The Minute Man of the Frontier Part 3

IV.

THE IMMIGRANT ON THE FRONTIER.

Whatever may be the effect of immigrants in cities, the immigrant on the frontier has sent the country ahead a quarter of a century. In the first place, the pioneer immigrants are in the prime of life. They generally bring enough money to make a start. They need houses, tools, horses, and all the things needful to start. They seldom fail. Used to privation at home, they make very hardy settlers. In some States they comprise seventy per cent of the voters; and the getting of a piece of land they can call their own makes good citizens of them sooner than any other way. You can't make a dangerous kind of a man of him who can call a quarter section his own.

In order to show how the pioneer settler from Europe prospers, let us begin with him at the wharf. There floats the leviathan that has a whole villageful on board,--over twelve hundred. They are on deck; and a motley crowd they appear, for they are from all lands. Here is a girl dressed in the picturesque costume of Western Europe, and here a man with a great peak to his hat, an enormous long coat, his beard half way down his breast, a china pipe as big as a small teacup in his mouth, his wife like a bundle of meal tied in the middle, with immense earrings, and an old colored handkerchief over her head. Behind them a half-dozen little ones with towheads of hair, looking as s.h.a.ggy as Yorks.h.i.+re terriers, blue-eyed and healthy. They are carrying copper coffee-pots and kettles; and away they march, eight hundred of them and more, up Broadway.

Here and there a man steps into a bakery, and comes out with a yard of bread, and breaks it up into hunks; and the little children grind it down without b.u.t.ter, with teeth that are clean from lack of meat, with all the gusto of Sunday-school children with angel-cake at a picnic. They are soon locked in the cars, and night comes on. Go inside and you will see the good mother slicing up bolognas or a Westphalia ham, and handing around slices of black bread. After supper reading of the Bible and prayers; and then the little ones are put into sack-like nightgowns, and put up in the top bunks, where they lie, watching their elders playing cards, until they fall asleep.

In the morning you go up to one of the women who is was.h.i.+ng a boy and ask, as you see the great number of children around her, whether they are all hers: she courtesies and says, "Me no spik Inglish;" but by pantomime you make her understand, and she laughingly says, "Yah, yah;" and you think of Russell's song,--

"To the West, to the West, to the land of the free, Where Mighty Missouri rolls down to the sea; Where a man is a man, if he's willing to toil, And the humblest may gather the fruits of the soil.

Where children are blessings, and he who has most, Has aid for his fortune, and riches to boast; Where the young may exult and the aged may rest-- Away, far away, to the land of the West!"

Their train is a slow one; it is side-tracked for the great fliers as they reach a single-track road.

The very cattle-trains have precedence of them. We watch their train as it reaches the great brown prairie; a little black shack or two is all you can see. The very tumble-weeds outstrip their slow-moving train; but after many weary hours they reach the end of the road, so far as it is built that day; it will go three miles farther to-morrow.

As yet there are no freight-sheds, and they camp out on the prairie.

The cold stars come out, the coyotes' sharp bark is heard in the distance, blended with the howl of the prairie wolf. Some of them dig holes in the side-hill, and put their little ones in them for the night. Tears come into the eyes of the mothers as they think of home and relatives beyond the seas.

And there we will leave them for twelve years, and then on one of our transcontinental palaces on wheels we will follow the immigrant trail.

Where they pa.s.sed black ash-swamps and marshes and scattered homes, we go through villages with public libraries; where they touched the brown prairie, we view a sea of living green; where they took five days, we go in two; where they stepped off at the end of the road, we stop at a junction whose steel rails run on to the Pacific or the Gulf of Mexico; where they made the shelter for their little ones in the ground, we find a good hotel, a city alive to the finger-tips, electric cars on the streets, an opera-house, and a high school just about to keep its commencement. On the street we notice some people that appear somewhat familiar, but we are not sure. When we spoke to them twelve years ago they said with a courtesy, "Me no spik Inglish;"

but now without a courtesy they talk in broken English. The man has lost his big beard, his clothes are well-made; the wife is no longer like a bag of meal with a string around it. No; with a daily hint from Paris, she has all the feathers the law allows.

They are making for the high schoolhouse, and we follow them. A chorus of fifty voices, with a grand piano accompaniment, is in progress as we take our seats, after which a boy stands forth and declaims his piece. We should never know him. It is one of our tow-headed youngsters from the wharf. The old father sits with tears of joy running down his wrinkled face. He can hardly believe his senses. He remembers when his grandsire was a serf under Nicholas, and it seems too good to be true. But he hears the neighing of his percherons under the little church-shed; and by a.s.sociation of ideas his fields and waving grain, his flocks, herds, and quarter section, rise before his mind's view, and he opens his eyes to see his favorite daughter step on the platform dressed in white, and great June roses drooping on her breast; and the old man's eyes sparkle as his daughter steps down amid a round of applause as she says in the very spirit of old Cromwell, "Curfew shall not ring to-night."

And this is real. It has been going on for a quarter of a century.

States with whole counties filled with Russians voting, and being the banner counties to have prohibition in the State's Const.i.tution; or, like North Dakota, with nearly seventy per cent foreign voters, driving the lottery from them when needing money sorely. Men and women who could scarcely speak the English language living to see their sons senators and governors.

All the dismal prophecies about ruin from the immigrant are disproved as one looks over Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas to-day; and instead of having a great German nation on this side of the Atlantic, as one writer predicted, we have in the great agricultural States some of our stanchest American citizens.

One of the mightiest factors in human life to-day is the language we use. Three centuries ago there were about 6,000,000 using it; to-day 125,000,000 speak the English tongue. The Duke of Argyle was once asked which was the best language. He said, "If I want to be polite I use the French, if I want to be understood I take the English, if I want to praise my Maker I take the Gaelic, my mother-tongue."

Foreigners coming here think in their own language, even though they may be able to speak in ours; gradually they come to think in English, but still they dream in their mother-tongue; at last they dream, think, and speak in the language of the land, and become h.o.m.ogeneous with the nation.

G.o.d's greatest gift to this New World is the foreigner. The thought came to me while on my way to Savannah: Why did not the discoverers of the Western Hemisphere find a higher civilization than the one they left? Why should G.o.d have kept so large a portion of the world hidden from the eyes of Europe for thousands of years? Had he not some grand design that in the fulness of time he would lead Columbus, like Abraham of old, to found a new nation?

Take your map and find those States which the stream of immigration has pa.s.sed by, and in every case you find them behind the times.

Strange how prejudice warps our vision! Jefferson said, "Would to G.o.d the Atlantic were a sea of flame;" and Was.h.i.+ngton said, "I would we were well rid of them, except Lafayette." Strange words for a man who would not have been an American had his ancestors not been immigrants.

Hamilton, the great statesman, was an immigrant. Albert Gallatin the financier, Aga.s.siz the scientist, and thousands of ill.u.s.trious names, make a strong list. One-twelfth of the land foreigners!--but one-fourth of the Union armies were foreigners too.

WHAT THEY BECOME.

When Linnaeus was under gardener, the head gardener had a flower he could not raise. He gave it to Linnaeus, who took it to the back of a pine, placed broken ice around it, and gave it a northern exposure. In a few days the king with delight asked for the name of the beautiful gem. It was the Forsaken Flower.

So there are millions of our fellow-men in Europe to-day, in a harsh environment, sickly, poor, and ready to die; but when they are transplanted, they find a new home, clothes, food, and, above all, the freedom that makes our land the very paradise for the poor of all lands. These immigrants have made the brown prairie to blossom as the rose, the wilderness to become like the garden of the Lord. They drove the Louisiana Lottery out of North Dakota; they voted for temperance in South Dakota. Their hearts beat warm for their native land, but they are true to their adopted country.

The mixture of the nationalities is the very thing that makes us foremost: it has produced a new type; and if we but do our duty we shall be the arbitrator of the nations. There is no way to lift Europe so fast as to evangelize her sons who come to us. Sixteen per cent go home to live, and these can never forget what they saw here; did we but teach them aright, they would be an army of foreign missionaries, fifty thousand strong, preachers of the gospel to the people in the tongue in which they were born, and thus creating a perpetual Pentecost.

One other great fact needs pointing out. The discovery of this land was by the Latin races; and yet they failed to hold it, lacking the genius for colonization for which the Anglo-Saxon is pre-eminent.

During the last fifty years, over 13,000,000 immigrants have come to this land. Great Britain sent nearly 6,000,000; Germany, 4,500,000; Norway and Sweden, 939,603; Denmark, 144,858; the Netherlands, 99,522; Belgium, 42,102. Here we have over 11,000,000 Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, and Scandinavian, of the 13,000,000, and almost half of them speaking English, while Italy, Russia, Poland, France, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, Spain, Portugal, and all other nations sent but 1,708,897 out of the 13,296,157. And we must note also that nearly all of the Latin races came within the last few years; so that we were a nation 50,000,000 strong before many of them came, and eighty per cent of all our people speak English.

No nation ever drove out its people without loss, as witness Spain and France with their Protestants and Huguenots. England took them, and they helped to make her great. Often when a nation has actually been conquered in war, she in turn conquers her victors and is made better.

Germany conquered Rome; but Roman laws and Roman government conquered the invaders, and made Germany the mother of modern civilization.

Nors.e.m.e.n, Danes, and Saxons invaded Britain, and drenched her fields in blood. The Normans brought their beef, their mutton, and their pork, but the English kept their oxen, sheep, and swine; and eventually from the Norman, Dane, and others came the Anglo-Saxon race. England has four times as much inventive genius as the rest of Europe, but America has ten times as much as England; and why? Because added to the English colony is all Europe; and in our own people we have the practical Englishman, the thoughtful German, the metaphysical Scot, the quick-witted Irishman, the sprightly Gaul, the musical and artistic Italian, the hardy Swiss, the frugal and clear-headed Swede and Norwegian; and all united make the type which the world will yet come to, the manhood which will recognize the inherent n.o.bility of the race, its brotherhood, and the great G.o.d, Father.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A TYPICAL SOD HOUSE.

_Page 61._]

V.

THE ODDITIES OF THE FRONTIER.

As the waves of the sea cast up all sorts of things, so the waves of humanity that flood the frontiers cast up all sorts and conditions of men. To go into a sod house and find a theological library belonging to the early part of the century, or to hear coming up through the ground a composition by Beethoven played on a piano, is a startling experience; so are some of the questions and a.s.sertions that one hears in a frontier Sunday-school.

I remember one old man who was in cla.s.s when we were studying that part of the Acts of the Apostles where the disciples said, "It is not reason that we should leave the word of G.o.d and serve tables;" the old fellow said, "I have an idee that them tables was the two tables of stone that Moses brought down from the Mount." This was a stunner. I thought afterwards that the old man had an idea that they were to leave the law and stick to the gospel; but still it did not seem right to pick out men to serve the tables if that was what he meant.

Another would be satisfied with nothing but the literal meaning of everything he read. So when I explained to the cla.s.s the modern idea of the Red Sea being driven by the wind so as to leave a road for light-laden people to walk over, the old man was up in arms at once, "Why," said he, "it says a wall;" and no doubt the pictures which he had seen in his youth, of the children of Israel walking with bottle-green waters straight as two walls on either side, and the reading of a celebrated preacher's sermon, where it spoke of the fish coming up to peep at the little children, as if they would like a nibble, confirmed the old man in his views.

In vain I told him that a wind that would hold up such a vast ma.s.s of water would blow the Israelites out of their clothes; still he stuck to his position until I asked him whether, when Nabal's men told him that David's men had been a wall unto them day and night, he thought that David had plastered them together?

He said, "No; it meant a defence," and apparently gave in, but muttered, "It says a wall, anyway."

Another man told me that if a man cut himself in the woods, there was a verse in the Bible so that if he turned to it and put his finger upon it, the blood would at once stop running; and he wanted to know whether I knew where to find it. I told him I was very sorry that I did not know.

On the other hand, you may find a man with a Greek Testament, and well up in Greek, making his comments from the original. Here a Barclay & Perkins brewer from London, who has plunged into the woods to get rid of drink, and succeeded. Here a family, one of whom was Dr. Norman McLeod's nurse, and a playmate of the family. Another informs you he preached twenty-five years, "till his voice give out;" and here a Hard-sh.e.l.l Baptist, who "don't believe in Sunday-schools nohow."

The minute-man at the front needs to be ready for all emergencies, for he meets all kinds of original characters. One of the most successful men I ever heard of was the famous Father Paxton described by the Rev.

E. P. Powell in the _Christian Register_ in a very bright article from which I quote:--

When "blue," I always went down to the Depository, and begged him for a few stories. He rode a splendid horse, that was in full sympathy with his master, and bore the significant name, Robert Raikes. There were few houses except those built of logs, and these were not prejudiced against good ventilation. He laughed long and loud at his experience in one of these, which he reached one night in a furious storm. He was welcomed to the best, which was a single rude bed, while the family slept on the floor, behind a sheet hung up for that special occasion. Paxton was so thoroughly tired that he slept sound as soon as he touched the bed; but he half waked in the morning with the barking of a dog. The master of the house was shaking him, and halloing, "I say, stranger! pull in your feet or Bowser 'll bite 'em!" Stretching out in the night, he had run his feet through the side of the house, between the logs; and the dog outside had gone for them. The time he took in pulling in was so trifling as to be hardly worth the mention.

Those who know little of frontier life can have no idea of the difficulties to be met by a man with Paxton's mission.

There was one district, not far from Cairo, that was ruled by a pious old fellow who swore that no Sunday-school should be set up "in that kidntry." Some one cautioned "the missioner" to keep away from M----, who would surely be as good as his word and thrash him. M---- was a Hard-sh.e.l.l Baptist, and owned the church, which was built also of logs.

He lived in the only whitewashed log house of the region.

Instead of avoiding him, Father Paxton rode up one day, and jumping off Robert Raikes, hitched him to the rail that always was to be found before a Southern house. Old M---- sat straddle of a log in front of his door eating peaches from a basket. Paxton straddled the log on the other side of the basket, and helped himself. This was Southern style. You were welcome to help yourself so long as there was anything to eat. The conversation that started up was rather wary, for M---- suspected who his visitor was. Pretty soon Paxton noticed some hogs in a lot near them. "Mighty fine lot of hogs, stranger!"

"And you mought say well they be a mighty fine lot of hogs."

"How many mought there be, stranger?"

"There mought be sixty-two hogs in that there lot, and they can't be beat."

Just then a little boy went up and grabbed a peach.