Part 13

Hardly to be wondered at, one would say. At one time he got an audience into a school house, and planting his back against the door so they could not escape, preached at them two hours, hot and strong. At another time he hired a woman for a dollar to give up one day to seeking her soul’s salvation; and again, following a young woman on the road importuning her to seek God, when she took refuge in a house; he sat on the steps, declaring he would not let her proceed till she had promised to pray. His nervous impatience of rest often impelled him to steal from a hospitable house at dead of night, and at daylight he would be found in another county drumming up a meeting.

These eccentricities, perhaps, brought him as much success as opposition; but the chief source of his troubles came from his independence, and even defiance of his own church. His impatience of limitations, regulations and authority of any kind caused an irrepressible conflict between him and the church from the beginning to the end of his labor. Four times the first year of his ministry did they try in vain to send him home. Though constantly, and with many tears, besieging conferences, bishops and elders for license, as soon as a circuit of appointments was given him, he would fly the track and be found traveling on another minister’s round, as complacent as a hen setting on the wrong nest. Regularity was death to him. Once he had been persuaded to take a circuit, and he says, “I had no sooner consented to try for a year, the Lord being my helper, than an awful distress came over my mind.” He staid the year, with an occasional escapade into other circuits, but says of it: “Scarce any blessing on my labors, and my mind depressed from day to day.” Yet he insisted, to the day of his death, that he was a Methodist preacher, and refused indignantly all propositions of his admirers and converts to organize a following of his own—“Dowites,” as they would call themselves, “Split-off Methodists,” as he dubbed all such schismatics. When his presiding elder, the renowned Jesse Lee, sent him injunctions against irregular traveling, under pain of expulsion, he replied to the messenger: “It does not belong to Jesse Lee or any other man to say whether I shall preach or not, for that is to be determined between God and my own soul. It only belongs to the Methodists to say whether I shall preach in their connection.”

“But,” said his monitor, “What will you call yourself? The Methodists will not own you, and if you take that name you’ll be advertised in the public papers as an impostor.”

“I shall call myself a friend to mankind,” said Dow, expansively.

“Oh,” exclaimed the advocate of regularity, “for the Lord’s sake—_don’t_! You are not capable of that charge—who is!”

One would think so, for Dow was at this time only eighteen years old, and the callowest fledgeling in all green New England. It was no use. This young eccentric would not work to any line. He obeyed only dreams, impulses and “impressions,” which he accepted as divine guidings. At one time they thought they had laid out for him in Canada a field sufficiently large, wild, unorganized and forbidding to give him “ample scope and verge enough” wherein to wander, preach and organize churches. It did seem that almost the whole boundless continent was his. But a continent has limitations. That thought tormented him. He tramped till he got to the edge, and then was seized with “a call” to carry the gospel into Ireland! and despite all remonstrance, opposition and threats he sailed for Ireland without a government passport, without church credentials of any kind, minus an overcoat and change of linen. Three dollars, a bag of biscuits, and unlimited confidence in his ability to “get through some way,” constituted his missionary outfit. His real reason for going, however, was the hope that a sea-voyage would improve his health, as he admits in his “Journal.”

Thereafter, wherever Dow pushed his peculiar mission he found the reputation of a schismatic and rebel against church authority had preceded him, and turned the Methodist clergy and laity against him, and generally closed their homes and houses of worship to him. This coldness, and sometimes enmity, he had to overcome before he could begin his work in any place. Nevertheless, he prosecuted it vigorously for over forty years with few interruptions, diverting all the converts of his ministry into the Methodist church that he could, and giving not only his services, but much of the proceeds of the sale of his books to that body. To the last he declared, like Wesley, “my parish is the world!” and extended his circuits to all parts of the Union, to Balize, the West Indies, and the United Kingdom. He would lay out routes of three or four thousand miles, covering appointments months or years ahead, and he rarely failed to appear on time or to find an audience awaiting him.

“The camp meeting era,” which began about the commencement of Dow’s ministry, was his great opportunity. These meetings were free, catholic, and welcomed all workers. They were the legitimate outcome of the religious necessities of the time. The land was ablaze from backwoods to sea-beech with that popular excitement which soon got the expressive name of “The Wildfire.” A host of preachers—Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers—went from camp to camp preaching, singing, exhorting. The meetings were going continuously. The country seemed to give up all other pursuits for religion. Twenty thousand often assembled at one place, coming hundreds of miles. One Granada, “the western poet,” wrote many “Pilgrim Songs,” rude but spirited, for camp meeting use, and these traveled, unprinted, on the air. That peculiar psychological phenomenon called “The Jerks,” appeared and spread like an epidemic. Penitents in this death-like trance were laid in long ranks under the trees and the weird torchlights, as if ready for interment. Three thousand fell in one night at Caneridge, Kentucky. It was common practice to prepare the camp meeting grounds by cutting all the saplings about six feet from the ground, leaving the stumps for the infected ones to grasp, to keep them from falling, and Dow records that the ground around them was torn up as if horses had been hitched there. At times a sudden influence would come over the multitude, which would strike preachers, singers, mourners and listeners speechless, so that not a word could be spoken for a period—a hush more awful and inexplicable than the jerks or the shoutings.

Into this work Dow plunged with the abandon of a knight-errant, and with wonderful success. His thin, skeleton frame, pale, sharp face, luminously black eyes, long hair, curling to his waist, sharp, strident voice, fierce, jerky sentences, qualified him to add intensity to the prevalent excitement. And he was fond of appealing to the fears and superstitions of humanity. He was full of dire predictions. The world was in travail for the last day. Napoleon was wading knee-deep in the blood of Europe. The last vial of wrath seemed to have been poured out upon the earth. The prophecies and the apocalypse were drawn on for texts, which he used literally. Any local calamity—and a long list of sudden or accidental deaths within his ken—were worked upon the minds of his hearers, as links in the chain of these awful portents. If there was any “scare” in a man or woman or child, he’d frighten them to their knees. He used the _argumentum ad hominem_ liberally, and if there were a conspicuous atheist reprobate or Calvinist in the audience—all of whom he classed together—the man was sure to be singled out for direct attack. A favorite device was to ask the audience to grant him a favor, and require all who were willing to do so to stand. When up, he would bind them to pray three times a day for a week for salvation, and abjure them not to add the perjury of a broken promise to their many other sins. This he exultantly calls “catching ’em in a covenant,” he expecting to make converts of nine-tenths of those who kept the promise into which they had been thus trapped.

The quality which gave Lorenzo Dow his greatest power with the “lower million”—to whom, after all, his mission went—was his courage. He was as bold as a man seeking martyrdom. His mien was defiant and his language brusque and aggressive. He belonged to the church militant by one of those contrasts which make the tender-hearted and sensitive seem rough and pugnacious. He fought against the wild beasts, on two legs, not at Ephesus, but from Boston to Balize. Rowdies dreaded his tongue more than any physical force, to which he never resorted. At New Kent, Va., a large billet of wood was hurled at him through a window. He immediately leaped through the window and gave chase to the assassins, yelling “Run, run, the Old Sam is after you.” Returning, he took the billet, cut the words “Old Sam” in it, and nailed it to a tree, installing it as “Old Sam’s monument.” He then proceeded logically to this demonstration: “You disturbers of the meeting, your conduct is condemnable—which expression means damnable; hence, to make the best of you, you are nothing but a pack of damned cowards, for not one of you durst show his head.” “Old Sam’s monument” stuck to the tree for years, and Dow records with great satisfaction that one of the ringleaders in this assault, a few months later had his _nose bit off_ in a fight, and another was flung from a horse and had his neck broken—all of which he cited as redounding to the glory of God and the vindication of Lorenzo Dow.

On another occasion, being apprised of the approach of a mob of several hundreds, sworn to take his life, he left the pulpit, took his wife by the hand, and marched out to meet the enemy. When met, he mounted a stump and poured out upon them a tirade of hot reviling, the very boldness of which overawed them. The result was that he led them back to camp, and in a short time had the most of them on the anxious seat.

At times, however, his enemies and opponents were too much for him. Detraction and back-biting hurt him worst, coldness cut him deeper than opposition. At one time, every man’s hand was so against him that he cut his way into the depths of a Mississippi cane swamp, built a hut, and there he and his wife lived recluse for months, surrounded by wolves and snakes, whose society he found less objectionable than that of the best friends he had in the country. One of the chief causes of enmity was jealousy, because he had made a little money by the sale of his writings. I fancy, too, that the popular feeling was mingled with one of contempt for a circuit-rider, who could be so easily beaten in a horse trade—a man who, equipped with a gallant mount on Monday morning, would turn up before the week was gone on a sorry, broken-down “plug,” against which he had paid beside more “boot” than his own horse was worth—could not command the respect of such people as he labored among.

It is hard to realize that the man is an invalid, working without fee or reward, unrecognized, and receiving more curses than coppers, of whose exploits we read such passages as these:

“_August 24._—After preaching at Ebenezer, Pa., I silently withdrew, and taking my horse, traveled all night until ten next morning, when I spoke at Bethel, and then jumping out at a window from the pulpit, rode seventeen miles to Union; thence to Duck Creek Cross Roads, making near eighty miles travel and five meetings without sleep. These few weeks past, since the eruption was dried up and the asthma more powerful and frequent, I feel myself much debilitated.”

“I returned to Dublin, having been gone sixty-seven days, in which time I traveled about 1700 English miles and held about two hundred meetings.” “To Warrington, having been about fifty-two hours, held nine meetings and traveled about 50 miles.” “Sunday, July 20, my labors were equal to seven sermons, which gave me a fine sweat that was very refreshing, and added to my health. In speaking twice in the street I addressed five thousand.”

“In the space of twenty-two days I traveled 350 miles and preached seventy-six times, beside visiting some from house to house and speaking to hundreds in class meetings.”

“_October 28, 1803._—After an absence of about seven months, I arrived back in Georgia, having traveled upward of four thousand miles (through the Mississippi Territory and Florida). When I left this state I was handsomely equipped for traveling, by some friends whom God had raised me up in need. But now on my return I had not the same valuable horse, my watch I had parted with to bear my expenses. My pantaloons were worn out. I had no stockings, shoes, nor moccasins for the last several hundred miles, nor outer garment, having sold my cloak in West Florida. My coat and vest were worn through to my shirt. With decency, I was scarcely able to get back to my friends.”

But we can not forget Peggy. Peggy was one of Lorenzo’s earliest converts, and throughout the most of his crusades was his faithful companion, through exposures and trials, through evil report and good report. She was the loveliest trait in his character. The courtship was unique. Let him tell it:

“Dining at the house of her foster parents, he learned that she had declared if she was ever married it should be to a traveling preacher.”

He continues:

“As she then stepped into the room, caused me to ask her if it were so. She answered in the affirmative; on the back of which I replied: ‘Do you think you could accept of such an object as me?’ She made no answer, but retired from the room.”

When about going away, he remarked that he was going a circuit of a year and a half in the South.

“If during that time,” he said to her, “you live and remain single, and find no one that you like better than you do me, and would be willing to give me up twelve months out of thirteen, or three years out of four, to travel, and that in foreign lands, and never say, ‘Do not go to your appointment,’—for if you should stand in my way I should pray God to remove you, which I believe he would answer, and if I find no one that I like better than I do you—_perhaps something farther may be said on the subject_.”

An ardent popping of the question, surely! But she waited, and they were married, and were happy. He was a very devoted husband, subsidiary to his appointments. He was away preaching when both their children were born, and on one occasion left his wife among strangers in England, ill, so that her death was hourly expected, and their infant child also being ill and dying in another place, for a chance to preach. Neither parent attended the child’s funeral. Peggy never murmured. She was as consecrated to his work as he—perhaps more unselfishly so. Minister’s wives often are, I have heard.

Applying to Lorenzo Dow a purely intellectual analysis, I should say he was a man born with a morbidly nervous temperament, which only ceaseless activity could satisfy. Rest was physical and mental poison to him. This helps explain his extraordinary energy. Egotism took the form of conceit for haranguing and influencing masses of people, and of believing himself competent to fill a world-wide field. Consciousness of his own weakness and supersensitiveness led him to shrink from the restraint and criticisms and evade the duties of church affiliation. He wanted the notoriety and gratification of ministerial life, without its responsibilities; he could not take the responsibility of becoming the founder of a sect.

In short, as I read Lorenzo Dow, he had a mania for haranguing people, and he gratified it in the easiest and most popular way then open to an uncultured, lawless, irresponsible nature, with strong natural tendencies toward religious exercises. If Dow had been born seventy-five years later, he would have made a first-rate demagogue and communist, but it is doubtful if he could have got any one to hear him preach in these days. He served the time and purpose well, and reached hundreds whom perhaps no one else could have influenced.

His eccentric behavior was due partly to lack of education and culture, and partly to physical causes, viz.: A morbid, nervous organization, which could only keep keyed up by excitement. His seeming violence and extravagance were probably assumed at first to cover diffidence and sensitiveness, and afterward became habits of pulpit address. He was affectionate, honest, sincere and brave.

HYACINTH BULBS.

By GRANT ALLEN.

If we were not so familiar with the fact, we would think there were few queerer things in nature than the mode of growth followed by this sprouting hyacinth bulb on my mantelpiece here. It is simply stuck in a glass stand, filled with water, and there, with little aid from light or sunshine, it goes through its whole development, like a piece of organic clock-work as it is, running down slowly in its own appointed course. For a bulb does not grow as an ordinary plant grows, solely by means of carbon derived from the air under the influence of sunlight. What we call its growth we ought rather to call its unfolding. It contains within itself everything that is necessary for its own vital processes. Even if I were to cover it up entirely, or put it in a warm, dark room, it would sprout and unfold itself in exactly the same way as it does here in the diffused light of my study. The leaves, it is true, would be blanched and almost colorless, but the flowers would be just as brilliantly blue as these which are now scenting the whole room with their delicious fragrance. The question is, then, how can the hyacinth thus live and grow without the apparent aid of sunlight, on which all vegetation is ultimately based?

Of course, an ordinary plant, as everybody knows, derives all its energy or motive-power from the sun. The green leaf is the organ upon which the rays act. In its cells the waves of light propagated from the sun fall upon the carbonic acid which the leaves drink in from the air, and by their disintegrating power, liberate the oxygen while setting free the carbon, to form the fuel and food-stuff of the plant. Side by side with this operation the plant performs another, by building up the carbon thus obtained into new combinations with the hydrogen obtained from its watery sap. From these two elements the chief constituents of the vegetable tissues are made up. Now the fact that they have been freed from the oxygen with which they are generally combined gives them energy, as the physicists call it, and, when they re-combine with oxygen, this energy is again given out as heat, or motion. In burning a piece of wood or a lump of coal, we are simply causing the oxygen to re-combine with these energetic vegetable substances, and the result is that we get once more the carbonic acid and water with which we started. But we all know that such burning yields not only heat, but also visible motion. This motion is clearly seen even in the draught of an ordinary chimney, and may be much more distinctly recognized in such a machine as the steam-engine.

At first sight, all this seems to have very little connection with hyacinth bulbs. Yet, if we look a little deeper into the question, we shall see that a bulb and an engine have really a great many points in common. Let us glance first at a somewhat simpler case, that of a seed, such as a pea or a grain of wheat. Here we have a little sack of starches and albumen laid up as nutriment for a sprouting plantlet. These rich food-stuffs were elaborated in the leaves of the parent pea, or in the tall haulms of the growing corn. They were carried by the sap into the ripening fruit, and there, through one of those bits of vital mechanism which we do not yet completely understand, they were selected and laid by in the young seed. When the pea or the grain of wheat begins to germinate, under the influence of warmth and moisture, a very slow combustion really takes place. Oxygen from the air combines gradually with the food-stuffs or fuels—call them which you will—contained in the seed. Thus heat is evolved, which in some cases can be easily measured with the thermometer, and felt by the naked hand—as, for example, in the malting of barley. At the same time motion is produced; and this motion, taking place in certain regular directions, results in what we call the growth of a young plant. In different seeds this growth takes different forms, but in all alike the central mechanical principle is the same; certain cells are raised visibly above the surface of the earth, and the motive-power which so raised them is the energy set free by the combination of oxygen with their starches and albumens. Of course, here, too, carbonic acid and water are the final products of the slow combustion. The whole process is closely akin to the hatching of an egg into a living chicken. But, as soon as the young plant has used up all the material laid by for it by its mother, it is compelled to feed itself just as much as the chicken when it emerges from the shell. The plant does this by unfolding its leaves to the sunlight, and so begins to assimilate fresh compounds of hydrogen and carbon on its own account.

Now it makes a great deal of difference to a sprouting seed whether it is well or ill provided with such stored-up food-stuffs. Some very small seeds have hardly any provision to go on upon; and the seedlings of these, of course, must wither up and die if they do not catch the sunlight as soon as they have first unfolded their tiny leaflets; but other wiser plants have learnt by experience to lay by plenty of starches, oils, or other useful materials in their seeds; and wherever such a tendency has once faintly appeared, it has given such an advantage to the species where it occurred, that it has been increased and developed from generation to generation through natural selections. Now what such plants do for their offspring, the hyacinth, and many others like it, do for themselves. The lily family, at least in the temperate regions, seldom grows into a tree-like form; but many of them have acquired a habit which enables them to live on almost as well as trees from season to season, though their leaves die down completely with each recurring winter. If you cut open a hyacinth bulb, or, what is simpler to experiment upon, an onion, you will find that it consists of several short abortive leaves, or thick, fleshy scales. In these subterranean leaves the plant stores up the food-stuffs elaborated by its green portions during the summer; and there they lie the whole winter through, ready to send up a flowering stem early in the succeeding spring. The material in the old bulb is used up in thus producing leaves and blossoms at the beginning of the second or third season; but fresh bulbs grow out anew from its side, and in these the plant once more stores up fresh material for the succeeding year’s growth.