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CHAPTER I. Earliest Recollections

In spite of all the wonders of material creation, life itself is the most amazing work of God, as presented to the thoughtful human mind. The older we grow the more we stand amazed and awed in the study of every kind of existence possessing, as it does, the marvellous properties and attributes of motion, choice, instinct and reason. The wonder, of course, is greatest in considering human life with its multiplicity and complexity of faculties and powers. Here is a self-going machine of so intricate and perfect a nature or natures, that only an omniscient and omnipotent Being could have made it.

But an. additional surprise is the fact of our being unable, even in possession of this life, to go back nearer in recollection than two or three years of its beginning. One of the forces of our being called memory is not aroused or developed, we are told, to the extent that it can make records and pictures for subsequent reference until we are over two years of age. The physical nature seems to be the first on deck; later comes the intellectual; and still later the spiritual.

There are some who claim memories dating back into the first year; but I do not doubt that stories of their childhood, repeated early and often, produced this conviction. The narrative finally stamped itself on the mind, and feeling very much at home, at last posed as a veritable recollection of infantile days.

With all of us there is a strange interest connected with that beginning of an existence which is never to end. Coming out of the blackness of nothing, we entered the world and for months were nothing but fussy, crying, eating, sleeping little animals, caring for nothing but food and rest. So far as thought was concerned we did not even know we were living.

Then the mind slowly began to wake up, take notice, connect and separate objects, learn a few words, and then came the hour and day when we, in an indescribable sense, became conscious of ourselves, thought was aroused in some way, and on that occurrence was based our first recollections. There were long mental lulls after that, and big gaps of days and weeks and perhaps months where we do not recall a person or circumstance. Then came another recollection, and then another, and after that increasing lines and groups, until behold! the procession and

rush of conscious' existence had begun never to end. I have thought that the first waking up of the mind is to the intellectual nature what conversion is to the soul.

A strange fact connected with the very beginning of the life of the writer, cannot properly be called a memory of the incident, but is simply a reminiscence of a piece of family history told him repeatedly by the members as well as some of the servants of the household.

Early on the morning of April the fourth, I was born in our beautiful Southland, in the County of Yazoo, in the State of Mississippi. But instead of beginning life in the regular orthodox way by breathing and crying, I failed for some reason to take in the necessary inhalation of the world's atmosphere, and so began existence with beating heart and throbbing pulses, but breathless and silent.

It seemed as if the child took a prophetic look at the life and world on which he had entered, and not caring to remain on such a planet that held so much of trial, labor and sorrow for him, concluded not to go farther, but to turn back and enter Heaven at once.

This was so evidently what the infant was doing that the nurse gave me up as good as dead, while the screams of my mother and the heart-broken lamentations of two of my aunts filled the room and house.

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Just at this juncture, old Aunt Esther, a true and tried family servant, full of expedients and all kinds of useful practical knowledge, hearing the shrieks, rushed into the room, and taking in the situation at a glance, caught the fast dying babe in her arms and filled the collapsed lungs with steady breathing from her own mouth, while manipulating at the same time the infant's chest, until finally the little one gave the first gasp, and then reluctantly turned back to earth with a bitter cry.

This history was frequently told to me when I was a lad, and I was disposed to think then that a very great favor had been done me. But many times since, in days of weariness, loneliness, sorrow, need, the hatred of some, the betrayal of confidence by others, the loss of friends, the bereavement of loved ones, the accusation of enemies, the suffering of long sick spells, I have been sorely tempted to wish that old Aunt Esther had let the child go as he had started, to a glad, beautiful, restful Heaven. Surely such a world, filled with holy angels, with Christ present, and with no sin, sickness, pain or trouble ever there, would be a lovely and most desirable place for children to grow up in wisdom and stature, in grace and knowledge, and in favor with God and the inhabitants of the skies.

My first recollection goes back to a period when I was between three and four years of age. Stand-

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ing on the front porch of my father's house in the country, I was listening to a bugle whose notes ascending from a pine-clad hillside a quarter of a mile away, floated across the intervening valley and fell upon my wondering ears.

The county road led across this valley, wound up the hillside and through the pine grove, and then on to town sixteen miles away. Once a week a large wagon with an ox or mule team was sent to the county seat for supplies of various kinds. The musical strains I heard were the notes of a tin bugle blown by the returning driver, when mounting the crest of the hill he came in sight of the distant home and plantation.

It was the first sound coming to me from the great busy world outside. I little thought as I hearkened to the plaintive echoes, that this same old world would summon me by clarion calls to leave home, to come over the hill and help it in its trouble. Nor did I dream that the time would ever be when I would cross ten thousand separating mountains and plains, and with Gospel trumpet in hand, sound in the ears of hundreds of thousands, the glad notes of a free and full salvation.

So it happened that my first memory was a kind of figure of things to come; a prophecy in symbol of what was to be in me and through me. Certainly it seems to the writer that the life he has followed since the Savior called him to leave home, has been one of highways, hills, towns, cities and constant journeyings., while he drives a Gospel wagon loaded down with heavenly supplies, and sounds trumpet calls about a wonderful world just out of sight over that last range of dark mountains called Death.

My second recollection comes soon after the first, and stands related with the death of a personge known in the South in ante-Bellum days as the black "Mammy."

The colored nurse of the Southern child was called by this title, and very tender and lasting often were the heart ties between the two. My nurse was named Margaret, and I heard from a number of lips after her entrance into Heaven high encomiums of her life and character.

When I was quite a child, this kind, faithful woman died, and I have been informed that I was inconsolable. They told the sobbing child that she was* gone. I asked where? Some one lifted me in their arms and pointed up to the sky, saying, "She has gone up there." Instantly my reply, according to informants, was, "Then bring a ladder and let us go after her."

These speeches they tell me were made. The only recollection of the writer is the death of his nurse, the being held in somebody's arms who pointed upward, and my own heartbreaking sorrow.

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This poor colored woman on her deathbed left to the child she was deeply attached to, about all of her earthly possessions, in the shape of an iron tea kettle and a small oven or boiler of the same metal.

I have no idea who got possession of these articles of the old-time kitchen fireplace ; I only know that I did not. But at the same time I have never recalled this remembrance of the nursling by the poor slave on her deathbed without being deeply moved.

Again, I see a kind of prophecy of a certain character of life in this matter. All my days, if I have not been in a frying pan, I have been in the fire. If somebody was not cooking and roasting me in an oven, I was being treated by another person to a stream of scalding water from his own little hook-nosed kettle.

Sometimes I have wished that Margaret had not left me those symbolic utensils. But as I began to notice, that like the Hebrew children, I did not perish in the flames ; and that furthermore, whenever the furnace of persecution was hottest, that the Son of God invariably came down and walked with me in the fire, giving me the gladdest and most triumphant hours of my life — I ceased to repine, and have learned to praise God for the oven and kettle both in type and fulfillment.

According to family chronology, my father sold his hill place and procured a swamp plantation on the Yazoo River, when I was just four years of age.

There is a faint, misty remembrance of tree-lined roads and a dwelling standing by the riverside. But the clear third recollection of life is connected with one of the porches of the new home. The flooring must have been defective, for suddenly a plank tilted and I possess a vivid memory to this day of having been literally shot from the face and sight of the upper world and landed in darkness and dust under the veranda in question.

I have not the faintest remembrance of anybody finding me there, and no recollection whatever of getting out. Of course, I must have gotten out, for here I am writing this chapter about my early days. But I have no proof that any one found me, and cannot for my life recall a face or form of young or old, white or black, who came after me under the house, and rescued me from my mortifying predicament and situation.

The symbols hold good even in the third incident. For in the matter of salvation, I have never been able to point out a soul who came to me in the darkness of sin and led me to Christ. Not a being came to me in my gloom and misery. No man seemed to care for my soul. I woke to find myself under the house. The Savior himself found me there, and brought me up and out, into the light, love, service and beautiful fellowship of the kingdom of God.

A few nights after our arrival at the new home,

my father aroused me from my warm bed, deep in the night, to see two steamboats passing. Partly from the cool air, and mainly from awe and wonder at the spectacle of the two great, sparkling, scintillating, nocturnal monsters in the river before me, I shook in my father's arms as though I had an ague. I recall his soothing words and touch, but was glad to escape the startling sight and get back to bed and a dreamless, peaceful pillow.

Several months later my mother, not satisfied with! the swamp location, persuaded my father to purchase a home in Yazoo City, a town twenty miles distant by land and nearly forty by water.

The morning we were to depart by steamboat, the family and house servants stood on the bank waiting for the vessel to land. The river was high, the current strong and the big steamer in swinging in to the shore encountered a great snag which entered one of the side wheel houses with a crash, and then ripped off a number of planks with a succession of loud noises that to one of the writer's few years and great inexperience was simply terrifying and unbearable. It seemed to me that the end of the world had come. And the present carrying on of the steamer before us, coupled with the still vivid recollection of the two snorting, panting crafts of a memorable night before, gave birth to the conception, and intensified the idea, that steamboats were the natural enemies of children, and were bent upon the death and destruction of little boys who were three or four years old, and two or three feet high.

Anyhow, the impression was on me that Death was in the air, and the language of the heart was, "To remain here is to die! Why tarry we here any longer !"

Nor did I tarry. While the family, friends and servants were absorbed in watching the difficult landing of the boat, I, bent on saving my life, ran across the road, climbed a rail fence, and entering upon a furrow of the broad cotton plantation, made for the woods that stretched a long green wall against the horizon. Evidently I wanted a lodge in some vast wilderness, rather than become a sacrifice and burnt offering in the ways, walks, works and inventions of men.

I have been informed that I had advanced fully one hundred yards over the cotton field before my absence was discovered. Then an elder brother and a couple of servants ran after, overtook, and brought me, panting and protesting, back to the landing, and then actually put me on the deck of the thing that seemed set for my destruction.

Oh, how the family smiled, the neighbors tittered, the captain, clerk, pilot and deck hands laughed, and the negroes guffawed. But the little boy, brought back to duty, and, as he thought, to death and de-

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struction, saw nothing in the world to be amused about.

Well, asks the reader, where are the life symbols in this fifth recollection, and what prophetic teaching can be found in the circumstance?

My reply is that I have found two most important lessons in the incident or happening of that morning.

First, I never started to fly from duty, and was making for some wilderness of seclusion, loneliness and inactivity, but the Lord sent some of His servants, and always our Elder Brother, after me. Thus far they have always caught me before I got to the woods.

Second, God has often made me take passage on the very thing I dreaded. He in His wonderful wisdom and power, has caused persons and circumstances that I thought were set for my destruction, actually to bring me on in the way of spiritual life and religious duty, and in the ripening and perfecting of character for the skies.

There are situations and occurrences of life as terrifying to the human soul as a noisy steamboat to a little child. But God can make the dreaded and dreadful event land for us, take us aboard, so to speak, bear us on up the stream of years, and bring us safe and sound into the Holy City, where our Father has prepared us a home and mansion eternal in the heavens.

Thank God for the Bible statement that "ALL THINGS work together for good to them that love God/'

CHAPTER II. Ths Reward of Faith^ui, Waiting

The childhood and boyhood home of the writer had in front a large flower yard. A clump of cedars was in one corner, a row of arbor vitses lined the sides of the garden, while the main and central part was filled with roses of every color and perfume. An arbor on the left was almost hidden as to its framework by the beautiful climbing plant and yellow flowers called the Cloth of Gold; violets bordered many of the walks and beds, while carnations, peonies, four-o'clocks., calacanthus, cape jasmine, crepe myrtle and many other plants made stich a riot of color and combination of fragrance that the golden-winged butterflies flitting through the shrubbery seemed to make the place their settled home.

The portico of the house jutting into the flower yard was literally buried in woodbine and honeysuckle, while in the sweet, shadowy depths of the clambering vines the bees droned their song, and humming birds fluttered their delicate wings through all the sunny hours of the day.

The fence that inclosed this garden was unusual in its style and construction. A board panel two feet j2o Graphic Scenes.

high formed the base. From this wall, square white pickets four inches apart shot up to the height of four feet. They were kept steady by passing through two planks one above the other and separated by eighteen inches. Panels, posts and pickets were all painted a pure white, giving a most attractive appearance to the fence, while at the same time it was as substantial and strong as it was handsome.

The white pickets projected about a foot above the top plank, making, as the reader will see, a most comfortable as well as safe perch and good outlook for a lad of five years, who* was not allowed to leave home, but was anxious to see all he could of the world as it flowed before and beneath him on street and pavement in his immediate neighborhood.

Here sitting on the top plank, with hands grasping a picket on each side, and with a background of waving plants and nodding roses, the writer spent many happy hours studying life as it rattled and rushed along in the shape of every kind of vehicle on the thoroughfare or walked and hurried by in the form of all kinds of pedestrians on the brick walks of the avenue.

One afternoon I occupied the usual observatory, having just left the hands of the servant maid, who had arrayed me in all the glories of a white suit, long, curls falling to the shoulder, and polished low quarter shoes.

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Among those who spoke graciously to me in passing was a nice looking colored girl of eighteen or twenty. She had1 a white pitcher in her hand and was on her way to a neighboring dairy for milk.

Stopping in front of me, she studied the childish figure on the lonely perch for several seconds very 'steadily, and then said:

"You are a mighty nice looking little boy; and to-morrow evening I am going to bring you a stick of molasses candy."

With that she passed on ; but the promise remained fixed and fast in the memory of the urchin on the [fence.

Next afternoon at the same hour I went promptly to the tower of observation, so to speak, looking for the sweet fulfillment of yesterday's pledge.

By and by the girl with the pitcher hove in sight. When as she approached I cried eagerly:

"Have you got the candy?"

She had forgotten it. And said pleasantly that she would remember it next time. The third evening I was laying in wait for her, and the old question fell upon the woman's ear from the top of the fence :

"Have you got my candy?"

Lo ! her recollection had proved treacherous again, and with some little asperity in her voice and manner she answered :

"No, I have not got your candy !"

The fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh afternoons found the determined youngster in his accustomed place, while the same query, full of faith and expectancy, would ring out: "Have you got my candy?"

As well as I can recall this early incident, weeks passed in the fruitless effort to obtain the promised blessing. I have a dim memory of the summer season going by, and the sober tints of autumn appearing in the flower garden as well as on the wooded hills near by; but still the lookout station was occupied and the appeal was regularly made each day. I doubt not that life began to be a burden and even wretched to the young servant maid. I can but think the little figure perched on the fence filled her with dismay when her eyes each afternoon fell upon it. Moreover, the streets were so arranged in that part of town that the girl had to pass our home to get to the dairy. So I unconsciously was the source of great trouble to her. I recall very plainly that some of her replies were quite snappish, and the former sentence of promise was never repeated.

But it had been made once, and I held gravely, steadily and imperturbably on. The candy had been pledged and was mine by virtue of the promise. So I never failed to say "my candy."

One afternoon from my watch tower on the palings, I saw the woman coming and put the stereotyped interrogatory, "Did you bring my candy?"

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When, to my unspeakable gladness, she exclaimed : "Yes! Here's your candy!" And, running her hand into the pitcher, she drew out a long stick of molasses candy that she had pulled a yellowish white, and held it out to me. Seizing it with a disengaged hand and placing one end of the elongated sweetness in the mouth, I began eating and, somewhat indistinctly mumbling at the same time:

"Won't you promise to bring me some more?" Her instant reply, shot from her lips like a musket ball was, "That I wont!" and with a quick step left me and vanished around the corner.

I have repeatedly recalled this scene of my childhood, which not only suggests moral lessons, but is a parable in itself.

One teaching is that the man who desires pardon and holiness should place himself in the Lord's way and get a promise from Him.

With such a Bible as we have, this is not hard to do. So it is not long when putting ourselves in the Heaven-appointed course, the Savior meets us in the way, and the pledge is given.

The next thing for us to do on hearing the promise from the pulpit, or reading it in the Scripture, is to take the position of faith and expectancy and begin to ask for the blessing.

"Lord, where is the fulfillment of the assurance you made me? Where is the sweetness and gladness and fullness of Pentecost? Where is the candy?"

The trouble with many is that they leave the fence too soon. They get too quickly discouraged over the empty pitcher days, and Heaven's apparent forgetfulness to redeem its covenant.

The thing to do is to stay on the prayer pinnacle and faith outlook. Keep asking. Continue to hang on the Lord.

What if Summer seems to depart, and the chill of Autumn days come on? God is faithful and cannot deny His Word. Keep entreating and asking* "Where is my promised Pentecost? Where is the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ?" And behold the hour will come when the Lord will suddenly appear with the promised blessing; and the soul of the faithfully praying, patiently waiting one will be baptized with the Holy Ghost, and find itself filled with the sweetness and gladness of the fullness of God.

So when people tell me to-day that they tried and could not obtain the blessings of pardon and full salvation, I give some of them this page of my child's history and say:

"You left the fence too soon. You did not wait long enough for the candy." -

The holiness movement is getting filled to-day with people who have never received the real Upper Room

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experience. They seem to know nothing of the baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire and the death o£ the Old Man. They know nothing of the white stone given by Christ to the Overcomer in the church, with a new name written in the stone which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. They have a dry, mechanical profession, but are minus a sweet, burning, unctuous, glorious possession.

In explanation, they say that the evangelist told them to take the blessing by faith and go on. My reply to all such is that the Saviour commands to the contrary, and that His words to the disciples were "Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high." "Wait for the promise of the Father, which (saith he) ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence."

Christ never said wait ten days, but tarry until the blessing comes, whether it takes ten, twenty or a hundred days.

But lo! many of the evangelists to-day call up the church members, ask them to bow a few minutes at the cushioned altar, request the preachers and laymen to lead in prayer who have not the blessing themselves, and when the wretched little farce is over, dismiss the seekers ( ?) to their seats with the assurance that the work has been done. Then the report

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is sent to some distant religious paper that one, two or three hundred have received their Pentecost !

But where is the flame in the soul? The tongue of fire? The winelike joy? And the power of the Holy Ghost in them and on them?

Even a complete consecration is not entire sancti* fication ! So what shall be said of an imperfect consecration? And yet the human side of the matter is called the divine work, and a most defective seeking is misnomened a finding.

The pledge of the young woman to me was not the candy itself. I believed the promise she made, but kept looking for the candy. I lived, so* to speak, on the top of the fence until I got it. The promise was sweet, but the fulfillment was far sweeter. As well as I recall it, the candy tasted immeasurably better than the promise. The latter was splendid, of course, but it brought a lot of restless longing and lonely waiting with it ! But when the sugar composition arrived and suddenly filled the mouth, the feeling was entirely different, and the satisfaction experienced at the time of the reception was simply immense.

The lesson is, do not leave the Upper Room too soon. And do not leave it without the blessing. The command is to tarry. The promise is that it shall come not many days hence. Do not leave Jerusalem without it, saying you have taken it by faith. Such faith is presumption, for it differs from Christ's

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directions. And such faith often turns out to be nothing but laziness, the giving up of the active seeking for the blessing.

Faith believes God's Word, and obeys God. Faith is full of works, according to James. And faith stays out the days until Pentecost is fully come and fills those days with prayer and expectancy for the blessing.

In other words, do not leave, but stay on the fence until you get the candy.

CHAPTER III. A Rivai, at School

At the age of seven I was sent to school. The schoolmaster, named Smur, was a hard looking, stiff, unbending kind of man and the severest pedagogue that ever held that position in our native town. I never knew him to smile, or exchange a kindly word with any of the scholars who came to the great brick building where he presided.

I had been very tenderly raised at home with a loving mother and devoted elder sister, and so the first vision I had of Mr. Smurs' hard face, and the sight of a boy whipped on his bare legs with a cowihide, until the blood ran down his limbs, fairly froze my blood with horror. I beheld fully a dozen lads castigated in one day, and as I saw them squirm and leap, and cry, I fully expected to be murdered in cold blood at no very distant day.

Perhaps the frightened face with the terrorstricken eyes looking out from a mass of long brown tangled curls may have saved me, I do not know, only I escaped the dreaded flagellation.

It was the fashion then to dress boys of seven years of age in white aprons; one style reaching to

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the knees, and the other coming only to the waist with a pretty border, edged with something like lace work. I abominated the long apron and delighted in the short one.

One morning my sister was dressing me for school and was placing on me the garment I fairly detested. I pleaded with a swelling heart and tearful eyes for the other.

Her reply was that she knew Mr. Smur would be pleased to see me in the long apron, when I promptly said,

"I spoke to Mr. Smur about it, and he said he greatly preferred to have me wear the short apron."

To this day I can recall the sudden concealment of my sister's face from view, while her body fairly shook with suppressed amusement. When she looked up, her eyes fairly streaming witK mirth, and face crimson with the effort not to laugh outright, I felt somewhat abashed, and decidedly convicted by conscience, but would not recede an inch from my statement of Mr. Smur's devotion to short aprons.