They did not move, however, and I think they rather considered the whole thing a joke. We proceeded to describe the East River Hotel and similar resorts that a few days previously had been described as immaculately clean by the captain of the precinct. The result of all this was the sustaining of the testimony of Dr. Parkhurst's detectives. The petty graft among the organ-grinders and the push-cart men went right on. Complaints were jokes and were treated as such.

The change of seasons brought little change in the activities of a church centre like that. In the winter it was the provision of coal and clothes. In the summer it was fresh-air parties and doctors.

I made the discovery one day in a tenement in talking to a little child of five, that she had never seen a green field or a tree. This led me to ask the missionaries assisting the church to make a search for a few weeks and collect as many such children as possible. We got together seventeen, ranging from three to seven years of age, not any of whom had ever seen a single aspect of the outdoor world, save the world of stone and brick and wood.

Some friends in Montclair, N.J., arranged a lawn party for these little ones, and we proceeded. Nothing extraordinary happened. There was no open-eyed wonder, few exclamations as we intently watched the emotions of these children as they gazed for the first time on lawns, flower gardens and trees. Two-thirds of them were seasick on the train and the one regret of the journey was that we had not taken along half a dozen wet nurses.

The one unique thing of the day was the luncheon. The children were arranged around an extemporized table where sandwiches, lemonade and milk were abundantly provided. At a signal from the hostess, I said, "Now, children, everything is ready! Have your luncheon." But there was no commotion. Two-thirds of them sat motionless, looking at each other.

The sandwiches were made of ham. If I had not seen this with my own eyes, I would scarcely have credited the telling of it by anybody else. Two-thirds of the children were of Jewish parents and had been taught at least one thing thoroughly. The hostess did the best she could under the circumstances and provided other kinds of meat, cake and fruit, and the festal occasion had a happy ending.

A certain amount of care has always to be exercised in new enterprises, in departures from the ordinary routine, especially if they involve expense; or, as I have said before, interfere with political or economic progress. Pulpit preaching is the smallest item in the entire programme of a preacher, especially in such a neighbourhood and in such a church. If a preacher wants an audience, all he has to do is to step outside his church door, stand on a box, and the audience is ready-made. It is miscellaneous and cosmopolitan; it is respectful and multitudinous. When I discovered this, I proceeded to act on my convictions, and copy, to the extent of getting an audience, at least, the Socialist propagandist; and I proceeded to work with the people around me instead of for them. There were no lines of demarkation to my activity. I touched the life of the community at every angle, sometimes entering as a fool where an angel would fear to tread.

I was called upon to visit a poor couple who lived in a rear tenement. They were of the unattached; had no ecclesiastical connections whatever. I saw that the old man, who lay on a couch, was dying. He was scarcely able to speak, but managed to express a desire that I sing to him; so, as there was no one present but his wife and myself to hear it, I sang. This inspired the old man to sing himself. He coughed violently, tried to clear his throat, pulled himself together, and sang after me a line of "Jesus, Lover of my Soul." This was very touching, but the solemnity was severely jarred by following that line by the first line of: "Little Brown Jug, don't I love you!" So between the Little Brown Jug and the sacred poetry of the church he wound up, dying with his head on my knee.

There was an insurance of thirty dollars on his life. I informed the undertaker, and did what I could to comfort the old woman who was now entirely alone in the world. One of the missionaries of the church came next day and helped to make arrangements for the funeral which was to take place in the afternoon. They had not been long in that alley and knew nobody in it, and when I arrived to conduct the funeral service at three o'clock in the afternoon, there was a little crowd of people around the door, and from the inside came agonized yells from the old woman.

I opened the door and marched in. I found the undertaker in the act of taking the body out of the casket and laying it on the lounge in the corner. The old woman was on her knees, wringing her hands and begging him in the name of God not to do it. I asked for an explanation and, rather reluctantly, the undertaker told me, proceeding with his programme as he explained that there was a "kink" in the insurance.

"Well," I said, "we can fix that up all right."

"Yes," he said, "you can fix it up with cash; but we are not in the undertaking business for our health, you know."

"Well, stop for a moment," I pleaded, "and let us talk it over!"

"Have you got the dough?" he asked.

"Not here," I replied, "but I am the pastor of that church up there on the corner, and surely we are good enough for the small expense of this funeral."

By this time he had the lid on the casket and was proceeding to carry it out. The old woman was now on her feet and almost in hysterics. I was mightily moved by the situation, and asked the man to wait; but he jabbed the end of the casket under my arm—perhaps accidentally—pushing me to one side on his way to the door. I was there ahead of him however; locked the door and put the key in my pocket.

"Now, will you wait for one moment till we talk it over?"

His answer was a volley of oaths. I waited until he subsided, and then I said:

"I will be responsible for this financially. You are wringing the heart's blood out of this poor old woman, and I don't propose to stand by and allow it." I raised my voice and continued—"I will give you two minutes to put that corpse back in the casket and arrange it for burial, and if you don't do it, there may be two to bury instead of one."

I began to time him, making absolutely no answer to anything he said. I quieted the old woman, stood very close to her and put my hand on her head. I said, "It's all right, Mary. Everything is all right. You are not friendless. You are not alone."

The two minutes were up. I took off my coat, rolled up my shirt sleeves and advanced toward him.

"Are you going to do the decent thing?"

There was one long look between us. Then he put the body back in the casket, arranged it for burial, and I opened the door and the crowd came in, not, however, before I had put my coat on again. I read the service and preached the sermon, and the undertaker did the rest.

Some months afterward, I was at work in my study in the tower of the old church, when I heard a loud knocking at the church door—a most unusual thing. I came down and found that undertaker and a gentleman and lady, well dressed, evidently of the well-to-do class, standing at the door.

"Here is a couple that want to get married, Mr. Irvine," the undertaker said.

They came into the study and were married, and I shook hands with the three, and they went off. Next day I went to the undertaker—indeed, he was an undertaker's helper. I went up to his desk and laid down a five-dollar bill, one-fourth of the marriage fee. Without being invited, I pulled a chair up and sat down beside him.

"Now, tell me, brother," I said confidentially. "Why did you bring them to me?"

A smile overspread his features.

"Well," he said, "it was like this. You remember that funeral business?"

"Yes."

"Well, I figured it out like this: that one of the two of us was puttin' up a damned big bluff; but I hadn't the heart to call it. Shake!"



CHAPTER XII

WORKING WAY DOWN

After some years' experience in missions and mission churches, I would find it very hard if I were a workingman living in a tenement not to be antagonistic to them; for, in large measure, such work is done on the assumption that people are poor and degraded through laxity in morals. The scheme of salvation is a salvation for the individual; social salvation is out of the question. Social conditions cannot be touched, because in all rotten social conditions, there is a thin red line which always leads to the rich man or woman who is responsible for them.

Coming in contact with these ugly social facts continuously, led me to this belief. It came very slowly as did also the opinion that the missionary himself or the pastor, be he as wise as Solomon, as eloquent as Demosthenes, as virtuous as St. Francis, has no social standing whatever among the people whose alms support the institutions, religious and philanthropic, of which these men are the executive heads. The fellowship of the saints is a pure fiction, has absolutely no foundation in fact in a city like New York except as the poor saints have it by themselves.

Tim Grogan jolted me into a new political economy; the crowded streets of the East Side on a summer night gave me a new theology. I stood one night in August on the tower of the old church and looked down upon the sweltering mass that covered the roofs, fire escapes and sidewalks. The roofs were littered with naked and half-naked children panting for breath. Down on the crowded streets thousands of little children darted in and out like sparrows, escaping as if by miracle the vehicles of all sorts and descriptions. Crowded baby-carriages lined the sidewalks. The stoops, too, were crowded. What a mass of humans! What a ganglia of living wires! As I looked on this vast multitude, I questioned the orthodox theology that held me in its grip. Most of these people belonged to another race. And I stood at that moment firmly rooted in the belief that this multitude was inevitably doomed! Let me put it frankly, even though it seems brutal: doomed to hell!

I am unable to analyze the quick currents of thought that went through my mind at that instant. I cannot explain how the change came. I know that there came to me a bigger thought than any I had ever known, and that thought so thrilled me with human feeling, with love for men, that I said to my soul: "Soul, if this multitude is doomed to hell, be brave; gird up your loins and go with them!"

In that tenement district people were being murdered by the tens of thousands by tuberculosis, by defective plumbing, by new diseases born of the herding of men and women like cattle. I made some feeble attempt to investigate, to ascertain, to acquaint myself with the facts, and my investigation led me to this result—a result that the lapse of years has not altered; that the private ownership of tenements—the private profits in housing—was not only the mother of the great white plague, but of most of the plagues down there that endanger health. It led me to the belief also that the struggle for bodily health, the struggle to survive, was so fierce as to leave little time for soul health or mental health! It was a source of continual wonder to me that people so helpless and so neglected were as good as they were, or as healthy as they were. It did not seem reasonable to lay the blame at the doors of the owners of the tenements. Many of them had a tenement only as a source of income—and to acquire the tenement had taken long years of savings, earnings and sacrifices. It was part of the great game of business, the game of "live I, die you!"

The churches and synagogues are of little vital importance there, because they ignore social conditions, or largely ignore them. And there is a reason for this also, and the reason is that they are supported by the people—the very people who perpetuate the evils against which prophet, priest and pastor ought to cry out continually. The protest against such conditions is a negligible quantity.

There is a protest, an outcry, but it is related neither to the church nor to the synagogue. The East Side has a soul, but it is not an ecclesiastical soul! It is a soul that is alive—so much alive to the interest of the people that many times I felt ashamed of myself when I listened to the socialistic orators on the street corners and in the East Side halls. They were stirring up the minds of the people. They were not merely making them discontented with conditions, but they were offering a programme of reconstruction—a programme that included a trowel as well as a sword.

The soul of the East Side expressed itself in the Yiddish press, daily, weekly, and monthly, and in Yiddish literature, and in the spoken word of the propagandist whose ideal, though limited in literary expression, made him a flame of living fire. It was this soul of the East Side that drove me against my will to study the relation of politics to the condition of the people. One of the first things that I discovered was the grip that Tammany had on the people. Every saloon keeper was a power in the community. Men, of any force of character whatever, who were willing to hold their hands behind their backs for Tammany graft, were singled out by the organization for some moiety of honour. Small merchants found it to their advantage to keep on the right side of the saloon keepers and the Tammany leaders. I remember trying to express this thought in an uptown church to a wealthy congregation; and I remember distinctly, also, that I was rebuked by one of the leading lights of the missionary society of which I was a part. I was informed that my business was to "save souls," and in my public addresses to tell how I saved them; that political conditions must be left to the politicians—and it was done.

To the old church at the corner of Market and Henry streets came Dowling. He followed me as a matter of fellowship—we loved each other. And came also Dave Ranney, the "puddler from Pittsburg."

On the first anniversary of Dave's conversion, I gathered a hundred wastrels of the Bowery together and gave them a dinner at the church. Dave, of course, was the guest of honour. When my guests were full and warm, they became reminiscent, and I urged them, a few of them, to tell us their stories—to unfold the torn manuscripts of their lives. Dave told his first.

"Boys," he said, "I was one of de toughest gazabos what ever hung aroun' de square. I met dis man an' tried t' bleed 'im, but it warn't no go—'e was on to de game and cudn't be touch't.

"I giv'd 'im a song an' dance story fur weeks. One day 'e sez to me, sez 'e, 'Chum!'—well, say boys, when I went out an' had a luk at meself, sez I, 'Ye dhirty loafer, if a man like dat calls y' "chum," why don't y' take a brace an' get on de dead level?' So I did an' I've been on de dead level ever since—ain't I, boss?"

I was able to place Dave as janitor of the church. After he had been there for a while and comfortably housed in the janitor's quarters in the basement, he thought it a propitious time to be reconciled to his wife; so we arranged to have Mary come down and inspect the place. We put extra work into the cleaning of the quarters, furnishing it with some sticks of furniture. Reconciliations were getting to be an old story with Mary, and Dave knew he was going to have difficulty in this new attempt. He finally persuaded her to make a visit to the church. When he was ready, Dave, in a most apologetic tone, said:

"There is just one thing lacking here."

"What is it Dave?"

"A white tie."

"Where?"

"On you."

The white tie as ecclesiastical appendage I had avoided. I despised it. But Dave assured me that if Mary came down to look the church over, she would be more interested in my appearance than in the appearance of the church, because what she really wanted was an assurance that Dave was "on the square!" and if he could introduce her to a real minister as his friend, it would enhance his chance.

I sent Dave to the Bowery for a five cent white string tie, and I borrowed a Prince Albert coat. There was an old stovepipe hat in the church—sort of legacy from former pastorates—and it was trotted out, carefully brushed and put on the study table. Then Mary appeared! Dave had instructed me to put up a "tall talk," so I put up the tallest possible. Mary inspected the church, the quarters and the minister; then she looked at Dave and said in an undertone—"This looks on the level."

"You bet your sweet life!" Dave said.

So Mary was installed as "the lady of the temple" at Sixty-one Henry Street, and for seven years ministered to the poor and the needy, and kept in order the House of God. After her death, Dave remained at the church about a year; then he became my successor as missionary to the lodging houses on the Bowery, where he still works—a sort of humble doctor of the humanities; feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting men in despair.

It seemed to me at that time that what a weak church like that most needed was a strong, powerful church to put its arms around it and give it support. I interviewed Dr. Parkhurst, as I was Chairman of a Committee of the City Vigilance League which he organized. The result was that Dr. Parkhurst's church gave it for a year support and absolute independence of action at the same time. Then the Rev. John Hopkins Dennison, who had been Dr. Parkhurst's assistant, superseded me in the care of the church, and was able to bring to its support help that I could not have touched. Mr. Dennison's service to that church is worthy of a better record than it has yet received. He performed brilliant service, intensified the life of the church and gathered around it a band of noble people. He transformed the tower of the church into a kind of modern monastery in which he lived himself, and in which Dowling, the old Irish tinker, had a place also, and which he made a centre of ten years' missionary work chiefly among the lodging houses where I found him.

One day Dowling was walking along the Bowery when a hand was laid roughly on his shoulder and a voice said:

"Ain't you Dowling?"

"Yes."

"What did you do with the loot?"

In the Sepoy Rebellion in India, he had looted the palace of a Rajah with two other soldiers. The most valuable items of the booty were several bamboo canes stuffed with diamonds, rubies and sapphires. In the act of burying them for protection and hiding, one of the soldiers was shot dead; the other two escaped and separated, and all these years each of them had lived in the suspicion that the other had gone back for the loot, and they both discovered on the Bowery that neither of them had and that this valuable stuff was buried in far-off India. Dowling wrote to the Governor-General and told of his part in the affair and volunteered to come out and locate it. But by this time his body was wasted, his steps were tottering and his head bent. Five-hundred dollars were appropriated by the Indian Government to take him out; but Dowling was destined for another journey; and, in the old tower that he loved so well and where he was beloved by every one who knew him, he lay down and died. They buried him in Plainfield, N.J., and his friends put over him a stone bearing these words that were so characteristic of his life:

"HE WENT ABOUT DOING GOOD"

My next service was in a city of a second class beyond the Mississippi River. I had been invited as a pulpit supply in one of its largest churches, but when I arrived I found them in a wrangle over the pastor who had just left and by whose recommendation I was to fill the pulpit. I arrived in the city on a Sunday morning and went from my hotel to the church prepared to preach. I stood for a few minutes in the vestibule, and what I heard led me to go straight out again, never to return.

My first impression of the city was that it contained more vital democracy than any city I had ever been in. It takes an Old World proletarian a long time to outgrow a sense of subserviency. As a missionary and almoner of the rich in New York, this sense was very strong in me. In the West I felt this vital democracy so keenly and saw the vision of political independence so clearly, that my very blood seemed to change. Politically, I was born again.



CHAPTER XIII

LIFE AND DOUBT ON THE BOTTOMS

While studying the social conditions of this city, I took a residence on the banks of the river among the squatters. There were about fifteen hundred people living in shacks on this "no man's land." My residence was a shack for which I paid three dollars a month. It was at the bottom of a big clay bank, and not far from where the city dumped its garbage. There was neither church nor chapel in this neglected district, and the people were mostly foreigners; but the children all spoke English.

During the early part of my stay in that shack, I entered my first great period of doubting—doubt as to the moral order of the universe, doubt on the question of God. I had gone through some great soul struggles, but this was the greatest. It was for a time the eclipse of my soul. For weeks I lived behind closed doors—I was shut in with my soul. But the community around me called in a thousand ways for help, for guidance, for instruction, and I opened the door of my shack and invited the children in. I organized a Sunday School and taught them ethics and religion. I got up little entertainments for them. I procured a stereopticon, gave them lectures on my experience in Egypt, and lectures on art, biography and history. I had a peculiar method of advertising these lectures. I informed the little cripple boy on the corner. He whispered the information to a section of the huts, at the farthest end of which a golden-haired courier informed another section; so that by the time the lecture was scheduled to begin, my audience was ready, and most of them slid down the clay bank in front of my door. Later I went out through the surrounding towns and cities, lecturing, and raised money for a chapel, and we called it the "Chapel of the Carpenter."

I never knew the meaning of the incarnation until I lived on "the bottoms" with the squatters. I talked of great characters of history; I reviewed great books. I travelled with these children over the great highways of history, science and art, and very soon we had a strong Sunday School, and helpers came from the city—but the door of my own soul was still shut. It seemed to me that my soul was dead. I was without hope for myself: everything around me was dark. Sometimes I locked the door and tried to pray, but no words came, nor thoughts—not a ray of light penetrated the darkness. My mind and intellect became duller and duller. It was at this time that I came across the writings of Schopenhauer; and Schopenhauer suggested to me a method of relief. I may be doing him an injustice, but it was his philosophy that made me reason that, as I did not ask to come into life and had no option, I had a right to go out of it. There was nothing spasmodic in the development of my thought along this line: it was cold, calm reasoning; I had determined to go out of life. So, with the same calm deliberation that I cooked my breakfast, I destroyed every vestige of my correspondence; and, one night went to the river to seek relief. I was sitting on the end of a log when a man, who had been working twelve hours in a packing-house, came out to smoke, after his supper. He had not washed himself. His bloody shirt stuck to his skin—he was haggard, pale; and we dropped naturally into conversation. In language intelligible to him I asked him what life meant to him.

"The kids," he said, "that's what it means to me. I work like one of the things I kill every day—I kill hundreds of them, thousands of them every day. I go home and eat like one of them, and sleep like one of them, and go back to hog it again like one of them."

"Do you get tired?"

"Tired? Tired as hell!"

"I mean—tired of life?"

"Oh, no," he said, "I aint livin' the best kind of a life, but what I have is better than none. I don't know what's beyond—if there is any life or none at all; but something in me makes me stick to this one. Besides, if there is any chance for a better life here, he must be a damned coward that would go out of it and leave it undone. Good night."

I saw him retreat to his shack among the tall weeds. I heard the door close. I fancied him lie down in a heap in the corner and go to sleep. He was a better philosopher than I was, and he had called me a coward, but he had not altered my determination. I began to sweat. It was like the action of a fever on my body, and I became very nervous; but I was determined to meet the crisis, and go.

A sudden change in affairs was created by an unearthly scream—the scream of a woman. I looked around suddenly and discovered that the only two-story shack on "the bottoms" was in a blaze, and the thought occurred to me that I might be of some help and accomplish my purpose at the same time.

In a moment I was beside the burning hut. It appeared that a lamp had exploded upstairs, and that three small children were hemmed in. That was the cause of the scream.

A plank that reached to the upstairs window was lying at the wood pile. I pushed it against the house and climbed like a cat into the burning bedroom. By this time the neighbours had collected, and I helped the woman and lowered the three children down, one by one, and then deliberately groped for the stairs to get hemmed in, the smoke suffocating me as I did so. By the time I found the stairs, my hair was singed, my arms were burned, but I was gradually losing consciousness, and before I reached the bottom I fell, suffocated with the smoke. In that last moment of consciousness, my whole life came up in review. I had no regrets. I had played a part and it was over.

When I came out of coma, I was lying on my cot in the hut, the neighbours crowding my little bedroom and standing outside in scores. One of the newspapers that had most severely criticized my interference in politics, gave me a pass to Colorado and return—and in the mountains of Colorado, the door of my soul opened again, and I saw the world beautiful—and opportunities that were golden for helpfulness and service awaiting my touch. So I returned to my hut with the sense of God more fully developed in me than it had ever been.

They had a system in that city that I was very much ashamed of—that I thought all men ought to be ashamed of—the segregation of the "social evil." I discovered that the city fined these poor creatures of the streets, and that these fines, amounting to thousands of dollars every year, went straight into the public school fund, so that it could truly be said that the more debauched society was, the more efficiently it could educate its children and its youth.

These houses in the red light district were built to imitate castles on the Rhine, and were owned by church people and politicians. Everybody winked at this condition. One minister of this town uttered a loud protest and took his children out of the public schools, but he had to leave the city. The Christians would not stand for such a protest. The newspapers would not touch it, trustees would not touch it, the great political parties would not touch it.

I joined the Knights of Labour in that city, an organization then in its prime of strength, but they would not touch it. I joined the People's Party in the hope that there I might do something about it. One of the leading members of that party importuned me to nominate him as presiding officer of the city convention. "On one condition," I told him; "that you appoint me chairman of the committee on resolutions." And the compact was made.

Five men were on that committee, and when I asked the committee to put in a resolution condemning the education of children from this fund, they refused. I could only persuade one of four to indorse my minority report, which, signed by two of us, condemned this remnant of Sodom left over; but it swept the convention and was carried almost unanimously. Even the three men on the resolutions committee who refused to sign it before, voted for it in convention. I am aware that it does not matter from what fund or funds the public school system is supported. I am aware also that one of the things we can do is to make that kind of thing cover up its head.

What I suffered for that resolution can never be recorded.

My period of inclement mental weather was followed by a period of poverty—destitution rather—I was physically unable to work with my hands and I had not yet tried to earn money by my pen. I was often so reduced by hunger that I could scarcely walk. At such times one feels more grateful for friendship. Into my life then came a few choice souls whose fellowship acted as a dynamic to my life. It was when things were at their worst that George D. Herron found me. The almost Jewish cast of feature, the strange, wonderful voice, the prophetic atmosphere of the man forced me to express the belief that I had never met a human being who seemed to me so like Christ. Then came George A. Gates, the president of Iowa College where Dr. Herron was a professor. About the same time came Elia W. Peattie and Ida Doolittle Fleming. Mrs. Fleming and her husband helped me organize a Congregational Church which, when organized, was a means of support.

The church was in a growing section of the city but I could not be persuaded to live there. I lived where I thought my life was most serviceable—on "the bottoms."

One night after a few days' involuntary fast I found in the hut two cents. To the city I went and bought two bananas—one I ate on the way back and the other I put in my hip pocket.

There were no streets, no lights, no sidewalks in that region. As I came to a railroad arch on the edge of the squatter community I saw a figure emerge from the deep shadows. I knew instantly I was to be held up, but as life was rather cheap down there I was not sure what would accompany the assault. A second figure emerged and when I came to within a few yards of them, I whipped the banana from my pocket and pointing it as one would a revolver I said—"Move a muscle, either of you, and I'll blow your brains out!"

"Gee!" one of them muttered; "it's Mr. Irvine."

They belonged to a gang of young toughs who lived in a dug-out on the banks of the river. Some of them had brothers in my school. There were about a dozen of them. They had hinted several times that they would clean me out when they had time, but they had delayed their plan. I took these fellows to my hut and we talked for hours.

When I produced the banana they laughed vociferously and invited me to their "hole." Next evening they gave a reception and, I suppose, fed me on stolen property. They had a stove—a few old mattresses and some dry-goods boxes.

I held their attention that night for four hours while I told the story of Jean Valjean. Next day we were all photographed together on a pile of stones near the "hole."

After that these fellows protected the chapel and made themselves useful in their way. In less than a year afterward half of them had gone to honest work; the rest went the way of the transgressor, to the penetentiary and the reform school.

This period was one of total rejection by any means—powerful influences were at work to render my labour void—but they were offset for a time by the finer influences of life. I gave a series of addresses in Tabor College, Iowa, and they were the beginning of an awakening among the students. After the last word of the last address the student about whom the president and faculty were most concerned walked up the aisle and expressed a desire to lead a new life.

"Do it now," I suggested.

"Right here?"

"Yes, right where you stand."

The president and faculty gathered around him, making a circle; he stood in the midst, alone, and in that way with prayer and dedication from the lips of the young man and his friends began one of the most useful lives in the American ministry. This young man became an ascetic. I gave him to read the life of Francis of Assisi, and he went to the extreme in emulation. He divested himself of collars and ties and on graduating read his thesis for his Bachelor's degree collarless and tieless.

I was in New Haven when he came there to take his Divinity degree in Yale. He came without either collar or tie, but after days of prayer and fasting he was "led" to enter the University as others entered it. He is now pastor of the First Congregational Church in Rockford, Illinois; his name is Frank M. Sheldon. Nine men have gone by a similar route into the ministry, but Mr. Sheldon is the only one of them who has kept touch with the modern demands on religious leadership.

Birthdays have meant nothing whatever to me, but I made my thirty-second an occasion for a party on "the bottoms."

I could only accommodate seven guests. Two were favourite boys and the others were selected because of their great need. The hut was the centre of a mud puddle that January morning. I got a long plank and laid it from my doorstep to the edge of the clay bank. I took precaution not to announce the affair, even to the guests, but a grocer's boy who had been sent by a friend with some oranges lost his way and his inquiry after me created such a sensation that when he found me he was accompanied by about fifty children.

Old Mrs. Belgarde, my nearest neighbour, had whispered across the fence to her neighbour that something was sure to happen, for she had noticed me making unusual preparations that day. I think the origin of the party idea came with my first birthday gift—I mean the first I had ever received—it was a copy of Thomas a Kempis, given me by my friend the Reverend Gregory J. Powell. [I gave it later to a man who was to die by judicial process in the county jail.]

When the hour arrived a crowd of two hundred youngsters stood in the mud outside. On the top of the clay bank stood parents, crossing themselves and praying quietly that their offspring would be lucky enough to get in.

I had taught these children some simple rules of order, and when I opened the door I rang a little bell. There was absolute silence. They had been actually tearing each other's clothing to rags for a position near the door. I told them that I was so poor that I had scarcely enough food for myself. That the little I had I was going to share with seven of my special friends; of course they all considered themselves included in that characterization.

"Dear little friends," I said, "I never had a birthday party before; and now you are going to spoil this one."

Up to this time the crowd didn't know who the guests were. I proceeded to call the names. As those called made a move there was a violent fight for the door. Some of them I had to drag out of the clutches of the unsuccessful. Only six of the seven were there. There was a howl from a hundred throats to take the place of the absent one.

"No," I said sternly; "he'll come, all right." A roar of discontent went up and chaos reigned. I couldn't make myself heard; I rang the bell and again calmed them. I was at a loss to know what to say.

"Dear little folks," I said, "I thought you loved me!"

"Do too!" whined a dozen voices.

"Then if you do, go away and some day I will have a party for every child on 'the bottoms.'"

That quieted the youthful mob and they departed—that is, the majority departed. Some stayed and bombarded the doors and windows with stones. There were few stones to be found, and as it didn't occur to them to use the same stones twice they used mud and plastered the front of the hut with it.

This form of expression, however, did not disturb us much. I sent three of my guests into the back yard to wash and arrange their hair. They returned for inspection but didn't pass, the hair refusing to comply on such short notice. I put the finishing touches on each of their toilets and we sat down to supper. The oldest boy, "Fritz," was half past twelve and the youngest, "Ano," had just struck ten. Ano was a cripple and both legs were twisted out of shape—he hobbled about on crutches. "Jake" was eleven—two of his eleven years he had spent in a reformatory where he had learned to chew tobacco and to swear.

"Eddy" was also eleven, but the oldest of all in point of wits. I had a claim on Eddy: one day he was amusing himself by jerking a cat at the end of a string, in and out of Frau Belgarde's well. She was stealthily approaching him with a piece of fence rail when I arrived and possibly prevented some broken bones. "Kaiser" was nearly twelve; he too had been in a reform school—he liked it and would have been glad to stay as long as they wanted him—for he had three meals a day and he had never had such "luck" outside. "Whitey" was a little Swedish boy whose mother worked in a cigar factory. "Kaiser" and "Whitey" had a "dug-out" and they spent more nights together in it than they spent in their huts.

"Fritz," the oldest boy, began his career in the open by stealing his father's revolver; and, jumping on the first grocery wagon he found handy, he left town. Of course he was brought back and "sent up" for a year. "Franz," the absent one, was Ano's brother, and the toughest boy in the community.

These brief outlines describe the guests of my birthday party.

"When ye make a feast call the poor" was stretched a little to cover this aggregation—stretched as to the character of those invited. A blessing was asked, of course—by the host and repeated by the guests. Of things to eat there was enough and to spare. After dinner each one was to contribute something to the entertainment.

"Beginning here on my left with 'Whitey,'" I said, "I want each boy to tell us what he would like to be when he becomes a man." Whitey without hesitation said:

"A organ-man wid a monkey."

"Why?"

"'Cause."

Eddy said he would like to be a butcher, and as a reason gave: "Plenty ov beef to eat."

"Kaiser" preferred to be a "Reformatory boss."

"Ano," the cripple, said he would like to be a minister. When pressed for a reason he said, "That's what m' father says—dey ain't got notin' to do!"

In the midst of this social quiz a loud noise was heard outside. "Bang! Bang!! Bang!!!" The timbers of the hut shivered, the guests made a rush to the back door. I was there first and found Franz, the missing guest, his arms smeared with blood, his ragged jacket covered with hair of some sort and in his hand a bloody stiletto.

He rushed past me into the hut, got to the table and exclaimed: "Gee whiz! der ain't a —— scrap left!"

"Look here, Franz," I said, "I want to know what you've been up to?"

"Ye do, hey? Ye look skeered, too, don't yer—hey?"

"Never mind how I look; tell me at once what you've been up to!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" he laughed, "d'ye tink I kilt some ol' sucker for 'is money—hey? Ha, ha! Well, I hain't, see? I've bin skinnin' a dead hoss an brot ye d' skin for a birfday present, see?"

The skin was lying in a bloody heap outside the back door. I arranged "Franz" for dinner and the party was complete.

I told some stories; then we played games and at ten o'clock they went home. The moment the front door was opened, about forty children—each with a lighted candle in hand—sang a verse of my favourite hymn: "Lead, Kindly Light." They knew but one verse, but that they sang twice. It was a weird performance and moved me almost to tears.

After they sang they came down the clay bank and shook hands, wishing me all sorts of things. Two nights afterward I had a different kind of a party. A bullet came crashing through the boards of my hut about midnight. Rushing to the door, I saw the fire flashes of other shots in a neighbour's garden. I went to the high board fence and saw one of my neighbours—a German—emptying a revolver at his wife who was dodging behind a tree.

My first impulse was to jump the fence and save the woman but the man being evidently half-drunk might have turned and poured into me what was intended for his wife; and the first law of nature was sufficiently developed in me to let her have what belonged to her! I tried to speak but my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I was positively scared.

The old fellow walked up to the tree, letting out as he walked a volley of oaths. I recovered my equilibrium, sprang over the fence, crept up behind and jumped on him, knocking him down and instantly disarming him.

I went inside with them and sat between them until they seemed to have forgotten what had happened. Then I put them to bed, put the light out and went home. I examined the revolver and found it empty. Next morning I went back and told the old man that I would volunteer to give him some lessons in target practice; and that the reason I knocked him down was because he was such a poor shot. This old couple became my staunchest supporters.

I interested the students of Tabor College in the people of that out-of-the-way community, and before I built the Chapel of the Carpenter which still stands there I organized a college settlement which was manned by students.

The small church, the chapel on "the bottoms," the work of the college students and the increasing circle of converts and friends made the work attractive to me, but I had entered the political field in order to protest against and possibly remedy something civic that savoured of Sodom; and for a minister that was an unpardonable sin. The "interests" determined to cripple me or destroy my work. This they did successfully by the medium of a subsidized press and other means, fair and foul. It was a case of a city against one man—a rich city against a poor man and the man went down to defeat—apparent defeat, anyway: I packed my belongings and left. As I crossed the bridge which spans the river I looked on the little squatter colony on "the bottoms" and as my career there passed in review, for the second time in my life I was stricken with home-sickness and I was guilty of what my manhood might have been ashamed of—tears.



CHAPTER XIV

MY FIGHT IN NEW HAVEN

The experiences of 1894, '5 and '6 gave me a distaste—really a disgust—with public life I felt that I would never enter a large city again. I sought retirement in a country parish; this was secured for me by my friend, the president of Tabor College, the Rev. Richard Cecil Hughes.

It was in a small town in Iowa—Avoca in Pottawattomie County; I stayed there a year.

In 1897 I was in Cleveland, Ohio, in charge of an institution called The Friendly Inn; a very good name if the place had been an inn or friendly. My inability to make it either forced me to leave it before I had been there many months. It was in Cleveland that I first joined a labour union. I was a member of what was called a Federal Labour Union and was elected its representative to the central body of the union movement.

Early in 1898 I was in Springfield, Mass., delivering a series of addresses to a Bible school there. My funds ran out and not being in receipt of any remuneration and, not caring to make my condition known, I was forced for the first time in my life to become a candidate for a church. There were two vacant pulpits and I went after both of them. Meantime I boarded with a few students who, like their ancestors, had "plenty of nothing but gospel."

They lived on seventy-five cents a week. Living was largely a matter of scripture texts, hope and imagination. I used to breakfast through my eyes at the beautiful lotus pond in the park. We lunched usually on soup that was a constant reminder of the soul of Tomlinson of Berkeley Square. Quantitively speaking, supper was the biggest meal of the day—it was a respite also for our imaginations.

The day of my candidacy arrived. I was prepared to play that most despicable of all ecclesiastical tricks—making an impression. I almost memorized the Scripture reading and prepared my favourite sermon; my personal appearance never had been so well attended to. The hour arrived. The little souls sat back in their seats to take my measure.

It was their innings. I had been duly looked up in the year-book and my calibre gauged by the amount of money paid me in previous pastorates.

The "service" began. My address to the Almighty was prepared and part of the game is to make believe that it is purely extemporaneous. Every move, intonation and gesture is noted and has its bearing on the final result. I was saying to the ecclesiastical jury: "Look here, you dumb-heads, wake up; I'm the thing you need here!" Sermon time came and with it a wave of disgust that swept over my soul.

"Good friends," I began; "I am not a candidate for the pastorate here. I was a few minutes ago; but not now. Instead of doing the work of an infinite God and letting Him take care of the result I have been trying to please you. If the Almighty will forgive me for such unfaith—such meanness—I swear that I will never do it again."

Then I preached. This brutal plainness created a sensation and several tried to dissuade me, but I had made up my mind.

It was while I was enjoying the "blessings" of poverty in Springfield that I was called to New Haven to confer with the directors of the Young Men's Christian Association about their department of religious work. I had been in New Haven before. In 1892 I addressed the students of Yale University on the subject of city mission work and, as a result of that address, had been invited to make some investigations and outline a plan for city mission work for the students. I spent ten days in the slum region there, making a report and recommendations. On these the students began the work anew. I was asked at that time to attach myself to the university as leader and instructor in city missions, but work in New York seemed more important to me.

I rode my bicycle from Springfield to New Haven for that interview. When it was over I found myself on the street with a wheel and sixty cents. I bought a "hot dog"—a sausage in a bread roll—ate it on the street and then looked around for a lodging.

"Is it possible," I asked a policeman, "to get a clean bed for a night in this town for fifty cents?"

"Anything's possible," he answered, "but——"

He directed me to the Gem Hotel, where I was shown to a 12 x 6 box, the walls of which spoke of the battles of the weary travellers who had preceded me. I protected myself as best I could until the dawn, when I started for Springfield, a disciple for a day of the no-breakfast fad.

Things were arranged differently at the next interview. I was the guest of the leaders in that work and was engaged as "Religious Work Director" for one year. I think I was the first man in the United States to be known officially by that title.

The Board of Directors was composed of men efficient to an extraordinary degree. The General Secretary was a worker of great energy and business capacity and as high a moral type as the highest. He was orthodox in theology and the directors were orthodox in sociology. It was a period when I was moving away from both standpoints.

To express a very modern opinion in theology would disturb the churches—the moral backers of the institution; to express an advanced idea in sociology would alienate the rich men—the financial backers. A month after I began my work I "supplied" the pulpit of a church in the New Haven suburbs called the Second Congregational Church of Fair Haven. The chairman of the pulpit supply committee was a member of the Board of Directors of the Y.M.C.A.

Gradually I drifted away from the Association toward the church. The former was building a new home and many people were glad of an excuse not to give anything toward its erection. So any utterance of mine that seemed out of the common was held up to the solicitor. An address on War kept the telephone ringing for days. It was as if Christianity had never been heard of in New Haven. Labour men asked that the address be printed and subscribed money that it might be done, but an appeal to the teachings of Jesus on the question of war was lauded by the sinners and frowned upon by the saints.

With the General Secretary I never had an unkind word. Though a man of boundless energy he was a man in supreme command of himself. We knew in a way that we were drifting apart and acted as Christians toward each other. What more can men do?

Mr. Barnes, the director, who was chairman of the pulpit supply committee of the church, kept urging me to give my whole time to the church. Every day for weeks he drove his old white horse to my door and talked it over. I refused the call to the pastorate but divided my time between them. For the Y.M.C.A. my duties were:

To conduct mass meetings for men in a theatre. To organize the Bible departments and teach one of the classes. Care and visiting of converts. Daily office hour. Literary work as associate editor of the weekly paper. Writing of pamphlets. To conduct boys' meetings.

For the church:

To conduct regular Sunday services. Friday night prayer meetings. Men's Bible class. Visitation of sick and burial of the dead. Class for young converts. Children's meetings.

At the same time I entered the Divinity School of Yale University, taking studies in Hebrew, New Testament Greek and Archaeology. A little experience in the church taught me that intellectually I was leaving the ordinary type of church at a much quicker pace than I was leaving the Y.M.C.A.

Dr. Edward Everett Hale told a friend once that he preached to the South Church on Sunday morning so that he might preach to the world the rest of the week. I told the officers of the church frankly that I was not the kind of man needed for their parish; but they insisted that I was, so I preached for them on Sunday that I might preach to a larger parish during the week.

Two things I tried to do well for the church—conduct an evening meeting for the unchurched—which simply means the folk unable to dress well and pay pew rents—and conduct a meeting for children. I organized a committee to help me at the evening meeting. The only qualification for membership on the committee was utter ignorance of church work. The very good people of the community called this meeting "a show." Well, it was. I asked the regular members to stay away for I needed their space and their corner lots with cushioned knee stools. I made a study of the possibilities of the stereopticon. Mr. Barnes gave me a fine outfit. I got the choicest slides and subjects published. Prayers, hymns, scripture readings and illuminated bits of choice literature were projected on a screen. I trained young men to put up and take down the screen noiselessly, artistically, and with the utmost neatness and dispatch. I discovered that many men who either lacked ambition or ability to wear collars came to that meeting, and they sang, too, when the lights were low. When in full view of each other they were as close-mouthed as clams. The singing became a special feature. My brethren in other churches considered this a terrible "come-down" at first, but changed their minds later and copied the thing, borrowing the best of my good slides and not a few of the unique ideas accompanying the scheme.

A Methodist brother across the river said confidentially to a friend that he was going to launch on the community "a legitimate sensation"—a boys' choir. My plans for getting the poor people to church succeeded. Such a thing as fraternizing the steady goers—goers by habit and heredity—and the unsteady goers—goers by the need of the soul—was impossible. The most surprising thing in these evening meetings to the men who financed the church was the fact that these poor people paid for their own extras. That goes a long way in church affairs.

The weekly children's meeting I called "The Pleasant Hour." Believing that the most important work of the Church is the teaching of the children, it was my custom for many years in many churches to personally conduct a Sunday School on a week day so that the best I had to give would be given to the children. In my larger work for the city two ideas governed my action. One was to get the church people interested in civic problems and the other was to solve civic problems or to attempt a solution whether church people were interested in them or not.

I organized a flower mission for the summer months. We called it a Flower House. An abandoned hotel was cleaned up. A few loads of sand dumped in the back yard as a sort of extemporized seashore where little children might play. Flowers were solicited and distributed to the folks who had neither taste nor room for flowers. We did some teaching, too, and gave entertainments. A barrel-organ played on certain days by the sand pile; and that music of the proletariat never fails to attract a crowd.

The flower mission developed into a social settlement. We called it Lowell House. At first the church financed it, then it got tired of that, and when I incorporated the settlement work in my church reports in order to stimulate support, the settlement workers—directors rather—got tired of the church and went into a spasm over it. Lowell House is accounted a successful institution of the city now. It is doing a successful church work among the poor—church work with this exception, that its head worker—its educated, sympathetic priestess—lives there and shares her little artistic centre with the crowd who live in places not good enough for domestic animals.

In 1898 New Haven's public baths consisted of a tub in the basement of a public school. I photographed the tub and projected the picture on a screen in the Grand Opera House for the consideration of the citizens. That was the beginning of an agitation for a public bath house—an agitation that was pushed until the dream became a brick structure.

I was not particularly interested in the bath per se. It was an opportunity to get people to work for something this side of heaven, to emphasize the thought that men were as much worth taking care of as horses—an idea that has not yet a firm grip on the mind of the bourgeoisie.

The bath-house bill passed the Aldermanic and Councilmanic chambers, was signed by the mayor and the matter of building put into the hands of the Board of Health. The Board forgot all about it and some time later the agitation began again and persisted until another city government and another mayor had made a second law and carried it into effect.

There was no ecclesiastical objection to my participation in this movement. It was a small thing and cost little.



CHAPTER XV

A VISIT HOME

My Father had been begging me for years to come home and say good-bye to him; so, in 1901, I made the journey.

I hadn't been in the old home long before the alley was filled with neighbours, curious to have a look at "ould Jamie's son who was a clargymaan." I went to the door and shook hands with everybody in the hope that after a while they would go away and leave me with my own. But nobody moved. They stood and stared for several hours. "'Deed I mind ye fine when ye weren't th' height av a creepie!" said one woman, who was astounded that I couldn't call her by name.

"Aye," said another, "'deed ye were i' fond o' th' Bible, an' no wundther yer a clargymaan!"

A dozen old women "minded" as many different things of my childhood. I finally dismissed them with this phrase, as I dropped easily enough into the vernacular, "Shure, we'd invite ye all t' tay but there's only three cups in the house!"

My sister Mary and her four children lived with my father. We shut and barred the door when the neighbours left and sat down to "tay," which consisted of potatoes and buttermilk. Mary had been trying to improve on the old days but I interposed, and together, we went through the old regime. Father took the pot of potatoes to the old tub in which he used to steep the leather. There he drained them—then put them on the fire for a minute to allow the steam to escape.

"I'm going to 'kep' them," I said, and they both laughed.

"Oh, heavens, don't," he said; "shure they don't 'kep' pirtas in America!"

"I'm not in America now," I answered, as I circled as much of the little bare table as I could with my arms to keep the potatoes from rolling off. He dumped them in a heap in the centre; they rolled up against my arms and breast and I pushed them back. Mary cleared a space for a small pile of salt and the buttermilk bowls.

"We'll haave a blessin' by a rale ministher th' night," Mary said.

"Oh, yis, that's thrue enough," my father said, "but Alec minds th' time whin it was blessin' enough to hev th' murphies—don't ye, boy?"

After "tay" I tacked a newspaper over the lower part of the window—my father lit the candle and Mary put a few turfs on the fire and we sat as we used to sit so many years ago. My father was so deaf that I had to shout to make him hear and nearly everything I said could be heard by the neighbours in the alley, many of whom sat around the door to hear whatever they could of the story they supposed I would tell of the magic land beyond the sea.

I unbarred the door in answer to a loud knock; it was a most polite note from a Roman Catholic schoolmaster inviting me to occupy a spare room in his house. Half an hour later we were again interrupted by another visitor, an old friend who also invited me to occupy his spare bed. It was evidently disturbing the town to know where I was to sleep. I politely refused all invitations. Each invitation was explained to my father.

"Shure that's what's cracking m' own skull," he said; "where th' divil will ye sleep, anyway, at all, at all?"

Then they listened and I talked—talked of what the years had meant to me.

The old man sighed often and occasionally there were tears in Mary's eyes; and there were times when the past surged through my mind with such vividness that I could only look vacantly into the white flame of the peat fire. Once after a long silence my father spoke—his voice trembled, "Oh," he said, "if she cud just have weathered through till this day!"

"Aye," Mary said, "but how do ye know she isn't jist around here somewhere, anyway?"

"Aye," the old man said as he nodded his head, "deed that's thrue for you, Mary, she may!" He took his black cutty pipe out of his mouth and gazed at me for a moment.

"What d'ye mind best about her?"

"I mind a saying she had that has gone through life with me."

"'Ivery day makes its own throuble?'"

"No, not that; something better. She used to say so often, 'It's nice to be nice.'"

"Aye, I mind that," he said.

"Then," I continued, "on Sundays when she was dressed and her nice tallied cap on her head, I thought she was the purtiest woman I ever saw!"

"'Deed, maan, she was that!"

When bed time came I took a small lap-robe from my suit case, spread it on the hard mud floor, rolled some other clothes as a pillow and lay down to rest. Sleep came slowly but as I lay I was not alone, for around me were the forms and faces of other days.

Next day I visited the scene of my boyhood's vision—I went through the woods where I had my first full meal. I visited the old church; but the good Rector was gathered to his fathers. It was all a day-dream; it was like going back to a former incarnation. Along the road on my way home I discovered the most intimate friend of my boyhood—the boy with whom I had gathered faggots, played "shinney" and gone bird-nesting. He was "nappin'" stones. He did not recognize my voice but his curiosity was large enough to make him throw down his hammer, take off the glasses that protected his eyes and stare at me.

"Maan, yer changed," he said, "aren't you?"

"And you?"

"Och, shure, I'm th' same ould sixpence!"

"Except that you're older!" There was a look of disappointment on his face.

"Maan," he said, "ye talk like quality—d'ye live among thim?"

I explained something of my changed life; I told of my work and what I had tried to do and I closed with an account of the vision in the fields not far from where we sat.

"Aye," he would say occasionally, "aye, 'deed it's quare how things turn out."

When I ended the story of the vision he said: "Ye haaven't forgot how t' tell a feery story—ye wor i' good at that!"

"Bob" hadn't read a book, or a newspaper in all those years. He got his news from the men who stopped at his stone pile to light their pipes—what he didn't get there he got at the cobbler's while his brogues were being patched or at the barber's when he went for his weekly shave. We talked each other out in half an hour. A wide gulf was between us: it was a gulf in the realm of mind.

As I moved away toward the town, I wondered why I was not breaking stones on the roadside, and I muttered Bob's well-worn phrase: "How quare!"

It became so difficult to talk to my father without gathering a crowd at the door that I shortened my stay and took him to Belfast where we could spend a few days together and alone. We had our meals at first in a quiet little restaurant on a side street. He had never been in a restaurant. As the waiter went around the table, the old man watched him with curious eyes. I have explained that my father never swore. He was mightily unfortunate in his selection of phrases and when irritated by the attention of the waiter to the point of explosion he said, in what he supposed was a whisper: "What th' hell is he dancin' around us like an Indian fur?" I explained. Everybody in the place heard the explanation; they also heard his reply: "Send him t' blazes—he takes m' appetite away!"

We moved into the house of a friend after that.

One afternoon I took him for a walk in the suburbs of the city.

He rested on a rustic bench on the lawn of a beautiful villa while I made a call.

"Twenty-five years ago," I said to the gentleman of the house, "I had a great inspiration from the life of a young lady who lived in this house, and I just called to say 'thank you.'"

"Her father is dead," he said. "I am her uncle."

Then he told me of the career of the city girl I had met on the farm and whom I had watched entering the church on Sundays.

"About the time you missed her at church," he said, "she was married to a rich young man. He spent his fortune in liquor and finally ended his life. She began to drink, after his death, but was persuaded to leave the country. She went to America. We haven't heard from her for a long time."

The following Sunday I told my father we were going to church.

"Not me!" he said.

"Oh, yes," I coaxed; "just this once with me."

"What th' divil's the use whin I haave a praycher t' m'silf."

"I am to be the preacher at the church."

"Och, but that's a horse ov another colour, bedad. Shure thin I'll go."

When my father saw me in a Geneva gown, his eyes were filled with tears.

The old white-haired lady who found the place in the book for him was the young lady's mother. Her uncle had ushered him into her pew, but they had never met each other nor did the old lady know until after church that he was my father.

He never heard a word of the sermon, but as we emerged from the church into the street he put his arms around my neck and kissing me said, "Och, boy, if God wud only take me now I'd be happy!"

He had been listening with his eyes and what he saw so filled him with joy that he was more willing to leave life than to have the emotion leave him.

Though he was very feeble, I took him to Scotland with me to visit my brothers and sisters; and there I left him. As the hour of farewell drew near he wanted to have me alone—all to himself.

"Ye couldn't stay at home awhile? Shure I'll be goin' in a month or two."

"Ah, that's impossible, father." He hung his head.

"D'ye believe I'll know her whin I go? God wudn't shut me out from her for th' things I've done—"

"Of course he won't."

"He wudn't be so d——d niggardly, wud He?"

"Never!"

He fondled my hands as if I were a child. The hour drew nigher. He had so many questions to ask, but the inevitableness of the situation struck him dumb. We were on the platform; the train was about to move out. I made a motion; he gripped me tightly, whispering in my ear:

"Ask God onct in a while to let me be with yer mother—will ye, boy?"

I kissed him farewell and saw him no more.

I went on to France.

My objective point in France was the study of Millet and his work. I wanted to interpret him to working people in New Haven.

So to Greville on La Hague I went with a camera.

Greville consists of a church and a dozen houses. Gruchy is half a mile beyond, on the edge of the sea.

In Gruchy Millet was born; in Greville he first came into contact with incentive—I photographed both places and spent a night and a day with M. Polidor, the old inn-keeper who was the painter's friend.

Surely, never was so large a statue erected in so small a village. The peasant artist sits there on a bank of mosses, looking over at the old church that squats on the hillside. In Cherbourg I found more traces of his art and some stories of his life there that would be out of place here.

I found four portraits painted while he was paying court to his first wife. I found them in a little shoe shop in a by-street, in possession of a distant relative of his first wife.

From Cherbourg I went to Barbizon, where Millet spent the latter part of his life. I was very graciously received and entertained by his son Francois and his American wife.

To browse among the master's relics, to handle the old books of his small library, to hold, as one would a babe of tender years, his palette, were small things, judged by the values of the average life: to me it was one of the most inspiring hours of my career.

Paris was to me an art centre—little more. I followed the footsteps of Millet from one place to another. I sat before his paintings in the Louvre—I met some of his old friends and gathered material for a lecture on his work.

From Paris I went to London. The British capital was more than an art centre to me. It was a centre, literary, sociological and religious. I was the guest of Sir George Williams one afternoon at one of his parties and met Lord Radstock whom I had heard preach on a street corner in Whitechapel twenty years before.

Besides visiting and photographing the literary haunts of the great masters, I made the acquaintance of the leaders of the Socialist movement. I went to St. Albans to attend the first convention of the Ruskin societies. The convention was composed of men who in literature and life were translating into terms of life and labour the teachings of John Ruskin.

From London I went to Oxford and spent a few weeks browsing around the most fascinating city in the world, to me. My visit was in anticipation of the British convention of the Young Men's Christian Association to which I was a fraternal delegate from the Young Men's Association of Yale University.

I was invited to a garden party at Blenheim Palace while at Oxford. I arrived early and presented my card. Without waiting I went into the grounds and proceeded to enjoy the beautiful walks. Before I had gone far, I met a young man who seemed familiar with the place. I told him that I had once taken the Duchess through part of the slum region of New York, and expressed a hope that she was at home.

"No," he said, "she is conducting a fair in London for soldiers' wives." My next remark was in the realm of ethics. I had heard that the father of the present Duke was a good deal of a rake and asked the young man whether that was true or not. He said he thought it was like the obituary notice of Mark Twain—very much exaggerated.

"I have been a flunky to some of these high fliers," I said, "and I know how hard it is to get at the facts and also how easy it is to form a mistaken judgment."

"Yes," he said, "that's true, but men of that type, while they are often worse than they are painted are more often much better than the best the public think of them! I am the successor of the late Duke, and speak with authority on at least one case."

He took me through the palace, not only the parts usually open to the public but the private apartments also, and later in the afternoon he took me over some of the property at Woodstock, stopping for a few minutes at the house of Geoffrey Chaucer.

The Rector of Exeter College had invited a group of the leaders of the convention to a luncheon in Exeter and, because I was the only American, I was asked to be present and deliver a short address.

The grounds of Exeter show the good results of the four or five hundred years' care bestowed upon them. In my brief sojourn in Oxford as a student I had been chased out of the grounds of Exeter by the caretaker, under the suspicion that I was a burglar, taking the measure of the walks, windows, doors, etc.

I told this story to a man with whom I later exchanged cards; he was an old man and his card, read "W. Creese, Y.M.C.A. secretary, June 6, 1844."

"You were in early, brother," I said. "Yes," he said modestly, "I was in first." He helped George Williams to organize the first branch of the Y.M.C.A. My story went the rounds of those invited to luncheon and prepared the way for the address I delivered.

The first thing I did on my return from Europe was to visit the last known address of the girl friend of my youth. It was in a Negro quarter of the city.

"Does Mrs. G—— live here?" I asked the coloured woman who opened the door.

"She did, mistah—but she done gone left, dis mawnin'."

"Do you know where she has gone?"

"Yes'r, she done squeezed in wif ol' Mammy Jackson," and she pointed out the tenement.

As I passed down the steps I noticed a small pile of furniture on the sidewalk. Something impelled me to ask about it.

"Yes'r," the negress said, "dem's her house traps; d' landlord done gone frow'd dem out."

I found her sitting with an old negress by the stove in a second-floor back tenement.

"I bring you a message of love from your mother," I said, without making myself known. We talked for a few minutes. I saw nothing whatever of the girl of long ago. There was a little of the voice—the fine musical voice—but nothing of form, nothing of feature. Deep lines of care and suffering marred her face and labour had calloused her hands. She was poorly dressed—had been ill and out of work, and behind in her rent. Too proud to beg, she was starving with her neighbours, the black people. I excused myself, found the landlord, and rearranged the home she had so heroically struggled to hold intact.

"Do you remember the farm at Moylena?" I asked.

"Yes, of course."

"And a farm boy——"

"Yes, yes," she said, adding: "those few days on that farm were the only happy days of my life!"

"I am that boy and I have come to thank you for the inspiration you were to me so long ago." She looked at me intently, perhaps searching for the boy as I had been searching for the girl.

"There was a wide gulf between us then," she said. "In these long years you have crossed to where I was and I—I have crossed to where you were, and the gulf remains."



CHAPTER XVI

NEW HAVEN AGAIN—AND A FIGHT

In December, 1901, the New Haven Water Company applied for a renewal of its charter. The city had been getting nothing for this valuable franchise, and there was considerable protest against a renewal on the same terms. The Trades Council asked the ministers of the churches to make a deliverance on the question, but there was no answer. I was directly challenged to say something on the subject. I attended a hearing in the city hall. It was the annual meeting night of our church, and I closed the church meeting in the usual manner.

As quickly as possible I made my way to the public hearing. The committee room was crowded; on one side were the labouring men and on the other the stockholders and officers of the company. Several prominent members of my church, whom I had missed at the annual meeting, were in the committee room.

When called upon to speak, I asked the committee to hold the balance level. "We tax a banana vendor a few dollars a year for the use of the streets," I said, "then why should a rich corporation be given an infinitely larger use of them for nothing?"

This provoked the rich men of the church, for most of them were stockholders in the company, and two of them were officers.

The thing was talked over afterward in the back end of a small store where all the church policies were formulated. One of the members was sent to the parsonage to question and warn me. My visitor spoke of former pastors who had been "called of God" elsewhere for much less than I had done. Another man came later, and asked for a promise that I would keep out of such affairs in the future.

This was the first fly in the ointment, the first break in the most cordial of relationships between me and the church.

The church had been organized fifty years when this incident occurred. We were preparing to celebrate the golden jubilee.

I gathered the officers together, and we went over the articles one by one. Not a man in the church believed in "everlasting damnation," but they voted unanimously to leave the hell-fire article just as they had found it. They had all subscribed to it, and it "hadn't hurt them."

"Do you mean to tell me," I asked, "that none of you believe in eternal punishment, and yet you are going to force every man, woman, and child who joins your church to solemnly swear before God that they do believe in it?" There was a great silence. "Yes, that's exactly what's what," one man said.

This incident illustrates the seared, calloused, surfeited condition of the average mind in the churches. It is glutted with sham, and atrophied by the reiteration of high-sounding but meaningless, pious phrases.

I managed to persuade them to so amend their by-laws that children baptized into the church became by that act church members. They did not know that by that amendment they were setting aside two-thirds of their creed, because they didn't know the creed.

One of my sermons at the Jubilee attracted the attention of Philo S. Bennett, a New York tea merchant, who made his home in New Haven. We became very close friends. One day Mr. Bennett and Mr. W.J. Bryan called at the parsonage. I happened to be out at the time, but dined with them that evening. Next morning a church member, who was a sort of cat's-paw for the rich men, called at the parsonage and informed me of the "disgust" of the leading members. "They won't stand for it!" he said vehemently.

When I spoke at the city hall they catalogued me as a Socialist, and when Mr. Bryan called, they moved me into the "free and unlimited coinage of silver" column. By "they," I mean four or five men—men of means, who absolutely ruled the church. The deacons had nothing to say, the church had as little. "The Society" was the thing. The "Society" in a Congregational church is a sort of secular adjunct charged with the duty of providing the material essentials. Their word is law, the only law. In their estimation business and religion could not be mixed, nor could things of the church be permitted to interfere in politics. The purchase of an alderman was to them as legitimate as the purchase of a cow. Some of them laughed as they told me of buying an election in the borough. It was a great joke to them. They were patriotic, very loudly patriotic, and their special hobby was "the majesty of the law."

I was to be punished for that water company affair, and a man was selected to administer the punishment. I had brought this man into the church; I had created a church office for him, and pushed him forward before the men. He was supposed to be my closest friend. He came to the parsonage one morning, to talk over casually the question of salary.

"Now," he said, "you don't care how we raise your salary, do you?"

"Of course not."

"Well, the Society's hard up this year and can only raise $1,600; but the church will raise the other $400, and I have one of them already promised."

This seemed a most unusual proceeding, but I was unsuspecting. A few months afterward this man, with tears in his eyes, said:

"Mr. Irvine, whatever happens you will be my friend—won't you?"

He was doing their work, and wincing under the load of it.

"Brother," I said, "when I know whether you are playing the role of Judas or John, I will be better able to answer you."

At the end of the year it all came out. I was literally fined $400 for attending that meeting.

As my term of service drew to a close, the workingmen who had joined the church during my incumbency got together. They were in a majority. A church meeting was called, and a motion passed to call a council of the other churches. The purpose of the call was to advise the church how to proceed to force its own Society to pay the pastor's salary. A leading minister drew up the call. All ministers knew the record of the church: only one minister in its history had left of his own accord. The council met. It was composed of ministers and laymen of other churches. Among the laymen was the president of the telephone company. I had publicly criticized the company for disfiguring the streets with ugly cross-bars that looked like gibbets. The president's opposition to me was well known.

The council, under such influence, struck several technical snags, and adjourned. The president of the council wrote me later that the president of the telephone company had advised him not to recall the council, and he had come to that decision.

Concerning the defrauding me of my salary, the best people in that church to this day, when speaking of it, say: "Well, we didn't owe it to him, legally." The Society spent the money in fitting up the parsonage for my successor.



CHAPTER XVII

I JOIN A LABOUR UNION AND HAVE SOMETHING TO DO WITH STRIKES

After the public hearing on the water contract, several labour unions elected me to honorary membership. The carriage makers' union had so elected me, and a night was set for my initiation. It was a wild winter's night—the streets of the city were covered with snow, and the thermometer registered five above zero. Few hard-working men would come out a night like this. Who would expect them? I was rather glad of the inclement weather. I was weary and tired, and hoped the thing would soon be over. I entered an old office building on Orange street and climbed to the top floor.

A man met me as I reached the top of the stairs and led me to a door, where certain formalities were performed. There was an eye-hole in the door, through which men watched each other. There were whispered words in an unknown tongue, then a long pause. Why all this secrecy? What means this panther-like vigilance? It is a time of war. This body of craftsmen is an organized regiment. The battle is for bread. Before the door is opened there is a noise like the sound of far-off thunder. What can it mean? To what mysterious doings am I to become an eye-witness to-night? I became a little anxious, perhaps a little nervous, and regretful. An eye appeared at the hole in the door; there is a whispered conference and I find myself between two men marching up the centre of the hall to the desk of the presiding officer.

My entrance was the signal of an outburst of applause such as I had seldom heard before. The hall was small, and it was a mystery how six hundred men could be packed into it. But there they were, solidly packed on both sides of the hall, and as I marched through them they seemed to shake the whole building with their cheers. The chairman rapped for order, and made a short speech.

"I ain't what ye'd call a Christian," he said, "but I know the genuine article when I see it. If the Bible is true, Jesus went to the poor, and if the rich wanted him they'd have to look him up. Do you fellows ever notice the church ads in the Sunday papers? They remind me of the columns where ye look for a rent. They all advertise their 'modern improvements.' This minister is doin' th' Jesus business in th' old way. That's why we like him, an' that's why he's here."

Once again the rafters seemed to shake with the violent vibrations of enthusiasm, and it was some time before order was restored. My initiation concluded, I made an address. It was as brief as the chairman's.

"Reference has been made to a great Master to-night," I said. "Let me ask you craftsmen of New Haven to stand and with all the power of your lungs give three cheers for the Master Craftsman of Galilee."

There was the shuffling of many feet for an instant—then a pause, a pause which was full of awe—then, with a roar like thunder, six hundred throats broke into wild applause for Jesus, whom such people ever gladly heard; and straightway, for the first time in the history of organized labour in New Haven, a union meeting was closed with the apostolic benediction.

Other unions followed suit. I carried a union card of the "Painters, Paper Hangers and Decorators," and there came a time when every street car on the streets of New Haven carried at least two of my friends, for I became chaplain of the Trolleymen's Union, and took an active part in their work.

I was a factor in the wage scale adjustments of the Trolleymen's Union for two years. I fought for them when they were right and against them when they were wrong. I fought on the inside. At first the railroad company looked upon me as a dangerous character; but when their spies in the union reported my actions, the general manager wrote me a letter of thanks and thereafter took me into his confidence. The public, also, looked upon me as inimical to the interests of business, but occasionally the newspapers got at the facts and published them.

The New Haven Register of August 8, 1904, in its leading editorial on an averted strike, said:

"There is a general feeling in New Haven to-day of satisfaction in the news published in yesterday's papers, that the trolleymen's plans for a strike had been relegated to the ash heap.

"The trolleymen were evidently satisfied with the attitude of the railroad managers, and satisfied that they were going to get fair treatment. We read with unusual pleasure the reports of 'cheers' at the meeting; and cheers, not for the little pleasantries of battle, but for the friendly propositions of peace. The sentiment shown by the trolleymen does full justice to their record as law-abiding and intelligent public servants.

"One or two phases of the completion of peace negotiations in the local trolley situation call for particular notice here and now. We do not remember, for instance, to have heard for some time of the active participation in labour agitations of a regularly ordained clergyman of the Christian church. We noted, therefore, with respectful interest, the manner in which the Reverend Alexander Irvine took part in the meeting at which the final decision was made, and especially the influence which he brought to bear to clear the atmosphere. Usually hot-headed sympathizers with the cause of labour agitation are the principal advisers at such a time. We remember, and the trolleymen certainly do, that at the critical juncture several summers ago, when a final decision was to have been rendered by the striking trolleymen, an agitator from Bridgeport not only agitated, but nearly managed to turn the balance toward an irreparable break in negotiations. We remember that New Haven people absolutely lost all patience at that juncture, and would have stampeded from their thorough sympathy with the trolleymen's cause had not better wisdom finally prevailed. Mr. Irvine seems to have occupied that gentleman's shoes at the Saturday night meeting, and to have acquitted himself much more to the taste of the public. His interest was, we take it, purely that of any citizen who has studied labour questions sufficiently to arrive at a fair and unprejudiced point of view, and who, moreover, possessed the requisite balance of mind and sincerity of purpose to counsel, when his counsel was asked, judicially. There was absolutely lacking, in his whole connection with the case, any of that sky-rocket, uncertain theorizing that makes the attitude of so many labour 'organizers' so detrimental, in the public eye, to real labour benefit. New Haven has considerable to thank Mr. Irvine for in his attitude in the past crisis. More sound advice and friendly counsel and wise sympathy from such men as he are needed in labour troubles."

Another New Haven paper, commenting editorially on my attitude toward a strike carried on by the bakers' union, said:

"We commend to the Connecticut Railway and Lighting Company, which has now practically four strikes on its hands, in two Connecticut cities, the sentiment of the Reverend Alexander Irvine, in his sermon last Sunday night in reference to the striking bakers of this city who declared against a proposition to arbitrate with the bosses. 'If they have nothing to arbitrate,' said Mr. Irvine, 'they have nothing to strike about.' The proposition would seem to involve a sound principle of business ethics. An honest disagreement is always arbitrable. A body of workmen who make a demand which they are unwilling to submit to the judgment of a fair and intelligent committee deserve little sympathy if they lose their fight, and an employer who refuses to entrust his case to the honesty, fairness and justice of a committee of respectable citizens representing the best element of that public from which he derives his support, must not be surprised if he loses public sympathy."

I was elected a member of the teamsters' union while the teamsters were on strike. I was in their headquarters night and day, doing what I could for them; but I was unable to offset the bad leadership which landed nine of them in jail.

On May 1st, I left Pilgrim Church. My farewell sermon was a fair statement of the case. The sermon was published in the press. The Hartford Post made the following editorial comments on it:

"ONE CHURCH AND ITS PASTOR

"Plain speaking is so much out of fashion that when examples of it are discovered they rivet attention. Undoubtedly there was a good deal in the farewell sermon of the Reverend Alexander F. Irvine, who has just closed a pastorate of four and one-half years in the Pilgrim Congregational Church in New Haven, that was applicable only to that church, but possibly some statements have more or less general application. At any rate, it is an interesting case and the sermon was remarkable for its almost brutal directness, its cutting satire, its searching exposition of the wholesale spirit of charity mixed with kindly humour which runs through it.

"After four years and six months of labour, a clergyman is certainly qualified to speak of the characteristics of the pastorate. In most cases the farewell sermon is, however, a mass of 'glittering generalities,' a formal, perfunctory affair. Often it is omitted altogether. The pastor simply goes out, leaving the church to its fate, commending it to the care of the Almighty. His private views are not expressed. Mr. Irvine retired in considerable turmoil, but he made his parting memorable by expressing his sentiments, and his frankness was absolute.

"In reviewing his pastorate, Mr. Irvine spoke of the children's services on Wednesday nights, the men's Bible class and a group of sixty added to the church at its fiftieth anniversary as among the happy features of his administration. But he went on to say that those new members were not welcomed by the 'Society' because they brought no money into the treasury. The clash that went on during those four and one-half years is revealed by what the pastor said on this matter. He tried to democratize the church. He wanted to get in 'new blood.' He tried to interest the workingmen, as many other pastors have tried to do and are trying to do, with varying success. We hear a great deal about the church and the masses, how they are drifting apart. Here is a minister who tried to bring them together. He had services when all seats were free, and workingmen were invited. He interested many of them, and many joined the church. But the attempt was a failure, for the church as a whole didn't take kindly to people without money. 'In the making of a deacon,' said Mr. Irvine, 'goodness is a quality sought after, but the qualifications for the Society's committee is cash—cold cash. If there is a deviation from this rule, it is on the score of patronage. Power in the case of the former is a rope of sand; in the latter it is law.' Again on this line, Mr. Irvine said: 'It was inevitable that these workingmen should be weighed by their contributions. That is the standard of the Society.'

"How true it is that this standard is applied in more churches than the Pilgrim Church in New Haven those who are in the churches know. It is not true, of course, universally, but this is not by any means an isolated case. Possibly the organization of the Congregational churches is faulty in this respect. There is the church and there is the Society. The Society's committee runs the business of the church. It is apt to be made up of men to whom the dollar is most essential, and often the committee exercises absolute power in most of the affairs of the church. In this case it froze out a man who wanted to go out and bring in men from the highways and byways, and now he has gone to establish what he calls the church of the democracy. It is to be a church independent of the rich. There are such churches—not many, to be sure—but they come pretty close to the gospel of the New Testament.

"'A man here may do one of three things,' said the democratic clergyman in his good-bye address. 'He may degenerate and conform to type. He may stay for three or four years by the aid of diplomacy and much grace. He may go mad. Therefore, an essential qualification for this pastorate is a keen sense of humour. If my successor has this he will enjoy the community ministry for a few years and will do much good among the children—he will enjoy the view from the parsonage, the bay, the river, the mountains. He will make friends, too, of some of the most genuinely good people on earth. He must come, as I came, believing this place to be a suburb of paradise, and blessed will that man be if he departs before he changes his mind.'

"That is satire, and possibly out of place in the pulpit, but it may be that the words could be applied without stretching the truth to other pastorates. 'The preacher is their "hired man." He may be brainy, but not too brainy—social, but not too social—religious, but not too religious. He must trim his sails to suit every breeze of the community; his mental qualities must be acceptable to the contemporary ancestors by whom he is surrounded, or he does not fit.' The bitterness in those words is evident, but the truths they contain are important.

"It may be that more sermons with equal plain speaking would do good. It may be that the conservatism, not to say the Phariseeism, of the modern church requires a John the Baptist to pierce it to the core, and expose its inner rottenness. The church that does not welcome the poor man and his family with just as much heartiness, sincerity and kindly sympathy as it does the rich man and his family is certainly not worthy of the great Teacher who spoke of the great difficulty the rich man has in entering the kingdom of God."

I have delivered about two written sermons in twenty-five years. That farewell message was one of them. I wanted to be careful, fair, just. I could not escape the belief that at least seven of my predecessors who had been pushed out by unfair means had left with a lie on their lips. Pastor and people, in dissolving relationship, had always assumed and often explicitly stated on the records that the departing minister "had been called of God" elsewhere. If God was the author of their methods of dismissal, He ought to be ashamed of Himself.

There was no interregnum. The Sunday following that farewell sermon I preached my first sermon as pastor of the newly organized People's Church of New Haven. About thirty people left the old church and joined the new. Among them was a saintly woman, who had been a member for half a century of Pilgrim Church. We had one man of means—Philo Sherman Bennett, the friend of Mr. Bryan. The opening meeting was in the Hyperion Theatre. The creed was simple, and brevity itself: "This church is a self-governing community for the worship of God and the service of man." A Jewish Rabbi read the Scriptures, a Universalist minister made an address, and a judge of the city led in prayer. Part of my address was a series of serious questions: "Will this movement raise the tone of society? Will it increase mutual confidence? Will it diminish intemperance? Will it find the people uneducated and leave them educated? Will the voice of its leader be lifted in the cause of justice and humanity? Will it tend after all to elevate or lower the moral sentiments of mankind? Will it increase the love of truth or the power of superstition or self-deception? Will it divide or unite the world? Will it leave the minds of men clearer and more enlightened, or will it add another element of confusion to the chaos? These are the tests we put to this new church and to our personal lives."

We had an old hall in the outskirts of the city, on a railroad bank. There we opened our Sunday School and began our church activities. I got a band of Yale men to go to work at the hall. The son of Senator Crane, of Massachusetts, became head of the movement, but that plan was spoiled by a man of the English Lutheran persuasion, who was an instructor in Yale. It appeared that the church of which this man was a member had been trying to rent this old hall and, not succeeding in that, they claimed the community. This instructor complained to the Yale authorities, and without a word to me the Yale band was withdrawn. A few weeks after the Lutherans claimed another community, and went to work in it.

In the middle of our first year our little church received a staggering blow in the death of Mr. Philo S. Bennett. We had become very intimate. I dined with him once a week. He was about to retire from business, and after a rest he was to give his time to the church idea. He inquired about buildings, and he had fixed his mind on a $25,000 structure. He spoke to others of these plans, but in Idaho, that summer, he was killed in an accident. Mrs. Bennett sent for me and I took charge of the funeral arrangements. Mr. Bryan came on at once and helped. After the funeral he read and discussed the will. I was present at several of these discussions. The sealed letter written by the dead man was the bone of contention. Then the lawyers came in and the case went into the courts. The world knew but a fragment of the truth. It looked to me at first as if a selfish motive actuated Mr. Bryan, but as I got at the details one after another, details the world can never know, I developed a profound respect for him. He was the only person involved that cared anything for the mind, will or intention of the dead man, and his entire legal battle was not that he should get what Mr. Bennett had willed him, but that the designs of his friend should not be frustrated: not merely with regard to the fifty thousand—he offered to distribute that—but with regard to the money for poor students.

We missed Mr. Bennett, not only for his moral and financial help, but because of his great business ability. During the coal strike of 1902, for instance, when coal was beyond the reach of the poor, we organized among the working people a coal company. The coal dealers blocked our plans everywhere. We were shut out. Then the idea came to us to charter a shipload and bring it from Glasgow. It was the keen business ability of Mr. Bennett that helped us to success. We needed $15,000 to cable over. I laid the plans before Mr. Bennett; he went over them carefully and put up the money. Before we needed it, however, we had sold stock at a dollar a share, and the coal in Scotland brought in an amount beyond our immediate needs. This, of course, was "interfering with business men's affairs," and the dealers in coal were not slow to express themselves. I was a director of the coal company for some time. The newspapers announced that I was going into the coal business to make a living; but I had neither desire nor ability in that direction. It was a great day in New Haven when our ship entered the harbour and broke the siege. We sold coal for half the current price.

The idea of a church building had held a number of people in our little church for a long time, but after Mr. Bennett's death that hope seemed to die, and those to whom a church home was more than a church, left us; those of that mind that didn't leave voluntarily were lured away by ministers who had a building. The amount of ecclesiastical pilfering that goes on in a small city like New Haven is surprising. Conversion is a lost art or a lost experience, and the average minister whose reputation and salary depend upon the number of people he can corral, usually has two fields of action: one is the Sunday School and the other is the loose membership of other churches. The theft is usually deliberate.

When my income was about forty dollars a month, subscribed by very poor people, a pastor who had been building up his church at the expense of his neighbours, wrote me that he was trying to persuade one of our members to join his church. It was the most brazen thing I had ever known. He felt that our dissolution was a matter of time, and he wanted his share of the wreckage. He went after the only person in our church who had an income that more than supplied personal needs. Afterward, this same minister entered into a deal with the trustees of the hall we used, by which the hall and the Sunday School were handed over to him. Of course, we made no fight over the thing—we just let him take them. This is called "bringing in the Kingdom of God."

We were not free from dissension within our own ranks, either. Mr. Bryan came to lecture for us in the largest theatre in town. Admission was to be by ticket, on Sunday afternoon. The committee of our church that took charge of the tickets began to distribute seats—the best seats and boxes—to their personal friends. Thousands were clamouring for tickets. It was an opportunity to give the city a big, helpful meeting, and to do it democratically and well. But the committee would brook no interference.