CHAPTER ONE
The Baneful Curls

On March 22, 1876 a child was born into a Methodist minister's home in Cleveland, Ohio. It must have been a scrawny babe, because when the two-year-old brother was shown the child he frantically clung to his father's neck sobbing, "Dots 'nough babies now, I 'dess". These proved to be prophetic words, as I was the last of six brothers. There were no sisters in the home, so it would seem the entire family conspired to make the baby into a girl. The long golden curls I wore, until I was seven years old proved the bane of my existence, although they did serve me well some, for which I should be thankful. One day, when I had wandered a bit too far from home to watch the whitescaps chasing each other on Lake Erie, I was gathered up in the arms of an old woman. She fondled my curls gently, and then put me down saying, "You had better run home little girl and tell your mother not to forget what happened to little Charlie Ross; some gypsy woman might want a little girl for her own." Mother was almost frantic with emotion when I told her what had happened, declaring had the old woman known I was a boy she would have carried me off. This incident probably instilled in me the fear of gypsies which was responsible for my burrowing deep into the hay mow in the barn every time a horse-trading troop of gypsies came to the little town in east Tennessee where I was reared.

My father moved his family to Athens, Tennessee in 1881. I was five years old. During the first few months we occupied rooms in the old Magill House close to the railway station. I was not so much intrigued by the trains on the nearby railway as I was by the ridges and hills on the other side of the town. These hills, and the

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mountains beyond, were one day to become a laboratory for the study
of nature's wonders. We four younger brothers were fortunate in
having as a teacher a Cherokee Indian who proved to be a dedicated
student of the wooded wilds.

My curls which had saved me from being kidnapped now
plagued my life as I began to play with neighborhood children. This
was especially so after father bought a home on the outskirts of the
town and we settled down as a family to normal living. My brothers
of course knew I was a boy, but they joined the other children in
calling me "Little Sis". I was banned from many of the activities
of the gang. Because I knew I was a boy I refused to play with little
girls.

The thing which hurt me most was that I was not permitted
to join the "Bumble Bee Fighting Army", captained by my own brother
Ernest. A taste now and then of the honey taken from bees nests
which had been whipped and plundered of their stores added greatly
to my suppressed desire to belong to this valiant army. I finally
made bold to volunteer but was turned down flat because of my curls.
I was only a sissie, therefore ineligible for membership in the army
of valiants.

But one day something happened. I was standing across the
road from the bee brigade watching the fight. I saw my brother Willie
with his back against a brick wall and bumble bees all around him.
Every bee had its legs hanging at full length. This meant they were
really mad. My brother slapped the side of his face where a bee had
stung him. He was being hard pressed. All the other soldiers were
engaged in their own fight. No one could help Willie. It was against

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the rules of the club for any member to run until the captain gave orders. I could stand it no longer. Rushing across the road with hat in hand I plunged into the fray swinging wildly at bees on all sides. My curls protected me pretty well from attacks from the rear, but bees penetrated my defense from the front. Several drove their swords deep into my neck and cheek. One bee got me on the bridge of the nose, I squashed it with my bare hand. Finally the battle was won, Willie and I crossed the road to await the outcome of other battles being waged. When it was all over I was declared a hero. I sure felt like one.

My mid-afternoon both eyes were swollen shut. Neither the blindness nor the pain was too much for me. I had been proclaimed a hero with the assurance that when I became a real boy I would be voted into membership in the club. I felt well repaid for my brave deed.

When I could see enough to get around I was in the wood-shed picking up chips. Willie came in, and after making sure there was no other person around he said, "Harry, you are a brave bee fighter; I wish you would ask big Martha to cut off your curls so you can join the bee-fighting army". I stole into the kitchen and offered my black mammy one of my curls for a nickel. Five cents was the initiation fee into the bee-fighting army!

"Laws-a-massey child, what will your mammy say if'n I goes and cuts off one of your beautiful curls," whispered the colored mammy. I begged her to cut the one she had long been saying she wanted when mother cut my hair. After much persuasion she went out to mother's flower pit and returned with a pair of small pruning shears. Without another word she led me to the window where she hacked away for awhile, and then held out two long golden curls

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before me. She then fumbled in her apron pocket and brought out two nickels. She whispered rather triumphantly, "There child, I's started it so they's neber 'gin going to call you a girl".

Mother was smilingly indignant when I told her what had been done. She turned me around and exclaimed, "Land-a-Goshen, Harry, Big Martha has ruined your beautiful curls". I told her then that it was all my fault, saying, "Mamma, I am tired being called a girl; I want to be a boy like Willie". A short time later I climbed out of a highchair a full-fledged boy. I was now eligible for membership in the club with a nickel to spare, and after my clash with the bees in defense of my brother was declared a valiant soldier. I was very happy. I was now a real boy.

The wooded hills around the little Tennessee town, and the blue range of mountains beyond, became more and more inviting as I grew older. It was this mass of woodlands which became a veritable laboratory for nature study and research through a period of years, in fact, until I left Athens in 1898. For at least ten years of this time I had been fortunate in having the Cherokee Indian as a teacher. This training was a fitting preparation for the nature study I was later to carry on for a period of many years in China.

As we brothers talked to our mother often about the wonderful red man we fraternized with in the woods she never once revealed to us we had an Indian heritage. Five generations back our grandmother on my mother's side was a Mohawk princess by the name of Molly Brant. The probable reason we were not permitted to know anything about our Indian ancestry was that we were the only Yankee family living in a community where race prejudice was strong. She

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doubtless felt that should it become known we had Indian blood in
our veins we might be ostracized by the boys of the town.

Father encouraged our study and collection of insects,
butterflies and moths. We had no books to assist us in our study.
It was necessary for us to acquire knowledge the hard way. This
hard way proved in later years to be the best way. By the time I
was twelve years of age I knew the life cycle of practically every
butterfly common to eastern Tennessee, as well as all the moths,
having reared them to maturity from the larva stage. We became
especially interested in the study of moths of the cotacala group.
The handsome underwings of moths of this very large group intrigued
us. Since we were interested in perfect specimens of both butterflies
and moths for our collection, we devised a method for collecting
cotacala moths in perfect condition which unknowingly led us into a
field of very interesting study. We improvised a gig by inserting
a long darning needle into a weed stock. With this "gig" in hand
we would stalk the unsuspecting moths as they rested upon the bark
of forest trees, and with stealth drive the needle through the thorax
of the insect. The rest was easy. Our collection of perfect cotacala
moths was probably unexcelled anywhere.

At the time of this study of cotacala moths we knew nothing
at all about the theory of camouflage, protective coloration and mim-
icry which we were to come up against later on in high school and
college. We had found far too many light colored moths resting on
trees with dark bark, and visa versa, to permit us to accept without
reservation the protective coloration theory studied in text books
during later years.

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Of course as boys we knew nothing about the controversy
over heredity versus environment which was being waged at that time
and which continues seventy-five years later. We yanked on a grape-
vine shattering a squirrel's nest in the top of a tree. Two blind
and hairless mouse-size baby squirrels plopped in the leaves at our
feet. Being too tenderhearted to abandon these wee helpless creatures
deep in the forest I picked them up and wrapped them in a hanker-
chief to take them home, hoping to be able to keep them alive. We
found our old lady cat with four newly born kittens in our kitchen
wood box. After much persuasion we succeeded in getting the cat to
adopt the helpless squirrels into her family. This was asking much
of a cat but we soon found the little children from the wooded wilds
nursing with the baby kittens. The kittens and squirrels grew up
together. The squirrels of course never knew any mother but the
cat, nor did they know any playmates but the kittens, yet they grew
up to be just as normal adult squirrels as any in the wilds. They
spent hours every day in the fall burying, in orchard and garden,
hickory and walnuts pilfered from our nut room. Certainly environ-
ment played absolutely no part in the conduct of two squirrels born
in the nest of a wild mother in the deep woods, but reared in the
family of a gentle domestic cat. We also showed the power of here-
dity over that of environment in China with eleven wild ducklings
hatched by an old hen from eggs taken in the wilds. These wee ducks
were just as wild and wary as were young wood ducks captured when
I was a boy on Turtle Pond deep in the woods.

My father was greatly pleased with the way we boys were
handling our collection and study of insects, moths and butterflies.
He reported hearing some of the citizens of the town say not a butter-

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fly crossed the line into McMinn County that one of the Caldwell
boys could not tell the time and place of the crossing, and where
it left the country, if it lived to get out. His work as presiding
elder in the Methodist Church necessitated much travel on horseback
over the Cumberland Mountain plateau and Saquatchee Valley areas.
One day, before leaving home for a long trip, he called his four boys
together for an important talk. He said, "Boys, I am very happy over
the way you are conducting your collecting, especially the way you
are collecting all kinds of caterpillars and larve and rearing them
through the life cycle. Your collecting will mean much if you con-
tinue to make such a study of it." We were delighted of course. But
we were all but bowled over with his next announcement. "Now listen
carefully," he said. "If you will promise to do the same thorough
job of it, I will permit you to collect birds' eggs, and I will
furnish you cases in which to keep your collection." We could hardly
believe our ears. "Robbing bird's nests" was looked upon with uni-
versal disfavor. In fact, it was condemned as one of the very great
sins. It was difficult for us to believe what father had said, but
since he was a prominent preacher, it must be all right. I was a mere
boy at the time, but I followed my brothers enthusiastically into this
new field of collecting and study.

The teacher of the Sunday School class of teen-agers and
younger, was a dispeptic retired Methodist minister. I was the
youngest boy in the class. It would be difficult to imagine any-
thing more unfortunate for a group of teen-age boys than having as
a Bible teacher a disgruntled belly-aching retired preacher. Well,
that is exactly what our class of rolicking boys had drawn.

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This retired man of God devoted much of the lesson period Sunday after Sunday ranting about robbing bird's nests. He seemed to take pleasure in all but literally dangling my brother and me by nape of neck and seat of the breeches over the bottomless pit. We two preacher's boys had to sit and take it.

Things suddenly took a change for the better one sultry Sunday afternoon. As was her custom, mother had her four boys sprawled around her as she told Bible stories and read a chapter from the holy book. The chapter selected for reading on that particular Sunday afternoon was the 22nd Chapter of the book of Deuteronomy. When mother read the sixth and seventh verses her boys were upon their feet very much awake. We all chimed in, "Read that again mother; is that in the Bible"?

What mother read again to us was, "If a bird's nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree or on the ground, whether there be young ones or eggs, and the dame sitting upon the young or upon the eggs, thou shall not take the dame with the young, but thou shall in anywise let the dame go" etc. We now not only had the permission of our father to collect eggs, but we had it straight out of the Good Book. That truly was a great day in our young lives.

We never once thought of selling eggs we collected, nor had we thought of in any way capitalizing upon our nature study. We did however, work up as many exchanges of eggs as possible in order that we might obtain eggs of auks, terns, gulls, and other sea and shore birds pictured in our Woods Natural History father had found somewhere.

In some way we contacted an egg collector in Knoxville, Tennessee, by the name of H. J. Ijams. We eventually did a lot of trading of eggs with this man. We exchanged eggs with utter disre-

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gard for listed prices in the A.O.U. price list. For instance, we
exchanged a nest and two eggs of the ruby-throated hummingbird; a
set of two eggs of the turkey vulture, and a set of two chuckwill's-
widow eggs, (total list value of $7.25), for a single egg of the
great blue heron listed at twenty-five cents.

There came a letter in the Friday afternoon mail from our
Knoxville patron asking for several sets, (with nest), of the ruby-
throated hummingbird. It would be no difficult matter for us to lo-
cate several nests of this little woodland fairy.

We had an assignment to weed the vegetable garden on the
following day in addition to cutting the week-end stovewood. And
too, there was the regular Saturday afternoon ball game between the
"Blues" and the "Browns". I wangled out of Willie an agreement that
he would attend to all the chores about the home if I would go to the
woods and fill the order for hummingbird eggs. This was agreeable to
me, although I did prefer company whenever I went into the woods. I
hoped that I would find the Indian herb gatherer as I passed through
the deep woods near Turtle Pond where we boys had spent so many won-
derful hours with this interesting red man.

From Turtle Pond I headed as straight as a bee would fly
for Cleig's Hollow where I felt certain I could locate hummingbird
nests without difficulty. As I hurried along a line of barbed wire
fence, crossing a divide I heard the nesting call of the hummingbird.
My trained eye followed the line of flight of the midget bird to see
it hover in the air for a moment and then settle upon a nut-size nest.
Well, here was find number one! It would be easy going for me while
Willie worked with hoe and axe at home.

Happy over this find I hurried along the wire fence. The
nest was saddled upon a small branch of a sapling hickory tree

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standing three feet on the other side of the wire barrier. Nailed to an oak tree a few yards away was a sign reading, "Land posted: No Trespassing allowed". My little heart skipped beats. This hickory sapling stood on land owned by my grouchy Sunday school teacher. I studied the situation. The nest actually was over the Getty's side of the fence. I reasoned that if apples falling from a tree in our orchard on the Leuter side of the fence rightfully belonged to them, the hummingbird nest rightfully belonged to me if I could get it without trespassing upon forbidden property. I figured out a strategy which satisfied my young conscience.

Carefully placing my bare feet between the barbs I climbed the fence. Standing upon the top of the post I straddled wide, hooked a big toe over a little knot on the sapling, and eased myself over to the tree. Shinnying up the tree with care I soon stood upon a limb of sufficient size to bear my weight. It required quite an acrobatic c stunt to reach out and lift the compact little nest from the limb and bring it in safely. Now I found myself facing a real dilemma. I had hurried away from home forgetting my cotton-filled Royal Baking Powder tin used for stowing away eggs when climbing down a tree. I dared not try to climb down the tree and negotiate a landing atop the fence post with the nest in one hand. The only alternative was to tuck the nest bodily in my mouth. I carefully did this, and as I squared myself to work down the tree I heard a rustling in the leaves down the fence line. Suddenly the ferocious brindle-colored cur belonging to the owner of the land emerged from beneath an overhanging limb of a beech tree. The dog rushed forward barking furiously as he reared upon his hind legs in an effort to climb the tree. Thuds of pounding feet announced the approach of a man. It was the owner of both dog and property. It was my Sunday school teacher!

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The man did not recognize my backsides, so he maneuvered himself around to where he could get a full view of the boy treed by his coon dog. He stood for a few moments gazing up at me. Finally he fairly exploded. "Harry Caldwell, it is you hanging up there like a possum; what are you doing in a tree on my posted property?" He then pointed a withered finger at the sign on the oak tree. When I did not answer any of his questions he really did boil over. Of course I could not talk. My mouth was literally too full for utterance. Finally, the irate man shouted, "Brindle, you keep him up there while I cut a beech branch; I will give that boy what his father should long ago have been giving him for robbing birds' nests". He walked to the beech tree and began to haggle off a limb. A nearby brush pile seemed to explode. Out went a cotton-tail rabbit. The dog dashed down the hill after the bunny and I "shinnied" down the hickory sapling with speed sufficient to almost set my breeches on fire. Groping with my right leg I hooked my toes over the top of the fence post. Before the man could bring his beech tree flail down on my back, I jumped with spraddled bare feet so as to miss landing on bristling chestnut burs, and was safe on friendly soil. Squaring myself so as to face the enemy on the opposite side of the fence I carefully disgorged the birds' nest into the palm of my hand. He stood speechless, gazing incredulously as I spat out the lichens, cob-webs, and what-not, from my mouth. He did not speak a word.

I broke the silence, saying, "Mr. T., you have every Sunday accused my brother and me of being bad boys because we collect birds' eggs. Have you ever read what the Bible says about it being all right to take the eggs of birds so long as the mother bird is not killed?"

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"What do you mean, Harry", the man replied, "Where in the Bible does it say you can rob birds' nests?"

"Although you have been a preacher a long time", I replied, "You surely have not read everything there is in the Bible."

"What do you mean", he replied excitedly, "I have read the Bible from cover to cover, and I never read anything about it being all right to rob birds' nests."

"Well, the Bible does say it is all right to collect bird's eggs if one does not kill or capture the mother bird; you read Deuteronomy the 22nd chapter, the sixth and seventh verses when you go home and see what God has to say about it." I wheeled and followed the wire fence over the divide and down into Cleig's Hollow. We never again had to listen to a Sunday morning lecture about the sin of robbing birds' nests.

From early boyhood I was hounded by peculiar complexes which might easily have been devastating in the life of a teen-age boy. It was when troubled by some such spiritual or mental problem that I sought solace in the wilds. Truly, to me as a bare-foot boy, the great out-of-doors was a real sanctuary when I was spiritually disturbed. These deep woodlands where I did most of my collecting of moths and butterflies was a veritable wild flower garden. Never have I seen such a profusion of color and beauty as covered the slopes of Cleig's ridge and over into the Getty's woodland. It was here I so often met God through the teaching of the Cherokee red man who was such an interpreter of the things of nature. Frequently in the spring, during my early boyhood, from the time the crinkleroot, hepaticas and bloodroots worked up through the mass of fallen leaves, I met this Indian herb digger in the deep woods to learn from him many things about nature that blessed my life through more than three

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score and ten years. Probably I would never have had more than a
casual interest in the wild flowers of Tennessee had not this Indian
held me for hours at a time in rapt attention as we sat on logs to-
gether and he explained to me secrets of the medicinal herbs, the
flowers, and the ways of the wild creatures as only a red man knew
them. Mine was certainly a rare schooling in the things of the great
out-of-doors. This Indian became a very important part of my young
life. In fact, the time finally came when our family doctor declared
to my mother we should be indebted to the Indian, Nels Cleig, for
saving my life.

One day in May 1888 some of us brothers were standing on
the old millrace at Matthew's Mill, one and one-half miles south of
Athens, fishing for "red eye" (later to be properly known to us as
rock bass). The Cherokee approached carrying upon his back a bag of
medicinal herbs. As we visited he pointed to a bunch of mint-like
weeds growing on the millrace.

"Boys, have I told you about that weed?", he asked. He
had not. The man went on to tell us that that weed was a sure cure
for the bite of either the rattlesnake or copperhead. He said, "The
Indians use the root of Solomon Seal as a cure for snakebite, but it
is not a sure cure. That weed there, is what we Indians call "Rattle-
snake's Master", or Baker Snakeweed. To chew that weed and swallow
the juice is a cure for any poisonous snakebite; it never fails."

It was but weeks later that we had an opportunity to try
the weed as a cure for the bite of a copperhead. My brother Willie
and I were collecting bird's eggs on our father's farm one mile from
home. As we climbed upon a pile of logs to watch a pair of tanagers,
I held in each hand two eggs of the brown thrasher. So intent were

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we, we did not heed the warning smell. The Indian had told us to always be on the alert for the shrill sound of the rattlesnake's warning, or the ripe-apple-smell warning of the copperhead. He had told us, "Neither snake will strike without giving warning if there is time".

Something struck me on the foot with the pain of a red-hot electric shock. "I am snakebitten" I shouted to my brother, as I tumbled off the log pile. Pausing just long enough to examine the two blue wounds on my foot we bounded for home with the speed of frightened deer. I was tripped by an exposed root across an old abandoned road and over and over I went down the hill. With scratches and skinned knees and elbows I was up and away, with my brother, toward home and mother. It was a long run over gulleys, through brambles and briars to the rail fence over which we scrambled into the road leading to town.

As we reached the creek back of our barn I sickened and gave out. With my arm around his neck and his arm around my waist Willie managed to drag me up through the orchard. The last thing I remember was mother standing on our back steps calling, "Willie, for land's sake what's the matter with Harry?" That was the end of it for me. I can only repeat what later was told me.

After I was laid upon a bed mother opened my clenched
fists and found two bird's eggs in each hand. Incidentally, these
four brown thrasher eggs were in a large collection of American and
Chinese eggs presented by me many years later to the Smithsonian
Institute in Washington. I suppose they are still there as I write
these lines in January 1959.

The family doctor was hurriedly summoned by my brother
Ernest. After a careful examination the doctor pronounced me dead,

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saying, "The long run in the hot sun circulated the poison through
his system so it was too late when I got here." He left without
administering a dose of medicine. Dr. announced to the
editor of the Athens Post that I had died from a snakebite. A week
later father read the announcement of my death in the Athens paper
in the country-store-post-office in Spencer atop the Cumberland
Plateau.

After calling the doctor Ernest hurried off at breakneck
speed for Matthew's Mill nearly two miles away. He was legging it
for the Baker's Snakeweed the Indian had pointed out to us. A
neighbor by the name of Mrs. Lane living across the street came in
to inquire about the hurried visit of the doctor. Upon hearing the
doctor had pronounced me dead she returned home and brought over a
bunch of dried weeds. As she ground this weed into a powder in our
mortar-and-pestle coffee grinder she told mother how an Indian had
cured her daughter after being unconscious from the bite of a rattle-
snake at Chilhowee Springs. She and mother pried my teeth apart
sufficiently to administer a spoonfull of this powdered herb with milk
every minute or so.

When Ernest returned with the fresh weed Mrs. Lane recog-
nized it as the same weed the Indian had used in saving her daughter.
Juice from the fresh weed was substituted for the dry powder. Within
a short time I regained consciousness, and within two days was up and
around. For months there was a black patch of skin on the side of
my foot and for many years after I suffered from a severe burning sen-
sation there every June. Not dying after being pronounced dead
has meant much to me during the past more than seventy years. Possibly
I am foolish, but I always make certain of the exact location of the

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CHAPTER TWO
The Young Nimrod

My first hunting was with a homemade bow and arrow. After becoming quite expert shooting mice and rats around the barn and corn crib I launched out after rabbits and quail in the field. When sixteen years of age I discarded the bow and arrow and started killing rabbits with stones. When I was out with my brothers and a rabbit was found sitting, I was given the chance to take a "shot" first with my rock. Mother called it a geode. One Thanksgiving day we brought in twenty-five rabbits. I had killed eight of them with my orange-sized rock.

My brother once picked up the frame of a revolver. The cylinder with several cartridges was rusted tight and the hammer was gone. Of course it was a harmless toy, but the two of us made bold to go man hunting with it. We were alone one night when a prowler tried to get into the house. He continued to prowl around after being chased off the back porch. My brother took that old relic of a revolver and I followed with a stick of stove wood. When we located the thief trying to pry his way into the chicken house Willie held mother's shears against the cartridge and I wracked it with the stick of stove wood. The prowler made his escape without either a wound or serious fright.

The next pistol event might have been more serious. It too, was an old rusty gun picked up in our barnyard. After repeatedly trying to fire the gun at a wandering rooster across the creek, we sat on the doorsill of a cow pen and began to try to turn the much battered rimfire cartridge into position for another try at the rooster. The gun exploded with a deafening report. I jumped up and began to run around in circles, both hands grasping my belly, hysterically shouting,

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"You've killed me, you've killed me". I knew I was dead! I saw the
pistol sail high in the air toward a deep pool in the creek. After
throwing the gun away my brother dragged me into the cow stall. An
examination showed a hole in my clothing at the waist line. There
was no hole in the belly, but there was a red streak across my abdo-
men. Willie assured me the bullet had not penetrated my flesh. I
hysterically affirmed it had. I could plainly feel it in my insides.
Our brother Fred was hoeing a melon patch far up the hill beside the
house. We wanted to make sure I was mortally wounded with a lead
ball in my belly, so Willie sidled up to Fred in such a way as not
to attract father's attention. He whispered, "Fred, does a bullet
always leave a hole when it enters a fellow's belly?" Being assured
it did, Willie returned to where I was about to give up the ghost on
the woodpile and convinced me the red streak across my belly was only
where the bullet had burned me. We were both very much relieved, and
were soon busy playing again with a setter pup.

Our next experience with a gun was with what the hired men
at the farm called a horse pistol. It was a muzzle-loading gun
used for firing minney balls during the civil war. We sold a few
dozen eggs gathered around the barn and bought some powder, shot
and caps. There proved to be real danger behind this gun when firing
a load of bird shot for it bucked like a bronco.

We went hunting with this pistol-gun. It was Willie's
time to shoot. He stole under a ceder tree on our father's farm where
hundreds of robins, bluebirds and cedar birds were feeding on the blue
cedar berries. He fired at a branch swaying with an overload of
hungry birds and the horse pistol kicked back driving the lock deep
into Willie's forehead. There was a deep crescent-shaped wound. How
would we ever explain that to mother? After stopping the ooze of blood

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at a cold spring we got our heads together to work up a story without
telling a lie, and without letting our mother know we had been hunting
with the old civil war relic.

I was the one who suggested the strategy. Taking my old
barlow pocket knife I cut off a small bush at an angle. Willie got
down on his hands and knees and carefully forced the stub of the bush
into the wound. From here on it was an easy matter to say a stub of
a bush had stuck into Willie's forehead as we were kneeling by a spring
on the farm. We boys had been taught never to tell a lie!

Although I always accompanied my brother on hunting trips
I did not carry a gun until I was almost out of my teens. For any-
thing sitting still upon the ground, or even for running quail or
rabbits, stones were all I wanted. All of this hunting with stones
paid off well during later years when pitching baseball. I seldom
gave a batter his base on balls. One Fourth of July afternoon near
Utica, New York, I struck out thirty-seven batters in a double-header,
whiffing twenty-one batters in the first game and sixteen in the
nightcap, not allowing a man to reach first base on balls all after-
noon. I was pretty much of a bulls-eye thrower, due probably to my
"shooting" at sitting rabbits through a period of several years.

When I did begin to hunt with a gun my shooting was usually
accurate. When the shooting was at a ruffed grouse in a laurel
thicket my brothers always asked me to take the shot. My average
was high in this difficult snap shooting. My training with a rifle
came later. It was all with a single-shot Stephens rifle borrowed
from a jeweler in Athens by the name of Fowler. During those days
I had to make the twenty-cents I paid for a box of cartridges account
for squirrels for the larder. Little did I dream what that training
would mean to me later when confronting the big cats of the Asian
jungles.

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Meat was scarce in our home through a period of years when I was a growing boy. Many of the chickens we raised were exchanged through barter for staple groceries. I very vividly remember one dreary weekend when there was not much food in the house to feed the family over Sunday. A thing happened which left an imprint upon me that will remain until the very end.

Two feet of snow lay upon the ground. When bringing in a backlog for the fireplace I heard mother say to Ernest there was no meat for Sunday. I was not greatly concerned for I got by pretty well on fried grits. We had plenty of sorghum molasses in the cellar, too. This combination meant much to me as a boy.

We were all sitting before the roaring fire eating out of a dishpan full of cracked hickory nuts and walnuts. Mother seemed very much distressed as she quietly knitted. Suddenly the face of our old tom cat appeared at the window over the slanting cellar door. He was mewing loudly. Whenever any one of us moved in our chair the head of the cat would disappear. Soon the cat would again appear at the window mewing some kind of a message to us. Ernest arose saying, "Jerry is trying to tell us something; I am going out to find out what is troubling him". Mother replied, "Well, it does seem as though the cat is trying in every way to attract our attention; something must be wrong."

The cat met Ernest at the back door, mewing excitedly. Ernest followed him around the house toward the cellar. There was a huge cottontail rabbit, lying in the deep snow. Gentle old Jerry had never been known to kill anything, but here he stood by a rabbit he had dragged in from the garden.

Mother wept tears of gratitude when she saw Ernest enter the door carrying the large rabbit. With great emotion she said,

-21-

"God is truly a com passionate and loving Father; boys join in singing thanksgiving to Him." She began with her sweet alto voice to sing that old song which begins something like this, "It may not be my way, it may not be thy way, but yet in His own way, the Lord will provide." There were repeated instances of God's goodness and care for us as a family when the going was hard and father was away traveling as a presiding elder. These ground deep into me the belief that God really does care. In my visits to the wooded solitudes as a barefoot boy I often sensed His presence there.

During those difficult times when father was away from home the names of places like Sunbright, Dayton, Tracy City, Spencer, Sequatchee Valley, and many other places scattered over the Cumberland Mountain area became familiar to me. I remember when father returned home one day. He turned the bridle reins of the old mare, Fanny, over to me saying laughingly, "Well Abba, I took in thirty-five cents on this round. That's not enough to pay the ferries across the rivers." Father surely was not in this job for the money there was in it, nor was he traveling all over the country on horseback because he had to. At that very time he was being offered the pastorate of a church in New York state which would pay him more than double anything he ever received during his ministry of more than half a century in the southland. Through a long period of years in China I remembered my father's years of really sacrificial service in the mountains of Tennessee, and it was always an inspiration to me.

My brothers and I never knew the meaning of the words, "weekly allowance". There was no such a thing in our lives. In season we often picked dewberries and blackberries in excess of what our mother could use. We sold these for ten cents per gallon and usually gave these few dimes to our mother. I did earn a much needed dime one day which I kept. Father's brother from Brooklyn, New York

-22-

was visiting us. Such a visitor meant an inroad on our chickens which
were counted upon for both eggs and meat. I was sitting on the corner
of the fence listening to my uncle tell stories about experiences in
Europe. Mother came out on the porch and asked me to get a chicken
for supper. She pointed out a lanky young rooster walking down the
sidewalk on the opposite side of the road. I climbed off the fence
and began to select a suitable stone out of the gutter. My uncle
asked, "Harry, do you mean to kill that chicken with a stone?" After
a bit of bantering, I wagered a nickle, (which I did not have), that
I would hit the chicken in the head the first throw. I waited until
the chicken stretched its neck out and then let fly my stone. There
was never made with a gun a more perfect shot. My uncle chuckled
heartily, and then handed me a dime saying, "Harry, that shot was
worth ten cents any day." It was the easiest dime I ever earned.

We were still frequently meeting the Indian in the woods
near Turtle Pond. There was good ginseng digging among the accumu-
lation of rotten logs and leaf mould. Our lesson one day happened
to be on wild bees. We were taught how to line honey bees, and how
to locate the area of a bee tree by angling the lines. We were also
told how very easy it was to recognize the flight of the honey bee as
it crossed a patch of sunlight among the forest trees.

The first bee tree we located after watching the beeline
flight back and forth across a forest opening was in the largest
chestnut tree, I am sure, within the bounds of McMinn County. It
was truly a tremendous tree. Fred climbed a nearby beech tree to
make a study of the barrel-sized "wart" growing on the chestnut
fifty feet from the ground. The bees were richly banded with yellow.

-23-

They were Italian bees! That should mean lots of honey!

On a cool October morning our two hired men from the farm joined an uncle of mine, who was an experienced wild honey gatherer, in an attack upon the massive chestnut tree. Three of us brothers pooled our strength and skill in cutting the tree. Two crosscut saws and two axes were kept busy until almost midafternoon. Under a dogwood tree awaited two milk pails and a wash tub ready to receive the barrel of honey we felt certain we would take. As the massive tree began to "talk" one of the hired men was given Fred's undershirt which he was to jam into the hole in the tree as soon as it toppled to the ground.

The tree went down with a thunderous crash. The man, Armstrong, ran up and stood with the wadded undershirt in his hand. Instead of jamming it into the hole he turned to the rest of us saying, "These are the calmest bees I ever saw". Suddenly like water from a pump spout the bees began to pour out in a fist-sized stream. We all scattered for cover but those mad bees found us wherever we hid.

Late in the afternoon Jim Gettys, owner of the woodland, came to have a look. He said he felt the earth tremble a mile away at his home when the tree fell. "I knew it was a whopper", he added as he inquired about the amount of honey we expected to get. After studying the tree awhile, he said he had to be going. "You know", he said, "that tree will make enough fence rails to fence in my farm".

Several weeks later father announced that the hired men would help us saw that tree into ten-foot cuts, after which we would work the tree into rails. As time progressed we had rails piled high all over that woodland. Father did not scold us for cutting the tree.

-24-

He said Mr. Gettys was mighty nice about it, and had agreed to make no fuss if father would see to it the tree was worked into rails. Luckily it was a lean time for work on the farm, and since we boys were in school we had to work only a few hours a day on this rail-splitting job.

Years later when I returned from China in 1904, I wandered over my old stomping grounds. Here I had collected moths and hob-nobbed with the Indian friend. I went over to look at the old chestnut stump. There lay a ten-foot long rail just where I had put it years before. The ends of the rail barely extended beyond the stump. I heard myself saying, "That tree really must have been as large as it seemed to be when we were working it into rails." Less than five hundred yards away was the stump of a huge poplar tree we boys had cut for raccoons. We got three coons out of the tree. The poplar log and stump were pretty well rotted away. The chestnut stump sure had outlasted the poplar! It was easy to understand why chestnut rails were used for fences.

My brothers and I became proficient in splitting rails and slabs. We cut another huge chestnut tree on our father's farm once, to get a coon. He did not scold us. He only said, "It seems to me that was a lot of work for one coon". We were later calmly ordered to work that tree into rails and slabs. We then were assigned the job of toting those heavy slabs down the hill, where we used them for covering a blind ditch used to drain a parcel of land for growing corn. I am sure had we not cut the tree, that parcel of land would be swamp to this day.

One day while sitting by a cool spring eating lunch father

-25-

explained to us the reason he had encouraged us in the matter of collect-
ing birds' eggs. He said he had wanted us to spend as much time as
possible away from town where men and boys spent so much time sitting
on dry goods boxes telling, and listening to, all kinds of gossip and
stories. He had wanted us to spend much of our summer vacation in
the woods where we would learn to love nature. We never ceased to
feel grateful to our wise father.

Our collections of butterflies and moths were composed of
perfect specimens, or nearly so, and this was due to the fact we
collected myriads of worms and caterpillars in the wild and reared
them through the complete cycle. This was not only profitable from
the standpoint of collecting perfect specimens, but it was equally
worthwhile from the standpoint of scientific research. My mother by
now should have been just about ready for anything, but she all but
fainted one day when I walked into the kitchen where she was making
doughnuts. My broadbrim straw hat was literally alive with worms,
including larva of small butterflies and moths, numerous fearful
looking hickory devils, larva of the luna moth, and many woolly cater-
pillars. When without a box in which to carry worms and caterpillars,
I carried them on top of my head under my hat. On this day I had made
an unusual haul. The huge, five-inch-long hickory devils, the larva
of the regal catheronia moth, had chewed a hole through my hat. Every-
thing followed them through this hole and were crawling around on the
crown and brim of the hat.

There was a frequent visitor in our home in Athens by the
name of David H. Moore of Cincinnati, who became much interested in
our collections. The work we were doing deeply impressed this man

I was able to buy a pair of Brogan shoes for winter wear, and to
provide for the family some sow belly and other provisions such as
were carried by the Company Store.

One brother was now gone, and Ernest was fast becoming in-
terested in affairs that diverted his attention from the things in
which we four brothers had been mutually interested. Willie and I
now teamed up in love and fellowship. He became the dearest companion
of my boyhood days. This friendship carried on right through the years
until we were separated by death after each had served a long term in
the Christian ministry, he in New York state and I in China.

As a boy, Willie was always ready to take on my fighting in
addition to his own. I provoked a lot of quarrels and Willie did the
fighting. We found a lot of pleasure in taking advantage of the ig-
norance of certain town boys who insisted on tagging after us when we
went to our favorite fishing hole, or on collecting trips. We usually
carried in our pocket the dried root of either ginseng or sweet flag,
(callied calamus by the peasant folk), upon which we nibbled from time
to time. We had learned this from our Cherokee friend. He had warned
us, however, against nibbling upon the pleasant tasting root of the
Indian turnip, (Jack-in-the-pulpit). We carried a shriveled root of
this herb to use on unsuspecting boys when irked too far.

We were waiting in the post office with a milling crowd
while the afternoon mail was being distributed. Willie winked at me
when a boy whom we particularly disliked, on account of his profanity,
entered the post office. I began to chew on a bit of ginseng. Young
Smith, the boy in question, siddled over and, in a rather offensive
manner, demanded some of whatever I was chewing. I brought from my
pocket a round root of the Indian turnip, warning the boy not to eat

-28-

it too fast saying, "Indian turnip must be nibbled slowly in order
to taste sweet."

Indian turnip does have a pleasant sweet taste when first
chewed, but woe betide the victim a few minutes later. This boy soon
began to move restlessly through the crowd. Within minutes he was
standing against a buck eye tree outside the post office digging at
his tongue. The more one scrapes and scratches the tongue the more
intense the prickles and pains become. We thus got rid of this pest
for a time.

Most of my pranks were not of a very serious nature. I was
walking one day through a field studded with flowering Canada Thistle.
Tagging me was another pest of a fellow. They were pests because they
were not interested in anything in which we were interested. Every
head of thistle flower was covered by bees and argynnis butterflies
crowding each other after hidden sweets. I saw two drone bumblebees
working on a purple thistle head, so I casually swooped them off the
flower and held my hand to the ear of the boy tagging along. Opening
my hand the bees flew away. I then picked up another bee, making sure
of the necessary yellow color on the abdomen to distinguish it from
the stinging worker bee. "You think you are awful smart, don't you?",
the boy said. "Well", I said, "you pick up a bee if you are so brave:
there's one now. Pick it up and hold your hand close to your ear to
hear how it buzzes". I was pointing to a large worker bee. He swooped
the bee up in his hand just as I had done and then, with a yell, threw
the bee to the ground and began to run around in circles, rubbing the
palm of his hand against his breeches. So much for another pest.

During the winter months my brother and I ran lines of steel
traps. We were trapping for mink, muskrat and raccoon. At home, we
were having a pretty hard time of it financially. My mother was finding

-29-

difficulty making ends meet. I have often wondered why three sons
followed their father in the Christian ministry after experiencing,
as we had, the privations of a preacher's family; and this, after each
of the sons had established himself in business upon graduation from
college.

Our trapping continued right up through college days. It
was necessary for us to assist ourselves in some way financially, and
naturally we turned to the wilds. We trapped during every month which
had in its name the letter "r". I had some never-to-be-forgotten ex-
periences during those years. Being in school, we had to run our
trap lines before daylight. We had one trap set in a narrow drainage
ditch for a mink. At four o'clock one morning we visited this trap,
and, as I straddled the ditch, I peered at what seemed to be a mink
of tremendous size. I squared myself and raised my dogwood cudgel to
bring it down upon the head of the prize mink. Something happened!
Just as I released my blow I was knocked off my feet by a bomb blast
which struck me squarely upon the chin. It was a skunk, and never did
a skunk make a more direct hit with its scatter-gun than did that one
at the dawn of an October morning. I rolled upon the ground vomiting
violently. We traveled the back way home that morning. I went into
the barn, and discarded as many of my garments as propriety would permit,
and then worked my way up through the orchard, dodging from tree to
tree, until I could dodge into the kitchen where mother was preparing
breakfast. "Phew, I smell a skunk", my mother exclaimed. She sure
did. I was it.

Mother scrubbed my head with everything imaginable and I
finally went out and smoked my head over both corncob and cedar bough
fires. I missed the chapel service that morning. When I entered the
first period mathematics class someone whispered, "I smell a skunk".

Soon everyone was sniffing the air. The skunk they smelled had gotten
into my hair.

I could never wear the hunting coat again, although I soaked
it long in running creek water, smoked it in all kinds of smudges,
and finally buried it down in the orchard. Weeks later it smelled
just as skunky as the morning the big black cat knocked me off my feet.
I buried it again, this time for good.

We always had to conceal our traps perfectly to prevent
their being stolen. In order to make this camouflage complete I
always carried the foot of a mink, raccoon and muskrat in my pocket
with which to make tracks in the mud covering the trap. A trapper
by the name of Decker would now and again steal one or more of our
traps, and we would proceed to replace them by traps stolen from him.
We would never think of taking a trap unless we had lost one.

We had one trap with an unusually long chain for emergency
use. We found where both raccoon and mink walked on a muddy ledge
at the foot of a sloping bank. Willie straddled a stump and let me
down headfirst to set a trap on this ledge. It was a master job of
setting.

We made a round every Saturday night in order to retrieve
any animals, and to snap all traps so they would not be working over
Sunday. And too, we could not bear the thought of animals suffering
unduly. Making the round one Saturday night we came to where the big
double-spring trap with long chain was set. While Willie let me down
head-first with a lighted lantern in one hand I tried to locate it.
There seemed to be trap. Cautiously I began to finger around in the
mud to locate one of the springs. I touched the panel of the trap and
it jumped out of the mud catching three fingers of my right hand. The
chain had been pegged down near the water for the purpose of drowning

-31-

any animal taken. There I was stretched out head-down on my belly,
with my hand held fast, and the chain too short to permit getting the
trap on level ground so that both springs could be pressed down at once.
I had to work myself into a standing position in the water. It re-
quired half-an-hour before the two of us could release my fingers.
Fortunately no bones had been broken.

Our trapping certainly did not bring much in actual cash,
but since it brought in a little money, and a little money meant much
to us, we stuck to it. It required a lot of trapping at the price we
were receiving for furs, to buy school books, and now and then a pair
of shoes.

When running our line of traps I usually crossed over and
followed one side of the creek while Willie followed the other. One
bitterly cold morning I approached the regular homeward bound crossing
place. It was a drift of logs extending half-way across the creek.
From this pile of drift wood I could reach high and graps the over-
hanging branch of an ash tree, swing my feet over the limb, and work
my way feet first, sloth-like, to where my brother would help me to
earth. On this fateful morning things went bad for me. My hunting
coat was well filled with the catch of the night, probably adding too
many extra pounds to my weight. Anyway, just as I was adjusting myself
after swinging my feet over the limb, there was a sudden sharp report.
The limb snapped off and I went down in the icy water taking the branch
with me. I was all but drowned when I succeeded in freeing myself from
the ash limb and struggled to the surface. Within a few minutes after
Willie pulled me out of the stream my clothes were frozen solid. It was
necessary to thaw out by the kitchen stove before my hunting coat could
be removed. All that mother said was, "You had better be more careful
next time Harry, you are likely to take your death of cold."

Father was wholeheartedly behind his boys in their trapping

-32-

and hunting, as well as in their scientific collecting. But he was a stickler for obedience. One morning before taking the train for Loudon up Knoxville way, he assigned us a job he wanted completed before we turned our attention to anything else. Hardly had he left home for the walk to the railway station then a flock of mallard flew over, and after circling a few times, set their wings for a pitch to slight on Turtle Pond. The temptation was great. An hour was all the time that would be required! That was not much time since we had the whole day to finish the work assigned us. Fred went in and loaded father's prize, double-barreled, Parker, muzzle-loading, shotgun, and we three headed for Turtle Pond.

Willie and I crouched behind a log jam while Fred made the final stalk. Just about the time we expected to hear two blasts from the shotgun there was a tramping in the dry leaves behind us, and there was father. He had missed his train. The only words he spoke were to inquire where Fred was. He then hastened his pace toward Turtle Pond.

Willie and I set to work trimming off every willow and alder switch within possible reach of father's hands. We planned to make him do some hunting himself before he found any switch with which to tan our bottoms. When he returned with Fred, carrying the Parker gun, he did not seem to be angry. He gave us boys a lecture on obedience in a calm voice, and then said, "Fred, this gun is what tempted you to disobedience. I would rather have no gun in the house than to have a boy of mine tempted to disobedience, so I will remove further temptation from you." With these words, he took the gun by the end of the barrels and brought it down over a log with force. The stock shattered into bits. Father then asked us to bow with him in prayer as he talked with God about his boys. The trimmed willow trees witnessed to the fact we did not fully understand our own father. After all, a prayer like that one was much more effective than any amount of physical punishment possibly could have been.

CHAPTER THREE
The Lost Gate

Mockingbirds were prized highly as a cage bird when I was
a growing boy in eastern Tennessee. Rivalry in getting the young
to raise was so great my brother and I took a nest with four little
birds when they were but two hours old. In order to keep them warm
we suspended the nest day and night over a kerosene lamp. All mother
did was to throw up her hands and declare, "boys, what next?" We found
the duties of playing both mother and babysitter for these wee mocking-
birds involved far more than we had counted upon. The diet of the
birdlings for the first week consisted of tiny cabbage worms and small
grasshoppers. One bird died on the eighth day. This was the time of
pinfeathering and the Indian herb-gatherer had told us this was the
time of danger when rearing young birds. He also told us the male
mockingbird has one extra white feather in the wing which we found to
be true when we reared our three young mockers to maturity.

I did all the climbing of trees in our egg collecting. One
time I looked down from a great height, when crossing from the top of
an oak tree into a pine tree, to see Willie sprawled flat on his belly
with his face buried in his arms. He just could not watch me. My
three greatest frights when climbing were when I was alone. On one
of these occasions I was high in the top of an oak tree after the eggs
of the piliated woodpecker. The tree was dead from twenty feet above
the ground. When I was fully sixty feet above the ground, a stub upon
which I was standing snapped off without warning. Down I went backward
to what seemed certain death. By spreading my arms and legs to full
breadth my progress was fortunately checked in the lower branches of
the tree so that when I gathered myself off the ground I had suffered
nothing more serious than a real fright and a few scratches and bruises.
I climbed back up the tree making certain of everything upon which I

entrusted my weight.

Out alone on another occasion I saw a white-breasted nuthatch enter its nest, a hole in a tall arching black gum tree leaning far over a deep gulch. I cautiously climbed the slanting tree only to find the entrance into the cavity too small to admit the hand. I labored long with a pocket knife to enlarge the hole. Finally, forcing my hand into the hole, I began to remove chips from the nest holding them between the ends of my fingers. With my hand deep in the hole my body hold in some way slipped, and I felt myself slowly sliding around to the under side of the slanting tree. With my body at such an angle it was impossible to remove the imprisoned hand. It was a very hazardous situation in which I found myself and I could never tell exactly what did happen, but I found myself once more clinging to the upper side of the tree. I withdrew the now swollen hand with difficulty, but I kept on doggedly enlarging the hole until I was able to remove the five eggs from the nest. This set of nuthatch eggs was included in a large collection of eggs presented to a great museum years later.

The experience, however, which still tends to produce goose pimples as I think of it today, happened while climbing a huge shagbark hickory tree. It was the first set of red-tailed hawk eggs I ever collected. I can never forget this experience. The tree was too large to climb without irons to begin with, and I never used climbing irons. To make the climbing doubly difficult the bark retarded progress both by sluffing off under one's arm and leg holds, and by sticking out like barbed barriers. Fortunately, there was a small knot on the tree twenty-five feet from the ground which could partially bear my weight as I halted for a rest. Looking up I could plainly see my real trouble another twenty feet above. The tree forked into two huge branches angling off at about forty-five degrees. In some way

-37-

turtle had seven distinct kinds of meat. I remember that among these
were rabbit, raccoon, pheasant (grouse), squirrel and possum. I be-
lieve both quail and chicken hawk were also included. I enjoyed the
gooey, sticky meat of the turtle, whether it was "rabbit" or what-not,
but the squirming and twitching of the meat in the cooking skillet
bothered me for a time. Fried snapping turtle was good meat whether
composed of one or seven kinds. We ate a lot of it over the period of
our boyhood years.

Our outdoor activities carried on right up into college days.
We were real boys full of the energy inspired by outdoor life. Our
college pranks were tempered by the fact that we were children of a
Methodist minister. Usually teamed up with us were three sons of
preachers, and one son of a judge living in Jonesboro, Tennessee. One
of the never-to-be-forgotten episodes of the college campus involved the
six of us. We were challenged to do this prank in a way difficult to
withstand.

The matron of one of the girl's dormitories, called Ritter
Home, made one charge against several of the group which was resented
by us all. That we were accused of passing notes to her girls as we
passed in the college halls was true, and too, we might rightfully have
been accused of other minor infractions of rules, but when we were
accused of hanging around the windows at night in the shadows, and
carrying on with the girls, we became much riled. None of us was
guilty of this charge. The matron even went so far as to tell one of
our crowd, "If I catch any of you boys inside the gate of Ritter Home
property at night I shall have you arrested for respassing, and will see
to it that you be punished according to law". That was a bit too much
for us. We gathered at our meeting place under a spreading maple tree
near the campus pump to talk the matter over. The charge was exactly
six hundred per cent untrue, because there were six of us.

-38-

During this council on retaliation one of the fellows suggested, "Say, fellows, let's steal the gate and hide it. Then there will be no gate to go inside of." That was but an innocent suggestion, but it stimulated some thinking. We agreed to remove the gate. That night the heavy gate was detached from the counter-balance chain and lifted noiselessly from its hinges. It was hidden in the clover and rye grass on the campus where there was but little chance of its being found, unless some boy stumbled over it while fielding a long driven fly ball on the recreation field.

The pot began to boil in Ernest. Mrs. C., the matron, ranted and fumed. On the fifth day a reward was offered to any person who located the gate with evidence sufficient to apprehend the culprit. This suggested the second move. At night the gate was removed from its resting place beneath the clover blossoms and field daisies and was weighted down in two feet of water in a not too distant gravel pit. There it reposed in its watery grave for days. The weather suddenly turned cold, and the pool froze over. That settled it for the time being.

A great deal of detective work was instituted on the campus and several of us volunteered our services in an effort to solve the mystery of the missing gate. Being preacher's sons, we proved to be very inefficient in this type of sleuth work, although we did seem to be working hard at the job.

The third and final act in the gate stealing episode was its sudden appearance on the campus. This was in response to the promise of a liberal reward, "For the return of the gate". It was agreed upon that the gate should be returned, and that nothing be said about the reward, but since the posted proclamation did not specify a place where the gate should be left, the generous culprits decided that matter among themselves.

-40-

end of the rope over a truss roof support and lowered it until it
touched outstretched hands. The long chain had been securely looped
around a cross support of the gate and the heavy gate was slowly
drawn up by the rope until it thudded against the roof timber. I
took up all the slack of the long chain by looping it over the timber
with each loop passing between the uprights of the gate. The heavy
padlock tied together links of the chain, and our work was done.
After the belfry door was locked, and we all climbed out the window
and down the long ladder, Willie and I headed for home. The others
crossed the campus with the ladder to restore it to its rightful
place against the residence of Dr. Cook.

The following morning we were in our usual places for the
morning chapel services. Not one of us so much as glanced upward as
we sat in our junior and senior class seats, well forward. Everything
seemed abnormally quiet as we waited for the faculty and staff to
take their accustomed places on the rostrum. Finally, one of the
venerable teachers skurried up the aisle and onto the platform,
hurrying to the speaker's desk where she placed her Bible and hymnbook.
Mrs. Knight, sister of Bishop Warren of the Methodist Church was re-
vered by all the students; it seemed unfortunate it had to be she who
was to lead chapel service that particular morning. She thumbed her
Bible and then began to read the chosen lesson of the morning. It
happened to be the 24th Psalm. There seemed to be the usual devotional
spirit brooding over the place until the leader read the seventeenth
verse, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, etc.". T
There was a disturbing giggle. The dear old lady characteristically
looked over her glasses, and with hand to her mouth, said, "Well".
She looked awhile at the assembly, and proceeded to continue reading.
When again there was, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted
up," the hundreds of pious students could contain themselves no longer.

-41-

There was first a suppressed, and then an uproarous burst of laughter.
The old saint paused, put her hand to her mouth and hacked three coughs.
By this time every eye was looking upward. Faculty members who had not
noticed what was hanging heavily over their heads, looked up and broke
into grins. The leader of devotions sidled off a distance and looked
above her. There was the lost gate hanging exactly over the pulpit!
Chapel service was abruptly terminated for that day.

It did appear to six students that it was more than mere
accident that of the whole book of Psalms that particular psalm should
have been selected for that particular morning. Those devout sons of
parsonage homes could but wonder whether God was not on their side,
even in a college prank. The gate swung over the chapel pulpit desk
until late afternoon when a plumber who had been called in, broke the
lock and lowered it to the platform. There was a crowd of students
assembled outside the chapel when the gate was brought out. Five sons
of Methodist ministers, and one son of a judge of the civil court,
volunteered to carry the gate to its rightful resting place. After it
was swung upon its hinges the matron of the girls' home warmly thanked
the culprits, saying, "Well, boys I have the gate back without having
to pay any of the rewards offered."

I did not do any trapping, and but little hunting after my
brother graduated in 1897. In order to earn sufficient money to buy
shoes, books and suit of clothes I worked a few acres of corn land.
After Willie left I settled down to hard work in school, but did find
time to continue my egg collecting and research work in nature study.
All through the years when I had been hounded by complexes which might
easily have driven men out, I had found solace in the wooded wilds.
I still often met the God of the nature I loved in the solitude of the
out-of-doors. During my senior year in college I was taking very seri-
ously the fact I had signed a volunteer card under the influence of

pulled off during the past years?" As I recounted several of the
things which had happened in which I played a major role, including
the stealing of the ice cream freezer from Bennett Hall when the
juniors were entertaining the seniors at their annual banquet, Dr.
Wright interrupted me saying "Harry, no one could ever make me be-
lieve all of this you are saying; I know you are just trying to cover
up for some of your friends; that would be just like you". Dr. Wright
was warmly holding my hand, smiling one of those winsome smiles which had
meant so much to me through the years. I looked the dear dean squarely
in the eyes and said, "Dr. Wright, do not dismiss what I have said
with too little thought, because I repeat to you the hand you hold
now is the hand which chained the gate to the chapel timber". Dr.
Wright squeezed my hand smiling and replied, "Harry, you do seem to
be in Ernest in what you say, and it makes me think more of you. I
still say you were a good boy". We tightened on each others' hand,
and I was gone.

I am sure June 18, 1898 was the most gloomy day of my life.
I was not only graduating from college with the realization I was now
to go out and face the responsibilities of life, but I was severing
all ties with the people of the little town in which I had lived since
five years of age. This was on Wednesday. On the following Monday
I was engaged in business in Johnson City under the business sign
"Caldwell and Dulaney, General Insurance". It was not long until I
was sitting behind a desk in an insurance brokers' office in New
York city.

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## CHAPTER FOUR
I Make A Decision

I had probably left forever the haunts of my childhood, and the woodlands where I had so often sat in rapt attention at the beauties and the mysteries of the out-of-doors. Dear to me had been the Tellico Plains region where I had fished for the beautiful brook trout, the Coker Creek area and the hill country where I had hunted wild turkey and panned for gold. All of this was now in the past, and I was launching out upon the great unknown. For nearly half a century as I tramped the trails in mountainous southeastern China I fully purposed in my heart to buy a certain forty acre plot of ground in the Coker Creek area. My uncle and I had done a lot of prospecting for gold during the summers of 1896 and 1897. The two of us alone knew what we had found, although a man of the Coker Creek community, by the name of Tip Tate, had every reason to believe we had found something worthwhile, as I repeatedly sold to him gold nuggets at the rate of ninety-cents per pennyweight. My uncle died soon after I left home for China, carrying the secret with him. It was the assay receipt from the U. S. mint in Carson City, Nevada, that was responsible for my resolve to own that property. In keeping with my resolve, I returned to Coker Creek in 1948, but I found ownership of the spot of ground hopelessly entangled, or so involved through multiple ownership, as to end the matter in so far as I was concerned. There was a tinge of sadness as I fished both the Tellico and North rivers with considerable success. The trout in those streams today are not the trout of my boyhood. To me the planted rainbow can never quite measure up to the scrappy brooks of well more than half a century ago.

Five days after graduation from college I entered business in Johnson City. The shingle which hung above the door read, "Caldwell and Dulaney, General Insurance." Both soliciting and selling were distasteful to me. I had gone down in a miserable defeat after

my initial try at canvassing during my last year in college. Although
my commissions on sales the first day amounted to six dollars, which
indeed was big money for me, I crumpled under the snubs and door
slamming in my face. My spirits were so crushed under it all, I re-
fused to deliver the things sold, gladly forfeiting my commission.

I received a shocking blow when my application for an in-
surance policy was turned down by the Prudential, for which I was
general agent. The report was a tuberculosis spot on my left lung.
It was difficult for me to imagine such a thing, but I was determined
to win out over the threat. Accordingly, I assumed all the outdoor
work and travel of the insurance firm, at the same time spending just
as much time as possible in the open, always making certain I was pro-
tected against taking cold. No matter what the weather, I traveled
far on horseback and in livery stable rigs. My headquarters when
working in the Noilla-Chucky region was the home of the Honorable Alf
Taylor, brother of the renowned Robert L. Taylor, governor of Tennessee,
lecturer and later United States Senator. Our home in Johnson City
was far less pretentious than the residence of the governor on the
beautiful wooded knoll known as "Robin's Roost". The fellowship I
enjoyed with these two illustrious brothers who were political rivals
of the first order, was delightful and wholesome.

Early one morning my brother Willie and I accompanied
Gov. ernor Taylor, and his private secretary, Mr. Rice, on a squirrel
hunt on nearby Buffalo Mountain. Such a squirrel hunt! From daylight
until well into early forenoon we hunted squirrels. The strategy
was to scatter out and cover four areas of hickory trees. During
three hours of hunting not a squirrel was seen or heard. Every bushy-
tail was deep in a hollow tree. The crashing through brush and leaves
by our two illustrious companions resounded far and wide. My brother
and I waited it out, feeling our friends would surely grow tired of

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such hunting. We agreed the hunting was drawing a blank, and were
favorable to the suggestion it be terminated. We said we would walk
home for the exercise, possibly picking up a few quail and rabbits.

Fifteen minutes of quiet in the woods brought hungry
squirrels out on all sides. The tops of certain hickory trees were
alive with them. Soon we had fifteen squirrels in our hunting coats.
Late in the forenoon I took a pan full of dressed squirrels over to
our neighbor, saying "Willie and I blundered into a few hickory trees
full of feeding squirrels after you folk left; for a time we had quite
a busy time shooting." To this the great Robert L. Taylor replied,
"Squirrel hunting must be as uncertain as politics, some times you are
in luck, and some times you ain't."

It required quite some time for me to shake off the fear of
cracking up under the dread tuberculosis. One of my brothers had died
of lung trouble only a few years earlier. It bothered me that my own
life insurance company had refused me a policy. Our family physician
prescribed beechwood creasote, raw eggs and plenty of out-door life.
I engaged without reservation in playing baseball, and in travel in
connection with my insurance business. I learned to enjoy raw eggs
broken into a glass, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and with a dash
of vinegar. In reply to a question by my brother as to how raw eggs
tasted, I replied, "Willie, they are as delicious as raw oysters."
He decided to try a raw egg. I doctored it up for him with care, handing
it to him in a glass. We were standing on the back porch six feet
above ground. Somehow, the egg did not go down as smoothly with Willie
as mine had with me. The yoke broke. Willie rushed to the end of the
porch trying to get rid of the egg, part of which seemed to want to
go down the gullet while the other part fought its way back. Before
the gagging and retching was ended that one egg was stretched from my
brother's stomach to the ground fully nine feet apart. Willie never
again attempted to swallow a raw egg. I continued with my treatment

of creasote, living in the out-of-doors, and raw eggs, until I began
to feel I was getting along all right physically. I utterly ignored
the threat of tuberculosis, and after several months was accepted
unconditionally as a safe risk by the same company which had denied
me a policy.

My brother Willie and I were a battery in the Johnson City
baseball club. I played in the field when not pitching. This team
won every game played that season with the exception of four out of
twenty games played with Frank Moffett's Indians of Knoxville. I was
greatly enjoying my outdoor life and my insurance business until both
were suddently disrupted in a most unexpected manner.

Without warning of any kind a telegram came to me from New
York offering me a position in an insurance broker's office on Wall
Street. The telegram was from a John A. Dohrman, and it called for a
definite reply within three days. I telegraphed an uncle living in
Brooklyn asking the rating of this man Dohrman. The reply was "Brad-
street A-1." Within forty-eight hours I walked into the broker's
office and introduced myself. The insurance man looked me over rather
critically, saying "You look all right, but go immediately and have
those trouser legs cut down several inches". I was wearing a new suit
of clothes with the baggy trousers popular in the south at the time.
I disliked very much having this new pair of pants mutilated, but
since it seemed necessary if I wanted to stay in New York, I complied
with the order from my new boss.

Things went well with me fast in this business office. I knew
the insurance business pretty well. It was not long before I was put
in charge of the policy department. I had never thought in terms of
such insurance policies as I initialed and okayed in that office. Cer-
tainly I had within a short time attained a degree of success of which
I had never dained, in fact, success which made me wish I had never
signed a volunteer card for missionary work in Africa. I wished I

could forget it all. I was trying to adjust myself to a business
career which seemed to be opening in a wonderful way.

But suddenly the problem was brought to a head. Before the
office staff separated for the weekend the broker called us together.
He announced his purpose to take a few months trip to Europe, con-
cluding his remarks with these words which caused goose-flesh pimples
all over me, "I am asking Mr. Caldwell to take charge of the office
in my absence". I could hardly believe the words had been spoken by
this hardboiled business man. I really was frightened.

That Saturday afternoon I visited the Brooklyn Navy Yard
with another member of the office staff. We spent hours on the
several battleships which had been pretty badly battered up during
the naval battle in Cuban waters. It was quite late in the evening
when I returned to my Brooklyn home on Pacific Street. I was greatly
disturbed mentally. Something was radically wrong. Every time I
closed my eyes to go to sleep throughout the entire night there seemed
to pound in my ears the words, "except the Lord build the house they
labor in vain who do build it." As I struggled to fight this night-
marish thing hour after hour there rose before my mind's eye that card
I had seriously signed volunteering for work on some mission field.
The struggle continued until a clock in some tower struck the hour of
four. I kneeled beside my bed in prayer. From a troubled heart I
said, "Father God, I believe I understand it now, and in the quiet of
this hour I promise to follow wherever Thou wilt lead me."

I had fought a night-long battle, and I had at last promised
to follow wherever He led me, notwithstanding it might mean abandoning
the business life which in an almost unbelievable manner had opened
to me. I realized I had found myself ready to forget the agreement I
had solemnly made with God when I volunteered to devote my life to work
on some mission field. I had, for what seemed the one-thousandth time
during the night of spiritual trouble heard those words, "Except the

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Lord build the house". I now felt that I was surrendering unconditionally
my will to His, no matter what the cost. It must be final. This was
followed by a calm and peace of both mind and soul I had never known
before.

I was at the insurance office in downtown New York early on
Monday morning, opening the safe and arranging each desk for the work
of the day. After this work was finished I sat calmly at my desk to
await the arrival of the broker from his home in East Orange, New
Jersey. When he arrived I asked for a few moments with him in private.
My announcement, "Mr. Dohrman, I am resigning as of today, and will
return to Tennessee immediately", seemed quite blunt. In reply to
numerous questions as to why I was taking this action I answered
evasively, saying it was a matter I did not care to discuss with any
man. I felt it was a matter of such spiritual significance I could
not discuss it even with the man who had treated me so generously.
Finally, I cordially thanked the broker for his confidence in me as
had been manifested in so many ways, and after bidding each man in the
office goodbye, I left the office and walked to, and across Brooklyn
Bridge a very happy man.

I do not excuse myself for dwelling at length upon this
that might well be termed my call to work on the mission field, be-
cause I have repeatedly resented keenly, implications that men and
women engaged in missionary work in foreign lands were there because
it was the course of least resistance in finding a job. I went to
China because I had every reason to believe God called me to that work.
So complete was my dedication, I did not so much as inquire of the
Board of Missions in New York what my salary would be. I found that
out when I received my first check after I had been in China one month.
It was fifty dollars per month. Two years later when I was married
our joint salary was nine hundred dollars per year.

ERASABLE BOND

On my way back to Tennessee I stopped off at Utica, New York to visit my brother Ernest who was preaching at the Northern New York annual conference. Although I had won a tremendous victory over personal business aspirations I somehow was, not yet entirely satisfied. I realized that in some way my dedication to Christian work was not without reservation. Even though I had solemnly agreed with God on my knees by my bedside in Brooklyn to go to any mission field, I still held firm in my purpose not to enter the Christian ministry. I felt that I should be able to serve both Christ and the church as a lay missionary. I did not want to preach.

I greatly enjoyed my visit with my brother living in a Methodist parsonage. We rambled together through woodlands and swamps studying birds as we had done years earlier in Tennessee. I bicycled to trout streams winding through meadows and forests taking fine catches of speckled beauties. The only thing that disturbed me was that verse in the 137th Psalm which had troubled me through an entire night in Brooklyn. I could not get rid of it. Deep in my heart I realized I was not yet willing that God take over completely in directing my future. Although I was perfectly willing to go even into darkest Africa as a missionary, I still was not willing to dedicate myself to the Christian ministry.

How very vividly I recall today, two events when I was in Ernest's home. One Saturday afternoon the presiding elder, a Dr. David Pierce of whom I had often heard my father speak, came to hold the quarterly conference in my brother's church. While I was sprawled upon the floor in the parsonage playing with my two little nephews, Ernest came over from the church and said to me. "Harry, Dr. Pierce wants you to come over to the church for a few minutes", "What does he want of me?", I inquired. Ernest replied, "Dr. Pierce says he has a strong feeling this district conference should license you to preach."

I fairly blew up. Here was a man whom I had never seen saying he felt he should give me a license to preach. "Go back Ernie," I blurted out, "and tell Dr. Pierce and your quarterly conference that when I want a license to preach I will ask for it." I rushed upstairs, throwing myself upon my bed, and trembled all over with great emotion.

When I came down for supper nothing more was said about the preaching matter. During the following three days after which I was scheduled to start for Tennessee, I avoided everyone as far as possible. I spent much time on trout streams alone, and in woods and swamps. The following Friday was July Fourth. Ernest urged me to remain over until Monday to start home saying, "The local ball club has an important game scheduled, and the pitcher upon whom it was relying has wired he is sick and cannot possibly be here; I have told them you might possibly be willing to pitch the game." I replied, "But Ernie, I have not pitched a ball game for months, so how dare I agree to step in and pitch this game for people who know nothing about me?" But I finally did agree to try to pitch the game.

When I returned from fishing a trout stream Wednesday night Ernest handed me a note which had been left with him. I read the note, and inquired who this Mr. Alesworth was. I found that he was a boyhood friend of our father, and that he was preaching somewhere in northern New York. I remembered that was the region where father was born.

After supper I called to talk with Dr. Alesworth who was visiting his daughter. When the door opened in response to my knock, there stood before me a man with the countenance of a saint. The man grasped my hand saying, "Brother Harry, I have come from Saggetts Harbor to call you into the ministry." What a greeting! I was for the moment fairly stunned. Finally I replied very rudely, "Dr. Alesworth, if God wants me to preach he can tell me without bothering you

53

or anyone else." Without releasing the hold upon my hand this grand man drew me into the house and closed the door. We visited for a time, but nothing more was said about preaching, until we shook hands at the door. This man of God, and life-long friend of my father, said, "Harry, do not feel offended over what I said, for I know in my heart you will one day enter the ministry to preach the gospel of the Living Christ". Somehow, I did not resent this. I went home, and after playing a game of chess with my brother went to bed.

The Fourth of July came, and with it two ball games to be pitched instead of the one I had agreed to pitch. Through some mix-up in schedule there were two nine inning games with two different teams. I was asked whether I felt it possible that I could pitch both games. I replied that I would be willing to try, if there was not too long a delay between games. Well, I pitched two full games. In the first game I struck out twenty-one batters. In the second game I whiffed sixteen batters. Not a man walked to first base during the entire afternoon. I got an urgent bid to pitch big league ball that day. The umpire was a scout for the Utica New York club. Sunday morning Ernest had to help me out of bed. I was as lame in every muscle as I was that morning after my first day of off-bearing brick when a boy.

Monday I started back to Tennessee. Upon arrival in Johnson City I resumed my work in the insurance office, and played some baseball. I found it very difficult to work up much enthusiasm in anything. One morning I entered the insurance office, and said to my former partner in the firm "Caldwell and Dulaney", "Foy, I want to run over the books this morning." Dulaney looked steadily at me for a long time, and said, "Harry, I have felt it for a good while; you are going to preach aren't you?" I replied without hesitation, "Yes, Foy, I am going to preach, and I hope to go to some mission field to spend my life." That definitely ended my fight against entering the Christian

CHAPTER FIVE
I Answer a Call

I was in theological school in Chattanooga when a real challenge came to me. A telegram came to the Board of Missions from Bishop David H. Moore of Shanghai asking that I be sent out to meet a very pressing emergency. This was the same Dr. Moore whom I had learned in my boyhood to call "Uncle David". My brother Ernest was already in China and would meet me. Since I had struggled so long to win the battle over self and personal ambitions I could not falter before this definite challenge.

It was another Fourth of July when I met the candidate committee of the Board of Foreign Missions in New York. It was the year of the great anti-Christian movement in China known as the Boxer Movement (1900). I had worried quite a bit about my brother Ernest's safety and, as I entered the sanctum of the Candidate Committee, I carried in my hand a New York newspaper with glaring headlines, "Minister Conger Boiled in Oil". It indeed, seemed a strange time for a timid young man to be thinking of going to China. In answer to a question by Dr. J. M. Buckley as to when I would be willing to go to China, I replied without hesitation, "Just as soon as transportation and other preliminary matters can be taken care of." Dr. Buckley arose, saying he had another very pressing engagement, adding, "Gentlemen, I cast my vote for the young man from Tennessee."

I left Chattanooga in December 1900. That last evening at home was a near breakdown for me. Mother had invited for supper the young lady I was later to marry in China, her sister and boyfriend. I wanted a last meal of mother-cooked oysters. I bought a pint of frying oysters, and a pint of oysters for stewing. Somehow, it seemed impossible for anyone to swallow oysters that night. Mother must have had a time disposing of her surplus oysters. I was dreading the goodbyes that were to follow immediately after supper. I knew my mother would

-56-

stand up under the strain of this parting, because it was an answer to
her prayers, that is that God would call me to service on some mission
field as He had my brother. I watched my dear mother smile back the
tears. She whispered a few words of gratitude to God as she kissed me
farewell. What a mother!

My journey from Chattanooga to Cleveland, Ohio was uneventful. I had at the end of this first lap of my journey my oldest brother Lisle, with whom I would spend a day. We had a delightful time together. Among other things he accompanied me to the city office of the Nickle Plate railway over which I was to travel to Chicago. I produced what I understood was only an order for a ticket which must be exchanged for a ticket. When the envelope was handed back to me the man at the desk said, "There you are sir, everything is in good shape; I hope you have a pleasant trip."

My troubles soon began. When the conductor examined my transportation he shoved it back at me with the very gruff remark, "Young man, you cannot travel on that paper". Upon examination I found some underling in the office had merely punched the order for a ticket instead of issuing an exchange ticket. The paper showed the Board of Missions had paid the railway for my travel from Cleveland to Chicago. Time and again the conductor demanded that I either pay cash for my transportation or prepare to leave the train. I replied, "All right, you may put me off the train, but I will only follow my baggage off," adding, "I have 350 pounds of baggage checked through to my destination on this ticket, and I am not leaving this train until my baggage is put off". I displayed my baggage checks. After looking carefully at the checks he muttered something, scribbled upon the paper and I offered him, and walked away. Thus ended episode number one.

In 1900 there was no union terminal in Chicago. Just how far it was from the Nickle Plate station to the station of the Chicago

-57-

and Northwestern I do not now recall. I was so flustered over my en-
counter with the conductor, I grabbed my two heavy suitcases and hurried
out the door, following directions given me by a man in the station.
As I swung around a corner I collided head-on with a man carrying two
bundles of small bird cages. He must have had a score of small cages
in each hand, each cage containing a single canary. The suitcase in my
right hand crashed squarely into the bundle of cages held in the left
hand of the bird fancier. There was a splitting sound. Small bird
cages littered the sidewalk and well into the street. I looked back
just long enough to see the man scrambling around picking up his terri-
fied and fluttering canary birds. My collar was wilted limp when I
reached Northwestern railway station. The transfer bus was unloading
its passengers. I then realized when an impulsive dumbbell I had
been for not riding the Parmalee Transfer bus, for which I held a coupon.

In San Francisco I joined three China recruits just as raw
and inexperienced as I was. We had been rated as qualified for work
in China. So far as I was concerned, I was hardly qualified to travel
alone. My steamer ticket was covered by the same ticket order covering
the ticket of my cabin mate, a young fellow of German extraction by the
name of F. G. Henke. Herein lay another tale of woe for me. After I
had used the joint steamer ticket for weighing my baggage and duffle
for loading on to the steamer, I handed my cabin mate by billfold
containing money, passport, ticket, etc, and left him to attend to
his baggage weighing. I was wandering around the deck of the steamer
a very lonely young man. There was not a person in the milling mass
upon the deck or upon the dock interested in me. The all-ashore gong
sounded, and people began frantically to say good-bye. When the deck
was pretty well cleared of everyone but passengers, I bumped into my
cabin mate, and asked him for my billfold. The young fellow patted his
pockets frantically and shouted, "Harry, I left that pocketbook on a
trunk where we weighed in our baggage".

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Without another word I dashed for the gangplank on lower deck. An officer tried to flag me down, saying, "The boat is being cut loose from the dock." He grabbed for my shoulder. I dodged him and was soon clawing my way through the jam of people on the pier waving goodbye to friends. When I got into the clear there was no pile of baggage to guide me. I was madly looking for my billfold, and there was no place to look. I rushed toward a huge fellow leaning against a pillar. Pausing I looked blankly into his face. The big fellow said, "Hey, take it easy buddy, I have it here; have been keeping it for you." He drew my billfold from his hip pocket and handed it to me. I yelled a thank you as I wheeled and ran. I found it doubly difficult to squirm my way from the rear through the mass of humanity. As I broke through on to the open pier I saw the gangplank had been removed. The steamer was slowly swinging from the dock. I made a college days broad jump and grabbed the guard railing. So happy was I to be back on the old S. S. American Maru with my billfold, I forgot all about bawling out my cabin mate.

I had heard people talk about sea-sickness. My experience as a seafaring man had been limited to one trip to Bedlow Island in New York harbor. I was not seasick on that trip to visit the Statue of Liberty, so I felt all set for the voyage across the Pacific. Sunset through the portals of the Golden Gate was beautiful. The great ball of fire was sinking into a billow of gilded clouds. The steamer picked up speed after passing through the gate. It began to heave and roll. One by one passengers left the upper deck and went below until there were but two of us left. The wind was not so strong but that I could wear my five dollar, creased, derby Stetsen some person in the Mission Board in New York had prevailed upon me to buy so that I would create a favorable impression as a missionary. Five dollars for a hat! I had never known hats cost so much. But I was proud of this nifty headpiece.

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By now the boat was doing quite a lot of corkscrewing and nose diving. The rollers were battering the boat from the quarter. It shuddered from a tem to stern under the impact of the waves, but I was still on my feet. I saw the last person on deck made a dash for the open door leading below. Proud of myself for outlasting everybody, I turned for another lap around the deck. The boat reared violently, poised for a time with the bow-sprit raised as if ready for a thrust at the heavens above, and then settled back with a rolling dive into the second roller. I lost footing on the sloping deck and lunged forward until I crashed into a steamer chair. It would be difficult to describe just what happened next. The third roller heaved the vessel until its ribs creaked under the impact of the attack. Dizzy and nauseated I scrambled from my imprisonment and hurried to the guard rail between the lifeboats. I was now too miserably sea-sick to be afraid, or even to care what happened to the struggling steamer. Although unbelievably sick, my thoughts turned to my hat. It was gone! Gone, that expensive headgear! Forgetting, for the moment, my miserable plight I looked for my hat. Another wave of nausea struck me. As I squared myself over the guard rail something seemed to interfere with the free movement of my right foot. Looking down I saw my precious hat ringing my foot above the ankle like a close fitting washer. When and how my foot got through the crown of that derby hat remains a mystery to me to this day. After wriggling my foot free from the hat I pushed it through the guard rail to see it drift astern of the boat. My problem now was how I would ever get to my cabin. It was difficult to muster courage to move a step.

As the boat steadied itself a moment and I made a break for the open door leading to the lower deck. On the stairway I met a passenger rushing up the stairs. One had covered his mouth. Gushers of soup and other lunch items spewed between his fingers. This added to my own miserable condition, hastening my pace to the seclusion of my own

difficult time carrying out his agricultural pursuits in China.

Upon being assigned to China I immediately began to study
both Buddhism and Taoism, the two major religions of southeastern
China. I confess I marveled at the beauties of Buddhism. The so-called
"eight Perfections" intrigued me - Right Beliefs; Right Resolves;
Right Words; Right Life; Right Acts; Right Efforts; Right Thinking
and Right Meditations. This might easily be characterized as the
Eight-Fold Path of Buddhism. Certainly the tenets of the great sage
embodied just about all that was required in the perfect life. What
did Christianity have more to offer? I was much concerned. I felt
sure Christianity had much that was more concrete to offer than the
tenets of Taoism. Such things as "The Cosmic Nature"; "The Way" and
"The Cause of Nature", everything seeming to lead toward "The Fountain
of Eternal Youth", were so vague and involved I felt the teachings
of Christ could take care of Taoism all right. But Buddhism gave me
considerable concern as I studied it during my weeks on shipboard.
But the day came when I fully realized what my job as a missionary
really was.

Our coast steamer slowed for dropping anchor in the Min江
River twelve miles below Foochow. My long journey was just about ended.
There I saw a man and two boys dressed in white standing upon the deck
of a houseboat which was slowly edging over toward my steamer. While
I waited I had to put up a real fight to keep possession of my luggage
and duffle. From a swarm of small river boats that had closed in
upon the moving steamer scores of jabbering men and women clambored
up the sides on ropes attached to hooks which had been hooked to the
guardrail. Never had I seen such a bedlam of humanity as scrambled
for baggage piled upon the deck. Those who did not sprawl over their
possessions had them forcibly taken from them to see them lowered by
ropes into river sanpans, leaving no alternative but to follow one's

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below." He then told me how unwanted babes are dropped into this
tower which covers a cavernous-like pit, and how lime was then thrown
in to help destroy the bodies. I passed the famous Baby Tower several
years later to find the entrance hole plugged with a great gob of
Chinese cement. Christianity was getting in its licks against the
evil customs of an ancient civilization.

Right here I want to beg the indulgence of whoever may
some day read these pages, promising that in succeeding chapters I
will not exalt too highly the transforming power of the gospel of the
Living Christ; nor will I say much about the caliber of the men and
women I have known who had dedicated their lives to the preaching of
this gospel just as I had done. I will endeavor to leave to the imagi-
nation of those who may read these lines as to the worthwhileness of
the Christian missionary enterprise among people burdened by idolotrous
rites and superstitious practices. But since I devoted forty-four
years of my life to missionary work in China I want to devote a few
paragraphs in this one chapter to relating a few things of which I
have personally been party, to testify to the transforming power of
the Christian message upon pernicious social evils which had been
practiced through countless ages with the sanction of all pagan religions.

The binding of the feet of small girls was universally
practiced when I went to China. Most women, other than those who
worked in the fields, had bound feet. This meant that women folk of
the well-to-do hobbled about bearing their weight almost entirely upon
the great toe, supporting themselves with one or two walking staffs.
Mrs. Caldwell today has a pair of the "Golden Lily" shoes worn by a
bride. The soles of these shoes measure less than two inches. That is
what bound feet in China meant. When my long-time friend Roy Chapman
Andrews first visited us in Fukien in 1916 he did not see a bound foot
other than in very rare instances as when a very old woman hobbled by,
Christianity had for years been waging a relentless war against this

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social evil in Fukien with almost complete success. During the year
1919 I traveled nineteen days on horseback with Mr. Andrews in Shansi
Province, at the time rated the model province in China under the
administration of the famous reformer-governor Yen Si Sang. During
this nineteen day period of travel through scores of towns and villages,
we did not see a woman or a girl, of footbinding age, who did not have
bound feet. The difference between what Mr. Andrews saw in Fukien and
in model Shangsi Province was due entirely to one fact. Christianity
had been operating in Fukien Province for many years with an intensive
program of social uplift and reform, while in the area in Shansi Province
where we traveled there was either no missionary work at all, or
missionary work on a very limited scale.

There is another place where the transforming impact of the
gospel of Christ is so plainly evident that even the most violent
critic of missionary work dare not let his voice be heard. I here
refer to the glowing countenance of the truly Christian, be he scholar
or illiterate peasant. I was standing one day with the noted scientist
and explorer, Roy Chapman Andrews, in a community where I had killed
several troublesome tigers. It was one of those many places where the
people declare, "The missionary shot the gospel into the community".
We were surrounded by many scores of curious and wondering people. My
companion said to me, "Harry, I can go around this group and without
a single mistake point my finger at the nose of every Christian".
After some questioning by me as to just what he meant, Mr. Andrews
replied, "There is a very noticeable difference to me between the
expression on the face of a pagan and on the face of a Christian. The
one is a blank stare and the other is a full glowing countenance." Then
this great scientist remarked, "Harry, your Christians carry their
Christ where I can see him."

I was standing one day in the pulpit in one of the many leper
villages which, in fact, testify to the type of work being carried on

in the name of Christ and the Church. With the exception of one other man sitting upon the pulpit platform, every person in that crowded chapel was a leper. As I preached with all the ferver of my soul to this congregation of the world's most unfortunate people, there sat on the front row of seats almost under me, an old woman whose face looked more like a wrinkled over-ripe pumpkin than the face of a human. As I preached upon the "Hope of the Christian", this blind, creased face fairly glowed with a radiance that made one forget the features so horribly disfigured by loathsome leprosy. She certainly, "Carried her Christ where He could be seen."

I found that the so-called beauties of Buddhism were found far more in library books than in the religious contributions seen in actual practice. I stood for an hour one day at the approach of a great stone bridge, watching Buddhist devotees putting into practice their religion. A priest had driven six brook-handle-size bamboo pegs in the ground. Upon each of these pegs was balanced a saucer-size fresh water terrapin. He was now open for business. Ardent Buddhists approached by the scores to cross the bridge. Many of them paused to look upon the terrapins pawing the air, fumbled in their money bag hanging around the belly, and handed the priest a coin. Stooping down with reverence, he lifted one of the terrapins from its peg, and very devoutly released it in a nearby pool prepared for the occasion by the priest. I stood there and watched with keen interest until the sixth terrapin was redeemed and released. I watched each of these compassionate Buddhist as far as I could see him in a crowd as he crossed the bridge, carefully stepping around suffering hu manity, taking not the least notice of them. He was thoroughly satisfied with himself. He had been a benefactor in that he had been kind to a dumb creature, and he was sure too, his good deed had been seen of men.

Time and again I watched the priest bale the terrapins from
the pool and replace them on the pegs to await the passing of other