The Story of a Life
by J. Breckenridge Ellis · English · Gutenberg #37677 · 556,489 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Story of a Life
Author: J. Breckenridge Ellis
Contributor: O. A. Carr
Release date: October 9, 2011 [eBook #37677]
Language: English
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Credits: Produced by David Garcia, Julia Neufeld and the Online
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file was produced from images generously made available
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORY OF A LIFE ***
Produced by David Garcia, Julia Neufeld and the Online
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file was produced from images generously made available
by The Kentuckiana Digital Library)
[Illustration: MRS. O. A. CARR]
THE STORY OF A LIFE
BY
J. BRECKENRIDGE ELLIS
AUTHOR OF
"THE SOUL OF A SERF," "THE DREAD AND FEAR OF KINGS," "HOLLAND
WOLVES," "SHEM," "ADNAH," "ARKINSAW COUSINS," "TWIN STARRS,"
"GARCILASO," "IN THE DAYS OF JEHU," "KING SAUL," "STORK'S
NEST," "THE RED BOX CLEW," ETC.
PRESS OF
REYNOLDS-PARKER CO.
SHERMAN, TEXAS
1910
TO HER GIRLS
and to the
MEMORY AND PERPETUATION
OF
CARR-BURDETTE COLLEGE
MRS. CARR'S PET--THE CHILD OF HER
BRAIN AND HEART
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
I. A KENTUCKY GIRL.
II. IDEALS.
III. A KENTUCKY BOY.
IV. A SCHOOL-GIRL'S NOTE BOOK.
V. A UNIVERSITY STUDENT.
VI. LOVE AND SACRIFICE.
VII. "I WILL GO."
VIII. AN ENGLISH PRIMROSE.
IX. THE LONG VOYAGE.
X. LIFE IN MELBOURNE.
XI. BUSY YEARS IN AUSTRALIA.
XII. EXPERIENCES IN TASMANIA.
XIII. TRAVELS IN THE ORIENT.
XIV. WORK IN KENTUCKY AND MISSOURI.
XV. LADY PRINCIPAL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI.
XVI. IN PURSUIT OF ONE'S IDEAL.
XVII. ACHIEVING ONE'S IDEAL.
XVIII. CROWNING MONUMENT OF A LIFE.
INTRODUCTION.
The story of any life, if fully portrayed, should be more interesting
than the story of a dream-phantom of fiction. In hearing of one who
really lived, there is with us the feeling that the sunshine which
greets our eyes, the rain which dashes against our window, in brief, the
joys and sorrows which like flowers and thistles grow everywhere, were
all known to that real character in the world's drama. Therefore, since,
in a measure, our experience and his are in common, his life, inasmuch
as it touches us at so many points, should lead us into new fields of
interest and instruction, as it goes on its way alone.
This is true of any life, if we could know it in its entirety. But how
much more strikingly true it is found, when the life selected is one
that leads from the twilight dawn of infancy to the twilight close of
life, in one straight line of definite desire and inspiring achievement.
It is the purpose of this book to trace such a life, from the little bed
in the nursery, a bed of weakness and tears, to the huge pile of brick
and stone which stands as a monument to that life as if to show what may
be accomplished in spite of tears and weakness.
In the story of this life will be found stirring scenes and distant
travels; romance will not be lacking; here and there the faces of famous
men and women will, for a moment, appear; across the bloom of youth and
hope will fall the shadows of war. All these realities will be presented
in the colors of truth. But something deeper than an interest in
connected links of a story is here to be found; it shall be our endeavor
to discover the causes that lead to wider activities.
In endeavoring to divine, and clearly reveal, the motives that prompt
action, we shall try to hold ourselves detached from the subject,
finding no fault, and indulging in no encomium, defining beliefs and
ambitions, not because they are ours, but because they were those of
Mattie Myers, and, to understand her, one must understand them.
It will not be sufficient to consider her work, and the opinions of
those who knew her, in order to reach the desired result. As far as
possible, she shall speak out herself, out of her old diaries and the
abundance of her letters. As her biographer, I would be but the setting
to uphold the gem, that it may shine by its own light. And yet, there is
no life whose story may be fully understood, unless a knowledge is
gained of those other lives with which it comes in contact. In the
present story, this truth is of wider significance than one finds in the
lives of the majority. Here will be painted scenes as widely separated
as Kentucky, Missouri, Texas, Australia, England, and the Levant.
THE STORY OF A LIFE.
CHAPTER I.
A KENTUCKY GIRL
"I don't believe she's going to live long," said the black nurse,
mournfully shaking her head. "She's so thin and weak, and she cries
nearly every night!"
The nurse was speaking of little Mattie Myers, who lived in the old
Kentucky town of Stanford. The child was seldom to be seen engaged in
those sports natural to children. She was grave, quiet, thoughtful. Her
one amusement was found in her family of dolls; she was always their
teacher, and they were daily going to school to her. For companions, she
chose those who were much older than herself, and she would sit by the
hour, soberly listening to theological discussion, weighing, in her
infant mind, the arguments of learned men.
Her mother was dead, but Mattie could recall her sympathetic touch, and
tender smile. It seemed to her that out of the shadow of death her life
had emerged, to be clouded by new losses. One after the other, her two
sisters were taken from her. Then the brother, who was her only
intimate companion, went to another town to teach school. Mattie found
herself the only young person in the large house of her wealthy father.
Of course she received all care; her slightest wishes were granted; the
love of her widowed father was doubly hers, because of his bereavements.
But the little girl was very lonely. When the flowers sent forth their
perfume on the warm Kentucky breezes, she was reminded of three graves;
and when the sunshine gilded the level pike leading toward Lancaster,
she felt as if her brother Joe were calling her to come and nestle
against his loving breast.
At every turn, the big house in Stanford reminded her of her mother's
footsteps, her sisters' voices forever hushed, and that beloved brother
from whom, for the first time, she found herself separated. Is it a
wonder that the nights often witnessed her tears? Is it strange that
there should have grown up within her, the intense desire to go to her
brother? She made this wish known to her father, and her brother
seconded her in the plan. Why not stay with Joe during the school year?
Then they could spend the vacations at home, together.
Henry Myers, the wealthy and influential father, considered this
proposition. He was an ambitious man. He had spared no expense in giving
his son a thorough education. He was pleased, now, to find that little
Mattie should show a disposition for learning. She was only eight years
old, and yet he felt that, in the companionship of her brother, she
would find ample protection. Moreover, while a child of eight is usually
no fit inmate of a boarding-school, and while it is not best to send one
so young, to dwell among strangers, Mattie was no ordinary child.
Nor was her mother an ordinary woman. Mary Burdette possessed a cultured
and original mind, related in sympathies to that of her cousin who is
known to the world, in the familiarity of affection, as "Bob Burdette."
When Mrs. Mary Burdette Myers died, it was supposed that Mattie was too
young to appreciate her loss. She could not, of course, appraise that
loss at its full value, but its shadow rested upon her girlhood. This
death, and that of her sisters, had rendered her serious, had brought
enforced reflections upon death and immortality. The letters that she
wrote, almost to the days of maturity, are found inclosed in faded
little envelopes, which show the black band of mourning.
No, there was no danger in sending Mattie to Lancaster where brother Joe
would be her protector. Her father consented.
The ambition to teach school, entertained by one who was a man of means,
was a rare thing in the South before the Civil War; or, at any rate, it
was rare in Kentucky. Yet that was the ambition of Joe Myers, and to
this ambition he devoted his life. He was a natural teacher, and Mattie,
who admired him above all others, imitated him in all things. What he
liked, she liked, and what he wanted to do, she meant to do. The young
man was very fond of music--so was his little sister. He opened up an
academy at Lancaster--Mattie established her first school, as we have
seen--a college of dolls.
When at last it was decided that Mattie should go to Joe, great was her
joy. Some of those few golden hours of childhood, which she afterward
recalled, came to her then. She went--the pike had not called in
vain--but she did not leave her dolls at home. She boarded with her
brother Joe Myers, and her education began in earnest.
"I was only eight," she afterwards said, "when I entered a boarding
school; my whole family of dolls matriculated with me."
Lancaster and Stanford were not far apart, though in different counties.
It was a short journey to go home Friday evening, and visit there until
Monday morning. But of course these visits were not of weekly
occurrence.
There was Joe to stay with, and these two never tired of each other's
companionship. In the twilight-hours, the young teacher would play his
flute, and the little girl would sit listening with all her soul,
translating his music into definite resolves. Just as he had given his
life to teaching, so would she. She declared her purpose at that age of
eight. She would teach a school--a school for girls. It was a purpose
she never changed.
Thus the years passed by, in sweet companionship with her brother during
the school months, and with the reunited family every summer. Mattie did
not grow strong. The black nurse still shook her head. "We never thought
she would live!" she often declared, in after years.
In the meantime, Mattie still associated with those who were much older
than herself, still found pleasure in discussion of religious
differences. We shall find her, at the age of eighteen, saying that most
of her friends are married or dead, thus showing that no intimacies
existed between herself and girls of her own age.
At twelve, a change came into her life. So thoroughly had she pursued
her studies at Lancaster, that it was determined to send her away to
college. At that time, the strongest college for girls of her father's
faith, was at Harrodsburg, Kentucky. The name of it was "Daughters'
College." Mattie's brother and father, justly proud of her attainments,
and still resolved to encourage her in her desire to become thoroughly
educated, sent her to Harrodsburg to be instructed by John Augustus
Williams, the President of "Daughters' College."
Boarding among strangers, now far from home, Mattie found accentuated
both her spirit of self-reliance, and her attitude of reserve toward
others, two traits always shown in her childhood. The six years at
Harrodsburg served to strengthen and deepen her already-preconceived
ideals. John Augustus Williams carried on the work that Joe Myers had
begun. The Harrodsburg President was as devoted to learning as the
Lancaster professor; and he had farther penetrated its depths. He was,
indeed, a remarkable man, one who magnified the dignity of his calling,
always conscious that the better he succeeded as a teacher, the greater
would prove his blessing to the lives of others.
On Sunday we may follow the college girls to church. There goes Mattie
Myers, in her solid-green woolen dress, her wonderful suit of hair
arranged as plainly as such a wealth of heavy brown will permit. We see
the neat and unpretentious hat from under which appear the serious brow,
and the eyes always bright and intelligent. We note her reliant step;
her form, too thin; her face a little weary from over-hard studying.
Shall we not enter this church on Main street, and watch the young
ladies as they seat themselves in a bright oblong of femininity, if not
of beauty?
We shall certainly do so, if we are young ministerial students,
attending the University! Unfortunately, young Oliver Carr cannot enter
with us, for he is still over yonder at May's Lick; but never mind--he
will presently be coming down to find out what Latin is like! What happy
fortune has brought the University for young men into the same town that
affords a college for young ladies? That, too, we shall presently
understand.
At any rate, here sits Mattie Myers, decorously listening, it would
appear--we hope she is not thinking about her studies--while Dr. Robert
Richardson, or Robert Graham, or Robert Milligan--all teachers at the
University (among whom "Robert" seems a favorite name)--preaches and
preaches. About what? Why, about what we must do to be saved, to be
sure. And Mattie listening eagerly--for of course she listens--finds
that these distinguished men agree entirely with her father, that what
we must do to be saved is very much like what Peter declared we must
do--nay, is exactly what Peter declared, to the very words. Far, indeed,
is it from the mind of this thin, erect girl in the dress of
solid-green, and under the hair whose splendor refuses to be
concealed--far is it from her mind that any young man of the Kentucky
"froglands" is ever to enter her life as an integral part!
[Illustration: Pres. Jno. Aug. William.
Daughters College.
Harrodsburg Ky]
Little time is there for day dreams for this child!--Little time, and no
inclination. Study--ever deeper and more persistent study for her; late
hours after the lamps are out, sitting in the window with long hair
streaming, borrowing favor from the moon--that means spectacles in no
very short time! Study--ever more absorbed, and absorbing study, at
noon-recess, in early morning, on holidays--till the form grows thinner,
the face paler; and, indeed, she had better have a care, or all this
will come to an end, with pain and disappointment!
The sermon is nearly ended. Are you sorry you missed it? An hour and a
quarter, already! Do the school girls move uneasily in the
straight-backed benches? Let us hope they are entertained by this
searching examination of sectarian "positions." How new that church
building seems to them! Why, it was finished only a few years ago--that
is to say, in 1850. There was a time when two bodies of believers met in
Harrodsburg; one organized by the followers of Barton Stone, who called
themselves "Christians", another the "disciples" who had followed John
Smith and John T. Johnson out of the Baptist church. The Christians met
from house to house; the "disciples" in the old frame building at the
corner of South Main and Depot streets, nearly opposite the public
square. Each body was suspicious of the other till, one day, they found
out that they taught the same things, believed the same truths, were, in
short, blood-brothers of faith and practice. So they came together and
formed the church which Mattie is attending. She comes every Sunday; and
every Sunday you will find, if you examine her closely, that she is a
little paler, a little weaker. Working too hard! The end must come if
this is kept up, year after year.
We find the girl subject to an unappeasable hunger for facts. Is she not
to devote her life to teaching her sex? Now is the time to store the
mind. John Augustus Williams spurs her on, leads her into untold
scientific difficulties; lets her realize how little is her strength;
then aids by teaching her to help herself. One thing he does not help
her do--that is to husband her physical forces. As he stands before his
"daughters" in chapel he hammers away at this idea:
"Teaching is woman's profession and her natural vocation. No lady can
claim to be well educated, therefore, or trained for her proper sphere
in life, until she has learned to teach, and to govern the young. The
learning which prepares her for the school-room, prepares her at the
same time for the highest social and domestic position. No time is lost
by such a training, even should the student never become a professional
teacher."
It is no wonder that the enunciation of these ideas strengthened the
girl's resolutions. Here was the most learned man she had ever met in
daily life, a polished speaker, a graceful author, a correct translator;
one who reads the pages of his manuscript, "The Life of John Smith,"
that his class may parse it;[1] a preacher, too, who pointed the way
back to Pentecost. Wisdom flowed from his lips, and his lips proclaimed
teaching the "natural vocation" of woman.
And the way in which this teaching was to be done--in a word, his
conception of what an education means--that justified his dictum. He
said over and over again:
"You have an infallible criterion by which you may determine the success
of your own and your teacher's labors. If you feel in your heart a
greater susceptibility to truth, a livelier appreciation of the purely
beautiful, a profounder regard for virtue, a warmer affection for the
good, and sublimer devotion to God, esteem your labors as eminently
successful; but if your attainments, varied and extensive as they may
be, are to render you less amiable in disposition, or less pure in
thought--less charitable to your fellows, or less devoted to God, then
have we labored in vain, and your learning, also, has been in vain."
To such a teacher as this, every year is a book written full of sweet
influences,--books far deeper and more permanent than any work of the
pen. The girl understood this; that is why her determination to be a
teacher grew and ripened; not to impart facts but, by means of facts, to
inculcate the love of learning and of truth. She wanted to come into
touch with the world, and to send the ripple of her personal influence
far out into those magic circles of infinite distance, which the casting
of an idea forms on the sea of thought. She wanted girls, many girls,
countless girls,--to receive a higher view of life by having known her;
to enter more fully into the inheritance of their estate through her
ministration. No other relation than that of teacher and pupil, could
connect this circuit of spiritual influence.
Teachers--the world was full of them in those days, just such as they
are now; teachers who bend beneath their burden, who seek in their
business but a means of livelihood, and who are ready to lay aside the
textbook and close the desk, when fortune smiles: who see their day's
end at four o'clock, and their happiness, at the dawn of vacation. But
there have always been, of teachers, a few who regarded their work as
Williams regarded his, and who, as in Mattie's case, with no spur of
necessity, selected it from all careers the future had to offer.
But we do not mean that these highest ambitions of a teacher's sovereign
realm took definite shape in the girl's mind in her twelfth year; for
see! She is no longer twelve, but thirteen--fourteen--fifteen--how fast
she is getting her education!--sixteen--
And then the blow fell--we said it would!--hours too late, and thought
too intense, and eyes too severely taxed! Has it been for nothing, after
all? She must flutter back home, now, like a disabled bird; high ideas
all lost in a maze, definite purposes fused white-hot in a raging
fever.
Not only so, but in her sudden breakdown of vital force, there is no one
to understand the despair over her own weakness, except, indeed, that
brother Joe who alone understands her. Mother and father are both dead,
now; and the sisters who are proud of her attainments--for she had
finished in the Junior Year at Daughters' College,--wonder that she is
not satisfied. Is it not enough? Already she is "educated."
And she is sixteen; and her inheritance assures her of future freedom
from necessity. It will be a long time, the doctors say, before she can
resume her studies--a year, at least; maybe two. But does that matter?
In two years she will be of age, and rich, or nearly so, in her own
right.
"And then," said brother Joe, "I will find her a rich husband, and see
her handsomely established for life!"
Not that Joe had himself married; he was too busy teaching school, and
too absorbed in his beloved work; but he felt the responsibility of his
guardianship. Mattie was too ill, too broken in spirit, to combat his
plans or to form any of her own. She could only lie silent and,
suffering, uncertain of the outcome.
Leaving her thus, as we found her at the beginning, in suffering and
tears, let us make a journey to Mason County, in search of that possible
husband. He may not prove so rich as brother Joe could desire. We shall
see.
[1] That "drill in Rhetoric, in English pure and undefiled" when she
analyzed and parsed every sentence of the Manuscript read to the class
Mrs. Carr often spoke of, and of John Smith who, in his last days, abode
at Daughters' College to furnish material for his biography. She was
always proud of the fact that John Augustus Williams taught her English.
CHAPTER II.
IDEALS.
But no, the biographer, on second thought, will not go up to May's Lick
in the present chapter. Let that expedition be reserved for Chapter
Third. And let those who care for the story of lives merely for events,
not for motive-springs of action, skip the present chapter, if they
will. It will be to their loss, if they do so; for what life is to be
understood, without an understanding of the principles that direct its
course?
In the life we are seeking to trace, there were three great principles
that shaped events. The first has already been amplified--the resolve to
become a teacher of girls. The other two must be defined--one's thought
of country, and one's religious faith.
In those days, a man who had no opinion on the "slavery question," or on
the "current reformation," was no true Kentuckian. If one has slaves,
his children are not only disposed to regard slavery as right, but as
highly fortunate and desirable. Also, when one's religion is being
placed on trial at every crossroad's log-schoolhouse, the smallest
girls in the household have some opinions on the Gospel Restored, on
Election, on Baptism.
[Illustration: "Studying too Hard."]
[Illustration: "Brother Joe."]
In the veins of Mattie Myers flowed Southern blood, and it was with the
South that she sympathized with all that fire of young enthusiasm that
characterized Southern adherents in those days. As for her religion,
that calls for more particular description, because it is
indistinguishably blended with all her emotions and purposes. It was no
more Mattie's intention to become a teacher of girls, than it was to
spread a knowledge of the Gospel as she herself understood it.
In portraying the belief of this child--a belief that time served only
to strengthen--it is far from our thought to influence the particular
faith of the reader. That biographer is unworthy of his task who allows
his own opinions to color his narrative. What I believe has no more to
do with the life of Mattie Myers, than has the belief of the reader; and
this is the story of a life, not a controversy in disguise.
But at the same time, it is not only due the reader, but the object of
the biography, that the faith of Mattie should be presented so clearly
and so fairly that no one can fail to understand what it was. I shall
do my utmost to make it plain. It occupied too great a part of the
girl's life and the woman's life, to be ignored. As she sat at her
father's knee in Stanford, as she rested with her brother on the porch
of the boarding-house in Lancaster, as she made her stage-journeys, in
short, wherever she was, she heard religion discussed in all its
phases. And that phase which appealed to her was the same that Walter
Scott--kinsman of the illustrious novelist--had proclaimed from state to
state.
One peculiarity of this faith was, that whoever accepted it with zeal,
became more or less antagonistic, combative. It was not because it
despised peace, although peace, in later years has sometimes proved
fatal to it; but it was because every hand seemed turned against it. Had
it asked for peace in 1850, that petition would doubtless have been
derided.
And why? Because an acceptance of this faith meant an end to all creeds,
to all sects, to all denominational barriers. Therefore all
denominations felt that the faith of Mattie Myers had raised its hand
against them. When Walter Scott and his co-workers prayed the Savior's
prayer that all might be one, what--if that prayer be granted--was to
become of the _many_?
It may be true, in the Twentieth Century, that one need only have enough
money to hire a hall, in order to start a new religion; that Society has
but to smile upon the dancing of Dervishes to popularize Orientalism;
that a woman, by the writing of a book, can convince intelligent
thousands that diseases are but delusions of their mortal minds--perhaps
instincts would be a better word, since unimaginative quadrupeds
sometimes "think" themselves sick. But whether this is true or not, it
is certain that, in the first half of the Nineteenth Century, it
required much more than money, and more than the writing of many books,
this endeavor to re-establish the old religion of Pentecost. It called
for courage, firmness and ability; it invited persecution and
misrepresentation.
"I would rather," an aunt of Oliver Carr once declared--herself a stern
soldier of the Cross--"see you go to your grave, than have you join the
Campbellite Church!"
What was this "Campbellite Church" of which some spoke thus
disparagingly? And why "Campbellite"? And why did the denominations
regard the people they thus designated much as, at a later day, the
Mormons were regarded? Before we enter into details, it is enough at
this point to emphasize the fact of general intolerance. To worship God
in your own way is the right of all; and no man disputes that inborn
right, so long as you agree with him in your religious belief. The
Puritans were ready to sacrifice their lives to preserve religious
freedom, and to take the lives of those who desired a separate freedom.
In the first half of the Nineteenth Century, more especially in the
first quarter, the jangling and wrangling among different sects was
almost inconceivable. It would appear that often where differences of
tenets were but slight, the fight was the more determined, as if the
possibility of preserving a denominational integrity, depended largely
upon keeping alive a spirit of hostility to all other denominations.
Happily that spirit of antagonism has largely died out, and men are not
so ready to take each other by the throat because they are seeking to
gain Heaven by different ways. This tendency to minimize differences of
speculative opinions, and to draw close to each other on the fundamental
truths as they are revealed in the life, death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ, is doubtless in a large measure due to the pioneers of
that faith which Mattie Myers had accepted, and which, at the time of
her acceptance, was the object of so much bitterness and ridicule.
Thirty years had already passed since Walter Scott and Alexander
Campbell first proclaimed their views in the "Christian Baptist." The
distracted state of the religious world had grieved many a pious and
erudite soul before 1819. In looking for a solution to the amazing
perplexities that baffled the seeker after God, in trying to avoid the
anomalous condition of changing a gospel of love to a gospel of
interminable disputation, the solution proposed by Thomas Campbell was a
return to the practices and faith of the early disciples. This solution
was urged by Walter Scott and Alexander Campbell. What more simple?
Everybody should be willing to accept the Bible; everybody should be
willing to discard everything else!
In brief, then, that was the work of the "current reformation." It would
call for a sacrifice of individual opinions, of sectarian names and
dogmas, of that poetic atmosphere which time bestows upon any
organization, of those intimate human associations derived from a
commingling with relatives and friends whom a common rule of practice
holds together. As a recompense for this sacrifice, was offered the
privilege of returning to the Apostolic faith and manner of worship, the
sense of security that should spring from following closely in the
footsteps of the earliest disciples, and the privilege of performing
one's part in the realization of the prayer of the Savior of mankind.
Alexander Campbell's life was given to this fundamental idea--that the
world should go back, in its religious beliefs and practices, nineteen
hundred years, to learn again the conditions of its salvation from the
lips of Christ's apostles. Campbell himself, was but a voice calling in
the wilderness. He seemed always to be crying, "Look back! Behold the
Lamb of God!" As for himself, he would have been but the medium through
which an enlightened vision might see that glorious spectacle of God in
man. "Do not regard me," he seemed to say, "For I am nothing. I am but a
voice--a voice proclaiming no new doctrine, only the old; asking you not
to originate a new faith, but to remember the old. Look back! Behold the
Lamb of God!"
But the world did not wish to look back. It exclaimed that these people
who pretended to do away with all sects, were themselves the narrowest
sect of all. These preachers who proclaimed that there was but one
church, were accused of "wanting to get us into their church." The
result was endless debates. We have seen that the denominations were at
war with one another; but all of them became more or less cohesive, in
their attack upon these people who claimed to be no denomination.
If Campbell and his friends urged that baptism should be administered as
in the days of the Apostles, the cry was immediately raised that "These
men believe in nothing but baptism." If their editors asked for an
instance of infant baptism between the lids of the Bible, it was
retorted that "They have only a head religion--they don't believe in a
change of heart." If a preacher said no more about baptism than did
Peter on Pentecost, his listeners went away observing that "he believed
water would save him." If nothing was said about baptism, if on the
contrary, the discourse were concentrated upon the idea that all
Christians should follow the same rule and practice, should dwell
together in one great homogeneous body, it was charged, "That is really
another way of saying that immersion is the only mode of baptism." If,
by dint of innumerable repetitions, Herculean efforts at self-restraint,
monotonous insistence, these "reformers" succeeded in convincing the
antagonist of the fact that nobody believed water would save him, and
every Christian believes in a change of heart, all this laborious and
indefatigable endeavor went for nothing.
"Well, maybe you do believe in a change of heart," it would at last be
conceded, "but your church don't." Or "Maybe _you_ don't believe water
will save you, but your church does."
Such as the views of the disciples of Christ really were, Mattie Myers
had received them at first hand. Her father was one of the "new faith."
His home had, from her earliest recollections, been a rallying point for
the sturdy pioneers of the "Old Jerusalem Gospel." In that home,
"Raccoon" John Smith and Barton W. Stone had held her upon their knees.
She had seen Walter Scott and Alexander Campbell in childhood, and had
heard L. L. Pinkerton's eloquence, and Robert Milligan's logic. She knew
the matters debated, the arguments that sustained each side in its
opinion,--and she could point out the verse of scripture that seemed to
substantiate every claim of her friends, and to confound those of the
enemy. And she knew how families had become divided; how bitterness
crept in between life-long friends; how misunderstanding led to
misrepresentation, and argument to vilification, and disapproval to
hatred.
Whatever else the plea of the disciples accomplished, it led to a closer
study of the scriptures; and to a fuller admission of their authority.
This was inevitable because the adherents of what was disparagingly
called the "new religion," based all their positions upon the Word of
God. Even farther than that they went, in declaring that they
entertained no doctrine not fully presented in the New Testament; they
were willing to relinquish any belief, no matter how dear, on being
shown that it was not divinely authorized.
It was futile to meet such claims by references to any other book than
that of the inspired writers, unless those books were lexicons and
dictionaries devoted to an explanation of biblical terms. To the
lexicons, the friends and enemies of the "reformation" did indeed go.
There were times when, if Polycarp, or Chrysostum, or even Sophocles, or
Plato, could have stepped into the debating-room, he might have fancied
himself just awakened from his long sleep, to hear confused murmurs in
his native tongue.
Under this awful weight of learning, the brain sometimes staggered. To
the imprudent, to the rash, to the over-zealous, vital truths might, at
times, be half-obscured, in showing the eunuch as he went down into the
water--_eis_, into; ah! shall we ever forget that _eis_ with its
suggestion of the cooling tide?--Into the water, then, the eunuch
descended; and good care was taken that he should not be left there. The
jailer, too,--was there no water in the courtyard? And Lydia's
household--what right has one to presume her mistress over a nursery? At
these debates, even the eloquent Henry Clay may act as moderator,
generously appreciative of the eloquence of A. Campbell. So, as we have
said, the theme may at times grow obscured with a sort of Greek mist;
but out of this mist there rises, at last, a face of meekness and
suffering beneath its crown of thorns--a crown of thorns, dear reader,
which the Son of God wore that you and I might wear crowns of glory.
It is interesting to note that here is a religion which its opponents
refused to take at its face value. Its adherents wished to be called
only by Bible names, such as Christians, or disciples of Christ. Their
opponents called them "Campbellites." These disciples claimed that they
had gone back to the days of the beginning of the church, to find there
the true standard of faith and practice. Their opponents said they had
started a new religion, and that it dated from the days of Alexander
Campbell. The disciples said that they added nothing to the Word of God,
took from it nothing; that where the Bible was silent they were silent,
that where it spoke they spoke; that, in matters of opinion, everyone
might think what he pleased, but that, in matters of essentials, there
should be unity. The opponents said that as a matter of fact, the
religion of the reformers was a religion of the head, and that its
central idea was baptism.
"You do not believe that baptism is necessary to salvation," the
disciples said; "then why do you baptize?"
"Aha!" the old cry was raised, "you think water will save you!" And
then the begrudged concession, "Well, if _you_ don't believe it, your
church does!"
In a word, then, the individual adherents of the religion were allowed
to hold opinions contrary to what the adherents as a whole, were
supposed to believe; while, at the same time, not one adherent of the
religion could be found who professed to hold the views that the
opponents of the religion ascribed to all the brotherhood! This was not
from a willful determination to misrepresent, but rather from a sense of
generous good-will. It was the only way to rescue one's kindred and
friends from the inevitable hell that awaits the adherents of heretical
doctrines.
"Tom is a good man," said a devout adherent of the established order of
things, referring to minister Thomas Arnold of the Kentucky disciples,
"but he preaches a lie and will be damned for it!" And the way to save
one's beloved from this damnation was to believe that they did not
really hold the views of these Ishmaelites of the "new religion," but
were "Baptists at heart"--or Pedobaptists, according to one's point of
view.
Thomas Campbell's "Declaration and Address" appeared in 1809; but it
was not until September, 1832 that the first general meeting of the
disciples of Christ was held, in Lexington, Kentucky. Everyone
understood that such an assemblage had no authority over local
organizations. Christian soldiers came together to talk over their
victories and defeats, and to plan for fresh campaigns. As time passed
by, such men as John T. Johnson and John I. Rogers were appointed state
evangelists; but they were supported by several churches combining to
furnish the funds.
At the time Mattie Carr was boarding at her brother's school, there was
no general board behind missionary enterprises. But later a convention
met at Harrodsburg and employed four evangelists; that was in 1857. The
next year sixteen were employed, and in a year they won 1,936 converts
to the church. The year following, twenty evangelists added to the faith
2,020. The "new religion" was growing at an unheard of rate, and the
more it grew the hotter raged the noise of battle and the clash of arms.
It is in such circumstances as these that one learns to weigh one's own
opinion, to use it, if need be, as a battering-ram against the opinions
of other folk; that one learns to realize the importance of
self-reliance, self-defense, self-assertion. Before Mattie Myers was
twelve years old, the leading purposes of her after-life were already
crystalized in thought and determination. It will be interesting to
watch how she adhered to these principles, and whither they brought her
at last. As we have said, they were three in number, more or less
commingled in her girlhood's plans of life; an unwavering devotion to
the South; a fixed resolve to become a teacher of girls; and a
conviction that the plea of the disciples of Christ was the need of the
world.
CHAPTER III.
A KENTUCKY BOY.
It was while the black nurse was doubtfully shaking her head over the
prospect of a long life for Mattie Myers, that two boys presented
themselves at the village schoolhouse of May's Lick, Kentucky. They were
two brothers who resembled each other so closely, and were so
inseparable, that they were often thought to be twins. Oliver Carr,
however, was two years younger than Owen[2]. They had come up from the
country in the old family barouche, and the fact that they were from the
country, was shown in their movements and their dress.
Their father, while still on the farm in Lewis County, had declared, "I
will educate my children, if I don't leave them a cent when I die." That
is why he sold his farm to invest the proceeds in town property at May's
Lick; and that is why Owen and Oliver are presenting themselves at the
door of May's Lick Academy. The family that had just moved to town,
consisted of William Carr and his wife, and their four sons and three
daughters. Of the children, the only one essential to this narrative is
he who gave his name to the teacher as Oliver A. Carr--better known in
his family and among his young companions as "Ollie."
The year was 1857. Of all the proud towns of Kentucky--proud of blood
and wealth--no city was prouder than May's Lick. Not even Lexington,
five counties to the southwest, thought more of her high birth, her fine
horses, her opulence, than did this little May's Lick of Mason County.
The schoolmates of the Carrs were the children of the wealthy. The boys
came to school in red-topped boots, riding prancing ponies, and were
waited upon by their black bodyguards. The girls were petted, and
spoiled, clad in dainty apparel, born to refinement and a nicety of
taste, intolerant of whatever appeared to their sensitive minds as
"common." Nor was this superiority of manner merely superficial. Beneath
the gleam of showy beauty, there was the gold of culture.
Naturally enough, these children of the rich, whether on the
play-ground, or in the school-room, stood aloof from Owen and
Oliver,--or as they were called "Bud and Ollie." In the first place,
they were newcomers; again, they were awkward and their clothes were
made from the same piece of their mother's weaving; and their father had
purchased one of the two hotels in town. "He works, himself!" it was
said, with pity, or contempt. And the sentiment against William Carr
because his work was not done by slaves, was reflected against his seven
children.
But William Carr, rugged and unyielding, firm in his belief that
education would place his boys and girls on a footing with the best,
conducted the hotel, while his wife, patient and tireless, sewed long
after the hours of the day's inevitable work were ended. To clothe and
educate seven children while all the time one's cashier is stealing
systematically--that is the problem!
It is a problem that little concerns the lads of the red-topped boots
and prancing ponies, or the girls of fine laces,--still less the fathers
of these; for all their spare time is spent in reminiscences of Henry
Clay, and in defining differences between the North and South--for this
is 1857, as we have said, and in a few years something may happen.
But it is not given to every boy to wear red-tops, nor to every girl,
real lace. Of course there were other families falling under the
supercilious classification of "those who do their own work." At such
times as the Carrs were not studying, or reciting to L. P. Streater, or
helping at home, companions were to be found, to bear a hand at a game
of marbles. Oliver had the genius of making friends; and, when no
artificial barriers interposed, his gentle nature thawed the ice in
natures most reserved.
Sometimes it happened that, as Oliver and his friends were engaged in
sports along the roadside, they would see a venerable man drawing near,
smooth faced, broad browed, stately in bearing, kindly in expression. If
it chanced to be a time of heated altercation, the warning would go
round--
"Hush! hush! There comes Brother Walter Scott."
The old man would pause with, "Well, dears, how do you do, this nice
morning? Are you on your way to school?"
Then he would pat one on the head, and say a pleasant word to all. In
his presence ill-humor melted away, and evil purposes were corrected. It
was not only so with the school boys, but with their fathers. His very
presence seemed a rebuke to wrong-doing and wrong-thinking. Sometimes he
came to the Academy and addressed the pupils. Oliver stood at the head
of the class in mathematics. One day after reciting geometry, "Elder"
Scott, as he was called--or "Brother" Scott--said, with that gracious
smile which lent the aspect of perennial youth to his wrinkled face,
"Young gentlemen, you have made good progress in Euclid." It was the
first time Oliver had ever heard of Euclid, but he knew the enunciation
of every proposition in the first five Books, and had drawn the figures
with elaborate care on his father's barn door! But he had not studied
Latin.
"That language," said his practical father, "is dead!"
The almost daily meeting with Walter Scott was one of those formative
influences, unperceived at the time, which help to shape one's ideals.
Let us look for a moment at this benign figure with his gentle smile,
his keen, penetrating glance, and his still almost raven-black locks. He
had brought to the Kentucky village an atmosphere of the great outside
world, for he was a man who had not only come in touch with the great
and illustrious, but who had himself participated in great affairs.
It meant much to the young mathematician at May's Lick Academy, this
daily intercourse with such a man. It inevitably raised his mind above
the daily toil, the unstimulating routine of a small town; it gave him a
certain outlook upon a wider life, suggesting higher things than had
hitherto entered his experience.
This venerable Walter Scott--he who had held little Mattie Myers upon
his knee--was a man in whose veins flowed the blood of Wat, of
Hardin--most illustrious of Scottish heroes. He was kin to the creator
of _Ivanhoe_ and _Rebecca_; a man who had graduated from the University
of Edinburg; who had sailed the seas and traveled in many distant
scenes; whose music instructor had been the friend of Sir Ralph
Abercrombie; who had been by turn teacher, preacher, editor, author; who
had traversed the circular avenues of poplars and pines leading to the
mansion-house of Henry Clay, trees "which made me fancy myself once more
in Scotia"--and who had sat in Clay's parlor in charming intercourse
with the statesman while the portrait of Washington looked down, and the
elegant simplicity of the apartments presented nothing "to make poor
men afraid, or rich men ashamed;" who had ridden on the steamboat with
the distinguished companionship of General Schuyler's daughter, the
widow of Alexander Hamilton, then in her eighty-fourth year; who had
visited the home of Colonel Richard M. Johnson; and who, finally, had
come to May's Lick to pass the remainder of his days.
It was natural enough that the very sight of this man should suggest to
the studious youth, thoughts of greatness and of travel. His kinship to
Sir Walter Scott and his familiarity with the lands beyond the seas, no
doubt lent him a sort of halo, to the imagination of boyhood. But it
must have done more than this; it must have suggested that one need not
remain poor and unknown; and that, as Walter Scott, when a poor young
man had lifted himself above his condition by means of his education, so
might Oliver Carr.
The postoffice was in William Carr's hotel. William was the
postmaster, and during vacation, or at intervals, Oliver served as
deputy. After the arrival of the mail, the distinguished scholar,
Walter Scott, would appear at the counter with his benignant smile,
and his "Dear--" he called all young people thus--"Dear, is there
anything for me, this morning?"
And Oliver was as pleased as he, when there was a _Louisville Courier_
to hand his friend, or a letter from Ohio, or Pittsburg, or New York.
There remains a word to be said as to what this Walter Scott was; for,
after all, where one has traveled, or whom one has met, speaks little of
the inner self; and it was this personal value of the man that counted
most with those he met.
It was in 1819 that Walter Scott landed in New York, and began teaching
Latin in Long Island--diverting himself with his flute at the close of
the day. But he soon felt the call of the West, and obeyed it afoot. It
brought him to Pittsburg, where he found himself drawn into school work
again. He became an assistant in the Academy conducted by Mr. Forrester,
a fellow-countryman. Scott had been reared in the Presbyterian faith,
and his soul had been perfectly satisfied in those religious grounds
staked off by his denomination's creed. He had not associated long with
Forrester before he found to his amazement that the latter, though
apparently of sincere piety, did not subscribe to all the articles; but,
instead of seeking to attack the Confession with the Discipline or the
Prayer Book, had recourse to the Bible. Not only so, but Forrester
professed himself ready to give up any article of faith that did not
appear fully warranted by the Scriptures; or, in other words, he had
resolved to be guided in religious matters by the Bible alone.
It is difficult for one of the present day to realize how radical,
unheard of, and unorthodox, such a determination as Forrester's appeared
in the year 1819. It is true that men here and there, in places far
removed from one another, were beginning to weary of the burden of the
creeds; they were reaching out to grasp something that might pull their
feet from the shackles of doubt or predetermined damnation, and in
desperate blindness they seized upon the Word of God as likely to prove
of most avail. It was, indeed, heresy; for if all had deserted creeds
for the Bible, what would have become of the creeds? In Luther's day it
had been heretical to decry Indulgences; if a Baptist, it was heretical
not to believe "in the peculiar and eternal election of men and angels
to glory," and "in a particular redemption of a definite number of
persons to eternal life," and "the final perseverance of the saints in
grace to the end."
Walter Scott felt no hesitation in joining Forrester in his studies of
the New Testament, secure in the belief that nothing could be found
there, inconsistent with his creed; henceforth, we find him sitting far
into the night, no longer solacing himself with the music of his flute,
but studying the Bible with ever greater and greater perplexity;
studying it as diligently as ever he had studied the Confession;
studying it with increasing uneasiness, as it seemed to lead him from
the faith of his fathers.
There was, at that time, no body of associated men who had agreed to
surrender all creeds, and take the Bible as their only guide. There were
isolated examples of such men. Alexander Campbell, of whom Walter Scott
had never heard, had been forced by his convictions from the
Presbyterian church into the Baptist association. Not long after the
beginning of Scott's explorations into this dimly-known field of
original research, he and the celebrated scholar met; but neither had a
thought of breaking away from the accepted religious bodies; the only
question was to find the one nearest approximating the truth, and to
seek reformation within that body.
The result of that effort to bring back the primitive church upon earth,
is seen today in the church of the disciples of Christ. This is not the
place to argue the feasibility of the plea, or to adduce arguments
against it. But what that plea was, should be presented clearly and
dispassionately. It is not the office of the biographer to point out the
right or wrong of his subject's dominating ideas, so much as it is to
show how the life was influenced by those motive-springs of thought.
Walter Scott, as an evangelist, pastor, author and editor, had come into
contact with tens of thousands, and had influenced countless lives. His
followers were called by the unsympathetic, "Scottites," just as those
of Alexander Campbell were nicknamed "Campbellites." Thomas and
Alexander Campbell and Walter Scott, the triumvirate of the dawning
"Reformation," did not come, however, to found denominations, but, so
far as they could, to do away with them.
They believed that it was possible for the church of New Testament days
to exist in the modern world, just as it had existed then. They
believed that the means of entering the church now, are what they were
then; that Christ's conditions were in their very nature of divinity,
unalterable. As Peter preached on the day of Pentecost, so Walter Scott
preached in the Nineteenth Century. As Cornelius and the jailer and the
eunuch and Lydia and all other recorded instances of sinners converted
in olden times, so man today, in turning to God, must turn as they
turned, come as they came, obey as they obeyed.
And if the old order should be restored, there would be but one order in
the earth; but one Faith, one Lord and one Baptism. The saints would sit
down to one table from which no saint would be excluded; they would join
their hymns of undenominational ecstasy, and, if they did not see every
subject exactly alike, they would at least agree in their contemplation
of essentials. After all, the important matter seemed to be, to get
safely into the church, and to stay in it; and if all entered in the
same way, the way the apostles had taught, and then dwelt in harmony,
not as Presbyterians and Baptists and Episcopals and Methodists, whose
very names appeared to draw lines, whether the lines were definitely
understood or not--this ideal body would be simply disciples of Christ,
or Christians, as they had been eighteen hundred years ago. Then indeed
would a shout of thanksgiving go up from the earth, that the prayer of
Jesus had been answered; not only his apostles but all those who now
believed on his name, had become one; one in thought and love and life;
one as he and the Father were one, eternal, indivisible.
Whether or not the reader believes such a union possible, or desirable,
it will surely call for no great task of the imagination upon his part,
to enter somewhat into the thrilling rapture this picture presented to
the hearts of the early "reformers." One feels his heart leap with a
sympathetic throb when men who had dreamed of such a return to the old
paths, but who had dreamed of it in solitude, not knowing it had found a
voice in the earth--suddenly heard it pronounced from the pulpit. Men
who had brooded in seclusion over their Bibles, finding there, as it
appeared to them, sublime statements antagonistic to sectarianism, were
suddenly transfixed by hearing the words of old, "Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved!" It seemed to them that the "Old
Gospel" was once more sounding in the land. On a visit to Missouri,
Walter Scott met an eminent preacher, Moses E. Lard.
"You do not know me," said Lard, as he threw his arm about the other;
"but you are the man who first taught me the Gospel."
"How so!" the other inquired.
"It was reading your book--'The Gospel Restored,'" was the answer.
That is how this movement appeared to those who came under its
influence,--the Gospel must be restored. The preachers proclaimed and
debated from the rostrum, and pulpit, and on horseback. The laymen
talked about it on the street, and in the field, ready at any moment to
draw the Bible from their pockets to show just what the "Old Jerusalem
Gospel" had to say for itself. The women discussed regeneration and
baptism over their sewing and knitting. The children taunted each other
at school and at play, and the swaggering bully might say to the
despised "Campbellite," "_We_ believe in a change of heart!" or "_You_
believe water will save you!"
Such taunts, however, did not assail the young Carrs, for their parents
belonged to no church, and their grandparents and numerous relations
were Presbyterians and Methodists. Oliver's teacher, L. P. Streator, was
a disciple of Christ; his life, as well as that of Walter Scott, were
arguments, in their way, for the "new religion"; but after all, Oliver
had thought little of religion during his first years at the Academy.
Martin Streator, his teacher's son, persuaded him to attend the
Sunday-school at the Christian church; he went once or twice, and then
tried the Baptist Sunday-school to find out what "they did over there".
The teacher of the Baptist class devoted his hour to an explanation of
the Holy Ghost, which proved so baffling to the young mathematician,
that for some time thereafter he discharged no religious duties.
Across the street from Carr's Hotel, was a blacksmith shop. The smith
was an Englishman, Eneas Myall. Fifteen years before William Carr drove
from Lewis County in the old barouche, Myall had come over from England,
and had stood on dry dock with only twenty-five cents in his pocket. He
walked twelve miles to find work; needless to say, he found it. He
earned the passage-money from England for his father, two brothers, and
cousin. All worked together; the cousin was a wagon-maker, and under
the newly made wagon-wheels, as they rested upon their trestles, were
the shavings that had curled up at the making. In the cold dark
mornings, when young Oliver came down stairs to make his fires, the
flames leaped up from these very shavings, which he had carried over the
evening before. They liked him at the shop, and Eneas, in particular,
believed he read an expression in the thin face of the ambitious
student, that promised something better than a hotel life.
Eneas was a Christian; [3]he and his two brothers and his cousin had all
heard the Gospel preached by R. C. Ricketts, as they had never heard it
in the old country. Over there, to escape the formalism of the Church of
England, they had listened to the Dissenters; they had watched sinners
hovering on the Anxious-seat of the Presbyterians, and the
Mourning-bench of the Methodists. Such ante-rooms to Grace were held
indispensable. As the eminent Congregationalist, Dr. Finney explained,
so nearly all believed: "The church has always felt it necessary to have
something of this kind. In the days of the apostles baptism answered
this purpose. The Gospel was preached to the people and all who were
willing to be on Christ's side were called on to be baptized. It held
the precise place that the anxious seat does now, as a public
manifestation of their determination to be Christians."
But Eneas and his relatives had been called upon by the preacher, not to
come to something which served the same purpose as an institution of
old, but to the institution itself. "Repent and be baptized every one of
you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall
receive the gift of the Holy Spirit!" This was the trumpet call of R. C.
Ricketts. To the simple blacksmith, it sounded like a voice long silent,
issuing from the sacred past. He had never heard it proclaimed before.
He and his obeyed the call. Having entered upon the Christian life, this
blacksmith felt an inexhaustible enthusiasm for the cause. He had been
made so happy by his acceptance of what opponents called the "new
religion" that he wanted all his friends to partake of his happiness.
When W. T. Moore came to May's Lick to raise funds for Bethany College,
the first college of the disciples,--Eneas took his old rusty pen and
wrote "$100."
Moore, in surprise, looked at the stalwart form in its rude garb, and
then at the homely scene in which it seemed in keeping. "This is more
than you ought to give!" he exclaimed. "How do you make it?"
"Oh," said the blacksmith, casting the pen aside, and lifting his
hammer, "I beat it out of this iron! It is such a good cause, I'm sure I
can give $100.00."
That was when Oliver was fifteen. W. T. Moore was holding a meeting at
the church, working up the college endowment during the day. One
evening, when Oliver entered the shop, as he did daily, seeking his
kindling, Ed Myall looked up from his work, and said, "Ollie, isn't it
time for you to be a Christian?" He would have said more, but his voice
failed him. The boy, without a word, turned and went away. It was the
first time anyone had ever spoken to him about being a Christian. He had
dropped out of the Sunday school; he rarely attended church.
His sister Minnie was the first of the family to become a Christian. She
repented; she confessed her faith; she was baptized; and then she became
a missionary, thus: She met Oliver in the hall, as by accident--such
matters come hard to the young and inexperienced--and said, "Ol, I want
you to be a good boy!"
That was all; but he knew what she meant. The opportunity to go to
church was not wanting, for Mr. and Mrs. Carr were always ready to take
the work in hand for that purpose. They wanted the children to go to
church, though, to be sure, they would have preferred the churches of
their fathers. So on Sunday, Oliver went to church and heard W. T. Moore
preach the first sermon he had ever understood. The same points were
preached over and over, "What must I do to be saved?" And after that,
when Oliver was driving passengers to and fro, or hauling wheat to
market, he was thinking incessantly over what he had heard, that
question of old,--"What must I do to be saved?" and then of the answer,
as it had come from the lips of Peter and Silas and Paul. And he made
the resolution, "Next Sunday, I will do what I think right!"
He asked his father's permission to "join the church." "If you know what
you are doing," said William Carr, "go ahead."
Oliver thought he knew. The next Sunday he did up his morning's work,
then walked to the Christian Church, where he made his confession of
faith. It was a joyous occasion, and few eyes were dry, as the lad stood
up to make known the new born desire of his heart. There were no looks
cast at him askance, no chill of social cast. All felt one in Christ
Jesus, and there was nothing but love for the lad from Lewis County.
And his mother who was by inheritance a Methodist, said, "The
Campbellites have got Ollie!" He was baptized; of all his family, only
Minnie was present.
One afternoon Oliver, now sixteen, came home for the last time from
May's Lick Academy. He had finished the course. He carried his report
proudly. "Seven" was the highest mark according to the teacher's system.
Oliver's card was sprinkled all over with "7's." As he drew near the
tavern, he saw his father in his chair, which had been brought outside.
He examined the report of his son with laudable pride, then said, "Well,
Ollie, you will have to finish for yourself, now. I'm not able to send
you to school any longer."
Of course, there was plenty of hard work. There was the wheat for him to
haul across the county to Maysville, and the loads of coal to be brought
home from the river; and there were the passengers to be carried to and
fro; and, always, the home tasks.
But this life of crushed ambitions was not long to continue. Soon after
Oliver's admission into the church, Eneas Myall, the blacksmith, walked
into Carr's Hotel, accompanied by a prominent member of the church.
Oliver happened to be in the hall when they began speaking to his
father. He heard a few words, and crept nearer the door, his heart
leaping in wild tumult.
He heard the blacksmith's voice, that voice which had often cheered him
as he went about his daily tasks. And now it was asking if William Carr
would consent to Oliver's being sent to Kentucky University at
Harrodsburg; saying that he and Dr. A. H. Wall would pledge themselves
to furnish the money. Is it a wonder that to Oliver Carr, that voice
"sounded like sweetest music?"
William expressed his sorrow at not being able to educate his children
as he wished; he appreciated the offer now made. "But," he said,
earnestly, "don't undertake this, unless you are sure you can go on with
it; I don't want you to give him up!"
A few days later Eneas Myall came with his hard-earned money, and
placed it in Oliver's hands, asking him to take it with the love of its
donors. And so, at the age of sixteen, Oliver Carr went to the
University at Harrodsburg, to study for the ministry.
So, this is what we have found, in our quest of a possible husband for
Mattie Myers--this Oliver Carr, who, as it appears, is far from being a
rich young man. Will brother Joe be satisfied? Nay, will he ever
consent? At any rate, they must be brought together. Let us return to
the overworked pupil of John Augustus Williams, she who parsed, in
class, too much of that MS. of his "Life of John Smith" for her health.
We shall find her still upon her sick-bed, hovering between life and
death.
[2] See appendix.
[3] See appendix.
CHAPTER IV.
A SCHOOL GIRL'S NOTE BOOK.
Of course she recovered, else there need be no biography of Mattie
Myers, except to teach young girls not to study too hard--a lesson
seldom needed. But the life we are following is to teach a quite
different lesson. She emerges from the sickroom with a constitution
shattered; not altogether broken, but much out of repair every way;
mentally, in particular; for the mind has developed enormous energy in
proportion as the body has wasted away; and all the nerves that are
controlled from the general office are sent tingling at the least
noise--even at the tread of a great thought.
The girl of sixteen is bewildered with herself. That grasp of the will
which had held her to her tasks, to the outraging of her physical self,
has suddenly slipped--it cannot be tightened up to the proper tension,
at least not now. This inability to sleep that has come upon her, is to
continue throughout her life; this nervous excitement of vital forces,
this disproportion of mind and matter, this thinness of form, this
determination to carry self to the end marked out, shown in the firm
mouth--we are to find all these unchanged in after years.
In the meantime, her resolution to carry on her education has not
faltered. She cannot go back to Daughters' College--Professor Williams
does not know how to bear lightly upon the mind, and the girl has not
even yet learned to spare herself. But there is a certain convent, the
St. Catherine de Sienna's--Joe will send her there for a year. The very
name is restful. The course is such that a young girl may carry it with
one hand. Mattie will attend a year; that will graduate her from the St.
Catherine de Sienna's. If, by that time, her strength has come back, she
may finish at Harrodsburg. The convent will be so quiet--no levees, no
marching to church in solid-green, no receptions in the parlors--nothing
but trees and birds and silent-footed sisters, and cool gray walls, and
a little French, a little ancient history, and such portions of the Old
Testament history as have not become Protestantized.
Joe and Mattie discuss these plans at the close of Joe's school-day, as
they sit on his piazza, his flute for the time silent. If they ever
considered her ability to go back to John Augustus Williams instead of
seeking the tutelage of the saint, an event took place that rendered
such a course impossible. It was an event that grew out of other events,
all of which had been preparing for many years.
To young Oliver Carr, far to the north in Mason County, the beginning
had been announced by his old friend Walter Scott. It had come about in
this way:
One evening the almost-raven locks and the keen but always kindly eyes,
of Walter Scott appeared at Carr's hotel, which is for the nonce, the
post office.
"Dear," he said to the youth who, for the time, is deputy post master,
"have you anything for me this evening?"
Oliver, feeling that pleasure he always experienced when this question
could be affirmed by a paper or letter, handed out the _Louisville
Courier_. The old man opened it, and caught sight of words in large
black letters that stared from the top of the page. At the door he read
the line aloud:
"FIRING ON FORT SUMPTER!"
The reader burst into tears, and sank down upon the sidewalk. His
friends hastened up, thinking he was ill, but Walter Scott could only
say, as he pointed at the page,--"Oh, my country is ruined!" They
carried him to his home, to that bed from which he was never to rise.
That was in April, 1861. On the 21st he whispered his dying message to
his friend L. P. Streator, Oliver's teacher,--
"It has been my privilege to develop the kingdom of God. I have been
greatly honored". On the 23rd, he was no more, for God took him.
The war broke in all its fury upon "neutral" Kentucky. It brought the
mountain guerrillas down on May's Lick with all their cruelty, all their
wanton destruction. Woe to the goodly stores in William Carr's larder,
the furniture of the hotel, the splendid horses in the stables, when
they come shouting and cursing at his door! John Augustus Williams is
obliged to close his Daughters' College and save his learning for
another day. The young ladies have laid aside metaphysics and rhetoric
to make clothes for the boys fighting in the Carolinas. For a time it
seems not so important to classify the metonymies as to make peas or
dandelion taste like coffee.
But gentle St. Catherine de Sienna raises its voice in pious song, and
tolls its beads, and murmurs in pensive recitivo "_Je suis_, _tu es_,
_il est_, _elle est_"--and hears not the echo of Perryville cannon, as
one hears in Harrodsburg; or, if hearing, puts it to the account of the
flesh and the devil, and chants _Te deum laudamus_.
Mattie's year in the convent is of all things the one needful. She
rests and learns. At the end of the year she knows what St. Catherine de
Sienna had to teach, and her strength is no worse from the acquisition.
But as for any influence upon her mind or heart by this year's
experience, we seek in vain for a trace. It may be that the beliefs she
took behind the convent walls were made firmer to resist soft
influences; or it may be that her faith was so impregnable at the
beginning of this gentle eclipse, that it had nothing to fear.
The girl of seventeen bade farewell to St. Catherine's with the warm
affection of the girl, and the serene self-poise of the woman. It left
her just where it had found her, except that she knew a little more
about the light graces of learning, and--the main thing, after
all,--that she was now able to go on with serious study. It is often the
case, when a Protestant so young as Mattie, graduates from the convent,
that she carries through life a little cloistered chamber in her heart,
where thoughts slip in the quiet hour to count their beads, and whisper
"Ave Maria".
The next year Mattie returned to Daughters' College, where she graduated
with honors, in 1865. There is an old gray-mottled composition-book
written through in different inks, the prevailing color suggesting
iron-rust, the pages showing the shadows of half a century, and the
oft-repeated contact of a school-girl's hand. We find on the title page,
"Miss Mattie Forbes Myers," written by her own hand--that was when she
was thirteen. Later--for this book was used during her college days--we
find "Mattie F. Myers"--no use now, for her to prefix the "Miss;" that
is done by others.
This book is filled with notes taken at lectures, with poems, some
original and some copied or memorized, with essays, with school notes;
and here alone, save in a few essays on separate sheets, are we given a
glimpse into the girl's mind, by the girl herself. Here we may find what
she thought of life and death and immortality--but nothing of her daily
life.
The book is interesting because of its omissions. There are no
straggling lines such as one naturally writes in one's school-days when
it is raining, for instance; or when one feels dull or impatient for the
closing hour. There are no pyramids of schoolmates' names, no idle
pictures that might be faces or geometrical figures, no allusions to
Harrodsburg, or Lancaster, or Stanford, or any place or person more
concrete than Moses crossing the Red Sea, or Hannibal crossing the Alps.
Above all, in whatever disquisition upon the "Atonement" or "The
Johnsonian Era," there is no flash of humor. One cannot avoid the
impression in turning over these 209 closely written pages that here was
a girl who, from year to year--that is, from twelve to twenty,--was
serious, was intent upon a definite plan, was adhering closely to a
central theme, unmindful of aught that detracts or turns the mind aside,
though that digression be but the pleasant recreation of a smile.
It is true that all these pages do not present "solid reading matter."
There is poetry here which shows a deeper love of poetry than of a
poetic gift. One sees that this love of poetry was no superficial
acquirement; it was not that nice taste for forms that contents the
modern reader of magazines with a four-line stanza about any subject
that can be put into four lines. Mattie read Mrs. Browning because she
loved her. Of all books in English literature, she seems to have cared
most for "Aurora Leigh." We find her in after years advising her friends
to read Mrs. Browning, if they would taste the purest literary joys. A
serious business, indeed, was life to that great-souled English poet
with the slender hand up-propping the heavy head--this life so full of
song and gaiety to most of us, before we stop laughing--also it meant
serious business to Mattie Myers. And as Elizabeth Barrett found in
later years a great love upon which she could always rest her weary
heart, even so was Mattie Myers to find a love resourceful and
deathless? We shall see, by-and-by.
The first writing in the book--written somewhere in her thirteenth year,
is this: "A forehead royal with the truth"--_Elizabeth Barrett
Browning_. Then we find, "As stars differ from one another in glory, so
shall it be in the resurrection morn." Later comes, "Heaven is fair,
earth pitiless; why is life so dear?" And, "He who has most of heart has
most of sword." Then, "Oh life, is all thy song, Endure and die?" These
are interesting as showing what sort of sentiments interested the little
girl at the boarding-school. They are all like these, her written
selections, grave to solemnity. Her original poetry is like it:
"In this narrow vale of life
Amid its scoldings and its strife,
Amid its darkness and its gloom,
Loving children, welcome, come."
Nor was this that seriousness which many an author confines to his
writings, living a life far different from one's tragic numbers. Mattie
was not an author, she had no desire to be one, and what she wrote was
not apart from her life, but a part of it.
The style she developed was the oratorical. Her sentences were balanced,
and her thoughts enforced by repetition. What she wrote after her
graduation was, in the main, written to be delivered in public address.
Her college theses represent the highest development of her style. Even
as one reads them, he feels that they should be proclaimed. They are
suited to the public platform. If the girl who wrote these does not, in
time, become a popular lecturer, we shall be much mistaken! Moreover,
apart from the embellishment which she loved to give her sentences, we
find that whatever subject she undertakes, she treats with a
whole-souled enthusiasm, as if it were a matter of immediate, vital
importance, and as if she were an eyewitness of the event. Hear her:
"But when Aurora with her rosy fingers lifted the veil of night and
robed the earth in sparkling gems, the predominant trait of his
character again swayed his being, and again his solemn oath was
violated. Infatuated man! Think you that because the stream now flows
smoothly, and the thunder of the cataract has transiently ceased, that
you are far removed from danger? Already you are within the rapids." Who
is this man that is in such terrible danger? None other than our old
friend Pharaoh. In such thrilling words is his doom presently presented,
that we feel that while he got no worse than he deserved, still it was
enough. This was written at St. Catherine's. She is just as intimate
with, just as keenly alive to, the sorrows of Spenser:
"Though the ashes of Spenser repose at Westminister, yet he still lives
in the hearts of every lover of the beautiful and the good. The casket
has decayed, but the jewel is firmly set in the coronet of Literature.
There it will shine in undimmed splendor and beauty until the Empire of
Genius shall fall. Even in our school-girl heart he has found a place,
and memory of his woes and his joys, of his poverty and his unsearchable
riches, will be with us forever."
The same spirit of bringing heart and soul into the theme, is shown in
her treatment of her favorites of the Elizabethan era, the time of Queen
Anne, or the Fall of Carthage. One does not feel that these essays are
"pieces" so much as they are fragments of a sincere and enthusiastic
mind. That which rouses her to greatest exaltation is the description of
a soul encountering supreme difficulties; and we find her standing by
Hannibal with a trumpet call to duty and heroism, when all his own have
deserted him. Here is her hero of history, to none other does she so
freely pour forth the unstinted admiration of her girl's heart.
Two other qualities should be mentioned in this connection. One is the
intellectual force shown in these really remarkable productions, the
ability to take the accepted positions of critics and clothe them in new
and pulsing words. No need to ask for help in writing these
compositions! who indeed could have done so well? In a few instances we
find where the pencil of John Augustus Williams has culled out
superlative phrases, or where he has inquired (for instance, after such
a phrase as "we weep for him") if this is not rather "strong?" But on
the whole, he leaves her articles unchanged, doubtless taking keen
delight in the ability that has produced them. A young girl who can
write thus at fifteen and seventeen, might do great things as an author;
but as we have seen, her plans were formed for other fields.
The last quality of her writings which we have reserved, is one that
permeates everything she wrote. No matter what the subject--whether the
"Vail of Wyoming," or the general title, "Logic"--religion comes in; we
do not say it creeps in; it walks in with head erect. It quite often
overflows and submerges the point under consideration. One feels at
times that the subject has been a means of getting at more vital
matters. All through the composition-book we find pieces of sermons, and
quotations of moral reflections, and verses from the Bible. Here and
there are penciled little prayers such as a school girl might make who
has deep purposes. There are pages of reflections on the Holy Spirit,
side by side with French lessons. The religious nature of man; Christ as
Prophet; Christ as Law-giver; God and Justice; Faith--these are
discussed at length between sections of Botany notes and Geology and
Civil Government classifications. The last word of all is given, not to
a remark about some seatmate, or teacher, but to John the Baptist--what
she thought of _his_ life and purpose.
In this schoolbook, closed so long ago, there is a page almost filled
with a discussion of Lady Macbeth; then, inverted lines, penciled as if
to stow it away from conspicuous sight--and, indeed, against the
background of iron-rusted ink, it is hardly discernible--are these lines
without a subject heading: "God grant that I may never find enjoyment in
the foolish pleasures of the world; but that my soul may soar far above
its ephemeral joys unto the unsearchable riches of Christ Jesus my
Lord."
That was the prayer of her young days; it explains what she has
written--the pages we have been examining. By the light of this prayer,
we may follow her from the schoolroom to her active service in the outer
world. We see her attentive upon the worship of God; not only going,
but leading; not only listening, but ministering. She finds her work in
the songs of the church. At Mount Carmel lives her married sister, Mrs.
Kate O'Bannon, a devoted member of the Church of Christ. During her
latter summer vacations, Mattie stays with her; at church, she leads the
singing.
In the early mornings, Mattie delighted in her walk along the
ridge-road, from which the woods could be heard speaking in the myriad
voices of bird-happiness. And she loved the little church, fresh from
her school-duties, loved each greeting at the sunny door, and down the
quiet aisles, coming as voices from long voyages apart. She led the
singing with all her heart, and the congregation sang with all theirs;
and when a protracted meeting was to be held, there was pleasurable
excitement among the singers, over what to sing, and how to sing it.
One day, excitement is rife among church-members; one hears that a
strange preacher is coming to hold a meeting--a young man Mattie has
never seen. Who can it be? Surely not the boy from May's Lick? Surely
not the Oliver Carr who was startled one evening with an armful of
shavings, poised for bearing home, at hearing the wagon-maker
say--"Ollie, isn't it time for you to be a Christian?"
Certainly, it would be strange if Oliver Carr should come to preach in
the church where Mattie Myers leads the singing! The hard-earned money
of Eneas Myall and his friend would not have been spent in vain, should
such be the case! Let us return to May's Lick at the time of Oliver's
starting to college, and find how, by any means, we can bring him to
Mount Carmel to hold this very meeting, for which "Miss Mattie" is
making ready.
CHAPTER V.
A UNIVERSITY STUDENT.
That was a wonderful day for the boy Oliver when, with the farewells of
his parents, brothers and sisters, friends and benefactors, ringing in
his ears, he started to college. As the stage coach rushed across the
corner of Fleming County, and plunged through Nicholas and wound its way
among the bluegrass pasture lands of Bourbon, he felt that he was seeing
the world, at last; and not only seeing the world, but had the means to
take an honored place in it; for to this youth of sixteen, there seemed
no honor greater than that of preaching the Gospel.
It was so plain to him, this plea of the disciples of Christ; it
appeared so evidently the truth of the whole matter; he was anxious to
tell others about it, imagining in his inexperienced zeal, that others
would be as glad to hear as he had been. But before he could preach, the
collegiate fortresses of wisdom must be stormed and captured. Head of
his class in mathematics at the academy--that is the best we can say for
him now, and souls are not won from sin and error by the demonstrations
of Euclid.
Here we are in Fayette County, and the train stops at Lexington. Here
Oliver pauses, but does not stop, for the University is wanting several
years of reaching this point. We must hold on our course--down through
Jessamine County to Mercer. And now indeed, our blood thrills as if
needles were pricking our veins, for we are near our destination,--near
Harrodsburg the goal of our boyhood's ambition.
There are other boys in the stage coach going to the University, and we
talk about the history of that institution, and of its professors, and
of what we will do when we stop at the station, and where we will
go,--all strangers as we are, and all young, in this year, 1861.
Some one tells how Bacon College was established by the disciples of
Christ in Georgetown twenty-five years ago, and how its first president
was Walter Scott--a name sufficient to bring up May's Lick before
Oliver's mind, with a far-away suggestion of homesickness.
And another tells (or should tell for the refreshing of the reader's
memory) of ten years of college life under James Shannon, until Bacon
College went to sleep, or underwent suspended animation, and had to be
brought to Harrodsburg by J. B. Bowman, to try what a new climate and a
new name could do for it. So Bacon College became Kentucky University in
1858--just three years ago.
Then another--for there were four of these[4] boys, and being boys
they talked a great deal, and, as we see, very much to our
purpose--congratulates all upon the fortunate circumstances that have
provided the University with the first teachers of the land--a fortunate
circumstance for Harrodsburg, he means; of course a fortunate
circumstance for anybody has a curious way of being unfortunate so far
as somebody else is concerned.
Bethany College had been reduced to ashes; and although new walls were
starting up from the gray ruins, such men of learning and piety as
Bethany College boasted could not sit idly by, while brick was laid upon
brick; they, too, might be building, and, by happy fortune, something
more durable than stone. So Robert Milligan leaves his chair of
mathematics at Bethany, to assume the presidency of our reawakened or
newborn institution--old Bacon College, or new Kentucky University--one
hardly knows if the author was Bacon or Shakespeare!--and Dr. Robt.
Richardson entrusts his chair of Physical Science at Bethany to Dr. H.
Christopher, and becomes vice-president at Harrodsburg. So now we
know--by listening to the chatter of these prospective students--how it
came about that Mattie Myers was treated to the preaching of these
giants. She is over yonder at Daughters' College even now a girl of
fourteen. Even then, she says, she "had given her life to serious study
and preparation for her chosen life-work."
And what of Bethany College? How can it survive the loss of those
illustrious men? Perhaps with its Alexander Campbell for president, it
can weather the gale!
But certainly those of us who are Kentuckians and who have been
attending the College in Virginia, because we had none of our own, now
feel unbounded elation over our newly-captured prize! For in those
days, says S. W. Crutcher, who was just such a student, "We had somehow
gotten into the habit of spelling Kentucky with a big 'K' and the United
States in small letters."
It was Crutcher who, then in Virginia, went with the other Kentuckians
to "Hybernia" to congratulate Professor Milligan on being chosen
president of Kentucky University. The Professor--who had already grown
cautious about standing in draughts--expressed his resolution to spend
the remainder of his life in the service of the University; and Mrs.
Milligan, with thoughts for the present life, led the young men into the
dining-room. Belle is in short dresses; for, as we have said, this was
three years ago; and it is only last year that Robt. Graham left
Harrodsburg for Arkansas.
We were speaking of S. W. Crutcher; and by a queer coincidence, there he
is in the middle of the street as the stage coach brings Oliver Carr to
Harrodsburg. We are here at last. Crutcher takes Oliver and his three
traveling-companions to a boarding-house which proves an undesirable
place, and President Milligan takes Oliver into his own home; there he
finds Belle's dress three years nearer the floor than when Sam Crutcher
told her farewell in Bethany; and Oliver is, of course, very much afraid
of her; for was there ever a boy more awkward or more conscious of his
tallness and thinness, than this youth from Lewis and Mason County?
Perhaps not. But he is much at ease with the president, himself, for the
president is a man--and Oliver has dealt thus far principally with
men--and not only so, but with a prince of men. If Eneas Myall, the
blacksmith, could have had the choosing of Oliver's companions, knowing
in his practical English head that his protege was in the danger-zone of
youth, when companionship counts most--he could have selected with no
greater care than Providence seemed to have done.
First of all, there was the Milligan household with its atmosphere as
unlike that of the village hotel, as if it had been of another world.
Then there was the man with whom Oliver used to walk home from school,
with whom he loved to stroll in the twilight--the Professor of English,
who examined the youth's fitness for his junior year by having him
analyze and parse a hymn. Between this man and boy grew a liking that
was soon ardent love. "My boy"--that is what L. L. Pinkerton called
Oliver. And Oliver, as he walked with his favorite teacher, and heard
him quote poetry--poetry in the balmy evenings of autumn, poetry in the
crisp winter afternoon, poetry wherever Pinkerton was, whether that of
others, or that of his own joyous temperament--here was another
formative influence for the boy from the froglands.
When we, of another day, look back upon that time, and watch this sweet
association, it is hard to understand the bitterness--we must not say
hatred--that used to be roused at the mention of the Professor of
English. Let us take a closer look at this man from Baltimore County,
Maryland; a brief look, necessarily, but one which will seek to envelope
his main attributes. In so doing, we have not forgotten that our central
aim is to present the life of Mattie Myers over yonder in Daughters'
College--where she has scarcely heard of Oliver Carr, though she knows
Pinkerton by sight.
To begin at the beginning of L. L. Pinkerton's life--which was in his
eighteenth year--we find him building a post-and-rail fence in West
Virginia not far from Bethany; "black locust posts, black walnut rails,"
he remembers, "all taken from the stump, and fence set, for twenty-five
cents per panel of eight feet." Not that the quality of wood or price of
wages matters--at least now; what does matter is that one morning,
before going to work, he found a paper on the table, edited by Alexander
Campbell. The _Millennial Harbinger_ was its name. Lewis picked up the
paper casually, and was soon reading with strange intentness--reading
and re-reading. Strange reading-matter to absorb the attention of a
fence-builder of eighteen--it was all about Truth! Presently he went to
Bethany to hear more about it, and at the close of a sermon by A.
Campbell, was baptized--he rode home that night four miles in dripping
garments. It was so wonderful to him, this plea of the disciples of
Christ--one name for all Christendom, one rule of faith and practice,
and that rule the Bible alone--he could not but believe that it would be
eagerly accepted by a sect-divided world! He began preaching.
From Lexington he went to Midway, where he established the Orphan School
of the Christian church. For sixteen years he labored in raising funds,
and in teaching, for this exponent of practical Christianity. The same
enthusiasm which had marked his acceptance of the "reformed religion"
carried him over innumerable obstacles, whether of miserliness, poverty,
or cold discouragement. Now the Midway Orphan School was firmly
established, and the year before Oliver came to the University,
Pinkerton accepted the English professorship.
But, unfortunately for his peace of mind, however fortunate for truth in
the abstract and concrete, poetry was not the only thing that L. L.
Pinkerton talked, outside of school hours. When we seek to pierce the
clouds of misunderstanding and accusation that darken the atmosphere of
those days, the charges of heresy, and the retorts of sectarianism,
above all, the trumpet call that one or the other was not
"sound,"--which opprobrious epithet, indeed, sounds above all the other
jarring cries,--we cannot believe that this resolution to "down
Pinkerton" came from the sole desire to exalt the Christ. No doubt his
opposers believed such to be the case, but they were mistaken. It was
all the war, the spirit of the times. Though the heavens fall, Pinkerton
must proclaim his conviction that slavery was of the devil, must lecture
about it, must do everything that lay in his power to convince others,
must declare his satisfaction when Lincoln's Proclamation--that one
proclamation that calls for no explanatory data to remind one _what_
proclamation--outraged those who did not believe slavery to be of the
devil; far otherwise, indeed.
For the war has burst upon us, now in all its fury, and though we, as a
state, are "neutral," everybody knows what that means, and suspects his
neighbor accordingly. In Midway, Pinkerton in building up the church,
established and nurtured a church for the black folk--preached for it
until out of African darkness was evolved a light to shine for itself.
He believed these slaves had souls, and somehow, he looked upon his
labors for their salvation as a part of the practical good-doing that
flowered in the Orphan School. If he could only believe these things to
himself, and not say anything! But in that case, he would not have been
Pinkerton. And so, after the year 1862--the year in which Oliver Carr
preached his first sermon--no church-door was opened that L. L.
Pinkerton might preach therein--never again was he to be thought "sound"
enough.
Oliver heard much of "soundness" in those days, just as we do now. But
happily for his peace of mind, he was not disturbed by the continuous
jarring and clashing of orthodox and heretical opinions. He was too
busy--too busy, almost to eat; there is no recreation for him save as he
trudges to and fro between school and lodgings, with, or without, the
poetical friend. For he is most irregular in his classes;
mathematics--fine; Latin and Greek--nothing!--"Dead," his father had
objected. Dead indeed, and buried so deep, that the boy must dig hard
and late, to unearth the skeletons. The result of which exhausting
excavation we hear announced in the language of Dr. Richardson: "If you
don't improve in health I do not see how you can continue your
studies--" And, a little later: "You had better go home!"
Dark days--a weary struggle for health--a conviction that this is
consumption--a last futile fight for victory--back home goes the broken
invalid, just as Mattie Myers had been forced to quit the field.
But there is a difference, since Oliver is obliged to stop in the midst
of everything--and since he can ill afford a rest. He has had his chance
and it seems all in vain. For three months he stays with his sister
drinking mineral-water, filled with torturing regrets and
inextinguishable hope. His sister--it is Mary--has married; we are to
hear of her again. Three months--and he realizes that if he goes back,
it will mean as severe a regime as before. The ground is hardly broken
above those dead languages, and he has not the strength he had thought
he possessed. However, if we could, later on, take a peep at the young
men about the grounds, we would find Oliver Carr holding his own with
Surber, Keith and Mountjoy and Albert Myles. For six years we find him
studying--"as hard as anybody," in his opinion; but not again is
ill-health to drive him home, though always hovering at his elbow. Let
us take glimpses, here and there, at these years, with the happy
privilege of the reader, of attending the school of his hero without
being compelled to study his hero's lessons.
At the close of his full year he goes back to May's Lick. To rest? Yes,
if to do what lies closest to the heart is rest. He borrows a horse,
gets his saddlebags, arms himself with Bible and hymn-book, and starts
out for Carter county where Henry Pangburn and Thomas Munnell have
"started a meeting." He informs the girl who keeps the tollgate that he
is a preacher; no doubt in this boy's mind as to what he is! He loses
his way in the mountain trails--"Babe" will go to show him the
school-house, if he will catch her old white horse with burrs in its
tail; "Babe" is a young lady of two hundred pounds--what matter her
other name? On they go, in and out among the hills--Babe's girth breaks
and Oliver gives up his horse to her.
"Hello Babe!" thus the father of Frank Kibbey from his doorway, "who's
that you have with you?"
"Oh, a little rebel I picked up on the way!"--a laughing matter to Babe,
but not to Oliver, for he sees her drawn aside, and hears the whispered
demand, "_Is_ he a rebel?"--and wonders if he will be hung.
But they are all rebels together. Thomas Munnell says "Ollie, you must
preach tonight!" And Oliver knows off-hand what he will preach, because
he has only one sermon! So the benches are brought into the home of
"Bro. Kibbey"--for in the morning the preaching had been in the
woods,--and Oliver stood in a corner, the preacher's point of vantage in
those days, and preached. "And some old women bragged on me," he said
afterward.
These fledgling students--Kibbey and Carr--sent an appointment to preach
in the mountains. As they rode along, talking about their faith,--for
that is what these boys loved to talk about--they saw a beautiful pool
sparkling among lordly oaks, and they said, "Here is where we will
baptize!" Why not? Not a word had been preached, nor had they ever
looked upon the faces of their prospective auditors; but did they not
have the truth? So they preached to the mountaineers; and presently came
back to the pool among the oaks, where they baptized four young men and
four young women.
Another picture, brief, almost brusque in its bold coloring: the young
man is called into the office of the Professor of Mathematics, Henry H.
White. The teacher abruptly extends his hand, "This is for you; take
it."
It is fifty dollars. Oliver, the tears springing to his eyes, would
falter his thanks. "That will do sir!" says the Professor with
mathematical dryness. "That will do sir! you're dismissed,"--so sharply,
so conclusively, that nothing is to be done but go. There are two such
scenes, precisely alike; fifty dollars each time, and, "That will do
sir!" as an end to the incident.
Never were such kindnesses more gratefully received, or more sorely
needed. For men have come down from the mountains, seizing upon the
property of Southern sympathizers, and none too particular about your
sympathies, if they can get away with horses and money. William Carr
sees his hard-earned savings disappear in a night. The horses from his
stables are spirited away; his hotel is looted; nor is there wanting the
suspicion that some of his neighbors have pointed out the spoils to the
enemy. To his sudden necessity is added the bitterness against injustice
and ingratitude. Farther into the night his wife must sew, earlier in
the morning they must rise; for though one son is away at college, and
one daughter is married, there is little left to support the other five
children. So here at May's Lick is a battle for daily bread, while
Oliver, at Harrodsburg, battles for daily Latin and Greek.
Nor is this time of stress without its element of heroism. One might
pause in the narrative to show the young University student in danger of
his life, on the occasion of one of his home-comings. A drunken
soldier, having robbed William Carr of his horse, is about to shoot the
hotel-keeper because he is a "Southerner." Oliver leaps between, fastens
his gaze upon the infuriated face, holds out his defenceless arms, and
saves his father's life.
This is Oliver's experience of the war, this crushing blow upon his
parents; this, and the booming of cannon at Perryville, and the long
line of stragglers coming back from a beaten field; and then the wounded
and the dead. Harrodsburg is taxed to the utmost in giving shelter to
the fallen heroes. Daughters' College from which, as we have seen, the
young ladies have been banished, is opened up as a hospital.
L. L. Pinkerton is no longer teaching; he has resigned to become surgeon
in the Eleventh Kentucky Cavalry; just as he marched to the defense of
orphan girls and negroes groping in spiritual darkness, so now he
sallies forth for his country; leading the soldiers in prayer every
evening, dressing the wounds of the blue or gray, and singing Northern
battle hymns. And just as he always worked too hard for Midway Orphan
School, or for the disciples' plea, or whatever he worked at--never
resting till failing resources made him rest,--so now, he toils at
regimental prayer-meeting and midnight diagnoses and presently finds
himself bedfast. Too feeble to stand, he lies praying that the South may
be conquered; and, so praying, he is carried to the home of an old
friend, a Captain Carr, who is a Southerner to the core.
For weeks the friend of Lincoln lies at the point of death, cared for
with all tenderness by the friend of Jefferson Davis. Then J. B. Bowman,
he who turned Bacon College into Kentucky University, came up from
Harrodsburg to Louisville; here the Professor of English lay, and,
taking him in his strong arms, Bowman carried him out to the carriage
and rode away with him. So, we have him back at Harrodsburg at last,
where he may walk with Oliver again, and quote poetry. Of course he
tells Oliver about his kind treatment in the home of Captain Carr, and
speaks of the tender and faithful ministrations of Southern nurses. And
then, quickly, lest he be misunderstood, he asserts his unalterable
faith in the justice of the Union cause; he will have no doubts as to
where he stands.
"I could scatter flowers over the graves of the Confederate dead," he
says, "and even bedew them with my tears; but I must still say, if
forced to it, 'These poor, brave young men fell in an unrighteous war
against a beneficent government!'" He must still say it, later on, to
the destruction of his peace of mind; to the dissolution of many a
friendly tie; must still say it, if forced to it; and must say it,
whether forced or not, such being the impetuosity of his character,
which consumes prudence and policy in one blaze of enthusiasm.
In the meantime, Oliver is at war in his own way. That the South should
prove its right to self-government appeared to him self-evident, but it
did not rouse his fighting blood. Souls to be saved from sin and
error--that is his ever-pressing consideration. That all religious
bodies should take the name of Christian, and worship according to the
Scriptures--could anything be simpler? That the six or seven
denominations in small tows, instead of utilizing half their vitality in
keeping themselves going, should all combine in one glorious purpose to
exalt the Christ--could anything be more like Heaven on Earth? Oliver
thought thus. He believed it might come to pass; and he was eager to do
his part in bringing it about. So every summer he left the University
halls to carry his message into the hills and valleys of Kentucky; and
such was his youthful ardor, his enthusiastic conviction of success,
that people for a time stopped talking about John Morgan and friends in
Canada, and went to hear the boy from the village tavern.
The time came when he resolved to carry the war into his own country. So
he packed his saddlebags and rode into the land of his youth. There was
no building of the disciples of Christ, but Oliver was offered the
Methodist meeting house.
When it was noised abroad that Oliver Carr was going to preach, hearts
were stirred and the farmers, many miles away, began catching up their
horses to take the family to meeting. Men who had not been to church for
years expressed themselves to this effect: "Ol going to preach? Yes,
I'll go to hear _him_."
The meeting began Thursday night; on Saturday he baptized fourteen.
Sunday morning the church building was locked; an agitated congregation
hovered in the yard. "Oliver has opened the doors of the church!"
complained his aunt--meaning the spiritual church; she had taken care
that the church of pine boards should be more closely guarded. Across
the street from the inhospitable meeting house stood the school house.
The audience moved thither. The women went within; the men remained
outside. Oliver stood in the door, and preached on "Christian Union".
Mrs. O'Bannon was there, she and her school-girl sister, Mattie Myers.
And Mattie led the singing, and listened to the young University student
with unqualified approval. In after days she was to hear him preach many
a sermon, and in many lands; "But that was the best sermon he ever
preached!" she declared. For they were both so young, then, and both so
fired with zeal for the same cause which to them seemed the supreme
cause of earth and heaven. And they were both so confident that this
cause must triumph--perhaps in their own lifetime!
Oliver went to Orangeburg to preach in another Methodist church, and
people came from May's Lick to hear the boy, his father among the
number. Very seldom, if ever, had Oliver seen William Carr at church
before; here he baptized fourteen--but alas! his father was not one of
them. Then ten days at Sardis, and forty baptized--but we need not
follow the youth from point to point; it was everywhere the same
indestructible faith, and many converts, and the beginnings of church
life.
Daniel Carr, Oliver's grandfather, sent for him to come up to Lewis
county and preach in his home. Daniel was a prominent class-leader of
the Methodist church, 76 years old. Oliver responded gladly, entered the
county of his birth, where his uncles and aunts all lived, faithful
Methodists. His grandfather brought benches and chairs into his house,
and called in neighbors and kinsfolk. Oliver saw before him the boys and
girls with whom he had gone to school in the country before his father's
removal to May's Lick. Here were Old-School Baptists and Presbyterians,
come to hear what the "Campbellite" had to tell them. But they did not
come in hostility; far from that. It was with wonder, rather, that they
looked upon this young man and thought of his past--the hard work on the
farm, the harder work in his father's hotel. They knew how he had been
obliged to leave the University on account of ill-health, and how, since
then, he had taxed his strength to the utmost in evangelistic campaigns
among the hills. And now he had come to them, his old neighbors, to
tell them about Christ!
His grandfather knelt down to open the meeting with prayer, but suddenly
the wonder and the joy of it came upon him, and they heard nothing but
his sobs. When he was able to utter words, they burst from a heart that
throbbed with heavenly thanksgiving.
Then Oliver rose. At last, at last! the privilege was his to speak to
these dear people, words of eternal life. As he looked into their kindly
faces, he too, was overcome by emotion. Minute after minute passed by,
and he could but weep, while the faces of his audience, bathed in tears,
told him that the yearning of his heart was understood. It seems
wonderful when a celebrated man rises to address an audience, and, for
ten minutes, stands dumb before tireless applause. But what shall we say
of this boy who stands ten minutes unable to speak for tears of joy,
while his friends wait, unable to hear for weeping?
This we must say; that we have found here a youth who has given himself
with all his soul to an idea; an idea that grips at the roots of
emotions and desires and life itself. Will not he who weeps with joy at
the opportunity to deliver his message, also fight for it? But though
fighting, will not his valor be tempered with the tenderness of tears?
[4] "These boys," Garrett S. Wall (now Judge Wall, of Maysville, Ky.),
Jacob Riley, Anthony Latham and O. A. Carr, all from May's Lick, had
lively discussion on the way. "Which church is right?" was the awkward
way the talk went on: Garrett explained Jacob's Theological puzzles:
Oliver presented the points in that first sermon he ever heard that he
understood, and to him the Scripture statements were plain: Anthony,
true son of "Calvin", dwelt on the "decrees". These boys were going to
be taught, and Anthony seemed willing that the "Spirit should guide him
into all truth" provided it did not make a Campbellite of him; for he
knew that was wrong religion. The count stood--three against one, and in
boy fashion it was claimed that if "what is to be will be" Anthony ought
to be satisfied. O. A. C.
CHAPTER VI.
LOVE AND SACRIFICE.
So they have met at last, the preacher and the singer. They might have
finished their education there at Harrodsburg, Oliver Carr at the
University and Mattie Myers at Daughters' College--if the meeting had
not brought them together--who knows! But, being brought together in
that way, and being the grave and purposeful characters we have found
them to be, it is easy enough to comprehend the friendship that came
into being; a friendship sanctified, as it were, by the sound of hymn
and the fervor of prayer.
After the services we find Oliver going home with Mrs. O'Bannon, in
whose parlor he meets the school-girl sister. Serious enough is their
talk--you might have thought them staid Christians of middle life! She
finds him awkward and embarrassed, except when the talk runs
religiously. He finds her, to his thinking, highly educated, and feels
due awe for her superior advantages. Behold him, now, driving up with a
spring-wagon to take Mattie and her friends on an excursion to the
mineral springs--"AEsculapia", it is called--certainly an appropriate
spot for these two health-needing students! Drink of that mineral-water
as deeply as you may and let us hope Old AEsculapius himself will infuse
strength into the sparkling drops!
After this pleasant companionship, Oliver and Mattie were never again to
be strangers. Now he knows one girl at Daughters' College who leads
singing in the church--and she knows one young man at the University
whose very soul is wrapped up in the things nearest her own heart. He
comes to the college to see her; and John Augustus Williams sits with
them in the parlor to complete the triangle,--very properly; are not
triangles the least-sided figures known in the halls of learning? And
when President Milligan gives a levee, who comes for Mattie to escort
her thither? Ask if you choose; I shall not answer!
We have seen how Kentucky University emerged from Bacon College, but we
have not witnessed the closing scene of the transformation. Out of
Georgetown came Bacon College to Harrodsburg; and out of Danville came
Transylvania Seminary to Lexington; here the Seminary found Kentucky
Academy, and these two were fused into Transylvania University. For
sixty-six years Transylvania University flourished and then declined.
Then fire destroyed the college building at Harrodsburg, and Milligan
came to Lexington, and Kentucky University was amalgamated with old
Transylvania, and these two were one. Which takes Oliver away from
Harrodsburg, and that means letters; letters between him and Mattie
Myers.
It was in 1865 that Kentucky University gave its last exercises in
Harrodsburg. The "Franklin Literary and Philosophical Society" gave its
"exhibit," June 21st. From his "speeches" written out and now among the
relics it appears that Oliver was usually chosen to represent the
"Franklins." One subject discussed was, "Should we in the administration
of law, be influenced by Justice alone?" J. T. Spillman of Harrodsburg
affirms; O. A. Carr of May's Lick denies. And the speech that O. A. Carr
delivers is sent on eight pages, the words liberally italicised, to
"Miss Mattie." "I do this to gratify my friend," he adds at the end of
the poetry that closes the debate, "and I hope that she will not forget
her promise--I will expect those notes on President Williams' lecture
soon." Thus begins the correspondence: a debate from him, lecture notes
from her.
Mattie Myers is only eighteen, now, and she speaks with all that
age-wisdom one finds in the sober-minded young: "I have been living over
all the delights of the past," she writes to a friend, "and when the
bright dream passed away before the storm actualities of the present, my
heart has wept that the golden hours of childhood shall never, never
return. True, my childhood was not all joyous; yet there is a luxury in
remembering even the grief that tore my young heart. Many changes have
taken place since then. The death-angel has taken from our circle two
dear sisters. Is it not hard for the human heart, so full of pride, to
pass submissive under the rod? Yet in each affliction there is a
blessing. There is a holy, purifying influence that the children of God
must feel in order to be made fit for His inheritance,--an influence
that even mighty truth, alone, cannot bring; an influence that only
trial can exert upon the proud heart. This will make the weakest strong;
God accepts no sacrifice without salt or without fire. Trial gives us
our Christian character, brings us into closer communion with our God.
With it our hearts may be made fair and pure as the snow that encircles
the mountain-crest. It was a bright-winged messenger that took from us
our sisters, though with the eye of flesh we could not see the
brightness of His glory."[5]
"Many of the old friends are married," she continues, "and many are
sleeping. One hardly recognizes the old Kentucky Home. Dearest friends
have moved away. The home of one's youth seems strange. But of one I
must tell you, one dearer to me than all others--_my brother_. God grant
that I may not love him too well lest I forget Him who gave me one so
dear!"
This year brought the war to a close. We find Oliver Carr once more on
an evangelistic tour, followed, we may be sure, by best wishes from
Mattie Myers for his success. He is accompanied by John W. Mountjoy.
They borrow horses at May's Lick, load their saddle-pockets, and start
for the mountains. Let us take a look at them, July 14, 1865,--"A
bright, beautiful morning," says Mountjoy, writing joyously in his
pocket-diary; "we rose with the sun, welcomed by the song of birds and
the gayety of nature."
It is interesting to note just what preaching means, and what it
includes for these young University students. "We led George and Davy to
water, fed them and rubbed them off." (Davy is Oliver's colt, so named
for David Armstrong, and George is John's colt, so called after George
Ranck, who trudged on foot with Oliver to hear his first sermon at a
school house on the Perryville road three miles from Harrodsburg, and
afterward became the Lexington historian.) "Went to the house, had
prayers, and then breakfast. Left immediately on our journey for
Vanceburg,--rode slowly on account of the lameness of Ol's 'Davy.'
Singing joyously"--this beautiful morning--"we reached rows of cabins
humbly situated by the roadside--the little children, the old
grand-mother with her white cap--an old man mowing by the wayside. I
would gladly have helped him, could I have stopped. * * * We are now at
the blacksmith shop, having 'Davy' shod--sixteen miles yet to ride
before we reach Vanceburg."
Presently they pass the little school-house where Oliver learned his
first lesson, his a b c's the first day; the second day it was a-b ab,
and the University student sees himself, barefoot and tiny, trudging up
to the doorway that looked so large to him then. It is hard for him to
believe that little boy himself. The years at May's Lick Academy have
come since then, and the years at Harrodsburg, and now the prospect of
years at Lexington. He is already so removed from that little boy, and
all the world of that little boy, so removed in life-purposes, in
eternal desires! and yet there is something of the little child in his
tall awkward form--or in his heart, rather--something always childlike.
"The school-house where Ol. learned his first lesson," says Mountjoy--"I
could not enter into half the joys of his sweet remembrances of happier
days." Could not, truly; but why "happier" days? Is it not because they
are past, those days of youth, never to be ours again; surely it is not
because they were in reality happier!
We pass through Clarksburg about 12, we reach Vicksburg about one, and
now we--or I should say, "I," am sitting on the bank of the
Ohio,--Oliver is doubtless resting from his experiences with "Davy."
For, "While riding along about halfway between Mount Carmel and
Vanceburg, talking of Geo. Ranck and Davy Armstrong, Ol. took a notion
that his beast was becoming insensible to the spur on his right foot,
and concluded he would make a change. He raised his left leg over the
shoulder of Davy"--and then we are treated to a bit of Greek in the
diary-narrative, the spirit, if not the letter, of which may be gleaned
from a line further on--"I thought Ol. would surely be killed."
Away goes Davy, free of any spur, scattering saddle-pockets and
hymn-books to right and left. A quarter of a mile away he stops, and
looks back at the other borrowed horse as if to say, "George, throw John
Mountjoy off and let's go back to old man Chancellor!"--the old man,
evidently from whom they were borrowed. At which, George's spirit begins
to rage, and Mountjoy has all he can do to keep _in statu quo_. And his
thought--if one can afterwards remember what his thought was at such a
crisis--ran thus; "Ol. is killed or half-dead; I suppose I will have all
the preaching to do!" Preaching he has to do, but only his share, but no
funeral, for Ol. staggers up and mounts and clings. And now we find
Mountjoy alone on the river bank, wishing that the music of the waves
could inspire him to do justice to the thrilling scene just closed.
But after all, Oliver is not resting up from his dethronement, for we
are presently to discover him in a situation none too heroic, by the
canons of genteel fiction. We have come down to the landing to see the
steamer "Telegraph." We are now down the river a little way. "While I
have been writing, Ol. has been washing his boots, with sand for soap.
The boat has just passed down the river and the waves are lashing the
shore, making melody. Ol. will preach tonight in the little
school-house."
And somewhat further down we find in another handwriting--"All sitting
together tonight, and Johnnie proposes that each of us write something
in his diary and sign his name.
O. A. CARR."
So the day, bright and beautiful, is at a close; the waves of the Ohio
no longer sparkle with diamonds as the steamboat plows its way
southward; and the jolts of the journey--let us hope--are eased; and the
sermon has been preached; and if we smile at the thought of the
sand-scouring of the boots, is it not with the smile of sympathy? For
we, too, find beautiful the feet of those who bring tidings of great
joy! So, as we say, gone is that bright day of July, so many years ago;
and every little movement in the river one saw that day has, for many
years, lapsed into stillness, to give place to the movements of other
times. But the words spoken then, the sermon preached, the hymns sung,
the prayers offered,--who shall say there is not in the world to-day a
greater love for humanity, a deeper adoration of the Christ, because of
them?
This same year Mattie Myers wrote,
"The leafy bowers their shadows cast, and on the grass so cool,
We lay our burning brows and weep the fleeting joys of school"--
For her school-days are at last ended.
Four years of instruction under her brother's surveillance, six more at
St. Catherine de Sienna's and Daughters' College--ten years of lingering
at the founts of knowledge! And now that they have slipped away, and the
young girl faces the graver problem of life itself, the school-girl
breaks into swan-song, and dies to her youth, as she immerges into
womanhood:
"We leave thee, Alma Mater, dear, with all the bitter grief
That farewell brings to loving hearts, yet with a sweet relief,--
A hope to tread thy walks again, to breathe thy fragrant air,--
A hope to hear again thy voice, thy holy truth to share."
To her mind, education was not only acquirement of truth, but of holy
truth; such an acquisition as called for its inevitable reward:
"When from the dust the good shall rise
When glory's streaming from the skies;
The hand of love a wreath will twine,
Eternal, glorious, divine."
"Miss Mattie: Dear Sister--" What is this? Nothing less than a Kentucky
University student, writing from "Social Hall," on the 12th of January,
1866. "Don't be surprised to find the name of your friend Ollie at the
conclusion of these lines," he goes on, "though I admit it is enough to
surprise you." But not us! He was disappointed, he says, because she did
not come to Mount Carmel during his last meeting, "for I had _all_ the
preaching to do myself--" signifying that there was no young girl fresh
from college to lead the singing. The letter is all about his
evangelistic work. "Uncle Gilbert, who had not been within a church for
twenty years, was constantly in his seat before me, looking and
listening with intent interest."
And then he mourns because his sister Mary did not "purify her soul by
obeying the truth through the spirit." Privately, she tells her
preacher-brother that she believes; but she will wait awhile before
confessing her belief, will wait for the husband to come. But he does
not come. "I left that dear good sister sitting on the stile, watching
to catch the last glimpse of me, departing perhaps forever." But that
vacation was not spent in vain. "During two months I reported 133
additions, organized four Sunday schools and two churches. Oh, how happy
I would be tonight, if all my dear relations were among those who have
obeyed!" Then he gives us an insight into the sort of things he and
"Miss Mattie" conversed about at social gatherings. "Although my summer
was indeed a happy one, yet when I returned to where all are so worldly,
my heart seemed almost broken. I will always remember the remark you
made at President Milligan's reception, in regard to the conversion of
my parents; and of your faith in prayer."
Serious, indeed, but sweet in its strong helpfulness, is this
correspondence, now springing up. We have but one side of it, but it
reveals the other. His next letter: "I will never forget your good
advice, nor will I cease to thank you for it. Mattie, I regard you as my
most wholesome counselor. I seldom find a young lady who will give me
advice; and none ever gave me more consolation than you. I have just
read your letter, and I feel stronger spiritually. How cheering to the
poor boy, are these words from a sister in Christ. You ask me what
message you shall bear to Mary"--the sister we left gazing sadly from
the stile, waiting, but unready. "If you have an opportunity, please
encourage her to become a Christian. I took tea with President Williams
last night. He says if he returns to Harrodsburg next year, he will have
you as his assistant teacher. I hope you will sufficiently recover
your health to be able to take up that employment next to the Christian
ministry in point of usefulness, that you may labor for God and
humanity."
[Illustration: School Days Ended.]
He writes in March: "I have been on a visit to my sister, Minnie Fox, to
attend an exhibition given by her husband's school. From there I went to
Winchester to preach, and have just returned. My roommate"--here he
pauses to take futile revenge--"Dr. Sweeny, is amusing himself with his
flute and vexing me no little with his discordant notes. Of course _good
natured Ol._ bears it all in good part, hoping however, that the
doctor's serenade will soon conclude!"--a side-remark which we might
have made ourselves. Then to the more serious matters: "I admire more
than ever the kind, easy and natural manner breathed in your letters.
Your style portrays a good heart. I love _talking_ letters, and such
talk, too, that expresses spontaneous emotions. How happy I am under the
conviction that you feel solicitations about my welfare, and offer up
prayers in my behalf. Mattie, I often think of your remark to me last
June, stating what you thought could be done through faith."
He has two regular appointments now, for preaching; at Macedonia[6] and
Providence. He touches upon the latest news: "I suppose you have heard
of Brother A. Campbell's death. How sad to think that one so great and
good must lose his power and fade away! 'He had fought a good fight,'
and now goes away to wear the crown. President Williams will go back to
Harrodsburg. He prefers teaching young ladies to boys. Mattie! I am
trying to compose an oration on the 'True and Good in Man,' and would be
very much obliged if you will give a few suggestions. (Bad luck to that
pen for dropping the ink! please excuse the blot.) I will be very glad
to hear from you soon on the True and Good in Man. Good night! May the
choicest blessings of heaven be yours, in time and eternity."
Mattie Myers is still seeking to regain her strength--for health has
fled after the closing days at Daughters' College; and as she rests, she
reads the "Quarterly,"--no light reading, one would think, for a girl
of eighteen--and "Aurora Leigh," always her favorite,--and at
night--these beautiful nights in May, she goes to the meeting held at
Stanford by Moses E. Lard. Oliver has no such excuses, he writes her,
for delaying his answer, but he has others just as good. "I have yet
those five studies this hot weather," he says; "besides, I go to the
country to preach nearly every Lord's day." However, we would not have
her think his preaching excuses any dereliction of duty. "I have had
occasion to pronounce my love for the ministry, and I need only say that
it is still my chief delight."
And then he comes to deal with the man about whom the storm-clouds had
gathered, the favorite professor who used to walk with the boy Oliver
when friends were few and the University was at Harrodsburg: "Last
Friday night Dr. Pinkerton addressed our society--the Philothean,--to
encourage us in our undertaking--about twenty-five of us are studying
for the ministry. His subject was 'True Greatness.' All were entertained
with the originality of his conceptions, and his peculiarly terse,
pointed and feeling manner. It just seemed a picture of the man
revealing his noble heart, and showing his fervent religious
sentiments. Perhaps you have been prejudiced against the doctor, owing
to his political proclivities. But Mattie, allow me to say that although
he acted as a Christian should not act, while overwhelmed in excitement,
and had his all in the 'Negro Bureau,' still, I cannot but believe he
was sincere. _Yes!_ he was so deeply convinced of the correctness of his
position that he would have been a miserable man, a vile hypocrite, had
he acted otherwise. He is ready to sacrifice popularity and friends;
yes, I verily believe life itself, for what his conscience tells him is
right. For this I admire him. For his sympathy, I esteem him; and
because he is a good man, I _love_ him. I know many lips have hissed
stern anathemas against poor, passionate Dr. Pinkerton; but his goodness
will compare favorably with that of any of his accusers. I hope the
brethren will labor to restore him to his proper orbit, where he will
shine among the brightest stars of the Reformation."
So this generous young defender goes on and on, till he reaches a blaze
of eloquence of which we are duly suspicious, knowing not what element
of actuality (which is seldom eloquent) may have been consumed in the
heat of chivalrous ardor. It is enough to know that we have found a
voice to speak for the man "who had his all in the Negro Bureau," nor
was it a light thing to speak thus to Mattie Myers, whose schoolbook is
written close with Southern songs. She loves to sing--else she would not
have taken the pains to write it down so carefully--
"Oh, yes, I am a Southern girl, and glory in the name,
And boast it with far greater pride than glittering wealth or fame.
I envy not the Northern girl her robes of beauty rare
Though diamonds grace her snowy neck, and pearls bedeck her hair.
"Hurrah, hurrah, for the Sunny South so dear!
Three cheers for the homespun dress
The Southern ladies wear."
After the exalted strain of the first part of this letter, we confess to
a great satisfaction in the latter part, which seems to come so much
closer to the ground on which most of us live: "I delivered your message
to Miss Shaw Turner. She expressed an ardent desire to see you, and gave
evidence to a strong attachment to you,--_which_ I suppose you will
allow me to do." (Observe the artfulness of that "_which_") "I am very
much obliged to you for the invitation to the railroad picnic, and I
think it would be altogether proper for the _Car_ to beat the railroad,
ric, tic." (A pun! what next?) "Well, I have heard Brother Lard preach
lately; no wonder I can't write to you! We are anticipating a happy
time in June at our society exhibitions. Please come! But before you
come, oblige me by writing some of your thoughts on this subject: 'The
Tears of History and the Smiles of Prophecy.' This is my subject and I
have not written a word. Jas. C. Keith, Albert Myles and myself are to
represent the University on the 28th June--a distinguished honor,
indeed. I am also elected to represent the Philothean society, and I
have not prepared _that_ speech. Oh, what a fix I'm in! Please, Mattie,
help me! Next summer, let us visit Mount Carmel again, and go to
AEsculapia for our health." (Only for our health?) "Brother Myles sends
his kindest regards, and says he doesn't think near so much of Miss Ada
as of you! Mattie, please write soon."
Next month comes the "exhibits," and in July--this from Oliver,--"I know
you will be surprised at the caption of this letter--Ghent, Carroll
County, Kentucky." It does, indeed, surprise her, for after a year's
absence, one would have supposed the student anxious to go back to his
parents, kindred and friends. But "I have sacrificed the pleasure of
meeting my loved ones, and given up all, for the good of this people."
His roommate, Albert Myles, has urged him to this course, for Albert,
who has been assisted in College by Mrs. Drusie Tandy Ellis of Ghent, is
called there to hold the meeting. "College days were over June 28th," he
continues. "I underwent six critical, trying examinations, and prepared
my two speeches--and was then so sick I could hardly walk. The doctor
brought me out of a weakening disease so that I could stand on the stage
while I spoke; but that was about all. When the boys parted for their
homes, they left me in extreme agony. My poor frame was racked and
tortured by unmerciful disease. Many I did not get to bid goodby--dear
boys! God be with you, and may we meet again next October. My roommate,
Brother Myles, remained with me. When I recovered, he plead so
affectionately for his 'chum Ol.' to go with him to Ghent, that I could
not refuse."
And so they go to Covington, and at Cincinnati take the "Joe Anderson"
for the river town. But in about two weeks, Oliver will be at Mount
Carmel where Mattie is now--he urges her to stay till he comes--and he
will bring her a book by one of his favorite professors--McGarvey's
"Commentary"--solid food for the young lady, one would think.
Back in the University next fall--let us hope in better health than when
he left it!--we find Oliver again pen in hand: "James Keith, Albert
Myles and myself will finish the course this year by hard study, having
about twenty-five recitations each week--and I am in wretchedly poor
condition. I'm fearful of my health's giving way under the great burden.
I hope and pray for strength of mind and body to prepare for a long
service. I sometimes think it is almost a sin for us young men who are
preparing for the ministry, to stay here conning over dull lessons in
mathematics, Latin and Greek. Like a caged bird, I long to be free of
the College-wall cage. I am anxious to go into the world and preach the
Gospel. I have been telling my friend of how you and I preach together,
and what a good, assistant preacher you are. How I would like to be with
you and your sister tonight. Dear me! What a contrast this dull monotony
presents to that blissful happy meeting--to do such noble work as that
in which we were engaged! Never can I forget that meeting, nor our trips
to Orangeburg! neither can I forget you who cling so tenaciously to
'that good part.' You and Sister O'Bannon both impressed me as being
God's dear children. Remember your mission to speak to my sister Mary
about becoming a Christian. I suppose you heard of my good meeting at
Sardis. Forty-five were added--four of my cousins among the number.
Don't fail to send that sermon. Mattie, I send the promised photograph,
please send me yours. Write to me soon, and tell me what you are doing.
I know you are not hearing Brother Lard _now_. I think you might write
poor Ol. a long letter very soon!"
"Poor Ol." received the letter; for we find him answering in a short
time--from his letter we may gain an insight into hers: "You speak of
your benevolent scheme in progress for the 'poor wanderers of New York.'
I do not know your exact meaning, but ever since I formed your
acquaintance, I have believed you a chosen instrument of God to
accomplish great good for poor mortals. Now you are making the step.
Dear me! How I wish such a spirit of Christianity infused itself through
the purposes of the ten thousand accomplished and efficient young ladies
of Kentucky! How much good might be done by womanhood, if they would
devote their time, means and energy to alleviating suffering. Perhaps it
would be a better plan to look nearer home. I am glad to know that you
whom God has blessed with a mind and heart able to conceive, plan and
feel, are breathing a prayer for the distressed. Mattie, it speaks well
for you, and makes me rejoice. A young friend of mine insists on my
preaching at Mount Sterling that he may obey the Gospel. I can't refuse
to go. I know I will lose time, and distract my attention from my
studies, but what is that in comparison to saving a soul? I don't
hesitate to go, but will be off soon. Encourage the building of the
church at Mount Carmel all you can. They will receive $50.00 from me
next summer for that purpose. Excuse bad writing. You know I can do
better."
In Oliver's next letter--December--we find him in a rather sensitive
mood. Mattie has accused him of "Some egotism clearly manifested in a
parenthesis" he appears to have stowed away in his last epistle. "Dear
me!" says Oliver, wounded and perplexed, "What can it be?" After trying
to recall anything that may have prompted her "sarcasm," and after an
eloquent outburst against the meanness of egotism wherever found, he is
obliged to give it up. After relieving his feelings he falls back on
"Brother Lard," who appears as a convenient stalking-horse for both
sides. "If you think my writing home a poor excuse for not writing to
you, I have a very good one at hand. Brother Lard is preaching here
every night. That, as you know (having offered it yourself) is a valid
excuse! I have just returned from a visit to President Williams who is
in high spirits. He has just been giving me a lecture on my returning
here for still another year. He is a dear good man, and often gives me
good advice; but I don't think it would be right, after taking a diploma
in the Bible College and another in the College of Arts, to remain
another year. Now, Mattie, I have always paid much attention to your
advice; what do you think on the subject? You know my deficiences; but
you also know my burning desire to be at work. Like you, I admire Geo.
D. Prentice's 'Closing Year' extravagantly. He has immortalized himself
with that inimitable production. What a pity that such a man is not a
Christian! The world is presenting a sad picture. The people are
beginning to lose confidence even in the clergy. I am convinced that,
as a Christian body, we are more in need of deep-toned piety than of
anything else. We have more learning than we put to good use. We need
exemplary conduct in young men and women. I am going to start out in the
New Year to live a holier, better and consequently a happier life.
Please remember me in your prayers."
Our next letter to "Miss Mattie," dated December 25th, is not from
Oliver Carr, but from another University student, who signs himself by
his initials. Poor young gentleman, we seek not to know his name, as he
pours out his love of near half a century gone. Her "very welcome
favor," it appears, had nipped his sweetest hopes in the bud, but he was
"glad to receive it." He goes to the point: "You say that no more
intimate relationship can exist between us than that of friendship. Miss
Mattie, why not? I do not presume to ask for details, whether your heart
is prepossessed in favor of another or whether * * *" But no, this was
very real to the "D.," of those days, let us not listen to his
heart-beats, but hope rather that "D." now sixty-odd, if he is a day,
has long since forgotten all about it. He is introduced here merely to
cast one tiny ray upon the character-development of the young lady
addressed: "In the mean time, you will allow me to thank you very
sincerely for the candor with which you have dealt with me, not only in
this correspondence, but ever since our acquaintanceship." And then,
remembering that it is the 25th, he adds with a stout heart, "Just while
I think of it, I will take your 'Christmas Gift!'"
He gives a flash-light of those vacation days: "Most of the students
have gone to their homes. Egg-nog is flowing freely here. The landlady
has it in abundance, today. Some of the company partook largely; among
them I noticed two young ladies. By the way, a little news afloat: Miss
Jennie Lard is to be married to a very interesting youth" (Note the
bitterness of our rejected lover!) "of fifty and odd summers: This
lovely lad is Woodson, a lawyer of St. Louis, who is very promising for
a mere beginner in this up-hill business of life. In the exuberance of
his youthful feelings he has presented her with a gold watch, rings
infinite, and earbobs not a few." (Oh, the bitterness of it!)
Then, in this incidental fashion, we find introduced a subject which is
presently to deepen until it envelops all other thoughts of Mattie
Myers: "Alex. Milligan received a letter of twelve pages from Brother
Gore, dated Liverpool. He and Surber intend to start for Australia on
the 21st"--two young friends of Oliver Carr and Mattie Myers, going
forth as missionaries. "They have visited Spurgeon's tabernacle, Crystal
Palace, etc. They describe the English manner of worship, different from
ours. They have no preaching Lord's Day morning; that part of the day is
spent in taking the Lord's Supper, Scripture reading, etc. Preaching at
night." And then "D." enters upon the subject of Conscience, in which it
seems Mattie is greatly interested; but our own will not permit us to
follow him into those intricate depths.
Three months pass by, but Oliver has not forgotten Mattie's thrust: "I
do wish you had gratified me by sending the sentence in quotation in
which I expressed _egotism_. I have been much troubled about it and I
would like to know exactly what it was." Then after several pages of
severe self-inspection, to find the contamination, he urges her to see
again his sister Mary and his other relatives who are out of the
church, and continue with zest, in finding a delightful means of
prolonging this correspondence: "You say that the affirmative of the
question, 'Will Christ's Second Coming be Premillenial?' is Scriptural.
Well, we will have a debate, if you say so. You must make the first
speech; I'm simply to reply. But as suggestive of the arguments, I wish
you "to prove to me, First * * *"
And so they debate; and spring blooms in Kentucky, and summer comes with
its hard work and balmy airs. Mattie Myers is not as strong as she might
be, but she has had a long rest, and can rest no longer; for that active
spirit calls her to her chosen work. She has already done some teaching,
but in the autumn of 1867, she purchases Franklin College at Lancaster,
and starts definitely upon her career. She is the president, of course;
and she feels as she walks the familiar streets,--no longer a little
girl under her brother Joe's tutelage, but a grave young teacher--a girl
of twenty now, surrounded by other girls--that her life-work has,
indeed, begun. Her first school! It does not, indeed, promise that wide
field she has so long coveted; the conditions are straight, the
capabilities rather narrow; but after all, it will serve for a time.
Why it served so short a time--but one school term, in all,--may be
gleaned from the continuation of the correspondence:
"I confide in you," Oliver writes in September, "as I do in my own kin.
The plain truth is that you seem much nearer to me than some of my
kindred who are ever opposing my humble work. I am thankful that I ever
met you, and that we have learned to sympathize with each other. I made
a flying visit to Mount Carmel, and cannot say how sad I felt at not
seeing you there. I preached at Orangeburg, and had the pleasure of
receiving among others, my little cousin Rachel. I have long been
praying for her conversion. I baptized her and her husband both at the
same time.
"From there I went to the State Meeting at Lexington, and a happy time I
had. It was said by old men that they had never known one so _good_.
During the meeting, a letter was received and read before the convention
by Brother J. W. McGarvey. It was from Brother Surber. He stated very
touchingly the need of more preachers in Australia, and urged Brother
Myles and me to come. He expressly stated that the Australian brethren
had--under the recommendation of himself and Gore--selected _us_, and
wanted no others. Brother Surber wrote to me, and gave a description of
Melbourne, where he wants me to preach. His description made me wonder
at the degree of refinement there. The city is beautifully adorned with
flower-gardens; 140,000 inhabitants. He imagines I'm there, walking with
him through the city. He says, 'Come, Ollie, it is just as near Heaven
from this country as from Kentucky.' He says we will be to the Cause
there what Walter Scott and Barton Stone were here, etc. The brethren
there are almost wild for an evangelist from Kentucky; have sent $800.00
in gold to bear expenses of Brother Myles and myself. Above all
considerations, the good I might do is the grandest--to preach to people
who are not tired of hearing! I know my relatives will oppose my going,
and that it will almost break my heart to leave them; but I cannot
consult flesh and blood. I have prayed and wept over this, but I cannot
escape the conviction that it is my duty to go. All the brethren except
Dr. Pinkerton advised me to go. President Milligan just wept like a
child. I've not let the folks at home know anything about it; there is
great excitement here. Mattie, what do you think of my going? Would you
go with me? _I'm in earnest._ Brother Keith and I are holding a meeting
at Millersburg. I wish I had you as an assistant preacher, as I did last
summer. I hear that people are well educated in Australia. Please write
immediately."
We have broken the news to the reader, just as it was broken to Mattie
Myers; but there is a difference; for in those days, knowledge of
Australia was very superficial in Kentucky. It was immensely farther
away then than now, and in proportion as it took so long to go there, to
that degree did it appear wild and barbarous, semi-civilized at best. To
Carr, Myles and Keith, the senior class of 1867,--the three young
preachers and roommates, who were called "the Trio,"--the Australians
were a mixture of exported English convicts and bush-men with bristling
hair. To their imagination, an Australian was hardly to be classified
with any of the recognized races of mankind; he was a mongrel, a
mystery. And even if they could have received the enthusiastic
laudations of young Surber and Gore, the perils of months upon the deep
which rendered passage full of dangers, and a speedy return impossible,
must still have appalled the fancy. To go to Australia, then, was to cut
away from the old life with all its ties of love, of laughter and of
tears, and to find what consolation one might in the thought that the
distance from there to heaven was as short as from a Kentucky haven!
The next month, Oliver writes to Mattie Myers: "Your touching letter
gave me more encouragement in my expected trip to Australia than any I
have received, leaving my heart literally steeped in faith, hope and
love. I hated to tell you my plan, for you are always holding up to my
view the amount of work to be done in Kentucky. This is the hardest
question I was ever called on to decide. It came to me something like
the question of my soul's salvation. At the State Meeting, old and young
advised me to go--all except Dr. Pinkerton, whose counsel was always
very weighty with me. His argument was that the people of Northeast
Kentucky need my labor too badly, and that their souls are just as
precious as those in Australia. But you know that in Lewis County I have
not the opportunities to labor that I'd have in Australia. Life is too
short--we must use every advantage. There are others to take my place
in this country.
"I wept all the way from Lexington. And then I placed in the scales,
home with all the meaning of HOME--father, mother, sisters, brothers,
and friends--and no one has dearer friends than I, and God knows I love
them dearly,--and on the other side I placed the salvation of perhaps
thousands of souls, the love of Jesus and his Cause. I looked at the
balance with tearful eyes, and resolved to tell parents, kindred and
friends adieu. The scale turned. My love for all dear to me on earth,
cannot deter me from going with glad tidings to the weary and
heavy-laden. And yet how sad to leave you and all others so dear. I
declare, it almost breaks my heart. Yet go I must! I wrote home and told
all about it. Oh, I hated to let my poor mother know anything about it.
I am to stay three or five years. I will have an audience of 1,000 every
Sunday. The salary will be $1,000 in gold. Some of this I will send home
to my poor parents; and some to my brother Dick whom I am going to
educate; and some to the young man I am already educating for the
ministry. I am going to make one more strong appeal to my parents to
obey the Gospel. How shall I be able to tell them goodby, if I am to go
away with no hope of meeting them in heaven? I am glad you have such a
good school. Oh, you are doing a noble work! Just think of training 90
or 100 little hearts and leading them to Jesus!"
December comes, and the stress of resolution grows harder to bear: "I
have come home at last, but not to rejoice in the association of
friends. I am chilled by translation from a fervid spiritual labor and
fellowship of the saints, into a fellowship of worldly affairs where
every effort is to get something to eat, drink and wear, with scarcely a
thought of the hereafter. Brother Dick is dangerously ill. The dear
fellow suffers the most excruciating pain. As I gaze upon his tender
form, I wonder if I am ever to realize that thought--my brother, a
preacher! Added to this sorrow is the sympathy I have for my poor
mother, who weeps whenever Australia is mentioned. It is very
distressing. All charge me with not loving them. My dear father rests
his heavy head upon his hand, and weeps to think of the future. His
frail body is tottering as he descends the hill of life. I fear I shall
never see him again, after I say farewell. It well nigh breaks my heart
to hear them chide me for resolving to go on that long, long voyage. I
close this sad picture by throwing myself into my only refuge--faithful
prayer, and immortal hope." The next part of the letter shows that
Oliver was "in earnest" when he asked Mattie Myers to go with him:
"In Lexington I met Brother McGarvey on the street" (his teacher with
whom he lodged during his last year at the University.) "He urged me to
tell him all that happened during my brief visit to you at Lancaster"
(where she is teaching her first school.) "In confidence, I told him
your objections and difficulties. When I had finished, he said,--
"'I admire her consideration. It is a serious question, I admit. With
regard to her health, and the dangers of the voyage, you and she are on
a common footing. She need not be deterred by the supposition that you
die and leave her in that distant land; the brethren here would, in that
case, have her safely returned home.' He urged our marriage, and trip to
Australia. He was delighted with the idea of having you there as a
teacher. We talked of the sacrifice of your school at Lancaster, and he
argued that it would be far better for the cause of Christianity and
education to have some one take your place in Lancaster, and have you
occupy a higher sphere of usefulness. I wish you had been present to
hear him talk; he is a dear, good fellow. With his strong clear brain,
he adjusts his plans; with an eye of faith, he views the future. I pray
you, weigh his opinions in your well-balanced judgment before you
conclude. I talked with President Williams; I fear he will not advise
you to go. Brother McGarvey says it will depend upon the mood in which
you find him. Then _do_ cheer him up, and prepare him for a happy
answer!"
The letter concludes with urging the marriage, cautioning her against
giving heed to the advice of others--as in the case of John Augustus
Williams--but the wisdom of _sometimes_ heeding the counsel of
others--for instance, that of John W. McGarvey.
"Though a stranger to you in person--" What is this? A letter written to
Mattie Myers by this very J. W. McGarvey! "By request of Brother Carr,"
he says. One would not expect a passionate, enthusiastic burst of
eloquence from the author of the "Commentary on Acts." What is said
here, emanates from a "strong, clear brain." As the Bible instructor
sees it, the situation stands thus: "After all, your own heart must
decide whether you go or stay. One thing seems certain, that _he_ will
go. It is for you to endure his long absence, and risk the uncertainties
of his return, or share the voyage with him, and help the noble cause to
which he consecrates his all."
This same month, Oliver returns to the charge: "I waited a week with the
keenest anxiety, hoping each night to get an answer from you. It has
come at last. Mattie! I anticipated what it would be, from reading
President Williams' letter. I know he has tried to mould your life for
teaching, alone. He is true and noble and I doubt not he gave you, as
you say, 'his wisest judgment and the fullest expression of his good
heart on the subject.' I believe he meant to point to our highest good;
but I cannot follow his advice. I have pondered both your and his
reasons for wishing delay. Both of you urge a year's preparation. Well,
what kind of preparation? You are already prepared to teach those in
Australia; and I know I can tell them what to do to be saved. I know I
am weak; but Northeast Kentucky is not the place for me to get strong.
You say I 'need to know assuredly that I can meet stern realities
victoriously.' I do not think I will know more about that than I do now,
till I meet them. Of course a year's experience would increase my
usefulness, but why not acquire it where the brethren want me? I don't
know what especial point you had in view by saying you would like a
year's hard study under President Williams. What were you going to
study? You have taken his full course, I presume. We have simply the
story of the Cross to tell and I believe that we can do it _now_."
So the letter goes on for eight closely-written pages, showing the
fervor of eloquence quite lacking in the concise review by McGarvey;
but, then, it was not McGarvey who was in love. Oliver is in love,
doubly so; first and always first, with his Cause; and then always with
Mattie. It is a terrible struggle for the young girl, for she too, is in
love; but her affections have always associated teaching with the Cause.
She must know in her heart that this missionary enterprise is a
divergence from her central idea, however much more good it may
accomplish. Here is her college, bought and paid for, and here are her
90 or 100 girls for training. She may hope for different blessings
beyond the seas, but not of this sort.
[Illustration: Prof. J. B. Myers]
[Illustration: "Considering His Letter."]
And here is her brother Joe bitterly opposed to the plan, as one's
brother Joe may very naturally be. It is well enough for McGarvey, who
thinks first of the dissemination of the Gospel, to smile upon her
going; and how could Williams, whose ideal for woman is the vocation of
teaching, say otherwise than wait? It is well enough for Oliver to see
but one course before him; he never entertained himself with dreams of
teaching school. He always meant to preach, and Australia means more of
it, with wider good to hope for. But it is no simple problem for Mattie
Myers.
A one-sided correspondence, we have been treated to, which, though
one-sided, has nevertheless given us as good an insight into the one
addressed as if she had done all the writing; better perhaps; for now we
are to hear her voice, which in its agitation and perplexity, does not,
it may be, reveal her as she is:
"I have stretched forth my hands and nailed my heart to the Cross. You
may cast it from you, but conscience nailed it there. For awhile I
cheated myself with the belief that its voice mingled with the voice of
my heart, 'You are already prepared; go with him.' But it was only the
echo of my heart's happy song. I feel that I would be an incumbrance,
rather than your co-worker. However mournfully my heart may cry, however
beseechingly, _I cannot go with you_. Conscience, my guide, beckons me,
and fervently I follow, though my heart is torn asunder. Ah, the
bloodless battles that are fought in our world! You have said, 'Although
I love you as I love no one else on earth, still, if you deny me, I must
go alone.' I say in reply, that though I love you with that love of
which only a Christian woman is susceptible, I cannot go with you. Your
capabilities fit you for one field of labor, mine fit me for another. We
have all to build an altar. I have built mine, and laid thereon my
tenderest feelings, the yearning desire of the woman-nature to be loved.
I know that this mysterious yearning which God has planted with his own
hand in woman's heart will, if left unsatisfied, cast a shadow over her
life; that however strong, however self-reliant a woman may be, her
heart reaches out for something to complete her happiness. But the giant
will can strengthen the trembling, faltering heart.
"And it is well to nail the heart to the Cross that raises it nearer to
God. He will give it strength to suffer. And his love can never fail. Do
not think that I am staggering under complaint. Like a cheerful traveler
I will take up my life-burden, and continue the journey, with a song in
my mouth, keeping time to the voice of conscience and my God. Do not
think for a moment, Ollie, that I would dissuade you from entering upon
your grand mission. What I said to you before I knew you loved me, I say
to you now, though it wrings my heart with an anguish that I sometimes
think cannot be borne. Sometimes I feel that my heart must break, but it
is sustained by the love of God. If conscience bids you go, then you
must go. But I cannot conceive how conscience would say to you to leave
a field in which laborers are few, for one which may cost you your life.
I am impressed that going is a matter of inclination rather than of
conscience. Nevertheless, if conscience does tell you so, then I urge
you with all the earnestness of my soul, to go. Go; and the burdens of
my prayers will be for him so far away, and yet so very near."
Alas! how great a mountain is our own conscience, and how small a
molehill that of our neighbor! Mattie, who has been pointing out that
all her future misery is to come from obeying her own, pauses to doubt
if Oliver's conscience is a conscience at all! On such provocation as
that, who can blame Oliver for having doubts about Mattie's conscience?
That he did have doubts, and that he did his utmost to cause her to
agree with him, no one can doubt with the following letter before him:
"Dear Mattie:--Yours received. I heartily agree to March 26th as _our
wedding day_. I will write to tell sister Mary and Matt to come down to
May's Lick on the 27th. Saturday I will deliver my farewell address
here. We will go to Maysville en route for Cincinnati. Horace came from
Flemingsburg yesterday to find out something about it. Matt, Bud and
Mollie are coming.
"Mattie, I have the best kind of news to tell you. Hold your breath
while you read. Father came forward at church yesterday, and made the
good confession. 'Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me,
bless his holy name!' I recognized in that, the answer to many a prayer.
And now if my mother would obey the gospel I would believe your prophecy
uttered at President Milligan's reception was fulfilled. Do you remember
what it was?--'Brother Ollie, I believe God will make you instrumental
in bringing your family into the fold.' Oh, will that ever be? Mother
won't go to church. She has never heard me preach but twice; but I will
pray on, and hope on."
[5] When first I saw the following lines, I called Mattie to hear me
read them to her. I thought of her "CHILDREN," the girls she had taught.
We were seated in her private parlor; and her attention was fixed from
the first stanza: "Shedding sunshine of love on my face." The reading
ended, she threw herself on the bed and wept aloud. Her feelings, when
fully aroused, were paroxysms of joy or grief; and now the two
alternated as memory of her first school at Lancaster, and of the girls
on the other side of the earth, at Melbourne, mingled with all her life
of love for "THE CHILDREN." She made notes when she read Milton,
Spencer, Mrs. Browning, Longfellow, Tennison, but this little poem was
literally bathed in her tears. O. A. C.
When the lessons and tasks are all ended
And the school for the day is dismissed,
And the little ones gather around me,
To bid me good night and be kissed;
Oh, the little white arms that encircle
My neck in a tender embrace!
On, the smiles that are halos of heaven
Shedding sunshine of love on my face!
And when they are gone I sit dreaming
Of my childhood--too lovely to last;
Of love that my heart will remember
When it wakes to the pulse of the past,
Ere the world and its wickedness made me,
A partner of sorrow and of sin
When the glory of God was about me,
And the glory of gladness within.
Oh, my heart grows weak as a woman's
And the fountains of feeling will flow,
When I think of the paths steep and stony,
Where the feet of the dear ones must go;
Of the mountains of sin hanging o'er them,
Of the tempest of fate blowing wild;
Oh, there's nothing on earth half so holy
As the innocent heart of a child.
They are idols of hearts and of households,
They are angels of God in disguise;
His sunlight still sleeps in their tresses,
His glory still beams in their eyes;
Oh, those truants from home and from heaven,
They have made me more manly and mild--
And I know how Jesus could liken
The kingdom of God to a child.
I ask not a life for the dear ones,
All radiant, as others have done;
But that life may have just enough shadow
To temper the glare of the sun;
I would pray God to guard them from evil,
But my prayer would bound back to myself.
Ah! a seraph may pray for a sinner,
But a sinner must pray for himself.
The twig is so easily bended
I have banished the rule and the rod;
I have taught them the goodness of knowledge
They have taught me the goodness of God:
My heart is a dungeon of darkness,
Where I shut them for breaking a rule;
My frown is sufficient correction;
My love is the law of the school.
I shall leave the old home in the Autumn,
To traverse its threshold no more;
Ah! how shall I sigh for the dear ones,
That met me each morn at the door;
I shall miss the goodnights and the kisses.
And the gush of their innocent glee,
The group on the green and the flowers
That are brought every morning to me.
I shall miss them at morn and at eve,
The song in the school and the street;
I shall miss the low hum of their voices,
And the tramp of their delicate feet--
When the lessons and tasks are all ended,
And death says: "The school is dismissed"
May the little ones gather around me
To bid me good night and be kissed.
[6] I must have preached "big sermons" in these days; for Brother
Benjamin Coleman saw to it that I received $25.00 each time I went to
Macedonia. No thanks to him and the church, their contribution was to
help me through College. O. A. C.
CHAPTER VII.
"I WILL GO."
It was September, 1867 that Oliver Carr asked Mattie Myers to go with
him to Australia. For six months she hesitated, refused, wavered. It was
not a question of devotion to each other, but of loyalty to the
life-ideal of each. Going to Australia meant three or five or seven
years away from Mattie's chosen vocation. She weighed at its full value
the argument that she could teach in Melbourne; of course, she could
teach; but teaching must necessarily be subordinate to missionary work.
Mattie did not undervalue the importance of missionary labors; but
neither did she undervalue the importance of touching girls' lives in
the school room.
In the struggle, McGarvey and Williams, as we have seen, took opposite
sides; McGarvey was for his pupil, Oliver; Williams was for his pupil,
Mattie. Each looked at the question from his point of view. To the
President of the Bible College, what was more important than carrying
the Bible across the sea? To the President of Daughters' College,
teaching was the exalted vocation of woman--Let O. A. Carr do his man's
work, he argued; and let Mattie Myers do her woman's work.
And there was brother Joe, who had done so much for Mattie--the brother
whom she feared she might love too well--pleading, arguing, exhorting.
"Let Oliver go to Australia," he insisted, "and when he comes back--at
the end of his five or seven years, then, if you and he think as much of
each other as you do now, why--" But the proposition seemed quite safe,
so he added with a stout heart, "then you can get married!" But on this
side of the five years, No! Never! And when words fail him, and
arguments need to be rested, each having done service so often for want
of new ones--Joe gets his flute and sits on the piazza with Mattie,
these balmy spring evenings of 1868, and plays and plays--plays always
the old familiar melodies, the airs that are wrapped up with her most
sacred memories--"Old Kentucky Home," and "Home, Sweet Home," and--we
fear--"Bonnie Blue Flag" that carries up the bars and would sweep the
stars from the Heaven of Union blue.
[Illustration: "I Will Go."]
All this is too much for Mattie; her own conscience, the advice of
Williams, "that prince of instructors," as she calls him, and beloved
Joe; all cry out against Australia. She writes to Oliver--
"I pray that the love of God may strengthen you to accomplish your holy
mission, and bring you back to waiting hearts in your own Kentucky land.
I may regret the decision that prevents me from going with you. I may,
after you are gone, regret that my hand is not to help you; I weep to
labor with you. I do not know. But I have tried to enlighten my
conscience, and it must not be disregarded. Go, and give to the weary
rest, and to those that thirst, of the well of living water. Though I
must suffer, there is a morn and land beyond it all. Go, and work for
God."
In these days when evangelistic work would permit Oliver to come to
Lancaster, he visited Mattie Myers as her accepted suitor. After her
day's work in the schoolroom, she listened to his reading of "Lady of
Lyons," and after the "Lady of Lyons" had had her say, talk would drift
to Australia. It was at the conclusion of such a talk at Mt. Carmel--how
earnest we may imagine--when Joe was not there--_that_ we may take for
granted--the young teacher rose with the solemnity of one who takes an
irretrievable step, having counted all the costs--"I will go!"
Those are her words. And having spoken, the matter is settled. Let poor
Joe play his flute-airs, and look mournfully into space; let Williams
say what he will, or Pinkerton, or anybody else. Mattie has spoken. That
means a wedding-day on March the twenty-sixth.
Not that Joe understands how unalterable is her mind. Indeed, he is in
no condition to bear the truth. That voyage seems to him a death, the
going out from his life of the dearest object of his affections. He
grows wild when she tries to make him understand her mind. When Oliver
reasons with him, he no longer answers with arguments, but with mere
incoherent passion, partly anger, partly despair. So this is what we
will do; we will go to Mt. Carmel without telling Joe,--yonder at the
home of the sister, Mrs. O'Bannon, where we first met, whence we took
that Spring-wagon excursion to the ineffective spring of AEsculapia.
Mattie will take the stage that comes down to Maysville. Oliver will be
standing upon the pike, out of sight of any kinsman's house. Mattie
will order the stage to stop. He will get in--off we will go.
And so we might have made our trip without incident, without sorrow, but
for the unforeseen, in this instance, embodied in brother Joe. He
suddenly appears, wild and excited, having come in such nervous haste,
that his hat is left at home. Hatless, but not breathless, he stops that
stage and holds it while he delivers himself of all his arguments,
seeking to bury Australia in an avalanche of spontaneous eloquence. But
the word Mattie has spoken before the blazing hearth she speaks on the
open pike: "I will go."
Why argue further? Clearly conscience nerves her to her purpose!
Conscience--or love. Only one term of her first school so proudly
begun--and she has put it in charge of another, and is starting forth to
merge her life-work into that of another--and he, a stranger not long
ago,--a mere lad gathering the shavings in the wagon-shop to start the
tavern fires.
Events now come thick and fast. We are getting ready for the wedding
now. Oliver rides in a buggy with a schoolmate from his home town, May's
Lick, through Lexington to Lancaster, the home of Mattie Myers. Many
times he stops on the way for farewells. The reception committee come
forth in strength, but their spokesman bursts into tears, and Oliver is
received with tears only. Albert Myles, his six-year schoolmate
accompanies him to Lancaster. The wedding is to be at five in the
morning. Bells ring. The village people, thinking there is a fire, are
roused and come forth. Learning that it is a wedding, they troop to the
church. The spectators look on through their tears, thinking vaguely of
the other side of the globe, whither the bridal pair is presently to set
forth. Albert Myles performs the ceremony. It is a scene of early light
and tears. "Mattie going away!" is the murmur--Mattie whom these folk
have known from infancy--going away in early womanhood, perhaps never to
return!
From Lancaster to Lexington in a carriage; and here J. B. Bowman, the
University necromancer, gives the bride and groom a dinner in his home,
once the home of Henry Clay,--Ashland, where we have seen Walter Scott
admiring the picture of George Washington. Teachers and pupils of the
University assemble, and there is another mournful farewell. In the
afternoon, from Lexington to Stony point, and goodby to Mrs. Fox,
that sister Minnie of the May's Lick days. At Millersburg, another
wedding-dinner, given by Alex. McClintock, and then to May's Lick,
thirty-six miles by carriage.
[Illustration: Before We Say Goodbye]
Here they remain over Sunday--the last Sunday in the old May's Lick
church, in which Eneas Myall is a deacon,--the blacksmith who said when
first hearing the news, "I am sorry to see you go, Ollie, but it seems
providential!" The elders of the church, the same who were elders when
Walter Scott preached there, ordained Oliver on that last Sunday at
home. He was surrounded by old friends, tearful but exultant in their
sorrow. There was one who could not come because, "I can't tell him
goodby," he said. That was Oliver's hard task now, to say goodby to all,
hardest of all to those of his father's house. But he had nerved himself
for the ordeal. "I could tell them all goodby," he says, "until I came
to my mother."
They go, according to their plans, straight to Maysville, across the
county, to take boat for Cincinnati. Not alone do Mattie and Oliver make
that journey. His mother is with them. News runs before; the Australian
missionaries are coming! The word is quickly passed back and forth,
that there will be services at the church. When Oliver arrives he finds
the appointment made. He rises to preach. It is his last night in
Kentucky. Before his vision stretches a long vista of uncertain years in
a strange land; years among strangers for this man who is blessed with
so many friends. But that sorrow is swallowed up in the deeper joy of
presenting Christ to the people, showing forth his loveliness for the
last time in the land of his birth.
That sermon is not preserved, for which we are, we believe, sufficiently
thankful. If love in its fulness cannot be spoken, much less can it be
read. There is a simplicity and an inner earnestness, that is altogether
baffling to the snare of leaded type. Whatever the subject of that
sermon, Christ was in it, and we care nothing for its divisions and its
order. We are thrilled with joy by that sermon--we who never heard
it,--because we see the preacher's mother step forth--at last!--and
stand before them all like a beautiful dream come true--or rather, like
a spirit of love, whose enkindled face flashes into the son's eyes the
answer to his prayers.
Not in vain, as we have seen, were her lonely vigils, sewing far toward
midnight in the sleep-enwrapped tavern, that her children might be
clothed, toiling before break of day, the pale candle guiding her hands
to heroic labor that her loved ones might be fed. Much does Oliver owe
her, and much is now repaid, on this last night in Kentucky. He baptized
her; and as she came up out of the water, with his arm so tenderly
passed about her, she looked at him through her wonderful, new-found
happiness. "If all were as easy to obey as baptism," she murmured, "it
would be easy enough!"
And so,--the boat to Cincinnati where W. T. Moore's father-in-law, he
who is later to become Governor Bishop of Ohio,--entertains the bridal
pair in his home, and other friends assemble for goodbys,--the goodbys
at Macomb, Illinois. And then to New York to set forth for Australia, by
way of England. On board at last--and under a sullen sky they stand on
deck, watching their native land fade--fade--till nothing is to be seen
but a world of angry waves.
CHAPTER VIII.
AN ENGLISH PRIMROSE.
The voyage, begun on a rough sea, was continued over angry waves. For
seven days the ship was beaten by the winds. It was the first time
Oliver and Mattie had been outside of Kentucky. Added to the distress of
seasickness was the thought that, after this passage to England, another
voyage of almost three months awaited them before they could set foot
upon the strange land selected for their missionary labors. No wonder as
the bride was borne farther and farther across the uneasy Atlantic, her
thoughts went constantly back to Kentucky--"That far-off land," she
writes, "my beautiful, sunny Southland."
Since the wedding-day, there have been a marvelous succession of strange
scenes--the trip to New York, the hurried visits to points of interest
in New York and Brooklyn, the mingling with the rush and roar of
Broadway, and, stranger than all these, this helpless tossing in the
cabin, as the ship throbs and lifts dizzily in air--lifts to sink down
and down, as if never to ride the sea again.
"That Twenty-Sixth day of March!" she writes in pencil with shaking
hand. "It dawned so bright and beautiful. In its soft morning twilight I
knelt before an altar, and laid thereon not only the heart of a bride,
but all that I had best known in childhood and in girlhood: Home with
all its tender associations, friendship whose face shone as the face of
an angel--the sweet brier that shed its fragrance beneath my window, the
birds that sang for me, the dear old 'big spring' over whose
cooling-ripples I have so often stooped to drink"--she remembers all
these, as the ship bears her farther from that America she may never see
again.
"Our blessed land of liberty," she says, "proud, beautiful, glorious
America!" Truly, the war is over; and as she steams ever farther away
from America, its states seem to melt magically into one another, and
North and South blend, and become an indissoluble Union.
One day, less stormy than the rest, the young husband crept from his
berth, hoping to find relief from days of nausea by greeting the keen
wind. He went upon deck, and was presently engaged in conversation with
a stranger.
He found that his companion was an Englishman who, for some time, had
been in business in Chicago. He was much interested in the young man's
missionary plans; the shrewd merchant read aright the intense zeal which
shone upon the Kentuckian's face, and which trembled in his voice. "I
have a brother living in London," he said; "when you go there, you must
go to his house. I am on my way to visit him now, and I'll meet you
there."
Oliver Carr had no intention of going to test the hospitality of a
stranger, and, when he gave Mr. Murby his card, he supposed the incident
closed. On the eighth day out the ship touched at Queenstown. Mr. and
Mrs. Carr--we must no longer call them "Oliver" and "Mattie,"--took a
ride on a Jaunting Car--in which one sits sidewise, while one's driver
sparkles with Irish wit. A woman came to sell them fruit, and offered to
toss pennies for the difference between what she wanted and they were
willing to give. It was a jolly crowd that surrounded them, and every
Irishman had a funny tale to tell the travelers. Before the ground
ceased its semblance of rocking to and fro, they were again on board.
When they landed in Liverpool, everything seemed new and strange. They
"found cabs instead of busses;" but doubtless the difference was most
marked because they found Englishmen instead of Americans. At the hotel
they were visited by G. Y. Tickle and other members of the church, and
in the afternoon they crossed to Berkinhead to visit other Christians.
On April 29th the train pulled out at 9 a. m. for London. Mrs. Carr took
a few notes, as she looked upon Mrs. Browning's world--the world of
"Aurora Leigh."
"Corn--undulating lands--rural improvements--daisies and primroses.
Hedges--winding roads, and footpaths. Drains in the lowlands. Winding
brooks and brooklets, through daisied meadows. Fir-clad hills."
Out of this primrose England, the car glides into the smoke and fog of
London. London at last--how far away from the Lancaster and Stanford of
one's girlhood! How far, indeed, even from the dreams of one's girlhood,
this city that rises up, solidly real before the young woman's eyes! It
seems pulsing with the thoughts of those who represent, to her mind, the
highest peaks of literature; Dickens and Thackeray, George Eliot and
Robert Browning, Bulwer Lytton and Macaulay and Carlyle and De
Quincy--all are living; one might meet them any moment on Oxford or
Regent streets, where "I took a promenade," she says; "I find they
surpass Broadway in all but dress."
At 2:30, they are installed at the hotel; at three, they take luncheon
and at four they have a visitor. It is the brother of the Chicago
merchant. The merchant has written about the missionaries, and asked
that they be looked up--doubtless, suspecting that the overtures must
come from the English side. So this brother has come, a Mr. Murby of
some distinction; for does he not edit the music department of the
_Cornhill Magazine_?
He insists on the young bridal pair going to his own home; for O. A.
Carr, in honor of the honeymoon, has selected a hotel of much
pretention. "You must go with me," says Mr. Murby. "It is too expensive,
staying at a hotel like this; you shall make your home in my house. My
wife will take no refusal. She will entertain you as well as she can--we
have one baby in the cradle, and another three years old. I've brought
the wagon for the trunks."
All this from a man and woman one has never seen before, and never heard
of, except from a chance fellow-passenger; a man and a woman who do not
belong to one's church and has never heard of one's friends! But, after
all, is it so strange? If one travels through the world with eyes open
for primroses, and finds them growing along the wayside, why should not
eyes that seek brotherly kindness, find it blooming in many a stranger's
heart?
Away go the trunks, and the hotel knows our friends no more. Two weeks
are to be spent in England, before sailing for the opposite side of the
globe; and while they are in England, Mrs. Murby leaves the baby in the
cradle, and acts as guide for the Americans. In their hurried visit,
they could have seen little without her. She takes them to ride in the
underground railroad, shows them the wonders of the waxworks, at the
entrance of which stands George Washington with extended hand, and
lingers with them in the British Museum.
Mrs. Carr's notes of her travels are meager in the extreme; she was too
busy observing and studying, to write about what she saw; but the
necessary enlargement of thought resulting from extended travel was to
take its own part in developing her personality. "Chelsea Hospital for
old soldiers--Buckingham Palace, the Queen's residence--Eaton
Square--National school teachers trained for public schools--Duke of
York's school--Geological exhibit--rock crystal--wood carving--Porcelain
plate, 1585, Francesco de Medici--Venetian wine glass--Danish
drinking-horn--Paul preaching at Athens--Christ changing the water into
wine--Peter and John at the Beautiful Gate--Hogarth's Marriage a la
Mode--Mrs. Siddons as Actress--Rosa Bonheur--Edwin Landseer--Hyde
Park--House where the Duke of Wellington died--Parliament--Retiring
Room--Her Majesty with Mercy and Justice in sculpture--Portrait of Kings
and Queens--House of Lords--Throne--Queen's chair on the right--Prince
of Wales on the left--The Prince Consort--Woolsack, seat for Lord
Chancellor in front of Queen--Table on which are laid all
petitions--books beneath--just behind the table, the bar--gallery for
peeresses, above--Peers' Robing Room--Moses descending from the
Mount--Lobby--Embarking of Pilgrim Fathers--Charles erecting Standard at
Nottingham--Central Hall--Four windows--Lobby--Pictures--Square
Hall--Commons Speaker's Chair--gallery--Each side of entrance, seats for
liberals and tourists--St. Stephen's--Marble walls and floors--On each
side, six stained glass windows, representing scenes in life of
Stephen--On the Thames--Somerset House--Waterloo Bridge."
Thus we might follow her from spot to spot, as she hastily jots down the
names of pictures, and of the illustrious dead, amidst a catalogue of
wonders seen at the Crystal Palace, the India Museum, the National
Gallery. "St. Paul--Whispering Gallery--Sculptor above--Scenes in the
Life of Paul--Monument of Sir John Howard, Joshua Reynolds--geometrical
stairway--Crypt--Newgate Prison for all offenders within the city's
limits--Christ's Hospital, founded by Edward VI.--Boys' dress in the
costume of that day--Yellow stockings, leather breeches--Former palace
of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey--Post Office; just across the street,
Returned Letter Office--Clock with two bells, one 'Time,' the other
'Death'--Publishing House belonging to the Religious Tract Society,
built over the place where the martyrs suffered under Bloody Mary--Guild
Hall--for public dinners--Grand dinner given to the Sultan--gold
array--The Lord Mayor conducts trials--His Residence--Monument to
Nelson.
"May 5th, the Tower--Gateway--Entrance, moats--Bell Tower--Bloody Tower,
porte cullis--White Tower, 15 feet thick--Built, time William the
Conqueror--Norman spear used by him--Dress of 1665--Gun taken by French
at Malta and afterwards recaptured by English--Sir Walter Raleigh
imprisoned 12 years--Lady Jane Grey--Queen Elizabeth on Horseback--Fire,
1841--Indian armor, 1750--Chamber from which Hastings was ordered to
execution--Anne Boleyn's prison in the Tower--Beauchamp Tower." And so
on, and on, from one spot of historic interest to another, the travelers
absorbing all with thirsty minds, the hostess tireless, or at least
uncomplaining--and at night the profound sleep of the sight-seer's utter
exhaustion.
Mr. and Mrs. Murby took the stranger-guests to their hearts, and treated
them like long-lost friends. The perfume of their gracious hospitality
invested London with a tender aroma for these wanderers, to such a
degree that whenever they afterward thought of England, they thought of
disinterested kindliness. On one of Mrs. Carr's diary-pages, is to be
seen a faint brownish stain, above which is written: "Found by Mrs.
Murby on the streets of London--this primrose." The flower has long
since slipped away and crumbled to dust, since it was placed there in
the spring of 1868; I should like to think that it blooms again on my
page, in honor of that quick and loving eye that discovered the primrose
in the London streets, and the gold in the strangers' hearts.
[Illustration: Conway Castle, N. Wales]
[Illustration: Beaumaris Castle, N. Wales]
On Sunday, they went to hear Spurgeon preach. It was a very ordinary
sermon; his statements had been made thousands of times before, and to
none who listened, were they new. His manner was untheatrical, his flow
of eloquence was not intense. Everything was the essence of simplicity.
He began by holding up a rose. He said that on his way to the
tabernacle, a woman had given it to him. He spoke of his happiness
caused by this simple gift, then of the beauty of flowers, and of
giving; and, as the audience of 3,000 listened, they were melted to
tears. His subject was the Accessibility of Christ. It was the
_tenderness_ in his words and voice that wrought the charm. The singing
was general; it seemed that each of the 3,000 took upon himself the
responsibility of carrying the song through to its conclusion.
In Birmingham, the Carrs visited David King, editor of the _Harbinger_;
he was the most prominent member of the Christian Church in England, of
his day. It was his custom to question the preachers who passed through
his country, to find out if they were "sound." It was from him that Mr.
Carr discovered the British objection to the American custom of
extending an invitation to the unsaved at the conclusion of the sermon.
It was also Mr. King who went to the office to buy the Carrs their
tickets up to London, fearing they would not get second-class ones.
"Only fools and noblemen ride first-class in this country," was his
dictum; "the second class is just as good and costs half as much."
The following brief notes show us that Mrs. Carr is in Scotland:
"Holyrood--Rezzio's Slaughter--Residence of bygone monarchs--where Lord
Murray held his Council--Residence of Mary Queen of Scots--where Her
Majesty stops, when in Edinburg--Castle of Craigmillar--where Mary
sometimes held her court--Lochleven Castle."
She was particularly interested in Wales: "Canarvon Castle, built by
Edward I.--First Prince of Wales born here--April 25, 1284--Chamberlain
Tower, occupied by the Lord Chamberlain--Eagle Tower, so called because
of the Eagle Sculpture on its turret. Prisoner, or Dungeon Tower. It is
supposed this castle was never completed. The banqueting hall, entirely
destroyed--In this castle the present Prince and Princess of Wales were
entertained during their visit to Canarvon, April 24. On this occasion,
Wellington Tower was magnificently decorated.
"North Wales--across the straight of Angelsey; lodgings here. Ebb and
flow of the tide--Hawthorne--a beautiful lodge, the entrance to a
residence--Suspension bridge over the Menia Strait--Castle--Model
village, Bethesda, near the slate quarries--20 galleries, each 60 feet
high--the deeper the quarry, the better the slate--Tunnel and railways
with round rails and grooved wheels, working with rope--Blasting signal,
first a red flag, then the bugle. Each gallery one mile around the
rail--1,200 feet from lowest gallery to top--300 men employed. Total
wages per month, 1,200 pounds.--Penryln Castle, 16 years building,
completed 30 years ago--Main entrance, heavy iron gate, swinging on
massive pillars of stone, with imposing ivy-clad arch above; winding
roads and bypaths; through rare shrubs and gorgeous flowers of
innumerable species--Main entrance to Castle yard, a massive orchid
gateway--Main entrance to Castle, massive cross-barred iron doors in
base of tower--Four towers with the ivy, beautiful emblem of trust,
clinging to them all--Interior; entrance hall, billiard room,
innumerable lobbies with rare ceilings, main stairway, bedrooms with
antique furniture, drawing-room, dining and breakfast rooms, library,
chapel for family worship, minor stairways, etc.--Family of 10 children,
two married and now in London--will return here in July. Culinary
apartments; cook's sitting-room, where he writes the bill of fare."
All these sights, crowded as they are into a few days, delay the
departure for Australia; moreover, the travelers have decided to take a
sailship. They have sufficient knowledge of the deathly throb of the
steamer, the quiver that sends unutterable faintness and nausea to those
susceptible to seasickness. The sailship, they are told, skims the waves
like a bird--one hardly knows he is afloat, or knowing, feels himself
lightly carried through the air.
Mrs. Murby finds her new acquaintances have not left, and writes to Mrs.
Carr at Liverpool, on May 15th, "I was very much pleased to receive your
letter yesterday; I had supposed you would be far away from Old England
by this time. I just wish you had stayed with us longer! There are lots
of places besides the British Museum, I could have taken you to see. You
say you are to leave on Saturday, the 19th, but the 19th is Tuesday, so
we can hear from each other if we cannot meet. If I can find that church
in Camden Town, for your sakes I will visit it. The few days we spent
together will always be remembered by us with pleasure. I sincerely
trust we may all be spared to meet again; you may rest assured of a
hearty welcome. In the meantime we can correspond with each other. I
went to sit for my portrait yesterday; it will be ready for me
to-morrow, and I will send it to you before you leave Liverpool."
So writes the editor's wife--she who finds primroses in the streets of
London; and her letter comes as a last voice of love to one about to
embark upon a sea-voyage of more than a hundred days.
CHAPTER IX.
THE LONG VOYAGE.
The long voyage was made on the Oriental, Captain Myles. Mrs. Carr was
the only lady who had taken first-class passage. There was a rich young
man on board, who had been put under the care of a Scot of mature years;
the young man was peculiarly susceptible to the temptation of strong
drink, but the Captain reassured his sisters with the declaration that
there would be no drinking aboard his vessel! The young man wished to
visit Australia, one of the few countries he had never seen, and Duncan,
the Scot, had undertaken his charge that he, too, might have the treat
of foreign travel.
England had not faded from sight before the corks were flying.
Mrs. Carr found herself associated with a class of men who were far from
corresponding to the degree of their tickets. She felt the need of
woman's society, since her husband was the only man present who
possessed that refinement and moral instinct which had been the breath
of her life. She was unable to hide her disapproval of the drunken
orgies which the officers of the crew shared, and it was particularly
distressing to her to witness the deliberate ensnarement of the rich
young man, the evident scheme to make him drink that he might be fleeced
at the card-game.
She and her husband put their sentiments into words of remonstrance,
which resulted in the Captain's making slighting remarks, as they sat at
table. He took a spiteful pleasure in boasting in their presence that he
wouldn't employ a "teetotaler on his ship."
The first Sunday out Mr. Carr was asked to conduct the religious
services. He read the First Psalm and made remarks relative to the godly
and ungodly. Captain Myles was enraged. "I supposed we would have the
Church of England Service," he said at the conclusion; "we will have it
after this; I will read it, myself." And so he did, when he was not too
drunk; in that case, he had the ship's physician read it.
Mrs. Carr sought relief in the association of the other women on board,
but this was peremptorily stopped. "If she wants to keep company with
second-class people," said the Captain with a sneer, "let her buy a
second-class ticket."
The ship had not been many days from the British Isles before the crew
was almost completely demoralized. Drinking, gaming, coarse songs marked
the hours of the night. The sailors were at the mercy of the winds. The
vessel drifted over to the coast of Africa. It was becalmed two weeks
under the intolerable heat of the sun's vertical rays, while not a
breath of air came to relieve the hot glare of the Equator.
One day the Captain exclaimed with the air of one who has made a
terrible decision, "If we don't get wind to-morrow, I will jump
overboard!" The morrow came, and there was no wind. Of course the threat
of the Captain resulted in nothing more dangerous than a cooling bath in
the peaceful waters, but the effect of his words, and of his sudden leap
from the deck, were hard upon sensitive nerves.
Mrs. Carr being denied the companionship of women, found what relief
from the monotony she might, in writing letters, and especially in
writing in her commonplace-book many quotations from the poets. She
beguiled the time, also, in composing poetry which deals rather with
themes of home, than with those of distant scenes. The ship was wafted
toward South Africa, but it did not weigh anchor. "The only view we had
of South Africa consisted of some monkeys in the trees." When the Cape
Verde Islands were sighted, Captain Myles was anxious to exhibit his
skill by passing within a stone's throw of one on either side. Mrs.
Carr, rejoicing at the sight of something more human and picturesque
than monkeys in trees, took extensive notes:
"June 18. The Captain caught a large dolphin--change of color in dying.
Breakfasted on flying fish.
"June 19. Sighted Antonio and St. Vincent islands--passing between them.
Cape de Verde Islands, possessions of Portugese. Antonio with its
innumerable rocky points, some losing themselves far above the clouds.
The white haze peeping behind, lights up the acute angles of the
points--the heights are dark, frowning and barren, with white bowlders
at the feet. The gray terraces in the distance look like leaping waters,
rushing onward to the ocean, to kiss the breakers. The shores are dotted
with little villages whose houses are small and white, with red tiled
roofs. Around these villages are spreading greens along the shore, and
extending up the heights that, through the glass, are seemingly
inaccessible. Yet these heights are laid out, far up, with hedges into
green fields and waving orchards. The shore is indented with innumerable
little bays, and the magnificent ravines to which they point, fill the
soul with awe.
"St. Vincent is inhabited by the Portugese, yet there is not a spring,
or well of fresh water, or a blade of grass in the whole island. There
are the signs, far up the island, of the washing of the waves. What a
glorious sight they would present in a storm! Here and there, far up the
heights are solitary rocks and vast strata left bare by the washing of
rains and waves, and blackened by the elements. Signals are hoisted
opposite Porte Grande in order that the Oriental may be reported in
Liverpool in 12 days. Two sailing ships are in the harbor. The Oriental
passed between St. Vincent and Shell Island."
One day the discovery was made that there was a stowaway on board; it
was a young man with a crippled arm, who had slipped into a hiding-place
as the Oriental lay at the Liverpool dock. Captain Myles was all the
more furious because he found himself helpless to rid himself of the
unfortunate youth. He compelled the stowaway to do the meanest labor,
and the hardest his crippled state would allow. When the sailors
encountered him, they greeted him with oaths, if they greeted him at
all. He was set to scour the decks, and it was a task that had no
ending.
The Oriental drifted at last into the arms of the Trade Winds which sent
it whirling around the Cape of Good Hope. A furious storm came on. The
sea was lashed into mountain-peaks and was hurled in rushing torrents
over the decks. Those sailors who were obliged to remain above, walked
waist-deep in water. The man at the wheel was tied to his post--the
Captain was up all night; but not, now, at cards and drink. The rumor
spread among the passengers that the crew expressed their doubts of
weathering the gale. The rumor was founded upon truth; the outcome was
extremely doubtful. There was the usual scene preceding a probable
capsizing; curses and prayers, the sudden scream of agonized fear, or of
desperate appeal. "But we committed ourselves to the care of the
All-wise and Almighty, and went to sleep."
Morning came to show under its dim light a battered ship, doors broken
open, cabins inundated from the seas that had poured down the hatchways,
and spars swept away. But suddenly the ocean grew calm, the wind became
fair, and the vessel headed straight for Australia.
They were at table when the cry arose above, "Man overboard!" Captain
Myers started up with an oath and went growling and storming to see into
the matter. It was the stowaway, who had been cast dizzily from the
life-boat he was trying to paint by a sudden lurch of the vessel. The
Captain himself threw him a life-preserver and shouted, "Stop for him, he's
too crippled to swim to it. Ship about! Man the life-boat!" In that boat
brave sailors went down out of sight in the angry sea, then like a bird
sat on the crest. Our ship "across sea" rolled fearfully and the Captain
commanded the passengers to leave the deck. The sailors in the boat
returned, but the poor crippled boy could not be found. And so the fair
wind bore them on their way and the youth who had come from the unknown
into our story, dropped back again into the unknown. Was there any one
to care?[7]
One hundred and four days on the deep, during which period, land had
been sighted only three times. Mrs. Carr continued to remember, and to
write poetry. We find this, "Written on board the Oriental, South
Atlantic, August, 1868:
Homeland, dearest, gentle homeland,
Dearest now art thou to me--
Dearest, for between us stretches,
Dark and grim, the cruel sea.
I have left thee, home and homeland,
I have bade thy joys adieu
But, my heart, my heart is with thee,
For I know thy heart is true.
Now I know how great thy soul is,
Know its depths, so deep, so mild.
Dear and tender home and homeland,
Pray, pray for your wandering child.
So I smile--the Father's calling
To a land beyond the sea,
To the weary heavy-laden,
Who are groaning to be free.
Yield I? Yes, I once was weary,
Heavy-hearted and oppressed;
Yield because Christ died to save me,
Yield because he gave me rest.
With such glorious love to lead me
Can my heart its thrilling tell?
Home and homeland, I have left you;
Dear and tender, fare you well!"
Thus after her varied experiences, we find the young bride's poetic
fancy slipping past the grandeur of the ocean life, its terrible storm
and its terrible calm; she remembers not now the beautiful castle with
its orchid gate, nor thinks of the family of ten who are to return to
their peasantry in the stately rural life of Old England; nor of the
wonders of the British Isles; it is Kentucky that claims her deepest
love and sincerest tribute--And if her ears ring to the melody of "Old
Kentucky Home," a voice seems to speak, breaking its way through the
music with--"Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every
creature."
At last, the Oriental casts anchor in Hobson's Bay. The voyage is ended,
the experiences in a foreign land are to begin. The Carrs are urged by
many of the second-class passengers to report the conduct of Captain
Myles, but they let his insolence to them pass with the passing of
unfavorable winds that have so long delayed the ship. At this entrance
into a new life, they are saddened to discover that the Captain has
persuaded the rich young man to go back with him--to refuse even to
land. He has not yet been completely stripped at the gambling table, and
he is so valuable and tractable a victim, that all arts are employed to
feed his vanity and alienate him from his guardian. It is a fearful
disappointment to the sturdy Scot, Duncan, to be deprived of his travels
in Australia, but he will not leave his weak-minded charge; so he turns
his back on the land to see which, he has endured contumely and abuse,
and sails away to do all he can to save his ward from the Captain's
rapacity--thus furnishing the Carrs with an example of fidelity to his
promise made to the sisters of the unfortunate man, which they treasure
in their hearts.
A hundred members of the church have come from Melbourne to Hobson's
Bay, to welcome the missionaries. Among them, the happiest is Oliver's
fellow-student at Harrodsburg, G. L. Surber.
"For many months we have been waiting to hear if some sacrificing ones
would leave the United States for this country--" as he and Gore had
left, a few years before. "Then at last," he writes, "we were rejoiced
to hear that Brother O. A. Carr and wife had left Liverpool for
Melbourne. Our anxiety was to see them in health. For a fortnight we
read the daily papers eagerly, hoping to hear from them. At last our
suspense was relieved by a telegram--the Oriental had entered the Head,
which constitutes the entrance to the port of Melbourne, about 45 miles
from the city. When I heard the news, I felt as I never felt before.
Now, I thought, my long loneliness is to end, and the cause of Christ
can be more fully met! I could not help weeping, but it was the weeping
of a rejoicing soul. My brethren in America do not appreciate their
blessings. What wonder that I, cast, as it were, upon a distant island,
almost alone, should rejoice at the coming of a co-laborer!"
He continues: "After receiving the telegram, September 2nd, a number of
brethren with myself went to the port, and took a skiff and went out to
meet them. After rowing about till nearly sunset, we learned that the
Oriental wouldn't cast anchor till the next day. So early the next
morning we again made our way to the landing; by this time the brethren
had begun to gather from all parts of the city and suburbs. At eight
o'clock that spring morning, we went aboard--" It must be borne in mind
that the Australian spring begins in September.
"Brother Carr didn't know I was there until I laid my hand upon his
shoulder, and spoke to him. Picture that meeting, if you can! Here in
this foreign land I grasped the hand of the dear companion of my
school-days! What thrilling joy! Sister Carr was soon rejoicing with us.
Blessed be our Heavenly Father, for bringing them safely across the
seas!
"After a few moments their luggage was in our boat and we were rowing to
the pier where we found a throng of brothers and sisters waving
handkerchiefs, and praising God for his goodness. With what rejoicing
the Christians grasped the hands of the missionaries, as they stepped on
shore! There was no time for introductions, none waited for that; but
such a shaking of hands, and welcoming of Brother and Sister Carr, was
enough to move the angels to rejoice. In a few minutes they had taken
the train for the city; then in a cab I took them to my residence, where
they are now resting from their hardships, soothed by the climate, and
delighting, after months upon the deep, in the bloom of peach and plum,
and the blossoming of our spring gardens."
Thus G. L. Surber writes home that Benj. Franklin of the Christian
Church may publish the letter; thus he writes, until he corrects and
polishes up the sentences, changing his "We made our way to the landing"
to--"we turned our faces," etc. and scratching out "waving
handkerchiefs" for something about "open hearts." But we make nothing of
his careful remoulding of ideas, nor give a snap for his "open heart."
The handkerchiefs shall wave in this history--let them stream to the
breeze, each a white fluttering banner of peace and love, raised above
the heads of this vanguard of Christian soldiers, this beautiful spring
morning of September 3rd, 1868.
[7] Just then, it seemed that every one on the ship "cared": That
drunken, card-playing pries
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