Heman White Chaplin

“ It was natural to recall that we were come to celebrate the birth of an uncommon man. It was natural to suggest that he was no creature of story or ancient legend, floating about in the imagination of an ignorant people, but a real man like us, of flesh and blood. ”

“ The books which lie before the Doctor seem all to, deal with a Romish Saint, and, of all the saints in the world, Saint Patrick. In full sight of his own steeple, from which the bell is even now counting out the sixty-nine years of a good brother just passed away in hope of a Protestant heaven,—tolling out the years for the village housewives, who pause and count; under such hallowing influences,—beneath, as it were, the very shadow of the Missionary Map and the Pauline Chart, and with a gray Jordan rushing down through a scarlet Palestine directly before him, suggestive of all good things ”

“ Across the street, and a little way down the road, is the square white house with a hopper-roof, which an elderly, childless widow, departing this life some forty years ago, thoughtfully left behind her for a parsonage. It is a pleasant, home-like house, open to sun and air, and the pleasantest of all its rooms is the minister's study. ”

“ The dedication of the little book strikes his imagination: "To the Members of the Confraternity of Saint Patrick, established at the London Oratory, who, with the children of the saint in many lands, are the enduring witnesses of the faith which seeth Him who is invisible." ”

“ On Monday and Thursday afternoons a troop of black-eyed, jet-haired Portuguese women, half of whom are named Mary Jesus, flock in to a sewing-school. On Tuesdays and Fridays American, Scotch, and Irish women, from the tenement-houses of the quarter, fill the settees, to learn the use of the needle, to enjoy a little peace, and to hear reading and singing; and occasionally the general public of the vicinity are invited to an entertainment. ”

“ Over the desk is a map of the Holy Land, with mountain elevations.
The walls of the room are for the most part hidden by books. The shelves are simple affairs of stained maple, covered heavily with successive coats of varnish, cracked, as is that of the desk, by age and heat. The contents are varied. Of religious works there are the Septuagint, in two fat little blue volumes, like Roman candles; Conant's Genesis; Hodge on Romans; Hackett on Acts, which the minister's small children used to spell out as "Jacket on Acts;" ”

“ Still, people continue to file in: laborers, Portuguese sewing-women, two or three firemen in long-tailed coats and silver buttons, from Hook and Ladder Six, in the next block; gross-looking women, habitués of the Mission, with children; women who are habitués of no mission; prosperous saloon-keepers; one of the councilmen of the ward,—he is a saloon-keeper too. ”

“ Would it not be a good plan to hold out the helping hand, in the form of a Saint Patrick's Day festival, with an address, for example, upon Saint Patrick's life, with Irish songs and Irish readings? Such an entertainment would draw; it would keep a good many people out of the saloons. ”

“ Nearly opposite is Sarah Ward's New Albion dance-hall. It opens directly from the street There is an orchestra of three pieces, one of which plays in tune. That calm and collected woman whom you may see rocking in the window, or sitting behind the bar, sewing or knitting, is not a city missionary, come to instruct the women about her; it is Sarah Ward, the proprietress. She knows the Bible from end to end. She was a Sunday-school teacher once; she had a class of girls; she spoke in prayer-meetings ”

“ There are a good many works, too, of general literature, but rather oddly selected, as will happen where one makes up his library chiefly by writing book-notices: Peter Bayne's Essays; Coleridge; the first volume of Masson's Life of Milton; Vanity Fair; the Dutch Republic; the Plurality of Worlds ”