The Minute Man on the Frontier. William George Puddefoot
ofttimes unknown, but leaving foundations for others to build on.
One place visited by a general missionary was so full of reckless men that the station-agent always carried a revolver from his house to the railway station. A vile variety show, carried on by abandoned women, was kept open day and night. Sunday was the noisiest day of all. Yet in this place a church was formed; and many men and women, having found a leader, were ready to take a stand for the right.
I am not writing of the past; for all the conditions that I have spoken of exist in hundreds, yes, thousands, of places all over the land. One need not go to the far West to find them; they exist in every State of the Union, only varying in their types of sin.
Visiting a home missionary in a mining region within two hours' ride of the capital, in a State not four hundred miles from the Atlantic, I found the man in one of the most desolate towns I ever saw. The most prosperous families were earning on an average five dollars a week, store pay. All were in debt. When the missionary announced his intention of going there, he was warned that it was not safe; but that did not alter his plans.
The first service was held in a schoolhouse, the door panels of which were out and not a pane of glass unbroken. A roaring torrent had to be passed on an unsteady plank bridge, over which the women and children crawled on hands and knees. It was dark when they came. The preacher could see the gleam of the men's eyes from their grimy faces as the lanterns flickered in the draughts. He began to preach. Soon white streaks were on the men's cheeks, as tears from eyes unused to weeping rolled down those black faces. At the close a church was organized, a reading-room was added, and many a boy was saved from the saloon by it. Yet, strange to say, although the owners (church members too) had cleared a million out of those mines, the money to build the needed church and parsonage had to be sent from the extreme East.
Hundreds of miles eastward I have found men living, sixty and seventy in number, in a long hut, their food cooked in a great pot, out of which they dipped their meals with a tin dipper. No less than seventy-five thousand Slovaks live in this one State, and their only spiritual counsel comes from a few Bible-readers. Ought we not then, as Christians, to help those already there, and give of our plenty to send the men needed to carry the light to thousands of places that as yet sit in the darkness and the shadow?
HOW THE HOME MISSIONARY BEGINS WORK IN THE NEW COMMUNITY.
First, pastoral visiting is absolutely necessary to success. The feelings of newcomers are tender after breaking the home ties and getting to the new home, and a visit from the pastor is sure to bring satisfactory results. Sickness and death offer him opportunities for doing much good, especially among the poor, and they are always the most numerous.
Some very pathetic cases come under every missionary's observation. Once a man called at the parsonage and asked for the elder, saying that a man had been killed some miles away in the woods, and the family wanted the missionary to preach the funeral sermon. The next morning a ragged boy came to pilot the minister. The way led through virgin forests and black-ash swamps. A light snow covered the ground and made travelling difficult, as much of the way was blocked by fallen trees. After two hours' walking the house was reached; and here was the widow with her large family, most of them in borrowed clothes, the supervisor, a few rough men, and a county coffin.
The minister hardly knew what to say; but remembering that that morning a large box had been sent containing a number of useful articles, he made God's providence his theme. A few days after, the box was taken to the widow's home. When they reached the shanty they found two little bunks inside. Her only stove was an oven taken from an old-fashioned cook-stove. The oven stood on a dry-goods box.
The missionary said, "Why, my poor woman, you will freeze with this wretched fire."
"No," she said; "it ain't much for cooking and washing, but it's a good little heater."
A few white beans and small potatoes were all her store, with winter coming on apace. When she saw the good things for eating and wearing that had been brought to her, she sobbed out her thanks.
In the busy life of a missionary the event was soon forgotten, until one day a woman said, "Elder, do you recollect that 'ar Mrs. Sisco?"
"Yes."
"She is down with a fever, and so are her children."
At this news the minister started with the doctor to see her. As they neared the place he noticed some red streaks gleaming in the woods, and asked what they were.
"Oh," said the doctor, "that is from the widow's house. She had to move into a stable of the deserted lumber camp."
The chinks had fallen out from the logs, and hence the gleam of fire. The house was a study in shadows—the floor sticky with mud brought in with the snow; the débris of a dozen meals on the table; a lamp, without chimney or bottom, stuck into an old tomato-can, gave its flickering light, and revealed the poor woman, with nothing to shield her from the storm but a few paper flour-sacks tacked back of the bed. Two or three chairs, the children in the other bed, the baby in a little soapbox on rockers, were all the wretched hovel contained. Medicine was left her, and the minister's watch for her to time it. He exchanged his watch for a clock the next day. By great persuasion the proper authorities were made to put her in the poorhouse, and she was lost to sight; but there was a bright ending in her case.
About a year after, a rosy-faced woman called at the parsonage. The pastor said, "Come in and have some dinner."
"I got some one waiting," she said.
"Why, who is that?"
"My new man."
"What, you married again?"
"Yes; and we are just going after the rest of the traps up at the shanty, and I called to see whether you would give me the little clock for a keepsake?"
"Oh, yes."
Away she went as happy as a lark. Less than two years from the time she was left a widow, a rich old uncle found in her his long-lost niece, and the woman became heiress to thousands of dollars.
Sometimes dreadful scenes are witnessed at funerals where strong drink has suddenly finished the career of father or mother. At the funeral of a little child smothered by a drunken father, the mother was too sick to be up at the funeral, the father too drunk to realize what was taking place, and twice the service was stopped by drunken men. At another funeral a dog-fight began under the coffin. The missionary kicked the dogs out, and resumed as well as he could.
At another wretched home the woman was found dying, the husband drunk, no food, mercury ten degrees below zero, and the little children nearly perishing with cold. The drunken man pulled the bed from under his dying wife while he went to sleep. His awakening was terrible, and the house crowded at the funeral with morbid hearers.
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. The first missionary on the field leaves his stamp indelibly fixed on the new village. Towns left without the gospel for years are the hardest of all places in which to get a footing. Some towns have been without service of any kind for years, and some of the young men and women have never seen a minister. There are townships to-day, even in New York State, without a church; and, strange as it may seem, there are more churchless communities in Illinois than in any other State in the Union. Until two years ago Black Rock, with a population of five thousand, had no church or Sunday-school. Meanwhile such is the condition of the Home Missionary Society's treasury that they often cannot take the students who offer themselves, and the churchless places increase.
All kinds of people crowd to the front—those who are stranded, those who are trying to hide