Twenty thousand of the thirty thousand lumber-jacks and river-pigs of the Minnesota woods are hilariously in pursuit of their own ruin for lack of something better to do in town. They are not nice, enlightened men, of course; the debauch is the traditional diversion–the theme of all the brave tales to which the youngsters of the bunk-houses listen in the lantern-light and dwell upon after dark. The lumber-jacks proceed thus–being fellows of big strength in every physical way–to the uttermost of

A big, clean, rosy-cheeked man in a Mackinaw coat and rubber boots–hardly distinguishable from the lumber-jack crew except for his quick step and high glance and fine resolute way–went swiftly through a Deer River saloon toward the snake-room in search of a lad from Toronto who had in the camps besought to be preserved from the vicissitudes of the town. “There goes the Pilot,” said a lumber-jack at the bar. “Hello, Pilot!” “’Lo, Tom!” “Ain’t ye goin’ t’ preach no more at Camp Six?” “Sure, Tom!”

Frank necessity invented the snake-room of the lumber-town saloon. There are times of gigantic debauchery–the seasons of paying off. A logger then once counted one hundred and fifty men drunk in a single hotel of a town of twelve hundred inhabitants where fourteen other bar-rooms heartily flourished. They overflowed the snake-rooms–they lay snoring on the bar-room floor–they littered the office–they were doubled up on the stair-landings and stretched out in the corridors. Drunken men stumbled ov

This is the simple and veracious narrative of the singular ministerial activities of the Rev. Francis Edmund Higgins, a Presbyterian, who regularly ministers, without a church, acting under the Board of Home Missions, to the lumber-jacks of the remoter Minnesota woods. Singular ministerial activities these are, truly, appealing alike to those who believe in God and to such as may deny Him. They are particularly robust. When we walked from Camp Two to Camp Four of a midwinter day, with the snow c

The lumber-jack in camp can, in his walk and conversation, easily be distinguished from the angels; but at least he is industrious and no wild brawler. He is up and heartily breakfasted and off to the woods, with a saw or an axe, at break of day; and when he returns in the frosty dusk he is worn out with a man’s labor, and presently ready to turn in for sound sleep. They are all in the pink of condition then–big and healthy and clear-eyed, and wholly able for the day’s work. A stout, hearty, kin

It is “back to the tall timber” for the penniless lumber-jack. Perhaps the familiar slang is derived from the necessity. I recall an intelligent Cornishman–a cook with a kitchen kept sweet and clean–who with a laugh contemplated the catastrophe of the snake-room, and the nervous collapse, and the bedraggled return to the woods. “Of course,” said he, “that’s where I’ll land in the spring!” It amazed me. “Can’t help it,” said he. “That’s where my stake ’ll go. Jake Boore ’ll get the most of it; an

It it a perfectly simple situation. There are thirty thousand men-more or less of them, according to the season–making the wages of men in the woods. Most of them accumulate a hot desire to wring some enjoyment from life in return for the labor they do. They have no care about money when they have it. They fling it in gold over the bars (and any sober man may rob their very pockets); they waste in a night what they earn in a winter–and then crawl back to the woods. Naturally the lumber-towns are

Not long ago Bemidji was what the Pilot calls “the worst town on the map.” It was indescribably lawless and vicious. An adequate description would be unprintable. The government–the police and magistrates–was wholly in the hands of the saloon-keeping element. It was a thoroughly noisome settlement. The town authorities laughed at the Pilot; the state authorities gently listened to him and conveniently forgot him, for political reasons. But he was determined to cleanse the place of its establishe

Higgins was born on August 19, 1865, in Toronto, Ontario, the son of a hotel-keeper. When he was seven years old his father died, and two years later his mother remarried and went pioneering to Shelburne, Dufferin County, Ontario, which was then a wilderness. There was no school; consequently there was no schooling. Higgins went through the experience of conversion when he was eighteen. Presently, thereafter, he determined to be a minister; and they laughed at him. Everybody laughed. Obviously,

It was on the way between camps, of a Sunday afternoon in midwinter, when the Pilot related the experience which led to the singular ministerial activities in which he is engaged. He was wrapped in a thick Mackinaw coat, with a cloth cap pulled down over his ears; and he wore big overshoes, which buckled near to his knees. There was a heavy pack on his pack; it contained a change of socks (for himself), and many pounds of “readin’ matter” (for “the boys”). He had preached in the morning at one c

It used sometimes to be difficult for Higgins to get a hearing in the camps; this was before he had fought and preached his way completely into the trust of the lumber-jacks. There was always a warm welcome for him in the bunk-houses, to be sure, and for the most part a large eagerness for the distraction of his discourses after supper; but here and there in the beginning he encountered an obstreperous fellow (and does to this day) who interrupted for the fun of the thing. It is related that upo

Fully to describe Higgins’s altercations with lumber-jacks and tin-horn gamblers and the like in pursuit of clean opportunity for other men would be to pain him. It is a phase of ministry he would conceal. Perhaps he fears that unknowing folk might mistake him for a quarrelsome fellow. He is nothing of the sort, however; he is a wise and efficient minister of the gospel–but fights well, upon good occasion, notwithstanding his forty-odd years. In the Minnesota woods fighting is as necessary as pr

In the bunk-house, after supper, Higgins preaches. It is a solemn service: no minister of them all so punctilious as Higgins in respect to reverent conduct. The preacher is in earnest and single of purpose. The congregation is compelled to reverence. “Boys,” says he, in cunning appeal, “this bunk-house is our church–the only church we’ve got.” No need to say more! And a queer church: a low, long hut, stifling and ill-smelling and unclean and infested, a row of double-decker bunks on either side,

The Pilot is a fearless preacher–fearless of blame and violence–and he is the most downright and pugnacious of moral critics. He speaks in mighty wrath against the sins of the camps and the evil-doers of the towns–naming the thieves and gamblers by name and violently characterizing their ways: until it seems he must in the end be done to death in revenge. “Boys,” said he, in a bunk-house denunciation, “that tin-horn gambler Jim Leach is back in Deer River from the West with a crooked game–just l

This sort of preaching–this genuine and practical ministry consistently and unremittingly carried on for love of the men, and without prospect of gain–wins respect and loyal affection. The dogged and courageous method will be sufficiently illustrated in the tale of the Big Scotchman of White Pine–to Higgins almost a forgotten incident of fourteen years’ service. The Big Scotchman was discovered drunk and shivering with apprehension–he was in the first stage of delirium tremens –in a low saloon o

One asks, Why does Higgins do these things? The answer is simple: Because he loves his neighbor as himself–because he actually does , without self-seeking or any pious pretence. One asks, What does he get out of it? I do not know what Higgins gets. If you were to ask him, he would say, innocently, that once, when he preached at Camp Seven of the Green River Works, the boys fell in love with the singing. Jesus, Lover of My Soul , was the hymn that engaged them. They sang it again and again; and w