Revisiting the Earth

by James Langdon Hill

Forty years were long enough to eliminate all the Israelites of one generation. It appears that in that length of time all the adults of one generation that had dwelt in Egypt were gone except two. Reckoning things then on a scriptural basis and assuming that all who lived forty years ago are gone, except two, a grave responsibility obviously rests upon me, as I have seen more than a generation rise and wane, to let the people of the present age or period in a definite locality know how things look in that lifetime just preceding their own. I remember when we had preaching services Sunday afternoon in all our churches at three o'clock and by count in our church the attendance often differed only by two, forenoon, afternoon and evening. I remember when Christmas and Easter observances were introduced into Sabbath services, it having been customary from Puritan days in New England to make, on Sunday, next to no reference to them excepting in Catholic and Episcopal Churches.

Lost Facts of Local History

Unless one sticks a stake, at some definite point, say less than a generation ago, he is not likely to remember that powerful electric lights have not always been, like the images of the Israelites, on every high hill and under every green tree. It is hard for me to realize that at my table I burned the midnight oil in Lynn, particularly when the next morning was Sunday, and my library during my ministry of twelve years was never decorated with anything but a student lamp. The city was in the kerosene oil period. The front hall lamp used to drip petroleum upon the carpet on the stairs, and I was contributing my full share to give John D. Rockefeller a start in his oil-refining business, a start indeed that I hear he has not been slow to appreciate and improve. After reaching the big hall down town, as the lights supplied to Professor Churchill, the renowned elocutionist from Andover, seemed dim, I left the hall and went out and bought a student lamp and had a wick put in and filled it with kerosene, which if now brought into a blazing auditorium in these enlightened days would be like holding a candle to the sun. In a more significant way the city has turned from Darkness into light.

Publicity is Light

We stood in relation to the gambling evil about where the country now stands in relation to drunkeries, whose death warrant we have lived to see signed. The hand-writing was written on the wall touching lotteries but they were winked at when conducted only for sweet charity's sake even after the death-knell had sounded. In a church fair a fine young acquaintance got a pony for fifty cents as he held the lucky ticket. Unless a person has felt it or witnessed it, he little conceives the fury of the passion to which gambling appeals. When fired up, there are men who would cross Sheol on a rotten pole to make money in a game of chance. It starts an appetite that feeding does not satisfy. It seems to rage by the fuel it feeds on. These lotteries, like the plague of frogs, were everywhere. For constructing the earliest building of Williams College, that is in particular the mother of missionaries, a lottery was granted and $3500 were raised.[2] It goes with the blood in Massachusetts, for when the State was hard up she used to spring a lottery, in one of which Harvard College drew four tickets, and clergymen seemed to have been particularly successful, and teachers for purposes of publicity were likeliest of all to profit by the turn of the wheel, till at length the whole gambling fabric suddenly, like the walls of Jericho, fell down flat.

Cupid All Smiling

Here was purely and distinctively an American City. The people were homogeneous in language, modes of thought and type of character. She had the specific New England, or Yankee, cast of mind. For her factories, forces were drawn from the hillsides, particularly of New Hampshire. There were elderly people, as we shall see, but the prevailing type was youthful, and the young lady contingent was attractive and had a good deal of the quality which we call charm. I wrote a column for a local paper, out of my experience on "Tying the Silken Knot," and Dr. Henry Hinckley, referring to my contribution and using my title, went beyond even my testimony, affirming that the City of Shoes furnished more marriageable material to the square rod than any other city of its size, and he seemed to attribute the fact, not merely to the incident that they met here under pleasant auspices, but that they heard in churches that marriage is honorable and that it is not good for man to be alone.

A couple would come to the parsonage, and if the associate pastor went to the door the young man would say, "Where's your foreman?" meaning her husband. As the lady of the Manse was entirely supported by her wedding fees and had money to lend, and as I married more people than could be seated in my church, if they should come together at one time, I have often deeply regretted that in the hurry and toil of removal, it did not occur to me to invite them all to attend a special service to be arranged for them, with specific hymns, and a practical address. I think I can claim for the couples that I made happy, the banner low record in the small percentage of divorces.

The Royal Families

The house of one parishioner was built in the century before the last, while General Washington was alive and on the earth, and was rich in history and tradition. A call upon the family was a lesson out of Colonial Records, the paper on the wall like that at Mt. Vernon, being of the same period.