The Minute Man on the Frontier. William George Puddefoot
Eighty thousand people are pushing forward into the northern counties of this great State. Roads, bridges, schoolhouses—all are building. Most of the settlers are poor, sometimes having to leave part of their furniture to pay freight. They are from all quarters of our own and other lands. Here spring up great mill towns, mining towns, and county seats; and here, too, our minute-man comes. What can he do? Nearly all the people are here to make money. He has neither church, parsonage, nor a membership to start with. Here he finds towns with twenty saloons in a block, opera house and electric plants, dog-fights, men-fights, no Sabbath but an extra day for amusements and debauchery.
The minute-man is ready for any emergency; he takes chances that would appall a town minister. He finds a town without a single house that is a home; he has missed his train at a funeral. It is too cold to sleep in the woods, and so he walks the streets.
A saloon-keeper sees him. "Hello, Elder! Did ye miss yer train? Kind o' tough, eh?" with a laugh. "Well, ye ken sleep in the saloon if ye ken stand it." And so down on the floor he goes, comforting himself with the text, "Though I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there."
Another minute-man in another part of the country finds a town given up to wickedness. He gets his frugal lunch in a saloon, the only place for him.
"Are you a preacher?"
"Yes."
"Thought so. You want to preach?"
"I don't know where I can get a hall."
"Oh, stranger, I'll give ye my dance-hall; jest the thing, and I tell ye we need preaching here bad."
"Good; I will preach."
The saloon man stretches a large piece of cotton across his bar, and writes—
"Divine service in this place from ten A.M. to twelve to-morrow. No drinks served during service."
It is a strange crowd: there are university men, and men who never saw a school. With some little trembling the minute-man begins, and as he speaks he feels more freedom and courage. At the conclusion the host seizes his big hat, and with a revolver commences to take up a collection, remarking that they had had some pretty straight slugging. On the back seats are a number of what are called five-cent-ante men; and as they drop in small coin, he says—
"Come, boys, ye have got to straddle that."
He brings the hat to the parson, and empties a large collection on the table.
"But what can I do with these colored things?"
"Why, pard, them's chips; every one redeemable at the bar in gold."
Sometimes the minute-man has a harder time. A scholarly man who now holds a high position in New England was a short time since in a mountain town where he preached in the morning to a few people in an empty saloon, and announced that there would be service in the same place in the evening. But he reckoned without his host. By evening it was a saloon again in full blast. Nothing daunted, he began outside.
The men lighted a tar-barrel, and began to raffle off a mule. Just then a noted bravo of the camps came down; and quick as a flash his shooting-irons were out, and with a voice like a lion he said—
"Boys, I drop the first one that interferes with this service."
Thus under guard from unexpected quarters, the preacher spoke to a number of men who had been former church-members in the far East.
Often these minute-men must build their own houses, and live in such a rough society that wife and children must stay behind for some years. One minute-man built a little hut the roof of which was shingled with oyster-cans. His room was so small that he could pour out his coffee at the table, and without getting up turn his flapjacks on the stove. A travelling missionary visiting him, asked him where he slept. He opened a little trap-door in the ceiling; and as the good woman peered in she said—
"Why, you can't stand up in that place!"
"Bless your soul, madam," he exclaimed, "a home missionary doesn't sleep standing up."
Strapping a bundle of books on his shoulders, this minute-man starts out on a mule-trail. If he meets the train, he must step off and climb back. He reaches the distant camp, and finds the boys by the dozen gambling in an immense saloon. He steps up to the bar and requests the liberty of singing a few hymns. The man answers surlily—
"Ye ken if ye like, but the boys won't stand it."
The next minute a rich baritone begins, "What a friend we have in Jesus," and twenty heads are lifted. He then says—
"Boys, take a hand; here are some books." And in less than ten minutes he has a male choir of many voices. One says, "Pard, sing number so and so;" and another, "Sing number so and so." By this time the saloon-keeper is growling; but it is of no use; the minister has the boys, and starts his work.
In some camps a very different reception awaits him, as, for instance, the following: At his appearance a wild-looking Buffalo-Bill type of man greeted him with an oath and a pistol levelled at him.
"Don't yer know thar's no luck in camp with a preacher? We are going to kill ye."
"Don't you know," said the minute-man, "a minister can draw a bead as quick as any man?" The boys gave a loud laugh, for they love grit, and the rough slunk away. But a harder trial followed.
"Glad to see ye, pard; but ye'll have to set 'em up 'fore ye commence—rule of the camp, ye know." But before our man could frame an answer, the hardest drinker in the crowd said—
"Boys, he is the fust minister as has had the sand to come up here, and I'll stand treat for him."
It is a great pleasure to add that the man who did this is to-day a Christian.
One man is found on our grand round, living with a wife and a large family in a church. The church building had been too cold to worship in, and so they gave it to him for a parsonage. The man had his study in the belfry, and had to tack a carpet up to keep his papers from blowing into the lake. This man's life was in constant jeopardy, and he always carried two large revolvers. He had been the cause of breaking up the stockade dens of the town, and ruffians were hired to kill him. He seemed to wear a charmed life—but then, he was over six feet high, and weighed more than two hundred pounds. Some of the facts that this man could narrate are unreportable.
The lives lost on our frontiers to-day through sin in all its forms are legion, and no man realizes as well as the home missionary what it costs to build a new country; on the other hand, no man has such an opportunity to see the growth of the kingdom.
There died in Beloit, recently, the Rev. Jeremiah Porter, a man who had been a home missionary. His field was at Fort Brady before Chicago had its name. His church was largely composed of soldiers; and when the men were ordered to Fort Dearborn, he went with them, and organized what is now known as the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. This minute-man lived to see Chicago one million two hundred thousand strong.
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; going weeks without fresh meat, sometimes suffering from hunger, and for a long time without a cent in the house. Yet who ever heard them complain? Their great grief is that fields lie near to them white for the harvest, while, with hands already full, they can only pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth more laborers.
Often there is but one man preaching in a county which is larger than Massachusetts. He is cut off from libraries, ministers' meetings, and to a large extent from the sympathies of more fortunate brethren, and is often unable to send his children to college. These men still stand their ground until they