The Sedalia weekly bazoo. [volume] (Sedalia, Mo.) 187?-1904, 1886-09-21
A PIONEER BISHOP.
A "Reminiscences of Montana Some
Twenty Years Ago. Is,
How "Bitter-rOOt Bill" and Cen
tleman Joe were His Part
ners I'm a Fight with
Fire and Snow.

The following interesting narrative
concerning Rt. Rev. DIR. futile, who
will officiate at Calvary church in this
city to-day, is of unusual fascination
and will be read with interest by pat
rons of the BAzoo generally, as well
as the Bishops friends. 1t was taken
from last Mondays issue of the Globe
Democrat, and is as follows:
New ORLEANS, La, Sept. 10. -Rt.
Rev. DR.. Tuttle, Bishop of the Pro-
testant Episcopal church for the do
cese of Missouri, is man of mark.
and not unknown in st. Louis, at
lie asst to those of It's citizens who had
the good fortune to enjoy the Bishops
ministrations in the golden days of
Montana. About score of years ago,
before railroads had crossed the Rocky
Mountains, Bishop futile was sent as
1 missionary to the northwestern ter
ritories. He might have been apprO.
priately styled Episcopus in partibus
infdeliun, for the rough miners and
mOuntaineers who inhabited the coun-
try care little for the men or affairs
of the church. The cOnventionali-
ties of life, the mere husks of social
forms had been pretty well discarded,
and the people in the mining camps
had come down to plain business. The
average preacher in the eyes of the
average miner was a man whose bust
ness was to pass around the hat or the
contribution box, if there had been
une in the country, and who made his
sermons the pTetext. Doubtless such
an opinion did injustice to earnest men
who were laboring among the appa-
rently barren wastes of that portion
Of the Masters vineyard, but the
thirst for gold and the rugged reali-
ties Of dairy lie left little inclination
or opportunity for listening to SER
mons.
The good Bishop might we'll have
been appalled, at the first veiw of his
diocese. 1t was an e mpire in extent,
but it barely afforded him a single
congregation. Afterward, when he
had planted the Church in a few ofthe
chief centers of population, he had
congregations thousand miles apart
requiring weeks of painful and dan.
gelous travel to reach them for The
hostile savages held sway on the plains,
while bandits more daring than the
savages and no less bloodthirsty, In
tested every mountain pass through
which the lines of travel led.
A WORK OF GRACE.
But never WAS a man hetter fitted
by nature and by grace for his high
mission. Of heOric stature, in every
physical sense a man among men, he
had a heart for every fate and a
courage and resolution equal to any
demand. His hand, strong as giants,
was soft and white as a woman's, and
more than once he had made some
insolent and sacrilegious brute
feel Its might, but far Oitener it has
wrought sweet charity and tenderly
nursed the sick and brought comfort
to the dying, to rough men in lonely
cabins In the wild mountain gorges.
bereft of woman's care. He entered
into the lives of the people and made;
at least their troubles his own, md
when the rude mountaineers, as they
presently did, came to know this
strong, brave and gentle man, his
fame went through the mountains and
he became the beloved ishop.
The city of Helena fit could be called
city, with its rabble of houses, huts,
novels ard tents crowding a gulch be
tween two high shoulders of peak
and climbing up the steep slopes to
perch On rocky lodges and platfor ms,
was the metropolis of the northern
mountains. One winter morning,
soon after midnight, fire broke out
among some shanties in the upper end
of the gulch. The mountains were
white with snow; a small rivulet
which meandered among the rocks
was locked with ice, while a bitter
blast blew down from the mountains,
and, sweeping through the gorge, soon
famed the fire into a conAagration.
Men rushed to the scene with buckets
and blankets. There was no fire
brigade and no other apparatus for
fighting the flames. Everything was
in confusion, and the raving of the
gale, the roar of the fire and the
shoutings of the men supplemented
the frantic exertions of the people to
save their property, and in many
cases to escape with their lives from
the fiery furnace into which the mar
row canyon that held the fated town
had been converted.