Part 2

After returning from sea Elijah found Portland and Portland ways no more congenial to him than they had been before he went away, and again he left home and went to Gorham to try life among his McLellan relatives. He lived for a time in the family of Major Warren on a farm some two miles out of the village, matching his own strength of muscle with that of the regular farm-hands. He was not there a great while, however. Rev. Mr. Kellogg came out from Portland and interviewed Mr. Alexander McLellan, a near relative of his own wife, and the result of that interview was that Elijah was, after the fashion of the time, indentured as an apprentice to Mr. McLellan to do general work on the place for the period of one year. The purpose of this indenture, however, was rather to restrain and hold him in one stated place than to make a servant of him, for he became at once a true member of the family “in good and regular standing.” He took his position and did his share of the work on the place in a faithful and orderly manner. His experience on the ship had been of great benefit to him. He had there learned the lessons of obedience and of industry,--lessons absolutely essential for every boy to learn if he would ever arrive at a worthy maturity. Now, instead of blocks and ropes and belaying pins, his tools were the plough, the hoe, the scythe, and the axe, and while using these he could almost fancy himself a pioneer. All this was a very wholesome kind of life and a right life in its way. Still it was no proper life for such a young man as by this time Elijah Kellogg had become. All his friends seemed to feel the incongruity of it, and the truth of this began to dawn upon himself, also. He began to feel, and to feel very strongly, that this sort of life was not up to his own level. The bird is for a life higher than the ground, and in like manner he was for something higher than the farm. There was a real genius in the soul of this boy that was reaching up toward intellectual exercises. Decks of ships, fields of corn, loads of lumber, were all good, but for him there was something better. The play of intellect appealed to him now more than the play of muscle did. All the associations in the family where he lived and those throughout the village were such as to encourage and foster this new ambition. This new feeling, this new ideal which was fast taking possession of his mind, was only an indication that the doors of boyhood were closing and the doors of manhood were beginning to open. He was gradually coming to understand himself and to have a dawning perception of some God-given powers, which, if they were properly trained, might result in the accomplishment of fine things. This vision of what he might sometime perform, if he would, rose to the front, and for the time assumed the leadership of his life. He was as obedient to this vision as Saint Paul was obedient to the vision he had near the city of Damascus, or as Abraham Lincoln was obedient to those dreams and visions that he had while he was managing the flatboat on the great river. The McLellan family, where he was living, were heartily in sympathy with this new development. From oldest to youngest they all felt that it was not a proper thing that this young man who was so gifted and who showed so many marks of a true genius should spend his energies on the farm and in the shop. There is iron for the place of iron and steel for the place of steel and silver for that of silver. This was a piece of silver, and he ought to take his proper place. It is needless to say how much this _change of aim_ on the part of Elijah gladdened the heart of his own father. It was indeed a day of general thanksgiving when this young man put himself in the way of a higher intellectual development and entered Gorham Academy as one of its students. This was one of the best academies in the country at that day. Its presiding genius was Master Nason who was known far and wide, not only as one who could keep rude boys in subjection to school rules by a liberal use of the birch, but as one who possessed faculty and power to stir the minds of pupils and impart to them rich stores of knowledge. New England has seen few instructors equal to Master Nason. The names of boys whom, in the old Academy at Gorham, he fitted for college, have in several instances become known all over the country, and some are known round the world. The Academy is proud of its roll of graduates, and those who studied under Mr. Nason have always been proud of their teacher.

Young Kellogg now put himself squarely down to hard work. He was older than are most boys when they take up the higher branches of study and begin to point their way definitely toward college, and he studied and worked in the Academy like one who is trying to make up for lost time. Such an intensity of application to books as was his at this time would have broken down many students; but Kellogg had a rare stock of good health and physical strength. He could well stand the strain of hard study. He had a well-knit frame. He never forgot how much of his own power of endurance he derived from his sturdy habits of toil in field and forest. He never forgot what a good physical basis for intellectual work manual labor gives one. In one of the college boys of his creation in the Whispering Pine series of books--Henry Morton--he shows the close connection between that young man’s hoe and axe and his leadership of the college class. When Mr. Kellogg did this, he knew very well what he was talking about. Seventy years ago these things largely took the place of the athletic field of our time, and they filled that place very well, too. An old fogy may perhaps be pardoned for saying that in spite of all the excitement and glory of base-ball and foot-ball and running and leaping and boating, still the oil of hoe handle has its virtues as a medicine for students.

The life of young Kellogg shows distinctly two points of turning. The first one was when he wakened to the consciousness of his mental powers; when he realized something of what he was and determined that he would live on the high level of his intellectual self. A young horse that has in him the elements of speed to win a race on the track is trained for the track. The horse of great weight is put into the truck team. Animals are put in training, according to what they are. When Kellogg realized something of his own intellectual power, then he put himself in training for an intellectual life. He therefore went into the Academy that he might fit for college. After he had begun work in the Academy there came to him another consideration, and he asked the question: “Is a life of mere scholarship the highest and best one of which I am capable?” He felt surely that he ought to live up to the level of his mind, but he began to feel that there was some power in himself superior to that of brains and that that higher power should be developed and his own life should be devoted to that which was supreme. He felt strongly that he should not allow the spiritual element of his nature to lie dormant or go to waste. The diamond that is not ground on the wheel is just as hard as the one that is ground, but it does not sparkle and flash like the one on which the lapidary has spent his skill. The uncut diamond is like the man who stops in the classical school and does not care for the infinitely finer work that religion does for him. Mr. Kellogg felt that it was not enough for him to have power. The power that was in him should be dedicated to the divinest ends. It should be religiously dedicated and consecrated. This was the second turning of his life, and when it was made he had become an earnest and devoted Christian. He understood Christianity to mean that he should employ the faculties and powers of his own nature in helping other people to lead better and more wholesome lives. Christianity meant more than self-culture; it meant self-giving. If there was in himself (as there certainly was) a large element of fun, this was by no means to be suppressed or sent into eclipse. Religion would not maim him that way any more than religion would clip the wings of a robin and make a mole of the bird. But religion would take that spirit of fun and cause it to play and shine and work for the production of purer thinking and cleaner living and higher aiming among all young people.

It was in obedience to this new spirit that Elijah went to work at once outside of the Academy as well as in it, and he then started some streams of religious influence that have by no means ceased running even to this day. Among the things he did at this period was to go into a certain neighborhood not many miles from Gorham and start a Sunday-school. It seems easy enough to _say_ that the young man went into a certain place and organized a Sunday-school, but from all accounts it was by no means an easy or even a safe thing for that young man to do. Three score and odd years ago--long before the days of Neal Dow and the Maine Law--there were certain regions here and there in the State where those people who were ignorant and given to drink and other forms of vice were sure to congregate like birds of ill omen, and there would be a neighborhood from which respectable people would keep away. Such a community was a multiplied Ishmael whose hand was against every man and every man’s hand against it. On one of these disreputable districts Elijah’s attention became fixed. With two or three of the people who lived there he had in some way become acquainted, and he “felt a call” to preach in that place. But even Elijah Kellogg, young, brave, and stout-hearted as he was, shrank from going there alone with an invitation to a Sunday-school to be sent abroad among that class of folk. He feared what might come from such a movement, and wished for a companion to share his fortunes. He appealed to a young friend, George L. Prentiss, afterward for many years an honored professor in Union Theological Seminary in New York, to go with him. But the response of Prentiss to this request was not favorable. “No, Elijah,” was his word,“I don’t dare to go down there. They will kill us if we do.” Then after a moment’s pause, “I’ll tell you what I will do. If you go down there and start a Sunday-school and don’t get killed, I’ll come in later and help you.” But Elijah had set his heart on doing the bit of work, and was not to be scared out of it. He started on his mission alone, and I doubt if Judson on his way to India, or Livingstone going to Africa, did a more heroic thing than that. He did start a Sunday-school, and he did get the people interested in both himself and his school, and through his influence the community was transformed, and to-day the descendants of those people are an intelligent, God-fearing, church-going, high-minded class of citizens, and they are such because of Mr. Kellogg. He never forgot them, and they never forgot him. The writer of this article was present in company with Mr. Kellogg at the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of that school. The season was mid-summer. The day was Sunday. The place was the church. The audience was everybody who lived in the district, supplemented by a large number who had driven thither from Portland, Westbrook, Gorham, Scarboro, and Saco. The larger share of those who had gathered were not able to get inside the church, but they crowded as close to the wide open windows as possible and heard what they could. After brief introductory exercises, Mr. Kellogg preached a most beautiful and touching sermon of some twenty minutes’ length. Then the Bible was closed, and a period of story-telling began. There were present some four or five persons who remembered the “first day of school” fifty years before. They all talked. Reminiscences were called up, old scenes revived, old stories told, old experiences related, and the old time was contrasted with the new. It was all of it immensely funny. Sometimes it was crying, but a good deal more it was laughing. My own feeling at the moment was that it was fortunate the windows were open, for otherwise the house must have burst. I do not think there ever was another church than that since churches were built where was heard so much laughter and manifested so much fun and wit on Sunday.

Mr. Kellogg got through with the Academy, and entered Bowdoin College in 1836. It is worthy of note that in all his long life he never shuffled off the boy. It was not a mere memory on his part that he once was a boy. The genuine boy was never a memory with him, but was always a present reality. In one sense he was as young at eighty as he was at eighteen. Boys were his mates always. There are men who, like Oliver Wendell Holmes, never grow old, and Mr. Kellogg was one of them. To the very last his lips would smile and his eyes would twinkle as he recalled some prank of his boyhood or told tales of those who had been his companions on the ship and on the farm and in the school. He never forgot a friend, and he certainly never forgot a funny or laughable incident. His own perennial boyhood has cheered and made more noble an almost numberless band of young lives throughout the country, and may the time be long before the young people of the land shall cease to read his wholesome books.

COLLEGE AND SEMINARY

HENRY LELAND CHAPMAN

It was in 1836, in the twenty-fourth year of his age, that Elijah Kellogg entered Bowdoin College as a Freshman. His father had been one of the earliest and firmest friends of the college. As one of the Cumberland County Association of Ministers he had joined in the petition to the General Court of Massachusetts for the establishment of a collegiate institution in the province of Maine. When in answer to the petition of the ministers, and of the Court of Sessions of Cumberland County, the college was incorporated in 1794, Mr. Kellogg was named as one of the first board of overseers. Four years later he became a trustee, and continued to hold that official relation to the college until 1824. During his boyhood, therefore, and before he cherished any purpose or desire to enjoy its privileges, Elijah must have heard, within the family circle, much about the college which was so great an object of interest and pride to his father, as it was, indeed, to the whole community. It was but natural, therefore, when his purpose was seriously formed to seek a college training in preparation for his father’s calling of the ministry, that Bowdoin, aside from its proximity to his home, should be the college of his choice. But his course collegeward was interrupted and delayed by various circumstances, and particularly by personal tastes that were quite other than scholastic. Always a lover of the sea, and delighting in the tales of sea life and adventure to which he listened from the lips of sailors themselves along the Portland wharves, it is not strange that the call of the sea sounded louder than any other in his ears. So, listening to the call, he shipped before the mast, and for three years lived the hard and perilous life of a sailor. It is true that the experience, which may have been useful to him in other ways also, was an admirable preparation for the brilliant service which he afterwards performed as chaplain of the Sailor’s Home in Boston, but in the meantime it made him late in entering upon his college life. It is to be said, however, that of his thirty classmates six were as old as himself.

We must look to certain volumes of the Whispering Pines series, and particularly to the volumes entitled “The Spark of Genius,” “The Sophomores of Radcliffe,” and “The Whispering Pine,” for a picture of his college life, true in its general features, and graphic like everything from Mr. Kellogg’s pen. These books, which have been read with eager interest by so many generations of boys, describe Bowdoin College, its professors, students, customs, and manners as they were known to Elijah Kellogg during the years of his residence there from 1836 to 1840. If they seem to be devoted largely to a recital of pranks and mischief and practical jokes among the students, it is partly because such things made a stronger appeal to scheming brains, and youthful fellowship, and leisure hours in those days, before athletic sports enlisted, as they have since enlisted, the restless energy and high spirits and intense rivalry of college boys; and partly, also, it was because his native sense of humor and love of fun, his spirit of adventure and personal courage, constituted an ever present temptation to him to share or lead in enterprises which demanded wariness and cunning and pluck, and which promised the discomfiture of some boastful and unloved fellow-student, or the perplexed disapproval of the college authorities, or the entertainment of a college community always keenly appreciative of a diverting sensation. So alive was he to this phase of student activity, and so conspicuous was he among his mates for resourcefulness and courage, that he became, in the popular opinion of his time and in subsequent tradition, the hero of many an escapade with which he had no connection. One instance, however, of strenuous effort quite outside his college duties seems to be well authenticated, and will serve to show the kind of mischievous exploit which was attractive enough to enlist his cooperation.

The president of the college during the first three years of Kellogg’s course was a man of great dignity and reserve. He held himself quite aloof from the students, neither inviting nor allowing any freedom of social intercourse. Partly on this account he was unpopular with the student body, and the solemn reserve in which he intrenched himself seemed, in their eyes, to make any infringement, however slight, of his personal dignity particularly humorous. There was much irreverent laughter, therefore, when it was whispered about on one occasion that the silk hat which the president was accustomed to wear, and which seemed the very crown and symbol of his formal stateliness, had been stolen, and was in the hands of some of the students. When it came to the ears of Kellogg he remarked that if he knew the boys that had the hat he would put it on the top of the chapel spire. Of course the interesting information was not long withheld from him, and in the darkness of a showery night he climbed sturdily up by the slender and insecure pathway of the lightning-rod, and placed the hat on the very top, where, in the morning, it met the dismayed vision of the president, and received the boisterous salutations of the college. That was Kellogg’s contribution to the deed of mischief. To steal the hat was a petty and foolish trick, such as might be perpetrated by a half-witted person, a coward, or a thief; but to carry it through the darkness to the top of the chapel spire required a clear head, a stout heart, good muscle, and nerve, and these Elijah Kellogg possessed, both in youth and manhood.

In reading these books, which tell the substantial history of his life at Bowdoin, it is quite evident that, with all the interest he took in the pastimes and pranks of his associates, he was not unmindful of the high and serious purpose of a college course. He maintained a consistent ideal of personal integrity and helpfulness and truth. It is the repeated testimony of those who were in college with him that his influence upon his fellow-students was in a high degree stimulating and wholesome. “He was,” says one who knew him well in the intimacy of college association, “universally popular, but he had his own chosen favorites, and one characteristic of him was his strong personal affection for them. His soul burned with love to those whom he loved. This was one secret of his power for good, for his influence upon them was always good.” An unaffected scorn of what was mean or false, and an eagerness to recognize and to make the most of every good and generous trait in his companions, were as characteristic of him as was his light-hearted, fun-loving disposition, and it is easy to see why he won both the respect and love of those who were admitted to his friendship.

These engaging qualities of his youth were no less those of his age, and they made him throughout life the friend of boys and the favorite of boys. He never lost the spirit of sympathy and comradeship with young men, and as his home, during the later years of his life, was not far from the college that he loved, he had a double motive to revisit, from time to time, the scene of those labors and frolics and friendships which he had so charmingly depicted in the Whispering Pine books. Accordingly he presented himself, now and then, either unexpectedly or upon invitation, at the door of some undergraduate member of his college fraternity, the Alpha Delta Phi, and became, for as long as he would stay, a welcome and honored guest.

It did not take long for the news to spread that Elijah Kellogg was in college; and then the hospitable room would be visited by many callers, eager to greet the shy, weather-beaten little man, whose heart was always warm for boys, and even the mazy wrinkles of whose face seemed to speak less of age than of kindness. And by the evening lamp an interested circle of students forgot the morrow’s lessons as they listened to stories of olden time, and to quaint words of counsel and comment as they fell from the visitor’s lips. When the circle finally dissolved, and Mr. Kellogg and his entertainers were left alone, a psalm, which seemed somehow to gain new meaning from his reading of it, and a simple earnest prayer, brought the long evening to a fitting and memorable close.

It is interesting, moreover, to notice, as an evidence of the profound regard and affection which the Bowdoin students felt for Mr. Kellogg, that when, in 1901, they published a volume of Bowdoin tales, no other dedication of the book was thought of than the one which inscribes it to the memory of Elijah Kellogg, “who celebrated his Alma Mater in story, honored her by practical piety, and won the hearts of her boys, his brethren.” If he was not eminent in the prescribed studies of the college, neither was he neglectful of them, nor unfaithful to them. Perhaps his enjoyment of college fellowships and his love of fun interfered to some extent with his devotion to the classics and mathematics, which made up a large part of the curriculum, and, in addition, the necessity under which he lay of providing for his own expenses must have diverted a part of his energies from study to manual toil. But whether at work, at play, or at study, he was hearty and resourceful. An incident, as told by himself, illustrates this trait of his character, and, incidentally, introduces the president whose sombre dignity provoked the stealing and subsequent disposal of his hat, as already related.

“I had to work my way through college,” said Mr. Kellogg, “and I boarded with a woman named Susan Dunning. I came to her house one Saturday. There was a deep snow on the ground, and college was to open Monday. She was feeling very blue because her well-sweep had broken. I told her not to mind, I’d fix it. The snow was too deep to get the cattle out, so I took a sled, and going to a wood-lot cut a big, heavy pole, it took a big one, too, for an old well-sweep. I put it on the sled, and tried to haul it back; but the long end dragging in the deep snow made that impossible. So, instead of hauling it, I took hold of the end and started pushing it home. It was hard work, but to make it worse President Allen met me and remarked, ‘Well, Kellogg, I have heard of putting the cart before the horse, but I never saw it done before;’ then he burst into a hearty laugh, and that’s the only time I ever saw him even smile in all the years I knew him.”