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The end of the Civil War brought freedom to
me, too. When peace was declared my father and brothers returned to the
claim in the wilderness which we women of the family had labored so
desperately to hold while they were gone. To us, as to others, the
final years of the war had brought many changes. My sister Eleanor's
place was empty. Mary, as I have said, had married and gone to live in
Big Rapids, and my mother and I were alone with my brother Harry, now a
boy of fourteen. After the return of our men it was no longer necessary
to devote every penny of my earnings to the maintenance of our home.
For the first time I could begin to save a portion of my income toward
the fulfilment of my college dream, but even yet there was a long, arid
stretch ahead of me before the college doors came even distantly into
sight.
The largest salary I could earn by teaching
in our Northern woods was one hundred and fifty-six dollars a year, for
two terms of thirteen weeks each; and from this, of course, I had to
deduct the cost of my board and clothing--the sole expenditure I allowed
myself. The dollars for an education accumulated very, very slowly,
until at last, in desperation, weary of seeing the years of my youth
rush past, bearing my hopes with them, I took a sudden and radical
step. I gave up teaching, left our cabin in the woods, and went to Big
Rapids to live with my sister Mary, who had married a successful man and
who generously offered me a home. There, I had decided, I would learn a
trade of some kind, of any kind; it did not greatly matter what it was.
The sole essential was that it should be a money-making trade, offering
wages which would make it possible to add more rapidly to my savings.
In those days, almost fifty years ago, and in a small pioneer town, the
fields open to women were few and unfruitful. The needle at once
presented itself, but at first I turned with loathing from it. I would
have preferred the digging of ditches or the shoveling of coal; but the
needle alone persistently pointed out my way, and I was finally forced
to take it.
Fate, however, as if weary at last of seeing
me between her paws, suddenly let me escape. Before I had been working
a month at my uncongenial trade Big Rapids was favored by a visit from a
Universalist woman minister, the Reverend Marianna Thompson, who
came there to preach. Her sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, and I
was, I think, almost the earliest arrival of the great congregation
which filled the church. It was a wonderful moment when I saw my first
woman minister enter her pulpit; and as I listened to her sermon,
thrilled to the soul, all my early aspirations to become a minister
myself stirred in me with cumulative force. After the services I hung
for a time on the fringe of the group that surrounded her, and at last,
when she was alone and about to leave, I found courage to introduce
myself and pour forth the tale of my ambition. Her advice was as prompt
as if she had studied my problem for years.
``My child,'' she said, ``give up your
foolish idea of learning a trade, and go to school. You can't do
anything until you have an education. Get it, and get it NOW.''
Her suggestion was much to my liking, and I
paid her the compliment of acting on it promptly, for the next morning I
entered the Big Rapids High School, which was also a preparatory school
for college. There I would study, I determined, as long as my money held
out, and with the optimism of youth I succeeded in confining my
imagination to this side of that crisis. My home, thanks to Mary, was
assured; the wardrobe I had brought from the woods covered me
sufficiently; to one who had walked five and six miles a day for years,
walking to school held no discomfort; and as for pleasure, I found it,
like a heroine of fiction, in my studies. For the first time life was
smiling at me, and with all my young heart I smiled back.
The preceptress of the high school was Lucy
Foot, a college graduate and a remarkable woman. I had heard much of her
sympathy and understanding; and on the evening following my first day in
school I went to her and repeated the confidences I had reposed in the
Reverend Marianna Thompson. My trust in her was justified. She took an
immediate interest in me, and proved it at once by putting me into the
speaking and debating classes, where I was given every opportunity to
hold forth to helpless classmates when the spirit of eloquence moved me.
As an aid to public speaking I was taught to
``elocute,'' and I remember in every mournful detail the occasion on
which I gave my first recitation. We were having our monthly ``public
exhibition night,'' and the audience included not only my classmates,
but their parents and friends as well. The selection I intended to
recite was a poem entitled ``No Sects in Heaven,'' but when I faced my
audience I was so appalled by its size and by the sudden realization of
my own temerity that I fainted during the delivery of the first verse.
Sympathetic classmates carried me into an anteroom and revived me, after
which they naturally assumed that the entertainment I furnished was over
for the evening. I, however, felt that if I let that failure stand
against me I could never afterward speak in public; and within ten
minutes, notwithstanding the protests of my friends, I was back in the
hall and beginning my recitation a second time. The audience gave me
its eager attention. Possibly it hoped to see me topple off the
platform again, but nothing of the sort occurred. I went through the
recitation with self-possession and received some friendly applause at
the end. Strangely enough, those first sensations of ``stage fright''
have been experienced, in a lesser degree, in connection with each of
the thousands of public speeches I have made since that time. I have
never again gone so far as to faint in the presence of an audience; but
I have invariably walked out on the platform feeling the sinking
sensation at the pit of the stomach, the weakness of the knees, that I
felt in the hour of my debut. Now, however, the nervousness passes
after a moment or two.
From that night Miss Foot lost no
opportunity of putting me into the foreground of our school affairs. I
took part in all our debates, recited yards of poetry to any audience we
could attract, and even shone mildly in our amateur theatricals. It was
probably owing to all this activity that I attracted the interest of the
presiding elder of our district--Dr. Peck, a man of progressive ideas.
There was at that time a movement on foot to license women to preach in
the Methodist Church, and Dr. Peck was ambitious to be the first
presiding elder to have a woman ordained for the Methodist ministry. He
had urged Miss Foot to be this pioneer, but her ambitions did not turn
in that direction. Though she was a very devout Methodist, she had no
wish to be the shepherd of a religious flock. She loved her
school-work, and asked nothing better than to remain in it. Gently but
persistently she directed the attention of Dr. Peck to me, and
immediately things began to happen.
Without telling me to what it might lead,
Miss Foot finally arranged a meeting at her home by inviting Dr. Peck
and me to dinner. Being unconscious of any significance in the
occasion, I chatted light-heartedly about the large issues of life and
probably settled most of them to my personal satisfaction. Dr. Peck drew
me out and led me on, listened and smiled. When the evening was over
and we rose to go, he turned to me with sudden seriousness:
``My quarterly meeting will be held at
Ashton,'' he remarked, casually. ``I would like you to preach the
quarterly sermon.''
For a moment the earth seemed to slip away
from my feet. I stared at him in utter stupefaction. Then slowly I
realized that, incredible as it seemed, the man was in earnest.
``Why,'' I stammered, ``_I_ can't preach a
sermon!''
Dr. Peck smiled at me. ``Have you ever
tried?'' he asked.
I started to assure him vehemently that I
never had. Then, as if Time had thrown a picture on a screen before me,
I saw myself as a little girl preaching alone in the forest, as I had so
often preached to a congregation of listening trees. I qualified my
answer.
``Never,'' I said, ``to human beings.''
Dr. Peck smiled again. ``Well,'' he told
me, ``the door is open. Enter or not, as you wish.''
He left the house, but I remained to discuss
his overwhelming proposition with Miss Foot. A sudden sobering thought
had come to me.
``But,'' I exclaimed, ``I've never been
converted. How can I preach to any one?''
We both had the old-time idea of conversion,
which now seems so mistaken. We thought one had to struggle with sin
and with the Lord until at last the heart opened, doubts were dispersed,
and the light poured in. Miss Foot could only advise me to put the
matter before the Lord, to wrestle and to pray; and thereafter, for
hours at a time, she worked and prayed with me, alternately urging,
pleading, instructing, and sending up petitions in my behalf.
Our last session was a dramatic one, which
took up the entire night. Long before it was over we were both worn
out; but toward morning, either from exhaustion of body or exaltation of
soul, I seemed to see the light, and it made me very happy. With all my
heart I wanted to preach, and I believed that now at last I had my
call. The following day we sent word to Dr. Peck that I would preach
the sermon at Ashton as he had asked, but we urged him to say nothing of
the matter for the present, and Miss Foot and I also kept the secret
locked in our breasts. I knew only too well what view my family and my
friends would take of such a step and of me. To them it would mean
nothing short of personal disgrace and a blotted page in the Shaw
record.
I had six weeks in which to prepare my
sermon, and I gave it most of my waking hours as well as those in which
I should have been asleep. I took for my text: ``And as Moses lifted
up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted
up; that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal
life.''
It was not until three days before I
preached the sermon that I found courage to confide my purpose to my
sister Mary, and if I had confessed my intention to commit a capital
crime she could not have been more disturbed. We two had always been
very close, and the death of Eleanor, to whom we were both devoted, had
drawn us even nearer to each other. Now Mary's tears and prayers wrung
my heart and shook my resolution. But, after all, she was asking me to
give up my whole future, to close my ears to my call, and I felt that I
could not do it. My decision caused an estrangement between us which
lasted for years.
On the day preceding the delivery of my
sermon I left for Ashton on the afternoon train; and in the same car,
but as far away from me as she could get, Mary sat alone and wept
throughout the journey. She was going to my mother, but she did not
speak to me; and I, for my part, facing both alienation from her and the
ordeal before me, found my one comfort in Lucy Foot's presence and
understanding sympathy. There was no church in Ashton, so I preached my
sermon in its one little school-house, which was filled with a curious
crowd, eager to look at and hear the girl who was defying all
conventions by getting out of the pew and into the pulpit. There was
much whispering and suppressed excitement before I began, but when I
gave out my text silence fell upon the room, and from that moment until
I had finished my hearers listened quietly. A kerosene-lamp stood on a
stand at my elbow, and as I preached I trembled so violently that the
oil shook in its glass globe; but I finished without breaking down, and
at the end Dr. Peck, who had his own reasons for nervousness, handsomely
assured me that my first sermon was better than his maiden effort had
been.
It was evidently not a failure, for the next
day he invited me to follow him around in his circuit, which included
thirty-six appointments; he wished me to preach in each of the
thirty-six places, as it was desirable to let the various ministers hear
and know me before I applied for my license as a local preacher. The
sermon also had another result, less gratifying. It brought out, on the
following morning, the first notice of me ever printed in a newspaper.
This was instigated by my brother-in-law, and it was brief but pointed.
It read:
A young girl named Anna Shaw, seventeen
years old, [1] preached at Ashton yesterday. Her real friends deprecate
the course she is pursuing. [1] A misstatement by the brother-in-law.
Dr. Shaw was at this time twenty-three years old.--E. J.
The little notice had something of the
effect of a lighted match applied to gunpowder. An explosion of public
sentiment followed it, the entire community arose in consternation, and
I became a bone of contention over which friends and strangers alike
wrangled until they wore themselves out. The members of my family,
meeting in solemn council, sent for me, and I responded. They had a
proposition to make, and they lost no time in putting it before me. If
I gave up my preaching they would send me to college and pay for my
entire course. They suggested Ann Arbor, and Ann Arbor tempted me
sorely; but to descend from the pulpit I had at last entered--the pulpit
I had visualized in all my childish dreams--was not to be considered. We
had a long evening together, and it was a very unhappy one. At the end
of it I was given twenty-four hours in which to decide whether I would
choose my people and college, or my pulpit and the arctic loneliness of
a life that held no family-circle. It did not require twenty-four hours
of reflection to convince me that I must go my solitary way.
That year I preached thirty-six times, at
each of the presiding elder's appointments; and the following spring, at
the annual Methodist Conference of our district, held at Big Rapids, my
name was presented to the assembled ministers as that of a candidate for
a license to preach. There was unusual interest in the result, and my
father was among those who came to the Conference to see the vote taken.
During these Conferences a minister voted affirmatively on a question by
holding up his hand, and negatively by failing to do so. When the
question of my license came up the majority of the ministers voted by
raising both hands, and in the pleasant excitement which followed my
father slipped away. Those who saw him told me he looked pleased; but he
sent me no message showing a change of view- point, and the gulf between
the family and its black sheep remained unbridged. Though the warmth of
Mary's love for me had become a memory, the warmth of her hearthstone
was still offered me. I accepted it, perforce, and we lived together
like shadows of what we had been. Two friends alone of all I had made
stood by me without qualification --Miss Foot and Clara Osborn, the
latter my ``chum'' at Big Rapids and a dweller in my heart to this day.
In the mean time my preaching had not
interfered with my studies. I was working day and night, but life was
very difficult; for among my school-mates, too, there were doubts and
much head-shaking over this choice of a career. I needed the sound of
friendly voices, for I was very lonely; and suddenly, when the pressure
from all sides was strongest and I was going down physically under it, a
voice was raised that I had never dared to dream would speak for me.
Mary A. Livermore came to Big Rapids, and as she was then at the height
of her career, the entire countryside poured in to hear her. Far back
in the crowded hall I sat alone and listened to her, thrilled by the
lecture and tremulous with the hope of meeting the lecturer. When she
had finished speaking I joined the throng that surged forward from the
body of the hall, and as I reached her and felt the grasp of her
friendly hand I had a sudden conviction that the meeting was an epoch in
my life. I was right. Some one in the circle around us told her that I
wanted to preach, and that I was meeting tremendous opposition. She was
interested at once. She looked at me with quickening sympathy, and then,
suddenly putting an arm around me, drew me close to her side.
``My dear,'' she said, quietly, ``if you
want to preach, go on and preach. Don't let anybody stop you. No matter
what people say, don't let them stop you!''
For a moment I was too overcome to answer
her. These were almost my first encouraging words, and the morning stars
singing together could not have made sweeter music for my ears. Before
I could recover a woman within hearing spoke up.
``Oh, Mrs. Livermore,'' she exclaimed,
``don't say that to her! We're all trying to stop her. Her people are
wretched over the whole thing. And don't you see how ill she is? She
has one foot in the grave and the other almost there!''
Mrs. Livermore turned upon me a long and
deeply thoughtful look. ``Yes,'' she said at last, ``I see she has.
But it is better that she should die doing the thing she wants to do
than that she should die because she can't do it.''
Her words were a tonic which restored my
voice. ``So they think I'm going to die!'' I cried. ``Well, I'm not!
I'm going to live and preach!''
I have always felt since then that without
the inspiration of Mrs. Livermore's encouragement I might not have
continued my fight. Her sanction was a shield, however, from which the
criticisms of the world fell back. Fate's more friendly interest in my
affairs that year was shown by the fact that she sent Mrs. Livermore
into my life before I had met Anna Dickinson. Miss Dickinson came to us
toward spring and lectured on Joan of Arc. Never before or since have I
been more deeply moved by a speaker. When she had finished her address
I made my happy way to the front of the hall with the others who wished
to meet the distinguished guest. It was our local manager who
introduced me, and he said, ``This is our Anna Shaw. She is going to be
a lecturer, too.''
I looked up at the brilliant Miss Dickinson
with the trustfulness of youth in my eyes. I remembered Mrs. Livermore
and I thought all great women were like her, but I was now to experience
a bitter disillusionment. Miss Dickinson barely touched the tips of my
fingers as she looked indifferently past the side of my face. ``Ah,''
she said, icily, and turned away. In later years I learned how
impossible it is for a public speaker to leave a gracious impression on
every life that for a moment touches her own; but I have never ceased to
be thankful that I met Mrs. Livermore before I met Miss Dickinson at the
crisis in my career.
In the autumn of 1873 I entered Albion
College, in Albion, Michigan. I was twenty-five years of age, but I
looked much younger--probably not more than eighteen to the casual
glance. Though I had made every effort to save money, I had not been
successful, for my expenses constantly outran my little income, and my
position as preacher made it necessary for me to have a suitable
wardrobe. When the time came to enter college I had exactly eighteen
dollars in the world, and I started for Albion with this amount in my
purse and without the slightest notion of how I was to add to it. The
money problem so pressed upon me, in fact, that when I reached my
destination at midnight and discovered that it would cost fifty cents to
ride from the station to the college, I saved that amount by walking the
entire distance on the railroad tracks, while my imagination busied
itself pleasantly with pictures of the engine that might be thundering
upon me in the rear. I had chosen Albion because Miss Foot had been
educated there, and I was encouraged by an incident that happened the
morning after my arrival. I was on the campus, walking toward the main
building, when I saw a big copper penny lying on the ground, and, on
picking it up, I discovered that it bore the year of my birth. That
seemed a good omen, and it was emphatically underlined by the finding of
two exactly similar pennies within a week. Though there have been days
since then when I was sorely tempted to spend them, I have those three
pennies still, and I confess to a certain comfort in their possession!
As I had not completed my high-school
course, my first days at Albion were spent in strenuous preparation for
the entrance examinations; and one morning, as I was crossing the campus
with a History of the United States tucked coyly under my arm, I met the
president of the college, Dr. Josclyn. He stopped for a word of
greeting, during which I betrayed the fact that I had never studied
United States history. Dr. Josclyn at once invited me into his office
with, I am quite sure, the purpose of explaining as kindly as he could
that my preparation for college was insufficient. As an opening to the
subject he began to talk of history, and we talked and talked on, while
unheeded hours were born and died. We discussed the history of the
United States, the governments of the world, the causes which led to the
influence of one nation on another, the philosophical basis of the
different national movements westward, and the like. It was the longest
and by far the most interesting talk I have ever had with a highly
educated man, and during it I could actually feel my brain expand. When
I rose to go President Josclyn stopped me.
``I have something to give you,'' he said,
and he wrote a few words on a slip of paper and handed the slip to me.
When, on reaching the dormitory, I opened it, I found that the president
had passed me in the history of the entire college course! This,
moreover, was not the only pleasant result of our interview, for within
a few weeks President and Mrs. Josclyn, whose daughter had recently
died, invited me to board with them, and I made my home with them during
my first year at Albion.
My triumph in history was followed by the
swift and chastening discovery that I was behind my associates in
several other branches. Owing to my father's early help, I was well up
in mathematics, but I had much to learn of philosophy and the languages,
and to these I devoted many midnight candles.
Naturally, I soon plunged into speaking, and
my first public speech at college was a defense of Xantippe. I have
always felt that the poor lady was greatly abused, and that Socrates
deserved all he received from her, and more. I was glad to put myself
on record as her champion, and my fellow-students must soon have felt
that my admiration for Xantippe was based on similarities of
temperament, for within a few months I was leading the first college
revolt against the authority of the men students.
Albion was a coeducational institution, and
the brightest jewels in its crown were its three literary societies--the
first composed of men alone, the second of women alone, and the third of
men and women together. Each of the societies made friendly advances to
new students, and for some time I hesitated on the brink of the new joys
they offered, uncertain which to choose. A representative of the mixed
society, who was putting its claims before me, unconsciously helped me
to make up my mind. ``Women,'' he pompously assured me, ``need to be
associated with men, because they don't know how to manage meetings.''
On the instant the needle of decision swung
around to the women's society and remained there, fixed. ``If they
don't,'' I told the pompous young man, ``it's high time they learned. I
shall join the women, and we'll master the art.''
I did join the women's society, and I had
not been a member very long before I discovered that when there was an
advantage of any kind to be secured the men invariably got it. While I
was brooding somberly upon this wrong an opportunity came to make a
formal and effective protest against the men's high-handed methods. The
Quinquennial reunion of all the societies was about to be held, and the
special feature of this festivity was always an oration. The simple
method of selecting the orator which had formerly prevailed had been for
the young men to decide upon the speaker and then announce his name to
the women, who humbly confirmed it. On this occasion, however, when the
name came in to us, I sent a message to our brother society to the
effect that we, too, intended to make a nomination and to send in a
name.
At such unprecedented behavior the entire
student body arose in excitement, which, among the girls, was combined
with equal parts of exhilaration and awe. The men refused to consider
our nominee, and as a friendly compromise we suggested that we have a
joint meeting of all the societies and elect the speaker at this
gathering; but this plan also the men at first refused, giving in only
after weeks of argument, during which no one had time for the calmer
pleasures of study. When the joint meeting was finally held, nothing
was accomplished; we girls had one more member than the boys had, and we
promptly re-elected our candidate, who was as promptly declined by the
boys. Two of our girls were engaged to two of the boys, and it was
secretly planned by our brother society that during a second joint
meeting these two men should take the girls out for a drive and then
slip back to vote, leaving the girls at some point sufficiently remote
from college. We discovered the plot, however, in time to thwart it,
and at last, when nothing but the unprecedented tie-up had been
discussed for months, the boys suddenly gave up their candidate and
nominated me for orator.
This was not at all what I wanted, and I
immediately declined to serve. We girls then nominated the young man
who had been first choice of our brother society, but he haughtily
refused to accept the compliment. The reunion was only a fortnight
away, and the programme had not been printed, so now the president took
the situation in hand and peremptorily ordered me to accept the
nomination or be suspended. This was a wholly unexpected boomerang. I
had wished to make a good fight for equal rights for the girls, and to
impress the boys with the fact of our existence as a society; but I had
not desired to set the entire student body by the ears nor to be forced
to prepare and deliver an oration at the eleventh hour. Moreover, I had
no suitable gown to wear on so important an occasion. One of my
classmates, however, secretly wrote to my sister, describing my blushing
honors and explaining my need, and my family rallied to the call. My
father bought the material, and my mother and Mary paid for the making
of the gown. It was a white alpaca creation, trimmed with satin, and
the consciousness that it was extremely becoming sustained me greatly
during the mental agony of preparing and delivering my oration. To my
family that oration was the redeeming episode of my early career. For
the moment it almost made them forget my crime of preaching.
My original fund of eighteen dollars was now
supplemented by the proceeds of a series of lectures I gave on
temperance. The temperance women were not yet organized, but they had
their speakers, and I was occasionally paid five dollars to hold forth
for an hour or two in the little country school-houses of our region.
As a licensed preacher I had no tuition fees to pay at college; but my
board, in the home of the president and his wife, was costing me four
dollars a week, and this was the limit of my expenses, as I did my own
laundry-work. During my first college year the amount I paid for
amusement was exactly fifty cents; that went for a lecture. The mental
strain of the whole experience was rather severe, for I never knew how
much I would be able to earn; and I was beginning to feel the effects of
this when Christmas came and brought with it a gift of ninety-two
dollars, which Miss Foot had collected among my Big Rapids friends.
That, with what I could earn, carried me through the year.
The following spring our brother James, who
was now living in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, invited my sister Mary and me
to spend the summer with him, and Mary and I finally dug a grave for our
little hatchet and went East together with something of our old-time joy
in each other's society. We reached St. Johnsbury one Saturday, and
within an hour of our arrival learned that my brother had arranged for
me to preach in a local church the following day. That threatened to
spoil the visit for Mary and even to disinter the hatchet! At first she
positively refused to go to hear me, but after a few hours of reflection
she announced gloomily that if she did not go I would not have my hair
arranged properly or get my hat on straight. Moved by this conviction,
she joined the family parade to the church, and later, in the sacristy,
she pulled me about and pinned me up to her heart's content. Then,
reluctantly, she went into the church and heard me preach. She offered
no tributes after our return to the house, but her protests ceased from
that time, and we gave each other the love and understanding which had
marked our girlhood days. The change made me very happy; for Mary was
the salt of the earth, and next only to my longing for my mother, I had
longed for her in the years of our estrangement.
Every Sunday that summer I preached in or
near St. Johnsbury, and toward autumn we had a big meeting which the
ministers of all the surrounding churches attended. I was asked to
preach the sermon--a high compliment--and I chose that important day to
make a mistake in quoting a passage from Scripture. I asked, ``Can the
Ethiopian change his spots or the leopard his skin?'' I realized at
once that I had transposed the words, and no doubt a look of horror
dawned in my eyes; but I went on without correcting myself and without
the slightest pause. Later, one of the ministers congratulated me on
this presence of mind.
``If you had corrected yourself,'' he said,
``all the young people would have been giggling yet over the spotted
nigger. Keep to your rule of going right ahead!''
At the end of the summer the various
churches in which I had preached gave me a beautiful gold watch and one
hundred dollars in money, and with an exceedingly light heart I went
back to college to begin my second year of work.
From that time life was less complex. I had
enough temperance-work and preaching in the country school-houses and
churches to pay my college expenses, and, now that my financial
anxieties were relieved, my health steadily improved. Several times I
preached to the Indians, and these occasions were among the most
interesting of my experiences. The squaws invariably brought their
babies with them, but they had a simple and effective method of
relieving themselves of the care of the infants as soon as they reached
the church. The papooses, who were strapped to their boards, were hung
like a garment on the back wall of the building by a hole in the top of
the board, which projected above their heads. Each papoose usually had
a bit of fat pork tied to the end of a string fastened to its wrist, and
with these sources of nourishment the infants occupied themselves
pleasantly while the sermon was in progress. Frequently the pork
slipped down the throat of the papoose, but the struggle of the child
and the jerking of its hands in the strangulation that followed pulled
the piece safely out again. As I faced the congregation I also faced
the papooses, to whom the indifferent backs of their mothers were
presented; it seemed to me there was never a time when some papoose was
not choking, but no matter how much excitement or discomfort was going
on among the babies, not one squaw turned her head to look back at
them. In that assemblage the emotions were not allowed to interrupt the
calm intellectual enjoyment of the sermon.
My most dramatic experience during this
period occurred in the summer of 1874, when I went to a Northern
lumber-camp to preach in the pulpit of a minister who was away on his
honeymoon. The stage took me within twenty-two miles of my destination,
to a place called Seberwing. To my dismay, however, when I arrived at
Seberwing, Saturday evening, I found that the rest of the journey lay
through a dense woods, and that I could reach my pulpit in time the next
morning only by having some one drive me through the woods that night.
It was not a pleasant prospect, for I had heard appalling tales of the
stockades in this region and of the women who were kept prisoners
there. But to miss the engagement was not to be thought of, and when,
after I had made several vain efforts to find a driver, a man appeared
in a two-seated wagon and offered to take me to my destination, I felt
that I had to go with him, though I did not like his appearance. He was
a huge, muscular person, with a protruding jaw and a singularly evasive
eye; but I reflected that his forbidding expression might be due, in
part at least, to the prospect of the long night drive through the
woods, to which possibly he objected as much as I did.
It was already growing dark when we started,
and within a few moments we were out of the little settlement and
entering the woods. With me I had a revolver I had long since learned
to use, but which I very rarely carried. I had hesitated to bring it
now--had even left home without it; and then, impelled by some impulse I
never afterward ceased to bless, had returned for it and dropped it into
my hand-bag.
I sat on the back seat of the wagon,
directly behind the driver, and for a time, as we entered the darkening
woods, his great shoulders blotted out all perspective as he drove on in
stolid silence. Then, little by little, they disappeared like a rapidly
fading negative. The woods were filled with Norway pines, hemlocks,
spruce, and tamaracks-great, somber trees that must have shut out the
light even on the brightest days. To-night the heavens held no lamps
aloft to guide us, and soon the darkness folded around us like a
garment. I could see neither the driver nor his horses. I could hear
only the sibilant whisper of the trees and the creak of our slow wheels
in the rough forest road.
Suddenly the driver began to talk, and at
first I was glad to hear the reassuring human tones, for the experience
had begun to seem like a bad dream. I replied readily, and at once
regretted that I had done so, for the man's choice of topics was most
unpleasant. He began to tell me stories of the stockades--grim stories
with horrible details, repeated so fully and with such gusto that I soon
realized he was deliberately affronting my ears. I checked him and told
him I could not listen to such talk. He replied with a series of oaths
and shocking vulgarities, stopping his horses that he might turn and
fling the words into my face. He ended by snarling that I must think
him a fool to imagine he did not know the kind of woman I was. What was
I doing in that rough country, he demanded, and why was I alone with him
in those black woodsat night? Though my heart missed a beat just then, I
tried to answer him calmly.
``You know perfectly well who I am,'' I
reminded him. ``And you understand that I am making this journey
to-night because I am to preach to-morrow morning and there is no other
way to keep my appointment.''
He uttered a laugh which was a most
unpleasant sound.
``Well,'' he said, coolly, ``I'm damned if
I'll take you. I've got you here, and I'm going to keep you here!''
I slipped my hand into the satchel in my
lap, and it touched my revolver. No touch of human fingers ever brought
such comfort. With a deep breath of thanksgiving I drew it out and
cocked it, and as I did so he recognized the sudden click.
``Here! What have you got there?'' he
snapped.
``I have a revolver,'' I replied, as
steadily as I could. ``And it is cocked and aimed straight at your
back. Now drive on. If you stop again, or speak, I'll shoot you.''
For an instant or two he blustered.
``By God,'' he cried, ``you wouldn't dare.''
``Wouldn't I?'' I asked. ``Try me by
speaking just once more.''
Even as I spoke I felt my hair rise on my
scalp with the horror of the moment, which seemed worse than any
nightmare a woman could experience. But the man was conquered by the
knowledge of the waiting, willing weapon just behind him. He laid his
whip savagely on the backs of his horses and they responded with a leap
that almost knocked me out of the wagon.
The rest of the night was a black terror I
shall never forget. He did not speak again, nor stop, but I dared not
relax my caution for an instant. Hour after hour crawled toward day, and
still I sat in the unpierced darkness, the revolver ready. I knew he was
inwardly raging, and that at any instant he might make a sudden jump and
try to get the revolver away from me. I decided that at his slightest
movement I must shoot. But dawn came at last, and just as its bluish
light touched the dark tips of the pines we drove up to the log hotel in
the settlement that was our destination. Here my driver spoke.
``Get down,'' he said, gruffly. ``This is
the place.''
I sat still. Even yet I dared not trust
him. Moreover, I was so stiff after my vigil that I was not sure I could
move.
``You get down,'' I directed, ``and wake up
the landlord. Bring him out here.''
He sullenly obeyed and aroused the
hotel-owner, and when the latter appeared I climbed out of the wagon
with some effort but without explanation. That morning I preached in my
friend's pulpit as I had promised to do, and the rough building was
packed to its doors with lumbermen who had come in from the neighboring
camp. Their appearance caused great surprise, as they had never
attended a service before. They formed a most picturesque congregation,
for they all wore brilliant lumber-camp clothing--blue or red shirts
with yellow scarfs twisted around their waists, and gay-colored jackets
and logging-caps. There were forty or fifty of them, and when we took
up our collection they responded with much liberality and cheerful
shouts to one another.
``Put in fifty cents!'' they yelled across
the church.
``Give her a dollar!''
The collection was the largest that had been
taken up in the history of the settlement, but I soon learned that it
was not the spiritual comfort I offered which had appealed to the
lumber-men. My driver of the night before, who was one of their number,
had told his pals of his experience, and the whole camp had poured into
town to see the woman minister who carried a revolver.
``Her sermon?'' said one of them to my
landlord, after the meeting. ``Huh! I dunno what she preached. But,
say, don't make no mistake about one thing: the little preacher has sure
got grit!'' |
