Famous leaders among men

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

"I have since nine this morning cut wood for an hour; spent an hour and more in prayer and humiliation ... written six or seven pages of a difficult part of my essay; taught in the school; thought over many things while walking; gone round two-thirds of the parish visiting and doctoring, and written all this." ...

The young curate lived in a thatched cottage, and found a remedy for his loneliness in hard work. The church services had been neglected, and the ale-houses were preferred on Sunday to the house of worship. There were no schools for the children worthy of the name, and the minister had to be teacher as well as preacher.

Finally the long silence was broken, and Kingsley wrote again to his Fanny, "I have been making a fool of myself for the last ten minutes, according to the world's notion of folly; for there have been some strolling fiddlers under the window, and I have been listening and crying like a child. Some quick music is so inexpressively mournful. It seems just like one's own feelings,—exultation and action, with the remembrance of past sorrow wailing up.... Let us never despise the wandering minstrel!... And who knows what tender thoughts his own sweet music stirs within him, though he eat in pot-houses and sleep in barns!"

Again he wrote, looking forward to the home they would some time have together, "We will hunt out all the texts in the Bible about masters and servants, to form rules upon them.... Our work must be done by praying for our people, by preaching to them, ... and by setting them an example,—an example in every look, word, and motion; in the paying of a bill, the hiring of a servant, the reproving of a child."

He carried out his Christian principles in his relations with his employees. At his death all the servants in his house had lived with him from seventeen to twenty-six years.

Early in 1844 Kingsley, then twenty-five, was married to the woman he loved, and the curate became the rector at Eversley. The house was damp, from the rain flooding the rooms on the ground floor, and the land required much drainage. But the happy husband was full of energy, and set to work to make the place habitable and attractive.

At once the young preacher established among the laborers a shoe-club, coal-club, loan-fund, and lending-library. A school for adults was held at the rectory three nights a week all through the winter; a class in music; a Sunday-school met there every Sunday morning and afternoon; and in the outlying districts weekly lectures were held at the cottages for the aged and feeble. None of the grown-up men and women among the laborers could read or write, and the minister became their devoted teacher. He taught them to love the nature he loved,—the flowers, trees, birds, and ever-changing sky. He visited the poor, the sick, and the dying, and soon became the idol of his people. He fed their minds as well as their souls; he knew, as so few really know, the all-important work which the pastor has committed to his hands. No wonder that London and England, and America finally, heard of this model preacher, and came to love him.

The year after his marriage, 1845, was saddened by the death of his brother, Lieut. Gerald Kingsley, in Torres Straits, on board Her Majesty's ship Royalist. All the officers and half the crew died of fever. His brother Herbert had died of heart-disease in 1834, when they were boys together at school.