LAST DAYS IN HARPSWELL
AS SEEN IN LETTERS AND JOURNAL
Wilmot Brookings Mitchell
Mr. Kellogg accepted the call to the Mariners’ Church in 1854, not because he had tired of his Harpswell farm or pastorate. They were as dear to him as ever. But fitted by nature and by experience to work among sailors, he saw in the Boston pastorate increased opportunities for doing good. Doubtless, too, financial considerations had their weight in this decision; for he had been unable to pay for his farm, and he hoped from the larger salary he would receive at the Mariners’ Church to save money enough to cancel that debt. While he was in Boston, he did not sever his connection with his Harpswell parish. Each summer he spent some time on his farm and preached a Sunday or two at the church. And now and then these people would see him in the winter, when some special errand of love or of business called him hither. At such times they were reminded that the city was not spoiling their minister, but that he was the same unique, unselfish, fearless man.
On one November, for example, he appeared at “Uncle” William Alexander’s with two sailors. These men, who had been dissipated, he had persuaded to sign the pledge. He feared, however, that if they went off to sea at once, they would forget their good resolutions and fall back into their old ways of drinking. They tried to get work in Boston and failed. At length they said if they only had a boat, they could fish for a living. Mr. Kellogg thought of his own twenty-five-foot boat, and at once they set out for Harpswell to get it. The morning after their arrival a northeast wind was blowing a gale, kicking up a rough sea. Mr. Kellogg doubted the feasibility of starting for Boston in such a gale. Whereupon the sailors questioned his courage! They did not know their man. “Don’t dare to, eh? We’ll see who dares.” Quickly making ready, he set out in his little boat, while his old neighbors, knowing his absence of caution or of fear, prophesied disaster. By the time the boat was off Cape Elizabeth, the old sailors were begging their captain to make harbor. But no; they must see who dared! When, cold and drenched, they reached Gloucester that evening, they had fully decided never to stump the sailor-preacher again.
From 1865, when he resigned as acting pastor of the Mariners’ Church, until 1882 Mr. Kellogg continued to reside in Boston, busily engaged in writing his books and in preaching. During these years he supplied pulpits at Wellesley, Massachusetts (1867), Cumberland Mills, Maine (1869), Portland, Maine (1870), and Pigeon Cove, Massachusetts (1874-1875). To the Warren Church at Cumberland Mills, the Second Parish Church at Portland, and the Congregational Church at New Bedford he received calls; all of which he declined.
In 1882 Mr. Kellogg came back to Harpswell to live for the rest of his life. He had worked hard in Boston and had made there many firm friends, but a large city was not the place for one who loved the smell of earth as well as he. He had often told his Harpswell friends that if he could consult only his own wishes, he would rather pass a winter in a brush camp built on the lee side of William Alexander’s stone wall than return to Boston. Like many another, “he found himself hungry to throw aside the tame and trite forms of existence and to penetrate the harsh, true, simple things behind. His imagination and his heart turned towards the primitive, indispensable labors on which society rests,—the life of the husbandman, the laborer, the smith, the woodman, the builder; he dreamed the old enchanted dream of living with nature.”
Though glad to return, Mr. Kellogg came back to his first parish a poor man. His books had made his name known throughout the United States, but fame and the consciousness of having done much good were his only remaining proceeds from years of writing. By the fire of 1872, and the consequent failure of his publishers, he had lost money that he could ill afford to lose. Pressed for funds, he had even been obliged to sell all his copyrights, with one exception—that of “Good Old Times.” He came back to his Harpswell home in debt, his farm run down, blindness threatening his wife, deafness and old age beginning to creep upon him. But his old grit and courage were still left; and he found his Harpswell friends unchanged, they and their children eager to welcome him back and to help him in every way they could. As General Chamberlain so well shows in the next chapter, he went to work with a will to do his best,—farming, preaching, going wherever duty called on errands of charity and consolation.
These were undoubtedly hard years. His struggle with debt was often embarrassing; his growing deafness caused him anxiety; and in 1890 the death of her who had been his companion and counsellor for more than forty years bowed him in grief. His son and daughter besought him to come and make his home with them. But that was not his way. He must stay in Harpswell and do his work.