“I admired Fisher Ames, to begin with, and, of course, Webster. I think Wendell Phillips and Bishop Matthew Simpson, whom I heard a few times, had the greatest influence on me. I considered them wonderful, moving speakers, and I do yet. Later on, Henry Ward Beecher and Phillips Brooks attracted my admiration.”
“Did you have leisure for study and time to hear orations when you were beginning life?”
“In early years I attended the district school. From the twelfth to my eighteenth year, I worked on the farm and studied nights. For all my father’s urgings toward the bar, I always felt an inward drawing toward the ministry, because I felt that I could do more there. My father was not a member of any church, though my mother was an earnest Presbyterian. Without any prompting from my parents, I leaned toward the ministry, and finally entered it of my own accord. I was fortunate enough to find a young companion who was also studying for the ministry. We were the best of friends and helped each other a great deal. It was our custom to prepare sermons and preach them in each other’s presence. Our audience in that case, unlike that of the church, never hesitated to point out errors. The result was that some sermons ended in arguments between the audience and the preacher, as to facts involved.”
HE DID NOT PRETEND TO PIETY.
“I was graduated from the Ohio Wesleyan Seminary in debt. I had no reputation for piety, and I don’t remember that I pretended to any. I had convictions, however, and a burning desire to do something, to achieve something for the benefit of my fellowmen, and I was ready for the first opportunity.”
“Was it long in coming?”
“No, but you would not have considered it much of an opportunity. I took charge of a small church at Harrisburg, Ohio, at a salary of three hundred and twenty dollars a year. In preaching regularly I soon found it necessary to formulate some kind of a theory of life,—to strive for some definite object. I began to feel the weight of the social problem.”
ARE THE DICE OF LIFE LOADED?
“One important fact began to make itself plain, and that was that the modern young man is more or less discouraged by the growing belief that all things are falling into the hands of great corporations and trusts, and that the individual no longer has much chance. My father had been more or less of a fatalist in his view of life, and often quoted Emerson to me, to the effect that the dice of life are loaded, and fall according to a plan. My mother leaned to the doctrine of Calvin,—to predestination. I inherited a streak of the same feeling, and the conditions I observed made me feel that there was probably something in the theory. I had to battle this down and convince myself that we are what we choose to make ourselves. Then I had to set to work to counteract the discouraging view taken by the young people about me.”
“You were a Methodist, then?”