The Minute Man on the Frontier

by William George Puddefoot

I was much perplexed about one place. Our minister was the first on the ground; the people voted for a union church and for him; yet two other churches organized. When I visited the place I found our brother with a parsonage half built. There was nothing but the bare studding inside—no plaster, winter coming on, and his little ones coughing with colds caught by the exposure. Then, to crown all, the house was found to be on the wrong lot, which brought the building to a stand-still; after that two other denominations rushed up a building—one only a shell, but dedicated. There was only a handful of hearers, and our minister preached more than two-thirds of the sermons there. We had the best people with us; and yet it was plain to me there was one church more than there ought to be. Had we not been first there, and things as they were, I should say, "Arise, let us go hence!"

I am constantly asked, "When are you going to send us a man?" and we have places where there is only one minister for two villages. Ah, if the pastors hanging around our city centres only knew how the people flock to hear the Word in these new places, surely they would say, "Here am I, Lord; send me."

In one place I went to, there were two women who walked eight miles to hear the sermon. One of them was the only praying person for miles around, and for some years back the only one to conduct a funeral service, to pray, or to preach. At this place there was an old lady who came nine miles every Sunday on foot, and sometimes carried her grandchild. Think of that, you city girls in French-heeled boots! In another place of two hundred people, where there was no church, a little babe died. The mother was a Swede, only a little while out. Would you believe it, there was not a man at the funeral! Women nailed the little coffin-lid down, and women prayed, read the Scriptures, and lowered the little babe into a grave half filled with water.

In another new settlement I visited, they were so far from railway or stage that they buried a man in a coffin made of two flour-barrels, and performed the funeral rites as best they could. But these people have great hearts—bigger than their houses. When a brother minister was trying to find a place for me to stay, a man said, "Let him come with me."—"Have you room?"—"Lots of it." So I went. In a little clearing I found the most primitive log house I ever saw; but the "lots of room"—that was out-of-doors. The man and his wife told me that when they came there it was raining; so they stripped some bark from a tree, and, leaning it against a fallen log, they crept underneath; and for three days it rained. The fourth being Sunday and a fine day, the settlers mocked them for not building. On Monday and Tuesday it rained again; "but we were real comfortable; weren't we, Mary?" said the man.

Then he and Mary built the house together. There was only one room and one bed; but they took off the top of the bedding, and put one tick on the floor. "That's for me," I thought. Not a bit of it. I was to have the place of honor. So, hanging some sheets on strings stretched across the room, they soon partitioned off the bed for me. Then, after reading and prayers, the man said, "Now, any time you are ready for bed, Elder, you can take that bed." But how to get there? First I went out and gave them a chance; but they did not take it. I thought perhaps they would go and give me a chance; but they did not. So I began to disrobe. I took a long while taking off coat and vest; then slowly came the collar and neck-tie; next came off my boots and stockings. Now, I thought, they will surely step out; but no; they talked and laughed away like two children. Slipping behind the sheet, and fancying I was in another room, I balanced myself as well as I could on the feather bed, and managed to get off the rest of my clothes, got into bed, and lay looking at the moonbeams as they glanced through the chinks of the logs, and thinking of New England with her silk bed-quilts and bath-rooms, till, as I mused, sleep weighed down my drowsy eyelids, and New England mansions and Michigan log huts melted into one, and they both became one Bethel with the angels of God ascending and descending.

I visited Lake Linden, and found the people ready for organization as soon as they could have a pastor. A brother had just left for this field; and I thought it safe to say that we should have a self-supporting church there at no distant day. We did. While staying there a man came after me to baptize two children. I went, and one would think he had been suddenly transferred to Germany. Great preparations had been made. I noticed a large bowl of lemons cut up, and the old ladies in their best attire. I was requested to give them a baptismal certificate, and to sign the witnesses' names, as they said that was done by the minister. It was a delicate way of telling me they could not write.

But that was not the strangest part of the ceremony. The father and mother stood behind the witnesses, the latter being two men and two women. The women held the children until all was ready, then handed them to the men, who held them during baptism. I preached to them a short sermon of five minutes or so, and then, when I had written the certificate, each witness deposited a dollar on the table. The father was about to hand me five dollars; but I made him give four of it to the children. They would not take a cent of the witness money; that would be "bad luck," they said. It was a new experience to me. The people had no Bible in the house. As I had left mine at the village, I had to use what I had in my heart. Here again, I thought, what work for a colporteur?

A great work might be done by one or two men who could travel all the time with Bibles and other good books, and preach where the opportunity offered. We might not see the result, but it would be just as certain; and though the people might not stay here, they will be somewhere. There are many places where neither railway, steamboat, nor stage ever reaches, and yet the people have made and are making homes there. They went up the rivers on rafts, and worked their way through the wilderness piecemeal. Missionary Thurston carried his parlor stove slung on a pole between himself and another man.

At one place, while preaching, I noticed a man fairly glaring at me. At first I thought he was an intensely earnest Christian, but he "had a devil." After meeting he told the people, "If that man talks like that to-night, I'll answer him right out in meeting." He came, and behaved himself. Some time after he had to leave town on account of a stabbing-affray, and I lost sight of him for a while. Long after I was in another place, one hundred and twenty miles away; and while talking with our missionary there, I saw a man coming from a choir-practice. I said, "Is that their minister?"

"No; he is our new school-teacher."