Mr. Hall was elected President of the Convention in 1925. We have the following life story of this man who gave thirty-seven years to North Dakota, written by his wife:

Frank D. Hall, first Sunday school missionary for North Dakota, was born at Norwalk, Ohio, May 20, 1864. He was the son of James Ransom and Nellie Drew Hall. His grandfather, Rev. Jeremiah Hall, a Baptist pioneer from Swanzey, Vermont, had served as president of Kalamazoo [Michigan] College, also for twelve years as president of Denison University, Granville, Ohio, and was ordained minister of the Baptist denomination for fifty-five years.

Mr. Hall's father had been a lieutenant of the Third Ohio Veteran Volunteer's Cavalry during two years of the Civil War under the leadership of Gen. W. L. Rosecrans. In 1864 he settled on a farm in Bremer County, Iowa, where he was soon elected County Superintendent of Schools. Here Frank Hall attended the public schools and St. Andrew's Episcopal Sunday school, of which church for several years after the was his father was a lay reader. In 1873 the family removed to Ohio where Rev. J. R. Hall served as pastor of several churches. Brother Hall attended the public schools of Shelby, Fitchville, and Geneva where he served as assistant postmaster until he decided to learn the printer's trade. He entered the offices of the "Geneva Times" and served Messrs. Hawley & Trent for four years and came under the influence of Prof. and Mrs. J. P. Treat. Here he organized a local B.Y.P.U.

In April 1889, he removed to Fargo, North Dakota, where he united with Fargo First Baptist Church and was elected first state president of B.Y.P.U. at Lisbon, which office he held for two years, 1891-1892. In 1892, through the efforts of Rev. W. L. Van Horn and Rev. Boston W. Smith, Superintendent of Chapel car work with the Publication Society, he was appointed by the Publication Society as Sunday achool missionary for North and South Dakota. He held this position until appointed Superintendent of the South Dakota Children's Home Society in Fargo in May 1902. Here, with Mrs. Hall as matron, he received and provided for two thousand five hundred sixty-two homeless and abandoned children. Mr. Hall looks upon this record as his main life work. While doing Sunday School work he established many Sunday schools in North Dakota. He attended nearly every State Covention during his residence in North Dakota and served as secretary at many of these conventions.

He was filling his second year as President of the Baptist Convention at the time of his breakdown, which came with little warning in April 1926, and compelled him to remove to warm southern California, where he lived for three and a half years. One year was spent with his son in Indiana and he and his wife are now in Geneva, Ohio. It is doubtful whether he will be able to walk alone again but his heart yearns for his old home and friends of the prairies.

"Autobiography of Frank Drew Hall, 1864-1937"
Edited from hand-written manuscript by his son, Donald Fletcher Hall. 16 March 1957.

My parents told me long ago that I first saw daylight in the town of Nor-walk, the county seat of Huron county, Ohio - one of the counties embraced in what is spoken of as the Western Reserve. I presume they are correct, but as I was quite young at the time I have no definite recollection~ of the event. I was born a Yankee, and that was no fault of nine, either. My mother once told me that the day previous she had been visiting my Grandfather and Grandmother Hall, who then resided at Fredricktown, Knox County, where my honored grandsire was pastor of the Baptist church. Mother shortened her visit somewhat and took a train for Norwalk, arriving safely that evening.

It was May time and the apple trees were in full bloom, and Mother used to say that I was born in an apple blossom at the home of Nurse Keeler, on May 20th, 1864. I never saw Norwalk to know it until some fourteen years later, when my father came to visit me at Fitchville, a small village in the south part of Huron county, where I was attending school. We drove to Norwalk so he could show me the town where I was born. We hunted up the old house and found Nurse Keeler still living there. Although an old lady, she remembered the event well. I presume several other natives of Norwalk might tell the same story in substance, for she had quite a reputation as a midwife.

My father, James Ransom Hall, had enlisted in the Third Ohio Volunteer Cavalry soon after Fort Sumpter was fired upon. Prior to the War he had learned the tanner's trade in the little inland village of Peru, in Huron county, and lived in the family of the staunch old proprietor, Deacon Kingsbury, who many years later was sponsor for him when he entered the Baptist ministry.

When but a boy - and in spite of the early training of his father, a Baptist minister for fifty years or more - he had become much attached to the Episcopal church at Granville, where for ten years his father, Dr. Jeremiah Hall, had been president of Denison University. While in training at Monroeville, before the Third Ohio was ordered south, he went to Mansfield and was confirmed as an Epis-copalian by Bishop McIlwain. Father wore his uniform during the confirmation service. As a sketch of Father's life will appear later in this biography, his two years as a soldier in the Army of the Cumberland will not be dwelt upon here. Suffice it to say that after receiving an honorable discharge from the service at Huntsville, Alabama, in the spring of 1863, with the rank of Lieutenant, he went to Kalamazoo, where his sweetheart, Cornelia Ann Drew, was about to graduate from the Young Ladies Seminary in that city, a Baptist school.

My father was born at Oshtemo, a district just west of Kalamazoo, on June 16th 1840. His cousin, Maria Cahill, lived in Kalamazoo and boarded several young ladies from the Seminary. It was while a guest at her home before the onset of the War that he made the acquaintance of my mother, and it was at her home that he was entertained while awaiting the wedding day.

Following their marriage at Kalamazoo they began housekeeping at Norwalk, where they remained until sometime after my birth the following year. Father then decided to purchase land near Waterloo, Iowa, where his uncles, Samuel and Arad Hall, Jr., had recently gone from Massachusetts. The four-hundred-acre farm of Samuel Hall was about three miles northeast of Waterloo, and Arad had settled some four miles north of that city. Father went there some time in the fall of 1864 and selected some lands northeast of Waterloo, but later disposed of it and bought eighty acres twelve miles east of Waverly. Very soon after his arrival at Waterloo his cousin Henry Hall, son of Deacon Samuel Hall, en-listed in the regular army to fight against Indians at Fort Laramie, Wyoming. Father's name appeared as a witness upon his enlistment papers. Only shortly after leaving Iowa he was sent on an expedition against the Indians. His body was found after their first engagement, with twenty-nine Indian arrows in it. His death was a great shock to the family,

Early Memories.

The first recollection of my parents was when I was about three years old. I presume I do not clearly recall any events previous to my third birthday, but that was a distinct event in life. We lived on a flat prairie, with here and there a slough where ducks, geese and cranes were plentiful in the fall. I re-member hearing my mother say that at times they were so thick about the doors that she could almost have hit them with a broom. Our house was of the common type, about sixteen by twenty-four feet, with an unfinished attic which was some-times used as a storage room for potatoes and sacked grain. I can see the arrangement of the house in my mind's eye: it stood facing the south, had two win-dows on the south - one each side of the doorway - and two on the north. On the south side was the bedroom, and back of it the pantry with a stairway leading to the loft. The rest of the downstairs was living room and kitchen combined.

I can remember once when we had returned from a neighborhood visit my pet cat was sitting on top of the chimney. She disappeared down the chimney as we entered the house, and as we entered she was crying inside the stove. The fire had fortunately gone out, but it was a rather sooty cat that jumped from the heater!

Another incident which I sometimes think I remember, but which Mother insisted I was too young to recall, was when I sat down one day in a pan of hot ashes just taken from the stove. It left an impression on me for much of my life and was a frequent subject of comment from my swimming companions!

Of the first three years of my life I know but little. But on my third birthday Mother made a little party for me that I have never forgotten. guests included the family cat, my dog Fanny, a pet dove and our tame lamb. The latter, however, was not invited to participate in the banquet, which was served on a chair. It consisted of three little cakes, baked in patty tins, and Mother had made a little red flag for each, which she fastened on with broom splints. This was on May 20th, 1867.

The prairie wolves were thick about the farm, and one day while I was playing in the yard one of them came up quite close to the barn and barked in the staccato manner of the animals. I ran into the house and told Mother that there was "sumfing out in the yard a-crowing and a-crowing!" Lupus had scampered off before she got outside.

One of our neighbors had a ranch at some distance from our place and owned a very sizable herd of cattle. One time when he wished to be away over night he got Father and Mother to sleep in his tent and watch the cattle. Large herds sometimes stampeded and caused much trouble in case of storms or other distur-bance. This was the first night I ever slept in a tent, and I can still recall that moonlight night and the shadows cast by the cattle upon the canvas. A rope yard around the tent kept them from crowding in too close upon us.

Rattlesnakes were very common on the Iowa prairies in those days, and Father killed twenty-five in the first year we lived on the farm. One day while playing about the back door one coiled up near the door and quite close to me. It gave its characteristic warning and I ran into the house crying "rattle 'nake!" Father went out and dispatched it. On another occasion Mother took me on her arm and went upstairs to get a pan of potatoes. Lying across the pile was a great snake, which glided down between the studding of the house. One time Father was riding horseback and his mount stopped suddenly. A rattler's head was under his left foreleg.

We had neighbors at some distance - the nearest, a German family named Trumbauer, a mile and a half away. We occasionally called upon them, and I can still recall the barrel of sauerkraut that stood behind a door, and from which all of them took liberal pinches, as they desired. Another family with whom we used to exchange visits were the Cooks, two miles west of us. They were very fine neighbors, but Mr. Cook was a violently profane man. A year or so after we had moved into Waverly we drove out to make them a visit, and as I was a very inquisitive boy, I got to meddling with the tools on his shoemaker's bench. He put up with my meddling for a time, but finally broke out with "Damn you, let my tools alone!" and although not yet five years old, it was my first lesson in profanity. Being an apt pupil, I replied in kind. I regret to say that it led to further lessons in the art of profanity, and in after years caused my parents many tearful regrets, and myself many painful experiences in the wood-shed. Even after fifty years the temptation to swear has been one of my worst enemies.

The Cooks had as a member of their home a Mrs. Wriker, sister of Mrs. Cook, a woman in middle life and insane. I remember that she used to plead for someone to hang her, and finally one of Mr. Cook's nephews put a rope about her neck and told her he would help hang her. He lifted on the rope until it choked pretty hard, when she suddenly decided that she was not born to die by hanging. She would imagine that she was in the infernal regions and would breathe on her hands, smell of them and say, "Can't you smell the sulphur?" She was finally committed to the insane asylum. She had the delusion that the Last Day had come and the world was on fire. She died a week after reaching the asylum. Her body was shipped east for burial, on the last train to leave Chicago before the Great Fire in October, 1871. That was the driest year ever known in the Central West, and there were forest and prairie fires for weeks all the way from Iowa to Chicago; so that the poor woman's delusion was not far from right!

Living so far from town, and seeing neighbors only occasionally, it was only to be expected that the calendar might be confused. Little wonder that Father and Mother once forgot the day of the week. He was building a granary, or something of the sort. One day when a load of our neighbors, all dressed in their best drove up and inquired if "he always worked on Sunday?"

Sundays were usually quiet days about the place, although we could not cover the twelve miles to church in town. I suppose that Sabbath thoughts filled Father's mind, for one day he declared that he heard the old church bell in Granville, his boyhood home, just as clearly and plainly as he ever did in his life! And he stuck resolutely to his belief until he was over seventy-five.

Father had become a confirmed smoker while soldiering during the Civil War, and had a most beautiful pearl-covered German pipe two or three feet in length, which used to be a thing of wonder for me. You may think that life on the prairie was lonesome and dull for us, but Mother had her guitar, and loved to play and sing a good deal. One of her songs was "There's Music in the Air," and though forgotten for a generation, it has lately been revived by the phonograph makers. She once had to send the instrument into town for repairs and some weeks later, on enquiring for it, was amazed to learn that the music dealer had sold it to a group of passing Indians.

Life in Waverly.

Whether the farming did not pay, or was lost for some reason, I do not know. My grandfather, Oliver Drew, of Beardsley's Prairie, Cass County, Michigan, left Mother some property at his death, and a part of it went into the farm. Whatever the reason for abandoning the farm home, when I was four years old the family moved into Waverly, which was the county seat of Brewer County. We moved into a small house known as the "Lush Home," about a block from the Cedar River. We lived there a year or so, and there my brother, Fletcher Ransom Hall, was born on May 22nd, 1868. He was called "Harry" when a small boy, but later his name was changed to honor Father's cousin, Professor Fletcher C. Marsh, and for my father, James Ransom Hall. Both names had been in the family for generations.

General Samuel Fletcher, of Townshend, Vermont, compatriot with Ethan Allen as leader of Vermont troops during the Revolution, was my father's great-grand-father. His daughter Lucinda married Major Ezekiel Ransom, of Townshend, and their daughter Clarissa, born December 30th, 1808 at Townshend, married my grandfather, Rev. Jeremiah Hall, D.D., on September 25th, 1830. Clarissa died at Kalamazoo June 23rd, 1840, one week after my father was born. In all our families these two names, Fletcher and Ransom, have been kept alive through the children.

My grandmother, Clarissa Ransom, was first buried at Kalamazoo, but when her husband removed from there to become pastor of the First Baptist church in Waverly, her remains were brought west and lie buried in the city cemetery south of Waverly. Her two other children, which died in infancy, are buried in the same casket. I visited the grave in 1889 to find it marked with a suitable marble slab.

My Grandfather, Jeremiah Hall, is buried on the college campus of Denison University, at Granville, Ohio, where he was for ten years president of that institution. He was also for two years pastor of the Granville Baptist church. His death occurred at Port Huron, Michigan, May 30th, 1881.

While my parents lived in the Lush Home I had the measles, along with my brother Fletcher, and also contracted the mumps. It was during our residence in Waverly that my aunt Emily Hall was married by Grandfather Hall at his home on Slate street, to Capt. Henry W. Chester. She was daughter of Dr. Hall by his second wife, Lucy Taylor Hall, who, previous to their marriage had been a missionary to the Choctaw Indians in Mississippi.

About this time we moved into a cottage on the west side of Water street, on a lot running back to the Cedar River. While we lived here Father taught a district school about a mile and a half east of town, walking through the snow to and from school each way. Once he pulled me on my sled and let me spend the day with him at school. Soon afterward Father became the county super-intendent of schools, and sometimes took me with him on his school visits. -One of these visits took us to Janesville, a village six miles south of Waverly. We stopped with Deacon Coddington of the Baptist church there. He lived in a fine house and had a great barn. While seeing that our horse was cared for, he and Father talked, Father leaning against a partition. After we left and were visiting another school, a bedbug went prancing down father's coat, followed by a whole procession of them. I don't know that the teacher saw them, but Father hastily cut short the visit. His coat collar was literally alive with the vermin, which had crawled onto him from the partition in the Deacon's barn!

I think Father remained superintendent for two years. During this period we moved into Grandfather Hall's home, after he became pastor of the First Baptist church of Chillicothe, Missouri. I think my parents bought this property, for it remained our home until the Panic of 1873, when a mortgage on it was foreclosed and the place lost.

An Episcopalian since his soldier days, my father joined the St. Andrew's Episcopal church at Waverly. It was a small, struggling church with only three or four male members. Jay Cooke, the great financier, had built this and many other similar brick chapels. It could not have seated a hundred people, but there we had some of the happiest times in my life!

When I was very small, Father used to take me to church and Sunday school there. One of the faithful standbys of the church was Mr. Hade, an elderly gentleman who lived on the west side of the river and took care of the church. He had two daughters, one of whom died when I was perhaps seven or eight years old. It was the first funeral I ever attended, and I remember how still and pale she looked in her little coffin. Some of us boys learned a little song, which we sang at her funeral:

"There is a reaper whose name is Death - and with his sickle keen
He reaps the bearded grain at breath and the flowers that grow between--"

Old "Auntie Jones" was my first Sunday School teacher and under her drilling I learned the Ten Commandments and the Apostles' Creed. I was called on to recite them at the next visit of Bishop Lee, whose visit was unexpectedly cancelled when he fell down a set of stairs and broke his neck. My second teacher at St. Andrew's was "Auntie" Chapman. She had us all at her house one day before Christmas. I couldn't imagine what her reason could be for measuring all of our heads "to see which had the biggest head." But at the church Christmas tree program I received a new cap - hand-made by Auntie Chapman.

These Christmas exercises were great events in our lives. For several suc-cessive years it fell to my lot to recite the 10th, 11th and 12th verses of the second chapter of St. Luke. We always had two Christmas trees - an evergreen for the one with candles, and a thorn tree covered with strings of popcorn and Christmas gifts. Of course there was always candy, and at that time children received little books, in size proportionate to their attendance. The first one I received was entitled "Frank Weston's Mistake," and was about a little boy whose chief failing was his stubborn faith in his own opinions.

When I was five years old I was sent to school to Miss Maggie Harwood in the two-story frame school building in the east part of town. She had a sister, Jennie, who roomed at our house for a time. Mother long preserved a silver sugar shell which was a gift from Miss Harwood. I did not learn the alphabet first, but learned to read by the new system just coming into use - learning short words by sight. Miss Harwood was a cranky teacher. At one time she made each pupil cover his desk with sheet cotton, to avoid the noise of slates and books. She could handle a ruler very effectively, and I have repeatedly seen her throw it clear across the room and hit some scholar who was whispering. One of her punishments was to make us stand on one foot while toeing a crack in the floor, and keep the right index finger on a nail-head in the floor. I think I was punished as frequently as the next one, for I was always fighting at recess or after school. One of my antagonists was August Bodeker, son of a German saloon keeper. In 1889, when visiting Waverly, I looked him up to talk over our old battles. He had become a cashier in the bank. We boys were always into scrapes and I wonder our parents did not string us up by the neck, when I think of them. I had a chum named Bert Aldrich, whose father kept a grocery store. Another of the "gang" was Tom Dunn, whom I used to fight sometimes, but was usually a pretty good friend.

There must have been eight or ten of us who used to smoke mullein leaves in the broken clay pipes thrown aside at Aldrich's store. There used to be an old-fashioned "Rockaway" coach which made daily trips between Waverly and Shell Rock. While at Waverly it stood in front of the livery barn where the horses were kept. "The Gang" used to get into this coach and smoke our mullein, and when driven out, resorted to the river bank below town. Once, I remember, we had no mullein, and we had not got so far as tobacco; so I took the boys to the empty haymow over Father's barn, and smoked strips torn from old bed-sheets!

I ran away from school one day. I had a good time, and at night told the folks at home what I had learned in school. Some other boys must have been in on the deal with me, for I kept this up for two weeks. But the day of reckoning was coming! One day while playing truant with August Bodeker we were in front of his father's saloon, when I saw my father coming our way. We dodged into the saloon, but he followed us and asked me how we happened to be out of school at that time of day?

"0h," I said, "The teacher excused us early."

"Well," he replied, "we'll go and see about it!" He took me by the hand to the school, where the teacher greeted us with "Oh, I'm so glad to see Frankie again!" Lost and undone, I took the whipping Father instructed her to give me, and then took one from hm that night in the wood-shed. Beware, young man, how you lie to your Dad, for your latter end may be worse than the first!

Mother was always a Baptist, and when we moved to Waverly she united with the church there while my grandfather was pastor. This church was also on the west side of the Cedar. Sunday mornings we all used to start for church to-gether, and when we got across the bridge Mother and Fletcher turned off to the Baptist church, and Father and I went to "the little brick church around the corner" - St. Andrew's. But Father always enjoyed attending the Baptist prayer meeting, and first time I was ever in one was when I attended one night with him and heard them sing

"Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer,
That calls us from a world of care -"

Somewhere about 1874 a number of us had learned to chew tobacco. One day I found a plug about two inches square which a clerk had left in a box he was unpacking. This was quite a find, and one day I went down to the woolen mills when Father was there operating a spinning jenny. employees about the place discovered that I had a plug of tobacco, and bet me I couldn't swallow it. Not to take a dare, I kept the stuff in my mouth several hours and swallowed more or less spittle. Father never intimated that he knew what was going on, and when I later on became deathly sick from the stuff, he didn't say a word, but sent me home to Mother. I never cared for plug tobacco after that, you may be sure, but I did chew "fine cut" occasionally, later on.

Another day several of "the Gang" went up to the cliffs on the river above the dam. They were full of holes and nests made by sand martins. We wanted to rob them of their eggs, and to do so, rolled up our sleeves and reached our arms in as far as we could. When we pulled them out, however, they were swarming with bird lice, which were soon all over our heads and bodies. We surely were in a predicament, and went to the woolen factory, borrowed Father's pocket comb, and put in an hour or two combing and washing the pesky vermin out.

As a boy I learned to swim in the Cedar River. Father went with me and taught me himself. After that I used to take my bath in that way; what I did for a bath in winter, when the Cedar was covered with three feet of ice, I do not remember. One day, on a dare, I beat the rest of the gang by swimming seven miles across the swimming hole - a distance of perhaps 200 feet, but on the last return trip I stepped into a deep hole near the bank. I went down and swallowed a lot of water, but some of the boys helped pull me out and carried me back to my clothes - pretty thoroughly scared.

Sometimes at this old swimming hole we boys would daub ourselves with stripes of sand, applied to our naked skin, until we looked like zebras, and ran up and down below the bank line like a band of savages. In fact, it was in the days when "Captain Jack of the Modoc Braves" was fighting Uncle Sam among the lava beds in eastern Oregon, and we called ourselves "Modocs."

The breaking up of the ice in the Cedar was always a great sight. We con-sidered it great sport to ride down stream on great cakes of thick ice, though it may have been somewhat risky. A three-span wooden bridge crossed the Cedar on Main street just below the dam, and hundreds of spectators used to stand there and watch the ice-floes come over. One of my young friends named Tanner, with another friend, was drowned when their boat went over the dam during a spring freshet.

One day in the fall of 1871 a number of us boys had been down by the river, and on our way back encountered a newsboy who was distributing bulletins about the great Chicago fire. As the "Big Woods" on the south side of the Cedar were exceedingly dry that year, and there had been several fires in them, we boys were scared out of our boots for fear we were to be burned up in Waverly, in common with Chicago.

In some of our exploring trips we used to go over in the big woods to pick mayflowers which grew plentifully, or to gather ripe mandrakes in the woods. Near the woods lived an old man known as "the hermit," and we used to be afraid to pass his house. He proved to be harmless. But there was one spot in the Big woods which we usually steered clear of. Only the bravest dared to go there, for in early days a horse thief had been taken over there by a mob of citizens and hung. As a matter of fact, he was buried in the potter's field of the town cemetery, but we used to imagine him still swinging in the wind.

One day a hostler at a livery barn in Waverly was sitting on a wagon-tongue talking with an outlaw known as "Idaho Red." The latter had been drinking and they soon quarreled. "Red" stabbed the hostler in the neck and ran down an alley with the hostler after him, his neck spouting blood at every step. He fell dead in a moment or two, and my first view of a murdered man was when they laid him on a door in the harness shop. "Red" escaped to the west and was never caught.

About 1873 Father made an investment in a patent washer, for the right to manufacture and sell it in certain counties. It was a good machine, but the times were very hard that year, and when the panic struck the banks, and Jay Cooke failed, great distress came over the West. The washer business folded. Father canvassed for "The Household," a well known magazine in those days, and many a long tramp of ten, twenty, or even thirty miles did he make that cold winter. We were hard up, and when about holiday time came, my uncle, Francis Mason Hall, of Cleveland, sent us a box of good things to eat or wear. He also sent a dollar for his namesake, and that dollar purchased a ticket which enabled me to draw books from a small library kept at the Brewer County Bank. From it I first read the adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and Swiss Family Robinson. I recall that there were also the Rollo books, stories of travel by John C. Abbott, and books on Light and Heat that gave ne a taste for reading. I was called a book-worm when small because I read so much. Geography was also a favorite study in school. The first geography I studied was "Monteith's Elementary." We used the McGuffey readers and speller. I was in the Fourth Reader when I left Waverly in 1874.

Hard Times in Iowa.

The winter of 1873-74 was one of the hardest I have ever known, or ever known in Iowa. Snow was three or four feet deep on the level, and the thermometer froze at 10 below zero. For a long period we could not see from our windows, for the frost was so thick. We knew nothing of storm-windows in those days. Father always banked up our house for the winter. I had no underwear, and we used to get in between cold sheets at night that almost froze us, and it is a wonder to me now that we did not all contract rheumatism or tuberculosis - then known only as "consumption."

Father had gone to Kansas City to look for work. Thousands of men had no jobs and he was glad to get work for a time as a car-sweeper at $43 a month. Later he took a course in bookkeeping, writing and telegraphy at Spaulding's Commercial College in Kansas City, and obtained a place as operator at Olathe, Kansas. This was in the days when the Morse code was printed on tape; reading by sound had not yet come into general use.

Meanwhile we were in distress in Waverly. Corn was cheaper than wood that winter, and we burned corn on the cob all winter for fuel. The Odd Fellows, of which order Father was a member, sent us a load of wood, which I sawed and split. With their kind help we managed to live through the winter. At one time the Illinois Central road - the only one that reached Waverly in those days - was blockaded by snow for three weeks, and when mail finally got through the postoffice remained closed for three days while they distributed it.

Many people froze to death in Iowa that winter; so we were fortunate after all. Our gratitude has always been great to the Odd Fellows for their assistance through that ordeal. Father had joined the order before going away to the War, and on several distressing occasions they had been very kind to us. Rebel Odd Fellows had picked him up on the battle-field after the siege of Corinth, Miss., where he lay sick with a fever. They took him into Corinth, got him onto a Federal gunboat and sent him north to Cincinnati and proper care. No wonder I became an Odd Fellow soon after I became of age!

We lost our home in Waverly, as previously stated. The house was small, but the double lot had a number of scrub oaks and one red oak that stood close to the house, and I used to climb them frequently. When I visited Waverly in 1910 the house had been moved into another block and seemed in-credibly small. How our boyhood environs do shrink with the years!

I recall a ludicrous incident that occurred when I was eight years old. Mother had been rather poorly and Doctor Smith advised her to get a certain make of beer and drink it for a while. So Father had a keg sent over from the brewery east of town. Whether Mother did not like beer or not I do not know, but she finally told me to empty it in the back yard. I had partly emptied it when Mother happened to think that perhaps another neighbor, Mrs. John Leonard, might like some, and sent me over with a quart pail of it for her. But it happened to be the first of April, as well as wash-day, and Mrs. Leonard thought I was trying to fool her with soapsuds, as she knew very well we never used beer. So she sent it back with her thanks!

In the spring of 1874 Father was still an operator in Kansas, and we had moved over a store on Main street, across from the Brewer House. We were there but a short time and really never lived there.

When I was still a tike and Fletcher a baby, Mother took us on a visit to her brothers, whose homes were north of Three Oaks, Michigan. As we were un-settled, and about five years had elapsed since that visit, she decided to visit them again, and Father was to meet us in Michigan. One of our old neigh-bors helped Mother pack our goods and later ship them. A large library of books, most of which had belonged to Grandfather Hall, was sold at auction for almost nothing.

A Waverly merchant, a Mr. Shepard, who was going to Chicago to buy goods, showed us great courtesy on the trip. It must have been quite early in the spring of 1874 that we left Waverly for good and all. We went right to Three Oaks and there, greatly to my surprise, Father greeted us at the train. We spent a month or more visiting at Uncle Albert L. Drew's farm at Chickanning Corners, and with Uncle Perry L. Drew and Aunt Vira Gillette, Mother's older sister. We also visited with Uncle Harvey L. Drew and family at the nearby station of Brownville, where he operated a sawmill. We children had a genuine good time there, as we used to climb all over the sand dunes that separated us from Lake Michigan, and go out on the dock when Uncle's lumber was put on board ships for Chicago and Detroit.

We finally moved to Toledo, and lived in a small cottage on Buffalo Street. Uncle Frank was at that time rector of Grace Episcopal church. I think he arranged for our coming to Toledo. We soon moved across the Maumee River and rented a little square house in the outskirts. For some months Father taught bookkeeping in a business school; but times were still hard and the school went bankrupt. We were stranded - and minus the salary that Father had earned. Winter came on, and again we were in a desperate straight. Potatoes were worth $2 a bushel, and everything else high in proportion. Luckily for us Father had a chance to dig some potatoes, and took some for the work. The wolf often looked in at our door - and showed his fangs! I can't think of that winter without a nightmare. Father was greatly discouraged, and we were in desperate shape.

What this discouragement might have led to is hard to say now, had not a fortunate change come in our affairs in the spring of 1875. There was no, Episcopal church in East Toledo and Father attended the Baptist church with the rest of us. He was also interested in the Sunday school work. There was another point on which he never did agree with Episcopalian doctrine - the baptism of infants. Perhaps the long line of Baptist blood was responsible for this; perhaps it was a conscientious belief independent of Baptist ancestry. Once in St. Andrews's at Waverly he had stood as God-father at the baptism of a very small boy, but it was done to oblige the father of the child. So it came quite naturally for him to again unite with the Baptist church; yet in all the years that have passed since then he has never lost his love for the Episcopal form of worship. Since Father and Mother have been living with Fletcher at Cannon Falls, Minnesota (1917) where there is no Baptist church, Father has attended the little Episcopal church pastored by the eccentric old Parson Crump.

For several years at Waverly Father had conducted the church service~ as a lay reader under Bishop Lee, and while in Kansas had several times preached sermons of his own in various churches; so it was natural for him to enter into the Baptist work earnestly. A hard winter had passed and we lived through it in spite of poverty and cold. Father had gone to Detroit, Michigan in the interests of "The Churchman," the organ of the Episcopal church. Times were still hard and he made very little money. Finally, one night as Mother, Fletcher and I sat about the midget coal stove to keep warm, we heard the familiar bugle call which Father always used to whistle to let us know when he was coming. We were glad to see him back!

In the spring another old friend of Father's appeared. It was Deacon Kingsbury, of Peru, Ohio, who taught Father the tanner's trade before the Civil War. I do not know how the Deacon learned of our being in Toledo, but he met the owner of the house we lived in, and asked him if he knew a Mr. Hall. Mr. Jemison was an eccentric and profane old chap - a ship carpenter - and asked if "this Mr. Hall was a sort of a half-preacher." He was directed where to find us, and told Father of a little Baptist church at Auburn Center, in Crawford county, that very much needed a pastor. He thought Father would be the man for them! A correspondence with the church followed and Father was asked to visit them, and did so. It resulted in a call to be their pastor. This was the great tuning point in our family and put an end to our distress.

Our family furniture was not extensive, but we packed it and shipped it to Tiro, the nearest point to Auburn. About the middle of April we moved to Tiro. As a boy Father had spent some months at Auburn with an old-time friend of Dr. Jeremiah Hall. He had a family of grown sons. We were met at Tiro station by Squire More and his lumber-wagon and soon were made heartily welcome in his good old-fashioned country home. And such a dinner as we sat down to! There was never before such hospitality on such a scale! To us, who had had little to eat for many months it was a feast for a king. There was plenty of ham and eggs, real milk to drink and thick cream in abundance. There were seven kinds of sauce on that table, including apple butter, peach and pear butter. I will never forget that feast a long as I live.

In a few days several teams brought our goods to the parsonage near the church and we were soon installed in a roomy, comfortable home again. We bought a red cow from Sisinger, a German member of the church, and Mahlan Morse drove us to Shelby, where we bought a heating stove, a church and other equipment. That stove has followed the family fortunes ever since. It passed from Father to us when they moved from Hawley, Minnesota to Cannon Falls, and was only disposed of in 1916, when I put hot water heat in my Fargo home.

There were three acres of land attached to the parsonage, so that we had good pasture for the cow; and there was a nice running brook that tra-versed the pasture. In this brook we had a swimming hole, and in it I was baptized by my father on April 15th, 1877.

The church at Auburn had long been established, but its membership was only 70 or 80 - all farmers. They were scattered all over the county. The church building was old with four windows on each side, each window having 32 panes of very crooked glass that distorted everything seen through it. There were two aisles, and between them a partition that shut off the men from the women. Children could sit with their mothers, unless the boys thought they were old enough to sit with their fathers. It was almost a sin for a man to sit with his wife on the women's side of the house. Elam Nobly was the bald-headed choir leader, and always hit a tuning-form, held it to his ear, sang out "do-mi-sol-do", and when everybody caught the pitch, led the singing.

The pulpit was at the back of the church, and a door opened directly into the structure from the outer world. In this old church my father was ordained in the Gospel ministry in the fall of 1875. Pastors came from all the churches of the Huron Association. Soon after this Father obtained a license to marry desiring victims, and the first couple he married were Dr. Frank Griffith, for many years an Ohio pastor, and Alice Morse. Father was great for visiting his people, particularly those old and bed-ridden. I have been with him many times on such visits, and before he left there was always Scripture reading and prayer. It always seemed to do Father quite as much good as it did his hosts. I used to wonder why he always squeezed his eyelids up so tight when he prayed, and looked so awful serious. He has never changed this habit in addressing his Lord, but his people have always known him as a man very earnest in prayer. He always seemed to get close to the Throne of Grace.

The Preacher's Son.

In the winter of 1876-77 Father assisted Rev. J. L. Covert, the pastor of the Bucyrus church, in a series of meetings. Many were converted and united with that church. Covert was somewhat spectacular in his methods, but held a very strong influence over his young people. In January or February, 1877, he came to assist Father in a similar series of meetings in our church. They were very successful, and I was among the converts!

I recall that day so well! My chum, Grant Howe, and I were coming down the road together, and talked of the "big revival" or "protracted meetins" as they were generally called. I remember saying to Grant, "Well, if they are going to convert me they've got to be damned quick about it! I was at this time a rather profane youth, and Father and Mother often had heartaches over it. Father used to say that "in one day you can undo all the good my preaching can do in months!"

But I went to the prayer meeting that afternoon, and was hard hit when Mr. Covert gave an invitation to those who desired prayers. My conversion was real enough. I knelt by Mother's bed that night and prayed the first Christian prayer of my life. It was not for myself, but that my Uncle Abner Drew, who was a pronounced skeptic, might also be converted. many times since then have I questioned whether I was a good Christian, and for years was a backslider; but I have never for a moment doubted my conversion on that day. I guess Father and Mother thought it would be wise to test me out for awhile, for it was not until April 15th that I was baptized. I wanted very much to be baptized by my honored grandfather, but there were a dozen waiting for baptism, and he was supplying a church elsewhere at the time; so Father administered the ordinance to me. I had a tough time trying to keep from swearing for a while, but I gradually overcame the distressing old habit.

The prayer meetings were characterized by a deep~solemnity and were usually held on Thursday afternoons. I can still hear old Deacon Griffith droning out the same old testimonies. And good old Sister Kate Sheckler, who scarcely committed a sin in all her spinster life, always confessed what an awful sinner she had been. There was old Deacon Bodley, who always wore a long face that scared me into silence, and when old Father Bodley preached to us on his eighty-fourth birthday, there was real gloom in the sanctuary! There was always a group of saints, male and female, who had their ups and downs, who felt they were dreadful sinners; while the real scoundrels amongst them never confessed at all.

"Covenant Meeting" was always held on the Saturday afternoon preceding the observance of the Lord's Supper. It was as solemn a meeting as Atonement Day in a Jewish synagogue, - a day for personal examination, for confession of wrong-doing, and of renewal of our covenant with each other and with God. We should have been shocked had anyone but a Baptist attended one of these meetings, or dared speak in one. My, but we were hide-bound in those old days! We would have put out of the synagogue any pedobaptist presuming to participate at the Lord's Communion Table. Every member piously believed God would hold him responsible if he even countenanced anyone not an immersed member of a Baptist church, in the breaking of Bread. Shades of our fathers! Some of the dear old saints would turn over in their coffins had they seen my father baptize several persons who were not even asked to unite with a Baptist church; or to see him assist a Congregational church in administering the Communion service; or to see him partake of the Elements at an Episcopalian service long years after he had retired from the active ministry!

One of the great events of the year at Auburn was the "wood-bee" for the parson. Father received for his salary that first year of his pastorate $450 in cash, free rent of the parsonage, all his year's supply of wood, and the "donation."

The wood-bee was held in the fall, after frosty weather set in. Either Captain Cummings (not a Baptist) or Harrison Carlisle donated the trees, and on a set day everybody turned out for the event with teams, axes and cross-cut saws. One group felled the trees, another severed them with cross-cut saws or drag-saws operated by a horse-power tread-mill; another group split up the blocks into chunks for burning in our heater, or to be split into firewood by us, later on.

They usually cut up forty cords for us, hauled to the parsonage and piled it up neatly in the back yard. Hot dinner and supper was furnished the men during the day, and all had a jolly good time.

The annual "donation" was another great occasion that brought us good cheer. This was no modern "pound party." Most of our members were of Pennsylvania Dutch descent, and they are the most liberal-hearted people you ever met. The men always gave about $30 or $35 in cash to buy Father a broadcloth tailor-made Prince Albert suit for pulpit wear. The women brought great quantities of household provisions. There were bushels and bushels of potatoes - "Early Rose," "Peachblow" and purple "Meshameocks." There were loads of pumpkin - some for pies and others for the cow. There were quarters of beef and sides of pork. Sage sausage galore; scores of cans of peaches, raspberries, blackberries and strawberries; all kinds of jelly, as well as from ten to twenty milk crocks filled with apple, peach, plum and pear butter!

And they brought us our supply of apples: Spitzenburgs, Rambeaus, Russets and other varieties. We always used a good many apples and had large bins in the cellar for them.

Did you ever help make apple butter? That was real fun - if you didn't have to stir it all day! A big copper kettle was set over an out-door fire; it was filled with boiled cider, and apples that for days the women had been quartering and peeling. When they were cooked into a mass, and seasoned liberally with a variety of spices, it was stirred all day long with a wooden paddle, full of auger holes and with a long handle so you would not get too near the fire. This was to keep the kettle from burning, as well as to give the mass a smooth consistency.

We always kept a couple of pigs, and when winter set in for keeps some of the neighbors turned in and helped butcher them. This was a big day for us boys. We liked to see them "stick" the pigs, souse them in a barrel of boiling water, scrape the hair from them with sharp corn-slashers. When they had cut them up before hanging them on gambrels, we boys took the bladders, cleaned them up for footballs or squawkers, which were made by splitting a goose-quill and inserting it in the mouth of the bladder. Then both men and women cut up the leaf lard and ground the sausage meat, which they stuffed into the "innards" after they had been prepared and cleaned by the ladies. How we enjoyed the cracklins - after the lard had been pressed from them! And the fresh pork tenderloins and spareribs! Those were the happy days!

Then there were the days when some kind neighbor offered us all the apples we could use, if we cared to pick them. It was great fun! And when the neigh-bors made cider we always had our fun "sipping cider through a straw."

The fall I was thirteen I worked for Harrison Carlisle for five weeks. We got up at 4:30 or 5:00 o'clock in the morning, had our breakfast by candle-light, did the chores, and then put in all day pulling and trimming mangelw-urtzels for the winter feed for the cattle. I was paid 33 cents a day, and lost twenty pounds in weight during the first five weeks. Harrison Carlisle was the moneyed man of Father's church, and things had to go his way or he got sore and made threats. I developed such a dislike for him because he worked me so hard, that I have never since cared for farm life, even when I owned one. I also thought to myself that if he was a Christian I did not care to be one, and this was the beginning of a period of backsliding for me which lasted until I was nineteen years old.

About the second or third year of Father's pastorate at Auburn, the young folks, led by Frank Griffith, who had conducted a singing school at the Center, decided that the church should have a reed organ. They raised about $100 and purchased an Estey Chapel organ, placing it in the church. The following Sunday it was to be used for the first time, and there would be a big turn-out. Lo and behold you, when the people assembled they found the doors locked and rails placed against them from the inside! Harrison Carlisle was "agin the Government", thought we shouldn't worship God by machinery, and determined to prevent its use. He had placed the rails that barred the entrance, but the young folks simply climbed in through the windows, removed the rails and a fine service followed. Well, Harrison "flunked" and never again took part in church work. He cut off his sub-scription, of course. But it was the beginning of better things for Auburn church when the "one-man power" was broken.

When we went to Auburn it was the custom to have and use whiskey at all sheep-washings and shearings; in fact, it was not thought possible to conduct them without it - "to offset the sickish smell from the sheep's warm bodies," or to keep the men from chilling while standing in the pool where the sheep were washed. Father determined to break up this practice. He stirred up the professional shearers, but protested vehemently against it until it eventual was done away with in that community.

The winter I was twelve years old the great temperance reform headed by Francis Murphy swept the country. Thousands everywhere signed the pledge, and hundreds of hard drinkers were reclaimed. Meetings were held in every town and in many country districts. We boys used to tramp some three miles to a neighboring church where personal experiences were given and hundreds took the pledge. The emblem of a "Murphy" was a blue ribbon worn in the lapel button-hole of the coat. Mine was on my coat, and my purse was in my pocket when I was baptized. I have always fought drink since, and practiced the tithe system in giving for religious work. One of the books that made a profound impression upon me was Arthur's "Ten Nights in a Bar Room." It may not be adapted to present-day life, but it helped to do for temperance what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for slavery.

We had a little white country school house at the center. My first teacher there was a young woman from the nearby town of Plymouth. Her name has skipped me, but she was a cousin of Edgar Allen Poe. In the winter Charles Griffith, a nephew of old Deacon Griffith, was our teacher, withal somewhat rough in his handling of the boys. His Aunt Jennie also taught us a term or two. I walked out of school one day when she told me I couldn't "go out." When she locked the door and tried to hold me in the room I hit her a couple of times. I was immediately expelled and sent home with my books.

I received no sympathy at home, but was reinstated in school by order of the school board, after making a public declaration that I was "sorry for my actions, and would behave myself in the future." It may not have been a very sincere apology, but I behaved myself well thereafter, and the teacher and I remained good friends. Poor old girl! She went crazy over a man some years later, and died in the asylum where once she had been an attendant.

Another teacher was Miss McBride, of Shiloh. We all cordially disliked her. Once while she was ill her brother took her place for a few days. He had occasion to whip a boy, and sent a German kid with me to some nearby woods to cut a whip for him. We felt "smart" and cut a beech "gad" about twelve feet long and took it to him. He whaled me with it until it broke in two!

We had a Miss Ella Carlisle for a teacher through a term or two. She was a cousin of old Harrison Carlisle, but was a good teacher and for years was my Sunday school teacher as well. In the latter relation I am sure I made life a burden for her. I was inattentive to lessons, and always drawing the attention of the class by my flippant remarks. Yet she was always patient. When I had grown to manhood I wrote her a letter and told her I was ashamed of my actions as a boy and wished her to know that she had quietly influenced my life in the best way, in spite of my seeming indifference. Long since dead, I am sure that her good work lives after her.

Did you ever visit a sugar camp while they were making syrup or maple sugar? Well, if you haven't, I am sorry for you, for you've missed a lot of fun. Auburn was a great place for making maple syrup, and some sugar. Every farmer had a "sugar bush" and tapped from 100 to 1500 maple trees each spring when the sap began to flow. It was great sport to tramp about to different camps, bunk with the men while they kept up the fires under the great copper pans, and wait until they had "sugared off." If this occurred in the daytime we used to boil down some syrup and pour it on a pan of snow to cool into wax that would stick your jaws together when you ate it.

Grant Howe, Fletcher and I determined one spring that we would tap the 50 or 60 maples in his mother's woods and make some syrup and sugar. She did not have a copper kettle, but had a great iron kettle used in those good old days for making soft soap. We scrubbed and scoured this out for boiling down our sap. We had no storage tank, but his mother had an old barrel that at some time had been used to hold slops for the hogs. It was pretty well dried up, but we gave it a good soaking, scraped it out, and boiled it until we thought it was sweet and clean. We had no sap-pails, but there were thirty old-fashioned wooden troughs for catching the sap. We chopped out a few more and supplemented them with pails, crocks and dishes of various sorts. Having no "sugar house" in the woods, we set up our kettle in the open, alongside of an old log.

As we gathered the sap we emptied it in the old barrel, and then started in to make syrup by boiling it down. For a day and a half we boiled and boiled it. It looked very dark, and we couldn't understand it. But after it thick-ened, we took it to the house to finish up. Father and Mother and the neigh-bors tasted it, and looked rather queer, but didn't ridicule it, for we had worked pretty hard. But in spite of all we had done, it tasted sour, and was as black as licorice. The old slop-barrel was responsible for our failure, along with the old soap kettle. We abandoned our camp and never again attempted to make sugar.

In the early spring we boys took our "snake sticks" and went forth to slaughter the garter snakes and black snakes which took in the warm sunshine on the banks of our creek. We gathered up a hundred or more of them in a basket one spring, and out of them braided a mat about two feet square. One day we took a great black snake to school to scare the girls. Another time I had a small garter snake in my pocket, and at school took it out and let it scare the girls when the teacher was not looking. But I got caught and finally paid the penalty

When the creek was warm enough to swim in, we used to spend hours in it. Once we were naked almost all day, and raced up and down the creek for a couple of miles through the woods. When we went home towards dusk we could not under-stand why we smarted so. But when we stopped at Bill Burchard's home his mother understood, and spread sweet cream all over our backs. We peeled freely in a few days.

It was in the spring of the year I became thirteen that Father decided I wac a lazy boy, and needed some good farm training. He arranged with Jim Sheckler, a neighbor, to have me spend the summer with them. I liked it fine! Jim was an old bachelor who had been a soldier in the 64th Ohio Infantry. He was of Pennsylvania Dutch parents, and lived on the old farm of 110 acres, which included ten acres of woods. Sheckler was noted as a careful farmer and he taught me carefully how to do farm work. The two other members of the family were two spinster sisters. Betsey looked after the stern requirements of the place, while Katie raised good old-fashioned flowers, such as hollyhocks, pansies, asters, bachelor's buttons and lady-slippers. Their vegetable garden was nicely arranged, and aside from the standard crop they raised thyme, dill and coriander.

Outside the house was a wash shed which had a good fireplace, with a great brick oven on one side, where the family baking was done. In an old chest upstairs were innumerable curious old household implements. One was a queer old lamp for burning whale oil or lard oil. It was shaped like a gravy-boat or one of the ancient Greek lamps, and a handle curved over it from the back so that it could be suspended from the ceiling. I have it among my curios.

This was one of the happiest summers of my life, although I did sometimes tire of chopping thistles with a hoe, or crushing potato bugs between two sticks. They taught me not to be lazy, but to like farm work. Had it not been for my experience with Harrison Carlisle I might have become a farmer!

One of the boys in our school was named Irvin. His father, who had a family of sixteen children, always raised a patch of tobacco for his own use. This boy Irvin used to roll great chunky cigars out of this home-grown tobacco, bringing them to school to barter or sell to us boys. Of course it wouldn't do for the "preacher's son" to be seen smoking, so I used to hide them in the barn and smoke them whenever I got a chance to do so undetected. But I didn't keep this up long.

About a year before Father left Auburn a new church building was erected. It was not expansive, but quite neat, and I was janitor of it as I had been of the old one. I believe I received $15 a year for taking care of it, or perhaps fifty cents a Sunday, with week-day meetings thrown in for good measure.

We two boys were the only children our parents ever had. Naturally, we needed a little refining and polishing. Father and Mother had talked some of adopting a little girl to round out the family. About this time they heard of a little tot who had been temporarily with a family in Plymouth, our trading town six miles from Auburn. They found that the father, a man named Landis, had been twice married, his second wife had a child by him, and was jealous of the three by his first marriage. The youngest of them was Noretta -"Nona" for short. She was about four years old at the time, and her mother sometimes beat her cruelly. The father gave in to his wife's temper; yet he wanted to see his children treated decently, so gave his boy to John Sheckler, and allowed Father and Mother to take Noretta for a few weeks to see if she would fit into our home. I remember the day they brought her home. She was a pretty little thing with long brown curls, but Oh, the woe-begone and sick look on her face! When she was undressed we could see that she had been cruelly beaten, for she was covered with black and blue spots where the strap and buckle in the hands of her mother had struck her. She was taken to the doctor in Plymouth who said she would never live to be seven years old. But with the tender care my mother gave her, she was soon well enough to smile and rapidly picked up weight and strength. In the course of a few months she became an altogether different child, and was later legally adopted. After Father and Mother came to live with us in Fargo Nona was married to Ernest J. Handyside, of Litchfield, Ohio. They later moved to Elyria, where they have resided ever since. (Note: "Aunt Nona," as of March 1957, is in critical condition in Elyria, in advanced infirmities of old age. - DFH) For many years while they farmed near Litchfield, they sent us each season a barrel or two of top quality maple syrup, which was peddled by my son Donald at $1.25 a gallon.

The celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of American Independence on July 4th, 1876 was one of the great events of my boyhood. It was more gener-ally observed, I suppose, than any purely national holiday had ever been before. Practically every city and hamlet in the country had its celebration. Plymouth was a town of only about a thousand population, but they certainly put on a great show. All of us country bumpkins either rode or walked the six miles to town to see the doin's. An iron cannon planted in the cemetery "woke the dead" with a salute of 36 guns - one for each state of the Union then recognized. A grand parade of "Calithumpians" occurred in the morning, and was followed by the reading of the Declaration of Independence and some very spread-Eagle speeches. The President of the Day was an old man, dressed in Continental style, with knee-breeches, silk stockings, slippers with great buckles, and with his hair powdered and done in a queue. On his head he wore a tri-corn cocked hat.

The Boy Becomes a Man.

In the fall of 1877, when I was thirteen years old, Father took me to Fitchville, in Huron county, about twenty miles northeast of Auburn, and entered me ln the high school presided over by a Scotchman named Scroggie. Here I began to study Latin, and took the first year's work. Scroggie was a good teacher, and I advanced rapidly in my studies. I made my home with old Grandma Eaton, a woman past seventy, who had a widowed daughter living with her. This Mrs. Rathbun had two children living with her - Anna and Abel. I worked for my board there, and earned it, too! Mrs. Eaton was an old-time Connecticut Yankee Baptist, and exceedingly narrow in her doctrinal views. While she allowed us children to go to the Congregational Sunday school in the afternoon, she would not think of voting a letter of dismissal from the Baptist church to one of another denomination, nor ever think of taking Communion outside of a Baptist church. I remained in Fitchville all that year and started in the next fall, but became homesick when I had a little illness, and wanted Mother so badly that I threw over my school work and got a Mrs. Johnson to drive me back to Auburn and Mother, where I soon recovered.

I thought I had met my fate at Fitchville, when lone Palmer, a girl from Cleveland, attending school there, smiled on me. We went to several parties together, and she was sweet as sugar to me. But, alas, when I returned the next fall she had tumbled for Charley Miles, a homely chap who used to go to sleep in the chair every Sunday. But my heart was soothed easily when Eleanor Wells, the lovely niece of Rev. George Wells, pastor of the Congregational church, accepted my juvenile attentions. After I left Fitchville they removed to Lowell and I never saw her again, although we corresponded for several years. I still have a lock of her hair, braided by her into heart-shape! But when I became eighteen or nineteen, and really began thinking seriously about the kind of girl I would marry, she up and married a clerk on an Ohio River steamboat!

In the spring of 1880 Father resigned as pastor at Auburn and became pastor of two country churches between Shelby and Mansfield. One was known as the Windsor church; the other as the Harmony church - which was a misnomer, for they had little harmony in their membership. The Windsor people were very nice, but they could not support a pastor alone, and Father remained but one year with them.

On account of school privileges for us, Father had settled us in Shelby, and drove out from there to his appointments. I entered the Shelby high school, where Rev. Jacob S. Lowe was superintendent. His wife was principal of the high school and gave me my introduction to natural philosophy and ancient history. She was a brainy woman. I paid some attention to her daughter, Dora. Another passing fancy was for Iuella Bloom, daughter of an Ohio legislator. But she was not for a poor chap like me, and I took her out just once, with a sleighride to an oyster supper near Tiro.

The great event of 1880 was the politic&l campaign between James A. Gar-field and Chester A. Arthur on the Republican ticket, and Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock and Will H. English on the Democratic ticket. It was a battle royal between two great generals of the Civil War. Every community had a marching club and torchlight parade, with bandstand fireworks galore! Some of those stump speakers could have settled the great World War in Europe easily! It was serious business for me. I was past sixteen and thoroughly imbued with the belief that the Republican ticket must win or the country would go to smash sure! I joined the Garfield and Arthur club, and marched night after night, carrying a kerosene torch which leaked more or less onto my red, white and blue oilcloth cap and cape.

Six hundred marchers went to Mansfield one afternoon on a special train, to a great Republican rally. We marched in grand review past the residence of John Sherman, only to find later that he was not in the city. We, in common with thousands of other marchers, paraded the streets with our torches, and at a given signal every man took from under his cape a 12-ball Roman candle and fired it.

Father helped us in our patriotic enthusiasm, and out in the country somewhere got a tree from which we made a very respectable flag-pole. Mother made for us a handsome flag from white muslin and turkey-red, oil-boiled cloth of some sort. On it we sewed a campaign handkerchief with pictures of Garfield and Arthur upon it. Father, Fletcher and I, with the help of some neighbors, raised the flag-pole in our front yard, and we were as "patriotic" a family as one could find. We, of course, carried the election that fall!

During vacation that year, and through the school year, I worked before and after school and on Saturdays in the dry-goods store of Kneisly and Mickey, the latter being the rich and silent partner in New York. My stay with them was a great help to me, though the wages were but $1.25 a week. This was Fletcher's first year in a town school and he got an excellent start there. Shelby was then a small town of a couple of thousand, but the great tube mills established there when the bicycle craze struck the country quickly brought thousands of working men there; so that it has since been a very pros-perous town. While we lived in Shelby I attended the Methodist church and principally, but went occasionally to the Disciple church, where Dora Lowe attended.

In the spring of 1881 Father resigned the care of the Windsor and Harmony churches and was called to be pastor of a strong church at Geneva. This marks another milestone in our family's history. While we were packing our household goods for moving I was taken sick with inflammatory rheumatism and was in criti-cal condition for five weeks. As Father was to begin work at Geneva on May first, we had to go, sickness or no sickness. I was carried onto the cars at Shelby and Cleveland, and off at Geneva. It was several weeks before I was strong again and I had become a walking skeleton.

The Geneva Chapter.

Geneva is a Yankee town on the Western Reserve of Ohio - a district settled about 1800-1810 by Yankees from New England. There were very few foreigners there, except Canadians, until the establishment of large factories brought in Germans, Hungarians, Irish and English, with a very few Finns. I do not recall ever seeing a Norwegian, Swede or Dane in Geneva.

It is a beautiful town, four miles from Lake Erie, and in 1881 had about 2,000 population. It was particularly noted for its fine maple trees and its good streets, though none of them was then paved, nor were there any sewers or water system. It was a village of neat and comfortable homes - some of them even elegant. It was about 50 miles east of Cleveland, on the Lake Erie rail-road. In 1881 the Nickel Plate road was laid through there, and it was a grand sight to see hundreds of men clearing the right-of-way and laying a mile of track a day! That was soon after we moved there. Our swimming hole was spoiled when the railroad was laid across it.

Garfield had been inaugurated President on March 4th, and was assassinated on July 2nd, 1881, in the Baltimore ~ Ohio station in Washington, by a half--crazed, disappointed office seeker named Charles Guiteau. How well I recall that day! We boys were just returning from the swimming hole, when another chum met us and told us a bulletin had been received stating that the President had been shot. His home was at Mentor, some twenty miles from Geneva. We lived in his Congressional district - the famous old 19th, which had produced Old Ben Wade and Joshua R. Giddings in Abolition days. It used to be said that while in Congress, Garfield knew every voter in his district. He was loved by all - fairly worshipped. Only a year before he had delivered the address when the soldiers' monument was unveiled in Geneva.

Consternation reigned supreme until bulletins gave the details, and during that long summer, while our martyred resident breathed away his life so patiently in the East, Geneva people eagerly scanned the bulletins each day until Septem-ber 19th, when he died. After lying in state in the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington, his remains were brought to Cleveland for the great funeral, which Father and I attended. I never happened to see Garfield while he lived, though Father had seen him during the war. The catafalque on which his casket reposed in the public square was gazed upon for a day and a night by a steady stream of his admirers; but when we arrived there the casket had been covered, and we could only march past it.

It was wonderful in its wreaths of floral tributes - many from kings and rulers of foreign countries. From 11 o'clock in the morning until 4 in the afternoon a procession as wide as the street passed the First Baptist church where we stood, on its way to Lake View cemetery. The crowd was so dense that while I stood on the curb at Euclid and Erie, Father was overcome by the heat, just back of me by the fence, and I heard nothing of it. He was laid on the grass in the yard of the First Baptist church, and some of the Baptist ladies took care of him until he revived.

During the next year I attended the Geneva Normal School, then presided over by Prof. and Mrs. Jay Porter Treat, who were also leading members of Father's church. "Prof" Treat was a graduate of Union College, had a broad education, and after leaving Geneva became president of the Colorado Women's College at Denver. While attending the Normal I continued in Latin and also took up German. The Normal was well known and had a good patronage from nearby counties, but was really more of a high school than a normal for the instruction of future teachers. I was a member of the Normal Kappa Iota society and there got my first taste in debate techniques, though I never took any leading part in it. Professor and Mrs. Treat always maintained a deep interest in religious work among the students, and many of them today owe what they are largely to the interests of this devoted couple in their religious welfare.

I think it was in the summer of 1882 that I was offered a clerkship in the postoffice, of which Hiram W. Turner had for fifteen years been postmaster. I had been working during vacations in the Enterprise Manufacturing Company's factory at various jobs, mainly in helping to make shelf hardware and children's tools and toys. I enjoyed the work in the postoffice very much, and continued there for almost four years, during the early portion of which I tried to carry along certain studies in school, including bookkeeping and algebra. I had to keep my textbooks with me at the postoffice and study during lulls in the work. But I found it impossible to keep this up long. An event in 1883 put an end to all my aspirations for a college education, with the con-sequence that I graduated only from the school of hard labor and practical experience.

My grandfather, Rev. Jeremiah Hall, D.D., was always an educator. At Bennington, Vermont, he organized an academy which for years was a flourishing institution. After his removal to Michigan in the '30's he reorganized a state school into what is now Kalamazoo College, one of the best of Baptist colleges in the country. Leaving Kalamazoo in 1840 or 1841, he became pastor at Akron, and later at Norwalk. There he organized Norwalk Academy, where President Ruth-erford B. Hayes had attended. He made a flourishing Baptist school of this academy. After leaving Norwalk, Dr. Hall became pastor at Granville, Ohio, the seat of Granville Academy, under Baptist control. While serving as pastor he was, in 1853, elected President of the school, remaining in that position for ten years. During his incumbency the College took on new life; money began to flow into its coffers, and a very generous gift was made by an old bachelor named Denison, of Zanesville, on condition that the school be re-named Denison University. Dr. Hall was later obliged to sue him in the courts to obtain the money, but succeeded.

Because of his valued services to Denison University, the trustees passed a rule in 1880 that tuition to any of his descendants should thereafter be free. When I began to think about college, it was only Denison that I would even consider. I was practically ready to go there in 1883, when a great tragedy occurred in our family that ruined my father's health and put an end to any further education for me.

The pastor who preceded Father at Geneva was Rev. Charles T. Morgan, later of Oil City, Pennsylvania. In the winter of 1880-1 he held a very successful series of evangelistic meetings in the Geneva church, and quite a number were baptized by him after the meetings. Among them was Mrs. Button, whose hus-band became very angry when his wife joined the church. He was a rank atheist, and made threats to get even with the Baptists. He was decidedly belligerent, but Rev. Morgan was of a stocky and stalwart build, and Button knew better than to tackle him in a personal encounter. He bided his time and nursed his bitter-ness .

One Sunday night in the fall of 1882, while the church bell was ringing for our evening service, there cane a knock at our door, which opened into the church yard. Mother went to the door, and a man she had never seen asked to see Mr. Hall. Father stepped to the door and the man asked him to step out-side for a moment. At first he thought it was some man who wished to arrange for a wedding ceremony. But he closed the door and stepped out on the porch. The night was very dark and only the light of a kerosene lamp at the church yard gate gave any light. Father could not tell who the man was, but was informed that it was Button - Charles Button - who immediately drew a heavy hickory club about two feet long from under his coat, and struck Father over the head with it knocking him to the ground. The club had been made from the handle of a pitch-fork, and was picked up near the church next day.

The testimony in court showed that Button had prepared the club that after-noon at the Battle livery barn, and it had been whittled down at the handle end to make it fit the hand like a policeman's night stick.

There was at once an outcry, as people were beginning to arrive for the evening service. When Mother heard unusual noises outside on the back porch she had sprung to the door, where she threw herself between Button and Father, who had got up from the ground. Button had just raised his club for another blow when Mother stepped between them. He then turned and fled in the darkness. Willing hands carried Father into the house and put him to bed, where he raved in delirium all night, repeating continually, "Button, button, who's got the button? Guess I've got the button!"

Button was arrested the following morning, and a few days later, when Father was sufficiently recovered to appear in court, was given a hearing in the court of Justice Brett, and bound over to the Court of Common Pleas at Jefferson. The seriousness of Father's injuries did not become apparent until later on, and the only punishment Button ever received was a fine of $50. Father soon began to show symptoms of pressure on the brain, and to have frequent nervous spasms - something like convulsions, in which his back seemed to snap, much after the fashion of a snapping beetle when placed on its back. Nothing would quiet these spasms except chloroform, and for many years after being hurt he was obliged to carry a bottle in his pocket for emergencies.

The case caused great excitement in Geneva, and denominational papers all over the country gave accounts of the tragedy. The church was most sympathetic and generous toward us, and sent Father to sanitariums at Green Springs, Ohio and Clifton Springs, NY, for treatment. At the latter place he was greatly helped. Dr. Biggar, physician to John D. Rockefeller and to President Garfield, diagnosed his case and showed that in his fall from the porch to the frozen ground a nerve located between his shoulders had been ruptured and was the cause of his terrible spasms. Father has never entirely recovered from the nerve spells, and any long-continued close application to study, or in listening to ad-dresses too intently, brings them on; though he has learned to know when they are approaching and reclines for rest.

The family's prospects became very dark, and we were in despair. While Father was away I gave up all thoughts of college, and continued in the post-office work. As the church could not do long without a pastor, Father presented his resignation and, except myself, the family was invited to spend the summer at the farm home of Mother's sister, Mrs. Vira (Oliver C.) Gillette, six miles northeast of Ottowa, Kansas. Our home was broken up and the goods stored. The family went to Ottowa in the spring of 1883, and I went to board in the home of Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Hart, widow of the late Daniel Lawrence Hart, sheriff of Ashtabula county. The family spent nearly a year in Kansas, and Fletcher and Nona went to school in the country. "Uncle Ollie" had a very lovely home among the trees on Marias des Cygne River, which was only a hundred feet or so from the door. It was a restful place for Father and they were all congenial spirits in a harmonious home. It was of great benefit to the invalid, but for him it was intolerable to feel a burden on others. The following year he accepted the pastorate of a very small church at Twinsburgh, Ohio, some twenty miles south of Cleveland. The work was very light there, and Father had a "barrel" of written sermons on which to draw. Everyone was kind and the conditions well understood. They became very much attached to the Twinsburgh people, and for the time being we will let them rest there peacefully, while our personal af-fairs receive attention.

Before passing from my work in the Geneva postoffice, let me speak of a hobby which I followed relentlessly for many years. Our literary society in the Normal school talked of making a collection of autographs from famous people to hand in the school rooms. I started the ball rolling by receiving the autograph of Vice President Schuyler Colfax for them. I then began a collection of my own, and in the course of years obtained the autographs of hundreds famous people. Among them are: President and Mrs. Hayes, President Garfield, his wife and mother, President McKinley, President and Mrs. Grant, James G. Blaine, Gen. John A. Logan, General William Tecumseh Sherman, John Sherman, Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stevens of the Confederacy, old John Brown, Wendell Phillips, Joshua Giddings, Cyrus W. Field of the Atlantic cable, Buffalo Bill and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Many of them were obtained directly from the notables, on my mailed request. (Note: The collection was hanging in the library at Fargo College in 1917, but has since been lost. An effort is to be made through the Fargo Forum to locate it, for its value has greatly increased with the passing years. - DFH.)

Mother Hart's Brood. -

When I went to board with Mrs. Hart I entered upon a new era. My people were in Kansas and I was left far from the family to make my own way. I was twenty years old, with no trade; neither was I educated in any profession. I continued to work in the post office for small wages. While Father was pastor at Geneva he had occasion to baptize a number of converts. Among them was Mrs. Hart's youngest daughter, Nellie Maude, who was then a girl about twelve or thirteen years old. I can see her now as she went down into the baptismal waters, dressed in white, with her hair spread down her back. I though then that she was beautiful, but that was as far as my feelings went. When I came to board in their home she was fourteen - a sweet but shy young girl, but when I got acquainted with her better I made up my mind she was just fine -too fine to even look at me, if she ever thought of such a thing. We were a jolly company at Mother Hart's. Stella was then at home, unmarried, and quite an invalid from a double curvature of the spine resulting from a childhood illness. There were also two young lady teachers who boarded there - Miss Stattie Thompson and Miss Bertha Week - the former fat and jolly; the latter thin, dark and solemn. Dick Phelps was a factory employee and roomed with me. It was a merry party we generally had every evening, singing "Jubilee" songs, or just "cutting up."

Nellie's mother had bought her an Estey organ, and she was taking lessons. I had not been there many months before I found that I liked her mighty well, and she always treated me kindly. On January 6th, 1884, Stella was married to her cousin, William Paul McKinstry, of Fargo, North Dakota. In 1833 she had visited her Aunt Sally McKinstry at Audubon, Minnesota, and it seems an old flame of love revived between her and Mr. McKinstry, that had been dormant for years. I have since learned that she voluntarily broke off their engage-ment, as she knew herself to be a life-long invalid, and refused to become a burden. But he insisted, and came back to Geneva to claim his bride. I recall how strange he looked when I met him at the train, wearing a huge buffalo-skin overcoat - something never before seen in Geneva, and certainly not adapted to our climate. A date was set for their marriage, and they were united at Mother Hart's by Rev. S.M. Cramblett, our pastor. Nellie and I stood up with them during the ceremony; then we all went to church together.

Mother Hart was never a strong, vigorous body, but had a great will power. She had been ill for some time with a stomach trouble, and soon after the wedding was taken violently ill and was confined to her bed. She had bad hemorrhages and many fainting spells. Stella and her husband had gone to their home in Fargo, but it was necessary to call her back when her mother became dangerously ill.

In the spring of 1884 matters between Nellie and I reached the stage where I believed she was the only girl for me. One beautiful Sunday afternoon I hitched up the gray mare belonging to Ned Hart, (Nellie's brother) who lived close by, and took Mother Hart and Nellie riding. We went up the Ridge Road past their old farm home, then continued on through orchards full of peach trees all a-bloom, until the whole air was gorgeous with their perfume. I think there never was another such day. We went down through Saybrook and home by the Middle Ridge Road. It was too nice to stop driving, but we dropped Mrs. Hart out at her home, and Nellie and I drove on out by the Main Street road west and south to Unionville, then east by the South Ridge Road home. Somewhere on the way I managed to broach the subject of marriage, and got a favorable response. The birds sang more sweetly than ever! I was smoking a cigar, when it suddenly occurred to me that she did not enjoy it and I asked her if she would like me to quit. When she said she would not ask it of me, but would certainly feel better if I did not smoke, I dropped the cigar in the road and the buggy wheels crumbled it up. It was years before I ever smoked again.

Mrs. Hart grew steadily worse and it was necessary to let the boarders go. Stella could not come until it became imperative, having so recently gone west. Ned Hart could not bear to be present and see his mother suffer and was of no use in a sick room. With only Nellie, not yet sixteen years old, to care for the house and her sick mother, something had to be done. I requested of the postmaster to be relieved of work for a week or two, but he said he could not spare me, so I handed in my resignation, and from that day on until Mrs. Hart died (June 16th, 1884) I remained at the house and helped minister to her needs. A day or two before she died she placed Nellie's hand in mine and gave us her dying blessing.

My father was called from Twinsburg to preach the funeral sermon. Everyone who knew her loved Mrs. Hart. She was only fifty-two years old at her death, but had suffered much and endured hardships; yet her faith in God as her Father, and Jesus Christ as her Savior never weakened. She had that Christian character that so commends one to everybody, and the beauty of her character was the purest I ever knew. I could never, if I lived to be a hundred years old, repay all the interest and kindness she showed me. Just one incident will illustrate.

I have mentioned my roommate, Dick Phelps. At one time Dick was very fond of a young lady, who for purposes here may be nameless. She loved him, but her mother did not, and planned to have her marry a rich man ~ considerably her senior. The mother thought to compel her to marry him, and placed her constantly in his company, with pregnancy resulting. The mother then schemed to lay the blame on poor Dick, after her initial plan misfired, but the girl absolutely rebelled. Then the mother decided to charge me with the crime! The girl was forced to put herself in my way as much as possible. She would come down to Mrs. Hart's, and plan to get down to the post office alone about 8 o'clock, the closing hour, so that I would have to walk home with her. Knowing nothing of the conspiracy I walked home with her several evenings. At last she confided in Mother Hart and told her that she would tell me of the plan to ruin me, and the girl left the next day. From mail passing through the post office I knew she was at Battle Creek, Michigan.

That night after the rest of the family retired Mother Hart told me the whole story. Needless to say, I was always on guard after that, and to my dying day can never revere her memory too much. When she was buried I spent the first night in the cemetery within sight of her grave. In those days the robbery of graves was all too common, and the puzzling nature of her illness might have attracted some of the ghouls that exploited medical needs. Her autopsy showed the cause of death to be a tumor growing on the membranes which support the stomach - in the light of today's medical knowledge it was probably cancer.

During the years from 1884 to 1888 when I left Geneva, I saw to it that a bouquet of roses or gladiolus was placed on her grave every Sunday, and we have never returned to Geneva without a remembrance of this kind for one of God's noblest women.

There was once facet to my life in Geneva that I have not mentioned. For several years I had little interest in the church, and instead attended the meetings of the spiritualists in Geneva. I became quite interested in the so-called spiritual phenomena of their seances, but one night I caught one of the leading slate-writing mediums of the United States in a trick to make the beholders think they were hearing a bit of slate pencil writing on the slates by spirit power! I distinctly saw the medium's finger-nail scratching the under side of the slates he was holding. Needless to say, the bottom fell out of Spiritualism for me very quickly.

While on her last sick bed Mother Hart had often talked with me about the spirit world, and one day I had been talking with her about my grandfather Hall, who died in 1881. I knew that if it were possible for spirits to communicate with friends on earth my Grandfather would be glad to let me hear from him. Mother Hart realized it was her last illness and we made an agreement between us that if it proved at all possible after her death she would come back to me and tell me about herself and my grandfather. I was extremely anxious to know the answer, but, needless to say in no shape or form has her spirit ever manifested itself to me or sent any message from my revered and loved grandfather!

In this connection I mention another spiritualistic seance which I had attended. One of Geneva's prominent men with whom I frequently attended seances, one night claimed to recognize the handwriting on a message purporting to be from Mary, his first wife. Some time after this he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. About a month later a lady medium was giving a seance and claimed to have a message from this Mr. Stephens. She spelled it out a word at a time, pointing into the air with her index finger as though on a bulletin board seen by all. The message read, "I am in hell, having a good time!"

The family was now obliged to break up. Arrangements were made for Nellie to go to North Dakota and live with the McKinstrys, and on July 5th they de-parted for their western home. That summer I again went to work at the Enter-prise Manufacturing Company's factory, and was given a job operating a turning lathe, where I turned out handles for shelf hardware. I got only $1.15 a day. I received my first month's pay and had paid all my bills, but had only three cents left, and it almost broke my heart.

I boarded in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Fred W. Dorman and the latter's mother, Mrs. Moses. It was a pleasant home in which to board, but nothing like Mother Hart's in any way. I occupied a room over A.C. Stephens dry goods store. My work in the factory at this time was to turn out handles for various types of hardware. At the next lathe was Charles Tibbetts, a long-time friend. He was rough in his language, and so was I. We tried sometimes to see who could say the worst things. That winter a noted evangelist came to Geneva and held meetings with the Methodist church. Tibbetts was reclaimed, but I was not. The following winter an evangelist named Hildreth conducted a revival in the Baptist church. I became interested enough to attend, and the interest became intense - -Dr. Hildreth was a good preacher! The young people had interesting meetings, and one day I gave up the rough old life altogether and enlisted on the right side.

My decision was made partly because of long talks to me by Professor Treat, with whom I was then living. While I sat at a desk in their sitting room writing to my far away Dakota Nell, they would talk to me from their bedroom about coming back to Christ. The Treats were some of the best friends I ever had, and while I am now fifty-two (1916) nothing delights me more than to get a letter from "Ma" Treat, and I generally hear from her twice a year ~ have not seen either of them since 1894. They were of "the salt of the earth" and all young people who came under their influence were better for it.

The Ladies - God Bless 'em!

During the years spent in Geneva I made several good friends among the young ladies. Miss Lelah Angell was one of the first young women I became acquainted with, and I escorted her here and there on several occasions. Another was Miss Jennie Blinn, daughter of Samuel Blinn, or "Blind Blinn" as we sometimes called him. She was an earnest Christian girl and a member of the Baptist church. I was often at her home on Sunday evenings after church, and she helped make it less lonesome for me while away from my family and Nell.

Then there was Nettie Spencer, daughter of Persis Spender - a nephew of Platt R. Spencer, the great penman and originator of the Spencerian system of penmanship. Nettie was a wee bit of a girl, good looking and jolly. Her lover, Fred Bollard, was in business in Omaha. He and I were the best of friends when he lived in Geneva, and when back for a visit one winter told me to look after her for him, inasmuch as I was away from my own girl. So for several years I served as an escort to Nettie and was frequently at her home. Her father was a hard drinker and many an evening she and I walked down town to find him - often too drunk to navigate well. But he was always kind to Nettie and her mother, who was a fine little old lady - sweet in spite of her husband's failings. It was a good thing for me to have the society of Nettie, and the friendship has continued through the years. She finally broke with her Omaha boy friend and finally married a manufacturing jeweler in New Jersey.

Florence Williams was another young woman whom I occasionally escorted home from church. She was a happy, good-looking girl, and afterward married Charlie Andress of Geneva and moved to Colorado, where they still live.

So much for the list of my girl acquaintances who helped pass away the time until I left Geneva. Just a friendly acquaintance with each of them, with no love-making involved. We all enjoyed the church socials, an occasional entertainment, and the walks home from church doings. They were all Christian young women, and with the exception of Miss Angell, were members of the Geneva Baptist church.

Learning a Trade.

Another chapter in my life begins with my choice of a trade. I was now twenty years old and more, and depended upon day wages in factories or the small wages paid to clerks by the postoffice.

When the Hart home was broken up and it was decided that Nellie should accompany her sister Stella to her home in Dakota to become a member of her family, we held a consultation one day to determine our standing and get our bearings. Nellie had been promised to me by her mother - provided her own desires coincided; and they seemed to. Stella felt that if the time should come when I should claim her sister as my bride, I ought to have a trade or profession that would assure her a fair and proper support. That she was correct in this position I have never doubted for an instant. Although at that time I had just turned twenty, I readily agreed to enter on an apprenticeship covering several years and learn a trade.

As a boy at Shelby I had become greatly interested in the Shelby Times printing office. I had since I was ten years old taken the "Youth's Companion," and had frequently secured premiums for obtaining new subscribers for the paper. While still at Shelby I obtained as one premium a small hand printing press for printing cards and envelopes. I made some small type cases, bought several fonts of ornamental type, made a convenient box for the press, got a good stock of cards and footed it out to Auburn Center to start in business. I think I remained there a week or two, and printed calling cards for most of the people for miles around. It brought me in quite a little money, and started an interest in printing which has persisted to this day.

So, when I was ready to learn a trade - about six years later in life than it should be - it was natural for me to accept an opening for a "Boy Wanted to Learn the Printing Trade," offered by the Geneva Times. Messrs. Hawley and Treat were the proprietors of the Times. Hawley was the practical printer, while my own friend and old teacher was the editor. I was living with his father and mother in the same double house with Prof and Mrs. Treat at the time, and they knew just why I wanted to learn a trade. They helped me get the opportunity.

I began work at the Times as the printing office "devil" in the fall of 1884. My first duty was to build fires and sweep out the building, and to wash up the press rollers. Their paper press was a Cattrel & Babcock cylinder job, and I had to learn run the engine and boiler which supplied the power for the press. I took to that quite naturally, for I inherited a love of machinery from my Grandfather Hall. He was a natural-born inventor, and had taken out several patents. Among them was a spring brake for street cars, and a garden hoe shaped like a gable roof, with a handle fastened at the top of the "gable" in such a way that it could be raised or lowered for man or child. This was a good hoe, and worked entirely below the surface, either forward or backward. He also invented a harvester, which, had not the McCormick self-binder been invented about the same time, would have come into general use. It was an excellent machine, and he had a working model made while living with his daughter, Aunt Maria Baker, at Benton Harbor. He was always tinkering with tools and machinery when he lived with us, and it was my greatest happiness to watch him work.

About that time Father had bought me a foot-power bracket-saw, which spurred on my love for machinery. I have never gotten over it. So I took quite naturally to the printing trade. I remember quite well that the first stick of type I ever set was an editorial about Hon. Freeman Thorpe, who was running for reelection to the Ohio legislature. I soon learned to feed the press on issue day; then, in the evening, we all had to help address wrappers. Mrs. Treat used to come down and help with the work. The next day I had to sort, wrap and mail the papers for outside towns.

Gradually, mr. Hawley taught me to set job-work, make out the paper, and do good work on the foot-power presses. The first year of my apprenticeship I received $75; the second, $100, and the third, $150. This was in addition to my board and washing. It wasn't much for a fellow then just of age, but I learned a great lesson in economy!

West Young Man, West!

In the summer of 1886 I was very anxious to go to Dakota (Dakota Territory was not divided into states until 1889) to see Nellie. Just how I could go was a puzzle, but as I had worked hard and was determined to go, Prof. Treat saw the situation clearly. I had made part of my arrangements to leave about the first of July, but did not know where the money was coming from for such a long trip. One day Prof came to me and asked how I was going to get out to Fargo. I said "I don't know, but am going to make it somehow!" He then told me they had an offer from the Great Northern Railroad Company, of a round-trip pass for one person between St. Paul and St. Vincent, Minnesota, provided the Times would publish an article of a column and a half describing the new road, which was then known as the Manitoba Railway.

The article was duly run in the Times and the pass turned over to me. I left Geneva for Fargo about the middle of June, and on arriving in Chicago found that a rate war was on between the roads from Chicago to St. Paul. By paying the regular fare of $10 I obtained at St. Paul a rebate of $7, making the fare only $3 between those cities. In St. Paul I visited the offices of the Great Northern, where they readily changed the pass to read to Devil's Lake, instead of St Vincent.

I shall never forget the sensation that came over me when I awoke in the sleeper and found we were dropping into the Red River valley north of Fergus Falls. A thick fog had hung over us all night, and in the gray mist of morning the Valley seemed to me like an ocean. I had never seen such a great extent of perfectly flat land before. A quick lunch during a stop at Barnesville - then a very small village with only the division headquarters to make business - and I stepped off at Fargo, to find Nellie waiting for me with a phaeton. I was soon greeted by the McKinstrys at their home on Madison Avenue (later 4th Avenue South). It was a happy three weeks I put in with them and with the relatives at Audubon and Detroit Lake. Aunt Sally McKinstry and her son Lester lived at Audubon on the old farm. It was then -and has always been since - a delightful place for a visit. A lovely lake lay just across the road, and I had a boat on it. There Nellie and I spent some of the happiest hours of our lives.

There were innumerable lakes within a radius of a few miles, and the lovely hills covered with grain and backed by woodland, gave a view that was most pleasing to the eye. And I was looking at the world through rose-colored glasses, at least for a few weeks.

One day my old chum Dick Phelps, who had come to Fargo when Stella and Nellie left Geneva, came down to the farm with Ida Corel, a former Geneva friend of Nellie's, and Lester McKinstry took us all for a visit to the White Earth Indian Reservation, some twenty-four miles northeast of Audubon. We got a very early start, and a thick fog lent a very peculiar appearance to the prairies. After a couple of hours of driving we became lost. Finally, near a smoke-house in the distance we saw a signboard and felt greatly relieved. When we came up to it we found the directions: "Take Tutt's Liver Pills!"

We finally reached White Earth village, and saw scores of Indians in tepees and crude log huts. In one tepee I heard someone playing "Home, Sweet Home" on a harmonica. Our party camped for a picnic lunch under the trees at St. Columba's Episcopal Mission and drove home by way of Detroit Lake, where we called upon the Wilcox family before returning to the farm. Mrs. Hannah (C.P.) Wilcox was a sister of Will and Lester McKinstry. She and her husband at one time seriously wanted to adopt Nellie and give her an education, but the plan met with some opposition by Nellie and the McKinstrys and never came about. Had she been so adopted she would have doubtless inherited a share of the vast Wilcox Lumber Company, which grew to great proportions throughout the state of Minnesota. The company's mills were at Frazee, near Detroit Lake.

There was one phase of my visit to Fargo that was very much of a disappointment to me. I had felt that matters between Nellie and me had reached a point where there could be a definite engagement between us. In anticipation, I had brought with me an engagement ring. Before leaving Fargo we all went one day to the Sheyenne river west of Fargo for a visit. Nellie and I had a carriage by ourselves. On the way I talked over the engagement, showed her the ring and asked her to wear it in token of that engagement. She did not think it wise at that time, and I was obliged to keep the ring until my visit in 1889. When, on my return, she accepted it, our "contract" seemed to be completely secured. Unfortunately that ring was lost during our early housekeeping days, but I previously had a ring made for her from gold brought from California by her father's brother, Uncle Jim Hart. In it was mounted a handsome pearl which Uncle Jim had brought from the Orient to give to Mother Hart. Nell has always considered this her engagement ring and is still wearing it. (1916)

My visit to Dakota lasted about three weeks and I returned to Geneva to resume my apprenticeship with more heart and better courage. Aside from the ring episode everything was favorable, and Nellie and I understood each other better than ever.

About the last year of my apprenticeship Father's health was such that, following the Twinsburg pastorate, he decided to drop study for a few years and engage in work of a different character. My brother Fletcher was then about twenty years old and anxious to be doing something to help out the family exchequer. He and Father decided to establish a broom factory in Geneva. They moved into a house in the south part of town, rented a commodious and well made barn for a factory, and equipped it with the proper machinery and stock of broom corn. They soon became very expert at broom-making and for the next year made and sold a large quantity of top-quality brooms. Having no means to keep a man on the road to take orders for them, they found before the year was up that they had too much stock on hand, and the larger factories could undersell them. They disposed of the business after I had left Geneva and Father resumed his pastoral work in a small church just south of Oberlin. He greatly enjoyed this pastorate and his health was considerably improved.

Fletcher was started in the preparatory department of Denison University at Granville, where his grandfather had so long been president. He remained there six years, until the close of his junior year, and was an honor student, making the Phi Kappa key in his final year there. He had to drop out of school before the year was up, however, when he broke his leg. He was obliged to spend an entire vacation in my Fargo home with his leg in a plaster cast. He was too proud to accept financial assistance from outside and gave up his college plans to enter business life. All his long study of languages was laid aside, although he has always continued his fondness for German, and has since acquired a thorough knowledge of Norwegian and Swedish. His business life afforded him the greatest field for use of these languages in this Scandinavian Northwest.

The Journeyman Printer.

On completing my apprenticeship in the summer of 1888 I naturally drifted to Cleveland to gain further experience on daily newspaper work. I made my home at Aunt Maria Baker's, on Edwards Avenue, and went by horsecar some three miles to my work down in the city. If all young fellows find it as hard breaking into city life as I did, I am sorry for them. I found the very first thing that I could not get work in the city without joining the Typographical Union. I did so at a meeting one Sunday afternoon. I became a union printer because of force of circumstances and not from principle; although from the time I was eighteen years old I had served as secretary of the Geneva Knights of Labor, when T. V. Powderly was the head of the national organization. I first got a job with the A.N. Kellogg Company, which printed the "insides" of more than three hundred country newspapers. I was introduced to the art of "making even" on a brief piece of copy from a given article. This means that where in a busy office it is necessary to cut up copy for a number of men to work on at the same time each has to make his last line of type come out a full line. This is sometimes difficult, and aa a greenhorn from a country office where "make even" is never necessary, it proved my downfall and the foreman swore at me like a pirate. However, another printer who was through with his bit of copy helped me out, and I drew my pay and sought work elsewhere.

There were a good many "subs" hanging about all news offices and I found it very precarious getting enough work to keep me alive. I worked a day now and then on the "Penny Press", but never got a chance at the Leader or the Plain Dealer, the two leading papers of the city. I soon became desperate, for I was flat broke. I made the daily round of the printing offices - often without success, and would then sit on a bench in the city park overlooking Lake Erie. I am afraid I sometimes cried there, and I know I seriously contemplated jumping into the lake and ending it all. After a time I found a little work with the Williams Printing Company, on catalogues. It was a dismal office, and I was not accustomed to inserting so many small cuts into narrow measure work. I'm sure my work was not very satisfactory, and that I could hardly make living expenses. The wage in book shops was but $12 a week.

Soon after this experience I saw an advertisement in an evening paper, and the next morning was early in line with thirty other men who wanted the place. It was a firm that sold musical merchandise by mail, and through the medium of catalogues. They had taken a contract to print a commercial spelling book for a business college. They had but a few racks of type and but one printer, whose time was occupied on catalogue printing. It was an "open shop" office. I obtained the job, and for the next two months put in my time on "Shinn's Commercial Speller." I set all the type and did all the proof reading and corrections.

Four different fonts of type ,were used in setting each word and defining it. I was not enough versed in the mysteries to know that such work should have had double pay, or that I was entitled to regular proof-reader's pay. That work I did at home during the evenings. The work barely kept me together, but was a good experience, and I still cherish a copy of the only book I ever set and read proofs for without help.

My experiences in printing in Cleveland clearly demonstrated the absolute inadequacy of the smattering of knowledge of the printing art to be obtained in the average country newspaper office. County and city printing, are two very different propositions!

When I went to the city I decided to visit around among the churches awhile and hear some of the prominent preachers before uniting with any church. Of course I first went to the Euclid Avenue Baptist church, where Rockefeller was superintendent of the Sunday school. There was a chilly welcome there and I did not go again. The Episcopal churches were very formal - too much so for me! Uncle Frank Hall was rector of St. Mary's church way over on the west side, but it was too far to go to regularly. The Logan Street Baptist church was nearer my style, but also too far from Edwards Avenue. At the little brick Quaker church on Cedar Avenue I was given a most hearty welcome, and often attended there.

Finally I went to the Wilson Avenue Baptist church, about a mile and a half from home, on the car line. There I found a hearty welcome and a true church home. I was first introduced into the Christian Endeavor Society, and was also a member of the teacher training class. I became much attached to these people, and became a member with them. From the Wilson Avenue church I later took my letter to the First Baptist church in Fargo, where I have now been for twenty--seven years. (As of 1916)

My cousin, Elbert Hall Baker, was then advertizing manager of the Plain Dealer. The Plain Dealer, although not Republican in politics, is easily the leading paper in Ohio today. Baker was a very thorough and energetic business man, and now owns not only the Plain Dealer, but the Boston Telegram and also one of the leading dailies in Tacoma, Washington. He had at that time a family of three children. Mrs. Baker was a most amiable woman who made visitors feel completely at ease in her home. The family now lives at Gates Mills, south of Cleveland.

There are very few bright days in my memory of events while in Cleveland. One, however, still remains fresh in my mind. It was a Fourth of July excursion I made with the Bakers and a company of about eighty guests to the shore of Lake Erie at Collinwood, eight miles east of Cleveland. We had a beautiful forenoon, a great chicken-pie dinner in the open - and thereby hangs a tale, for nearly everyone in the party was poisoned by the chicken pie. None was critically ill, but all were in for trouble in the afternoon. We witnessed one of the worst storms that ever occurred in the lake regions. Many ships were wrecked, though not in our vicinity, and our big cook tent was blown down on Sally Brass, the fat old darky cook, and her poor insane mother. I lived within a few miles of Lake Erie for years, but have never seen such waves as that storm rolled up!

That winter I worked several months for the Cleveland Printing and Publishing Company on St. Clair Street, a block north of the public square. This was a first-class printing establishment and did more for me than any other in Cleveland. Here I had charge of the mailing lists of the Brotherhood of -Locomotive Engineers Journal - with more than 100,000 subscribers. I also worked on book jobs, which greatly pleased me. The office was pleasant and the men most agreeable. I continued there until April, 1889, and boarded in the old Case Homestead Building on the public square. This was one of Cleveland's landmarks.

I kept getting more and more homesick to see Dakota again, for Nell was there. When I could stand it no longer I called for my check, went down to Geneva to say goodbye to my people, and pulled out for the west.

Off to Dakota for Good.

Many years ago Horace Greeley advised young men to go west and grow up with the country. It has been fortunate for me that my "best girl~' went west, for she certainly was the magnet that pulled me away from low-paid labor in the east, and introduced me to a new career in North Dakota, which had just become state.

On my trip west in that spring of 1889, I stopped off a few days at Three Oaks, Michigan, to visit my Uncle Albert L. Drew. He was my mother's oldest brother. Her sister, Mrs. Vira L. Gillette, resides near Ottowa, Kansas. Mother's next older brother, Harry L. Drew, died some years ago at San Bernardino, California - a well-known banker and an associate of Vice President Fairbanks in a large Mexican land syndicate. Mother's youngest brother, Perry Green Drew, was not very successful and lived for many years back in the mountains of southern California. His oldest daughter, Lulu, was for some years a well-known actress. She is a very handsome woman and is now in private life.

I reached Fargo on April 11th, 1889, and it has been our home ever since. After a short visit I found I could get much better wages in Fargo than in the East, and decided to make it my home. I boarded with a Mrs. Frank Beals for a little over a year. During that time I held cases of the Fargo Daily Argus, then edited by Major Alanson Edwards - one of the absolutely unique men in western journalism. My wages averaged about $4 a day - or rather a night. We were paid by the thousands of "ems" set. Once I made $7 in one night, when we had copy for the drawings in the Louisiana Lottery.

I remained on the Argus nearly four years, during the last two of which I was acting foreman, while the real foreman, Frank L. Gage, was proof-reader. When I took his place for nearly two years my wages were $4.16 per night.

We had great experiences on the Argus in those days. Major Edwards was bankrupt, and we printers received weekly paychecks covering about half our earnings, while the other half went on the paper's book accounts. When a printer quit the force they generally settled up. Some of us, being fixtures, gradually found ourselves in a very serious situation. About $200 was due me on account when I was married. I needed the cash to start housekeeping, but to realize on it I had to take it out in orders on firms that owed the Argus.

Perhaps it was fortunate that I had this anchor to windward. At any rate, it paid for the furnishings of the little cottage at 1440 Fourth Avenue South -next to the McKinstry home - where Nell and I began housekeeping.

We were married in the parlor of Will and Stella McKinstry's home at four o'clock on the afternoon of Nell's twenty-second birthday, June 14th, 1890. Rev. J. M. Davis, pastor of the First Baptist church, tied the knot and Rev. McKnight, pastor of the First Methodist church, assisted. The guests present were Judge Charles A. Pollock and wife, Prof. Francis T. Waters and wife, of Fargo College, Rev. and Mrs. McKnight, Frank Aikens and wife, Miss Jardine (Nell's dress-maker) and all the McKinstry family.

Nell looked sweet and charming that day. She was dressed in a brown wedding dress, with lovely hand embroidery, and carried a huge bouquet.

For several days I had been off duty at the printing office, and my bride-to--be and I put in the time getting our cottage cleaned up and ready for occupancy. I had bought some new furniture from an acquaintance who was leaving Fargo. He had a few simple things, and a new carpet for our parlor; but we were positively happy. We began our home that very day by establishing a family altar, and have maintained it during the years since, though varying it in form from time to time.

As I worked from noon until 6 in the morning in the printing office it was necessary for me to sleep daytimes, and for my wife to be alone at night. I presume she got used to this, but it was difficult all around. As the Argus was a seven-day paper, I generally put a "sub" in my place on Sundays and went to church with Nell. She was always active in church work, and both of us were members of the Young People's Society. When the Baptist Young People's Union was organized I became its first president.

Our first son, Jeremiah Lawrence, was born April 25th, 1891, about five minutes before midnight. He was named for his great-grandfather, Dr. Jeremiah Hall, and for his maternal grandfather, Daniel Lawrence Hart.

The Big Storm.

On July 21st, 1890 - one Sunday when I was at home - a tornado struck the city of Fargo, and devastated the country for miles around. We were sound asleep when about two o'clock Monday morning the storm struck the city. It was not a true twister, but a straight blow from a wind that blew 90 miles an hour. It was accompanied by terrific lightning and thunder. From the steady glare of the lightning we could see a barn next door east of us had been blown over. To the west of us in the next block a small residence reposed on its roof. Across an open stretch to the northwest we could see that a passenger train of a dozen coaches was lying on its side in the ditch. In a residence in the northwest part of the city seven people - a mother and six children -were killed when their home was blown off its foundation and crushed them in a coal-hole under the kitchen, where they had taken refuge. Had they remained in the house no harm would have come to them. In the twenty-five years since the storm no family has lived in that house for more than a few weeks.

We shall never forget that disaster. For years it left a terrible dread on my mind, and a fear of wind-storms which for years was a nightmare to me whenever a long, white, rolling wind-cloud came from the west.

A year or so later the only real blizzard I have ever seen struck us on the night of March 9th, 1892, at 11 o'clock at night. Nell was alone with baby Lawrence, and I at work at the Argus office. I was acting foreman that night in the composing room. The evening had been mild and a warm rain from the southeast fell until 11 o'clock, when with no warning at all our ventilator shaft closed with a bang when the wind veered squarely into the northwest. Yes, there had been some warning: a telegram from Devil's Lake stated that a blizzard was on the way and that the temperature had dropped forty degrees in six hours.

The four-story brick-veneered building rocked and shook so that water spilled from pails partly filled with rainwater from leaks in the roof. We were afraid the building would collapse, and I told the men to lay off work until things steadied down somewhat. For a time we took refuge in a basement vault. After several hours in which the storm only gathered in its intensity, the boys got their nerves together, and some tried to set type.

We knew there could be no trains out in the morning, so we only set a few columns of storm news, and quit work about four o'clock in the morning. We waited in the press room for daylight. Several windows had been blown in, and snow was drifting about the room. About six o'clock Arthur Bestic, one of the office employees, another printer and I concluded that we would try to get home. We went up the alley toward Eighth Street, but found it blocked with roofs and from two to three feet of snow. We could not see our way, but managed to get back to the press-room door. An hour later we tried it again, holding hands so we would not get separated. The evening before had been so mild I had worn only a light overcoat - and no gloves! When we reached Bestic's place he loaned me his mittens, and I managed to get home - so chilled that I fell in a heap at my wife's bedside. She opened her eyes and rubbed them, exclaiming, "Why, what's the matter?" Then, man-like, after worrying all night for her safety, I said, "Why, woman, don't you know there's a blizzard on?" She indicated that she did, but that there was nothing she could do to stop it. Just like a woman!

The blizzard lasted three days and I didn't return to work until it was over. My next neighbor, Mr. Green, had a farm eleven miles east of Moorhead, just across the Red River. His hired man started for the farm that first even-ing after a drinking bout in a Moorhead saloon. He took a jug of whiskey along with him, and started for the farm after nightfall. The storm caught him on the open prairie, and not being able to see where to go, he unhitched his team, tied them to the wheels and lay down in the wagon, where he froze to death, with his arms crooked around the jug of whiskey. They were found after the blizzard abated - the team nearly starved and frozen.

Only the great blizzard of the winter of 1888 surpassed this one Ln its intensity, and that was before I left Geneva. The wind in this later storm reached 90 miles an hour - only two miles less than the windstorm of 1890. The storms in North Dakota come with great force, and because we can see them so long before they strike - if in daylight - they are more terrifying to us. However, there is small probability of a tornado destroying the same town more than once, and as Fargo had had a bad one, we gradually got the idea that the next storm probably would not hit us hard. As a matter of fact we dread the intense heat of summer more than the cold of winter; although the cold usually spins out longer than is agreeable. It reminds me of when my son Donald was ranching in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 1915. He asked an old-timer there how long the winters usually lasted in the Hole. "How the hell do I know?" replied the westerner; "I've only been here thirteen years!"

Adventures in Fraternalism.

Soon after going to Fargo I transferred my membership in the Odd Fellows from Geneva to Fargo, and remained a member of the Northern Light lodge until its charter was cancelled, several years after the great fire which destroyed a large portion of Fargo. But that is another story - too long to reproduce here.

In April of 1897 I was made a Mason in Shiloh Lodge, in Fargo. A month later I was passed to the degree of Fellowcraft, and in June was raised to the sublime degree of a Master Mason. I was then in Sunday school organization work for the American Baptist Publication Society, working throughout both North and South Dakota. In August, 1897, the Scottish Rite bodies of Fargo made a pilgrimage to Ellendale to establish a Lodge of Perfection. My pastor, Rev. Wm. L. Van Horn, was a prominent Scottish Rite Mason, and I believe had been made an honorary thirty-third about that time. He had interested me in masonry to begin with and persuaded Major Fleming, Inspector General for the Dakotas, to let me receive the Rite degrees at the time of the Ellendale pilgrimage. I accepted the invitation and received all degrees from the fourth to the thirty-second at the Ellendale meetings.

This was the beginning of masonic studies and ritual work that have always been very dear to me. Even at Ellendale I was given important parts in the ritual work, and at Fargo I was at once given the position of Orator of all the Scottish Rite bodies. Some years later I became Lieutenant Com-mander of the Consistory, for the 31st and 32nd degrees. Dr. Sylvester J. Hill, 33, was Master of Kadosh at that time. He had posted me when learning the catechism of the Blue Lodge degrees and had me pretty much in hand all the way through Masonry. It was a pleasure to be the second officer under him for four years, and when he stepped out as Master of Kadosh I was advanced to that place, retaining it for nine years, or until I was coronated an Honorary Thirty-third Degree Mason, about 1909. I had received the Royal Arch Chapter degrees in 1900, and the Order of the Red Cross and the order of the Temple two weeks later.

The occasion of my receiving Knighthood in the Templers, was most inter-esting. It was the night of December 31st, 1900, and a class of eight novices had received all the ritual work but the accolade, or the act of the Commander in dubbing the candidate a knight. As the hour of midnight between the cen-turies approached each of the novices knelt for the accolade. Dr. Hill, who had so often stood beside me, had me in charge that night, being Eminent Commander. As the church bells pealed out the hour of midnight and whistles helped bring in the new year the Twentieth Century, a sword was laid across the shoulder of each novice and he was dubbed "Sir Knight". Other members of the "Twentieth Century" class were Prof. Charles M. Hall, Scott Hall, Henry J. Hanson, Dr. C. N. Callender, Sam Mathews, Jacob Lowell, Jr., and Oscar Hallenburg.

I served a term as Eminent Commander of Auvergne Commandery in 1907-08, and the following January, when about to start for Washington with Nell, as invited guests of the White House Conference called by President Theodore Roosevelt, was presented with a handsome gold watch by the members of the Commandery. The following year I was elected Grand Prelate of the Grand Commandery of North Dakota, and served about eighteen months.

About 1909 I received my Honorary Thirty-third, having previously been given the honorary degree of the Knight Commander of the Court of Honor by the Supreme Council. This degree and the 33rd are given only in recognition of continued hard work for Scottish Rite Freemasonry, and are not purchasable by money or through favor. The work which earned the honors was my compilation and revision of the rituals for the 32nd degree, eliminating most of the Sanskrit proper names used in the printed ritual and substituting for them their English equivalents or substitutes.

I became a member of El Zagal Temple, Ancient Arabic Nobles of the Mystic Shrine early in the century, and have with but one exception attended every ceremonial session since. Those who have no understanding of the basic principles of Masonry, or of the purposes of the Shrine, often fail to see how a grown man can belong to an organization whose principal outward acts are those of show and pageantry, and whose secret work consists in such large measure in fun and tom-foolery. Every man likes to be a boy now and then, and enjoys a little horseplay. All of the rest of Masonic work is of a solemn -even a religious - character. To receive the Shrine work immediately after the order of the Temple, or the Rose Croix degree, would be too abrupt - a descent from the sublime to the ridiculous. The Shrine has plenty of good, wholesome fun in it, together with some of the best lessons in the fostering of charitable motives, that could be taught anywhere. The Order has each year given from $400 to $1,000 for the work of the North Dakota Children's Home Society, turning it over to me as superintendent, with no restrictions as to its use, except that it be used, for something to "make the kids happy." I have never looked upon Masonry as better than the church, nor as a substitute for it in any way. I have no time for those Masons not Christians who set up any such argument. The whole tenor of Masonry is against any substitution of it for the Christian church. It does distinctly teach morals in the Blue Lodge, and Christianity in the Commandery. In the Scottish Rite the best qualities of all the world's great teachers are set forth, and Jesus of Nazareth pictured as the greatest of the teachers of men; but as for divine birth and true Messiahship, Freemasonry does not attempt to decide for men, but leaves each to make his own interpretation.

I know its teachings thoroughly and at the same time profess to be an earnest and sincere Christian, always taking an active part in church work. I have no quarrel with any man who looks upon Masonry with contempt, or who believes it to be a work of Satan to subvert men's souls. I know it is nothing of the kind and have only pity in my heart for the man whose mind is so narrow. I have in my heart a sincere desire that when my son has reached the age where he can judge a thing without bias, and after he is thoroughly grounded in Christian faith and doctrine, that he will keep his anchor just where it belongs. Then, may her receive the degrees of Masonry. Yet I would never ask him to join the Masonic order. So much for my Masonic career!

The Challenge of the Sunday School.

To revert to my printing days once more: I remained on the working force of the Argus until the spring of 1892. After the organization of the National Baptist Young People's Union in 1890, I was sent as a delegate to the North Dakota Baptist convention at Lisbon, in the fall of 1891. Just previous to the convention, "Evangel", one of the chapel cars of the American Baptist Publication Society, came to Fargo in charge of Boston W. Smith - "Uncle Boston," as he was familiarly known all over the country. He held a meeting for railroad men in the car near the Northern Pacific depot. The car was to go to Lisbon for inspection by the convention, and "Uncle Boston" asked me to stay with him on the car each night of that gathering.

I remember we held a prayer meeting in the car between Fargo and Lisbon, and it was filled with delegates and others interested. The car was side-tracked near the station when we arrived, and was the Mecca of the curious for several days. There were two regular sleeping berths in the living section of the car, and here I stayed with Mr. Boston. He told me much about true possibility of the chapel car work in sparsely settled regions on the railroads, and about the Sunday school work of the Publication Society. It was at this Lisbon convention that I was selected state president of the B.Y.O.U., which office I filled for two years. During that time I organized local B.Y.O.U.'s in a number of the Baptist churches of the state.

It was a matter of much surprise to me when, in the following early spring, my pastor, Rev. W.L. Van Horn, asked me if I would consider accepting the position of state Sunday School Missionary for North Dakota. This would mean a radical change for me, and the abandonment of my printer's trade.

Nell and I talked the matter over very carefully and prayerfully. We finally reached the decision that the Lord was leading in the matter, and that if He was, we could only accept and undertake the work. It meant that I should travel most of the time in the interest of Sunday school work, and that Nell would have the burden of bringing up our boy. There were many tears shed, but we had settled it and were prepared to abide by the consequences.

Uncle Boston has picked me out for the work, and came to Fargo on the day I began the job for the Society. He talked on the work of the organization and then I was publicly installed as the Sunday school Missionary for North Dakota. I shall always feel a deep debt of gratitude to Brother Van Horn for the part he played in getting me into the work, and to the memory of Uncle Boston who long since went to his reward.

There were then only about twenty-five Baptist churches in the state, although several other defunct congregations were carried on the books. One of these was at Mapes, in Nelson county. It was really the first place where I made an effort to organize a Sunday School. I found a small building which had not been used for several years, judging from the amount of dust on the floor and furnishings. I could not find a Baptist in the village, and the only members left lived a mile and a half in the country. I walked out to see them, but found they had little interest in the reorganization of the Bap-tist work there. However, they promised to come in the next day - Sunday - and open the church. I called at every house in town and invited them to service the next morning. When church time came I found that the building had not been opened or prepared for a service. I put a plank up to a window, crawled in and unlocked the door. I swept out the room and dusted the seats, so that when people began to gather the room looked quite presentable.

I tried to preach a short sermon, and then organized a school, from neces-sity using such material as I could find for officers. I gave them some Bibles and enough Sunday school literature to carry them through the quarter. This was my first organization, and it was kept up for several years until the building was sold and made into a residence.

Another place I visited was Crystal, where I found the male members of the church were putting a new roof on the church horse-sheds. Adapting my tactics to circumstances, I helped them shingle all day, and they always remained fast friends of my work. At Cavalier I spent a week one winter and held meetings every after noon for boys and girls. I used chalk talks freely; also some interesting chemical experiments as object lessons. Several young people professed conversion in the meetings and have since been faithful Christian workers.

Not long after becoming a Mason I purchased a double stereopticon from Shiloh Lodge when they installed a new one operated by electricity. The old one which I purchased used kerosene and was bulky, smelly and heavy. Between the outfit and my large grip filled with slides and personal effects, I usually had to make two trips onto and off of trains at all junctions. I had a fine outfit of slides on the Holy Land and Egypt, and another on the Life of Christ. Still another illustrated "How We Got Our English Bible." All were most useful in holding interest for Sunday school workers.

In the fall of 1893 South Dakota was added to my field and for seven years I carried the stereopticons all over both states, including the Black Hills. I made one trip into the Hills each year, and had some very interesting, as well as some very dismal experiences there. In those days, in order to get from Fargo to Deadwood - a distance of over thousand miles - I had to go by way of Sioux City, Iowa, thence to Omaha and across the entire length of Nebraska, before entering the Hills at Buffalo Springs.

I well remember my first trip there. It was the year of the Omaha Exposition, and I spent half of one day visiting it. I was particularly interested in the many Indian tribes there represented. They could not understand each other's dialects, but all understood a common sign language. It was most interesting to see them hard at it as they sat ranged in a long row on the shady side of the cattle sheds. Each tribe and family had their own tepees or wickiups, showing their manner of life in both summer and winter. Just as we crossed the state line into the Black Hills region I looked out of the window and on the bank above me sat two coyotes, watching the train.

The visit to Hot Springs was always enjoyable. The church people were cordial and the scenery of the town most charming. From the Soldier's Home came poor old crippled veterans to drink of the hot water gushing from the earth -a "sure" panacea for their rheumatism! I once climbed Battle Mountain, just northeast of town, and from a height of 3,000 feet enjoyed a magnificent panorama of the entire range of Black Hills, with Harney Peak rising to the north some 8,000 feet until his hoary head was lost in the clouds. There was a wonderful natatorium at Hot Springs, 450 feet by sixty broad. The water comes right from the ground at a temperature of 98 degrees. On one of my visits to the place I had the pleasure of saving a young boy from drowning when he lost his hold on a tie which he had propelled into deep water. His mother was helplessly watching him and was profuse in her thanks when I pulled him in.

Two different years I made trips to the famous Wind Cave, twelve miles north of Hot Springs. I have seen Mammoth Cave in Kentucky and several other great caverns, but for wonderful beauty Wind Cave far outclasses them all. I went about three miles into the cave the first trip, and made it to the Blue Grotto - seven hundred feet below the surface - on the second visit. The variety and beauty of the crystals formed by the chemical content of the hot water working on the rock formations is astounding. The principal room in the cave is about twenty-five feet high and fifteen hundred feet long, with no supporting pillars.

At one point in the cave is a very acute angle in the passageway, and right here the draft of wind is very strong, so that it becomes necessary to go forward with your lighted candle behind you to keep it from the wind. The "Chimney" is a perpendicular passageway quite hard to negotiate. I took one lady into the cave against the advice of the manager, who begged me to coax her out of it. He insisted she couldn't make the tortuous passage. But she was determined to go, and go she did! When she came to the Chimney she followed the men, and straddled it just as the men did, with her feet on stones on either side, she proved herself agile enough, however ungraceful!

At Piedmont, farther up in the Hills, I visited Crystal Cave, from which the crystals were taken to construct the miniature replica of the cave shown at, the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. I had visited that, and was anxious to see the original. It is an amazing place, extending for several miles underground. It is difficult of access and there are few visitors. The owner lives in a log cabin near the entrance to the cave, which serves as a cellar and milk room. The Hills country is full of magpies, and a tame one in this cabin bit the back of my hand savagely from under the rocker where I sat.

Not the least of my experiences was my association with the Chinese who were members of the churches at Deadwood and Lead City. They were all restaurant men; and because of the hours at which they served meals could not attend Sunday school. But in its place they had Sunday school on Monday evening for Bible study, and on Friday nights they studied the English language. Each "China boy" had to have his own teacher and this provided some real missionary work for a number of young American Christians. The Chinese used to almost quarrel to see which should entertain me at his restaurant. They never allowed me to pay anything for my meals, and seemed really hurt if I could not visit each of them.

One day I was in the tailorshop of Duncan Dexter, when one of the China-boys came in. I had been remarking to Dexter that I should greatly enjoy a visit to a Chinese joss-house. The Chinese boy overheard the remark, and offered to take me to one. He acted rather sheepish, however, until he explained that "I Christian now - I no go to joss-house anymore!" But we did finally go through the joss-house in lower Deadwood. I saw the great joss, or image, made of papiermache, which represents some Chinese warrior who lived and died many centuries ago. Vases of incense burned before the altar, and joss-sticks were fuming from vases on the altar itself. These joss-sticks are made of bamboo, each carrying its own symbol, and are used by every unconverted Chinaman to divine his future, and guide him in his business or loves.

On another occasion I visited a Chinese store at noon and saw a group of Chinamen eating rice with chopsticks, from small bowls held against their chins. The proprietor of this store was a fat old fellow, who had a wife here - the only Chinese woman in the Hills. He also had another wife and set of children in China, or so the son told me. There were several of the children in Deadwood, and he allowed me to photograph them, including a little baby boy and a daughter with a long queue. I became very fond of the China-boys and they certainly seemed to appreciate the fellowship of Christian people.

While at Deadwood I climbed to the top of Mount Moriah, which looms just over the city to the south, and gives a very fine panorama of the northern Black Hills and the Indian Rosebud Reservation. The city cemetery lies on a high slope of Mount Moriah, about five hundred feet above the city, and contains a long row of those early settlers who met death at the hands of their fellow -bandits or roughians. Only wooden boards mark their graves, which are excavated from solid rock. These boards all have the simple description: "Died from a pistol shot." The grave of Wild Bill Hickock, the frontiersman and scout, is one of the best known in the cemetery. Some admirer has chiseled from red sandstone a tall monument which bears two crossed pistols, and the inscription, "Custer was lonely without him."

One afternoon at Lead City I was setting up my stereopticons in the Baptist church when I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder and a familiar voice said, "Well, how's the old soldier?" I turned and looked into the face of my Uncle Henry Baker. I could not have been more surprised than to meet him so far from Cleveland, and he told me that his daughter, Nellie Baker Dickerson, lived in Lead, and he was visiting her. I of course visited the family, and one of the little girls took me up the mountain north of the city to visit the open-cut mine discovered and owned by Otto Grantz, an eccentric old German. I was shown the spot - no larger than a peck basket - from which he took $25,000 in nuggets. He told me that the first three carloads of ore he sent to a smelter in Denver had netted him $225,000.

I will never forget my varied experiences in the three or four years I visited the Black Hills. They are so absolutely unlike the rest of Dakota that one seems to be in a different world there. I will close my story of the Hills with an experience I had at Keystone, where the Holy Terror Mine is located. It was a small town built in a gulch on the mountainside a few miles north of Harney Peak. There was only a Catholic church in the town, but many saloons. I could find but one hall in which to hold service, and that was over a saloon, and very dirty - probably used for miners' dances and shows. I had the place jammed with miners and their families, and was using the slides on the Life of Christ. Towards the close I threw on the canvas Guido Revi's "Ecce Homo" - "Behold the Man!" One cannot look upon that agonized face of the thorn-crowned Christ unmoved. As I flashed it on the screen there was a moment of silence, better than any sermon, when a roughly-dressed, drunken miner who had come in with a smeared up girl from the street, rose and said, "Come on, Sal! Say, Mister, I am only a drunken miner, but I used to be the son of a Presbyterian minister, and I can't stand that face!" And out they went!

Work in the Black Hills had many unique and interesting features, and I disliked to leave it; but it was necessary to remain there alone, a month or five weeks at a time, and often I failed to connect with the mail from home. The last year I was there mail failed to reach me for five weeks and this was too much to stand. My remaining dates were cancelled when I reached Custer, and I went on to Keystone, took the stage for Humbolt, on the Elkhorn road, and turned my face eastward. Never will that ride be forgotten! It was down grade all the way, and the "rocky road to Dublin" was very narrow - the cliffs rising almost perpendicularly on either side. To the south Harney Peak lifted its sharp head far above the clouds. It was a magnificent view, and in its way quite as charming as that from the top of Lookout Mountain, in Tennessee, which I visited in 1897.

Soon after this I arranged with the Publication Society, in whose mlsslonary service I was employed, to have the work in the Black Hills transferred to the Sunday school missionary for Colorado, it being several hundred miles nearer Denver than Fargo. When they realized this they gladly consented to the arrangement, and thereafter I resigned the work in the spring of 1902.

The Work for Homeless Children.

After almost ten years' service as Sunday school missionary in Dakota I began to feel that it was unfair to my wife to put upon her all the respon-sibility of training our children to useful manhood. I was away from home a large part of the time; when in the Hills, more than a thousand miles away my heart was hungry for home life and Nell longed to have me with the family, although she never interposed any objection to my absence while in Sunday school work. My two boys were at an age when they needed a father as well as a mother.

In the spring of 1902 it seemed as if Providence was opening the way to a realization of our dreams. For some time past the Ladies' Auxiliary of the North Dakota Children's Home Society, at Fargo, had been dissatisfied with some of the features of the work as carried on by Superintendent B. H. Brasted. My relations with him had always been pleasant, so far as we came in contact. As the Ladies had solicited all the funds with which the Receiving Home was built, and were doing much to maintain the home, they finally asked Mr. Brasted to resign as Superintendent. This seemed to sour him, and he felt very bitter at the treatment accorded him. He had been Superintendent for seven years, succeeding Rev. McConnehey, who filled the office for a year and a half.

When organized in 1902 by Rev. E. P. Savage, superintendent of the Minnesota Children's Home and Aid Society, the North Dakota branch remained auxiliary to the Minnesota society. On January 19th, 1897, it was incorpor-ated as an independent organization, but affiliated with the National Chil-dren's Home Society.

The Ladies' Auxiliary began the collection of funds for the erection of the Receiving Home. Toward the close of 1889 or early in 1900 the building - a two -story frame structure of good size, and designed by a well known architect, was completed at a cost of about $8,000, which was then quite a lot of money, even for such a structure. It was built by Stewart Wilson, a Fargo contractor, on a site donated by Charles A. Morton and wife. The site covered five lots on the east side of Tenth Street South, at the corner of Eighth Avenue.

Superintendent Brasted was the first to occupy the Home, and the furnishings were mainly his personal property. The building at that time had no heating plant, and was heated by eleven coal stoves scattered over the plant. Mr. Bras-ted did his own janitor work, and in winter it consumed much of his time. All the furniture that belonged to the Society were twelve iron cribs, a few wooden beds and a very large parlor rug.

One day in the early spring Mrs. Tom L. Sloane, one of the most active of the ladies, approached me, told me they expected to make a change of super-intendent, and asked me if I would consider taking it over. I told her I would do nothing that could be interpreted as opposing Mr. Brasted, but that if he gave up the work I might then consider it. A few days later she informed me that he had resigned, and would leave about May 20th for California. On behalf of the Society she again urged me to accept the position now vacant. I told her I was bound to the work of the American Baptist Publication Society, but if they would release me I would accept the position on a basis of $1,200 a year salary, and out of it would meet my own traveling expenses. The Publication Society accepted my resignation, but requested me to attend to the field correspondence until a successor could be found. Nominally, I became superintendent of the Home Society on May 20th, 1902 - my thirty-eighth birthday.

The National Baptist Anniversaries were held in St. Paul, and I attended for the full week. I assisted the Publication Society all week with their book display and they presented me with $25 worth of books of my own choosing.

On my return to Fargo I found the Ladies' Auxiliary in full force at the Home. In my absence they had raised and installed four hundred dollars' worth of furniture, rugs, dishes, curtains and other furnishings, and the Home began to look more cheerful. They had done this as a house-warming for us, and it certainly helped the situation.

As we had no intention of giving up our own home, I engaged Mrs. Jennie A. Benedict, widow of a former Northern Pacific engineer. Mrs. Benedict had been Matron in the Michigan State Home at Coldwater. She was taken very ill after she had served for six months, and resigned her work. She was married about this time to my long-time friend and Masonic instructor, Dr. S. J. Hill.

My good wife then assumed the matronship, and Mrs. Nellie Hyatt, of Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, became assistant matron. She had filled a similar position in a similar home in New Jersey. She was a trained nurse in army hospitals in England, obeyed instructions strictly, and was a valuable worker. About this time an epidemic of dysentery struck our nursery, and before it could be checked swept away fourteen babies. We shall never forget the trying experiences of these trying days. Nell never got over the shock of so many deaths, and to this day the wrinkles on her forehead tell the story of sleepless nights of anxious watching. Only when the nursery was emptied of its homeless charges did the epidemic cease, although many Fargo physicians did all they could to find the source of the trouble and kill the scourge.

After six months as matron, she turned over her work to Mrs. Hyatt, who retained it for four years, when she married a well-to-do farmer named Rich, at Detroit, Minnesota. Their wedding took place in the parlor of the Home.

During the early part of our service with the home, Mrs. W. H. Hunt and Mrs. Morton Page, of the Auxiliary, made a tour of the state soliciting funds for the installation of a hot-water heating plant for the Home. This was a great help to the work. A little later the same ladies persuaded Hon. R. M. Pollock, of Fargo, to prepare a bill for presentation to the Legislature, providing a biennial appropriation of $3,000 from the state treasury in support of the home. The measure was not engineered by the Society, and the board of directors knew nothing of the ladies' intentions until the bill had been intro-duced. The women lobbied effectively, and the measure passed both houses with no opposition, but the Governor, Hon. Frank White, vetoed it on the ground that it was unconstitutional.

It was fortunate that he did so. It was entirely contrary to the practice of other state members of the National Children's Home Society, which had never solicited state aid, for fear it would throw the work into politics. Beside this feature, it would have killed charity from the general public. Had we re-ceived $3,000 every two years from the state treasury it would have gone but a small way toward the total amount needed, and the balance would still have to be raised by public charity.

Some of the board members felt otherwise, and the ladles who engineered the bill never since have assisted in raising funds. Mrs. Hunt, however, always remained interested in needy children, and on numerous occasions gave me valuable assistance.

Upon becoming superintendent I began the publication of a monthly paper called "The Children's Home Finder." A year or so later it was changed to a 16 to 20 page bi-monthly magazine, and has ever since been the official organ of the Society. For a year or two I set the type myself and had it printed by Brown and Gage. After quitting this task under the pressure of more important work, the printing job was turned over to Walker Bros. & Hardy.

Mrs. Hyatt was succeeded in the matron's position by a Mrs. Shaw, a very nice, motherly women - really too old for the work involved. She held on for a year or more and turned the place over to a Mrs. McLeod, wife of an insane Presbyterian missionary. It became necessary to fire her for unbecoming conduct and conspiracy. She was followed by Miss Pearl Carey, a trained nurse from St. Paul, whom I had met when she was assistant matron of the Minnesota Children's Home Society. She served four years and then entered the Salvation Army.

The Bad Lands Claim.

During my earlier years with the Home Society I one day made application for participation in a Government land-drawing, involving a lot of excellent farm land in the Devil's Lake region. It was a casual sort of act on my part, and to my surprise I drew a number in the first fifty of many hundreds of applicants. Many of the fifty subsequently withdrew, and had I exploited my good fortune I should have eventually had the tenth choice of all the fine 480-acre tracts in the Government homestead, but it would have necessitated a break from my work and a complete change of program for my family. I was in no position to gamble, so gave it up. That tract now holds some of the finest farms in North Dakota, and it is hard to say what fortunes might have come my way had I decided other- wise than I did.

The death of our son Lawrence, on April 2nd, 1909, was a tremendous blow to us and cast a shadow over our lives that has remained ever since. He had been married the previous fall to Miss Lucy Babcock, daughter of S. B. and "Mittie" Babcock - close Baptist friends of ours. Lawrence was working for the Scott Hall shoe store in Fargo when he contracted pneumonia, and slipped away in a coma five days later. His posthumous son was born a few weeks later in our home. He was named Lawrence Babcock Hall. His mother, who has never re-married in all these years, has done a wonderful work in raising this fine lad, who promises to become a fine, upstanding man.

The death in our family was a tremendous strain on both Mother and me. Although we planned to continue our work with the Home, we determined to take up a homestead in what is now Golden Valley, near the Little Missouri River, in the Northern Dakota Badlands, not far from the site of Teddy Roosevelt's ranch of pioneer days. In the spring of 1910 Nell and I went to the 160-acre tract to establish a legal residence, with a view to proving up on the place in 16 months. I remained with her a month, installing her in the one-room--and-attic house, built by a Mr. Herrick. I then returned to Fargo to take up my work, and as soon as school was out my son Donald, with my daughter-in--law Lucy and baby Lawrence, went out to keep Nell company. Our adopted daughter, Clara, who had come into our family in 1902, was also with my wife.

The Bad Lands claim has never brought us any fortune, and we are probably still in the red on the venture, but it did give the family a chance at real pioneering in a wild country, and gave a quick pick-up to our son Donald, who had been a somewhat anemic child. A few months of Badlands hunting and work on our farm snapped him out of it in fine shape. Clara, who was about nine years old at the time, unfortunately injured her back while running down a steep hill one day, and was troubled by it for several years. We found it necessary for the family to return to Fargo at Christmas time in 1910 for medical attention for our daughter.

The claim was some thirty miles north of Beach, North Dakota, but we reached it from Wibaux, Montana, by stage. When Nell, with Clara and Donald, returned to the claim early in January, they made the thirty-mile trip in 30 degree below zero weather, in a bob-sled, wrapped in blankets and carrying hot bricks to keep from freezing. They stopped over night at a ranch near Beaver Creek. Donald froze a large spot on his cheek during the ride, and it was a tough experience for all of them.

Upon completion of our 16-month residence, the family returned to Fargo. During my month's stay on the claim we had attempted to dig a well, but found no sign of water. Donald one day noticed a trickle of water in a draw on the east edge of the claim, however, and on one of my trips to the place he and I dug a twelve-foot shaft through the damp soil. The next morning the well was half full of sparkling clear water that tasted pure - nothing like the water from the many surface springs that flowed with yellow alkali water that tasted like epsom salts! We cased the well and had the water tested at Bismarck. The report stated that the water was of a quality unusual in North Dakota, with almost no organic content and chemically almost pure. We had the finest well in all that part of the country!

I proved up on the claim after the residence requirements were satisfied, at the Dickinson land office, and we became owners of the 160-acre farm. We were in no position to cultivate it ourselves, so let it out to the Gasho family - our nearest neighbors - on a crop-sharing basis. We have realized little from it during the years since, for only about one season in four brings enough rain to assure a reasonable crop. We have considered disposing of it, but we hesitate to surrender the title to ground which we worked so hard to obtain.

The years since our homesteading adventure have been a great advance in the work at the Home. Nell has continued much of the time as matron, and for some years we made our home in the little cottage adjoining the receiving home. Donald graduated from high school in 1913 and the following fall entered Fargo College. Many hundreds of homeless children have been cared for in the home since we took over the work, and Nell has been the only mother many of them had ever known before coming here. Most of our wards were placed in Christian homes, to become useful members of their new families. This function - the placement of children with Christian families - has been the great work of my life.

My recognition as an expert in this field was recognized in the first decade of my work when I was invited by President Theodore Roosevelt to come to the White House, where he had arranged a conference on the care of dependent children - a conference instigated by the action of the Delineator Magazine and headed by James E. West, who later became the head of the American Boy Scout movement.

The invitation caused quite a commotion in Fargo, and was given wide publicity. I of course accepted, and Nell and I made the trip to Washington, where, with other workers similarly qualified, we were received in a special meeting at the White House, and cordially greeted by the President. Later, during the conference, we attended the big banquet at the Willard Hotel, at which the President was the principal speaker. It was a great adventure in our comparatively humble lives.

Some Travel Notes.

This Washington trip was but one of a number of interesting journeys I made about the United States in the course of our work with the Publication Society and the Children's Home work. While in Washington we naturally visited the usual show spots ~ Washington's Mount Vernon, the Smithsonian Institution, the art galleries, etc.

I have no idea how many thousands of miles I traveled through the Dakotas in my years of work here, but I'm sure they would take me to and from the moon several times if stretched out in the right direction. In the early days I held passes on all railroads in the Dakotas, and could obtain special passes to any point in the United States to which lay work took me. Because of political abuses of pass privileges given by railroads, the restrictions on them were greatly increased later, but the roads have always been as generous as the law would allow, for travel in connection with the Home work.

While discussing some of my journeys let me turn back my writing to the Sunday School Missionary days. One of the first friends I made while working in South Dakota was the Rev. Timothy M. Shanafelt, D.D., the pioneer Baptist general missionary for South Dakota. His home was in Huron, and I worked with him for several years in that state. He was an old soldier from a Pennsylvania regiment, and was at one time the Chaplain General of the Grand Army of the Republic. He was much older than I was, and was like a father to me. In 1897 we traveled together to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to attend the Baptist Young People's convention. I shall never forget two things that happened on that trip: On arriving in Chattanooga we took a room together at the old Southern Hotel. Our window commanded a magnificent view of Lookout Mountain, three miles distant. There were signs of a thunderstorm, and the crest of old Lookout could be seen far above the zone of clouds that hung about its great waist. Doctor Shanafelt's regiment had participated in Hooker's famous "Battle Above the Clouds" and we could see the very place where they had stormed the heights in the face of fire from rebels on point Lookout. The good old doctor lighted his cigar and was puffing the smoke out of the open window as we enjoyed the magnificent view.

"All we need to complete the battle scene," he said, "is the cannonading."

Just then two tremendous thunder-claps shook the hotel, and the "battle above the clouds" seemed again under way, for our special benefit.

The other unforgettable incident of that trip occurred one day when the doctor and I took the train to a station five miles east of Chicamauga battle field to see Crawfish Spring, where during the fierce fighting in 1863 the wounded had been brought by the hundreds and laid about the banks of the spring. We then walked over to the main battle ground which we had previously visited with a guide. The walk of five miles on the dusty road that ran through cotton-fields, and under a scorching sun, wilted the poor old doctor, and to cap the climax, he turned his ankle and sprained it so badly that he could not accompany me on my trip to Mammoth Cave, on our way north.

While in Chattanooga I climbed the face of Lookout Mountain alone, to get a better realization of what Hooker's men went through. Everything went well until I was considerably above the Cramer House, which was a storming point in the battle. Above that the slope is very much steeper. Someone had been clearing the face of the mountain below Point Lookout. Presently I found two great rocks that had apparently given shelter to some Union sharpshooters, and in kicking up the rich mold between the rocks I dug out a Union bullet and an old fashioned cap-box. It was so badly rusted that I have never been able to open it.

After a brief rest behind these rocks I climbed on up, but soon became overcome by the heat. Things began to spin around and look black, but I had the sense to wrap myself around a sapling to prevent my rolling down the mountain in case I fainted completely away. I don't know how long I lay there, but finally recovered sufficiently to make my way to the Point Lookout hotel, where I found cold water. After resting for an hour I returned to Chattanooga by way of the inclined railway. Later I found another bullet or two at Chicamauga, and cut some hickory canes near the monument of Father's old regiment. Many years after I made a couple of very fine canes from the hickory sticks, mounting the bullets in them.

On the way home from Chattanooga Mr. Van Horn and I stopped off at Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, and made two never-to-be-forgotten trips in the cavern. The following morning we made an eleven mile trip in the cave with a party of sixty- five young Canadian Baptists. The boat ride of over half a mile on a river over 300 feet under the surface, gives one an eerie feeling, but we did this on the celebrated Echo River.

Several years after this, in company with my wife, I again visited the Cave, and took her over practically the same route. Only a Negro guide ac-companied us, and he took us much farther on Echo River and gave us some wonderful echoes. Mother had always said she would never go underground except in a box, but she enjoyed the trip immensely. It tickled me to see her worm her way through "Fat Man's Misery", and to climb the Corkscrew. It was one of the most enjoyable trips we ever took together, and we just pretended it was our wedding trip, which should have been taken many years earlier.

In the course of my work in the two positions I took many other trips, including one that touched most of the interesting spots in New England.

Bit of Philosophy.

So, I near the end of my story, in the year 1916. I am only 52 years of age, so it seems probable that I will have a good many years yet to live. It seems highly probable that I will end my days in the type of work which has brought me the most satisfaction - the work for the homeless child. Since being made a Juvenile Court Commissioner, in addition to my regular work with the Home, my field of activity has expanded, but it all centers about the welfare of children.

Although descended from a long line of Baptist preachers I never attempted seriously to sermonize. I was frequently importuned to accept ordination to the ministry, but have never felt a real "call" in that direction. Perhaps I am just not a good enough man for the pastoral responsibilities. There are too many rough places in my life to set myself up as a religious leader, and I guess there are plenty of opportunities for men like me in the work for Christianity just as I am.

I was, however, licensed by the First Baptist church of Fargo to preach when I felt like doing so. Sunday school work in those days was different in its methods from now, but even then there was a general up-grade tendency for better methods. I spoke at one time or another in every Baptist church in both North and South Dakota, and had a very wide acquaintance which was greatly increased in my many years of work with the Home.

Like my friend Van Horn, I found time for recreation when it tied in with my work. I enjoyed the out-of-doors, and did not shy at long hikes in interesting country. "Van" was a mighty Nimrod - in fact, if he had given closer attention to his field work and less to hunting, he would have fared better. But we had many interesting trips together while he was the general missionary for North Dakota. Once we blockaded in snowdrifts for a night on the Northern Pacific, near Dickinson. Another time our train jumped the track on a curved high grade. Two different years we visited a Swedish settlement forty miles north of Mandan, on the banks of the Missouri. We hunted deer in the brush during the daytime, and in the evenings conducted services in the settlers' homes. They were always packed, and we had splendid meetings.

One afternoon just before dusk we went into the brush on the Missouri, looking for deer. We took separate paths, and I had not gone far when I thought I saw a house-dog's tail waving in the bushes where he often scurried about looking for rabbits. But as it remained still for a moment I concluded it was a fawn, and blazed away. No sound followed the shot and I went over to see where I had hit. I found a young buck kicking his last kick, having been shot squarely in the center of his forehead. I cut his throat with my hunting knife and called for my companions. They had heard my shot and found me trying to lug the deer to the wagon road. We carried it to the house and dressed it out. A day or two later we took him on a load of wheat forty miles to Mandan and shipped him to Fargo.

During the earlier days I found time occasionally to hunt prairie chickens in various parts of the state, and on several occasions brought home good bags of ducks and geese from hunts in both Dakotas. The best hunting for waterfowl was always in the swamps near the source of the Red River, south and east of Fairmount, N. Dakota.

Fargo's proximity to the Detroit Lake region made it a convenient place for vacations. Lester McKinstry owned two cottages on Lake Melissa, south of Detroit Lake, and my father and mother lived for sometime in Detroit while he was pastor there, so we had places to stay. I sometimes fished at Lake Lizzie, fifteen miles south of Detroit Lake, and in 1900 we spent several weeks camping on an island with our pastor and his family, Mr. Reed, his wife and daughter. We all slept in tents, and mosquitos nearly ate us alive the first few nights. We found the lake alive with fish, and for those weeks glutted ourselves on bass, pike and muskies. Nell one day while trolling, caught a four-foot muskellunge that put up a great battle before I could kill it, and all but took over our row-boat.

A near cyclone on a hot summer night almost blew our tents into the lake while we were encamped on this island, and only the combined strength of Reed and I, with Nell and Mrs. Reed and Lawrence and Donald, prevented a real disaster.

There Shall be War.

It may be that I will someday add the account of many years of further life to this chronicle. As I write, the great nations of Europe are tangled in a war such as the world has never seen. England and France are hard-put, and unless the United States is drawn into the struggle it seems that the Kaiser may win out. Since the sinking of the Lusitania last year there has been a strong agitation for us to take up arms against the Huns. We shudder as we consider what that might mean for us. We have lost our eldest son; war would doubtless take our remaining son for service, and who knows? So we stand today facing an uncertain future - with the specter of War against the eastern sky. Pray God that our decision may be right, and that if war comes to us we may acquit ourselves like men, and be strong!

Conclusion. (Prepared by Donald F. Hall)

The great humanitarian work of my father continued in the field of help to homeless children until 1926, when in the spring of the year he was stricken with apoplexy which completely paralyzed his side and made him an invalid for the remaining eleven years of his life.

While the work of the Children's Home continued satisfactorily, and Dad received several increases in salary as living costs became higher, the post-war period brought on new worries. The most pressing of these grew out of efforts by eastern politicians, to regulate and standardize the work of placement agencies throughout the country. The fiscal aspects of new regulatory provisions precipitated many a financial crisis in the work and involved tremendous problems which eventually brought on the stroke.

For a month or two the outcome of the attack was in doubt, but it soon became apparent that many years of complete helplessness lay ahead of the patient. It was finally decided that he and Mother would go to California, where my sister Clara, and her husband, Dr. John D. Keye, were about to set up a small hospital at Holtville, in the southern part of the state. Mother had been sufficiently experienced to be considered an excellent practical nurse, and the arrangement gave Dad the opportunity for hospitalization, with some income for Mother. The plan worked for some years, but the heat and a change of plans on the part of Clara and Doctor John resulted in Mother and Dad coming to our home in Kokomo, where we all lived together for a couple of years.

About 1935 Mother's Aunt Angeline Cole, in Geneva, Ohio, invited the folks to come and live with her. So we took Dad and Mother by car across Indiana and Ohio, and they took up residence in the old home town where they had first met. The people of the Baptist church, where Mother had been baptized, were very kind to my parents, and the many relatives in the area saw to it that they didn't get lonesome.

Dad's condition gradually weakened until June 24th, 1937. I was at my desk at the Kokomo Tribune when a telegram came stating that I would have to hurry if I wanted to see my father alive. Nina and I took off by car at once, and in six hours drove up in front of the Geneva home. Mother came running to the door as I arrived, hurrying us into the house just in time to kneel by my father's bed as he died.

We laid Dad away in the little plot in the cemetery just a stone's throw from where he died. After his death my mother lived for some years with Aunt Angie in her Cleveland apartment, and took care of Aunt Angie's daughter, Cousin Ivy Cole Weld prior to her death. Aunt Angie died a few years later, leaving Mother with an annuity that has met her financial needs ever since.

Mother continued to live in the house at 257 Walnut Street, in Geneva, until September, 1955, when her extreme age and infirmity required much personal care. We brought her to our home here in Orlando, where she has nothing to do but bask in Florida's wonderful sunshine. She is nearing 89 years of age as I write.

It was in preparing for the sale of the Geneva house, which Nina and I bought in 1948, that Nina found the manuscripts of Dad's autobiography~ from which I have typed this chronicle.