540 "Good Deacon Willard." a friendly word to me, I rejoice to think how much I love them, and every creature that God has made." I repeated this verse from one of her poems: "It lies around us like a cloud, A world we do not see; May bring us there to be," and told her how in hours of grief the poem had comforted my heart. At this she took me by the hand, saying earnestly, "God help you, God be with you." I kissed the dear, old, wrinkled hand that in its strength had written "Uncle Tom's Cabin"; she gave a kind good-by to each of us, and we went our ways-to meet some sweet day, by and by," in heaven. DEACON WILLARD. When working in the revival with Mr. Moody in Chicago, January, 1877, I met for the first time Deacon L. A. Willard, a well-known leader for many years of the Y. M. C. A. My witty Irish friend, Mrs. Kate McGowan, spoke to me of him first, and said, "If you wish to be forever a favorite of this lovely old gentleman, you must respond to the question he will be sure to ask, namely, What single passage of Scripture contains within it the whole plan of salvation? you must speak up brightly and say, 'Acts x 43,' and there is nothing that he will not do for you from that time forth.” He was one of the loveliest old men in face, manner and spirit that I ever saw. His whole soul was absorbed in his own method of presenting the plan of salvation, which he did with remarkable clearness and efficiency. He has doubtless been the means of the conversion of more persons than the entire membership of an average church can show for all its work in any given year, perhaps in several years. At this time I was intensely stirred by the desire and purpose that my brother should be converted over again, for although at twelve years of age he had started in the Christian life, had graduated in theology at twenty-five, and become Presiding Elder of the Denver District, Colorado, at twenty-seven, he had some years after that seemed to fall away from his allegiance, and the dearest wish of our hearts was that he should return to the Shepherd and Bishop of his soul, and of all our souls. I had told Mr. Moody of this, and urged his help, but he answered, "I am so preoccupied that I can not see individual cases, but I will pray for you and you must work and pray." Just then I made the acquaintance of this dear patriarch, Deacon Willard, and told him all my heart about my brother, begging him not to go at first on a religious mission, but to call upon him as a friend and a possible relative. My brother, like my father, was exceedingly interested in the annals of his family, and delighted to read the Willard Memoir, the History of Dublin, N. H., with which his great-grandfather, Rev. Elijah Willard, was so long connected, the History of Marlborough, N. H., and indeed every scrap that he could learn touching his lineage was sedulously treasured. On the contrary, Deacon Willard seemed to care very little about all this, but, as he said, he had "learned to angle skillfully for souls." Going to my brother's editorial sanctum at a time when I told him he would be most likely not to be preoccupied, the Deacon talked up ancestry with great spirit, told my brother he believed they were related, that he had no son himself and as my brother had not long since lost his father, he proposed they should "club together and make believe father and son." So with much bright and genial talk, he threw his arm over my brother's broad shoulders and said, "Let us go to lunch, Willard, and talk this matter over more at length." So it began and the rest of the story is told in the priceless letter which I preserve in my dear old friend's handwriting. learned that we were really cousins at two removes, but I am sure we shall be nearer of kin than that when we meet in the Celestial Mansion, to which, as I believe, that gentle old hand was God's instrument to open the way for one we loved so well. WALT WHITMAN. One Christmas I was in the home of Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith, where I have met many most interesting literary people at her "hobby parties," which are a witty invention of her gifted husband, herself or her ingenious children, I do not know which, the plan being to have some person of distinction in a particular line of literary, moral or religious activity, as the central figure of the evening. Each of these persons brings out his or her hobby, and paces it up and down before the group, after which any other person has a right to ride upon it, if so disposed. This results in a really charming and informal conversation, following the brief special disquisition, and is the most enjoyable home entertainment I ever attended. Finally the suggestion was made, "Why not ask Walt Whitman, who lives just across here in Camden? let us see him for ourselves;" and the invitation went. In due process of time, there appeared on the scene a man about seventy years of age, attired in gray, from his soft gray overcoat to his old-fashioned gray mittens, with sparse gray hair, kind, twinkling gray eyes, and russet apple cheeks, the mildest, most modest and simplehearted man I ever saw. It almost seemed as if a grand old oak had opened suddenly and turned the good, gray poet loose upon the world. He is the farthest possible from being leonine in aspect or intent. He has no ends to serve, no place to hold in conversation, nothing to gain or lose. He is the soul of geniality and seems never better pleased than when others are talking and he is seated in a large arm-chair gazing reflectively into the glowing grate. But if you talk of Nature and her shy ways, he is at home. I remember his look of amused surprise when someone mentioned the title of one of his books, "The Wake Robin," and he told us John Burroughs, who seems to me to be a sort of spiritual son to Whitman, had suggested it. I said, "I did not know what a Wake Robin was, unless it was a bird-they used to wake me early at Forest Home in olden days'-when, behold, the mild old man informed me gently that it was a flower! He did not like to talk about his books and seemed to me as a hunting hound lying at full length on the rug before the fire, content and quiet, until some reference is made to horses, hunting-horns and guns, when it rises up, intent, alert, electrified with activity. So the common hum and talk seemed quieting to Father Walt, but when Thoreau or Burroughs were referred to, or a quotation given from Wordsworth, Thomson, or some dear Nature-lover, the kindly eyes beamed upon us with joy, and some pithy sentence, clean-cut enough to be a proverb, fell from his lips. What he really is I do not know. I only tell about him as he was to me, and his sense of God, Nature and Human Brotherhood struck me as having been raised to such a power, and fused in such a white heat of devotion, that they made the man a genius. An Indian Civilizer. CAPTAIN PRATT AND THE CARLISLE INDIAN SCHOOL. 543 Captain Pratt is a man six feet in height, and every inch a soldier. His great, well-balanced head, dauntless profile, and kindly smile predict the qualities of a born leader. A native of New York state, reared in Logansport, Ind., of Methodist parentage and training, but a Presbyterian by reason of his wife's preference, he has the root of the matter in him as a muscular Christian of the nineteenth century. Joining the Union forces as a volunteer at the outbreak of the war, he was appointed lieutenant in the regular army in 1867, and assigned to a post in the far West. From that time he studied the Indian question at first hand, and he has become an expert, not excelled in all the nation. Later on, when his pre-eminent ability as an Indian civilizer came to be known, he was put in charge of the captured "hostiles" in Florida, where he remained three years, and was then sent to Carlisle, Pa., to found and conduct an Indian school there. "views" are best expressed in his own words : His "There are about two hundred and sixty thousand Indians in the United States, and there are twenty-seven hundred counties. I would divide them up, in the proportion of about nine Indians to a county, and find them homes and work among our people; that would solve the knotty problem in three years' time, and there would be no more an Indian Question." It is folly to handle them at arms-length; we should absorb them into our national life for their own good and ours. It is wicked to stand them up as targets for sharp-shooters. The Indians are just like other men, only minus their environment. Take a new-born baby from the arms of a cultivated white woman, and give it to the nurture of a Zulu woman in Africa; take the Zulu's baby away from her and give it to the cultivated white woman. Twenty-five years later you would have a white savage in Africa, and a black scholar, gentleman, and Christian in America. This sharply illustrates what I mean. We can, by planting the Indians among us, make educated and industrious citizens of them. "The Indians are naturally religious, an infidel is to them an unknown quantity. All you have to do is to familiarize their reverent minds with the truths of the New Testament. Our Sunday-school and prayer-meeting are the best proof of their readiness to take on Christianity; their testimonies are full of earnestness Temperance at Carlisle. and genuine religious fervor. If I have a stri end, it is my intense condence in th the sanitary and ethical power of a useful ve people, like to be independent, and *. "How do your scholars stand upon Be to seco ouestion was my natrid query. are a section of the millennium, as It” • n with parden2'! bride. "In my 10.1 in 4 thirteen landed papils Intoxicat pignors and tobaco Lept nted to them as unhe sithful, uncle rely, hp expected and a pured to give them up. curty for where whisky sellos tempted gy the cattle Sols and drink, and where the of them yu... have not in nine v ars nad a single case of dry.kenness at the Considering, ente lack of trai ang and the ans tobacco heredity, I ex let the's remark til. We furnish very simple food, i situ, Strict pers 2 il cleanliness, and young people read'; talon with the prevai ̧ usages." "We keep the v. "sud the Captain as we p from shop to shop, in this gicat, hemming hive of indus and they have no time for domesickness, none for mischiet n for regret." 4 Are the girls as smart as the boys?" was my ever ng question. Every bit, rat quicker-witted on the whole," tain Pratt's reply. "The history of the F dane as set forth in b clsehoods," he sard "They ete like other p povoked by outrage and uje tice, behave far ti. n they get credit for. “Beter to capture them by love, uniform ti All them with kindness than to send out our own be killed by them," was my grateful commentary 1oth talked to them of ter perance, and they app When Proibition-ts come into power tl. notot dizzy on the heights, do the Indians i by making Captain Pratt Secretary of the Inter |