I began to inquire about this far-away city. I am not sure now that I had heard one word about it, and am quite sure that Pekin is not so strange a city to me now as our home for more than twenty years was then. One man in the forge had been there, I found. I asked him to tell me all he knew about Chicago, and the substance of his knowledge was this: the place was all mud when he was there, and the water you had to drink was brought from the lake in barrels and peddled from house to house. He was only there a few weeks, so many years ago, and then he cleared out and came East, as he thought I should. My employer had lived in Illinois when he was a younger man. He had been to Chicago, and advised me not to go, and said also for my comfort that, if we went, we should return, and he would keep my fire for me and anvil; for this I thanked him kindly, but said, "We are going to stay." We talked these things over in the home, and began to arrange for the moving. The managers of the ministry-at-large wanted me to come out at once. This I could do; mother said she must 'have time to sell the household goods at auction, have everything ship-shape for herself and the children, and then come out to me. So in

February I went West, and in April she came with the children, safe and sound, and would tell me to the last how good James Mott and Lucretia had been in helping her to get a good ready, and how he had come with them to the train and said, "Now is there anything more thee thinks I can do?" It was a journey of about forty-four hours or it may be more in those days from Philadelphia to Chicago, with no Pullman cars or their like. Mr. Pullman indeed was at work then, or soon after, in the city, raising great buildings to a higher plane: the whole Marine Block, I remember, was one of them, and another was the Tremont Hotel. The grand stroke of his life was waiting in his good brain to be done, and make millions of folk his debtors. But there we were, all safe and sound; and, when the mother and children came, I was busy at the work they had engaged me to do for the poor. And here is a rough outline of my work.

I must look after the poor, as one man said, the Lord's poor, our own poor, and the devil's poor; for I should find them all in Chicago. Try by all means to set them on their feet and help them to go straight, if possible. Find homes for girls and boys on farms or in good

homes in the country, where their work would be worth their home and education. Hold a night school and a Sunday-school, mainly, as I found, for the children of the emigrants who were flocking there from Germany in those times, and the managers would give me all the teachers I might need.

XIII

It was welcome work for me, and mother was my good helpmeet and inspiration. She did not lend a hand, she gave it for keeps; and she was my wise monitor in the time of need. One memory, the most sacred of all now, she would forbid me to touch if she was here with us still. A man came one day to see if I could do anything to help a poor girl who had been left in a wretched den to die. I went at once to see her, and found she was, as we say, a 66 lost woman." I could find no refuge for her anywhere in the city. So, when I came home, I told mother my trouble. She was silent some time after I had said, "Can you do anything?" And then she answered: "There is only one thing we can do: we have a spare room, we must take her in. It is hard. Here are the children; but we can keep the poor creature apart in that room, and I will look after her." So this was done. In about a month she was well. We wanted to find her a place to work. Mother often told me in the after time how she

had spoken to her about the life she had lived and the life she might live, but could make no impression on her heart or mind. She left us, with no thanks even when she was well, and went to her own place. She had no tears to shed at the feet of the holy one of God, or box of ointment to break. She was still a "lost woman." The schools prospered. The boys were eager to learn "de English," as they would tell me: then they would be American. This was their great purpose, and for years after I gave up this ministry, when they were grown men, one and another would stop me on the street and tell me they were my old scholars in the night school or the Sunday-school when they were boys.

And now another memory comes to me which may cast a gleam of light on our success in the Sunday-school, and on the way they learned their lessons. One of the classes had been working their way through the life of Moses, from his infancy to his call to be the deliverer of the tribes from their bondage. I had noticed how one bright boy would wrestle, head well down, with the story. So I picked him out one Sunday to see how much he had learned, and here are the questions and answers :