ought to touch the Christian reader to help more. We had fifty miles to ride the next day, into a county town. We found it all alive; for nearly four hundred lawsuits were on the docket, mostly for timber stealing.
"Poor fellows," I thought, "Uncle Sam ought to give you the timber for coaxing you here."
However, the judge was a fine, well-read man, and let them off easy. Deputy-sheriffs by the score were stalking about,with their deadly revolvers sticking out from under their short coats.
The best hotel was crowded, and I had for that night to sleep in another one. The house was old, and had been taken down and brought here from Kansas and rebuilt. The doors up-stairs once had glass in them; rough boards covered the broken places. One door was made up entirely of old sign-boards, which made it appear like so many Chinese characters, such as Pat said he could not read, but thought he could play it if he had his flute with him.
I was ushered into a room, and requested to put the light out when I was through with it; meaning I was to place it outside, which I did not do. But what a room! The wainscoting did not reach the floor. Small bottles of oil, with feathers in them, looked awfully suspicious. There was no washstand or water. The pillow looked like a little bag of shot, and was as dirty as the bed-clothes. The door was fastened with a little woodenbutton, which hung precariously on a small nail.
I took off my coat, and put it on again, and finally lay down on the bed, after placing something between my head and that pillow.
I had to go several blocks in the morning to find a place to wash, so dirty were the towels down-stairs. I was then given a house to myself, which consisted of a single room, eight by ten, or ten by twelve, I forget which. It was originally the church and parsonage. Here the church was organized, and the first wedding took place.
A fine church, the largest and handsomest in the Territory, was next door, and was to be dedicated the next day, which would be Sunday. This building had been brought all the way from Kansas, and the very foundation-stones carried with it, and put up in better shape than ever. Three times next day it was crowded, even to the steps outside, many coming twenty miles to attend. One lady came twice who livedsix miles away, and said, "Oh, how I wish I could come again to-night! But I have six cows to milk, and it would mean twelve miles to ride there and back, and then six miles to go home; yet I would if I could. Oh! sometimes I think I should die but for God and my little girl."
As the people came in, I said to myself, "Where have I seen these ladies before,—pink and lemon-colored silk dresses, pointed buff shoes, ostrich feathers in their enormous hats,—oh! I have it, in the daily hints from Paris."
The men wore collars as ugly and uncomfortable as they could be made, which made them keep their chins up; and right by their sides were women whose hats looked like those we see in boxes outside the stores, your choice for five cents; there were four or five little sunburned children, some of whom were in undress uniform, and their fathers in homespun and blue jeans.
Close by in the cañons crouched a fugitivefrom justice. Two men started out to take him, but came home without their guns. Then a brave, cool-headed man of experience went, and slept in the timber where our desperado lay concealed, thinking to catch him in the morning before the robber awoke; but while he was rubbing his own sleepy eyes the words, sharp as a rifle report, came, "Hold up your hands!" And number three came home minus his shooting-irons.
Oklahoma differs in many ways from other frontiers. You find greater extremes, but you also find a higher type intellectually. TheCenturyandHarper'sand the popular magazines sell faster, and more of them, than thePolice Gazette.
On the other hand, settleden masseas it has been, the church has not begun to reach the people except in county towns, where, as usual, it is too often, but not always, overdone. In one case I found a man who was trying to organize with one member; and in another a man actually built a church before a single memberof his denomination was there, and there were none there when I left. In some cases I found our minute-man an old soldier; and more than once for weeks at a time he had to sleep in his clothes, and keep his rifle by his side.
In some cases the Government had located a county town, and the railway company had chosen another site close by. Then the fight began. The railway at first ignored the Government's site, and ran their trains by; built a station on their own site, and would have no other. Then the people on the Government site tore up the tracks, and incendiarism became so common that the insurance agent came and cancelled all the policies except the church and parsonage where our minute-man stood guard. This was done in several places, and the end is not yet.
Now, to the general reader, everything seems in a hopeless muddle, and he is glad he is not living there. But remember this. It is better than some older settlements, where men had to give eightybushels of wheat for a pair of stogy boots, as they did in Ohio, and fight the Indian as well as the wolf from the door, or in Kansas forty years ago, where corn brought five cents a bushel, and men had to go a hundred miles to the mill. In order to show the hopeful side, I will give an illustration.
I was to speak at a meeting in Illinois. My way was through Missouri, where spiritual and civilized prosperity has not kept pace with her wealth and opportunities. I was entertained in a mansion built sixty years ago. The city, of sixteen thousand inhabitants, could hardly be matched in New England,—many fine streets, shaded with grand old elms; the roads bricked and well graded; the houses beautiful, artistic, and surrounded with lovely lawns; a college, a ladies' seminary, and many fine schools and churches.
The lady of the house said, "My mother crossed the mountains many times to Washington, to live with her husband, who represented the State there." Atlast she had to take two carriages and two horses, and it became too hard work, when her husband built the house which is still a beautiful home, with magnificent elms, planted by its original owner, shading it. In that day the rattlesnake glided about the doorway, the Indians roamed everywhere, and the wolves actually licked the frosting off the cakes that were set to cool on the doorstep, while the Indians stole the poor woman's dinner who lived close by. To-day a park adorns the front, given by the generous owner to the city; and where the wolves and the Indians roamed, lives the daughter of Governor Duncan, with her husband and family, in one of the finest cities of its size in the world. Nowhere in all this wide world can the advance of civilization during the last fifty years be found on so large a scale as here on the American frontiers.
As one travels over our country to-day, one will see as lowly homes, as acute poverty, and as congested a population, as he can find anywhere in Europe, with this great difference,—our people are filled with hope. There is a buoyancy about American life that is lacking in Europe. It is, as Emerson expressed it, a land of opportunity; and this difference is everything to the immigrant and the native pioneer. And this means much to us. The great majority of immigrants are from the most thrifty of the poor.
I have in mind now a family, who once lived in a large city. It took all the strength of husband and wife to make both ends meet; but by dint of rigid economy, they saved enough to take them across the water in the steerage of a greatship. This couple, with their little ones, found themselves at the end of their journey on a homestead, but with scarcely a cent left. The people around them were very poor, some of them living the first winter on potatoes and salt, not having either bread or milk. But in some way they managed to live, cheered by the hope that any move must be upward, and in the near future comfort, and farther on affluence. The same economy that saved the passage-money kept a little for a rainy day, no matter how hard the times were.
When I became acquainted with them they owned a large farm, a small log house and stable, several cows, horses, pigs, and poultry. Around the house was a neat picket-fence, every picket being cut out and made with axe and jack-knife during the long winter months. The vegetable garden was well-stocked; but what appealed to me most was the richness and the variety of the flower-garden,—roses, pansies, wallflowers, sweet-pease, hollyhocks, and mignonette. It was truly afeast for the eyes. The little house and the milk-room, the latter made of lilliputian logs, were dazzling white by the repeated coats of whitewash. The whole formed a pretty picture; and for so new a country it was more than a picture,—it was an education for every settler near them.
I tried to fancy my host's feelings as he thought of the sharp struggle in the old land, and as he looked over his broad acres now, richer than the farmers he once envied as they drove in on their stout cobs to market.
Near by was another home. Here, too, were fine gardens, and another old couple out of the grip of poverty, which well-nigh killed them in the struggle. This good lady was once the only white woman on a large island, which to-day is laid out in sections, has towns, villages, schoolhouses, and churches, and every farm occupied. The old couple had an unmarried son left; and he, too, was about to quit the parent nest, and start a homefor himself. And now I must tell about the wedding.
But first a word about the climate, soil, and conditions, in order to understand what follows. The whole country had once been forest, the home of the Hurons, Chippewas, and other tribes of Indians. The Jesuit had roamed here, suffered, and often become a martyr. Some time in the past, either from Indian fires or carelessness, the forest caught fire, and tens of thousands of acres of choice maples and birch were burnt down to the very roots. The soil is clay, but so charged with lime that you can plough while the water follows the horses in the furrows in rivulets that dash against their fetlocks. This in clay, as a rule, would mean utter ruin until frost came, and the ground thawed again. But not so here. As the ground becomes dry, it pulverizes easily under the harrow.
This section was subject to storms that filled the narrow streams until they became dangerous torrents, sweeping all before them, and sometimes making ajam of logs twenty miles long. One spring I noticed that all the bridges were new, and that they had all been built some four feet higher than before. I was told that the spring freshets had swept everything before them, and had been so unusually high that the change of level became necessary.
It was the night before the wedding, and I was preaching in a little schoolhouse that held about twenty people. It was a very hot night for that latitude, and every one was depressed with the heat. A great black cloud covered the heavens, except an ugly streak of dirty yellow in the west. It was not long before the yellow glare was swallowed up by the night; and then from out of the dense black canopy shot streaks of vivid lightning, forked, chained, and of every variety, and "long and loud the thunder bellowed."
We were not long in closing that meeting. All that rode in our wagon had more than two miles to go. The horses were terrified, but to those who enjoy a thunder-stormit was sublime. We crossed one bridge in the nick of time; for it went thundering down as the back wheel bumped against the road, only just clear of it.
One man was asleep in his shanty, and did not know of the storm until his little dog, tired of swimming around the room, climbed on the bed, and licked his face. The man awoke, and put his hand out of the clothes and felt the water. He sprang up and lit a lamp, and found two feet of water in his room. In the morning it had run off and taken all the bridges again.
And this was the wedding morn. The bridegroom had been away for the ring, but had not returned. We were getting anxious for him when we saw two horses coming on the jump, and a wagon that was as often off the ground as on it, as it thumped along the macadamized road of a new country, with stones as large as a cocoanut, five and six feet apart; but, as the settlers said, it was good to what it once was, and I believed it too.
He came in splashed with mud; but although he had been without sleep, victorious love shone in those light blue eyes, and with his fair complexion and rich rosy cheeks he was the personification of a Viking after victory. He had covered four times the distance on account of bridges carried away.
A hasty breakfast, and off we started, forgetting, until we were almost there, the bridge which had gone down the night before. We turned back to find another bridge afloat and in pieces; but, luckily, the stream had become shallow, and after the horses had danced a cotillon, we succeeded in getting across.
As we came to the farm where the fair young bride was waiting, we found the fields under water nearly to the house. I hardly knew how we should reach it. But the bridegroom and the horses had been there before; and, as the water was only a few inches deep, we were soon at the house. The youngsters were all in great spirits. This was the first wedding in thefamily; and I remember how awestruck the children seemed when the bride came out, looking queenly in her white robes, but soon recovered themselves as they recognized their own sister.
The wedding over, then came the dinner. Who would have thought, as they passed that farm, of the world of happiness in that little log house? And the dinner,—a huge sirloin, which made us sing, "Oh, the roast beef of old England!" Precious little had these people had in old England; but now, besides the mighty sirloin, there were capons, ducks, lamb and green pease, mint sauce, delicious wild strawberries, damson pie, and raspberry-wine vinegar for drink.
Thank God for the possibilities of our glorious land to those who are frugal and industrious.
After dinner we sang "The Mistletoe Bough," "To the West, to the West," "Far, far, upon the Sea," "Home, Sweet Home," and "America," the youngsters singing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," andsome of the old ones "God save the Queen," to the same tune.
The young couple had the only spare room in the house, and the rest of us went up-stairs into a room that was the size of the house. There father and mother hung a sheet up, and went to bed. Some grain-sacks made the next partition; and a young student and myself took the next bed. Golden seed-corn hung over my head from the rafters; oats, pease, and wheat were in bins on either side of the bed.
To-day that one family has become many families. The old people go to church in a covered buggy. The youngest are on the home farm, and live with the parents, and lovingly tend those two brave hearts who now sit content in their golden age, waiting for the call to that better land, where the Elder Brother has prepared a mansion for them and a marriage supper, with everlasting joy.
Transcriber's note:Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error.The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs.
Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error.
The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs.