30. A SORROW
Father and I were the only ones at the little farm that spring. He had been unable to sell the place, but was still hopeful that we would eventually get a fair price. Although we missed the bustle around the house of earlier days, it was good for the two of us to be together. We enjoyed watching the new beauty of spring come to the valley, and we were easy companions, both at work and when we relaxed.
When the trout fishing season opened on May 1, we decided to try our luck in a brushy brook called Desolate. It was a warm sunny day, and anglers’ luck was with me, for I caught the largest fish, a beauty weighing well over a pound. However, Father soon took the lead and caught the most fish. As we were returning home with our catch, and had reached the very place where I had prayed so fervently when Mother was ill, a neighbor came along the road to meet us. He brought the sad news that Mother was dead.
Some people might call it mere coincidence that this communication was given us at this particular bend of the road, but to me it seemed as though an unseen force was saying, “Seven years ago, when you prayed here, your prayer was heard and answered. Now your mother’s work is done, and she has gone to the Better Land.”
When Father and I reached Glens Falls we learned that on her last day, toward evening, Mother had asked one of my sisters to go to the post office to get my weekly letter, which she always eagerly awaited. But the post office was closed, so she said, “I’ll get it in the morning.” That night she died quietly in her sleep.
After the funeral, Father and I went back to the little weather-beaten house where Mother had come as a young bride forty-three years before. As I looked around me, I found it almost impossible to adjust to the thought that she had gone forever from this earth. It did not seem reasonable that the house in which she had lived, the roses which she had set out by the stone wall in the front yard, and the clump of lilacs up on the hill should outlast the one who had cared for them for so many years. Even the ledge of rocks, the large trees and the surrounding mountains seemed to taunt me with the truth that they were more enduring than the one who had loved us so tenderly and faithfully.
Of course, I remembered the divine promise about the spirit that goes to God, but my faith was put to a severe test. Did I really believe what I hoped for, and what I professed to believe? In the darkness of the night I would sometimes awake from sleep with a fear that death might be like an endless night and that the survival of my mother’s soul somewhere in the universe was a theory too good to be true. I would be so depressed that I could not lie in bed, but presently I found relief for my troubled mind. As I went to the window and looked up at the stars, their shining splendor seemed to assure me that I had all the reason in the world for believing in immortality. They gave me the same confident answer each time.
When I was a very small boy the stars had fascinated me. They did not seem to be so very far up in the sky, but only just above the roof of our house. One evening when they were shining brightly I went out back of the shed, took down Father’s long ash fishpole, and attempted to knock down a few stars. Now, twenty years later, the same kindly stars beamed down on me, and I was glad that I had not disturbed them from their moorings.
31. A CERTAIN DANGER
In our common sorrow, Father and I found comfort in the words of the Great Book. Like a faithful priest in his own home, Father never failed to read a full chapter from the Bible every morning, and another in the evening., There were other activities, too, which helped to heal us. We fished, set and tended bear traps, and found a bee tree with good honey in it.
Since the season for bear trapping was drawing to a close, and the bears had somehow avoided being caught, Father went off early one afternoon to spring his trap. When he had not returned for the trout supper that I had prepared, nor at nine o’clock when the overcast sky turned to intense darkness, I began to worry. I knew that Father had a way of reading the contours of the mountains and the familiar ground over which he had traveled so many times; but I recalled the stories of his narrow escapes from wounded bears, and knew also that he was no longer as agile as he had been, and that he was alone. It was so dark that I could not see even the dusty gray road which wound to close the house. Time and again I opened the front door so that light from our dim kerosene lamp might guide him. Under such circumstances time moved slowly, but at about eleven o’clock the sound of Father’s footsteps put an end to my fears. His exultant voice greeted me with the words, “I’ve got one.”
The prize was a large female bear which he had found dead in his trap, apparently killed by another animal. Father had flayed the bear, folded the pelt to his shoulders, and started back without incident toward the mountain pass and home. Now as he told me the story, Father realized that he had left his pistol behind him on a log near the trap. It was not until the next day, when he went back for the pistol and to reset his trap, that he realized the experience of the day before could have ended quite differently for him.
Large tracks near the trap and through the mountain pass indicated that Father had been watched and followed. Evidently the huge mate had paced angrily back and forth out of sight while Father was busily engaged in skinning the pelt from the dead bear. While black bears are generally afraid of human beings, and are quick to run off at the sound of a hunter’s footsteps, this big male apparently was not inclined to flee. Perhaps an instinctive loyalty to his mate kept him near, even though he did not have the courage to defend her. Some trappers have reported hearing a bear sob, much like a person; and Father often said that one bear which he had shot made a noise that sounded like “Oh, dear.” But in our valley there was not much sentiment for bears that killed our sheep in the darkness, and certainly not a great deal of sympathy for an old male who pretended affection for his mate at one period of the year, only to kill her cubs later on.
It seemed as though this cautious male must have followed Father’s burdened figure for quite some distance, but had never found the right moment for attack. Father later learned from some vacationers that the fearful noises of some animal had kept them awake all night. In fact, a lady from the city was so frightened by the dreadful sounds that she lost no time in leaving the cottage where she was being entertained. She was sure that the mountains were haunted.
32. CONFUSIONS AND CONVICTIONS: WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY, 1906
Until this time I had no conception of what a college was like. As I have mentioned, no one from our section of the Adirondacks had ventured forth even for a high school education, to say nothing of going to college. However, the urge to seek higher education had been growing stronger and stronger within me, and I was fortunate in receiving enthusiastic support from two clergymen, George C. Douglass and C. O. Judkins. When I mentioned to George Douglass that the financial problems seemed almost insurmountable, he told me how he had worked his way through college. He said also that his financial resources had been so limited that once when he received a letter from his mother warning him to watch out for pickpockets, he had had to borrow a postage stamp to mail his reply. C. O. Judkins, the builder of a splendid church in Glens Falls, gave me further reassurance, and even suggested two people who might be willing to lend me money for college expenses. Greatly encouraged by the advice of these two men, I decided upon Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut, reasoning in my heart that the best way to accomplish anything worthwhile is to begin doing something about it.
In September of 1906, with less than one hundred dollars in my pocket, I started for Wesleyan. Since I had had four years of Latin and three of Greek, plus a diploma from the Glens Falls Academy and another from the Regents of New York State, I was accepted as a student without examination. This was fortunate for me, for I was a rather slow learner and because of my ministerial work had never had enough time to get any translations of Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, Xenophon and Homer in accurate classical form. I felt rather shaky in these subjects and could sympathize with the student who, having heard that pure Attic Greek might be the language of heaven, wrote the lines: What to me will heaven be? What its joy? If I should flunk in Attic when a boy?
As matters turned out, I never failed to pass the periodic tests in both Latin and Greek, but it must have been evident to my instructors that I was not a star of the first magnitude in linguistics. An English professor of mine, after saying some encouraging things about one of my compositions, once remarked, “By the way, Mr. Roberts, some people spell differently from you.” My Greek and Latin professors at Wesleyan, when they saw my handling of tenses, datives and accusatives in these highly developed languages, might have been provoked to a similar criticism. I was aware, however, that my failings were not due entirely to stupidity, but were partly the fault of a system of education that did not take into consideration the unfortunate fact that self-supporting students often have little time for their studies.
During my senior year, when I had more h ours for study, I took Hebrew. I began by learning the alphabet forward and backward, and pursued vocabulary and grammar with the same thoroughness. As a result, my midyear mark in that subject was 99%. Doubtless I spelled some word a little differently.
Considering the way in which I had been brought up on the Bible it will not seem strange when I say that I experienced my greatest mental upheaval at Wesleyan in the realm of faith, especially when I began to study the subjects of biology and evolution. While the assignment of dissecting a tail-less frog for the sake of science sheds some light on why we think of these jumpers as “brother frogs,” I was not fascinated with the theory which purported that amoeba begat tadpole, which begat monkey, which begat anthropoid ape, which begat missing-link, which begat man. I had always been led to believe that God had made all things very much as they now appear, and that he had done so in a relatively short period of time. Fortunately for me, the distinguished Professor Conn, under whom I studied biology and evolution, was a devout and religious man. He held thoroughly to the evolutionary process of creation, but he also believed that this apparently slow and gradual method of natural selection was God’s way of working. It was reassuring to know that a great scholar did not try to eliminate God from the universe but, rather, saw Him working in it and through it at all times.
Our instructors were men of deep learning, always patient and inspiring, but also gifted with keen humor. Once when Professor Conn was asked at the bank whether he would like his money in new bills, the authority on germs replied, “I am not afraid of old money—bacteria can’t live on my salary.”
This same professor also revealed to us that one of the more logical places to dig for earthworms is in a spinster’s garden, for birds devour worms, cats scare the birds away, and old maids generally keep cats. At the same time my study of biology taught me to realize the worth of angleworms as soil-builders. I had known from experience their value in catching fish, but I learned that from sand and decaying vegetable matter these underground workers make humus, so essential for growing prize crops.
Because we were eager to solve the baffling problems of philosophy and religion, a group of students including myself, formed what we called a Quest Club. We met regularly to discuss such questions as the Idea of the Trinity, the Resurrection, and the cussedness of Evil. The heads of the various departments at Wesleyan often gave short talks at these meetings.
Caleb T. Winchester, our teacher of literature, suggested that we read Dr. Eleanor Rowland’s The Right to Believe. I followed the recommendation, and was richly rewarded. Dr. Rowland contends that if we want a God, We have as much right to believe in Him as others have to take sides with the “no-God.” People who think it is more intellectual to doubt God’s reality are like a man who leans over backward in an effort to stand up straight.
As a further bulwark, I recalled the teachings of the Bible, and was able to rise above all dark dreams of doubt. The Book of my parents, the starry sky above, and the joy of Christian experience all seemed to bear witness to the virtue of faith. So it was that instead of losing my faith as a result of my courses in science and philosophy, my convictions concerning the great teachings of Christianity became more firmly grounded than ever before. In short, my feelings toward those who spoke against the Bible were similar to those of Mark Twain when he was asked to buy a ticket to hear Robert Ingersoll lecture on “Some Mistakes of Moses.” The noted humorist said that he wouldn’t pay ten cents to hear Ingersoll lecture on the mistakes of Moses, but he would be willing to pay ten dollars to hear Moses lecture on the mistakes of Bob Ingersoll.
At the same time that I was broadening my horizons through the meetings of the Quest Club, I was also gaining valuable practical experience by earning money to help pay college bills. A sales manager for a publishing company trained me to go from house to house selling books. The effort was glamorized as a part of The Purity Movement, and great pains were taken to show me to the best way to get a hearing. When housewives saw my sample book and assumed a negative attitude, I was to create a friendly atmosphere by explaining that I wished to talk to them about the Self and Sex Crusade. Not surprisingly, doors were opened wide when I used this approach, and I was rewarded with many sales of What Young People, Married Couples, and Older Folks Ought to Know.
Continue reading here-->
Father and I were the only ones at the little farm that spring. He had been unable to sell the place, but was still hopeful that we would eventually get a fair price. Although we missed the bustle around the house of earlier days, it was good for the two of us to be together. We enjoyed watching the new beauty of spring come to the valley, and we were easy companions, both at work and when we relaxed.
When the trout fishing season opened on May 1, we decided to try our luck in a brushy brook called Desolate. It was a warm sunny day, and anglers’ luck was with me, for I caught the largest fish, a beauty weighing well over a pound. However, Father soon took the lead and caught the most fish. As we were returning home with our catch, and had reached the very place where I had prayed so fervently when Mother was ill, a neighbor came along the road to meet us. He brought the sad news that Mother was dead.
Some people might call it mere coincidence that this communication was given us at this particular bend of the road, but to me it seemed as though an unseen force was saying, “Seven years ago, when you prayed here, your prayer was heard and answered. Now your mother’s work is done, and she has gone to the Better Land.”
When Father and I reached Glens Falls we learned that on her last day, toward evening, Mother had asked one of my sisters to go to the post office to get my weekly letter, which she always eagerly awaited. But the post office was closed, so she said, “I’ll get it in the morning.” That night she died quietly in her sleep.
After the funeral, Father and I went back to the little weather-beaten house where Mother had come as a young bride forty-three years before. As I looked around me, I found it almost impossible to adjust to the thought that she had gone forever from this earth. It did not seem reasonable that the house in which she had lived, the roses which she had set out by the stone wall in the front yard, and the clump of lilacs up on the hill should outlast the one who had cared for them for so many years. Even the ledge of rocks, the large trees and the surrounding mountains seemed to taunt me with the truth that they were more enduring than the one who had loved us so tenderly and faithfully.
Of course, I remembered the divine promise about the spirit that goes to God, but my faith was put to a severe test. Did I really believe what I hoped for, and what I professed to believe? In the darkness of the night I would sometimes awake from sleep with a fear that death might be like an endless night and that the survival of my mother’s soul somewhere in the universe was a theory too good to be true. I would be so depressed that I could not lie in bed, but presently I found relief for my troubled mind. As I went to the window and looked up at the stars, their shining splendor seemed to assure me that I had all the reason in the world for believing in immortality. They gave me the same confident answer each time.
When I was a very small boy the stars had fascinated me. They did not seem to be so very far up in the sky, but only just above the roof of our house. One evening when they were shining brightly I went out back of the shed, took down Father’s long ash fishpole, and attempted to knock down a few stars. Now, twenty years later, the same kindly stars beamed down on me, and I was glad that I had not disturbed them from their moorings.
31. A CERTAIN DANGER
In our common sorrow, Father and I found comfort in the words of the Great Book. Like a faithful priest in his own home, Father never failed to read a full chapter from the Bible every morning, and another in the evening., There were other activities, too, which helped to heal us. We fished, set and tended bear traps, and found a bee tree with good honey in it.
Since the season for bear trapping was drawing to a close, and the bears had somehow avoided being caught, Father went off early one afternoon to spring his trap. When he had not returned for the trout supper that I had prepared, nor at nine o’clock when the overcast sky turned to intense darkness, I began to worry. I knew that Father had a way of reading the contours of the mountains and the familiar ground over which he had traveled so many times; but I recalled the stories of his narrow escapes from wounded bears, and knew also that he was no longer as agile as he had been, and that he was alone. It was so dark that I could not see even the dusty gray road which wound to close the house. Time and again I opened the front door so that light from our dim kerosene lamp might guide him. Under such circumstances time moved slowly, but at about eleven o’clock the sound of Father’s footsteps put an end to my fears. His exultant voice greeted me with the words, “I’ve got one.”
The prize was a large female bear which he had found dead in his trap, apparently killed by another animal. Father had flayed the bear, folded the pelt to his shoulders, and started back without incident toward the mountain pass and home. Now as he told me the story, Father realized that he had left his pistol behind him on a log near the trap. It was not until the next day, when he went back for the pistol and to reset his trap, that he realized the experience of the day before could have ended quite differently for him.
Large tracks near the trap and through the mountain pass indicated that Father had been watched and followed. Evidently the huge mate had paced angrily back and forth out of sight while Father was busily engaged in skinning the pelt from the dead bear. While black bears are generally afraid of human beings, and are quick to run off at the sound of a hunter’s footsteps, this big male apparently was not inclined to flee. Perhaps an instinctive loyalty to his mate kept him near, even though he did not have the courage to defend her. Some trappers have reported hearing a bear sob, much like a person; and Father often said that one bear which he had shot made a noise that sounded like “Oh, dear.” But in our valley there was not much sentiment for bears that killed our sheep in the darkness, and certainly not a great deal of sympathy for an old male who pretended affection for his mate at one period of the year, only to kill her cubs later on.
It seemed as though this cautious male must have followed Father’s burdened figure for quite some distance, but had never found the right moment for attack. Father later learned from some vacationers that the fearful noises of some animal had kept them awake all night. In fact, a lady from the city was so frightened by the dreadful sounds that she lost no time in leaving the cottage where she was being entertained. She was sure that the mountains were haunted.
32. CONFUSIONS AND CONVICTIONS: WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY, 1906
Until this time I had no conception of what a college was like. As I have mentioned, no one from our section of the Adirondacks had ventured forth even for a high school education, to say nothing of going to college. However, the urge to seek higher education had been growing stronger and stronger within me, and I was fortunate in receiving enthusiastic support from two clergymen, George C. Douglass and C. O. Judkins. When I mentioned to George Douglass that the financial problems seemed almost insurmountable, he told me how he had worked his way through college. He said also that his financial resources had been so limited that once when he received a letter from his mother warning him to watch out for pickpockets, he had had to borrow a postage stamp to mail his reply. C. O. Judkins, the builder of a splendid church in Glens Falls, gave me further reassurance, and even suggested two people who might be willing to lend me money for college expenses. Greatly encouraged by the advice of these two men, I decided upon Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut, reasoning in my heart that the best way to accomplish anything worthwhile is to begin doing something about it.
In September of 1906, with less than one hundred dollars in my pocket, I started for Wesleyan. Since I had had four years of Latin and three of Greek, plus a diploma from the Glens Falls Academy and another from the Regents of New York State, I was accepted as a student without examination. This was fortunate for me, for I was a rather slow learner and because of my ministerial work had never had enough time to get any translations of Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, Xenophon and Homer in accurate classical form. I felt rather shaky in these subjects and could sympathize with the student who, having heard that pure Attic Greek might be the language of heaven, wrote the lines: What to me will heaven be? What its joy? If I should flunk in Attic when a boy?
As matters turned out, I never failed to pass the periodic tests in both Latin and Greek, but it must have been evident to my instructors that I was not a star of the first magnitude in linguistics. An English professor of mine, after saying some encouraging things about one of my compositions, once remarked, “By the way, Mr. Roberts, some people spell differently from you.” My Greek and Latin professors at Wesleyan, when they saw my handling of tenses, datives and accusatives in these highly developed languages, might have been provoked to a similar criticism. I was aware, however, that my failings were not due entirely to stupidity, but were partly the fault of a system of education that did not take into consideration the unfortunate fact that self-supporting students often have little time for their studies.
During my senior year, when I had more h ours for study, I took Hebrew. I began by learning the alphabet forward and backward, and pursued vocabulary and grammar with the same thoroughness. As a result, my midyear mark in that subject was 99%. Doubtless I spelled some word a little differently.
Considering the way in which I had been brought up on the Bible it will not seem strange when I say that I experienced my greatest mental upheaval at Wesleyan in the realm of faith, especially when I began to study the subjects of biology and evolution. While the assignment of dissecting a tail-less frog for the sake of science sheds some light on why we think of these jumpers as “brother frogs,” I was not fascinated with the theory which purported that amoeba begat tadpole, which begat monkey, which begat anthropoid ape, which begat missing-link, which begat man. I had always been led to believe that God had made all things very much as they now appear, and that he had done so in a relatively short period of time. Fortunately for me, the distinguished Professor Conn, under whom I studied biology and evolution, was a devout and religious man. He held thoroughly to the evolutionary process of creation, but he also believed that this apparently slow and gradual method of natural selection was God’s way of working. It was reassuring to know that a great scholar did not try to eliminate God from the universe but, rather, saw Him working in it and through it at all times.
Our instructors were men of deep learning, always patient and inspiring, but also gifted with keen humor. Once when Professor Conn was asked at the bank whether he would like his money in new bills, the authority on germs replied, “I am not afraid of old money—bacteria can’t live on my salary.”
This same professor also revealed to us that one of the more logical places to dig for earthworms is in a spinster’s garden, for birds devour worms, cats scare the birds away, and old maids generally keep cats. At the same time my study of biology taught me to realize the worth of angleworms as soil-builders. I had known from experience their value in catching fish, but I learned that from sand and decaying vegetable matter these underground workers make humus, so essential for growing prize crops.
Because we were eager to solve the baffling problems of philosophy and religion, a group of students including myself, formed what we called a Quest Club. We met regularly to discuss such questions as the Idea of the Trinity, the Resurrection, and the cussedness of Evil. The heads of the various departments at Wesleyan often gave short talks at these meetings.
Caleb T. Winchester, our teacher of literature, suggested that we read Dr. Eleanor Rowland’s The Right to Believe. I followed the recommendation, and was richly rewarded. Dr. Rowland contends that if we want a God, We have as much right to believe in Him as others have to take sides with the “no-God.” People who think it is more intellectual to doubt God’s reality are like a man who leans over backward in an effort to stand up straight.
As a further bulwark, I recalled the teachings of the Bible, and was able to rise above all dark dreams of doubt. The Book of my parents, the starry sky above, and the joy of Christian experience all seemed to bear witness to the virtue of faith. So it was that instead of losing my faith as a result of my courses in science and philosophy, my convictions concerning the great teachings of Christianity became more firmly grounded than ever before. In short, my feelings toward those who spoke against the Bible were similar to those of Mark Twain when he was asked to buy a ticket to hear Robert Ingersoll lecture on “Some Mistakes of Moses.” The noted humorist said that he wouldn’t pay ten cents to hear Ingersoll lecture on the mistakes of Moses, but he would be willing to pay ten dollars to hear Moses lecture on the mistakes of Bob Ingersoll.
At the same time that I was broadening my horizons through the meetings of the Quest Club, I was also gaining valuable practical experience by earning money to help pay college bills. A sales manager for a publishing company trained me to go from house to house selling books. The effort was glamorized as a part of The Purity Movement, and great pains were taken to show me to the best way to get a hearing. When housewives saw my sample book and assumed a negative attitude, I was to create a friendly atmosphere by explaining that I wished to talk to them about the Self and Sex Crusade. Not surprisingly, doors were opened wide when I used this approach, and I was rewarded with many sales of What Young People, Married Couples, and Older Folks Ought to Know.
Continue reading here-->