Trail Tales
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| Publié par | mosil |
| Publié le | 01 décembre 2010 |
| Nombre de lectures | 55 |
| Langue | English |
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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Trail Tales, by James David Gillilan
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Title: Trail Tales
Author: James David Gillilan
Release Date: October 24, 2009 [EBook #30320]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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TRAIL TALES
BY JAMES DAVID GILLILAN
THE ABINGDON PRESS NEW YORK CINCINNATI
Copyright, 1915, by JAMES DAVID GILLILAN
DEDICATED AFFECTIONATELY TO MY MOTHER, TO MY WIFE; LIKEWISE TO THE PREACHERS OF UTAH MISSION AND IDAHO ANNUAL CONFERENCE
CONTENTS
PREFACE GOD’SMINISTER THEWESTERNTRAIL THELONGTRAIL THEDESERT SAGEBRUSH THEIRONTRAIL A Railroad Saint in Idaho An Unusual Kindness INDIANS OF THETRAIL Introductory Words Pocatello, the Chief The Babyless Mother Mary Muskrat Bad Ben A Three-Cornered Sermon Three Years After Chief Joseph and His Lost Wallowa The White Man’s Book LIGHTS ANDSIDELIGHTS THESHACCOGETA AMONG THEHILLS The Mother Deer The Shepherd The Feathered Drummer MORMONDOM The Trail of the Mormon Some Mormon Beliefs
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Weber Tom, Ute Polygamist138 Polygamy of To-Day145 GREATSALTLAKE149 ARGONAUTSAM’STALE157 THEWRAITH OF THEBLIZZARD167 THEGREATNORTHWEST175
ILLUSTRATIONS J. D. GILLILANFrontispiece CHIEFJOSEPH, NEZPERCEINDIAN64 WALLOWALAKE94 END OF THETRAIL183
PREFACE
In his young manhood the writer of these sketches came up into this realm of widest vision, clearest skies, sweetest waters, and happiest people to engraft the green twig of his life upon the activities of the mountaineers of the thrilling West. At that time the vast plains and the barren valleys were silvered over with the ubiquitous sage through which crept lazily and aimlessly the many unharnessed arroyo-making streams waiting only the appearance of their master, man. Under his scientific, skilled, and economic guidance these wild waters, lassoed, tamed, and set to work, taking the place of clouds where there are none, were soon to cause the gray garden of nature to become goldened by the well-nigh illimitable acres of grain and other home-making products. The West has an abundant variety of life of a sort most intensely human. Life, always so earnest in Anglo-Saxon lands, seems to have accentuated individuality here in a wondrous and contagious degree. These few stories, culled from the répertoire of an active life of more than thirty years, are samples of personal experiences, and are taken almost at random from mining camp, frontier town and settlement, public and private life. As a minister the writer has had wide and varied opportunities in all the Northwest, but more especially in Utah, Oregon, and Idaho. Many a man much more modest has far excelled him in life experiences, but some of them have never told. This little handful of goldenrod is affectionately dedicated to them of the Trails. THE AUTHOR.
GOD’S MINISTER
Dedicated to the Mountain Ministers As terrace upon terrace Rise the mountains o’er the humbler hills And stretch away to dizzy heights To meet heaven’s own pure blue; From thence to steal those soft and filmy clouds With which to wrap their heads and shoulders– – Bare of other cloak–– Transforming them to rains and snows To bless this elsewise desert world: So, he who stands God’s minister ’mong men, High reaches out above all earthly things
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And comes in contact with the thoughts of God; Conveys them down in blessings to mankind–– Richest of blessings, Holiest fruit of heaven–– Plucked fresh from off the Tree of Life That springs hard by the Lamb’s white throne, And bears the plenteous leaves which grow To heal the wounded nations.
THE WESTERN TRAIL And step by step since time began I see the steady gain of man. ––Whittier.
THE WESTERN TRAIL “An overland highway to the Western sea” was the thought variously expressed by many men in both public and private life among the French, English, and Americans from very early times. In 1659 Pierre Radisson and a companion, by way of the Great Lakes, Fox, and “Ouisconsing” Rivers, discovered the “east fork” of the “Great River” and crossed to the “west fork,” up which they went into what is now the Dakotas, only to find it going still “interminably westward ” . In 1766 Carver, an Englishman, went by the same route up the “east fork” to Saint Anthony Falls; thence he traveled to Canada, to learn from the Assiniboin Indians the existence of the “Shining Mountains” and that beyond them was the “Oregan,” which went to the salt sea. As early as 1783 Thomas Jefferson wrote to George Rogers Clark to tell him he understood the English had subscribed a very large sum of money for exploration of the country west of the Mississippi, and as far as California. He even expressed himself as being desirous of forming a party of Americans to make the trip. Twenty years later, under the direction ofPresidentThomas Jefferson, General Clark was made a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which went up the “great river” and ultimately crossed through Montana and Idaho to the Columbia (Oregan?) and the “salt sea.” Zebulon Pike was turned back by the imperious Rocky Mountains in 1806. A few years later Captain Bonneville braved the plains, the plateaus, the mountain passes, and the deserts, and saw the Columbia. Then continuous migrations finally fixed the overland highway known from ocean to ocean as the Oregon Trail. The Mormons followed this national road when they trekked to the valley of Salt Lake in 1847––a dolorous path to many. Because the Oregon Trail was nature’s way, man and commerce made it their way. Road sites are not like city sites––made to order; they are discovered. For that reason the pioneer railway transcontinental also followed this trail. The Union Pacific marks with iron what so many of the emigrants marked with their tears and their graves. From the mouth of the Platte to the heart of the Rocky Mountains and beyond is a continuous cemetery of nameless tombs. The next few pages will give some sketches of fact depicting scenes of sunlight and shadow that fell on this highway in days not so very long agone.
THE LONG TRAIL Those mighty pyramids of stone That wedge-like pierce the desert airs, When nearer seen and better known Are but gigantic flights of stairs. ––Longfellow.
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THE LONG TRAIL The Old Overland Trail from the Missouri River to the Willamette is a distance of nearly two thousand miles. Before Jason Lee and Marcus Whitman sanctioned its use for the migrating myriads of Americans seeking the shores of the sunset sea, trappers and adventurers, good and bad, had mapped out a general route over the wind-whipped passes, where the storm stands sentinel and guards the granite ways among the rough Rocky Mountains. They had followed the falls-filled Snake and the calmer Columbia, which plow for a thousand miles or more among basaltic bastions buttressing the mountain sides, or through the lava lands where cavernous chasms yawn and abysmal depths echo back the sullen roar of the raging rapids. In the early forties of the nineteenth century restless spirits from Missouri and eastward began to filter through the fingertips of the beckoning mountains of the West and locate in the land where storms seldom come and where the extremes of heat and cold are unknown––Willamette Valley, Oregon. In these early days, a farmer, whom we shall name Johnson, with wife and son, hoping to better conditions and prolong life, thus sought the goal toward the setting sun. Starting when the sturdy spring was enlivening all nature, they left the malarial marshes of the Mississippi Valley, where quinine and whisky for “fevernagur” were to be had at every crossroads store, and in a couple of weeks found themselves west of the muddy Missouri, where the herds of humped bison grazed as yet unafraid among the rolling, well-wooded hills of eastern Kansas. Barring a few common hindrances, they went well and reached the higher and hotter plains in midsummer; they were out of the sight of hills and trees––just one weary, eternal, unchangeable vista day after day. Mrs. Johnson had not been well, and after a few weeks that promised more for the future than they fulfilled, she began gradually to lose strength. But she was made of the uncomplaining material pioneers are wrought of, the ones who so lived, loved, and labored that the hard-earned sweets of civilization grew to highest perfection about their graves, and proved the most enduring monument to their memory. She never murmured other than to ask occasionally: “Father, how much farther? Isn’t it a wonderfully long way to Oregon?” “Just over that next range of hills, I think, from what the trappers told me,” was the reply, after they had come to the toes of the foothills that terminate the long-lying limbs of the giant Rockies. But he did not know the stealth of the mountains nor the fantastic pranks the cañony ranges can play upon the stranger. A snowy-haired peak, brother to Father Time, wearing a fringe of evergreens for his neckruff, would play hide-and-seek with them for days, dodging behind this eminence and hiding away back of that hill, only to reappear apparently as far off as ever, and sometimes in a different direction from where he last seemed to be. After a few more days: “Father, how many more miles do you think?” “O, not many now, I am sure!” cheerily and optimistically would come the answer. As they climbed, and climbed, and climbed, the ripening service-berry, blackened by weeks of attention by the unclouded sun, and the pine-hen and the speckled beauties from the noisy trout-streams, added to their comforts, and for a little while appeared to enliven the tired and fading woman. A frosty night or two, a peak newly whitened with early snow, put an invigorating thrill and pulse into the blood of the man and the boy, but she crept just a little nearer to the camp fire of evenings and found herself more and more languid in responding to the call of the day that returned all too soon for her. At last, rolling out on the Wahsatch side of the continental backbone, they encountered very warm but shortening days, while the nights grew chillier. Having passed to the north of Salt Lake by the trail so well and faithfully marked by Mr. Ezra Meeker in recent years, they began to realize that they were with the waters that flow to the west. One evening, after the tin plates, iron forks and knives, and the pewter spoons had been washed and returned to their box, and as they were getting ready for their nightly rest, Mrs. Johnson said, wearily: “Father, it just seems to me I would be glad if I never would waken again. It seems I would enjoy never again hearing the everlasting squeech, squeech of the wheels in the sand, and see the sun go down day after day so red and so far away over those new mountains. O, I am so tired!” “Never mind, mother, we are not far from our new home now;” and moving over to her side as she sat leaning against the wagon-tongue, the man slipped his own tired arm about her shoulders and let her rest against him, for he was indeed weary, and the trailwaswonderfully long. The following morning he purposely lay still just a little longer than was his custom, although he was most prudently desirous of making as much speed as he could while the weather continued so good; he knew the rains might soon set in and make travel over unmade roads much worse than it already was. When he arose he noiselessly crept away from her side and quietly called the boy to go and bring up the horses and the cow, cautioning him to take off the horse-bell and carry it so as not to arouse the mother when he came to camp. Quietly as possible he made the fire and prepared their breakfast of fare that was daily becoming scantier. Then, when all was ready, he tiptoed through the sand to where she lay under the spreading arms of a little desert juniper, such as are occasionally found in the deserts, and where she had said the night before she wished she could sleep forever. She looked so calm and restful he hesitated to wake her; it seemed like robbery to take from her one moment of the longed-for and hard-earned rest. Yet it was time they were on their road, and the day was fine; so after a few minutes he called, gently, “Mother, you’re getting a nice rest, aren’t you?” She did not stir. He then stoo ed to kiss the lan uid li s––the were cold. She was dead. The had been
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seeking a home by the shores of the sunset sea; she had found the sunrise land. It is a sad, solemn, and sacred thing to be with our dead, but to be alone, hundreds of miles from the face of any friend, in such an hour, is an experience few ever have to meet. Pioneer-like, the father scans the horizon, locating all the prominent features of the landscape. He makes a rude map, not forgetting the juniper. As best he can he prepares the body for the burying. And such a burying! No lumber with which to make even a rough box; nothing but their daily clothing and nightly bedding was to be had. The unlined grave was more than usually forbidding. The desert demon had trailed that brave body and was now swallowing it up. They made the grave by the juniper where she last slept, and, sorrowing, the father and the son went on, firm in the resolve that the loved one should not always lie in a desert grave. Forty years later a man past middle-age, riding a horse and leading another, to whose packsaddle was fastened a box, went slowly along that old trail in Southern Idaho, now almost obliterated by many-footed Progress. He was scanning the hills and consulting a piece of age-yellowed paper, broken at all its ancient creases. It was the son obeying the dying request of the old father––going to find, if possible, the spot where the tired mother went to sleep so long ago, and bring all that remained to rest by his side. It was no easy task. Fertile fields, whose irrigated areas now presented billowy breasts of ripening grain; mighty ditches like younger and better-behaved rivers; a railway following the general direction of the old trail; ranch-houses and fat haystacks indenting the sky-line once so bare of all except clumps of sagebrush– –these all conspired to make the task next to impossible. Man may scratch the hillsides, but cannot mar the majesty of the mountains; they were unchanged. The map he carried was the one his father made on the spot more than a generation before. It had been well made and the specifications were minute. After a long while, carefully measuring and comparing, he found the spot to him so sacred. The juniper tree, so rare in that section, had not been disturbed by the new owner of the land, and as the precious burden, secured at last, was borne away, it still stood on guard––as if lonely now. Like father, like son. Both were faithfully bound by the strongest tie in the universe––love!
THE DESERT
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. ––Gray. As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs. ––Plutarch.
THE DESERT Much of the Old Overland Trail lay across the “Great American Desert,” as it was named in the earlier geographies. Irrigation and progressive energy have made these wastes in many instances literally to “blossom as the rose”; but until that was done these stretches were weary enough. He who knows only the desert of the geography naturally conceives it an absolutely forsaken and empty region where nothing but dust-storms are born unattended and die “without benefit of the clergy.” But the desert has character and is as variable as many another creature.
THE SAND STORM An experience in an actual sand storm is food upon which the reminiscent may ruminate many a day, being much more pleasant in memory than in the making. First come the scurrying outriders, lithe and limber whisking gusts, dancing and whirling like Moslem dervishes, coyly brushing the traveler or boldly flinging fierce fistfuls of dirt into his eyes; then off with a swish of invisible skirts––vanishing possibly in the same direction whence they came. They go leaving him wiping his astonished eyes disgustedly, for the act was so sudden and tragic as to excite tears. Before he is aware of it other and stronger gusts duplicate the dastardly deed of the first wingless wizard of the plains, and the hapless voyager is left gasping. Almost immediately there are to be seen the regular “desert devils,” as they are called, bringing a dozen or more whirling columns of yellow silt rapidly through the air, each pirouetting on one foot, assuming meanwhile all sorts of fantastic shapes.
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Now for the fierce onset. Like blasts of a blizzard, the shrapnel of the desert is hurled into eyes, face, ears, and nostrils; little rivers pour down the back and fill every discoverable wrinkle and cranny of the clothing with their gritty load. If in summer, buttoning the clothing is suffocation, and the perspiration soon makes one a mass of grime; if in winter, it is not so unbearable, for a comfortable fencing can be made against the sand and the cold. The whole landscape is obliterated by and by, and the trails are so often drift-filled that unless one is himself accustomed to such methods of travel or has an experienced plainsman as his driver and guide, there is danger of becoming lost, or so out of the way that night may overtake him and compel a waterless camp for himself and team.
TWILIGHT AND DAWN But to see the morning slip off its night clothes and step out into daylight, or watch day don her night-wraps and snuggle down into twilight on the quiet sand-ocean! In summer it is a scene of splendor, often coming after a day or an evening of sandy wrath. At early dawn, lining the eastern horizon, are the soft pencils of bashful day over-topping the jagged sawteeth of the yet sleeping mountains, fifty or more miles away. A faint hinting of the lightening of the sky only deepens the blackness of the snow-streaked peaks. The cowardly coyote’s yelp comes more and more faintly, the burrowing owl’s “to-whit, to-whoo” falls dying on the moveless air, and the white sparrow of the sagebrush starts up as if to catch the early worm he is almost sure not to find. The loping jack rabbit slips softly to his greasewood shelter and the prairie dog bounces barking from his snake-infested haunt, noisily preparing for his day’s digging and foraging. The stubborn mountains begin to let the sun’s forerunning rays glide between them; the sky, now old gold, is fast transforming into kaleidoscopic crimsons and other reds, while the swift arms of the day-painter are reaching from between the peaks of the precipitous crags and dyeing the scales of the mackerel sky with hues and tints the rainbow would covet. In the opposite direction a morning mirage inverts an image of a stretch of trees along the far-away river and blends them top to top till they seem greenish-black columns supporting the dun clouds of the west, while the belated moon peers through the half-unreal corridors.
SUNSET The sunset is far more gorgeous; it often reaches grandeur. Let it be a winter evening. A suggestion of storm has been playing threats. The western hills have reached up their time-toughened arms and carried the burnt-out lantern of day to bed, tucking him away in gold-lace tapestry and rose-tinted down. Then the blue, black, and brown clouds change quickly to purple, pink, and red by turns, and the opaline sky itself forms a background for the dissolving community of interlacing filaments of priceless filigree, till in time too full of interest to compute by measure, the whole heavens are aflame with a riotous orgy of color, a prodigality of shifting scene, making one think of the descriptions essayed by the writer of the Apocalypse. We think of Moses who wished to see God “face to face,” but was told he would be permitted to behold only the “dying away of his glory.” No wonder the man who was forty years in the wilderness before that grand exode, and forty more through the unsurveyed deserts, was enabled to write the majestic prose-poems that have lived unaltered through all these thousands of critical years! He was in the region where inspiration is dispensed with hands of infinite wealth. God is the dispenser.
SAGEBRUSH
This is the forest primeval.––Longfellow. The continuous woods where rolls the Oregon.––Bryant.
SAGEBRUSH Frequently within these pages mention has been made of the commonest of all our native plants on the Trail––sagebrush. Botanically, it is,Artemisia tridentata. The new Standard Dictionary defines sagebrush as “any one of the various shrubby species of Artemisia, of the aster family, growing on the elevated plains of the Western United States, especiallyArtemisia tridentata, very abundant from Montana to Colorado and westward.” The leaf ends in three points; hence the adjective tridentata––the three-toothed artemisia. There are several varieties of sa ebrush, and a erson not well ac uainted with the desert mi ht easil
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mistake one for the other. There are the white sage, a good forage plant for sheep, and the yellow sage, which, when properly taken, can be made useful for cattle. Then there is the common variety, the sort named above. This is not to be mistaken for the prickly greasewood which infests the more alkaline regions; nor the rabbit-brush with its blossom so like the goldenrod, but with a very disagreeable odor. No man who knows will ever buy land where the greasewood grows thickly; it is unproductive because of the large percentage of alkali. But the ancient-looking sage is a pretty sure indication of fertility of soil. Mother Nature is sometimes hard pushed to find dresses for all her poorer areas; of course the better portions of the land east or west, north or south, care for their clothes better than do these arid stretches and the clothing is a richer vegetation. This ever-gray, little hunger-pinched pygmy among trees looks about as much like an oak as does a diminutive monkey like a grown man. A peculiarity of this individual in treedom is that it keeps its ash-colored leaf until it has a new set to put on in the spring, so that all winter long it presents the same color as it does in the summertime. Its bark is loose and shaggy, being shed rapidly, and gives one the thought of the old grape vine; hanging in bunches, the bole has always a ragged appearance. It is truly the dry-land plant, always found where the alkali or water is not too abundant; but in favored spots where there is only a little dampness and not too much fierceness of the summer heat it grows eight or ten feet high, making a body large enough for fence posts. This is extraordinary, for usually these Liliputian forests do not attain a height of more than four feet, and often much less. So diminutive are these solemn woods that the ordinary gang-plow can walk right through them, turning the shrubbery under like tall grass, although every tree is perfect, just like the dwarf creations produced by the resourceful Japanese. The seed of this tiny tree grows on stiff, upright filaments like the broom-corn straws. These stems are very bitter and are often used by the range-riders on long rides or roundups to excite the flow of saliva when thirst overtakes them too far from water. Because of its bitterness it is often called wormwood. Not many uses have been found for the wood of these primeval forests. In many sections the people have nothing but sagebrush for firewood. The whole tree is used, special stoves, or heaters, being made to accommodate the whole plant. It is gathered in the following manner: Two immense T-rails of railroad iron are laid side by side, one inverted, and securely fastened together; to the ends of these are hitched two teams of horses or mules, which pulling parallel to each other, are driven into the standing fairy forests and the swaths of fallen timber show the track of this unnatural storm. Its roots have such slight hold on the soil that it easily falls. Wagons and pitchforks follow, and the whole of the felling is hauled untrimmed to the home for hand-axing if too large; and it is all burned, top and root. There is so much vegetable oil in this queer plant that it makes a fine and very quick fire, green or dry. After a summer rain there is no aromatic perfume surpassing that of the odor of sagebrush filling the newly washed air. The mountaineer who has had to make a trip East gladly opens his window, as his train pushes back into the habitat of these aromatic shrubs, to get an early whiff of the health-laden, sage-sweetened atmosphere of the beloved Westland and homeland.
THE IRON TRAIL
There are hermit souls that live withdrawn In their houses of self-content; There are souls like stars that dwell apart In their fellowless firmament. There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths Where highways never ran. But, let me live by the side of the road And be a friend to man. ––Sam Walter Foss.
A RAILROAD SAINT IN IDAHO
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The “railroad saint” was a locomotive engineer. His life was ever an open book, yet while careful and almost severe in his personal religious habits, he did not criticize the manners of his associates. He simply let his well kept searchlight shine. Though born in Ohio, his boy life was spent mainly in Nebraska, when it was just emerging from the ragged swaddlings of rough frontierdom; and during his young manhood he lived in Wyoming, at the time when men “carried the law in their hip-pockets,” as he graphically expressed it. Early becoming an employee of the Union Pacific, he was a permanent portion of its westward intermountain extension, and he did his life’s work among the scenic cliffs and clefts of the picturesque crags and corrugated cañons of the wrinkled ridges in the Rocky and the Wahsatch ranges. Opportunities for literary education were very limited to one so engaged, and little more than what was absolutely necessary to the railmen did he receive. But he was not ignorant by any means. In later years he read extendedly and with careful discrimination. He had a poet’s soul, but was not visionary. His mother had been a careful and sensible Christian. The indelible impress she left upon him was like to that given by Jochebed to her son Moses. He never wholly escaped from her hallowed influence, although he descended into vicious living and became a notorious and blatant blasphemer, sceptic, and drunkard. Once when attending a national convention of railway engineers in an Eastern city he noticed a little flower boy vainly attempting to dispose of his roses. Our engineer (who always had a feeling for the “other fellow”) paid the lad for all he had left and directed him to carry them to the hotel where the delegates were stopping, and give them to the ladies in the parlor. This act was repeated on successive days. It attracted attention finally, and one of the delegates asked him if he were a Christian. Characteristically he blurted out: “Do you see anything about me that indicates it? If so, I will take it off at once. Why do you ask such a question?” “Because,” said the questioner, “your kindness to that pale-faced little flower boy makes people think you are.” “Nothing at all queer about that,” was the quick reply. “Common humanity should dictate such deeds. If I myself wanted a favor, I’d not go to any Christian for it; I’d rather tackle a bartender or a gambler.” “Well, Dr. T–––, of the Methodist Church, has heard of you,” remarked his questioner, “and he says he would like to meet you for an hour or so before you leave the city. ” “But I’ve no desire to meet any preacher, though if it will afford the gentleman any pleasure, I will gladly do it for that reason and no other. What do you suppose he wants?” The intermediary arranged a time of meeting, and after introducing the men, left the “eagle eye” in the pleasant study of the minister, a pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. After a few minutes of easy conversation, the minister abruptly cut all Gordian knots and said: “Mr.–––, are you a Christian?” “No, sir, not so you can notice it.” “Why are you not?” “Why should I be?” “It gives to every one who embraces true religion a better, broader, worthier view and conception of life.” “Wherein, mister?” “It puts purpose into his life and interprets the end to which he is tending ” . Then came up from the keen intellect-quiver of our Rocky Mountain engineman all the stock phrases, replies, and arguments of Voltaire, Rousseau, Ingersoll, and others whose writings he knew perfectly. With Christian and cultivated patience the minister listened and then said with captivating and sympathetic tenderness: “But, my dear sir, that is all speculation on the part of those scholarly and eloquent men whom you quote so accurately. They know no better. The religion of Jesus is not speculation; it is practical knowledge. Would not you, sir, like to know personally as to its truth?” “Yes, but how can I?” His foot had been taken in the snare of the wise trapper. Said the preacher: “You can; and this is the way. As you leave this city for your return to the West, get a cheap New Testament; indeed, here is a copy; please accept it. Tear it in two in the middle, retaining only the four Gospels––Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Read them; you will by yourself and by this means find the way to perfect knowledge.” He of the throttle, hungry for the deepest knowledge, did as directed and advised. Back to his cab and engine he went, under the deepest conviction. Yet he declared that he needed no extraneous assistance to be as good as any Christian; Jesus he considered a superfluity, and said so. The negative influences of the atheistic authors yet warped him. He said: “I dare any of you to watch me. I can and will be as upright as any Christian on earth.” But after a short time of exemplary conduct, he would wake up some morning only to discover to his hearty disgust that he had been on an extended period of dissipation. Later he would attempt another straightening-up and try to “be good” without the necessary becoming so, only to fall again and harder than before. Once, after such humiliating debauch, he entered a saloon which contained the only barber shop in the village, the railway division point where he had his “layovers” for regular rest. He sat down for his daily shave. It was the morning after pay-day among the employees, and, as he stated it to the writer, “everybody, even the barber, had been drunk.” Cigar stumps, empty bottles, cards, and other plentiful signs of the
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previous night’s carousals covered the floor with bacchanalian litter. Lying there, eyes shut, an Armageddon was taking place on the stage of his perturbed soul. His story is this: “While lying there that morning a voice said to me, ‘You are not a square-dealer.’ I opened my eyes on the barber, only to see a bloated face with impassive and mute lips; he had said nothing, I could easily see. I closed my eyes again, only to hear, ‘You do not treat me as you would a gentleman.’ I now knew that the voice was that of an unseen person, and I replied mentally but really. ‘Who are you, and what do you want?’ ‘I am Jesus, whom you deny without having known, and condemn without having attempted to prove. You have been saying all the while you can succeed without my assistance, and you know you have failed every time. All I want is a chance in your life that I may prove myself to you.’ Then I replied, ‘If this is what you want, just come in and we will talk it over.’ He then came in never to go out again. I went to my little shack-room and, locking the door, took out of a little old hair-covered trunk a Bible my mother had given me; it had lain there for thirty long years untouched. I opened it and read a while and then got down on my knees to pray. What I said was about like this: ‘Lord, if it is really the Lord who was talking to me (I have my doubts), you know I am a man of my word, and you can trust me. I want to make you a proposition: I’ll do the square thing by you if you’ll do the same by me. Amen!’” “This,” said he, “was the beginning of the struggle for rest to my soul; and I found it.” An incident leading to his immediate, possibly ultimate safety, was a conversation in a saloon. It does not always transpire that we are benefited by the act of the talebearer, but in this case it was highly salutary. One of his engineer friends, drinking at the bar, said: “Never fear about H–––. He will soon get over all this and be along with us as usual.” Hearing it, he became very righteously indignant and said: “By the grace of God, never! I’ll go up to the church my wife attends and join with her, and when they know I am a church member they’ll let me alone.” He did so at once. He was saved. He lived for many years, always happy, always helpful, and without fear he ascended the snowy hills of old age, with their enveloping mists. Afflicted with a creeping paralysis, he lingered long, ever cheerful, and interested in his friends, to whom he sent many messages. To his brothers of the Odd Fellows he sent this message: “Boys, I’ll not see you any more. I am just like a boy at Christmas Eve, who with stocking hung up, is anxious for daylight. The shadows have come over me. My stocking is hung up by the Father’s fireplace and I am almost impatient for the morning. I haven’t the remotest idea what I will get, but I am sure it will be something good.” A few days before his translation he was visited by one of his old-time railway associates, who said to him: “H–––, you are now up against the real thing, according to your belief; and it looks to us the same, just as if you would have to go some one of these days. How does it seem? What is it like?” Looking at the questioner lovingly, the dying man said, “Charley, you’ve worked for the railway company a long time, and never had many promotions, have you?” “Yes, about twenty years––and no promotions.” “Well, Charley, suppose there’d come to you to-day a wire from headquarters saying there’s a big promotion waiting for you on your arrival, and at the same time a pass for your free transportation. How do you think that would seem to you?” “My soul, but that’d be fine,” said he. “Well, Charley, that’s just my case exactly,” said the radiant man. “I’ve been working for God and his company for about that same length of time and never had much promotion so far as I could see, and now I have a summons direct from the glory land telling me there’s a big advancement for me, and it sounds mighty good.” He was dressed for the wedding, the Christmas morning, or whatever awaited him, and was anxious that the couriers of the King should come. When the moment came the old engineer’s headlight was undimmed, the switch signals showed green, and when he called for the last board at the home station the signal came back: “All’s well; come on in.” He had received his coveted promotion.
AN UNUSUAL KINDNESS
That best portion of a good man’s life–– His little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love. ––Wordsworth. The Methodist locomotive engineer had died joyful. “I am so glad to go,” he said. “I am like a boy when there’s a circus in town; I’ve got the price, and my baggage is checked clear through.” I was holding a memorial service for him in his old home town, and at the close a big, broad-shouldered man came forward to the altar rail and quietly said, “You did not know that man.”
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The remark startled me a little, for I had been acquainted with him for many years; in fact, had once been his pastor. “I thought I did,” replied I. “No, you never really knew him,” was the insistent rejoinder; “let me tell you something about him. Years ago I was not living as I ought, and I had all sorts of trouble. My wife was very sick, and we were living in a bit of a shack back here a little way where she finally died. I was down and out. The fellows wanted to be good to me, and they were––in their way of thinking––but it did me no good. They would say, ‘Come, brace up, old fellow, have a drink and forget your troubles.’ But there are some troubles drink will not drown; mine was one of them. “One night our friend came up to my shack, and having visited a while he said: ‘Old man, you’re up against it hard, ain’t you?’ I replied, ‘Yes, I am, just up to the limit.’ ‘Well, let’s pray about it.’ I told him I didn’t believe in prayer. ‘All right,’ said he, ‘I do, and I’ll pray any way.’ You should have heard the prayer he made. It was about like this: ‘God, here’s my friend, Charley; he’s in an awful fix. We’ll have to do something for him. I’ve done all I can; now, it’s up to you to see him through. Amen.’ “Then he arose from his knees and, handing me his check book, he said, ‘My wife and I ain’t got much, only a couple o’ thousand in the bank; but here’s this check book all signed up; take it and use it all if you need it, and God bless you!’ “But,” added the narrator of the story, “I couldn’t use money like that.” The tears were fast falling over his bronzed cheeks as he told with tenderness the story, and as I looked into his eyes I knew that through knowledge of the dead engineer’s kingly kindness had come to him the knowledge of the new life.
INDIANS OF THE TRAIL
Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn. ––Burns.
CHIEF JOSEPH, NEZ PERCE INDIAN
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