In making a visit to one Home Missionary, I found him living in a little board house, battened on the outside, but devoid of plaster. His study-table was a large dry-goods box, near the cook-stove, and on it, among other things, a typewriter. It looked somewhat incongruous; and on mentioning this, the good brother said, "Oh that is nothing; wait until it is dark and I will show you something else."

And sure enough, soon after supper he hung up a sheet, and gave me quite an elaborate entertainment with the help of a stereopticon. It seemed very strange to be seated in this little shell of a house, in such a new town among the pine stumps; and I could hardly realize my position as I sat gazing at the beautiful[124] scenes which were flashed upon the sheet.

Across the road was a dance-house; and we could hear the scraping of the fiddler, the loud voice calling off the dances, and the heavy thump of the dancers in their thick boots. Afterwards the missionary gave me a short account of his trials and victories on coming to the new field, and it illustrates how God opens the way when to all human wisdom it seems closed.

When he tried to hire a house, the owner wanted a month\'s rent in advance; but a short time after called on him and gave him the house and lot with a clear deed of the property for one dollar! At the same time he told him that there were lots of cedar posts in the woods for his garden fence, if he would cut them, and added that maybe some one would haul them for him. The missionary chopped the posts, "some one" hauled them for him, and up went the fence.

The missionary felt so rich that he asked the price of a fine cooking-stove[125] that this man had loaned him. "Oh," he said, "I gave you that." The next thing was to find a place suitable to worship in—often no easy thing in a new town. At last a man said, "You can have the old boarding-house." This was said with a sly wink at the men standing by. So into the old log house went our friend, with his wife; and after a day\'s work with hoe, shovel, and whitewash, the place was ready. The whitewash was indispensable; for though the men had deserted it, there was still a great deal of life in it.

When the men saw the earnestness of the missionary they turned in and helped him, and became his friends; and in the old log boarding-house were heard the songs of praise instead of ribaldry, and prayers instead of curses, while Bibles and Sunday-school leaflets took the place of the Police Gazette.

The other field in which this brother works would delight Dr. Gladden\'s heart: 350 people, 17 denominations, all "mothered"[126] by a Congregational church; and I don\'t know of another church under the sun that could brood such a medley under its wings. When the church was building, one might have seen a Methodist brother with a load of boards, a Presbyterian hauling the shingles, a Baptist with some foundation-stones, and a Mormon hewing the sills—not a Mormon of the "Latter-Day swindle variety," though, but a Josephite. In this place our brother had many a trial, however, before getting his conglomerate together.

The head man of the village offered to give a lot if the church would buy another; and in the meanwhile his charge was five dollars each time they used the hall. But the next time our brother went, the man gave both the lots; the next time, he said he would not charge for the hall; and finally he gave the lumber for the church. The church was finished, and a good parsonage added; and to-day fashionable summer resorters sit under its shadow, and never dream of the wild lawlessness that once reigned there.
 
The next new place I visited was well out into Lake Michigan, and yet sheltered by high bluffs clothed with a rich growth of forest trees, so that, notwithstanding its northern latitude, six degrees below zero was the lowest the mercury reached, up to the middle of February. This is saying much in favor of its winter climate, when we consider the fact that in the rest of the State it has often been from zero down to forty below for nearly a month at a time.

I do not remember such another month in years,—wind, snow, fires, intense cold, and disease, all combined. However, in spite of everything, the people turned out remarkably well, and I managed to preach twenty-eight times, besides giving talks to the children.

It took twelve hours of hard driving to make the forty miles between home and the appointment, and we were only just in time for the services. I was surprised to see the number present; but what looked to me like impassable drifts were[128] nothing to people who had sat on the top of the telegraph-poles, and walked in the up-stairs windows off from a snow-bank, as they actually did four winters previously. The church here has a good building, heated with a furnace, and owns a nice parsonage where the minister lives with his wife and four children. Although it stormed every day but one, the meetings were blessed by the conversion of some, and the church rejoiced with a new spirit for work.

I next visited E——, a place seven years old, which ran up to fifteen hundred inhabitants in the first three years of its existence. It had about twelve hundred inhabitants, and ours was the............