Higgins, a Man's Christian

“Sure!” said the preacher, not at all shocked; “let’s sing her again!”

There is a sermon–composed on the forest roads from camp to camp: for on those long, white, cold, blustering roads Higgins either whistles his blithe way (like a boy) or fashions his preaching. It is a searching, eloquent sermon: none other so exactly suited to environment and congregation–none other so simple and appealing and comprehensible. There isn’t a word of cant in it; there isn’t a suggestion of the familiar evangelistic rant. Higgins has no time for cant (he says)–nor any faith in ranting. The sermon is all orthodox and significant and reasonable; it has tender wisdom, and it is sometimes terrible with naked truth. The phrasing? It is as homely and brutal as the language of the woods. It has no affectation of slang. The preacher’s message is addressed with wondrous cunning to men in their own tongue: wherefore it could not be repeated before a polite congregation. Were the preacher to ejaculate an oath (which he never would do)–were he to exclaim, “By God! boys, this is the only way of salvation!”–the solemnity of the occasion would not be disturbed by a single ripple.

“And what did the young man do?” he asked, concerning the Prodigal; “why, he packed his turkey and went off to blow his stake–just like you!” Afterward, when the poor Prodigal was penniless: “What about him then, boys? You know. I don’t need to tell you. You learned all about it at Deer River. It was the husks and the hogs for him–just like it is for you! It’s up the river for you–and it’s back to the woods for you–when they’ve cleaned you out at Deer River!” Once he said, in a great passion of pity: “Boys, you’re out here, floundering to your waists, picking diamonds from the snow of these forests, to glitter, not in pure places, but on the necks of the saloon-keepers’ wives in Deer River!” There is applause when the Pilot strikes home. “That’s damned true!” they shout. And there is many a tear shed (as I saw) by the young men in the shadows when, having spoken long and graciously of home, he asks: “When did you write to your mother last? You, back there–and you! Ah, boys, don’t forget her!”

There was pause while the preacher leaned earnestly over the blanketed barrel.

“Write home to-night,” he besought them. “She’s–waiting–for–that–letter!”

They listened.

XI

VTHE SHOE ON THE OTHER FOOT

The Pilot is a fearless preacher–fearless of blame and violence–and he is the most downright and pugnacious of moral critics. He speaks in mighty wrath against the sins of the camps and the evil-doers of the towns–naming the thieves and gamblers by name and violently characterizing their ways: until it seems he must in the end be done to death in revenge. “Boys,” said he, in a bunk-house denunciation, “that tin-horn gambler Jim Leach is back in Deer River from the West with a crooked game–just laying for you. I watched his game, boys, and I know what I’m talking about; and you know I know!” Proceeding: “You know that saloon-keeper Tom Jenkins? Of course you do! Well, boys, the wife of Tom Jenkins nodded toward the camps the other day, and, ‘Pshaw!’ says she; ‘what do I care about expense? My husband has a thousand men working for him in the woods!’ She meant you, boys! A thousand of you–think of it!–working for the wife of a brute like Tom Jenkins.” Again: “Boys, I’m just out from Deer River. I met ol’ Bill Morgan yesterday. ‘Hello, Bill!’ says I; ‘how's business?’ ‘Slow, Pilot,’ says he; ‘but I ain’t worryin’ none–it’ll pick up when the boys come in with their stake in the spring.’ There you have it! That’s what you’ll be up against, boys, God help you! when you go in with your stake–a gang of filthy thieves like Jim Leach and Tom Jenkins and Bill Morgan!” It takes courage to attack, in this frank way, the parasites of a lawless community, in which murder may be accomplished in secret, and perjury is as cheap as a glass of whiskey.

It takes courage, too, to denounce the influential parishioner.

“You grown-up men, here,” Higgins complained to his congregation, “ought to give the young fellows a chance to live decent lives. Shame to you that you don’t! You’ve lived in filth and blasphemy and whiskey so long that maybe you don’t know any better; but I want to tell you–every one of you–that these boys don’t want that sort of thing. They remember their mothers and their sisters, and they want what’s clean! Now, you leave ’em alone. Give ’em a show to be decent. And I’m talking to you, Scotch Andrew”–with an angry thump of the pulpit and a swift belligerent advance–“and to you, Gin Thompson, sneaking back there in your bunk!”

“Oh, hell!” said Gin Thompson.

The Pilot was instantly confronting the lazy-lying man. “Gin,” said he, “you’ll take that back!”

Gin laughed.

“Understand me?” the wrathful preacher shouted.

Gin Thompson understood. Very wisely–however unwillingly–he apologized. “That’s all right, Pilot,” said he; “you know I didn’t mean nothin’.”

“Anyhow,” the preacher muttered, returning to his pulpit and his sermon, “I’d rather preach than fight.”

Not by any means all Higgins’s sermons are of this nature; most are conventional enough, perhaps–but always vigorous and serviceable–and present the ancient Christian philosophy in an appealing and deeply reverent way. I recall, however, another downright and courageous display of dealing with the facts without gloves. It was especially fearless because the Pilot must have the permission of the proprietors before he may preach in the camps. It is related that a drunken logger–the proprietor of the camp–staggered into Higgins’s service and sat down on the barrel which served for the pulpit. The preacher was discoursing on the duties of the employed to the employer. It tickled the drunken logger.

“Hit ’em again, Pilot!” he applauded. “It’ll do ’em good.”

Higgins pointed out the wrong worked the owners by the lumber-jacks’ common custom of “jumping camp.”

“Give ’em hell!” shouted the logger. “It’ll do ’em good.”

Higgins proceeded calmly to discuss the several evils of which the lumber-jacks may be accused in relation to their employers.

“You’re all right, Pilot,” the logger agreed, clapping the preacher on the back. “Hit the – rascals again! It’ll do ’em good.”

“And now, boys,” Higgins continued, gently, “we come to the other side of the subject. You owe a lot to your employers, and I’ve told you frankly what your minister thinks about it. But what can be expected of you, anyhow? Who sets you a good example of fair dealing and decent living? Your employers? Look about you and see! What kind of an example do your employers set? Is it any wonder,” he went on, in a breathless silence, “that you go wrong? Is it any wonder that you fail to consider those who fail to consider you? Is it any wonder that you are just exactly what you are, when the men to whom you ought to be able to look for better things are themselves filthy and drunken loafers?”

The logger was thunderstruck.

“And how d’ye like that, Mister Woods?” the preacher shouted, turning on the man, and shaking his fist in his face. “How d’ye like that? Does it do you any good?”

The logger wouldn’t tell.

“Let us pray!” said the indignant preacher.

Next morning the Pilot was summoned to the office. “You think it was rough on you, do you, Mr. Woods?” said he. “But I didn’t tell the boys a thing that they didn’t know already. And what’s more,” he continued, “I didn’t tell them a thing that your own son doesn’t know. You know just as well as I do what road he’s travelling; and you know just as well as I do what you are doing to help that boy along.”

Higgins continued to preach in those camps.

One inevitably wonders what would happen if some minister of the cities denounced from his pulpit in these frank and indignantly righteous terms the flagrant sinners and hypocrites of his congregation. What polite catastrophe would befall him?–suppose he were convinced of the wisdom and necessity of the denunciation and had no family dependent upon him. The outburst leaves Higgins established in the hearts of his hearers; and it leaves him utterly exhausted. He mingles with the boys afterward; he encourages and scolds them, he hears confession, he prays in some quiet place in the snow with those whose hearts he has touched, he confers with men who have been seeking to overcome themselves, he writes letters for the illiterate, he visits the sick, he renews old acquaintanceship, he makes new friends, he yarns of the “cut” and the “big timber” and the “homesteading” of other places, and he distributes the “readin’ matter,” consisting of old magazines and tracts which he has carried into camp.

At last he quits the bunk-house, worn out and discouraged and downcast.

“I failed to-night,” he said, once, at the superintendent’s fire. “It was awfully kind of the boys to listen to me so patiently. Did you notice how attentive they were? I tell you, the boys are good to me! Maybe I was a little rough on them to-night. But somehow all this unnecessary and terrible wickedness enrages me. And nobody else much seems to care about it. And I’m their minister. And I yearn to have the souls of these boys awakened. I’ve just got to stand up and tell them the truth about themselves and give them the same old Message that I heard when I was a boy. I don’t know, but it’s kind of queer about ministers of the gospel,” he went on. “We’ve got two Creations now, and three Genesises. But take a minister. It wouldn’t matter to me if a brother minister fell from grace. I’d pick him out of the mud and never think of it again. It wouldn’t cost me much to forgive him. I know that we’re all human and liable to sin. But when an ordained minister gets up in his pulpit and dodges his duty–when he gets up and dodges the truth–why, bah! I’ve got no time for him!”

XV

CAUSE AND EFFECT

This sort of preaching–this genuine and practical ministry consistently and unremittingly carried on for love of the men, and without prospect of gain–wins respect and loyal affection. The dogged and courageous method will be sufficiently illustrated in the tale of the Big Scotchman of White Pine–to Higgins almost a forgotten incident of fourteen years’ service. The Big Scotchman was discovered drunk and shivering with apprehension–he was in the first stage of delirium tremens– in a low saloon of White Pine, some remote and God-forsaken settlement off the railroad, into which the Pilot had chanced on his rounds. The man was a homesteader, living alone in a log-cabin on his grant of land, some miles from the village.

“Well,” thought the Pilot, quite familiar with the situation, “first of all I’ve got to get him home.”

There was only one way of accomplishing this, and the Pilot employed it; he carried the Big Scotchman.

“Well,” thought the Pilot, “what next?”

The next thing was to wrestle with the Big Scotchman, upon whom the “whiskey sickness” had by that time fallen–to wrestle with him in the lonely little cabin in the woods, and to get him down, and to hold him down. There was no congregation to listen to the eloquent sermon which the Pilot was engaged in preaching; there was no choir, there was no report in the newspapers. But the sermon went on just the same. The Pilot got the Big Scotchman down, and kept him down, and at last got him into his bunk. For two days and nights he sat there ministering–hearing, all the time, the ravings of a horrible delirium. There was an interval of relief then, and during this the Pilot gathered up every shred of the Big Scotchman’s clothing and safely hid it. There was not a garment left in the cabin to cover his nakedness.

The Big Scotchman presently wanted whiskey.

“No,” said the Pilot; “you stay right here.”

The Big Scotchman got up to dress.

“Nothing to wear,” said the Pilot.

Then the fight was on again. It was a long fight–merely a physical thing in the beginning, but a fight of another kind before the day was done. And the Pilot won. When the Big Scotchman got up from his knees he took the Pilot’s hand and said that, by God’s help, he would live better than he had lived. Moreover, he was as good as his word. Presently White Pine knew him no more; but news of his continuance in virtue not long ago came down to the Pilot from the north. It was what the Pilot calls a real reformation and conversion. It seems that there is a difference.

We had gone the rounds of the saloons in Deer River, and had returned late at night to the hotel. The Pilot was very busy–he is always busy, from early morning until the last sot drops unconscious to the bar-room floor, when, often, the real day’s work begins; he is one of the hardest workers in any field of endeavor. And he was now heart-sick because of what he had seen that night; but he was not idle–he was still shaking hands with his parishioners in the bar-room, still advising, still inspiring, still scolding and beseeching, still holding private conversations in the corners, for all the world like a popular and energetic politician on primary day.

A curious individual approached me.

“Friend of the Pilot’s?” said he.

I nodded.

“He’s a good man.”

I observed that the stranger was timid and slow–a singular fellow, with a lean face and nervous hands and clear but most unsteady eyes. He was like an old hulk repainted.

“He done me a lot of good,” he added, in a slow, soft drawl, hardly above a whisper, at the same time slowly smoothing his chin.

It was a pleasant thing to hear.

“They used to call me Brandy Bill,” he continued. He pointed to a group of drunkards lying on the floor. “I used to be like that,” said he, looking up like a child who perceives that he is interesting. After a pause, he went on: “But once when the snakes broke out on me I made up my mind to quit. And then I went to the Pilot and he stayed with me for a while, and told me I had to hang on. I thought I could do it if the boys would leave me alone. So the Pilot told me what to do. ‘Whenever you come into town,’ says he, ‘you go on to your sister’s and borrow her little girl.’ Her little girl was just four years old then. ‘And,’ says the Pilot, ‘don’t you never come down street without her.’ Well, I done what the Pilot said. I never come down street without that little girl hanging on to my hand; and when she was with me not one of the boys ever asked me to take a drink. Yes,” he drawled, glancing at the drunkards again, “I used to be like that. Pretty near time,” he added, like a man displaying an experienced knowledge, “to put them fellows in the snake-room.”

Such a ministry as the Pilot’s springs from a heart of kindness–from a pure and understanding love of all mankind. “Boys,” said he, once, in the superintendent’s office, after the sermon in the bunk-house, “I’ll never forget a porterhouse steak I saw once. It was in Duluth. I’d been too busy to have my breakfast, and I was hungry. I’m a big man, you know, and when I get hungry I’m hungry. Anyhow, I wasn’t thinking about that when I saw the steak. It didn’t occur to me that I was hungry until I happened to glance into a restaurant window as I walked along. And there I saw the steak. You know how they fix those windows up: a chunk of ice and some lettuce and a steak or two and some chops. Well, boys, all at once I got so hungry that I ached. I could hardly wait to get in there.

“But I stopped.

“‘Look here, Higgins,’ thought I, ‘what if you didn’t have a cent in your pocket?’

“Well, that was a puzzler. ‘What if you were a dead-broke lumber-jack, and hungry like this?’

“Boys, it frightened me. I understood just what those poor fellows suffer. And I couldn’t go in the restaurant until I had got square with them.

“‘Look here, Higgins,’ I thought, ‘the best thing you can do is to go and find a hungry lumber-jack somewhere and feed him.’

“And I did, too; and I tell you, boys, I enjoyed my dinner.”

It is a ministry that wins good friends, and often in unexpected places: friends like the lumber-jack (once an enemy) who would clear a way for the Pilot in town, shouting, “I’m road-monkeying for the Pilot!” and friends like the Blacksmith.

Higgins came one night to a new camp where an irascible boss was in complete command.

“You won’t mind, will you,” said he, “if I hold a little service for the boys in the bunk-house to-night?”

The boss ordered him to clear out.

“All I want to do,” Higgins protested, mildly, “is just to hold a little service for the boys.”

Again the boss ordered him to clear out: but Higgins had come prepared with the authority of the proprietor of the camp.

“I’ve a pass in my pocket,” he suggested.

“Don’t matter,” said the boss; “you couldn’t preach in this camp if you had a pass from God Almighty!”

To thrash or not to thrash? that was the Pilot’s problem; and he determined not to thrash, for he knew very well that if he thrashed the boss the lumber-jacks would lose respect for the boss and jump the camp. The Blacksmith, however, had heard–and had heard much more than is here written. Next morning he involved himself in a quarrel with the boss; and having thrashed him soundly, and having thrown him into a snowbank, he departed, but returned, and, addressing himself to that portion of the foreman which protruded from the snow, kicked it heartily, saying: “There’s one for the Pilot. And there’s another–and another. I’ll learn you to talk to the Pilot like a drunken lumber-jack. There’s another for him. Take that–and that–for the Pilot.”

Subsequently Higgins preached in those camps.

XVI

THE WAGES OF SACRIFICE

One asks, Why does Higgins do these things? The answer is simple: Because he loves his neighbor as himself–because he actually does, without self-seeking or any pious pretence. One asks, What does he get out of it? I do not know what Higgins gets. If you were to ask him, he would say, innocently, that once, when he preached at Camp Seven of the Green River Works, the boys fell in love with the singing. Jesus, Lover of My Soul, was the hymn that engaged them. They sang it again and again; and when they got up in the morning, they said: “Say, Pilot, let’s sing her once more!” They sang it once more–in the bunk-house at dawn–and the boss opened the door and was much too amazed to interrupt. They sang it again. “All out!” cried the boss; and the boys went slowly off to labor in the woods, singing, Let me to Thy bosom fly! and, Oh, receive my soul at last!– diverging here and there, axes and saws over shoulder, some to the deeper forest, some making out upon the frozen lake, some pursuing the white roads–all passing into the snow and green and great trees and silence of the undefiled forest which the Pilot loves–all singing as they went, Other refuge have I none; hangs my helpless soul on Thee– until the voices were like sweet and soft-coming echoes from the wilderness.

Poor Higgins put his face to the bunk-house door and wept.

“I tell you, boys,” he told us, on the road from Six to Four, “it was pay for what I’ve tried to do for the boys.”

Later–when the Sky Pilot sat with his stockinged feet extended to a red fire in the superintendent’s log-cabin of that bitterly cold night–he betrayed himself to the uttermost. “Do you know, boys,” said he, addressing us, the talk having been of the wide world and travel therein, “I believe you fellows would spend a dollar for a dinner and never think twice about it!”

We laughed.

“If I spent more than twenty-five cents,” said he, accusingly, “I’d have indigestion.”

Again we laughed.

“And if I spent fifty cents for a hotel bed,” said he, with a grin, “I’d have the nightmare.”

That is exactly what Higgins gets out of it.

Higgins gets more than that out of it: he gets a clean eye and sound sleep and a living interest in life. He gets even more: he gets the trust and affection of almost–almost–every lumber-jack in the Minnesota woods. He wanders over two hundred square miles of forest, and hardly a man of the woods but would fight for his Christian reputation at a word. For example, he had pulled Whitey Mooney out of the filth and nervous strain of the snake-room, and reestablished him, had paid his board, had got him a job in a near-by town, had paid his fare, had taken him to his place; but Whitey Mooney had presently thrown up his job (being a lazy fellow), and had fallen into the depths again, had asked Higgins for a quarter of a dollar for a drink or two, and had been denied. Immediately he took to the woods; and in the camp he came to be complained that Higgins had “turned him down.”

“You’re a liar,” they told him. “The Pilot never turned a lumber-jack down. Wait till he comes.”

Higgins came.

“Pilot,” said a solemn jack, rising, when the sermon was over, as he had been delegated, “do you know Mooney?”

“Whitey Mooney?”

“Yes. Do you know Whitey Mooney?”

“You bet I do, boys!”

“Did–you–turn–him–down?”

“You bet I did, boys!”

“Why?”

Higgins informed them.

“Come out o’ there, Whitey!” they yelled; and they took Whitey Mooney from his bunk, and tossed him in a blanket, and drove him out of camp.

Higgins is doing a hard thing–correcting and persuading such men as these; and he could do infinitely better if he had more money to serve his ends. They are not all drunkards and savage beasts, of course. It would wrong them to say so. Many are self-respecting, clean-lived, intelligent, sober; many have wives and children, to whom they return with clean hands and mouths when the winter is over. They all–without any large exception (and this includes the saloon-keepers and gamblers of the towns)–respect the Pilot. It is related of him that he was once taken sick in the woods. It was a case of exposure–occurring in cold weather after months of bitter toil, with a pack on his back and in deep trouble of spirit. There was a storm of snow blowing, at far below zero, and Higgins was miles from any camp. He managed, however, after hours of plodding through the snow, to reach the uncut timber, where he was somewhat sheltered from the wind. He remembers that he was then intent upon the sermon for the evening; but beyond–even trudging through these tempered places–he has forgotten what occurred. The lumber-jacks found him at last, lying in the snow near the cook-house; and they carried him to the bunk-house, and put him to bed, and consulted concerning him. “The Pilot’s an almighty sick man,” said one. Another prescribed: “Got any whiskey in camp?” There was no whiskey–there was no doctor within reach–there was no medicine of any sort. And the Pilot, whom they had taken from the snow, was a very sick man. They wondered what could be done for him. It seemed that nobody knew. There was nothing to be done–nothing but keep him covered up and warm.

“Boys,” a lumber-jack proposed, “how’s this for an idea?”

They listened.

“We can pray for the man,” said he, “who’s always praying for us.”

They managed to do it somehow; and when Higgins heard that the boys were praying for him–praying for him!–he turned his face to the wall, and covered up his head, and wept like a fevered boy.

THE END