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THE WOLF AT THE DOOR The Story of a Pioneer | ||
4. IV
THE WOLF AT THE DOOR
WHEN I returned to Albion College in the autumn of 1875 I brought with me a problem which tormented me during my waking hours and chattered on my pillow at night. Should I devote two more years of my vanishing youth to the completion of my college course, or, instead, go at once to Boston University, enter upon my theological studies, take my degree, and be about my Father's business?
I was now twenty-seven years old, and I had been a licensed preacher for three years. My reputation in the Northwest was growing, and by sermons and lectures I could certainly earn enough to pay the expenses of the full college course. On the other hand, Boston was a new world. There I would be alone and practically penniless, and the opportunities for work might be limited. Quite possibly in my final two years at Albion I could even save enough money to make the experience in Boston less difficult, and the clear common sense I had inherited from my mother reminded me that in this course lay wisdom. Possibly it was some inheritance
It was an instance of stepping off a solid plank and into space; and though there is exhilaration in the sensation, as I discovered then and at later crises in life when I did the same thing, there was also an amount of subsequent discomfort for which even my lively imagination had not prepared me. I went through some grim months in Boston— months during which I learned what it was to go to bed cold and hungry, to wake up cold and hungry, and to have no knowledge of how long these conditions might continue. But not more than once or twice during the struggle there, and then only for an hour or two in the physical and mental depression attending malnutrition, did I regret coming. At that period of my life I believed that the Lord had my small personal affairs very much on His mind. If I starved and froze it was His test of my worthiness for the ministry, and if He had really chosen me for one of His servants, He would see me through. The faith that sustained me then has still a place in my life, and existence without it would be an infinitely more dreary affair than it is. But I admit that I now call upon the Lord less often and less imperatively than I did before the stern years taught me my unimportance in the great scheme of things.
My class at the theological school was composed
With characteristic optimism, however, I hired a little attic room on Tremont Street and established myself therein. In lieu of a window the room offered a pale skylight to the February storms, and there was neither heat in it nor running water; but its possession gave me a pleasant sense of proprietorship, and the whole experience seemed a high adventure. I at once sought opportunities to preach and lecture, but these were even rarer than firelight and food. In Albion I had been practically the only licensed preacher available for substitute and special work. In Boston University's three theological classes there were a hundred men, each snatching eagerly at the slightest possibility of employment; and when, despite this competition,
There is a special and almost indescribable depression attending such conditions. No one who has not experienced the combination of continued cold, hunger, and loneliness in a great, strange, indifferent city can realize how it undermines the victim's nerves and even tears at the moral fiber. The self-humiliation I experienced was also intense. I had worked my way in the Northwest; why could I not work my way in Boston? Was there, perhaps, some lack in me and in my courage? Again and again these questions rose in my mind and poisoned my self-confidence. The one comfort I had in those black days was the knowledge that no one suspected the depth of the abyss in which I dwelt. We were all struggling; to the indifferent glance—and all glances were indifferent—my struggle was no worse than that of my classmates whose rooms and frugal meals were given them.
After a few months of this existence I was almost ready to believe that the Lord's work for me lay outside of the ministry, and while this fear was gripping me a serious crisis came in my financial affairs. The day dawned when I had not a cent, nor any prospect of earning one. My stock of provisions consisted of a box of biscuit, and my courage was flowing from me like blood from an opened vein. Then came one of the quick turns of the wheel of chance which make for optimism. Late in the afternoon I was asked to do a week of revival work with a minister in a local church, and when I accepted his invitation I mentally resolved to let that week decide my fate. My shoes had burst open at the sides; for lack of car-fare I had to walk to and from the scene of my meetings, though I had barely strength for the effort. If my week of work brought me enough to buy a pair of cheap shoes and feed me for a few days I would, I decided, continue my theological course. If it did not, I would give up the fight.
Never have I worked harder or better than during those seven days, when I put into the effort not only my heart and soul, but the last flame of my dying vitality, We had a rousing revival—one of the good old-time affairs when the mourners' benches were constantly filled and the air resounded with alleluias. The excitement and our success, mildly aided by the box of biscuit, sustained me through the week, and not until the last night did I realize how much of me had gone into this final desperate charge
At first his words rolled around the empty church as if they were trying to get away from me, but at last I began to catch them. I was, it seemed, a most desirable helper. It had been a privilege and a pleasure to be associated with me. Beyond doubt, I would go far in my career. He heartily wished that he could reward me adequately. I deserved fifty dollars.
My tired heart fluttered at this. Probably my empty stomach fluttered, too; but in the next moment something seemed to catch my throat and stop my breath. For it appeared that, notwithstanding the enthusiasm and the spiritual uplift of the week, the collections had been very disappointing and the expenses unusually heavy. He could not give me fifty dollars. He could not give me anything at all. He thanked me warmly and wished me good night.
I managed to answer him and to get to my feet, but that journey down the aisle from my chair to the church door was the longest journey I have ever
I stumbled along, passing blindly a woman who stood on the street near the church entrance. She stopped me, timidly, and held out her hand. Then suddenly she put her arms around me and wept. She was an old lady, and I did not know her, but it seemed fitting that she should cry just then, as it would have seemed fitting to me if at that black moment all the people on the earth had broken into sudden wailing.
“Oh, Miss Shaw,” she said, “I'm the happiest woman in the world, and I owe my happiness to you. To-night you have converted my grandson. He's all I have left, but he has been a wild boy, and I've prayed over him for years. Hereafter he is going to lead a different life. He has just given me his promise on his knees.”
Her hand fumbled in her purse.
“I am a poor woman,” she went on, “but I have enough, and I want to make you a little present. I know how hard life is for you young students.”
She pressed a bill into my fingers. “It's very little,” she said, humbly; “it is only five dollars.”
I laughed, and in that exultant moment I seemed to hear life laughing with me. With the passing
“It's the biggest gift I have ever had,” I told her. “This little bill is big enough to carry my future on its back!”
I had a good meal that night, and I bought the shoes the next morning. Infinitely more sustaining than the food, however, was the conviction that the Lord was with me and had given me a sign of His approval. The experience was the turning-point of my theological career. When the money was gone I succeeded in obtaining more work from time to time—and though the grind was still cruelly hard, I never again lost hope. The theological school was on Bromfield Street, and we students climbed three flights of stairs to reach our class-rooms. Through lack of proper food I had become too weak to ascend these stairs without sitting down once or twice to rest, and within a month after my experience with the appreciative grandmother I was discovered during one of these resting periods by Mrs. Barrett, the superintendent of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society, which had offices in our building. She stopped, looked me over, and then invited me into her room, where she asked me if I felt ill. I assured her that I did not. She asked a great many additional questions and, little by little, under the womanly sympathy of them, my reserve broke down and she finally got at the truth, which until that hour I had succeeded in concealing. She let me leave without much comment,
“Miss Shaw,” she said, “I have been talking to a friend of mine about you, and she would like to make a bargain with you. She thinks you are working too hard. She will pay you three dollars and a half a week for the rest of this school year if you will promise to give up your preaching. She wants you to rest, study, and take care of your health.”
I asked the name of my unknown friend, but Mrs. Barrett said that was to remain a secret. She had been given a check for seventy-eight dollars, and from this, she explained, my allowance would be paid in weekly instalments. I took the money very gratefully, and a few years later I returned the amount to the Missionary Society; but I never learned the identity of my benefactor. Her three dollars and a half a week, added to the weekly two dollars I was allowed for room rent, at once solved the problem of living; and now that meal-hours had a meaning in my life, my health improved and my horizon brightened. I spent most of my evenings in study, and my Sundays in the churches of Phillips Brooks and James Freeman Clark, my favorite ministers. Also, I joined the university's praying-band of students, and took part in the missionary-work among the women of the streets. I had never forgotten my early friend in Lawrence, the beautiful “mysterious lady” who had loved me as a child,
During my vacation in the summer of 1876 I went to Cape Cod and earned my expenses by substituting in local pulpits. Here, at East Dennis, I formed the friendship which brought me at once the greatest happiness and the deepest sorrow of that period of my life. My new friend was a widow whose name was Persis Addy, and she was also the daughter of Captain Prince Crowell, then the most prominent man in the Cape Cod community—a bank president, a railroad director, and a citizen of wealth, as wealth was rated in those days. When I returned to the theological school in the autumn Mrs. Addy came to Boston with me, and from that time until her death, two years later, we lived together. She was immensely interested in my work, and the friendly part she took in it diverted her mind from the bereavement over which she had brooded for years, while to me her coming opened windows into a new world. I was no longer lonely; and though in my life with her I paid my way to the extent of my small income, she gave me my first experience of an existence in which comfort and culture, recreation,
I did not long enjoy the glimpses into my new world, for soon, and most tragically, it was closed to me. In the spring following our first Boston winter together Mrs. Addy and I went to Hingham, Massachusetts, where I had been appointed temporary pastor of the Methodist Church. There Mrs. Addy was taken ill, and as she grew steadily worse we returned to Boston to live near the best available physicians, who for months theorized over her malady without being able to diagnose it. At last her father, Captain Crowell, sent to Paris for Dr. Brown-Séquard, then the most distinguished specialist of his day, and Dr. Brown-Séquard, when he arrived and examined his patient, discovered that she had a tumor on the brain. She had had a great
Three months after Mrs. Addy's death I graduated. She had planned to take me abroad, and during our first winter together we had spent countless hours talking and dreaming of our European wanderings. When she found that she must die she made her will and left me fifteen hundred dollars for the visit to Europe, insisting that I must carry out the plan we had made; and during her conscious
First, however, I had graduated—clad in a brand-new black silk gown, and with five dollars in my pocket, which I kept there during the graduation exercises. I felt a special satisfaction in the possession of that money, for, notwithstanding the handicap of being a woman, I was said to be the only member of my class who had worked during the entire course, graduated free from debt, and had a new outfit as well as a few dollars in cash.
I graduated without any special honors. Possibly I might have won some if I had made the effort, but my graduation year, as I have just explained, had been very difficult. As it was, I was merely a good average student, feeling my isolation as the only woman in my class, but certainly not spurring on my men associates by the display of any brilliant gifts. Naturally, I missed a great deal of class fellowship and class support, and throughout my entire course I rarely entered my class-room without the abysmal conviction that I was not really wanted there. But some of the men were good-humoredly cordial, and several of them are among my friends to-day. Between myself and my family there still existed the breach I had created when
Toward the end of my university experience, however, an incident occurred which apparently changed my mother's viewpoint. She was now living with my sister Mary, in Big Rapids, Michigan, and, on the occasion of one of my rare and brief visits to them I was invited to preach in the local church. Here, for the first time, my mother heard me. Dutifully escorted by one of my brothers, she attended church that morning in a state of shivering nervousness. I do not know what she expected me to do or say, but toward the end of the sermon it became clear that I had not justified her fears. The look of intense apprehension left her eyes, her features relaxed into placidity, and later in the day she paid me the highest compliment I had yet received from a member of my family.
“I liked the sermon very much,” she peacefully told my brother. “Anna didn't say anything about hell, or about anything else!”
When we laughed at this handsome tribute, she hastened to qualify it.
“What I mean,” she explained, “is that Anna didn't say anything objectionable in the pulpit!” And with this recognition I was content.
Between the death of my friend and my departure
In reply Mr. Livermore flashed on him one of his charming smiles. “Why, I'm very proud of it,” he said, with the utmost cheerfulness. “You see, I'm the only man in the world who has that distinction.”
They were a charming couple, the Livermores, and they deserved far more than they received from a world to which they gave so freely and so richly.
It was during this period, also, that I met Frances E. Willard. There was a great Moody revival in progress in Boston, and Miss Willard was the righthand assistant of Mr. Moody. To her that revival must have been marked with a star, for during it she met for the first time Miss Anna Gordon, who became her life-long friend and her biographer. The meetings also laid the foundation of our friendship, and for many years Miss Willard and I were closely associated in work and affection.
On the second or third night of the revival, during one of the “mixed meetings,” attended by both women and men, Mr. Moody invited those who were willing to talk to sinners to come to the front. I went down the aisle with others, and found a seat near Miss Willard, to whom I was then introduced by some one who knew us both. I wore my hair short in those days, and I had a little fur cap on my head. Though I had been preaching for several years, I looked absurdly young—far too young, it soon became evident, to interest Mr. Moody. He was already moving about among the men and women who had responded to his invitation, and one by one he invited them to speak, passing me each time until at last I was left alone. Then he took pity on me and came to my side to whisper kindly that I had misunderstood his invitation. He did not want young girls to talk to his people,
I made no explanations to him, but started to leave, and Miss Willard, who saw me departing, followed and stopped me. She asked why I was going, and I told her that Mr. Moody had sent me home to grow. Frances Willard had a keen sense of humor, and she enjoyed the joke so thoroughly that she finally convinced me it was amusing, though at first the humor of it had escaped me. She took me back to Mr. Moody and explained the situation to him, and he apologized and put me to work. He said he had thought I was about sixteen. After that I occasionally helped him in the intervals of my other work.
The time had come to follow Mrs. Addy's wishes and go to Europe, and I sailed in the month of June following my graduation, and traveled for three months with a party of tourists under the direction of Eben Tourgee, of the Boston Conservatory of Music. We landed in Glasgow, and from there went to England, Belgium, Holland, Germany, France, and last of all to Italy. Our company included many clergymen and a never-to-be-forgotten widow whose light-hearted attitude toward the memory of her departed spouse furnished the comedy of our first voyage. It became a pet diversion to ask her if her husband still lived, for she always
“Oh no!” she would chirp. “My dear departed has been in our Heavenly Father's house for the past eight years!”
At its best, the vacation without my friend was tragically incomplete, and only a few of its incidents stand out with clearness across the forty-six years that have passed since then. One morning, I remember, I preached an impromptu sermon in the Castle of Heidelberg before a large gathering; and a little later, in Genoa, I preached a very different sermon to a wholly different congregation. There was a gospel-ship in the harbor, and one Saturday the pastor of it came ashore to ask if some American clergyman in our party would preach on his ship the next morning. He was an old-time, orthodox Presbyterian, and from the tips of his broad-soled shoes to the severe part in the hair above his sanctimonious brow he looked the type. I was not present when he called at our hotel, and my absence gave my fellow-clergymen an opportunity to play a joke on the gentleman from the gospel-ship. They assured him that “Dr. Shaw” would preach for him, and the pastor returned to his post greatly pleased. When they told me of his invitation, however, they did not add that they had neglected to tell him Dr. Shaw was a woman, and I was greatly elated by the compliment I thought had been paid me.
Our entire party of thirty went out to the gospelship the next morning, and when the pastor came
With deep reluctance the pastor finally accepted me and the situation; but when the moment came to introduce me, he devoted most of his time to heartfelt apologies for my presence. He explained to the sailors that I was a woman, and fervidly assured them that he himself was not responsible for my appearance there. With every word he uttered he put a brick in the wall he was building between me and the crew, until at last I felt that I could never get past it. I was very unhappy, very lonely, very homesick; and suddenly the thought came to me that these men, notwithstanding their sullen eyes and forbidding faces, might be lonely and homesick, too. I decided to talk to them as a woman and not as a minister, and I came down from the pulpit and faced them on their own level, looking them over and mentally selecting the hardest
“My friends, I hope you will forget everything Dr. Blank has just said. It is true that I am a minister, and that I came here to preach. But now I do not intend to preach—only to have a friendly talk, on a text which is not in the Bible. I am very far from home, and I feel as homesick as some of you men look. So my text is, `Blessed are the homesick, for they shall go home.' ”
In my summers at Cape Cod I had learned something about sailors. I knew that in the unprepossessing congregation before me there were many boys who had run away from home, and men who had left home because of family troubles. I talked to the young men first, to those who had forgotten their mothers and thought their mothers had forgotten them, and I told of my experiences with waiting, heavy-hearted mothers who had sons at sea. Some heads went down at that, and here and there I saw a boy gulp, but the old fellow I was particularly anxious to move still grinned up at me like a malicious monkey. Then I talked of the sailor's wife, and of her double burden of homemaking and anxiety, and soon I could pick out some of the husbands by their softened faces. But still my old man grinned and squinted. Last of all I described
“When I came here,” I added, “I intended to preach a sermon on `The Heavenly Vision.' Now I want to give you a glimpse of that in addition to the vision we have had of home.”
I ended with a bit of the sermon and a prayer, and when I raised my head the old man of the sardonic grin was standing before me.
“Missus,” he said in a husky whisper, “I'd like to shake your hand.”
I took his hard old fist, and then, seeing that many of the other sailors were beginning to move hospitably but shyly toward me, I said:
“I would like to shake hands with every man here.”
At the words they surged forward, and the affair became a reception, during which I shook hands with every sailor of my congregation. The next day my hand was swollen out of shape, for the sailors had gripped it as if they were hauling on a hawser; but
“I wouldn't have believed it,” was all he could say. “I thought the men would mob you.”
“Why should they mob me?” I wanted to know.
“Why,” he stammered, “because the thing is so —so—unnatural.”
“Well,” I said, “if it is unnatural for women to talk to men, we have been living in an unnatural world for a long time. Moreover, if it is unnatural, why did Jesus send a woman out as the first preacher?”
He waived a discussion of that question by inviting us all to his cabin to drink wine with him—and as we were “total abstainers,” it seemed as unnatural to us to have him offer us wine as a woman's preaching had seemed to him.
The next European incident on which memory throws a high-light was our audience with Pope Leo XIII. As there were several distinguished Americans in our party, a private audience was arranged for us, and for days before the time appointed we nervously rehearsed the etiquette of the occasion. When we reached the Vatican we were marched between rows of Swiss Guards to the Throne Room, only to learn there that we were to be received in the Tapestry Room. Here we found a very impressive assemblage of cardinals and Vatican officials, and while we were still lost in the
I had previously remarked to my friends that kissing the Pope's ring after so many other lips had touched it did not appeal to me as hygienic, and that I intended to kiss his hand instead. When my opportunity came I kept my word; but after I had kissed the venerable hand I remained kneeling for an instant with bowed head, a little aghast at my daring. The gentle Father thought, however, that I was waiting for a special blessing. He gave it to me gravely and passed on, and I devoted the next few hours to ungodly crowing over the associates
In Venice we attended the great fête celebrating the first visit of King Humbert and Queen Margherita. It was also the first time Venice had entertained a queen since the Italian union, and the sea-queen of the Adriatic outdid herself in the gorgeousness and the beauty of her preparations. The Grand Canal was like a flowing rainbow, reflecting the brilliant decorations on every side, and at night the moonlight, the music, the chiming church-bells, the colored lanterns, the gay voices, the lapping waters against the sides of countless gondolas made the experience seem like a dream of a new and unbelievably beautiful world. Forty thousand persons were gathered in the Square of St. Mark and in front of the Palace, and I recall a pretty incident in which the gracious Queen and a little street urchin figured. The small, ragged boy had crept as close to the royal balcony as he dared, and then, unobserved, had climbed up one of its pillars. At the moment when a sudden hush had fallen on the crowd this infant, overcome by patriotism and a glimpse of the royal lady on the balcony above him, suddenly piped up shrilly in the silence. “ Long live the Queen!” he cried. “Long live the Queen!”
The gracious Margherita heard the childish voice, and, amused and interested, leaned over the balcony to see where it came from. What she saw doubtless touched the mother-heart in her. She caught the eye of the tattered urchin clinging to the
One more sentimental record, and I shall have reached another mile-stone. As I have said, my friend Mrs. Addy left me in her will fifteen hundred dollars for my visit to Europe, and before I sailed her father, who was one of the best friends I have ever had, made a characteristically kind proposition in connection with the little fund. Instead of giving me the money, he gave me two railroad bonds, one for one thousand dollars, the other for five hundred dollars, and each drawing seven per cent. interest. He suggested that I deposit these bonds in the bank of which he was president, and borrow from the bank the money to go abroad. Then, when I returned and went into my new parish, I could use some of my salary every month toward repaying the loan. These monthly payments, he explained, could be as small as I wished, but each month the
With my return from Europe my real career as a minister began. The year in the pulpit at Hingham had been merely tentative, and though I had succeeded in building up the church membership to four times what it had been when I took charge, I was not reappointed. I had paid off a small church debt, and had had the building repaired, painted, and carpeted. Now that it was out of its difficulties it offered some advantages to the occupant of its pulpit, and of these my successor, a man, received the benefit. I, however, had small ground for complaint, for I was at once offered and accepted the pastorate of a church at East Dennis, Cape Cod. Here I went in October, 1878, and here I spent seven of the most interesting years of my life.
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THE WOLF AT THE DOOR The Story of a Pioneer | ||