They had been created each for the other; and God—who watches over human lives—had kept them apart and sacred in their loneliness until the hour when they should recognize their oneness. He believed this and yielded to the joy of it, and was as absorbed and as far from wise as any man of his acquaintance had ever been in like circumstances.
—From Pauline
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He will not come into a divided heart; a heart which says, “In some things I will obey; but in this, and this, and this, I must have my own way.”
You would not expect even a human friend who had the right to direct you, to accept such a position as that, would you? How much less the Lord?
—from Eighty-Seven
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Isabella Alden called Gloversville, New York her home town. And Gloversville, in turn, proudly published Isabella’s accomplishments in the local newspaper and ensured her books were prominently displayed in the town library.
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Gloversville is a small community nestled in the foot of the Adirondack Mountains. It was settled soon after the American Revolution in 1783. Originally, it was called Stump City because the early settlers felled so many of the surrounding hickory trees, leaving just their stumps behind. In those days, Stump City had about 100 residents and only 14 houses.
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But in the early 1800s a change took place. An enterprising citizen began a leather tannery, which quickly expanded to add a leather mitten manufacturing business. By 1830 there were about 100 people living in Stump City, most of them involved in the leather business. Residents began calling the place Gloversville, as a tribute to the merchandise that was proving to be very profitable for them.
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By 1857 the village of Gloversville had over 3,000 residents and was the leading supplier of gloves in the country. The village mills were responsible for 80% of the leather gloves sold and worn in the U.S. The village’s prosperity attracted more residents and new businesses.
Isaac Macdonald, Isabella’s father, earned his living as a supplier to the leather mills. He owned a paper box factory that sold the containers used by leather mills to ship their finished goods to stores and wholesalers across the country.
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In the mid-1880s residents cast their ballots on the question of whether the thriving village should incorporate as a city. At the same time, a few residents began a campaign to change the name from Gloversville to Kingsborough.
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Kingsborough is a name that runs consistently through the community. There’s a Kingsborough church and tree-shaded Kingsborough Avenue, a pretty thoroughfare that spans the length of Gloversville.
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And the Kingsborough Hotel was a grand building that any town would be proud of. In fact, many residents thought the name Kingsborough would fit the town like, well, a glove.
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Isabella Alden had her own opinion about the name the newly-chartered city should adopt. Here’s an article she wrote for an 1888 local magazine that explained her recommendation:
Now, I am going to tell you how this deer, or one that looked like it, founded a city. Of course, you’ll believe what I tell you because I was there and saw it done, having been born there.
Rome, you know, was founded by Romulus; that is to say, he was the “chief spoke in the wheel” when it began to be. Maybe there would never have been built so much as a hut, but for the wide-awake Romulus.
Some years ago, and 150 miles north of New York and about 50 miles west of Albany, there lived a few families in a placed called “Stump City.” It was wild and cold in the winter, almost as Greenland. I have often seen the snow there six feet deep!
Oh, the long and dreary winter! Most of the land was as poor as the snow was deep.
Now this was the very spot where our city was “builded together.” And it was done by the deer, as was said. And it was on this wise: one of those neighbors came home with a deer skin and another neighbor happened in at the time and they said, “What’s the use of a deer skin unless it is tanned and dressed?” So they dressed it after a fashion.
The next thing was to make mittens out of it. And they did that after a fashion, too.
But no sooner were the mittens made than everyone in the neighborhood wanted a pair.
So other skins were bought and they were soon turned into mittens and gloves and moccasins, after a better fashion. And distant neighbors heard of the wonderful wares for the hands and feet in the winter and they came miles to get them.
Then poor cold “Stump City” with its three or four families began to look up. Every man, woman and child went into the business. Even then they could not supply the demand.
Distant towns sent word. “We want some.” Then peddlers started out with horse and sleigh in mid-winter, often with a great load of the precious wares tied with buckskin strings in dozens, and all packed nicely in a big box, so neither snow nor thieves could harm them. Away they would dash, east, west, north, south.
A real city now occupies the place of “Stump City” and its name is Gloversville. It is one of the finest towns in all the great State of New York.
Go through the streets and you’ll be surprised to see how busy every man, woman and child still is. It’s one of the last places to go if you want to . . . rust.
There are machines and machines—often many in the same house, and from early morn till long after sunset they hum and buzz till you’d think everybody and the very air would go crazy. No one goes crazy, however; the hum has become sweetest music to Gloversvillians. It annually makes money for them to the tune of millions, and I am glad to say they pour thousands of it into the Lord’s treasury.
So much for what the deer did. The place should be called Deerville. Go and see it.
As entertaining as it was, Isabella’s story didn’t convince voters to change the town’s name to Deerville . . . but the people who pushed for naming it Kingsborough were disappointed, as well. The citizens voted to keep the name of Gloversville and Isabella’s home town continues to thrive to this day.
The heroine in an Isabella Alden book was a strong woman. She may not have known how strong she really was; but when trouble struck, it was the heroine of the story who stepped up and took action in order to save the family.
That’s what Claire Benedict did in Interrupted. She bravely took on the responsibility of supporting her mother and sister by taking a job as a music teacher in a far-away city.
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In Four Mothers at Chautauqua, Isabel Bradford also decided to teach. She opened a School of Expression where she taught physical exercise techniques and grace of movement to women in New York City.
And in Pauline, Constance Curtiss supported herself (after rashly running away from her husband) by offering a variety of homemaking services, from laundering cuffs and collars to canning fruits and vegetables for busy housewives.
At the time Isabella’s books were written, women, as a rule, weren’t trained to take their place in the business world. They couldn’t vote and in many states they couldn’t own property. It was unusual for a woman to own her own business and even more unusual for her business to succeed.
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Starting a business that involved working in other people’s homes—as Constance Curtiss did—or opening an exercise studio—which was Isabel Bradford’s plan—may have been viable for some women; but for a few Alden heroines, working outside the home posed a problem. For starters, opening a shop or renting studio space required investment capital, as this ad in a 1908 edition of The Delineator magazine shows:
In other instances the heroines lacked marketable skills or they had unique family responsibilities that demanded they remain at home.
That was the case with Joy Saunders in Workers Together. Her very protective mother didn’t want to see her lovely daughter toil for wages out in the world; but with hard work and clever management, Joy and her mother ran a flourishing boarding house.
In Household Puzzles and its sequel, The Randolphs, Maria Randolph supported her entire family by running a laundry business out of her kitchen.
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Constance Stuart did laundry, too. In the book Pauline, Constance specialized in laundering women’s delicate lace collars and cuffs, and she had a knack for laundering worn curtains and old linens so they looked almost brand new.
And in Her Associate Members, Mrs. Carpenter earned a living by ironing other peoples’ clothes in her sparse little kitchen.
Doing laundry and ironing as a way to earn money was fairly common for women in Isabella Alden’s time. That’s because doing the laundry was such time-consuming work, even for small families, that homemakers across the country struggled to accomplish the task on their own. Modern conveniences, like wringers and ironing machines did little to ease the load.
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“Monday is the washing day of all good housekeepers,” declared The Household, A Cyclopaedia of Practical Hints for Modern Homes. This book, published in 1886, promised to make washing day easier by setting out step-by-step instructions for accomplishing every phase of the task: from making starch to eradicating fruit stains and bleaching white goods.
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The volume of laundry to be done was often staggering. In Victorian-age America people wore layers of clothing, beginning with long drawers and undershirts for men; corset covers, chemises, drawers and petticoats for women. Often these items were made of wool, which made them extremely heavy once they were wet.
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Over these layers they wore shirts and shirtwaists, trousers and skirts, jackets and coats. Collars and cuffs gave the finishing touch to every outfit, but because collars and cuffs were easily soiled, they were changed a minimum of two or three times a day. Collars and cuffs also required the most care and skill in laundering.
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Men’s collars and cuffs were heavily starched until they could stand on their own. This paragraph from The Household instructed homemakers on how to make and apply the starch:
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With such heavy starch, the best laundresses knew that men’s collars and cuffs had to be ironed over a rounded form; otherwise, if ironed flat, they were likely to crack when they were fitted around the throat or wrist.
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Women’s collars and cuffs were just as challenging to launder and finish. Fluted fabric was a popular detail in ladies’ fashion, and it was difficult to keep the flutes crisp and well-shaped after washing.
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Laces were easily scorched if an iron was too hot and they were just as easily discolored if they were pressed with an iron that wasn’t perfectly clean.
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With so much preparation required and a good deal of heavy lifting, it usually took two women working all day to get the laundry done in an average household. And if the lady of the house didn’t have a family member or neighbor to help her, she often hired a portion of the work out.
But finding a good laundress was a challenge. Isabella Alden commented on that fact in The Randolphs:
While the world seems to be full of people who are willing to teach our children to strum on the piano, to draw impossible-looking trees and people, to jabber in a dozen different tongues, the lamentable fact remains that in every town and city it is really a difficult matter to get one’s collars and cuffs starched and ironed decently without paying a fabulous price for it.
The need for an extra pair of hands on laundry day opened the door for talented and hard-working women like Constance and Maria to earn a living.
To promote her new business, Constance Curtiss washed and mended the curtains that were “just falling to pieces before our eyes” in her landlady’s house, much to the landlady’s amazement:
“The girl darned them and washed them and rinsed them in starch water and stretched them till they looked as though I had put my hand in my pocket and paid for them out of the store, as I expected to. She does beat all!”
The landlady was so impressed she told her friends and neighbors of Constance’s skill. In very short order, Constance had more work than she could handle and had to write polite notes every evening to decline any new engagements.
In Household Puzzles, Maria Randolph started her laundry business after her brother Tom told her that his co-workers admired his clothes:
Tom needed assistance in the matter of a button and was glad to find Maria at liberty for a minute to sew it on. During the operation he laughed outright at his own thoughts, and then proceeded to explain.
“One of my brother drivers came to me last night for a confidential chat. I wish you could have seen his puzzled and important face. He is that Jerry that you think is so good-natured. What do you think he wanted?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. This button has split in two, Tom.”
“Well, here’s another. I couldn’t imagine what he was coming at. He called me aside and looked so important. He begged my pardon for troubling me—they are all remarkably polite to me—and he said that four or five of them had been having a time with their washerwoman because she didn’t use starch enough. They’re wonderfully particular fellows on Sunday. She ironed in wrinkles, too, he said; and then, after considerable stammering, he managed to get out that a number of them had been talking over the immaculateness of my linen, and had decided to get me to negotiate with my washerwoman, whoever she was, to see if she would do their work. The poor fellow was utterly crestfallen when I told him that my laundress was my sister.”
Industrious Maria saw an opportunity to earn money to pay for the medicine and medical care her father needed.
So she washed and ironed for the street-car drivers exactly as she had planned to do. They had few clothes to spare for the wash, but it must have been a delight to them to see the smoothness and whiteness of those few. Maria took great pains with them for two reasons: one, because she liked to hear Tom tell of their exclamations of delight, and the other, that she had a habit of doing well what she did at all. This new way of earning money was very helpful, and added not a little to the comfort of the invalid who was slipping away from them in such a quiet fashion. Sometimes it took all her resolution and a fond remembrance of how much her father enjoyed the oranges and strawberries to keep her heart in the work.
Doing a family’s laundry alone was a strenuous task and in Maria Randolph’s case, the hard, physical labor of the work took a toll on her health. But the work also had its rewards.
As Maria had a great deal of pride of execution, and an indomitable determination, and a secret plan to make herself and her father independent thereby, she worked with a will.
Before long, Maria’s business expanded enough so she could hire several “hard-working girls who were glad to be taught that which she had worked out by her own wits and the help of her eyes when she visited certain famous laundries.”
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As part of their laundry duties, Maria probably taught her employees the proper way to fold clothes for customers. These plates from a laundry manual published in 1900 illustrate the correct procedure for folding drawers, shirts, and night clothes:
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And though her family and friends were appalled when Maria decided to advertise her business, she was proud to hang a small sign outside her home, “tacked in a conspicuous spot, and the letters on it were unmistakably clear and plain:
Would you like to know more about sad irons and how they were used? Click here to view an article at Collectors Weekly.
Read our previous post about The School of Expression that inspired Isabel Bradford in Four Mothers at Chautauqua.
Click here or return find out more about Isabella’s Books mentioned in this post.
God had not left her without witnesses to the worth of the life she was living. She had early found what some Christian workers have yet to learn—that the road to hearts lies oftentimes by way of the most commonplace of domestic duties.
She earned her living by sweeping and dusting and fruit-canning, and a dozen other homely back-door occupations; but she lived in order to show forth the strength and the beauty of a life “hid with Christ in God.”
—from Pauline
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Many of the women in Isabella Alden’s books had to earn a living to support themselves or their families. That was the case with Maria Randolph in Household Puzzles, who took in laundry so she could buy medicine for her father and pay the family’s bills.
And in Miss Dee Dunmore Bryant, Mrs. Bryant supported her children by sewing late into the night, when she wasn’t working long hours at the local canning factory.
Earning a living wage wasn’t an easy thing for women to do in the years between 1880 and 1920. Competition for jobs was fierce, as more and more women entered the job market and took over low-paying, repetitive jobs that men once held—and they earned considerably less than men did for performing the same work.
The majority of jobs open to women were manual factory work and service employment. Both were physically demanding. If a woman was lucky enough to find a position, she could count on working long hours in often poor conditions.
In factories there were few breaks in the long work day. Employers commonly boarded up windows to keep employees from being distracted; and they blocked doors to discourage workers from leaving their posts before the workday was done.
Those were some of the conditions that lead to one of the worst work-place disasters in American history: the 1911 Triangle shirtwaist fire. A New York clothing manufacturer, The Triangle Waist Company, locked its workers inside their assigned work areas so they couldn’t leave. Most of the workers were young women and girls as young as fourteen. When a fire broke out, their only means of evacuation was a dilapidated fire escape that collapsed under the weight of the first few workers who scrambled to safety.
The fire took a horrific toll: 147 people burned to death or died as a result of jumping or falling from the upper floors of the burning building.
Work in private service had its own set of challenges. Women worked long hours as house maids, cooks, and charwomen (women who clean other women’s houses).
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The work was physically demanding and they were often treated poorly. Isabella Alden gave an example of such treatment in her book, Pauline. In the story, Constance Curtiss had to fight off the unwanted advances of her employer’s eldest son because he thought a working woman wasn’t due the same level of courtesty as a lady who was his social equal:
She had always taken the position that no self-respecting young woman need fear being treated other than respectfully by men; that girls probably had themselves to thank for carelessness when any man attempted familiarity. Yet the only excuse that she had given Mr. Emerson was the fact that she had chosen to make herself useful, on occasion, in his mother’s kitchen, and accept payment in money. This, it seemed, not only shut her out from Mrs. Emerson’s parlor as a caller, which she had expected, but made the son feel privileged to call her “Ellen” and treat her with a familiarity that could have been justified only by long and intimate acquaintance. She felt that such a state of things was a disgrace to American civilization.
For a woman who was lucky enough—and had the financial means—to afford an education, she could go to school and be trained to work in a more skilled capacity as a teacher or nurse.
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Summer residents at Chautauqua Institution could take advantage of courses in stenography, teaching and library science—training that opened up new job opportunities for women. (Click here to read more about courses at Chautauqua Institution.)
But that kind of training cost money. Women who had to support themselves and their families often took whatever work they could get, leaving them at the mercy of their employers’ whims and wage structures.
As Constance Curtiss discovered in Pauline, she had to put up with long hours and some embarrassing mistreatment if she wanted to keep her job.
She meant to be brave and true, and to demonstrate that the religion of Jesus Christ was of sufficient strength to bear any weight; but in order to do this she need not accept the attentions and take pleasure in the scenes that other women of her age would naturally accept and enjoy. God did not ask this of her; she was thankful that she felt sure of it. How, then, was she to ward off such attention?
On her knees that night she gave herself solemnly to the work; and the sense of humiliation that Henry Emerson’s treatment of her had induced, passed. It had come to her that she might in this way have been permitted a glimpse of his true character for a purpose.
Constance’s prayers were answered. With patience and God’s help, she found a solution to the dilemma of her employer’s son, and in the process, she became God’s agent in saving a young soul.
Want to learn more about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire? This brief video from CBS marked the 100 year anniversary of the tragedy:
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And this documentary video provides a more comprehensive look at the fire and its aftermath:
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Click on the book covers to read more about Isabella’s books mentioned in this post.
She weighed the possibilities now, much as she might have weighed the question whether she should or should not go to the lecture that evening. Should she take a new stand; begin to pray, to read her Bible, to go to church regularly, and to prayer-meeting, and honestly try to follow Christ? She had never given it careful consideration before, but why should she not? She was tired of all her surroundings; nothing in or about her home or her life was quite as she wished it. Why not have it utterly different? In short, why not try Christianity for all it was worth? She did not settle the question; but as she applied the latch-key to their own door, she almost thought she would.
—from What They Couldn’t
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It’s hard to imagine a world without Isabella Alden’s wonderful books and stories; but, left to her own devices, Isabella never would have become a published writer.
From a young age she had been taught to let her imagination soar. She began keeping a diary at the age of six, filling it with records of daily events and bits of stories. And even before she could write, Isabella’s mother encouraged her to make up little stories—perhaps from a picture Isabella would show her, or out of a few toys or some flowers. “Make a story out of it for mother,” was a most familiar sentence.
Out of those beginnings, Isabella developed her writing skills, and she continued to craft stories for the amusement of her friends and family. Her talent showed in school assignments, too; her compositions always earned good grades and won her recognition and prizes.
It was at school that Isabella Alden met her good friend, Theodosia Toll, nicknamed Docia. They were students together at Oneida Seminary in New York. After they graduated, Isabella returned to the school as a teacher; and since Docia’s family home was nearby in a neighboring town, the young women saw each other often.
After the close of one particular school year, Docia arrived to help Isabella pack up her things. Isabella was leaving the next morning to spend the long vacation at her family’s home, some eighty miles away.
While Isabella packed, she tasked Docia with sorting through the papers and books she had stored in a large trunk. As Docia went through the trunk, she came across a story Isabella had written as an entry for a writing contest. Here is Isabella’s description of what happened next:
“Why, Belle!” she suddenly exclaimed. “Here is that story you were to send to Cincinnati! Didn’t you do it after all?”
“No, I didn’t,” I said.
“But you promised!”
“No, not exactly. I said I would, if I didn’t change my mind, and I changed it.”
“Well! I think you were a perfect simpleton! It might have taken the prize. I thought it was the best thing you had written. What do you want done with it? Oh, say! Don’t you believe! The time for sending manuscripts isn’t up yet! Here is the printed slip that tells about it. There are seven days yet. Now do be sensible and send it on. Just think what fun it would be if it should win the prize!”
Then I appeared in the doorway and spoke with decision.
“I’ll do no such thing. If I can’t write a better story than that, it proves that I ought never to write at all. Tear the thing into bits and throw it in the grate with the other rubbish. I’ll set fire to them tonight.”
Luckily, Docia saw the promise in that story and instead of tearing it to bits so it could be set on fire, she submitted it to the contest under Isabella’s name.
Two months later, Isabella was shocked to receive a letter from the Western Tract & Book Society in Cincinnati, congratulating her on her win. Enclosed with the letter was a check for fifty dollars!
After she got over the initial shock of winning a prize for a story she thought she had burned, Isabella realized that Helen Lester was something to be proud of—especially once the contest judges explained the reason the story won:
“In the opinion of the carefully chosen committee of award, it met the condition imposed by the grand old Christian gentleman who offered the prize. It was to be given for the manuscript that would best explain God’s plan of salvation, so plainly that quite young readers would have no difficulty in following its teachings if they would, and so winsomely that some of them might be moved to take Jesus Christ for their Saviour and Friend.”
And how did Isabella spend that fifty-dollar prize money? She made two packets, each containing “the enormous sum of twenty-five dollars.” She placed one of the packets inside a bound volume of her first book, Helen Lester. On the fly leaf she wrote:
“Presented to my honored father.”
The second packet went into another copy of the book; and on the fly leaf she wrote:
“To my precious mother.”
Then, in both books she wrote those “wondrous words that must have trembled with excitement, and ought to have been written in capitals”:
“From the Author.”
Helen Lester was published in 1865 and with it, Isabella’s writing career was launched. The following year she published another children’s book, Nanie’s Experiment; Jessie Wells was published in 1867, quickly followed by Tip Lewis and His Lamp. After that, she published multiple titles each year, demonstrating both her talent and her discipline as a writer.
Since then, her stories that explain salvation through Christ and the rewards of abiding faith in God have enlightened and entertained generations of readers around the world.
You can read Helen Lester for free. Click on the cover to begin reading.
You can learn more about Isabella’s friendship with Docia by clicking here.
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I think if I could help to lead one person to understand and love the Lord Jesus Christ as much even as I understand Him now, so that He would be that soul’s eternal salvation, it would be ambition enough to fill a lifetime.
—The Hall in the Grove
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In 1911 a resurgence of spiritual awakening was sweeping across the United States. Even in the mid-west states—where “that old time religion” was firmly entrenched—people were undergoing a revival of spirit and rededication to the Christian life.
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When Isabella Alden wrote Lost on the Trail in 1911, the concept of tent revival meetings wasn’t new. Only four years earlier a great Christian revival had spread across the U.S. and Canada, led by two Australian ministers who traveled the Americas converting thousands of souls.
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And in 1897, when America suffered a tremendous economic crash, people turned to revival meetings for hope and comfort in a very tough time.
But by the early 1900s the Christian revival meeting had reached new levels, thanks, in many ways, to the emergence of great revival preachers and the power of the American newspaper.
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Many popular ministers traveled the country and drew large crowds, but Billy Sunday was the rock star of the revival circuit.
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When Billy Sunday preached, forty to fifty thousand people went to hear him each day. He spoke in tents, open fields, and huge tabernacle structures built especially for him in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and New York. Newspapers reported that wherever he went, the crowds were so great police could not control them.
In Pittsburgh, the newspaper reported 3,000 club women paraded down the main street of town to a Billy Sunday revival meeting. In Chicago, the entire office force of the courthouse abandoned their desks to march to the meeting tent, accompanied by a brass band.
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In the 1880s Billy Sunday was a baseball player. He played outfield, first for the Chicago White Sox and then the Pittsburgh Alleghenies (later, the Pittsburgh Pirates). He was a good player; he had a .291 battering average and he set a record for stolen bases. But his real calling, he believed, was giving regular locker-room sermons to his teammates about the evils of alcohol and tobacco.
After he left baseball, Billy Sunday was ordained by the Presbyterian Church, and embarked on a career as an evangelical minister.
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Not every revival meeting was led by a minister of Billy Sunday’s calibre. In small towns and large cities across the country, revival meetings of every size popped up during spring and summer months.
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While Billy Sunday might spend up to six weeks in a single city and convert forty thousand people, most small revivals lasted one to two weeks with considerably fewer attendees—but the effect was the same: people found new faith and hope by becoming Christians, and established Christians renewed their walk with God.
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Revival meetings were big news. Newspapers promoted them and reporters covered the events. In 1905 The Seattle Republican actively encouraged readers to attend an upcoming revival meeting led by Reverend J. Wilbur Chapman, writing:
The thing to do is attend. Let us attend these meetings and, as Mr. Chapman says, feel every time he speaks that he is addressing you individually. Then we will be able to measure ourselves by the standard he represents and see if we are found wanting. The meetings are for the rich and the poor, for the people who are and would become Christians.
And in 1915 the Chicago Day Book invited Billy Sunday to “preach” a revival sermon via a daily column of the newspaper for five consecutive days. The Day Book promoted Rev. Sunday’s guest column in front page headlines and full-page spreads:
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Newspapers in smaller towns and throughout America’s Bible belt gave revival meetings front-page attention:
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Isabella Alden drew on her experience with tent revival meetings in her allegorical novel, Lost on the Trail. In the book, a young woman named Weewona was raised from an early age by people in an isolated mountain cabin.
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But one day Weewona ventured down the mountain and stumbled upon a tent revival meeting where she heard the Christian message for the first time. Isabella used Weewona’s story to illustrate the ignorance and uncertainty we all suffer until we accept salvation through Christ.
After that first taste of God’s message, Weewona felt compelled to seek God. She headed down the mountain again, determined to learn more about the message of the revival meeting.
For the first time in her life she was entirely on her own and unschooled in the ways of the civilized world. Finally, a kindly milk man helped her find a home . . . and took her on her first wagon ride. After Mr. Best got her settled in his milk wagon, he tried to put her at ease by asking if she’d traveled far.
“Y-yes,” said Weewona, breathlessly, for they were in motion now, and she had never felt anything like it. Pete had told her much about horses and wagons, but it is one thing to be told about a horse, and quite another not only to see one for the first time, alive and moving, but actually to be seated on a board behind him!
“Don’t it make you afraid?” she gasped, holding on firmly with both hands.
The old man looked at her curiously; then threw back his head and laughed, an entirely fearless, reassuring laugh.
“Afraid of Old Gray!” he chuckled. “Well, now, if that ain’t a joke! I shall have to tell mother that, sure. Why, Old Gray is the gentlest, reliablest horse that ever put foot on the ground! He wouldn’t hurt a fly, even after it had bit him, if he could help it. I guess you ain’t used to horses, are you?”
She answered with a single word, but her voice made the old man look closely at her again, and speak soothingly: “You needn’t be a mite scared. There ain’t anything going to happen to you as long as Old Gray and Stephen Best have you in charge.”
Riding in the dairy wagon was the first of Weewona’s adventures, but as she learned more about God and what it meant to live a Christian life, she blossomed and found the courage, with God’s help, to make a place for herself in the world.
You can read Billy Sunday’s five-part revival sermon as it appeared in the Chicago Day Book in 1915. Click on the image to begin reading:
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Here’s a short video that illustrates Billy Sunday’s style of preaching:
Find out more about Lost on the Trail by clicking on the book cover:
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Isabella Alden 