William George Puddefoot

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Take your map and find those States which the stream of immigration has passed by, and in every case you find them behind the times. Strange how prejudice warps our vision! Jefferson said, "Would to God the Atlantic were a sea of flame;" and Washington said, "I would we were well rid of them, except Lafayette." Strange words for a man who would not have been an American had his ancestors not been immigrants. Hamilton, the great statesman, was an immigrant. Albert Gallatin the financier, Agassiz the scientist, and thousands of illustrious names, make a strong list. ”

“ A grand sight is the forest primeval when the birds fill all its arches with song, or we sweep through them to the music of sleigh-bells. A pleasant sight is the farmer, surrounded by his wife and children, with well-kept farm, ample barns, and well-fed stock. But what wild desolation once reigned where now these fine farms are seen! The great trees stretched on for hundreds of miles. The hardy settler came with axe and saw and slow-paced oxen, cleared a little space, and built a log hut. ”

“ Nature was revelling in her fullest dress, making a symphony in green,—all shades, from the pale tint of the chinquapin and persimmon, to the deep indigo of the long-leafed pine, and the tender purple green of the distant hills,—a perfect extravaganza of vegetable growth.
The weather was delicious; from the south and east came the ocean air, and from the north and west the balsam-laden ozone of the mountains, every turn in [92] the road revealing new beauties. ”

“ We should have lost the whole Pacific slope but for our minute-man, the glorious and heroic Whitman, who not only carried his wagon over the Rockies, but came back through stern winter and past hostile savages, and by hard reasoning with Webster and others secured that vast possession for us. As a nation we owe a debt we can never repay to the soldiers of the cross at the front, who have endured (and endure to-day) hardships of every kind. They are cut off from the society which they love; often they live in dugouts, sometimes in rooms over a saloon ”

“ 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. [219] "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." ”

“ As the train turns a curve we lose sight of its red lights, and feel we have lost our best friend. A little boy, the sole human being in sight, is carrying a diminutive mail-bag. The sidewalk is only about thirty-six feet long. Then among the stumps we wind our slippery way, and at last reach the only frame house for miles. To the north and east we see a wilderness, with here and there a hardy settler's hut, sometimes a wagon with a cover and the stump of a stove-pipe sticking through the top. ”

“ The finding of a home is one of the worst of hardships. Let us start with the missionary to the front; our way lies through a rich valley. The moon is at her full, and we pass fine farms. The scent of the hay floats in at the car windows; fine orchards surround the houses, while great flocks of sheep are seen feeding, and herds resting, comfortably chewing the cud.
But morning comes, and we must change cars. We are in a city of 80,000 people, with 498 factories with 15,000 employees, where a few years ago a few log houses only were in sight. As we change cars we change company too. ”

“ In one town visited, a county town at that, the roughs had buried a man alive, leaving his head above ground, and then preached a mock funeral sermon, remarking as they left him, "How natural he looks!"
As the nearest minister is miles away, the missionary has to travel many miles in all weathers to the dying and dead. Visiting the sick, and sitting up with those with dangerous diseases, soon cause the worst of men not only to respect but to love the missionary; and no man has the moulding of a community so much in his hands as the courageous and faithful servant of Christ. ”

“ As the waves of the sea cast up all sorts of things, so the waves of humanity that flood the frontiers cast up all sorts and conditions of men. To go into a sod house and find a theological library belonging to the early part of the century, or to hear coming up through the ground a composition by Beethoven played on a piano, is a startling experience; so are some of the questions and assertions that one hears in a frontier Sunday-school. ”

“ In every hedgerow, and within a stone's throw of nearly every country home, will be found partridges, wild pigeons, and all sorts of small game, with plenty of foxes to keep it in reasonable bounds, while every household has a number of hounds and curs for the foxes. But with all the varied beauty of the scene, the New Englander constantly misses the well-kept lawn,—for here bare ground always takes the place of grass,—and there are no village green and fine shaded roads, and that general neatness which distinguishes the rural scenes of "the Pilgrim land." ”

“ The South American republics respond in return.
The hardy pioneer, ever on the move, explores well nigh impracticable routes in search of precious metals. The inventive mechanic must respond with an engine that can climb anywhere; and in almost inaccessible mountain eyries the eagle is disturbed by the shriek of the locomotive, and the bighorn must take refuge with the bison in the National Park. The news of new mines flies around the world, fortunes are made and lost in a day, and the destinies of nations determined. A great crop starts railways, steamships. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a church also, which, with no credit to itself,—for, brethren, only sink the well, pipe it, keep an open flow, and it is God who, from his bare heights and the rivers opened on them, will supply the water,—it is a church which has enjoyed the great blessedness of contributing its part to every good thing in a growing city which has grown in the thirty years from fifteen hundred to sixty thousand souls. ”

“ The minister starts in with a brave heart, and commences to underbrush and cut down the giant sins that have grown on such fat soil. But as they come down, he, too, finds the thistles and mulleins; jealousies, sectarian and otherwise, come in and hinder him, and it is a long, weary way to the well-filled church, the thriving Sunday-school, and the snug parsonage.
Often he fares like the early farmer. The pioneer preacher is seldom seen in the pretty church, but a man of a later [267] generation. The old man is alive yet, and perhaps his good wife ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here is a girl dressed in the picturesque costume of Western Europe, and here a man with a great peak to his hat, an enormous long coat, his beard half way down his breast, a china pipe as big as a small teacup in his mouth, his wife like a bundle of meal tied in the middle, with immense earrings, and an old colored handkerchief over her head. ”

“ 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? ”

“ We are living in rushing times. I have just read in a paper that one town in Ontonagon County, one year and a half old, has three thousand inhabitants, forty-five saloons, twelve hotels, two papers, forty-eight stores, two opera houses, and an electric plant! With villages springing up in every county, and [275] the immense onflowing tide from foreign shores, the lone missionary on the frontier ofttimes would despair, but for the promise of the Master, the miracles of the past, and the joy of hope's bright harvest in the future. ”

“ The men are all provided with pocket-pistols that are often more deadly than a revolver. At the first station—a little mouse-colored affair, sometimes without a ticket-agent—we notice the change. The stumps are thick in the fields; many of the houses have the building-paper fluttering in the wind; the streets are of sawdust. You can see the flags growing up from the swamp beneath. The saloons are numerous; and as the train is a mixed one in more senses than one, abundant time is given while shunting the freight-cars for the men to reload their pocket-pistols and get gloriously drunk. ”

“ 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 spell [249] their names, and men who went to St. Paul's and admired Canon Liddon, or New York men that went to Beecher's church. ”

“ After all the hopes and fears and toil of the summer, the farmer's most beautiful sight is to see the last great load safe in the barn, the stock fattening on the rich, sweet aftermath, the golden fruit in the orchard, and the big, red, harvest moon smiling over all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sleighs look, in the distance, like a little dog-train. Now you are gliding over a mile of ice, smooth as glass, while all around it is heap upon heap; then you pass through gaps cut by the road-makers, who have left little pine-trees to guide you ”

“ The frontiers of America will yet change the world. When in the not distant future hundreds of millions cover the great continent, dotted with schools and churches, and an intelligent population speaking one language, and with other millions in Africa, Australia, and the islands of the sea, using the same language, the time will come when they will arbitrate for the world, and war shall be no more. Long before the Atlantic cable was stretched across the ocean, millions of heartstrings were vibrating from this land to all parts of Europe ”