Part 6

One night, when temperance was the theme, he paused, and directing his conversation to some boys who were whispering, remarked: “I sometimes wonder how it will be with young men who cannot behave in Boston, where there are so many policemen to watch them, when they get into that far country where there are no policemen. You’d better cast anchor, boys.”

This anecdote is on the writer. My companion was one of the young ladies of Park Street, and I was feeling just a bit proud of myself. We were on hand in time, and had good seats against the wall. Distress came upon me by reason of new and tight-fitting shoes. I had slipped them off and put them under the seat, and was as peaceful and contented as a bug in a rug. Presently the crowd came, and there was a demand for seats. Spying other boys and me, this is how he fixed us: “Here, John, Thomas, Ezra, Henry, and William, come this way and sit on the pulpit steps.” All the other boys started. I kept my seat. I was in a fix. Then he spoke a second time. “Come, come, no hanging back!” Taking the shoes in my hand, I went as directed. The boys and girls laughed, and he comforted me by saying: “I sat on the pulpit steps many a time when I was a boy. It didn’t hurt me, and it won’t hurt you.”

One night just before the benediction he said very earnestly: “I wish the congregation would exhibit less haste to be dismissed. When the last verse of the hymn is being sung, you throw your books into the rack with a nervous thud that sounds like the ’ram-cartridge’ of a regiment of raw militia. Kindly hold the books in your hands until after the benediction.”

On one occasion when he was talking about politeness as apart from selfishness, this is how he got back at some of us, “Now I suppose if you were travelling in a crowded horse-car, and a tired mother with a baby in her arms, or a feeble old man with bundles in his hands, got aboard, you would give up your seat even if you had paid for it--but I happen to know that there are some of your elders who won’t do it.” I never knew whom he fired that shot at.

A transient man (speaking in meeting one night) bemoaned the fact that some of the tunes to which hymns were sung were theatre refrains, and unholy. “What!” exclaimed Father Kellogg, “you wouldn’t give all the good music to the devil, would you?” The stranger sat down.

One cold, blustery day Father Kellogg came to the store on Milk Street where I was employed, with a tale of sorrow. He had discovered a sick family. There was no food or fuel in the house, and he had no money in his purse. He must raise $3 immediately. Every one contributed on the instant, and he obtained nearly $4. There was a tear in his eye when he went out, and probably having in mind that some of us were theatre-goers or billiard-players, or something else--he turned to me, and remarked aside, “Old Satan will be about $4 short to-night!”

It should not be understood from the foregoing that my recollection of Father Kellogg and my admiration for him are based on and began and ended with a few little anecdotes incidental to evening meetings at the church over which he was the honored pastor. I knew him in the broad field, the world. He frequently spent an hour of the evening with me at the store which was my only home, and where half the evenings in the week I was alone as watchman after closing hours; here he often related his experiences as a sailor--much of which was afterward woven into his stories--and corrected the compositions I had written as a student at the Mercantile Library Association then located on Summer Street. More than this, he knew most of the boys and young men of the association, and dropped in occasionally to hear them speak his declamations and to encourage them in their studies. Later he was wont to call at my boarding-place, as he did at boarding-places of other homeless young men in that great city, to look after me and make me feel that some one cared for me. In those years I went occasionally with him and others to his week-day meetings at the Marine Hospital in Chelsea to“help out in the singing,”--as he was pleased to put it,--and to more other places than it would be interesting to mention here. On most of these occasions he “stood treat” on soda or ice-cream somewhere on the tramp, and, as I now discover, was always endeavoring to keep us interested and out of reach of temptation. In after years and following my departure from Boston, I used to find him at the Athenæum on Beacon Street where--after giving up his church duties--he spent most of his time when writing his books. These meetings were the joy and pride of my life, and from them I always obtained new courage to persevere in my profession. And here let me say that of all the boys of 1857-1870 I know of but one who has made a misfit of life; and over his misfortunes I throw, as I know Father Kellogg would were he still among us, the broadest mantle of charity.

Of Father Kellogg as an earnest and inspired preacher, a consecrated man with a message to men, and of his greatest sermons, others may speak. He was a modest and unassuming man who did not recognize in himself his full power to move and convince men. Physical fear stood in the way. He often expressed himself as greatly embarrassed when officiating over large and fashionable congregations, and he said to me, following his magnificent discourse in a series of meetings at Tremont Temple, that when he approached the desk, his knees shook so that he feared he should fall in his tracks. However this may have been, he got control of himself before he had spoken twenty-five words. All of embarrassment fled before the earnestness of his words and purpose. It was--and I speak with the knowledge that many others consider his sermon on the “Prodigal Son” his masterpiece--one of the greatest efforts of his life. He realized that he was in contrast with Dr. Stone, Dr. Manning, Dr. Kirk, Dr. Neal, and others, and that he must give the best he had. The sermon made a deep impression upon all his hearers.

It was a comparative parallel of a brook and the career of man in weird and forceful language, in imagery that was entrancing, in striking passages, and with the lesson every moment in the foreground,--man and brook at their sources, the place of their birth.

_Morning._ He dwelt upon its beauty at sunrise, and the secluded depths of the forest, and sought the birthplace of the brook. Then with the child and the tiny stream he lingered and dwelt in graceful, dreamy thought, in which he compared their purity, pondered upon the dangers and pitfalls beyond, half undecided whether to venture farther or cease to be. Having determined that it would be cowardly to resist destiny, he followed the murmuring stream, listened to its complaints and made note of its troubles. It was the career of man. As it flowed on, and he wandered beside it, he listened to the song of birds, the murmuring wind, and found himself in harmony with things divine. Anon, the scene changed, the harmony was broken, the temptation to recklessness was observed on every hand. The little brook had increased in strength and commenced its complaining. It was being bruised against boulders, rushed over logs and through chasms, over ledges, alongside of marshes and across the quicksands of meadows, under water-wheels and bridges, thrown mercilessly over precipices and dashed against every substance in its path.

_Noonday._ He mused with it, gathered admirers about it and discovered that it entered into partnership with other streams as men and women enter into the partnerships of life. He listened to its whispered songs by day and sought its harmonies by night, he sympathized with its fault-finding because of the impurities which flowed into it from cities and villages, admired it when it became a broad expanse, and enforced the lesson of man’s journey through life.

_Evening._ Standing on the shore of the ocean, the tide receding, he gazed far out toward the horizon, and in descriptive beauty I cannot reproduce, saw the river meet and mingle with the sea, losing its identity; saw the streets of shining gold, the great white throne and the crown for those who are faithful unto death.

The outline of one other of Father Kellogg’s great sermons still lingers in my mind and attracts my thought. Paragraphs from it are discoverable in the stories he wrote late in life. It was prepared for the purpose of presenting the cause of the Seaman’s Friend Society before a great convention in the Boston Music Hall. He was to speak to a cultured audience of men and women from all parts of the state, and in the presence of some of the best scholars and thinkers in his own profession. He felt that he would be criticised in comparison with other speakers, and was therefore determined to do himself and his alma mater credit, and withal present his cause, so as to reach the hearts and pocketbooks of his hearers. I did not hear the sermon at its original delivery, but later he used it for the same purpose in the churches. I heard it at Park Street, and was so attracted and impressed by its beauty of language and eloquence when spoken by him that I went to the Mount Vernon Church when he delivered it there. This gives the impression it left upon my mind.

Through the career of one sailor, learn of many. He pictured the child in the cradle, the love and hope of a doting mother; followed him to school, saw him develop in mind and muscle; sailed cat-boats, set lobster-traps, and dug clams with him. He talked and dreamed with him about other lands and climes beyond the boundary of their vision, and entered into his hopes and ambition to become the master of a ship. Passing briefly over his coasting voyages, he portrayed him in port surrounded by sharks and bad women, and in the whirl, where if he listens and yields to the tempter, he becomes lost to himself and a sorrow to the mother who bore him. He spoke of his needs, of the associations that should environ him, the necessity for a snug harbor home in every port, and then, when an able seaman, he accompanied him on a voyage to a foreign land.

Then he presented, in vivid colors, beautiful, weird, and awful pictures of the sea such as no man who has not witnessed them may discover in the storehouse of his knowledge. The vessel drifts to-day in a calm; there is little to do on shipboard, and so, half homesick, the sailor looks upon the glassy deep as in a mirror, and sees faces and forms of those he loves. Meantime, there are omens that indicate a coming storm, and anxiety is depicted on every face. Night and the storm! Then the awful picture of the raging deep; the vessel climbing mountain waves and anon pitching into the trough of the sea; the dark and ominous clouds, the angry winds, the mingled prayers and supplications of the crew; the promises of a better life if spared to reach land, the wreck, the rescue,--all in vividness, in rapid and burning oratory that held a landsman as in a vice, moved him to tears, and blotted from his mind all else save the speaker and his theme. Into port, far from home and kindred, and the old story of forgetfulness of promises when in the presence of temptations, and, in conclusion, a masterly plea for pecuniary aid from those who had it in their hearts to better the sailor’s environments.

During the war of the rebellion, Father Kellogg’s patriotism and zeal for the cause of his country was of the most pronounced type. Whenever a regiment from Maine was due to march through the streets of Boston, whether outward or homeward bound, his affection for the old home and the boys of his state, excited him beyond self-control. He met the command, if informed of its coming, at the railroad station, crossed the city with it, remained close to the ranks and at every halt talked with and cheered the boys. He made speeches to several regiments, when reviewed on the Common, and on one occasion--I was present to greet a cousin in the ranks--he broke down completely, and wept like a child. It was pretty safe to say after the departure of a regiment from Maine that Mr. Kellogg had not a “penny to his name.” He made speeches and offered prayers at the unfurling of the flag, and spoke parting words of affection and advice to seamen of his congregation and young men of his Sunday evening meetings, many of whom “died with their wounds in front.”

The last of my several visits with Father Kellogg at his home at North Harpswell was on August 5, 1899. On my journey thither, I talked freely with the driver of the hired carriage--G. W. Holden, a brother of the mystic tie--and said to him: “I should think the people of such an up-to-date place as this would demand a younger preacher, more of a society man than Mr. Kellogg.” He became enthusiastic at once and replied: “Why, bless you, brother, the people of this place are all of one mind in this matter. Like myself they had rather hear Mr. Kellogg say ’amen,’ than the finest sermon any younger minister could possibly preach. Why, people come from far and near to hear him, and every now and then he has a request from some of them to deliver his discourse on the ’Prodigal Son.’ It is a most remarkable sermon. I could hear it twice a year, and hunger for a third.”

But here we were at the end of our pilgrimage, at the very door of his residence. It was nine miles from the boat-landing, half a mile from the main highway through a strip of woods, and in a romantic and secluded spot; an old-fashioned, unpainted farm-house of the fathers, with large, high-studded rooms, and furnishings after the fashion of the city. Everything bespoke comfort.

Mr. Kellogg met me at the door with warm greeting, and when he made out my identity through the mists of years, embraced me with the enthusiasm of a child, put his arms about my neck and kissed me upon the cheek. It was the same warmth and affection with which he greeted the old Park Street Church crowd of young people in good old times. “Come in! come in!” and then our tongues were loosed and it was a race for life, for my visit was necessarily to be brief, to see who could do the most talking. I think--mind you, reader, I am not positive about it--that he did the most of it; at any rate he conjured with names of old-time companions and friends whom I had forgotten, but whose faces and forms were instantly upon the screen before me, and spoke with tenderest affection of boys and girls, old men and matrons, whom we had known and loved, and who have long since paid the debt of nature. Oh, that the living of the good old times could have joined me on that pilgrimage!

He told me it was his purpose to proclaim“glad tidings” to men while life lasted; that he had engaged to preach the next year; that he expected to officiate on Sunday at Bowdoin College, and that his health was such--deafness being his only apparent infirmity--he had reasonable hope of becoming a centenarian. He recalled incidents innumerable with which I am familiar, and related with manifest pleasure that the deacons of Park Street undertook to put a stop to the “running away” of their young people on Sunday nights, and, with merriest twinkle of the eye, said, “their lectures fell on stony ground. Some of the young people replied that they were born in the Bethel, others that they were looking for a chance to sing, and there were a few--and I fear you were one of the number--who always turned up where the girls were. Anyhow, I had the crowd, and I loved every one in it as though he were my own.”

Then, in softened accent, as though he feared he had wronged those deacons in thought and spirit, he said practically this: “Ah, but those same deacons were good and true men. They were sympathetic, they were liberal to a fault, and I never went to one of them for aid in my work to return empty-handed. Then there was my old friend, Alpheus Hardy, of the Mount Vernon Church. I verily believe he would have turned all he had in the world over to me had I solicited it.”

The conversation ran on and on in changing moods. I feared that Brother Holden and our lady travelling companion would begin to think themselves in for a half-day of steady waiting, and so I began to break away. This was the hard part of it all. He clung to me and put his arms about me, urged me to dismiss the driver and sleep under his roof, and finally exacted a promise that I would come again next year, if in that vicinity, and tarry longer. Our adieus were then spoken, and he stood upon the porch and waved his hand in parting.

All that I have here written is, as I view it, a eulogy on the character and career of Father Kellogg, and yet I may be pardoned, considering my long acquaintance, tender attachment and admiration for the man, if, as attorneys put it, I sum up:--

He was one of nature’s noblemen; he was incapable of deceit; he lived a life above reproach. His one great purpose was to make himself useful to the human family. To this end he sought out boys who were liable to go astray, and it may be said in all seriousness, and with impressive emphasis, that he succeeded in the mission to which he was consecrated. The seed he sowed ripened in the lives of those in whom it was planted, and, granting that each in turn confers the same blessing upon his children, Father Kellogg’s influence must continue on and on to future generations, making the world wiser and better because he has lived in it. His gentle chidings, his forgiveness of seeming neglect, his patience when troubles were upon him, his sympathy for those who were in sickness, sorrow, need, or any other adversity, his hopefulness when in financial stress, his devotion to his invalid wife, his anxiety for his children, his unselfishness, his never failing cheerfulness and steadfast faith in God, his submission by which he ever discovered the silver lining in the dark cloud, his determination to preach the Gospel to the end of his days,--all, all, have lodgment in my heart; and so, when I think of him, it is not as of one dead, but one who lives, lives in the affections of kindred and friends, in beneficent influence still abroad in the world, in deeds: not dead, not dead:--

“There is no death, The stars go down to rise upon a brighter shore.”

Kellogg the Author

WILMOT BROOKINGS MITCHELL

“If the gods would give me the desire of my heart,” exclaims Thackeray in _The Roundabout Papers_, “I should write a story which boys would relish for the next few dozen of centuries.” This is a glorious immortality which Thackeray desires for his boys’ story. Generously have the gods dealt with that author whose writings for boys have been relished even a quarter of a century.

Of the stories and declamations of Elijah Kellogg the past at least is secure. What boy reader did not relish “Good Old Times” and “Lion Ben”? What schoolboy has not“met upon the arena every shape of man or beast that the broad empire of Rome could furnish, and yet never has lowered his arm”? The schoolboy of the future will be of different stuff from the schoolboy of the past if, when declaiming to his mates on a Friday afternoon, he does not begin in subdued tones and stand, like Regulus, “calm, cold, and immovable as the marble walls around him,” and end in guttural tones and in a fine frenzy with “the curse of Jove is on thee--a clinging, wasting curse.” “Spartacus to the Gladiators,” the first of Mr. Kellogg’s eleven declamations, was written, as has already been said,[4] in 1842, for one of the rhetorical exercises at Andover Seminary. At this exercise there was present a Phillips Academy boy, John Marshall Marsters. Some years afterward, when Marsters was to take part in the Boylston Prize Speaking at Harvard College, he secured from Mr. Kellogg a copy of “Spartacus.” In this, as in many similar competitions, it proved a prize-winner; and it so won the admiration of Mr. Epes Sargent, one of the judges, that he first published it, in 1846, in his “School Reader.” Since then no school or college speaker has been deemed complete unless it included“Spartacus to the Gladiators.”

[4] See page 47.

“Regulus to the Carthaginians” Mr. Kellogg wrote at Harpswell for his friend, Stephen Abbott Holt, then a student at Bowdoin College, who first declaimed it in the Junior Prize Speaking, August 25, 1845; and it was first published in 1857 in Town and Holbrook’s Reader. Most of his other declamations were written for _Our Young Folks_, and similar magazines.

As school and college declamations, these have seldom, if ever, been surpassed. Vivid in description, stirring in sentiment, alive with action, dramatically portraying concrete deeds of heroism, they are especially attractive to school and college boys. Nearly all of these, it will be noticed, deal with ancient characters and events. From the time Mr. Kellogg began to prepare for college in his father’s study, he was exceedingly fond of the ancient classics. He had in his library at the time of his death 235 volumes of the classics of Greece and Rome. Well versed in Greek and Roman history and mythology, he could fittingly extol the patriotism of Leonidas and Decius; bewail the woes of the Roman debtor; incite the gladiators to revolt; and appeal to the Roman legions, or curse the Carthaginians through the mouth of Icilius or Regulus.

With the exception of a few bits of verse written while he was an undergraduate and printed in the college paper, _The Bowdoin Portfolio_, “Spartacus” was the first of Mr. Kellogg’s writings to be published. During the twenty-three years between 1843, when he became pastor of the church at Harpswell, Maine, and 1866, when he resigned as pastor of the Mariners’ Church in Boston, he wrote very little that was printed: “Regulus,” an ode for the celebration of Bowdoin’s semi-centennial in 1852, and a sermon, “The Strength and Beauty of the Sanctuary,” preached at the dedication of the Congregation Chapel, St. Lawrence Street, Portland, Maine, in 1858. After 1866, after Mr. Kellogg was more than fifty years old, came that rather remarkable period of story-writing. Uncommon is it for a story-writer not to begin his career until after he has lived two score years and ten. That Mr. Kellogg could tell a tale, however, in a way to interest boys, his college mates discovered during his undergraduate days; for those well acquainted with him in college, as they have recorded their recollections of young Kellogg, seldom fail to mention that “he was very fluent in talk, exceedingly interesting as a conversationalist, and an excellent story-teller.”