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 crackling underfoot and the last sunset light glowing like heavenly fire beyond the great green pines--
"Boys," said Higgins, gravely, "there's just one thing that I regret; and if I had to prepare for the ministry over again, I wouldn't make the same mistake: I ought to have taken boxing lessons."
No other minister of the gospel, possibly, could with perfect propriety, in the sight of the unrighteous, who are the most severe critics of propriety in this respect, lean easily over a bar (his right foot having of long habit found the rail), and in terms of soundest common sense reasonably urge upon the man behind the wet mahogany the shame of his situation and the virtue of abandoning it; nor could any other whom I know truculently crowd into the howling, brawling, drunken throng of lumber-jacks, all gone mad of adulterated liquor, and with any confident show of authority command the departure of some weakling who had followed the debauch of his mates far beyond his little strength.
"Ah, go chase yerself, Pilot!" is the indulgent response, most amiably delivered, with a loose, kind smile.
"Ah, Pilot," the youngster pleads, "I'm on'y havin' a little fun. You go chase yerself, Pilot," says he, affectionately, with no offence whatsoever, "an' le' me alone."
The Rev. Francis Edmund Higgins, in the midst of an unholy up-roar--the visible manifestation, this environment and behavior, it seems to me, of the noise and smell and very abandonment of hell--is privileged to seize the youngster by the throat and in no unnecessarily gentle way to jerk him into the clean, frosty air of the winter night. In these days of his ministry, nobody--the situation being an ordinary one--would interfere. If, however, it seemed unwise to proceed in this way, Higgins would at least strip the boy of his savings.