Part 3

Besides President Allen, who was a man of learning and piety, as well as soberness, and whose single laugh, as chronicled by Mr. Kellogg, may perhaps be extenuated on the ground that it was indulged in before the term began, it was a notable group of men under whose influence and instruction Mr. Kellogg came during his residence at Bowdoin. There was Professor Alpheus S. Packard, whose elegant culture and kindly heart and beautiful face relieved the tedium of the Greek class-room, and impressed themselves upon the grateful memories of not less than sixty classes of Bowdoin students. There was Professor Thomas C. Upham, the quaint and shy philosopher, who had in himself so much of the mystic and seer combined with the patient metaphysical analyst that it sent him from time to time into bursts of religious song, and assured his name an honored place among the hymn-writers as well as among the philosophers. There was Professor Samuel P. Newman, who, by precept and criticism, imparted as much as can be imparted of the art of rhetoric, in which Mr. Kellogg was to become so much of a proficient. There was Professor William Smyth, rugged, impetuous, and true, an apostle of abolition, an enthusiastic champion of popular education and, indeed, of every good cause, and, above all, a profound and famous mathematician, about whom Mr. Kellogg relates the somewhat apocryphal story of the “Mathematician in Shafts,” not, as may be seen, to suggest ridicule, but in a sort of fond and amused recognition of his unique and vigorous personality. And finally, not to make the catalogue too long, there was Professor Parker Cleaveland, the distinguished scholar and teacher of chemistry and mineralogy, and a man of idiosyncrasies as striking as were his gifts. In a beautiful memorial sonnet Longfellow said of him:--

“Among the many lives that I have known None I remember more serene and sweet, More rounded in itself, and more complete.”

“From Seniors to Freshmen,” says Mr. Kellogg, “all believed in, loved, and were proud of the reputation of the scholarly, kind-hearted, democratic, and, at times, compassionate professor.” And at the close of the chapter which is devoted to illustrations of Professor Cleaveland’s eccentric ways and beneficent influence, Mr. Kellogg is moved to this earnest and affectionate expression of his reverence: “Blessings on thy memory, faithful one,--faithful even unto death,--to whom was committed the gift to stir young hearts to noble enterprise and manly effort; who knew how to train the youthful eye to look upon, and the heart to pant after, the goal thou hadst reached! Those most amused with thy peculiarities loved thee best. From hence removed to the presence and enjoyment of Him whose wisdom, power, and goodness, manifested in the material world, thou to us didst so worthily explain and illustrate, we shall behold thy form and press thy hand no more; but only with life shall we surrender the memory of him who united the attributes of both teacher and friend.”

It is impossible that under the personal influence of these teachers, and of their instruction, young Kellogg, with his frank and susceptible nature, should not have been stimulated to intellectual effort, and to moral earnestness, and that he should not have retained in subsequent life some impress from their vigorous and scholarly and noble characters. How much he owed them in the direction and the development of his powers we may not say. It is never possible to measure, or to estimate exactly, the total influence of a teacher’s life and work upon his pupils. It acts often in ways that do not disclose themselves to our perception; it touches the young men at points and moments of which we do not know the responsive or the repelling significance; it often produces effects which are the very opposite of what we should predict; it falls into the ground and dies, as it were, and years afterward springs up and bears fruit in a form so changed that we do not recognize the seed in the resulting harvest; it is often hidden in the hearts of the young men, and works by way of impulse or restraint so subtly that they themselves are not conscious of it; and so we can never tell to what extent a young man’s character has been formed or modified by the influence of his teachers. But there is certainly some indication of Mr. Kellogg’s own estimate of what he owed to college instruction and stimulus in the ardent and unwavering affection which he always exhibited for his Alma Mater, and which was abundantly reciprocated in the reverent honor accorded to him by the college, and by all its students and alumni. At the one-hundredth anniversary of the college, in 1894, there were more than a thousand graduates assembled at the banquet in a mammoth tent on the campus. Mr. Kellogg had, with some difficulty, been persuaded to be present. He was, of course, called upon for a speech; and when he rose to respond, every graduate, young and old, in the great company was instantly on his feet, cheering and shouting a glad salute. It was a touching and memorable ovation, and the flush of troubled happiness that flitted across his bronzed and wrinkled face was something long to be remembered, as was also his glowing tribute of affection for the college, which was his answer to the welcome of his brethren.

In Mr. Kellogg’s student days the chief literary interest and activity of the undergraduates, and no small part of their more formal social life, centred about two societies, the Peucinean and the Athenæan. Between these two societies there was intense rivalry in securing accessions from among the more desirable members of newly entering classes, in public exhibitions and anniversary exercises, and in the distribution of college and class honors. Each society possessed a considerable library of carefully selected books, and each held regular weekly meetings for literary exercises consisting of essays, poems, declamations, and debates. Kellogg was an active and esteemed member of the Peucinean society, and contributed not a little to the interest of its meetings in the several features of their literary programmes. Mr. Henry H. Boody, of the class of 1842, and subsequently professor of rhetoric and oratory in the college from 1845 to 1854, recalls the fact that at the meetings of the Peucinean society, “we used to consider a poem by Kellogg as a very rare treat,” and then adds that perhaps “our liking for the man influenced our judgment as to the merit of his productions in that line.” However that may be, it is evident that his gifts of tongue and pen were freely exercised during his undergraduate days, and that the charm of them was felt and acknowledged by his college associates.

In Mr. Kellogg’s Junior year a literary magazine, the second venture of the kind at Bowdoin, was projected by some of the students, and made its first appearance, under the name of the _Bowdoin Portfolio_, in April, 1839. Its advent was heralded, in a manner somewhat figurative and characteristic of the time, by an editorial note, of which the following are some of the first sentences:--

“A short time since, as we were sitting quietly in our room discussing the common topics of the day, we were suddenly surprised and pleased by the entrance of a comely youth, of an ideal nature, that is, made up of the immaterial mind, but who had embodied himself in a visible form. He was arrayed in a neat, simple garb, evidently preferring pure simplicity to ostentatious splendor, and wishing to attract notice, not so much by a showy dress and gorgeous outward appearance, as by the spiritual within, made clear and comprehensible by the outward representation. On his front he bore the name of ’Bowdoin Portfolio,’ and in communing with him we found a most entertaining and agreeable companion. He was just making his debut into the literary world, and it was with modesty and timidity that he declared to us his intentions of speedily making his bow, and paying court to the public.”

There is no indication that Mr. Kellogg was connected with the editorial board of the _Portfolio_, but there are contributions from him in three of the seven numbers that were published, and all his contributions are of verse. This fact recalls the testimony that has been quoted as to the pleasure with which his poems were received at the meetings of the Peucinean society. Altogether it seems as if, during his college days, his tastes led him to the cultivation of poetry, and as if the impression he made upon his college mates was rather by his verse than by his prose.

One of the poems in the _Portfolio_ is a clever translation of a Latin epitaph upon a moth miller which “came bustling through the window directly into the editorial taper, and fell lifeless upon the sheet of paper.” A part of the epitaph in Kellogg’s verse is as follows:--

“Whose greatest crime was to intrude Upon a Poet’s solitude; Whose saddest fortune was to fly In a Poet’s lamp, and cheated die. Ah! punishment to rashness due, How certain! and how direful too! The silly Moth thus seeking light Is overwhelmed in shades of night; So Youth pursuing Pleasure’s ray O’ertakes grim Death upon the way!”

The Latin of the epitaph is of that obvious kind which an American college boy is likely to write, and there is really more distinction in Kellogg’s translation than in the original.

The other poems contributed by Kellogg to the _Portfolio_ are entitled, “The Phantoms of the Mind,” and “The Demon of the Sea.” They are both vigorous in sentiment and correct in form, and the opening lines of the latter remind us of the author’s early, and, indeed, lifelong passion for the sea:--

“Ah, tell me not of your shady dells Where the lilies gleam, and the fountain wells, Where the reaper rests when his task is o’er, And the lake-wave sobs on the verdant shore, And the rustic maid, with a heart all free, Hies to the well-known trysting-tree; For I’m the God of the rolling sea, And the charms of earth are nought to me. O’er the thundering chime of the breaking surge, On the lightning’s wing my pathway urge, On thrones of foam right joyous ride, ’Mid the sullen dash of the angry tide.”

It is not altogether fancy that recognizes in such lines as these hints of the impetuous and stirring rhetoric of Mr. Kellogg’s later prose, especially on occasions when his deepest feelings were moved, and he spoke of love and duty, of character and destiny, of life and immortality, out of the fulness of his conviction, and with the ardor and eloquence of his sensitive and poetic nature.

So passed his college days, in the keen enjoyment of generous comradeship, in the instinctive indulgence of his fondness for fun and frolic, in the cheerful acceptance of the burden of defraying his own expenses, in manly fidelity to the appointed studies of the course, and in the voluntary and congenial exercise of the literary gifts with which he was endowed, and through which he has made so many of us his debtors. And through it all he preserved the unaffected simplicity and purity of heart, the reverence for truth, and the consideration and charity for his fellows, which were the winning characteristics of his whole life.

* * * * *

Mr. Kellogg’s theological training in immediate preparation for the ministry was received at Andover Theological Seminary from 1840 to 1843. The intellectual and social conditions which prevail at the professional school are quite unlike those of the college. It does not have the same atmosphere of venerated tradition and compelling custom, nor is it the scene of a life so varied and buoyant. The students are older, more sedate, and more intent upon the special studies of the place. They have passed through the period of boyish effervescence and frolic, of ardent and generous comradeship, of steadfast friendships and changing schemes of life, of relative unconcern for what lies beyond the horizon of the college world--and the period is not to be repeated. They are committed to common pursuits and ambitions, and are sobered by the duties and responsibilities of life to which they are sensibly drawing near.

In his college life Mr. Kellogg found the material for a series of sparkling stories, evidently as congenial to himself as they have been interesting to his readers; but of life in the seminary he has given us no picture. This is not to the discredit of the honored school of theology to which he went, nor does it imply that he did not enter into its studies and its life with heartiness and joy, but it is a natural result of the distinction which has been suggested between the college and the professional school. The picturesque nook or landscape attracts the pencil or the brush of the artist, but his choice does not discredit the thousand scenes of field and pasture and hill and woodland which he passes by as unsuited to his artistic purpose.

It is enough to mention the names of Moses Stuart, Bela Edwards, Leonard Woods, Ralph Emerson, and Edwards Park, to show that Mr. Kellogg was as fortunate in his teachers at the seminary as he had been at the college. They were men of profound learning, of stimulating influence, of consecrated character, and of great and deserved reputation. They could not fail to quicken and enrich both his intellectual and his spiritual nature, and to send him forth fully instructed, as well as profoundly eager, to preach with persuasiveness and power, as he did preach for nearly half a century.

It was while he was a student in the seminary that Mr. Kellogg wrote the famous declamation, “Spartacus to the Gladiators,” as well as some others, almost equally famous, of the same general character. It was written for one of the prescribed rhetorical exercises of the course, at which the writer or speaker was publicly criticised by members of the student body, and also by the professor in charge. Mr. Kellogg, always timid at the prospect of open and formal criticism of his writing or speech, greatly dreaded the ordeal, and resolved to write something which should so interest his hearers by its unusual subject-matter as to divert their minds from the thought of criticism. His scheme was completely successful. The students listened with breathless attention, and were dumb when the speech was concluded. To the inquiry of Professor Park if there were any criticisms to be offered, not a voice was raised; and the professor himself remarked that though there were some things, perhaps, that might be said in criticism, yet it was so admirable a specimen of masterful rhetoric that he should say nothing. It has been considered so much of a masterpiece in its kind, that at Andover they still point out No. 20 Bartlett Hall as the room in which it was written.

There is an unmistakable dramatic quality in the conception and speech of “Spartacus,” as there were hints of such a dramatic quality in some of Mr. Kellogg’s sermons in later years, and it is interesting to note that, in his Senior year at Andover, he wrote a “dialogue,” or brief play, called “The Honest Deserter,” which was performed by the Philomathean Society of Phillips Academy. The occasion of its presentation was considered of so much interest and importance that an elm tree was planted in the Phillips yard in commemoration of the event.

When in his Senior year as a theological student Mr. Kellogg went to Harpswell to preach for some weeks, his personality and his preaching, his love of the sea and his kindly human qualities, so won the hearts of the Harpswell people that they besought him to return to Harpswell after his graduation, and become their pastor. To their urgent request he yielded, being himself much attracted by the people and their home by the sea. It was in 1844 that he was publicly installed over the church, and the official tie of pastor to the Harpswell church was severed only by his death.

EARLY HARPSWELL DAYS

WILMOT BROOKINGS MITCHELL

Harpswell, Maine, is a seaboard, almost a sea-girt, town. It is made up of a long, narrow neck of land and forty islands, some containing hundreds of acres, others almost entirely covered by the tide. Indenting the shore of this peninsula and the larger islands are sheltered inlets of deep water well suited to the building and harboring of ships. Hither came, during the first half of the eighteenth century, from Boston, Scituate, York, and other settlements, men and women of Puritan stock and Puritan ways of thinking; and here grew up large families, hardy and God-fearing, some farmers, but most of them fishermen, sailors, and ship-builders.

Elijah Kellogg could not long attend Bowdoin College, only a few miles distant, without being attracted to these sea-going people of Harpswell; for Kellogg was born with webbed feet. When hardly out of the cradle, family tradition has it, he went to sail in Back Cove, Portland, with a sugar-box for a boat and his shirt for a sail. As a youngster he would often steal to the Fore Street wharves to watch the ships, and he was never so happy as when listening to the yarns which the sailors spun. He says of himself, “At ten years of age I began to climb the rigging, and at fifteen went to sea.” His years in the “fo’c’sle,” with all their perilous and disagreeable tasks, only intensified his love for the water. As a Freshman he took supreme delight in sailing with a good comrade, on a Saturday afternoon, in his little cat-rigged boat, the _Cadet_, among the islands of Casco Bay.

One of these half-holiday expeditions affected, as it happened, his whole after-life. The _Cadet_, belated by wind and tide, ran ashore on Birch Island, and “Captain” Kellogg and crew, supperless and weary, sought shelter at the house of Captain John Skolfield. Mr. Kellogg never forgot how cosily the light from the house that evening shone through the hop vines growing over and around the windows. The hospitable islander gave the wayfarers a warm welcome and a plentiful supper; for which hospitality, before the evening ended, Kellogg, full of stories of college and the sea, made his host feel well repaid. Thus began his acquaintance with the Birch Islanders,--the Skolfields, Curtises, and Merrimans,--an acquaintance which was to ripen into a life-long friendship. The men on this island, hardy, powerful, and fearless, at once became heroes in the admiring eyes of this venture-loving student. After this he spent many happy hours building boats, gunning and fishing with Captain John, or spinning yarns and reading aloud with “Uncle Joe” Curtis,--a man who read every book he could get hold of and who remembered everything he read.

From Birch Island to Harpswell Neck, where Eaton’s store and the church were located, is but a short row; there Kellogg often went to buy something for his boat, or to worship on the Sabbath. Before long he had many friends and admirers upon the mainland; for these people had but to see the sharp-eyed, brown, wiry “colleger,” and hear his stories, or listen to his earnest and eloquent exhortations in the prayer-meeting, in order to love him. It was with them, as well as with him, love at first sight; and by the time he was a Sophomore they had plighted troth. Learning that he was to study for the ministry, they must have him for their preacher; and he, half jokingly perhaps, told them if he lived to get through the seminary and they built a new church, he would come to preach for them.

After graduation at Bowdoin, Kellogg began the study of theology at Andover. When his course at the seminary was near its close, Professor Thomas C. Upham, who had been so stanch a friend of the Harpswell church that Mr. Kellogg once said it owed its very existence to him, came to Andover with a message from the Harpswell people that the timber for the new church was on the spot, and they still wanted him for a preacher. The bearer of the message evidently saw in the young preacher the salvation of the Harpswell church; for he reënforced this reminder of the promise Kellogg had made in his student days by the emphatic prophecy that God would curse him as long as he lived if he did not go. Influenced somewhat by these prophetic words, but probably much more by his love for the place and the people and the opportunity he saw of doing good, he turned away from a call to a much larger church and went to Harpswell, where, as he said many years later, he found that “obedience is sweet and not servitude.”

Although Mr. Kellogg, in response to this informal invitation, began at once to supply the pulpit in the old church, a formal call to settle as pastor was not extended to him until the next year. The reason for this becomes apparent upon an examination of the church records.

The original Harpswell church and parish were at this time passing through a transition period. Formed in 1751, the parish was at first identical with the town. The preacher’s salary and other church expenses were assessed by the town officers as taxes. But later, other churches having been built and other denominations having sprung up, many citizens objected to being taxed for the support of the minister, and some absolutely refused to pay such taxes. A troublesome question concerning the control and ownership of the first church building also arose between the town and the parish. Accordingly the supporters of the Congregational church organized a new society and erected a new church building.

This church was dedicated September 28, 1843. For this dedication the following poem was written by Mr. Kellogg:--

“Here, ’mid the strife of wind and waves Upon a wild and stormy sod, Beside our fathers’ homes and graves, We consecrate a house to God. “Here, on many a pebbly shore, Old Ocean flings his feathery foam, And close beside the breaker’s roar The seaman builds his island home. “’Mid giant cliffs that proudly breast And backward fling the winter’s spray, ’Mid isles in greenest verdure dressed, ’Tis meet that rugged men should pray. “Its spire shall be the last to meet The parting seaman’s lingering eye, The first his homeward step to greet, And point him to a home on high. “Here shall the force of sacred truth Defeat the Tempter’s wildest rage, Subdue the fiery heart of youth And cheer the drooping strength of age. “And when the watch of life is o’er May we, where runs no stubborn tide, No billows break, nor tempests roar, In Heaven’s high port at anchor ride.”

The records show that on April 25, 1844, with Professor Upham as moderator, it was “moved and voted that the church of the Centre Congregational Society in Harpswell do hereby invite and call Mr. Elijah Kellogg to settle with them as their pastor in the Gospel ministry and [do agree] to pay [him] by subscription $300 a year for four years from the first day of June, 1844.” This call to what proved to be a long and fruitful pastorate Mr. Kellogg, on May 4, 1844, accepted in these simple and earnest words: “Brethren and Beloved: I have considered your call to settle with you as a minister of the New Testament. It appears to me to be the will of God pointed out by his providence that I comply with your invitation, which I accordingly do, praying that it may be a connection full of blessed fruits both to pastor and people.”