Elijah Kellogg, the Man and His Work / Chapters from His Life and Selections from His Writings

by Unknown

Rev. Elijah Kellogg. 1796.
Father of Elijah Kellogg.
From a miniature.

It is almost superfluous to say that the man who wrote such books for boys as are the Elm Island and the Pleasant Cove series of stories was himself, when a lad, what would be called to-day an irrepressible. Without the least spice of malice or any suggestion of real harm in his nature, Elijah Kellogg was as full of mischief as a spring is of water, and it was simply impossible for parents and guardians to keep him within the bounds of Puritan propriety. It weighed not one jot with him that grave ministers and dignified elders of the church were among his forbears. It never occurred to him that because his father was a clergyman therefore he, the boy, should not go with other boys on Sunday morning to enjoy a frolic and take a swim in the waters of Back Cove, well out of sight from the parsonage windows, though of course such things on the Lord’s Day were strictly forbidden. Elijah’s proclivities were well known, and many were the family traps that were set for his ensnarement. But he had great facility for getting out of scrapes as well as getting into them. He did not, however, always escape detection. On one occasion, for example, the Sunday morning swim and games had been too fascinating for his boyish discretion, and had held him at the water until the public services for the morning at the church had closed. Elijah went home to meet his father, who had missed the boy from his proper seat in the family pew. That meeting between father and son can be more easily imagined than described, especially if the reader happens to be the child of a stern Puritan church-goer, and has himself been guilty of escapades on Sunday. To the question, “Where have you been this morning?” the boy replied without hesitation that he had been to the Methodist meeting. He heard his father preach every Sunday, and he had become a little tired of hearing one voice, and he wanted to hear what some other man had to say. Of course the next question was, “What was the preacher’s text?” Elijah was ready for this and at once gave chapter and verse and repeated the passage. But the inquisition did not stop here; he must now give some account of the sermon. This seemed a perfectly easy matter to the young culprit. He had heard a good many sermons, and he felt very sure that he could report one even though he had not listened to it at all. But here he was caught. He had never heard anything but the rigid, old-school, Calvinistic doctrines, and it never entered his head that one minister did not always preach like another. It was therefore a sound Calvinistic sermon that this young reporter put into the mouth of the Methodist minister. He was soon brought up short with the paternal remark: “Elijah, stop right there. Now I know you are lying. No Methodist minister ever preached like that. Your whole story is false. You have spent your morning down by the water.”

When Elijah was some ten or eleven years old he was taken to Gorham, and spent some months in the home of Mrs. Lothrop Lewis. Mrs. Lewis had a young daughter whom she wished put into a Portland school, and an exchange of children was made with the Kelloggs, they taking the girl into their home and Mrs. Lewis taking the boy into hers. This exchange was in many respects a grateful one to the boy. The country was the place for him. There was more freedom there, more room and more chance for fun than in town. Perhaps, too, the fact that his father was nine miles away had its alleviations, for the presence of a father, however dearly he was loved, was a damper on the spirit of prankishness. While with Mrs. Lewis, Elijah certainly made mischief for everybody, but at the same time he made friends of everybody, for none could help loving the bright and lively fellow. In due time the boy went back to Portland. But the city was no place for a lad like him. He chafed under its restraints, and cared but little for its schools. He was like a sea-gull shut up in a cage. As the imprisoned gull pines for the freedom of wind and wave so did the heart of Elijah Kellogg long for the free winds and the rolling waters and the ships that went sailing away to distant ports. It was a longing that could not be suppressed, and no one can really blame him that before he was thirteen years old he had found his way on board a ship and become a sailor in downright earnest. I am sure that the boys who read his books are not sorry that the hand that wrote those stories gained some of its cunning by pulling ropes, furling and unfurling sails, taking his trick at the wheel, and sharing actively in whatever pertained to the handling and management of vessels. He loved the sea, and was fascinated by the strange sights and sounds of foreign countries. He was a keen observer for a boy just entering his teens, and he gained much valuable knowledge as he wandered round the world borne along by the wings of a ship. But in his roving he never for one moment forgot his home. His heart was warm and true to the friends who were there. Letters written to his father from different quarters of the world are now in existence, and they bear full testimony to his ardent affection for home and friends. His love for friends was perhaps the strongest element of his nature, even stronger than his love of adventure, and in due time that love brought him back from his travels no longer to sail the seas except in small boats near the shore. In the story of “Charlie Bell,” Mr. Kellogg (unconsciously, no doubt) has given us the picture of a boy’s nature and disposition very much like his own.

After returning from sea Elijah found Portland and Portland ways no more congenial to him than they had been before he went away, and again he left home and went to Gorham to try life among his McLellan relatives. He lived for a time in the family of Major Warren on a farm some two miles out of the village, matching his own strength of muscle with that of the regular farm-hands. He was not there a great while, however. Rev. Mr. Kellogg came out from Portland and interviewed Mr. Alexander McLellan, a near relative of his own wife, and the result of that interview was that Elijah was, after the fashion of the time, indentured as an apprentice to Mr. McLellan to do general work on the place for the period of one year. The purpose of this indenture, however, was rather to restrain and hold him in one stated place than to make a servant of him, for he became at once a true member of the family “in good and regular standing.” He took his position and did his share of the work on the place in a faithful and orderly manner. His experience on the ship had been of great benefit to him. He had there learned the lessons of obedience and of industry,—lessons absolutely essential for every boy to learn if he would ever arrive at a worthy maturity. Now, instead of blocks and ropes and belaying pins, his tools were the plough, the hoe, the scythe, and the axe, and while using these he could almost fancy himself a pioneer. All this was a very wholesome kind of life and a right life in its way. Still it was no proper life for such a young man as by this time Elijah Kellogg had become. All his friends seemed to feel the incongruity of it, and the truth of this began to dawn upon himself, also. He began to feel, and to feel very strongly, that this sort of life was not up to his own level. The bird is for a life higher than the ground, and in like manner he was for something higher than the farm. There was a real genius in the soul of this boy that was reaching up toward intellectual exercises. Decks of ships, fields of corn, loads of lumber, were all good, but for him there was something better. The play of intellect appealed to him now more than the play of muscle did. All the associations in the family where he lived and those throughout the village were such as to encourage and foster this new ambition. This new feeling, this new ideal which was fast taking possession of his mind, was only an indication that the doors of boyhood were closing and the doors of manhood were beginning to open. He was gradually coming to understand himself and to have a dawning perception of some God-given powers, which, if they were properly trained, might result in the accomplishment of fine things. This vision of what he might sometime perform, if he would, rose to the front, and for the time assumed the leadership of his life. He was as obedient to this vision as Saint Paul was obedient to the vision he had near the city of Damascus, or as Abraham Lincoln was obedient to those dreams and visions that he had while he was managing the flatboat on the great river. The McLellan family, where he was living, were heartily in sympathy with this new development. From oldest to youngest they all felt that it was not a proper thing that this young man who was so gifted and who showed so many marks of a true genius should spend his energies on the farm and in the shop. There is iron for the place of iron and steel for the place of steel and silver for that of silver. This was a piece of silver, and he ought to take his proper place. It is needless to say how much this change of aim on the part of Elijah gladdened the heart of his own father. It was indeed a day of general thanksgiving when this young man put himself in the way of a higher intellectual development and entered Gorham Academy as one of its students. This was one of the best academies in the country at that day. Its presiding genius was Master Nason who was known far and wide, not only as one who could keep rude boys in subjection to school rules by a liberal use of the birch, but as one who possessed faculty and power to stir the minds of pupils and impart to them rich stores of knowledge. New England has seen few instructors equal to Master Nason. The names of boys whom, in the old Academy at Gorham, he fitted for college, have in several instances become known all over the country, and some are known round the world. The Academy is proud of its roll of graduates, and those who studied under Mr. Nason have always been proud of their teacher.

Young Kellogg now put himself squarely down to hard work. He was older than are most boys when they take up the higher branches of study and begin to point their way definitely toward college, and he studied and worked in the Academy like one who is trying to make up for lost time. Such an intensity of application to books as was his at this time would have broken down many students; but Kellogg had a rare stock of good health and physical strength. He could well stand the strain of hard study. He had a well-knit frame. He never forgot how much of his own power of endurance he derived from his sturdy habits of toil in field and forest. He never forgot what a good physical basis for intellectual work manual labor gives one. In one of the college boys of his creation in the Whispering Pine series of books—Henry Morton—he shows the close connection between that young man’s hoe and axe and his leadership of the college class. When Mr. Kellogg did this, he knew very well what he was talking about. Seventy years ago these things largely took the place of the athletic field of our time, and they filled that place very well, too. An old fogy may perhaps be pardoned for saying that in spite of all the excitement and glory of base-ball and foot-ball and running and leaping and boating, still the oil of hoe handle has its virtues as a medicine for students.

The life of young Kellogg shows distinctly two points of turning. The first one was when he wakened to the consciousness of his mental powers; when he realized something of what he was and determined that he would live on the high level of his intellectual self. A young horse that has in him the elements of speed to win a race on the track is trained for the track. The horse of great weight is put into the truck team. Animals are put in training, according to what they are. When Kellogg realized something of his own intellectual power, then he put himself in training for an intellectual life. He therefore went into the Academy that he might fit for college. After he had begun work in the Academy there came to him another consideration, and he asked the question: “Is a life of mere scholarship the highest and best one of which I am capable?” He felt surely that he ought to live up to the level of his mind, but he began to feel that there was some power in himself superior to that of brains and that that higher power should be developed and his own life should be devoted to that which was supreme. He felt strongly that he should not allow the spiritual element of his nature to lie dormant or go to waste. The diamond that is not ground on the wheel is just as hard as the one that is ground, but it does not sparkle and flash like the one on which the lapidary has spent his skill. The uncut diamond is like the man who stops in the classical school and does not care for the infinitely finer work that religion does for him. Mr. Kellogg felt that it was not enough for him to have power. The power that was in him should be dedicated to the divinest ends. It should be religiously dedicated and consecrated. This was the second turning of his life, and when it was made he had become an earnest and devoted Christian. He understood Christianity to mean that he should employ the faculties and powers of his own nature in helping other people to lead better and more wholesome lives. Christianity meant more than self-culture; it meant self-giving. If there was in himself (as there certainly was) a large element of fun, this was by no means to be suppressed or sent into eclipse. Religion would not maim him that way any more than religion would clip the wings of a robin and make a mole of the bird. But religion would take that spirit of fun and cause it to play and shine and work for the production of purer thinking and cleaner living and higher aiming among all young people.

It was in obedience to this new spirit that Elijah went to work at once outside of the Academy as well as in it, and he then started some streams of religious influence that have by no means ceased running even to this day. Among the things he did at this period was to go into a certain neighborhood not many miles from Gorham and start a Sunday-school. It seems easy enough to say that the young man went into a certain place and organized a Sunday-school, but from all accounts it was by no means an easy or even a safe thing for that young man to do. Three score and odd years ago—long before the days of Neal Dow and the Maine Law—there were certain regions here and there in the State where those people who were ignorant and given to drink and other forms of vice were sure to congregate like birds of ill omen, and there would be a neighborhood from which respectable people would keep away. Such a community was a multiplied Ishmael whose hand was against every man and every man’s hand against it. On one of these disreputable districts Elijah’s attention became fixed. With two or three of the people who lived there he had in some way become acquainted, and he “felt a call” to preach in that place. But even Elijah Kellogg, young, brave, and stout-hearted as he was, shrank from going there alone with an invitation to a Sunday-school to be sent abroad among that class of folk. He feared what might come from such a movement, and wished for a companion to share his fortunes. He appealed to a young friend, George L. Prentiss, afterward for many years an honored professor in Union Theological Seminary in New York, to go with him. But the response of Prentiss to this request was not favorable. “No, Elijah,” was his word,“I don’t dare to go down there. They will kill us if we do.” Then after a moment’s pause, “I’ll tell you what I will do. If you go down there and start a Sunday-school and don’t get killed, I’ll come in later and help you.” But Elijah had set his heart on doing the bit of work, and was not to be scared out of it. He started on his mission alone, and I doubt if Judson on his way to India, or Livingstone going to Africa, did a more heroic thing than that. He did start a Sunday-school, and he did get the people interested in both himself and his school, and through his influence the community was transformed, and to-day the descendants of those people are an intelligent, God-fearing, church-going, high-minded class of citizens, and they are such because of Mr. Kellogg. He never forgot them, and they never forgot him. The writer of this article was present in company with Mr. Kellogg at the fiftieth anniversary of the inauguration of that school. The season was mid-summer. The day was Sunday. The place was the church. The audience was everybody who lived in the district, supplemented by a large number who had driven thither from Portland, Westbrook, Gorham, Scarboro, and Saco. The larger share of those who had gathered were not able to get inside the church, but they crowded as close to the wide open windows as possible and heard what they could. After brief introductory exercises, Mr. Kellogg preached a most beautiful and touching sermon of some twenty minutes’ length. Then the Bible was closed, and a period of story-telling began. There were present some four or five persons who remembered the “first day of school” fifty years before. They all talked. Reminiscences were called up, old scenes revived, old stories told, old experiences related, and the old time was contrasted with the new. It was all of it immensely funny. Sometimes it was crying, but a good deal more it was laughing. My own feeling at the moment was that it was fortunate the windows were open, for otherwise the house must have burst. I do not think there ever was another church than that since churches were built where was heard so much laughter and manifested so much fun and wit on Sunday.

Mr. Kellogg got through with the Academy, and entered Bowdoin College in 1836. It is worthy of note that in all his long life he never shuffled off the boy. It was not a mere memory on his part that he once was a boy. The genuine boy was never a memory with him, but was always a present reality. In one sense he was as young at eighty as he was at eighteen. Boys were his mates always. There are men who, like Oliver Wendell Holmes, never grow old, and Mr. Kellogg was one of them. To the very last his lips would smile and his eyes would twinkle as he recalled some prank of his boyhood or told tales of those who had been his companions on the ship and on the farm and in the school. He never forgot a friend, and he certainly never forgot a funny or laughable incident. His own perennial boyhood has cheered and made more noble an almost numberless band of young lives throughout the country, and may the time be long before the young people of the land shall cease to read his wholesome books.