At sea and in port; or, Life and experience of William S. Fletcher, for thirty years seaman's missionary in Portland, Oregon

ROBERT

ERNEST COWAN

William S. Fletcher,

The Seaman's .Missionary.

AT SEA »HN PORT

LIFE AND EXPERIENCE

WILLIAM S. FLETCHER

FOR THIRTY YEARS SHAMAN'S MISSIONARY
IN PORTLAND, OREGON.

Compiled from his Journal and other authentic sources

BY
H. K. HINES, D. D.

With an introductiou

BISHOP EARTy CRANSTON.

PRICE, $1.OO.

THE J. K. GII.L COMPANY,

Portland, Oregnu.

1898.

/'i-ess of Marsh limiting Company, Portland.

olo mn brctljren of tlje Sea, in roljosc labors anb eorroros 3 Ijauc

anb in mljosB tia^pincse 5 l)ace rejoiccb
from imj bonljoob, tljie rrcorb ofuuj life
anb cryeneuce is most
afffctionatehj

in ttje steabfast tjope tljat it nrill prone to tljem a beacon anb
a gnibe to tlje ^Dort of QBnbless

WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

CONTENTS.

Page.
CHAPTER I.

Birth and Early Life 11

CHAPTER II.
The Changed Lifo, 22

CHAPTER 111.
To a New Field 40

CHAPTER IV.

The Higher Life, 57

CHAPTER V.
Jnnitor of Taylor Street Church, 70

CHAPTER VI.
Marriage, 84

CHAPTER VII.

Crusaders 93

CHAPTER VIII.
Work Widening, 104

Page.

CHAPTER IX.
Broadening Life n '

CHAPTER X.
Work Among Seamen 128

CHAPTER XL
On Ship and On Shore I41

CHAPTER XII.

Correspondence, 1 •>'

CHAPTER XIII.
Won for God, 1<W

CHAPTER XIV.
Ship Work, 177

CHAPTER XV.
Widening Work 18S

CHAPTER XVI.

Bethel Work Reviving, 19S

CHAPTER XVII.

Sowing and Reaping, 209

CHAPTER XVIII.
(Jrandma Fletcher, 220

CHAPTER XIX.
Coining to the End, . .238

INTRODUCTION.
* * *

T will be well for those who propose to read
this unpretentious volume to understand at
once its mission. It is not sent forth as the life-
story of a man who fancies that he has won a high
place amongst men. Nor is Br. Fletcher covetous
of literary recognition or of the rewards that ordi-
narily attend successful authorship. He is only a
plain Christian man, who, in what he has to com-
municate, seeks to honor his Master rather than
himself. As the representative of the Seaman's
Friend Society in this city, Mr. Fletcher has been
not only an enthusiastic witness for Christ in all
assemblies, but a tireless missionary among the
sailors visiting this port. I am sure that in thus
introducing him I can express no desire more in
accord with his own design and purpose than that
the story of his rescue shall be to many a sin-

8 INTRODUCTORY.

wrecked sailor a life-line thrown by the hand of a
saved shipmate.

Surely other lives than those of "great men"
should "remind us (that) we may make our lives
sublime; and, departing, leave behind us" — ay,
something better than — "footprints on the sands
of time." After all, greatness consists first in
character. It is Divine possession, only, that
makes man capable of deeds worth telling — deeds
that do not pale in the presence of the motive that
prompted them. We have heard of savages who
were prodigies in cunning and courage, but mon-
strosities as men. Beasts of prey can leave foot-
prints in the sand. "Greatness,'' as measured in
the past, often stalked with bloody trail over the
rights and liberties of man. But we have learned,
and the world is fast learning the truer type. "The
Light that lighteth every man" has not been shin-
ing in vain. The greatest life ever lived was that
of Jesus the Christ. From pole to pole, and the
earth around, He is crowned the Ideal Man, and
the Saviour of men. Think of it : that two
should be one. The result of this accepted truth
upon the world's measurements of men is being
wrought out slowly, but the revolution is on and

INTRODUCTORY. 9

will prove resistless. Henceforth the true man,
the brave man, the perfect man, — the great man,
if you will, — is to be the friend and saviour of men ;
not an oppressor, not a plunderer of his kind. So
let it be. Good-bye to the stars that rose in sel-
fish ambition, lust and carnage. Welcome the
new galaxy with Christ as its central sun, and this
its prophetic legend:

"THEY THAT TURN MANY TO RIGHT-
EOUSNESS SHALL SHINE AS THE STARS
FOREVER AND EVER."— [Daniel xii: 3.]

No; the author of "At Sea and in Port," is not
seeking reputation. But if God shall bless his
witness to the men "who go down to the sea in
ships," many may yet come from all nations and
call him great, because honored of his Lord.
Amen.

EARL CRANSTON.

Portland, Oregon, March 20, 1898.

PRELUDE.

AS Compiler and Editor of this Memoir of
Mr. William S. Fletcher, it is suitable that
I should say that those portions of this book ap-
pearing as my own are the result of an intimate
personal acquaintance with Mr. Fletcher and his
work that has continued for over thirty years. They
express the personal estimate that so long and so
intimate a knowledge of the man and his work has
enabled me to form of them. Pure and incorrupt-
ible, devout and consecrated, firm, yet kind and
charitable, his life has been a beacon to voyagers
over the ocean, and a guide to toilers on the land.

H. K. HINES.
Portland, Oregon, April, 1898.

CHAPTER I.

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE.

"I am: How little more I know!
Whence came I? Whither do I go?
A centered self, which feels and is;
A cry between the silences;
A shadow birth of clouds at strife
With sunshine on the hills of life;
A shaft from Nature's quiver cast
Into the Future from the Past!
Between the cradle and the shroud.
A meteors' flight from cloud to cloud."

— Whittier.

T X T ILLIAM S. FLETCHER was the old-
^ * est child of William Fletcher, and was

born in the parish of Kilmore, near the town of
Neaugh. County Tipperary, Ireland, on the 29th
day of May, 1829. His parents were members
of the Roman Catholic Church, and the boy
was brought up in its faith. When he was
seven years of age his father died, and soon after
his mother married again. The next seven years

12 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

he spent at home, but at fourteen he left his home,
or, as he says, "ran away from home," and soon
reached the port of Limerick, Avith the intention of
going to sea. He had but a few pennies in his
pocket, but, as he had come with the intention of
going to sea, he soon found his way to the deck
of a ship and asked the captain if he would take
him "and make a sailor of him." The captain
took him and William remained with him for more
than two years in the Quebec trade. He finally
left this ship in Quebec and worked his way to
New York, and after spending a couple of weeks
in that great city shipped on one of the "Black
Ball" line for Liverpool. On the return of the
vessel to New York it brought over six hundred
emigrants.

For some years there was nothing in the life of
this young man unlike that which enters into the
life of any young seaman. He made a number of
voyages out of New York to various European
ports, and also to South America. In one of his
European voyages he brought out a younger
brother with him and apprenticed him to the sail-
maker's trade in a large Sail and Rigging Loft in
South Street, in New York. On another voyage

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE. 13

to Dublin he brought his sister with him on his re-
turn. He had found an aunt in his ramblings
about the city of New York, on another occasion,
and he left his sister with her, and himself entered
a sailor boarding house kept by one Sam. Smith,
on Oliver Street. Here he was the subject of one
of those inhuman practices which disgrace this
class of business in nearly all ports. Desiring to
"have a little run ashore" before he went to sea
again, he paid his landlord for two weeks board
in advance. In about four days the landlord came
to him and said: "Bill, I want you to go in a
little down-east bark to New Orleans, and then up
the Mediterranean.'' Bill declined, as he had been
ashore so short a time, and had paid for his board
in advance, and he did not wish to go to sea so
soon again. Little did Mr. Smith care for that.
He sent one of his "runners" to entice Bill down
to one of the "chain lockers," and there he was per-
suaded to take a couple of "drinks," which stupe-
fied him, and when he came to he found himself
in a "Whitehall" boat, with his "dunnage," and
shipped on the bark bound for New Orleans un-
der another name than his own. One of the men
engaged by Smith to the captain of the bark had

14 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

decided not to go, and this method was taken to
supply his place with Mr. Fletcher. However, he
left the bark in New Orleans and shipped on board
a large Philadelphia ship for Liverpool. After the
cargo of this ship was discharged, six hundred
emigrants were taken aboard for Philadelphia. In
running down the channel, when off Holyhead,
and before all the emigrants had gone below, a
fearful squall struck the ship and away went the
three topmasts, the jib-boom and all the "top-
hamper" of the vessel with them over the side.
When the wreckage was cleared away, about day-
light, one of the Belfast steamers picked up the
ship and towed her to that port. Here Mr.
Fletcher left her, returned to Liverpool and en-
tered on another ship bound for New York.

On arriving in New York he went up to see his
old "friend" Smith, who was "delighted" to see
him, and desired immediately to send for his "dun-
nage," which was yet on the ship. Mr. Fletcher
declined, reminding Smith in not very gentle
words of the "dirty trick" he had played him be-
fore, and took up his quarters at "Jack Barry's,"
at 42 Cherry street. But a like experience await-
ed him here, for, in about a week he was again out-

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE. 15

ward bound for San Francisco in the ship Monu-
ment, of New York. The ship had a stormy pas-
sage, but arrived in San Francisco about the last
of March, 1850.

By this time Mr. Fletcher was becoming wearied
of the sea, or, if not of the sea itself, then of the
character of the life that comes to the ordinary
sailor. And, besides, this was in the very midst
of the golden flood of prosperity that was rolling
over San Francisco, and over all the Pacific coast,
from the gold mines that had been discovered but
about two years before. Wages were so high
and work so abundant that he determined to try
what he could do on shore. Stopping in San
Francisco and working along shore for some time,
the enchanting tales of sudden and fabulous
wealth to be dug out of the hills and gulches of
the Sierra Ne.vadas drew him away from the city,
and he soon found himself on Feather River, and
engaged in mining on a bar on the Middle Fork
of that stream, in 'the primitive fashion of that
primitive period. Himself and his companion gen-
erally took from the dirt from twenty to thirty
dollars per day. The winter was spent in the
southern mines, where the same fortune attended

16 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

his work. Notwithstanding money was so rapid-
ly and easily made, it was just as rapidly and eas-
ily spent. Still he wrought industriously on until
the fall of 1853. when he sold out his interest in
the mines on Feather River, went down to San
Francisco and shipped for Liverpool, with the in-
tention of visiting his mother in Ireland and his sis-
ter in New York, and then returning to California.
But though he visited the place of his nativity,
which he had left when a mere boy, he found that
his mother had removed to England and so he did
not see her.

By this time, it is clearly to be seen, Mr. Fletch-
er had come to some enlarged views of the pur-
poses and ends of life. He had seen its hard sides
and dark shadows. He had visited many of the
great ports of the world. Sea and land were famil-
iar to him. His body was hardened by toil, his
mind expanded by trial, and to a good degree as-
piration for a better condition of life was awakened
in his soul. One can easily trace these results
in the record he made of the events and experi-
ences of these years. Still there is not, up to this
time, a single intimation of any religious emotion
or sentiment coming into his heart or fashioning

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE. 17

his purposes. Still there was love in his heart;
love to his friends, affection for mother and sister,
and an evident desire to minister to their hap-
piness. Where there is any susceptibility for love,
there is yet a place for God in any human heart.
This has evidently been a growing grace in the
heart of Mr. Fletcher up to this time.

Not finding his mother, the young man turned
back again towards his sister, who was still resid-
ing in New York. He had got beyond the hard
need of working his way before the mast, and
took passage on the steamship "City of Glasgow,"
with a large company of passengers. This was
the last trip of that ill-fated vessel. On her next
voyage she sailed out of her port with a large pas-
senger list, disappeared in the sky-rimmed loneli-
ness of the ocean, and was never heard of more.

Remaining with his sister a few days in New
York, he returned to California and its golden
treasures. So prospered was he in his mining op-
erations that in the fall of 1854, finding that he had
$2,000 for his summer's work, he resolved to re-
turn to New York and spend the winter with his
sister in that city. But life even in a great city,
lacked the excitement and impulse of life in the

18 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

mines and mountains of California, so, in the spring
of 1855, taking his sister with him, he turned his
face again towards the west, and, after a short
tarry in San Francisco, with his sister he went into
Klamath County. California, and again began min-
ing at Sawyer's Bar, on Salmon River.

There is something in the work of mining for
gold that holds an adventurous and enthusiastic
spirit with an entrancing grip. It seems monoton-
ous to a looker on, but not so to the worker. The
excitement of seeking something that is only just
out of sight, and that something gold; and the
hope that the next blow of the pick or the next
pitch of the shovel will uncover it to the eager
gaze, keeps the nerves strung to rapid and easy
toil. And in those early days the weirdness and
wildness of the mountain gorges, the rush and roar
of the river, the song and shout of the successful
miners, the lights of the campfires that set aglow
the hillsides, the "yarns" of the eager circle that
drew near the cheering blaze, the stories of "finds"
of fabulous wealth in some distant camp that seem-
ed to breath themselves over plains and moun-
tains and through forests for hundreds of miles to
every miner's cabin, all conspired to spread over

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE. 19

such a life a charm and a promise that were un-
known and unfelt in city or on farm. It was a new
civilization, if it was civilization, or a new barbar-
ism, if it were a barbarism. If it were either, it
had many of the elements of the other strongly
blended with its own, and so constituted a new
life, rough but charming, developing a character
of strong vigor, of high independence, with a kind
of wild, penetrating intelligence that could look
farther into a rock for a seam of gold than any
other time or people have ever evolved. Out of
this new civilized-barbarism have developed many
of the strongest and most practical intellects of
our national history. Out of it have come many
of the purest and most chivalrous Christian lives
that have blessed humanity. Amidst it have been
kindled to immortal song poetic spirits that else
had dreamed themselves away in unsung rhap-
sodies amidst the monotonous and uninspiring
bricks and walls of the dreary cities, or in measur-
ing calicos and woolseys behind the counters of vil-
lage traders. There is a relation of beauty and
poetry between true souls and Sierra heights up
there in the skies, and murmuring cascades and

30

WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

flowing rivers in the gorges and on the plains.
Since Bryant sung of

"Where rolls the Oregon.
Ami hears no sou ml save his own diisuiugs."

till Miller glorified the mountain peaks of Cali-
fornia with the "Song of the Sierras," it has been
thus.

Mr. Fletcher remained at Sawyer's Bar as a
miner until the fall of 1858, when he removed a
few miles to a place known as ''Russian Creek,"
where he secured interests in mining property and
applied himself with his usual industry to the hard
toil of the miner. Nothing of special note oc-
curred in his life or fortune during the first year
that he spent on Russian Creek. He had a home
kept by his sister, whom he cherished very fondly
and faithfully, and the months of daily toil in the
mines during the summer of 1859 were pleas-
ant. His lot seemed fixed for life. He had
drifted off the ocean and drifted, almost with-
out purpose, into the mountains of Califor-
nia. But life has its eras, many of them
seemingly beyond our own ordering, but it
may be guided by a wiser and more powerful hand

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE. 21

than our own. So it may prove with Mr.
Fletcher.

CHAPTER II.

THE CHANGED LIFE.

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which
Is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto
thee, ye must be born again."— Jesus.

n^ HE life that Mr. Fletcher had lived up to
^ the fall of 1859 was, as we have seen, that
of a seafarer and miner. While such a life had in
it much that would prove detrimental and even
ruinous to a man of weak moral nature, to one of
a vigorous sense of the reality of life there was in
it an experience that could be made very effective
and useful in the future. A wide knowledge of the
world, and a wide acquaintance with all classes
and conditions of men, gained by personal contact
with them, was a kind of education that compen-
sated in a good measure for the lack ofthe educa-
tion of the schools. None have greater opportu-
nities for acquiring such knowledge than the sail-
or and the miner. They see men at their best and

THE CHANGED LIFE. 23

at their worst. They become acquainted with the
kindest and noblest of men, and with the hardest
and meanest. They meet and mingle with the
most truly religious and the most shockingly wick-
ed. They hear prayers and profanity in the same
company. Drunkenness reels and staggers before
them or lies down and wallows in the mire of the
gutter, and sobriety walks with manly uprightness
and clean garb at the same time. They see the dif-
ference; and the man of natural moral strength
instinctively comes to choose the better for his
portion. The lesson may not always be learned
quickly, but it is quite sure to be finally learned.
It may not always be learned radically, so as to
lead to a distinctively religious life, but it will often
be so; and when it is it makes a character that
becomes a worthy model of life. This was the re-
sult with Mr. Fletcher.

He had now reached thirty years of age. His
naturally sincere mind had been prepared in many
ways for the planting of the seed of truth within
it, and when it was once planted it could rapidly
spring up into a gracious harvest. The instru-
mentality that finally reached this result was sim-
ple, yet "mighty through God."

24 WILLIAM. S. FLETCHER.

In the autumn of 1859 a religious friend by the
name of Henry Ferrett made a visit to the mining
camp of Mr. Clough and Fletcher, and spent the
evening in a religious conversation with Mr.
Clough, Mr. Fletcher being a simple listener. He
had never read the Bible. He had never attended
religious meetings. His naturally inquisitive mind
detected at once that Mr. Ferrett was in posses-
sion of something to which he was a stranger. On
retiring for the night, after a chapter of the Word
of God had been read by Mr. Clough, Mr. Ewing
made an earnest prayer that God would apply the
truth about which they had been talking to the
hearts of all present. Mr. Fletcher says:

"It was the first time I had knelt in prayer for many,
many years. I then and there gave my heart to God, and
asked Him to teach me how to pray and lead me in the
way of truth. The few little prayers I had learned when
I was a child, out of our Catholic prayer book, I believe,
since God has shown me the way of truth, were not in
harmony with God's word."

To the truth that makes "wise unto salvation"
Mr. Fletcher was an utter stranger up to this time.
All about him were like himself. His closest asso-
ciates were irreligious. His own sister, his broth-
er-in-law, his daily companions, all alike forgot

THE CHANGED LIFE. 25

God. It was under such unfavorable surround-
ings that then and there Mr. Fletcher's mind and
heart reached the high resolve to surrender to
God. The way, the time, the completeness of his
resolve and the deliberate earnestness of his action
under it, mark the inherent independence and sin-
cerity of his nature, as well as the reality of his
change "from darkness to light." He says of it:

"I did not experience that joy and ecstacy which some
have felt, but I felt an abiding witness of the Spirit of God
in uiy soul that He had pardoned my sins and accepted
me as righteous in His sight for the sake of Christ."

How thoroughly this work of regeneration
changed the course and purpose as well as the mo-
tive and spirit of his life is expressed in his own
record of the event. He says:

"I then commenced to strive to read His word, for I had
no one to teach me but God. How many times I went on
my knees and spread my Bible before the Lord, and there
spelt out the word, for I could not read. But the Lord,
who is more willing ^0 give than I was to ask Him, gave me
that light by which I was enabled to read His word in a
short time, and also how to write, so that all I am I owe
to the goodness of God towards me."

One can hardly imagine less favorable condi-
tions for the development of the religious and in-

26 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

tellectual life of a man like Mr. Fletcher than
those that surrounded him at this time. The true-
ness and decision of his action alienated his old
friends, and they "went by on the other side."
But their loss was his gain. God did not forsake
him, but raised up other and better friends; for
He never leaves himself without a witness to those
that seek Him. Not long after his conversion he
was minded by the Divine Spirit, to visit the fami-
ly of a Mr. Reany. During the visit Mrs. Reany
spoke most earnestly about seeking the Saviour,
and finding his heart inclined that way, encour-
aged him in every way she could. Among other
helps she gave him two of the books that have
helped mould the Christian life of thousands,
namely, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and Dod-
ridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul.
These were the first religious books he ever read;
and these were read when he was only able to read
at all by the laborious spelling out of each individ-
ual word. After he had thus read them once he
took them back to their owner with the acknowl-
edgment that he could not understand them. She
persuaded him to take them back and read them
again; and herself gave him some instructions

THE CHANGED LIFE. 27

how to read them understandingly. He took
them again, read them over more carefully, earn-
estly praying to God to enlighten his mind so that
he could understand them. The prayer was an-
swered, and he was greatly blessed then, and
through all his life, by this ministry of these two
eminent and devoted men, long after they had
gone to Heaven.

Mrs. Reany so illustrates a phase of the frag-
mentary religious life found in mining regions, and
on the frontiers, that we should not pass by this
incident without a brief notice of it. Mr. Fletch-
er speaks of her most tenderly and gratefully. Her
interest in him religiously led to inquiry concern-
ing her, when he found "she was a member of the
Methodist Episcopal Church at Saywyer's Bar;
a good, pious woman, one who was always striving
to lead sinners into the light and liberty of the chil-
dren of God.'' This good woman evidently be-
came "the guide, philosopher and friend" of Mr.
Fletcher in his earliest Christian life, and, without
a doubt, her influence and teaching did much to
fashion that life that ripened into such a beautiful
fruitage in later years. His own brief reference to

28 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

this early Christian friendship is so tender and
frank that we here transcribe it. He says:

"I was living seven miles from her place of residence, so
I had not many opportunities of speaking to her. When I
would go to see her the first question she would ask me
was how I was getting along spiritually. She won my con-
fidence and I opened my mind to her freely. O, how the
tears ran from her eyes when I told her of my resolve to
serve God and make my way to heaven. She then invited
me to join her little class and become a member of her
church. I told her when I came down again I would let
her know about it. In the meantime I was striving to read
my Bible, but could not read it very well yet; though the
Lord was giving me light and liberty in it.

"The next time I went to Sawyer's Bar was in April.
1860. It was on Sunday, and I met Mrs. Reany going to
hold her Bible class and class meeting. I asked her what
that meant. She told me if I would go with her I would
find out for myself. I thank God I did find out one thing. I
found out that it was more profitable for me to be there
than to spend the hours in the saloon or bar-room. When
the little meeting was over Mrs. Reany told me that their
Presiding Elder would be there on the twelfth of May to
hold their quarterly meeting, and asked me to attend it. I
told her that I would be down and hear a Methodist
preacher for the first time in my life. I spent the time be-
fore the quarterly meeting reading my Bible and improving
my mind. I made some inquiries about the doctrines and
discipline of the Methodist Church, and made up my mind
to become a member of that church at the coming quarter-
ly meeting.

THE CHANGED LIFE. 29

"As I was about to join another church than that under
which I was brought up, I put myself under the guidance
of God. to be led by Him, for He had assured me in His
Word if I would acknowledge Him in all my ways, that He
would direct my paths.

"May the eleventh, I left home to attend the quarterly
meeting, and on May 12th, 1860, at Sawyer's Bar, on Sal-
mon River, Klamath County, California, I joined the Meth-
odist Episcopal Church on probation, under kelson Rea-
soner, presiding elder of the Mount Shasta District, Cali-
fornia Conference."

Mr. Fletcher concludes this touching account
of his early Christian life up to his union with the
visible church with an earnest prayer for grace and
guidance in the life he had thus and there under-
taken, and solemnly records his vow of fidelity as a
member of that church with which he had connect-
ed himself. How he kept that vow will appear in
the entire course of this narrative.

It appears a strange coincidence that the Rev.
Nelson Reasoner, under whose ministry Mr.
Fletcher became a member of the Methodist Epis-
copal Church, should have been one of the most
intimate of the early ministerial friends of the writ-
er of these memoirs, when we were both in our
early twenties in Western New York. We have
not met for nearly fifty years, but our works thus

30 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

meet in the actual and recorded life of our dear
Brother Fletcher, thousands of miles distant from
where our early associations were formed.

Thus the wandering, wayward life of William
S. Fletcher, after being tossed by the storms of all
the seas so long, and buffeted and beaten by so
many waves and adverse tides, came to safe anch-
orage at last, and he could joyously sing:

My soul in sad exile was out on life's sea,

So burdened with sin and distress,
Till I heard a sweet voice saying make me your choice,

And I entered the haven of rest.

I've anchored my soul in the haven of rest,

I'll sail the wide seas no more;
The tempest may sweep o'er the wild stormy deep;

In Jesus I'm safe evermore.

Here in the fastnesses of the mountains this
rover from the seas found this safety; and, with a
little band of eight, who there represented the
great Church of Christ on the earth, connected
himself as a Christian. As these eight names had
such a vital relation to the after life of Mr. Fletch-
er, we transcribe them from his journal: Joseph
Beasley, leader; Henry Ferrett, E. Lee, Joseph
Smith, Josiah Gwin, Mrs. Reany, Mrs. Luckett
and W. S. Fletcher.

THE CHANGED LIFE. 31

It will be interesting and profitable to trace the
early Christian life of Mr. Fletcher, while he re-
mained in this locality, a little farther. His helpers
were very few in number, though these few were
men and women of good sense and solid character.
They had no pastor, and only once in three months
were favored with a visit from the Presiding Elder
of whom we have spoken. But the means of
grace, like class meetings, Bible class, prayer meet-
ing, were not neglected. Mr. Fletcher lost no op-
portunity for improvement in knowledge, as well
as in piety. Immediately on his conversion an im-
pulse to do good to others became the controlling
force of his mind. Small as was the light kindled
in his heart, and few as there were among the
rough miners of the mountains to profit by it, it
was never hid under a bushel. There is a charm-
ing simplicity and honesty in the words in which
he himself wrote of his first participation in pub-
lic religious services. It was not long after he had
connected himself with the church. He says:

"Our class leader gave out an appointment for a prayer
meeting in connection with our class meeting. As it was
the first prayer meeting that I had ever attended, and the
first that had ever been held in our class since I united

32 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

with it. I did not know how I should get through with it.
I had never prayed in public, and was greatly troubled
during the week to know how I should .act. 1 wrote a little
prayer for the coming meeting and committed it to mem-
ory. It was well fixed in my mind, as I hardly thought of
anything else during the week. When Sabbath evening
came and our meeting time drew near I was very much
embarrassed about my little prayer. Although I could
repeat it readily, I felt that I had not confidence in myself.
As our meeting progressed I scarcely knew what was going
on, as my mind was so taken up with my little prayer.
The class leader called on me to pray. As I was in the
act of kneeling my little prayer vanished from my mind.
As quick as thought it came into my mind to ask God to
be my present help in time of need. Blessed be God! I
prayed in a way I had never prayed before. I had an
access to the throne of grace I had never had before. This
is the second time the Lord has taught me not to put too
much confidence in my own strength, and I have profited,
I trust, by my own experiences, to trust more in God and
less in myself."

Thus early, while he was yet only a probationer
in the church, this uneducated young miner began
to evince that sturdy honesty of purpose and
whole-hearted consecration to God which marked,
as the reader will see, all his career, and made his
life so widely useful to lost men.

The long mountain winters come early in these
rugged ranges where the miner seeks for gold..

THE CHANGED LIFE. 33

Hence the last visit of the Presiding Elder to Saw-
yer's Bar for 1860 came in October. Mr. Fletcher
notes the date — October 26th — as the time he first
partook of 'The Supper of the Lord." He speaks
of it most devoutly and prays "may God cleanse
me from sin and make me a partaker of His divine
nature." Incidentally, in the same entry in his
journal in which he records this incident, he re-
fers to another fact that shows his intense thirst
for knowledge as well as religious experience. It
will be remembered that before his conversion to
God, only six months before this time, he could
neither read nor write. During this fall he pur-
chased Clarke's Commentaries, six very large vol-
umes, one of the most learned works that the
world had ever seen when they were published,
paying for them $22.00. During all that long win-
ter he "improved every opportunity in reading
them." In reviewing this time he says:

"I hope the light I have received from these hooks will
never be blotted out of my memory. I now begin to feel
the want of education. All that I know God has taught
me since I gave Him my heart. He has enabled me to
read and write, and above all He has taught me how to
live; and I have a reasonable hope that when my proba-

34 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

tionary life is over He will receive me to His everlasting
Kingdom to praise Him forever in Heaven."

On May 12, 1861, Mr. Fletcher was admitted
to "full connection" in the Methodist Episcopal
Church by Rev. Nelson Reasoner, who had admit-
ted him upon probation exactly one year before.
His own reflections on this occasion open the
door of his heart as nothing we could write would,
and will give the reader a clear insight into the
true philosophy of his life. He writes:

"In looking over this the first year of my Christian ex-
perience, my heart feels humbly thankful to God for His
merciful care over me. When I look back and see what I
was before I gave God my heart, and then see what I am
now, surely my soul is grateful to God for taking 'my feet
out of the miry clay and establishing my goings and
putting a new song in my mouth, even praises to my God.'
He has caused the light to shine out of darkness, and He
hath shined in my heart to give me the light of the knowl-
edge of the glory of God in the grace of Jesus Christ. My
prayer to God is that I may be perfected in love and filled
with all the fullness of God."

At this time the Presiding Elder introduced Mr.
Fletcher to a new and wider field of Christian in-
fluence. He organized a Sabbath School, and
though Mr. Fletcher had never been in one in his
life, appointed him a teacher. It was not Mr.

THE CHANGED LIFE. 35

Fletcher's way to decline opportunities for doing-
good, and so he readily entered this open door,
and took charge of a most interesting class of girls.
There was an excellent library of books in connec-
tion with the school, and these Mr. Fletcher him-
self read with his usual care and attention. Use-
ful as he was to his class, his work in the school
was scarcely less useful to himself. He learned
the blessedness of doing good as he had never
learned it before. Giving, he received. Strength-
ening others, he was strengthened. Leading
others in the right way, he was led in it himself.
He was never slow to learn this lesson, and the ef-
fect of it, as we shall see, remained with him ever
after. Fortified by his year's advancing experi-
ence in the things of God and in the work of God,
he came into the early summer of 1862 only to
meet more trying difficulties than any that he had
hitherto encountered.

It was characteristic of Mr. Fletcher that he had
a "fixed heart." He was never unstable. If ever
a man could adopt the words of the Psalmist with-
out reserve, "O God, my heart is fixed," that man
was W. S. Fletcher. It was the element that
made him. One feels a holy pride of humanity

36 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

itself when he studies such a Christian, however
humble his accidental sphere in life. It is the
heart of all true greatness. It is the sure prophet
of victory, whether on the highways or in the by-
ways of life.

The trials that came to Mr. Fletcher in the sum-
mer of 1862 were in no wise of a personal nature,
but related solely to the condition of the work of
God in the small community in which he took so
deep an interest. The Sabbath school in which
he was a teacher began to decline. Superinten-
dent, teachers and even the pastor forsook it, un-
til Mr. Fletcher and his class were all that re-
mained. Faithful among the faithless and discour-
aged, he sought the advice and encouragement of
the pastor, but he met discouragement rather.
He declared his purpose to continue it unless his
own class deserted him. The pastor advised him
to "dry it up.'' Mr. Fletcher appointed a meeting
for the afternoon of Sunday. Every member of
his class, seventeen in all, was present. He di-
vided the class; gave one to each of two girls
fourteen years of age, taking the superintendency
himself. This prompt and faithful action on
the part of Mr. Fletcher saved the Sunday school,

THE CHANGED LIFE. 37

and continued this instrumentality of grace among
these scattered and needy children of the moun-
tains. It was characteristic of the man; such a
spirit as has marked the work of his whole life.
He records this as the most trying week of his
experience up to this time, but it brought him its
usual compensating lesson, namely, "not to trust
too much in others if I want to make progress in
holiness of heart and life."

Thus amidst the solitudes of this mining gulch,
the work of God was carried on and the standard
of the cross upheld, and mainly by the instrumen-
tality of this one man; not yet two years rescued
from the bondage of sin; and now only just start-
ed on that career of usefulness which has given
him such a warm place in the hearts of thousands
on the sea and on the land. An incident will
show the gentle yet decided force with which
he asserted his Christian principles and vindicated
his Christian liberty among his mining compan-
ions in these proverbially ungodly associations.

In one of his mining ventures on "White's
Gulch" he accepted a partner who was a very pro-
fane man. Mr. Fletcher reasoned with him about
the folly and wickedness of his course, and then

38 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

told him that he was a member of the Methodist
church and had made his house a house of prayer;
and if he came to live with him he would have to
conform to the rules of his home. This decisive
course was effective. The man came, and within
a few weeks became himself a member of the
church. At this place there had been almost liter-
ally no religious influence or sentiment until Mr.
Fletcher came into the church. Others, among
whom were some of those who had been associated
with him at Sawyer's Bar, came afterwards. As
winter came on he went through the camp, look-
ing up all those who desired to live a Christian life,
called them together at his "old cabin," and
though there were but few of them, and only "five
outsiders who used to attend these meetings," or-
ganized and kept up an "old fashioned prayer
meeting" all winter. Some were converted; among
them a Frenchman, a Catholic, by the name of
Nichols, who was unable to speak English, and
used to pray and speak in his own language, while
the great tears rolled down his face and best be-
spoke his gratitude to God for deliverance from
the double bondage of sin and the superstitions of
Catholicism.

THE CHANGED LIFE. 3<J

During this winter strong efforts were made by
the Catholic priest to break up the Sabbath school
under Mr. Fletcher's superintendence. Some
Catholic children attended it, and were becoming
greatly interested in it, and especially in the read-
ing of the Sunday School Advocate. This he for-
bade them to read, and denounced all who read it
as heretics. Mr. Fletcher, in his usual open and
frank way went directly to the parents of the chil-
dren and inquired if they objected to their children
attending, the school and reading the papers
They replied that they did not. He then encour-
aged them to come, gave them the papers, and,
unawed and unashamed, went straight forward in
his "work of faith and labor of love."

CHAPTER III.

TO A NEW FIELD.

"It Is often reserved for 'every-day people,' as we are
apt to call them, to illustrate one of the facts of life— that
a crisis produces the man to meet it." — Gustav Kobe.

1WT R. FLETCHER'S work seemed now to
**• -*- be done in the mountains of Califor-
nia. Providence appeared to be calling him
to a far northern field. He had been thrown
upon the golden coast, a waif of the seas,
almost without purpose, and wholly without
a large and noble aim in life. He appeared to
others, and probably to himself, like one of the
vast multitude of human beings who, as tramps
of the land and rovers of the ocean, existed only to
wander in aimless disquietude of being, wherever
the momentary whim or the chance currents of
impulse might take them, and then to die out on
the desert sands, or deep in the mountain gorges,
or on the restless tides of the never quiet seas, and

TO A NEW FIELD. 41

be buried out of sight and thought of their more
favored, or more highly endowed human fellows.
Three decades of life had thus gone, more than one
of which had been spent in California at a time
that witnessed the utter moral and intellectual
wreck of more men in proportion to the pop-
ulation of the State than ever occurred in any
other land in the same length of time. Who
could have prophesied that this uneducated Irish
boy should wring, out of that hard lot, the ele-
ments of a character that should make him in the
next thirty years such an honored instrument of
good to so many people as he became. If he did
not dig much ^old out of the gulches of these
California mountains he did dig out of them that
which was better than gold. All this turned on a
single fact, namely, that he was wise enough to re-
spond to the call of God to His love and service at
almost the first time that call ever came to him;
and that he kept himself open to that call of God,
and lived "obedient to the heavenly vision" that
then, as we have shown, rose upon his soul.

It was in July, 1863, that Mr. Fletcher decided
to leave California, and turn his face towards far
Northern Idaho. He felt it was God's will; why, he

42 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

could not tell; where it would lead him he did not
know. Tender and touching was his farewell to
his little Sunday school in the mountains. Great
their regrets in bidding him farewell. Among
them was one, especially, of whom we have spoken
before as his "guide, philosopher and friend," in
the beginning of his Christian life: Mrs. Reany.
Probably she little understood the far reach of her
good work in leading him to Christ; but still
there must have been a sensitive chord quivering
in her heart when she bade him good-bye. Mr.
Fletcher records his gratitude to God and to those
with whom he had lived and labored in very tender
terms; and at the same time expresses his deep re-
gret that he "had not had some one to lead him to
Jesus in the days of his youth."

His sister and her husband had been living with
or near him, in the mines for some years. They
were not only unconverted, but had been violently
opposed to the religious life of their brother.
With a fidelity and tenderness that was wonderful,
he had counseled and besought them to give their
hearts to God. He had been to his sister more
than brother; father, provider and friend, but she
flung his counsel to the mountain winds and

TO A NEW FIELD. 43

turned away from his God and Saviour. When he
was to leave her in this great wild of loneliness and
sin the memory of his kindness, of his faithfulness,
of his love, overcame her stubborn heart, and she
promised him in the last words she then spoke to
him, that she would "give her heart to God and
join our church." With this new benediction on
his soul he turned away and went out, "not know-
ing whither he went."

On leaving the narrow field where he had so
faithfully striven to do all that came to him in the
work of the Master, Mr. Fletcher joined the great
movement of the mining population of the Pacific
coast northward towards the newly opened mining
regions of Washington and Idaho Territories. In-
dustrious, provident and frugal, although his min-
ing adventures had not brought him great wealth,
they had not left him in that abject poverty that
has been the result with such multitudes of the
men who, like himself, entered upon them without
the education and moral training that enabled
them to cope with the trained rascality of the
gamblers and saloon keepers who laid their plans
of knavery and robbery for every unwary visitor.
From such a fate he was rescued by his religion,

44 WILLIAM S. FLETCHEE.

without which the name of W. S. Fletcher would
have perished with the unnumbered multitudes
that went down unknown and unregretted in the
gulches of California and in the mountains of Ida-
ho. For this reason alone, when he left California,
he left amidst the benedictions and tears and pray-
ers of those who loved him ; those whom he loved.
If he did not carry much gold with him on his
journey, he carried golden memories far better
than gold. Yet he went in comfort, and his jour-
ney northward became the means of shaping the
ultimate field of his true life work.

The incident on his journey to the north which
most aided him in that which was always
uppermost in his mind — his religious life — was
the falling providentially into the company
of Bishop E. S. Janes, one of the sweetest,
most beloved and useful bishops of his own
church. At Yreka, California, where he spent
the first Sabbath after he left his old home,
the Bishop preached; and from Yreka to Ore-
gon was his traveling companion in the close
fellowship of a stage-coach. Those who knew the
tenderness and simplicity of the Bishop's manner
and the sweet and insinuating method of his con-

TO A NEW FIELD. 45

versation in private, will understand how quickly
and completely he would win the confidence and
trust of such a heart as Mr. Fletcher's. Nor would
the eager, sympathising attention of the latter to
everything said intended or adapted to benefit a
hearer, fail to draw forth from the good Bishop all
his good natured efforts to benefit the listener.
Like all really great and good men, the Bishop was
not pretentious, either in garb or manners, but
plain and direct; always affable, always kind.
Probably the week spent in this journey in this
coach with the Bishop, with the opportunity it
brought Mr. Fletcher, of observing the spirit and
listening to the conversation and sharing the ad-
vice of this truly godly man and most able Bishop,
did as much as any one week of his life to elevate
and ennoble his conception of true manhood and
consecrated piety. And when the same bishop vis-
ited Oregon again, many years after, Mr. Fletch-
er met him and re-called to him the incident of this
ride together through the mountains of Northern
California and Southern Oregon, and inquired if
he "remembered the little Irishman who was his
traveling companion on the journey." "O yes,"
replied the venerable man, "and I have often and

40 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

always thought of you in connection with that
trip." So this humble young miner and this exalt-
ed Bishop of the church were a mutual ministry of
help and pleasure by the way.

From Portland, which was reached August 7th.
and where one Sabbath was spent, improved, as
was usual with him, in attendance on all the serv-
ices of the house of God, Mr. Fletcher pursued his
journey for "Bannock City," Idaho, where he ar-
rived on the 31st of August, 1863.

"Bannock City," later and now known as "Idaho
City," was one of the richest mining camps ever
discovered on the Pacific slope. It is located in
the far interior, in the very top of the Salmon River
range of mountains, about thirty-five miles north
of the present "Boise City," the beautiful Capital
of the now State of Idaho. It was a place of awful
wickedness. The vagrants, the gamblers, the
thieves, the murderes and the prostitutes, who had
been driven away from the older mining towns of
the coast on account of their crimes, had all gath-
ered in these Idaho mountains, where they organ-
ized a pandemonium of crime. They reigned for a
long time supreme. They organized society in the
interest of crime, and for the protection of crim-

TO A NEW FIELP. 47

inals. They elected civil officers for the same pur-
pose. Sheriffs were bandits, and treasurers were
thieves. Bannock City at that time was a real Acel-
dama, "the field of blood." Never before, and prob-
ably never since, even in mining camps, was there
a more desperate body of men gathered in one
place.

Probably, however, in the very worst mining
communities of the coast some of the very best
men are found. Indeed, where the worst of the
bad prevail, the best of the good are found, for
God never leaves Himself without a witness. So it
was in this place, and ultimately, here as elsewhere,
the few righteous proved themselves more than
a match for the many wicked, and gradually re-
stored society to the conditions of civilization
known in other places. The writer for many years
subsequently visited "Idaho City,'' officially in the
work of his ministry, and found quietude where
there had been storm; peace and safety where
there had been robbery and murder.

In the work of rescuing the place from its dark
pall of wrong and sin Mr. Fletcher was the pioneer.
Those who have followed us thus far in the inci-
dents of his life would not expect he would enter

48 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

even such a place as this, and not let his light shine
forth. Almost before he had struck his miner's
pick into the gravel he makes this record:

"The week after I came here I started out to hunt up
some of our members, for I knew that there must be many
of them here, but I could find only four on my first round.
I got them to promise that they would meet me the next
Sabbath evening at the Colorado House for a class and
prayer meeting. They came, and we had a most refresh-
ing season. As far as I can find out this was the first
prayer and class meeting that has been held in this place."

Undoubtedly to Mr. Fletcher belongs the hon-
or of thus gathering into an organization the first
band of Christian workers in those Idaho moun-
tains. But he was soon followed by others, and
about three months after this small organization
was effected, Rev. C. S. Kingsley, a very able min-
ister from Portland, Oregon, reached the place,
and entered at once on the work of organizing a
society and erecting a house of worship. He high-
ly approved the work done by Mr. Fletcher, and
from that time forward they earnestly co-operated
in the work before them. By May, 1864, a church
was completed and opened, a class of twelve mem-
bers organized, and a Sunday school established,
and thus the institutions of Christianity were per-

TO A NEW FIELD. 49

manently erected in Idaho City. In all this work
Mr. Fletcher was a chief instrument.

There was little of special incident attending
the work in which Mr. Fletcher was engaged in
Idaho during the remainder of the time of his resi-
dence there; which was until late in September,
1864. He did, what is the most difficult of all
things for a Christian to do. "always abounded in
the work of the Lord." In his mining claim, where
he toiled from day to day, in the prayer and class
meetings, at which he was always present, on the
highway where he walked with the multitude, in
the places of trade, everywhere and always he was
the gentle, kindly man; the devoted, self-denying
Christian. Trials were borne with resignation; la-
bors performed with intelligent trust; and his
open hand ever had its gift of charity for the needy,
or his contribution to help forward the work of
God. When the time came that he felt God's call
to him was elsewhere, he sold out his mining claim,
adjusted all his temporal affairs with conscientious
faithfulness, ready to go where God had work for
him to do most to glorify Himself. Under date of
September 2nd he makes this entry:

"As this is the last time I intend to be with the children

r,0 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

in the Sabbath school, I spoke to them about loving their
Saviour, especially to my own class. May the good seed
that has boon sown bring forth abundant fruit in their
young hearts to the glory of God. I feel greatly thankful
to God for His assisting grace which has enabled me to
prove faithful to my calling which is in Christ Jesus during
my sojourn in this wicked place. I can say from an honest
heart that I have grown in grace and in the knowledge of
the truth as it is in Jesus since I came here, and as I in-
tend leaving this place to-morrow for Portland and San
Francisco, and if it is the Lord's will, for Ireland, I de-
sire above all things to acknowledge God in all my ways,
thnt. he may direct my paths."

These reflections and this prayer are in harmony
with all he did and all he felt from the moment of
his conversion. He kept God in all his thoughts,
and God kept and cared for him in all his ways.

His journey to Portland and thence to San Fran-
cisco via Victoria, was without noteworthy inci-
dent. In San Francisco he immediately connected
himself with the church of which Jesse T. Peck,
D. D., afterwards Bishop, was pastor. Here he
had the satisfaction of seeing his sister, who had
promised him at Sawyer's Bar, when he was about
to leave for Idaho, that she would become a Chris-
tian and unite herself with the Methodist Church,
give her name also as a probationer to the church.

TO A NEW FIELD. 51

What seemed to him the special work God would
now have for him to do was to care for the relig-
ious and intellectual improvement of that beloved
sister. He proved his real manhood by the care
he took of her. He met her on his arrival in San
Francisco, surrounded by influences greatly ad-
verse to her spiritual and intellectual well being,
but he immediately put her into the Santa Clara
Female Collegiate Institute, under the family care
of Rev. Mr. Tuthill and lady, where all her in-
terests were tenderly and faithfully cared for; him-
self paying all bills for tuition and board. This, he
felt, was his special call to California. Though he
came to San Francisco with his mind fully dis-
posed to ship for Ireland, yet he found that the
providence of God had closed that way to him,
and, as ever, he said "Thy will be done." When
all his arrangements for his sister's welfare were
made and he was about to leave her again, he says
in his journal:

"The few days I have spent with her have been a bright
spot in my life. I have been enabled by the grace of God
to sacrifice my own pleasure in giving up the idea of going
to Ireland to spend the winter, in order that I might make
my sister more comfortable and happy. Our parting this
time has been most affectionate. Her heart seems to be

52 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

touched by the power of God. I feel very lonely in leaving
her, not snowing where I shall go; but I am determined to
go wherever the Lord shall direct, for He will direct me
aright."

He returned to San Francisco, where the im-
pression was forcibly made upon his mind that he
should go back to Portland, Oregon. To him it
was a heavenly vision, and immediately he was
obedient to it, and on the 29th of October, 1864,
he took passage on the steamer for that place, ar-
riving there on the first day of November, 1864.

Though Mr. Fletcher had now reached the place
where was to be wrought the great work of his life,
he was not yet to enter upon it. All his previous
experiences, both before and after his conversion,
had been preparatory to it. But there were yet
other preparations to which God was bringing
him as he was made able to bear them. The care-
less reader might suppose, as he has followed him
in his rovings on the sea and his journeyings on the
land; in his mingling with sailors on the decks of
vessels and in the many ports to which he sailed;
as he dug in the mines of California and Idaho,
that he was but one of the floating thousands
whose employments were like his, who were ever

TO A NEW FIELD. 53

saying-, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we
die;" mere floating fragments of humanity, not
thinking what they were nor whither they were
drifting. Now in Ireland, now in England, now in
America; one month in Gal way, the next in Liv-
erpool, the next in New York, the next in San
Francisco; what was there in that to prepare an
uneducated man for any great mission of after life,
or to qualify him to reach and influence other lives
on a broad and efficient scale? God knew, and
"God disposes;" and He made all these things
work together for the good both of Mr. Fletcher
himself and the world through him.

On his arrival in Portland in the begining of the
winter of 1864-5, he immediately connected himself
with Taylor Street Church, then under the pas-
torate of Rev. David Rutledge, and entered heart-
ily into its work. With this change there had
come to him the thought of a home, so he pur-
chased a plat of ten acres of land of Rev. Albert
Kelly, in whose family he boarded, and with his
usual industry set to work to clear and improve
it. In the midst of his manual toil, such as clear-
ing and grubbing land and building a house, he be-
gan the reading of the New Testament through

-,4 WILLIAM S. FLETOIIF.IJ.

by course, while on his knees looking for God's
blessing to be upon the word to sanctify his own
soul. He also organized a Sabbath school in the
neighborhood where his home was located, a few

c>

miles out of the city, and with a faithfulness that
was ever one of his most prominent characteris-
tics, attended all the services of the church and did
whatever came to his hands as a Christian in the
helping forward all that were about him. "To do
good and to communicate forget not;" which
Paul enjoined upon the early Christians, was the
very spirit of Mr. Fletcher's life. So he says:

"I can now see why the Lord brought me to this place.
Here are a few followers of His without any one to look
after them, with no class or prayer meetings, with preach-
ing only once in four weks by our preacher in charge, who,
I must say, takes very little interest in us."

This religious indifference and spiritual desti-
tution of the people bore heavily on his heart, and
he set to work to remedy it in his usual sensible
and practical way, by visiting among the people
religiously, holding prayer meetings and class
meetings and Sunday schools, and soon saw that
"his labor was not in vain in the Lord."

One cannot but wonder when he sees the results

TO A NEW FIELD. 55

of the work of this unpretending man in such lines
as these, why it should have remained for him al-
most alone of the vast multitudes in the church
everywhere his equals, and even his superiors in
general talents and education and even in oppor-
tunity, to demonstrate what one man alone can do
to further the cause of truth and piety among men.
But so it seemed to be in the places where his lot
was cast; but his faith and zeal never faltered and
God never ceased to honor his devotion. For two
years this character of work continued, while the
experience of Mr. Fletcher seemed like an ever
widening stream, flowing deeper and deeper, and
more and more enriching all the land. His care-
ful and prayerful study of the Bible made him more
and more able to guide the people aright, and his
expositions of Scripture in prayer and class meet-
ings and in occasional exhortations were often
accompanied by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Through his instrumentality the Lord added to
the church many that were saved, but beyond
this, and probably greater than this, during these
years of 1865 and 1866, with a part of 1867, these
labors and successes were a great help in the prep-
aration of Mr. Fletcher himself for the new relig-

56 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

ious era that was now about to dawn on his own
soul. He had learned well how to seize opportun-
ity, and God gives the grace of opportunity to
those who know how to use it.

CHAPTER IV.

THE HIGHER LIFE.

"Leaving the things that are behind and reaching forth
to those things that are before."— Paul.

Take my soul and body's powers;
Take my memory, mind and will;
All my goods, and all my hours;
All I know and all I feel;
All I think, or speak, or do;
Take my heart, but make it new.

—Wesley

A S at the beginning of his Christian life, at
-^-^ the opening of what may be called its first
era of experience, Mr. Fletcher deliberately, and in
a clear business way, made a surrender of his heart
to God, so when the years had taught him that
there was a deeper experience and a larger life for
him to enjoy and express, with the same deliberate-
ness he moved forward to their attainment. This
will be clearly seen from the following from his
journal:

58 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

"Portland, March 27, 18G7.

"I have this day consecrated myself anew to Jesus. I
give Him all my sinful heart, rebellious will, my time and
talents, and all that I possess, to be spent in His service.
And now my blessed Jesus, I know that Thou wilt accept
it, for I intend, God being my helper, never to take any of
it back. I pray that I may be sanctified through the truth;
for Thy Word is truth; and that I may adorn the doctrine
of God my Saviour In all things.

WILLIAM S. FLETCHER."

The entrance of this record of his new and entire
consecration to the service and work of his Re-
deemer is of such signal interest, and marks so de-
cisively such an important era in his life, that it
must be treated separate from the general story
of that life. From the very beginning of his Chris-
tian experience he had been remarkably single
hearted, and had always made his religion fore-
most in the purposes of his life. It is doubtful if
he had forgotten to do this for a single moment,
whether he was on the street, in the mines, in the
church or at home. Still he had come to feel that
there was a higher religious experience than he
had enjoyed, and true to that prevailing purpose
that distinguished him to reach the highest of
which he was capable, he resolved to seek it.

THE HIGHER LIFE. 59

Portland at this time was greatly stirred relig-
iously under the preaching of Rev. A. B. Earle, a
noted evangelist who was spending a few weeks
in special revival work in the city. Mr. Fletcher's
home was then a few miles out of the city, but on
Sabbath, March 24th, he walked in to hear the
evangelist, whose fame had filled all the region
round about, preach. After hearing him, he de-
termined to let his "work stop for a few days" and
devote them especially to the services of Mr. Earle.
The direct result to himself was the awakening in
his heart of that intense desire for an advanced ex-
perience and a complete consecration of all his
powers and life to God.

With Mr. Fletcher this was no spasmodic move-
ment impelled by an excitement that might last
but for a day, but the logical moral result of all
his life since he became a Christian. Always
"leaving the things that are behind he was reach-
ing forward towards the things that are before,"
and "pressing towards the mark for the prize of
the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." This
was a moving up to the light that had come to
him. The operations of his mind while coming up
to it were of singular intensity and interest. We

60 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

follow them for a little, as the study of them may
help other inquiring and struggling souls.

In connection with his preaching, Mr. Earle
had put into the hands of those who heard him a
card containing a list of ten questions relating to
the personal religious life, as follows:

SELF EXAMINATION.

FOR OLDER CHRISTIANS.

1. Do I search my heart to the bottom, and act out its
convictions?

2. Do I believe I control my tongue and my temper?

3. Do I really believe the Bible is the law of my heart
and life?

4. Do I convince men that I believe there is an eternal
Hell?

5. Am I greatly concerned for the salvation of men?

6. Do I act like a Christian in my family and among my
intimate friends?

7. Do I fully believe I have been born again?

S. Do I know that I have power with God in prayer?

9. Do I believe I have been baptised with the Holy
Spirit since my conversion?

10. Am I sweetly resting in Christ by faith now?

These questions, covering the very heart of
Christian experience and life, could not but deep-

THE HIGHER LIFE. 61

ly impress so sincere a mind as Mr. Fletcher's, and
he quickly and fully resolved to test their widest
reach of experimental and practical power.

Still he did not reach the point for which he
aimed without a struggle. His record of it is
plaintive and pathetic. Such words as "darkness,"
"no liberty," "struggle," "Satan using every
means to draw me away," are the common
terms by which he describes his emotions and feel-
ing for some days after he had written the conse-
cration paper at the head of this chapter, notwith-
standing he attended the services of Mr. Earle all
the time. Finally the conflict was ended in this
way. He had attended a "meeting for holiness''
in Taylor Street Church, Portland, without any
special profit. On his return to his home he re-
solved to take up the next morning the ten ques-
tions proposed by Mr. Earle, and seek in special
prayer the grace to answer them in the affirma-
tive. This he did, most carefully and earnestly,
while on his way to his work, a mile from his
house; kneeling by the wayside in the woods, and
reading them over on his knees, he accepted them
all as the guide and test of his future Christian life.
Still there were seasons of "restlessness," but

62 WILLIAM S. FLETCIIEK.

no real drawing back from his vows and faith of
consecration. The Scripture that led his mind out
at last into the ultimate trust was First John, first
chapter and seventh verse: "If we walk in the
light as he is in the light we have fellowship one
with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son
clcanseth us from all sin." Now he was able to
say : —

"Now rest, my long divided heart,
Fixed on this blissful center, rest;
Nor ever from thy Lord depart I—-
With Him of every good possest."

There in that struggle, alone with God in the
woods, he says:

"My axe which I held in my hand dropped harmless at
my side, and that beautiful hymn,—

"There is a Fountain filled with blood.

Drawn from Immanuel's veins:
And sinners plunged beneath that flood.

Lose all their guilty stains,"

spoke my faith. O, how my heart responded to the
words of my mouth! Blessed be God, I can now rejoice
evermore, pray without ceasing, and in everything give
thanks. 'Faithful is He that calleth me. who also will do
it.' "

THE HIGHER LIFE. 63

Without doubt the mental and spiritual strug-
gles of the last few days marked as distinct an era
in the life of Mr. Fletcher as did the date and
struggles of his first espousals. He had faithfully
used the grace first given and God entrusted to
him the larger riches. By the faithfulness and
growth of his earlier Christian life he had prepared
himself for the wider opportunities and greater
responsibilities that God had prepared for him in
his later life. Thus is it ever. God rewards faith-
fulness by larger trust, and compensates labor by
giving greater opportunities for labor.

But this victory of faith and this advanced ex-
perience in the divine life did not lift Mr. Fletcher
above the continued and faithful discharge of the
ordinary every-day duties of the Christian life. On
the contrary it gave a greater earnestness and a
deeper spirituality to that work. He not only
gave definite testimony to "what the Lord had
done for his soul," but in his place as a class leader,
and in all his relations as a Christian man seeking
to help God's children on in the heavenly way, and
to lead sinners to a knowledge of the truth he
walked and talked with greater freedom and en-
largement. He not only attended the meetings

64 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

of his own class, but visited nearly all the classes
for many miles around, confirming and strength-
ening them in the fellowship of the faith of Jesus.
He made these visits on foot, and sometimes
walked fifteen or twenty miles in a day on these
missions of love. He did not assume to do this as
a teacher, but as a "brother beloved." He always
walked in an atmosphere of humility, and never
more so than after he had experienced the blessing
of "perfect love." He closes up the year 1867 with
many expressions of praise and gratitude to God
for His abounding mercy and goodness during the
year, especially in his "rich experience in spiritual
things.'' He makes this grateful record: —

"On the seventh day of last May the Lord sealed rne for
His own. The impression that was then made on my poor
heart has grown stronger and brighter to the present mo-
ment; and now I can say from that experience that 'the
blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth me from all sin. O, how
humble it makes the soul to be freed from all the carnal
mind and to be filled with the love of Jesus!"

O that the world would taste and see

The riches of His grace;
The arms of love that compass me

Would all mankind embrace."

The early months of 1868 were marked by quite

THE HIGHER LIFE. 65

an enlargement of the scope of Mr. Fletcher's
work. His singular influence in drawing the hearts
of those with whom he associated towards Christ,
and especially in leading believers into the higher
experiences of the Christian life, was becoming
widely understood, and his services were sought
for in many places. In his own class he was be-
loved as a brother, and he lavished his own love
upon them all. Within a circuit of twenty miles
from his home his kindly Christian influence was
strongly felt. Nor was that influence confined to
the rustic population of the hills and valleys amidst
which his own home lay; he was as welcome and
as beloved in the classess and Sunday schools of
the city as he was there. Not unfrequently he
would be with the classes in Portland in the morn-
ing and with those several miles distant in the af-
ternoon, edifying believers, counseling unbeliev-
ers, speaking kindly to children, and by pureness
of life and charity of word "commending himself
to every man's conscience in the sight of God."
A record or two from his dairy will indicate the
constant character of his work at this time of his
life. On May 10th, 1868. he says:
"I attended the morning class in Portland, then heard

66 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

preaching, and then led the noon class, Brother Tatterson
being absent. I then came out and led my own class. 1
thank God for all the privileges I have enjoyed this Sab-
bath. May llth, I went into the city to attend the Monday
evening class. It was a feast to my soul. This is the most
spiritual class I have attended. I love to hear Governor
Abernethy lead his class, he is so spiritual. It is no wonder
he has such a good class. May the Lord raise up many
such leaders."

When one remembers that it was three miles
from Mr. Fletcher's home to the city, over a rough
and hilly road, and that he always walked, he will
see something of the devotion that inspired this
man of God in all his work. The leaders to whose
classes he was welcomed often as their leader him-
self, Governor Abernethy and Mr. H. Patterson,
were among the most thoroughly equipped leaders
the writer has ever known. Both men of age and
experience, well trained intellectually as well as
spiritually, they were well adapted to the largest
influence in their spheres.

Up to about this time Mr. Fletcher's official re-
lation as class leader had been with classes in
rural neighborhoods. In 1868 he was appoint-
ed by Rev. C. C. Stratton, pastor of Tay-
lor Street Church in Portland, leader of the

THE HIGHER LIFE. 67

morning class. He had felt that God was pre-
paring him for greater work, but what it might
he he awaited God's movings to knowr. So
when this appointment came it was accepted as
from God, and he girded himself to meet its re-
sponsibilities in the best and most useful manner
possible. That the reader may see a little deeper
into his heart we quote from his journal under
date of June 8th, 1869:—

"Brother Stratton appointed me to take charge of the
Sabbath morning class at 9 o-clock. My confidence is
strong in God that He will greatly bless me in my labor
of love. I have been asking my Heavenly Father that He
would open a door for me where I could be most useful for
the remainder of my life, and I have reason to believe that
He has work for me to do in Portland. O, may I have that
grace in my heart that will make me to be greatly useful
in winning souls to Christ. O, my Heavenly Father, when
I think of a poor sinner, who could not even read, saved by
grace and made to be holding such an important office In
Thy Church, surely I must say, 'eye hath not seen nor ear
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the
tilings which thou hast laid up for those that love thee.' "

Mr. Fletcher began his service in his class meet-
ing with eight present. His first work was to hunt
up the long-absent ones and gather them back into
the fold. Meantime his relation to his former class

68 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

on the mountain some miles from the city con-
tinued, and they were as faithfully watched and
sought after as ever. But the time was coming
near when much of that widely scattered work in
the country that he had attended to so carefully
for such a length of time would be given up to
other hands, and his own would be transferred to
the more concentrated field of the city. After
some weeks of the usual routine of class meetings,
prayer meeting and Sabbath school work in and
about the city, and at the same time attending to
his temporal affairs in his usual exact and con-
scientious manner, the Quarterly Conference of
Taylor Street Church, under the advice of the
then pastor, Dr. J. H. Wythe, offered him the very
responsible and delicate place of janitor of the
church.

Taylor Street Church has been for many years
the leading church of Methodism in the North-
west. A large church, with a membership count-
ing many hundreds, and a great congregation, it
was no small work to care for the church itself and
look after the accommodation and comfort of the
congregations that thronged its services.

It is not strange that Mr. Fletcher hesitated.

THE HIGHER LIFE. 69

It was unlike any other work to which he had
ever been called. It had much to do with the tem-
poral side of the church work, and might possibly
interfere with the spiritual opportunities that were
so dear to his heart. But to him opportunities
were providences, and he must needs lay this be-
fore the Lord and ask for His direction before he
answered. He says: "I spread the whole matter
before the Lord and asked Him what I should do
about it. The passage of Scripture that was ap-
plied to my mind was, "Behold, I have set before
thee an open door.'' In this word God's voice was
heard and accordingly he accepted the offer of
the church, and immediately began to prepare for
the removal of all his personal interests to Port-
land. He entered on the duties to which he had
been called on the 8th day of November, 1868,
with this characteristic prayer upon his lips:

"May God enable me to discharge all my duties in the
most profitable manner, and may my coming among this
people be abundantly blessed."

CHAPTER V.

JANITOR OF TAYLOR STREET CHURCH.

"I rest in Thy Almighty power;
The name of Jesus is my tower,

That hides my life above.
Thou canst, Thou wilt my helper he;
My confidence is all in Thee,

Thou faithful God of Love."

—Charles Wesley.

T7T 7"ITH the poetic quotation from Charles
V * Wesley that stands at the head of
this chapter, Mr. Fletcher entered upon the
work of 18(59. He had "entered the open door,"
and in the name of the Lord went forward
to whatever might await him of duty or priv-
ilege in the years to come. As, in addition to
that specific work that came to him as janitor
of the church, the incessant watchfulness and
care for the comfort of the congregation, the
constant attention to all those matters that would
make the public services attractive and profitable,

JANITOR TAYLOR STREET CHURCH. 71

he retained his relation to his classes as leader and
performed his work among them with singular ef-
fectiveness and intelligence, this may be a proper
place to give some description of the character of
that work.

The place of class leader in the Methodist
Episcopal Church has been hardly second to
any other in its direct influence on the per-
sonal experience and character of the church it-
self. Its theory supposes that only such as
are themselves well grounded in the Christian
life shall be appointed to it. Besides this, there
must needs be a discriminating if not profound
knowledge of the vital doctrines of the Holy
Scriptures, especially as set forth in the teachings
of Methodism in her books of theology and in her
standard hymnology; the most complete and per-
fect that is to be found in all the Christian church.
Then, an essential facility in simple doctrinal state-
ment and application, with a readiness in calling to
mind suitable stanzas of a hymn when it can serve
a useful purpose; a discriminating judgment of
human nature; kindness coupled with firmness; a
heart full of love and yet full of fidelity; a soul
capable of feeling the burdens and temptations of

72 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

others, and an ability to lead those of others to the
great Burden Bearer and teach them how to "cast
their cares on Him who careth for them;" all these
and many more kindred qualities are essential to
the successful class leader.

It will easily be seen that this is a combination
of mental and moral and spiritual and even physi-
cal qualities that is not easy to find, and when it is
found it is an inestimable treasure to the church
that possesses it. It is not too much to say that
the spiritual results of the work of the preacher in
the pulpit are largely saved or lost to the church
by the influence of capable and godly leaders, or
by the neglect and weakness of incapable and care-
less ones. Many hearts are prepared for a tender
and helpful waiting upon the teachings of the pul-
pit by the more direct and personal teaching of
the leader before the pulpit speaks, or after it has
spoken by the careful and loving application of
the truth heard to the mind and heart of the
hearer by the leader, whose alert mind and recep-
tive heart have taken close grip of each truth
needed by the individual members of his class.

William Carvosso has been the patron saint of
the class-room in nearly all the life of Methodism.

JANITOR TAYLOR-STREET CHURCH. 73

If a Methodist needs to be told who William Car-
vosso was, his ignorance of Methodist lore is too
dense to be illuminated by such a side reference as
we are able to make to him in such a work as this.
If any man has ever been appointed a class leader,
and has not proceeded at once to familiarize him-
self with the doctrines and rules of the church he
served, and in immediate connection therewith the
personal lives and official methods of such men as
Carvosso, that fact alone has doomed him to fail-
ure, and the souls of those committed to his care
to injury and loss. No one acquainted with Mr.
Fletcher could expect for a moment that he
would not lay hold of all these helps, and also of
any other that might come to his knowledge.

There were many things in common in the con-
ditions, character and work of the two men. Both
were born in low estate. Both entered upon life
in humble callings. Both were entirely uneduca-
ted in their youth. Both learned to read and write
when considerably advanced in life, and after the
grace of God had touched and awakened their in-
tellects to an ambition to do good in the world.
Both had charge of several classes at the same
time. Both kept up a wide and continued corres-

74 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

pondence with the members of their classes. Both
had great and evenly sustained zeal in their work.
Both had strong faith. The parallel might be con-
tinued. Something of this came doubtless from
the fact that Mr. Fletcher, the younger, was a
careful student of Carvosso, the elder, not as an
imitator, but as a disciple, intelligently compre-
hending principles and carefully applying them.

A few extracts from Mr. Fletcher's journal
touching his class methods and his personal ex-
periences will give the reader a better knowledge
of the elements that combined in him to make his
work a success than a more extended ex parte de-
scription. Under date of January 24th, 1869, he
writes: —

"Sabbath morning. I read our church rules to my class
this morning. I want them to be well informed in the doc-
trines and principles of our church. It is a source of much
regret to me that our people are so ignorant in relation to
these. I intend, by the blessing of God, not only to build
my class up in the 'knowledge of the truth,' but also in their
duties as members of the church."

What pureness, what trueness, what faithful-
ness are manifested here! On the very next Sun-
day, Januay 31st, he makes this record: —

JANITOR TAYLOR-STREET CHURCH. 75

"In place of our regular class meeting this morning I
had each member of the class select such a portion of one
of our hymns as would best correspond with their present
experiences. I had two objects in view in this. One was
that they might be made more familiar with our hymns,
and the other that I might vary the order of exercise to the
greater interest and profit of the members. I wish I could
get them to study our hymn book more, for I believe that,
next to the Bible, it is the best book for us to study. It
contains such a body of divinity, and such soul-stirring
praises to God that its greater use would be a great benefit
to them all. They would then 'sing with the Spirit and
with the understanding also.' "

An experienced Christian can readily see the
skill of ''the master workman" displayed in such di-
versified and ingenious methods of spiritual work.
He will imagine what an impression would be
made on other minds when one would quote such
stanzas as: —

"Now 1 have found the ground wherein
Sure my soul's anchor may remain;
The wounds of Jesus, for my sin

Before the world's foundation slain;
Whose mercy shall unshaken stay
When heaven and earth are fled away."

Or this from Charles Wesley: —

7(; WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

"Long my imprisoned spirit lay

Fast bound in sin and nature's night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray;

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

And then some weary one sings from Bonar:—

"I heard the voice of Jesus say:

'Come unto me and rest;
Lay down, thou weary one, lay down

Thy head upon my breast!'
I came to Jesus as I was,

Weary and worn and sad;
I found in Him a resting place,

And He hath made me glad."

And then some one further on in the divine life,
better acquainted with God than most, repeats as
the experience of perfect trust: —

"Thee will I love, my joy, my crown;

Thee will I love, my Lord, my God;
Thee will I love, beneath Thy frown

Or smile, Thy scepter or Thy rod.
What though my heart and flesh decay?
Thee shall I love in endless day."

Now it is a stanza expressive of penitence, now
of pardon, now of cleansing, of sanctification, now

JANITOR TAYLOR-STREET CHURCH. 77

of faith's triumph, now of the hope of heaven.
Who could go away from such a service unedified
and unblest?

Another marked peculiarity of Mr. Fletcher's
work as class leader was the great interest he took
in the new members, especially the young people,
added to his class. Evidencing this is a record he
makes in his journal under date of March 14th,
1869. He says: -

"Sabbath morning. The Lord Jesus has added one more
new member to my class. This is a dear little boy, Herbert
Xorthrup, who has early given his heart to Jesus. O, may
I have grace to take care of these precious lambs which are
entrusted to my care. The Lord is blessing my class.
Many of them are truly hungering and thirsting after right-
eousness, and I am looking to see them filled."

Northrup was a name long and greatly honored
in the Methodism of Portland, and of the entire
Northwest. Herbert was the eldest son of E. J.
Northrup, who was converted to God in the meet-
ings held in Portland by Rev. A. B. Earle. to
which reference has been previously made. The
father lived a very devoted life, and, although en-
gaged in large business enterprises, gave much
time and means to the direct spiritual work of the
church. He became the leading layman of the

78 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER,

city, was a delegate from the Lay Electoral Con-
ference of the Oregon Conference to the General
Conference, and, when in the full course of liis
most useful life, was suddenly killed by an acci-
dent in his storehouse. He was, and, in a moment,
"he was not, for God took him." Herbert, the
young boy of whom Mr. Fletcher speaks above so
tenderely, lived a few beautiful years after he
united with the class of Mr. Fletcher, and then
went to join his translated father in the celestial
land. Their names have the perfume of ointment
poured forth in the church in Portland.

We have already mentioned Mr. Fletcher's habit
of a close and religious correspondence with mem-
bers of his classes and others in whom he took a
special interest, as one of his distinguishing quali-
ties as a class leader and general Christian worker.
This extended not only to those who were near,
but to those far away as well. Wherever he jour-
neyed, by sea or land, his heart never forgot the
land of his birth, nor the friends of his early life
there. His journal often speaks of some of them
in terms of peculiar tenderness. While he was com-
municating to them assurances of his recollection
of them, and often making to some of them remit-

JANITOR TAYLOR STREET CHURCH. 79

tances of money, he evidently never forgot their
spiritual good, but wrote and prayed in constant
hope that his words might become the instrument
of their salvation. Nor was his labor in vain, or
his hope in this regard cut off. An incident illus-
trating this is given in his journal February 22d,
1869. He writes of two friends in Ireland:—

"I received a letter from Eliza Floyd and Margaret Floyd
which has made my heart glad. I find by it that God has
seen fit to use me as the instrument in His hand in their
conversion. O Lord, 'my cup runneth over' with joy to
think that Thou canst convert even in Ireland as well as
in Oregon, and that in every nation he that feareth Thee
and worketh righteousness is accepted of Thee.' O may
the good seed that has been planted in their hearts bring
forth abundant fruit to the glory of my God. Although I
am far away from them, my heart is often present with
them, and they are doubly dear to me now that we are
united in the bonds of Christian love. O may the riches of
God's grace be multiplied to them, and may they become
burning and shining lights in that portion of God's green
earth. Although I am far away from it I love it still. My
soul often desires that God in His good providence should
open the way that I might once more visit them, and there
make known to them personally the riches of His grace.
But I will lay myself in His hands, with the assurance
that, if it is His will, I shall go there, but if it is not, then
His will, not mine, be done.

"In all my ways His hand I own."

80 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

The summer of 1869 marked a serious decline in
the spiritual condition of the church with which
Mr. Fletcher was connected. It seemed a period
when mere "table-serving'' and temporalities occu-
pied the minds of both pastor and people to a very
alarming extent. Mr. Fletcher was greatly dis-
tressed over this condition of things, and for a
time was inclined to believe that his work in Port-
land was done, and God was about to call him
into some other field; but, though he felt this
impression for a short time, opening providences
soon satisfied that there was yet work reserved in
the counsels of the Master for him to perform here
and he turned to it with unabated zeal, even when
so many about him had doubtful and fainting
hearts. Another class — a class of young boys —
was put under his care, and he gave it the same
faithful attention and prayerful instruction that
marked his relation with all his classes. He was
also elected a member of the Young Men's Chris-
tian Association of the city, and took an active
and useful part in all its work. About this time
there fell into his hands a copy of George Muller's
"Life of Trust," a work that records the wonderful
experiences of that man of God in entering on and

JANITOR TAYLOR-STKEET CHURCH. Kl

and carrying forward his great school and orphan-
age undertakings. The reading of this book was
a means of great benefit to him, as it has been to
thousands. From its reading he was led to adopt
Romans 13-8.: "Owe no man anything, but to
love one another; for he that loveth another has
fulfilled the law," as the rule for the remainder of
his life. At the close of 18G9 he makes this remark-
able record:

"I have not been absent from my class meeting; nor from
any other meeting of the church a single time during the
year. I have spent over eleven hours every Sabbath in the
church attending to the various duties of tho sanctuary,
and notwithstanding all this labor and care and anxiety.
God's grace has always been sufficient for me. On enter-
ing upon 1870 it is with the desire in my heart to be more
faithful, more useful, and more abundant in those labors
of love. I have set apart Friday of every week for the ser-
vice of the Lord in any way His providence may direct."

Any one who has followed carefully the story of
Mr. Fletcher's life up to this time, must surely
wonder how he could be more faithful, except in
the use of the new strength he had been constantly
gaining in his life of singular consecration, up to
this hour.

About this time another class of twenty-four

82 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

young girls was committed to his care. This class
had been under the instruction of Mrs. Patterson,
a most capable and godly woman, whose personal
influence over Mr. Fletcher himself had been a
strong factor in the development of his own high
Christian life. It was no slight mark of the high
place he had attained in the confidence of the
church that these places of special responsibility
fell to him, not from any desire on his part to ob-
tain them, but because no one else seemed so well
fitted to aid the young people forward in the true
divine life as he. Not only this, the young people
themselves were delighted to have him as their
counselor and friend, and under his direction many
of them were early brought to a clear knowledge
of their adoption into the family of God. With
the care of three of the most important classes of
the church, the diversified and never ceasing du-
ties of his janitorship, and also his wide correspon-
dence, it is not strange that at the close of the
year he felt that his duties pressed heavily upon
him. Yet he expresses "thankfulness that God
gives them to him to discharge," and that he "has
reason to belive that he blesses him therein." With
such reflections on his work, and with such resolu-

JANITOR TAYLOR-STREET CHURCH. 83

tions for the future, Mr. Fletcher comes to a point
that marks the beginning- of another distinct era
in the story of his life.

CHAPTER VI.

MARRIAGE.

"We are weaving the thread of our life's webs

Day by day;
And its colors are sometimes sombre,

Sometimes gay;

For \ve dye it with every passing thought,
And by words and deeds is the pattern wrought."

— Bradt,

the 24th day of May, 1871, Mr. Fletcher was
united in marriage with Miss Lizzie Brown.
As some notice will hereafter be given of the re-
lations of his companion to the larger and most
useful part of his career, it is only necessary now to
make such mention of her as seems to be needful
in connection with the incident of their marriage.
Mr. Fletcher himself was fully impressed with the
belief that this marriage was of the Lord's own
ordering, and he therefore entered upon it in a de-
vout and tender frame of mind. Miss Brown was
about his own age, and well calculated to sustain
and help her husband in the work in which he was

MARRIAGE. 85

now engaged, and in that upon which he after-
wards entered.

Miss Brown was born in Buffalo, New York.
She was left an orphan at an early age, yet in early
childhood she gave her heart to the Lord, and
lived a pure Christian life through all the changes
of her subsequent career. She came to Portland
about a year before her marriage, and was a close
attendant on the services of the church. In this
way she commended herself to the confidence and
love of the church, and especially of Mr. Fletcher,
and both accepted it as of the Lord's will that they
should become one in Christ Jesus. Our readers
will hear more of her hereafter.

Mr. Fletcher always took great interest in his
pastor. In proportion as he was a man devoted to
God and able to instruct the people in the "things
pertaining to life and godliness," he found in Mr.
Fletcher a signal help in leading the people for-
ward. But if the pastor chanced to have a worldly
spirit, or was disposed to compromise truth by
yielding to doubtful social customs or demands,
though no factious and contentious opposition
was made to him, yet he could not be in doubt as
to the position Mr. Fletcher occupied. He was

8G WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

friendly and gracious with all, but his closest Chris-
tian intimacies were with those who walked on the
highest paths of the Christian way. In reading his
journal, the writer has observed that every one of
his pastors was welcomed with words of trust and
hope, even if thereafter he showed his want of the
best instincts of the spiritual life, and led, or per-
mitted his people to drift into doubtful ways of
worldly compliance. In such case, and in these
things, Mr. Fletcher parted company with him,
even while he gave his active support in every way
to the general work of the church. Several in-
stances of this kind had occured previous to the
time of which we are now writing, but in none of
them was there the slightest evidence of disloyalty
to the church, but constant tokens of the greatest
fidelity to all her interests and economy. The
work of the summer of 1871, was not closing pros-
perously with the church where he had labored so
long and earnestly, and as conference approached
he was excedingly anxious in relation to the ap-
pointment of a pastor for the next year. This did
not arise out of any question of personal friendship,
but with a single reference to the spiritual condi-
tion and progress of the church.

MARRIAGE. 87

The annual conference of 1871 was held in Tay-
lor Street Church,and Bishop Edmund S. Janes
was its presiding officer. Our readers will remem-
ber that Bishop Janes had traveled in the stage
coach from Yreka, California, to Oregon, in com-
pany with Mr. Fletcher in 1863. They recalled the
incidents of the journey with mutual satisfaction
as they met here eight years thereafter. When the
conference closed Bishop Janes announced as the
pastor for the coming year, Rev. G. W. Izer, who
was transferred from the Central Pennsylvania
Conference to the Oregon for this special charge.
Probably no pastor that the church ever had in-
fluenced the thought and hope of Mr. Fletcher
more strongly or more favorably than did Mr.
Izer. Young, alert, spiritual and intellectual, his
ministry was full of an attractive and stimulating
unction that peculiarly attracted the people, and
was especially helpful to Mr. Fletcher in his per-
sonal experience, as well as in his relations to the
work of the Master that lay so near his heart. It is
with no feeling of surprise that we read in his jour-
nal at the close of the conference session, "I look
for great things from the hand of the Lord
through him this year.'' At the end of the first

88 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

month of Mr. Izer's pastorate, the house was filled
with a very serious congregation; a number had
been converted, several had professed sanctifica-
tion, the prayer meetings and class meetings had
revived and the entire outlook for the church had
been changed from one of clouds and doubt and
fear, to one of bright skies and conquering faith,
and confident courage. No wonder that Mr.
Fletcher greatly rejoiced, giving glory to God.

At this period in the life of Mr. Fletcher, we
note, for the first time, a record of his entering
upon a work that was eventually to prove the
great work of his life. What it was will appear if
we quote a sentence or two from his journal under
date of September 14th, 1871:

"Since Conference I have been distributing tracts among
the hotels and boarding houses and shops and steamboats,
and have done some little missionary work in connection
with it. The Lord blesses me in it, and my prayer is that
He will continue to make me more useful. I love this work
of distributing tracts; it gives me such opportunities to
speak a word for Jesus to the sailors about the ships and
inviting them to our meetings."

About two weeks later he records that:

"For the two weeks work twenty-four persons have been
converted and four made perfect in love, and among the

MARRIAGE. 89

twenty-four are three sailors belonging to vessels in port.
I trust the Lord has used me as an instrument for the sal-
vation of these souls, and I look for still greater results yet
in the salvation of more of them before our meeting
closes."

Two weeks later a second record says that fifty-
two had been converted and six made perfect in
love, and that among them was another of the
"sailor boys," the second mate of the English bark
Bristolian, making three from her and one from
another ship. He prays that the little leaven that
has been hid in the heart of these sailor chaps will
so work that the whole of the ship's company will
be leavened."

The early occupation of Mr. Fletcher as a sailor
even long before his conversion, now began to
show its ffects in his readiness for the work God
was preparing for him. He could not have im-
agined as he was passing through the hard lessons
of a sailor's life what an influence these lessons
\\oulcl have after many years upon his career; and
certainly those who saw him in his rough garb
and perilous exposures would never have thought
that out of these untoward conditions would come
at last a character so refined and a life so conse-

90 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

crated. With a new attainment of strength, and
this leading by Providence into new and promis-
ing fields of Christian work, Mr. Fletcher closed
the year 1871. His reflections are so pertinent,
and express so much of the spirit that was his best
furnishing for the work of his life, that we give an
extract from them under date of January 1st,
1872:

"The past year has been one rich in mercy to me and my
companions. I have devoted this year entirely to the ser-
vice of God in the various duties connected with my work
in the church. It has been the burden of my prayers to
God that He would so bless me in the labors of my hands
that I would be able to devote all my time and little talent
to Him, and to-day, in looking back over the year that is
just closed, surely my prayers have been most abundantly
answered. My Heavenly Father has has not only given me
a nice home, but one of the best of companions to share it
with me. We are one in spirit in serving the Lord. In en-
tering this new year myself and wife have consecrated
ourselves and all that we possess anew to God, to be used
as His good providence may direct; and may the grace of
our Lord Jesus Christ abide with us."

This character of work continued with Mr.
Fletcher through 1872. The latter part of the
year was signalized by a gracious revival of re-
ligion in the church in Portland, and in the revival

MARRIAGE. 91

Mr. Fletcher was in labors most abundant, and his
soul flamed with purifying fire. Probably Taylor
Street Church never had a higher and purer re-
ligious life than at this time.

Mr. Fletcher's work was extending more and
more among the sailors. He says of January 1st,
1873:-

" I have been greatly blest in my labors among the sail-
ors in this port. How thankful I am that I have been to
sea myself in my younger days, as I can adapt myself so
readily to their wants. I am so well acquainted with all
the "land sharks" and sailor boarding house runners, that
I am able to warn the sailors of their dangers when on
shore. I have been very succesful in getting many of them
to attend my Sabbath morning class, and many of them
have been converted in the class rooms, and have gone to
sea happy in the Lord. I have realized in the past year
more than ever before the importance of living a holy life,
and being fully consecrated to God and His work: as it re-
moves from me a man-fearing spirit, and gives me that
liberty in my work that I need so much. My wife is also
rejoicing in the same blessed experience with me. It makes
our work so pleasant for us, and our home so happy, and it
gives us favor with the people so that we can do them
good."

During 1873 the shipping entering the Port of
Portland greatly increased, and so Mr. Fletcher's
work among the sailors became more and more

92 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

important. A much larger number than ever
were induced by him to attend church and class
meeting, where he found it easy to teach them,
and lead them into a Christian life. So rapidly did
this work grow under the faithful hand of Mr.
Fletcher that on January 1st, 1874, we find him
expressing the expectation of seeing at no distant
day "a Seaman's Chaplain and Bethel for the men
of the sea."

CHAPTER VII.

CRUSADERS.

Not many lives, but only one have we

Our only one;
How sacred should that one life ever be!

That narrow span,

Day after day, filled up with blessed toil,
Hour after hour still bringing us new toll.

— Bonar.

EARLY in 1874 there occurred in the moral
and religious history of the city of Portland
a series of incidents with which Mr. Fletcher and
his wife were actively identified, that should have
some notice in this work. They grew out of the
organization and work of "The Woman's Temper-
ance Prayer League."

The saloon power had become so formidable in
the city, and all the crimes that are fostered and
sustained by that power so prevalent, that a num-
ber of the Godly women of the city, of various de-
nominations, banded themselves together for a

94 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

"crusade" against it. There were perhaps forty in
all who enrolled themselves in the band; women
who led the active religious work of the several
city churches, and whose hearts were stirred within
them when they saw the city so wholly given up to
the ravages of intemperance and all its attendant
crimes. They resolved to go upon the streets, and
even into the saloons, and by songs and prayer and
personal appeals, try to stay the tide of destruc-
tion. There were but thirteen of them at the first
enrolment, and the second name on the list was
"Lizzie Fletcher." They had a very active and
and even enthusiastic support from Rev. G. W.
Izer, pastor of the First M. E. Church; Rev. G. H.
Atkinson, pastor of the First Congregational
Church, and Rev. Mr. Medbury, of the First Bap-
tist Church. The other pastors of the city gave
the movement only a reluctant support, Their
work was first confined to earnest prayer in the
meetings of the League and at home, but before
long they felt it their duty to go upon the streets-
and carry the battle of prayer to the very gates of
the saloons. It was the veritable march of the
"Crusaders" when these godly women went forth
out of the front door of old Taylor Street Church,

CRUSADERS. 95

led by the unseen "Captain of their Salvation"
against the giant foe of all good on the crowded
streets of the city, not knowing to what insults and
oppositions they went. Martyrdom itself could
not be more to be dreaded. Foul insults of low
and villainous speech were heaped upon them from
the habitues of the saloons. Horsewhips were plied
upon their backs. Streams of water from the hose
pipes were turned over them, but none of these
things moved them. They had hold of God, and
nothing seemed able to make them unloose their
grip. They reviled not again. They replied to
angry oaths with sweet-voiced songs and earnest
prayer. They remembered the Master's code of
Christian warfare, "bless them that curse you, and
pray for them that despitefully use you and perse-
cute you." This they literally did. No braver, no-
bler Christian spirit ever was exhibited.

So deep was the impression made on the public
mind of Portland by the heroic and devoted as
well as determined course of these noble women —
for they were noble in every sense — that the saloon
forces saw that their cause was doomed to fall un-
less, in some way, the efforts of these women could
be stopped. Five of the women were arrested for

96 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

praying on the street, under the charge of disor-
derly and riotous conduct. Among these was Mrs.
Fletcher. The city magistrate spent two days in
the mockery of a trial, and then they were found
"guilty" and fined "f 5.00 each or one day in pris-
on." They refused to pay the fine, choosing, prop-
erly, to endure the imprisonment rather than in
any way to recognize the semblance of justice in
the action of the court, and accordingly they were
locked up in the city prison. Such is the mercy
and justice that wrong gives to right when right
makes . even the insurrection of prayer against
wrong. As though prisons could manacle prayer,
or iron walls defeat the power of God to finally
avenge His people!

At evening of the day of their incarceration Mr.
Fletcher visited the prison where they were con-
fined, to observe their spirit, and especially to see
if his wife needed anything for her comfort during
the night. He says:

"I shall never forget the impression that was made on my
mind while there with her in prison for about half an hour
before she was locked up for the night. She was very
happy in the Lord; not only willing to spend one night in
prison, but also to suffer death, if need be, for the cause

CRUSADERS. 97

of Christ. All the ladies that were with her In prison
would have been willing to do the same."

How strange the senseless enthusiasm of sin for
its own cause! How strange that eighteen cen-
turies have not sufficed to teach iniquity that there
is no real refuge for it in law; that its victories are
always its defeat, and its crowns of thorns on the
brow of right always change to coronets of glory.

Immediately after these ladies were released from
their imprisonment they and their coadjutors of
the praying band continued their work on the
streets and in the saloons until June, but even be-
sotted crime did not attempt to stay their proceed-
ings by prosecutions or limit the freedom of prayer
by prison walls.

Soon after the close of this active "Crusade," the
pastoral term of Rev. G. W. Izer closed at Taylor
Street Church, and he was transferred to the East.
His preaching and pastoral labor had proved a
great mental and spiritual help to Mr. Fletcher,
and it was with sincere regret that he bade him
"good-bye" as he retired. Nor had Mr. Izer any
less cause to feel gratitude to Mr. Fletcher for the
full, constant and efficient support received from
him. In the cheering words, unpretending kind-

98 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

ness and helpful attentions given him by the latter
at all times and under all circumstances not a little
of the good wrought by Mr. Izer in Portland had
its origin and support.

The years 1875 and 1876 were, with Mr. Fletch-
er, in the main incidents of his life, like those that
had preceeded them. There was no lessening, but
rather an increase of his responsibility and work.
The number of ships that entered the port contin-
ued to increase, and with that his work among the
sailors enlarged. More of them attended his
classes and the general services of the church than
ever before. Evidently the seed that Mr. Fletcher
almost alone had sown in the hearts of "the men of
the sea," who had visited the port was beginning
to bear its ripened fruit all over the world.

Many incidents of thrilling interest occurred in
connection with his work; incidents that made
his name and work familiar to seafaring men every-
where. At one time a sailor was converted in one
of his meetings in Taylor Street Church. The
next morning Mr. Fletcher met him and inquired
if he had written the good news of his conversion
to his wife in Liverpool. The sailor replied, "No;
I could not keep her waiting for two weeks to

CRUSADERS. 99

know what God had done for me, but I have sent
a cablegram this morning.'' So the good work of
this true friend of the seamen was becoming known
in every port. It may be truly said that, up to this
time, very little had been done in Portland for the
salvation of the sailors that was not done directly
through the instrumentality of Mr. Fletcher. Of
the increase of this great work we shall see more
hereafter.

As we pass down the way in the story of Mr.
Fletcher's life, it seems needful that we illustrate
the influence that continually aided in the develop-
ment of his life by some references from the men
and women with whom he wrought in the inti-
macies of Christian friendship. Few men have had
their friendships pitched on a higher key, and he
had the faculty of absorbing good out of them all.
His own sincerity of word and deed was so obvious
that he needed no other credentials to open his
way to the trust and confidence of others.

Among those who, for years, was most closely
connected with him in his church work, and per-
haps more intimately connected with the develop-
ment of his own spiritual life, was Mr. George Ab-
ernethy. His death, which occurred on the 2d

100 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

day of May, 1877, brought to the whole church
sadness, and especially to the heart of Mr. Fletcher.
When we study the character and career of Mr.
Abernethy, and then consider how intimately
these two men were associated in the work of the
church in Portland for so many years, we shall un-
derstand this fact better.

Mr. Abernethy was a thoroughly trained and
cultivated Christian gentleman. Few finer speci-
mens of that beautiful product of the Christian civ-
ilization of America have been seen among us. He
was eminent in all the relations of a most enter-
prising and useful life. After an early discipline
and training in business and in Christian life in the
city of New York, under such eminent teachers as
Nathan Bangs, Samuel Mervvin and their com-
peers and coadjutors, he was chosen by the Mis-
sionary Board of the M. E. Church to be put in
charge of the financial inerests of its missions in
Oregon in 1839, and came to this coast in the
capacity of Missionary Steward. Here he served
faithfully in that capacity as long as such an officer
was needed, or until 1846, when he entered busi-
ness for himself, and became the best known of the
early merchants of Oregon. He was chosen as

CRUSADERS. 101

Governor of the Territory under the Provisional
Government, and re-elected to the same place,
serving as such until the general government ex-
tended its jurisdiction over Oregon in 1848. He
led the laity of Methodism in all good works for
many years; and was the first lay delegate to the
General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal
Church from the Pacific Coast. When he died,
not only did the church here feel the shock of a
great loss, but the entire State of which he had
been one of the most influential and discreet foun-
ders, paid its tribute of praise and gratitude at his
tomb. With him as a brother beloved, Mr. Fletch-
er sustained a most intimate relation, and without
doubt drew from his richly stored mind and ripe
Christian experience much that was helpful to his
own life and work. To have held such relations to
such a man for so long a time was surely pledge
enough of the personal character and religious
worth of Mr. Fletcher.

For nine years Mr. Fletcher had served the
church in the relations which have been traced in
the preceedlng pages. At the close of the ninth
year he was granted a leave of absence for four
weeks, for a visit to California. When this was

102 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

done he makes in the journal the following remark-
able statement regarding these years:

"I have never been absent from my class for one meet-
ing since I came to this Church, nor from any of the church
services. Since I became its sexton in 1868 to the present
time, I have been enabled by the blessing of God to attend
to all my various duties, having the best of health, and
above all, the favor of God in my work. I believe that the
Lord has appointed me to this work. When I took charge
of the church as its sexton, I felt fully convinced in my
own mind that this was the work which the Lord had for
me to do, and now, as I look back, I can truly say that I
was not disappointed. It may be my life work, so far as I
know. The Lord's will not mine be done. I want to be
where the Lord thinks best."

Such was the record Mr. Fletcher had made in
these nine years, and such the spirit he had borne
through them all. If it could but enter into
the lives of all God's people what wonders
of redemption would be wrought in the world!
God's call was never unheard. Everything
must wait for God's voice. That was the
only determining factor of duty. Inclination
was nothing — only God's will. Steadily as
time moved onward he moved on and out to do
God's will. And everything was done in love.
Strength after strength was attained through duty

CRUSADERS. 103

done. All strength was used. He never frustrated
the grace of God; never consumed it on his own
desires. And so he came to a period and a fact in
his work that marked the opening of a new era to
him, and those who had been a chief object of his
solicitude for many years, "the men of the sea."

CHAPTER VIII.

WORK WIDENING.

Wait cheerily, then, O mariners,

For daylight and for land;
The breath of God is in your sail,

Your rudder is His hand.

Sail on, sail on, deep freighted

With blessings and with hopes;
The saints of old with shadowy hands
Are pulling at your ropes.

Behind ye holy martyrs

Uplift the palm and crown;
Before ye unborn ages send

Their benedictions down.

Sail on! the morning cometh,

The port ye yet shall win;
And all the bells of God shall ring

The good ship bravely in!

— Whittier.

~\ X 7"E have now come to the opening of a

» * work in the life of Mr. Fletcher for

which, it seems to us, all that preceeded it was but

WORK WIDENING. 105

a preparation. When we saw him a sailor on the
deep, tossed by the waves and driven by the winds
of all the seas, or stranded on many shores of many
lands, he seemed but a sailor, destined, in all sure
probability, to continue his adventurous voyages
until, in some stormiest day, he should earn a
sailors' heroic burial in the deep bed of the sea
with the unnamed thousands of those, to all ap-
pearances like him, who have thus sailed and thus
sunk into the unfathomed depths. But they were
not like him, though they thus seemed. God had
more for him than for them because he had more
for God than they. When we saw him a miner,
with pick and shovel bending over the rocky pits,
or digging in the deep gulches of the mountains
of California, or daring the granite fastnesses of
Idaho for gold, he seemed only a miner; likely to
beat his life out against the iron walls of the mines
or lose it out of sight of men with the hundreds of
thousands the engulfing mines have swallowed
up forever. He seemed like them — they like him.
But God had more for him than for them, because
he had more for God than they. When we saw him
in the ordinary pursuits of a laborer on the fir-clad
hills of Oregon, or in the streets of the city, he

106 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

seemed but the ordinary laborer, fated to the weary
round of daily and nightly toil for bread,— only for
bread — until that weary round ended in an un-
marked grave; where ends the bootless struggle
of more than half of the human race. But God had
more for him than for them, because he had more
for God than they. That more was a purpose; a
looking forward, a making the most and the best
of to-day as all he had, remembering that to-mor-
row was God's, and that he could only be ready
for God's to-morrow by rightly using his own to-
day. Thus he made the sailor's voyages and the
miner's toil preparations for the greater, higher to-
morrows that followed on his lower yesterdays.

The era in his life to which Mr. Fletcher had
been thus conducted by God's gracious providence
he had, in a divine way, foreseen and expected, and
had been doing much to create. It was the for-
mal and public inauguration of Christian work
among "the men of the sea," who, in the courses of
trade or the pursuits of adventure, were finding
their way into the ports of Oregon, and especially
into Portland, in great numbers. Our story of his
life has repeatedly mentioned his personal atten-
tion to them and his earnest solicitation for their

WORK WIDENING. 107

salvation. These seemed, as we recorded them,
but casual incidents, quite aside from the main pur-
pose and interest of his life, while, in reality, they
were chief factors in the make-up of that life. He
was marking out the most important and far-
reaching labors of his whole history. The people
of Portland, among whom he had gone so long,
and to whom he was so well known, did not un-
derstand that his quiet and unostentations visits
to the wharves and the decks of the vessels lying
at them; to the sailor's boarding houses, and to
all the resorts where the sailor boys were enticed
to their ruin, with his bundles of tracts in his hands,
which he distributed as leaves of the tree of life to
all, were putting in action a train of influences that
meant a world-wide evangelization and would
make Mr. Fletcher himself one of the most widely
known of the religious workers of the coast. But
so it was. It was, as ever, God taking care of His
own, and taking pains that His watchmen did not
wake in vain.

It is probable that the modern church has not
begun to appreciate the evangelistic value of such
work among the sailors; even if she has appre-
ciated the sailor himself as a man. A converted

108 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

sailor is a world-going missionary. No pent-up
village or narrow country neighborhood confines
his influence. From port to port, from country to
country, from capital to capital, he is borne by the
free winds of the sea. He knows all continents and
all islands. He is a citizen of the world. He be-
longs to the demorcracy of humanity. He is God's
free evangel; heaven's roving messenger of truth
and love to every land and every clime. Thus the
winds waft His story. Thus the waters roll it.
Every ship that bears him becomes "the old ship
of Zion,'' freighted with salvation and sailing to
all ports. "The breath of God is in her sails, her
rudder is His hands," as she sails on freighted with
hope and salvation for the world.

Portland had grown to be such a seaport and to
command such a commerce with foreign nations
as awakened its great Christian merchants to the
need of organizing a Bethel Home" and a "Mar-
iner's Church" for the benefit of the hundreds of
sea-faring men constantly in the city. According-
ly, on November 4th, 1877, union services, under
the auspices of the leading churches of the city,
were held in Taylor Street M. E. Church, for the
purpose of making such an organization. Rev. R.

WORK WIDENING. 109

S. Stubbs, a very able and devoted as well as ex-
perienced minister, had been appointed by "The
American Seaman's Friend Society," of New York,
Chaplain for the port of Portland. Mr. Stubbs was
present, and his evident adaptation to so great .1
work stirred the people to enthusiasm. Mr. Stubbs
had been a sailor for many years, and had risen to
the command of vessels, and, of course, under-
stood the needs of sailors, and well knew how to
provide for their supply. The meeting completed
plans for work, raised over $5,000 for its com-
mencement, and had assurances from the best
sources of further aid as it would be required in the
progress of the work. These facts greatly encour-
aged Mr. Fletcher in the hope that his ruling de-
sire would have a larger fulfillment in the salvation
of his beloved "men of the sea."

At this time one of the most eminent of pulpit
orators of his day, Doctor Guard, visited Portland,
delivering two lectures and one sermon. They
were greatly appreciated by all, and especially by
Mr. Fletcher. By a happy incident he introduced
a friend of his, Mr. John Wilson, a leading mer-
chant of the city to the Doctor, who immediately
recognized him as one of the teachers of his early

110 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

boyhood, and greeted him with most loving re-
membrances.

Under date of January 1st, 1879, Mr. Fletcher
writes: —

"There Is a most, remarkable work of grace now going
on among the seamen in this port. Chaplain Stubbs is
working faithfully on board the ships in port. My wife
and myself have attended many of the night meetings on
some of the ships during the last five weeks. I have not
seen such a revival since I came to Portland as is now go-
ing on among the seamen. I think there must have been
about forty seamen converted up to the present time. Truly,
the little leaven that has been working for the last few
years is now showing its power. I hope it will not stop
until the crew of every ship in port shall be leavened of
righteousness."

With the added work that came to Mr. Fletcher
in the organization of the Seaman's Friend Society
in Portland, there was little diminution of his work
in the church itself as janitor and class leader. At
the same time his reading and studying of the best
class of Christian works increased. His journal
often speaks of them with most appreciative lan-
guage, especially of such as touched the practical
and experimental sides of Christian life. For those
that had tendencies opposite to the purest and

WORK WIDENING. Ill

highest experience he had no place. One, for
which he had paid three dollars, under a mistaken
idea of its character, he consigned to the flames,
"so that it could do no harm." Still providence
seemed directing him toward a wider opportunity
for usefulness to his beloved "sailor boys," as the
very best field for the use of his mature Christian
powers and experience. Making up his mind after
mature deliberation and prayer that the Lord had
other work for him to do, in August1, 1879, he re-
signed his place as janitor of Taylor Street Church.
Of so much public interest was the event that the
Pacific Christian Advocate, whose editor, Rev.
Dr. Dillon, was at that time serving as pastor of
the church Mr. Fletcher had so long served, gave
this appreciative notice of it: -

"Brother Fletcher has been a fixture in the janitorship of
Taylor-street church for ten years. If ever faithful and de-
voted labor was cheerfully and well performed it has been
done by him; for all these years promptly at the time, with-
out a failure, he has rung the bell for all the gatherings
of the church, has had the church ready for occupancy,
dusted, cleaned, ventilated and warmed: often in very cold
weather sleeping at the church Saturday nights so as to
start the fires in the furnace very early in the morning.
Not only this, during all this time he has been present
every Sunday morning at the 9 o'clock class of which he

112 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

is leader. But he is gone, and we fear "we ne'er shall see
his like again." We are only too glad to hare him with us
yet in his pew, and in the class and prayer meeting, where
he will still be found upon every opportunity that he can
avail himself of."

These words of his pastor were but an indication
of the place Mr. Fletcher had won in the hearts of
all the church and congregation, the largest in
Portland. The care and punct'uality with which he
had attended to his duties in Taylor Street Church
for so many years had attracted the attention of
the directors of the Portland High School, and
they sought his services in the like office in that in-
stitution. He accepted their proposition, as of the
Lord. His work threw him into close association
with hundreds of young people, and a very culti-
vated body of teachers, with all of whom he soon
became a favorite. His genial disposition, quiet
and obliging manner, and his careful consideration
of the comfort of all and the happiness of each not
only secured their confidence but won their affec-
tion, and he held their full esteem for all the years
that he served in that capacity.

With him one of the chief reasons for choosing
this position was that it gave him the week day

WORK WIDENING. 113

evenings and all of the Sabbath to pursue his work
among the seamen. More and more his heart was
drawn to this, and more clearly God's providence
was opening it to him. With him opportunity was
duty, and a chance to do was always earnestly im-
proved. Accordingly he had no sooner entered his
new field than we find him drawing nearer to "the
men of the sea.'' Within two months of the time
he began his work in the school he makes this
characteristic entry in his journal:

Nov. 9th— I got Dr. Nelson to consent to lead my morn-
ing class for the next three mouths so that I could have
more time for work among the sailors on Sabbath morning.
I visited four ships this morning, and distributed one hun-
dred pages of tracts among the men forward. I also got
five of the men to accompany me to church. O. may the
Lord bless my work among these men of the sea.

Nov. 16— Sabbath morning. I had a good time in my
visiting the ships, giving the tracts to the men, and In
ppeakiug to them of Jesus, who is always the sailor's
friend. I told them his very first disciples were sailors,
and that of all men sailors should be first to serve him.
As I had spoken to the crew of one of the ships somewhat
freely, I asked them how many of them would come with
me to the church that morning to hear His word preached
for themselves. Five of them came with me.

Nov. 23.— Only time to visit one ship this morning. After
speaking to the men forward and distributing some tracts.

114 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

I went aft and spoke to the officers, gave them some tracts,
and got the first and second officers to accompany me to
the church.

This character of hand to hand and heart to
heart work was pursued by Mr. Fletcher with the
faithfulness and zeal of an apostle. Nearly every
Sabbath morning he would be seen coming into
Taylor Street Church with a company of "sailor
boys" dressed in the garb of the sea, conducting
them to eligible seats, sitting with them, watching
intently the effect of the word upon them, ready to
take advantage of all influences and impressions
to lead them to Jesus.

In closing up his record for the year 1879 he
gives —

A VISION OF THE BIBLE.
By a Seafaring Man.

"As I lay musing a vision passed before me of a noble
ship. She was built in New Jerusalem, and her builder
and maker was God. Her timbers were of the strong oaks
of Zion, her masts of the tree of Calvary, and her rigging
of the cords of love. Her sails were the doctrines of sal-
vation, her cable a three-fold cord of faith, hope and char-
ity, which could not be easily broken. Her helm glittered
like the star of prophecy, her anchor was of gold from Im-
manuel's Land; her crest was the emblem of righteousness

WORK WIDENING. 115

and her name was "The Word of God." From stem to
stern, from keel to deck she was a goodly ship. Her deck
was a broad platform on which Christians of all denomina-
tions might stand. Her guns thundered forth the terrors of
the law, but her mission was emphatically peace. Her
weapons were not carnal but mighty through God to the
pulling down of strongholds. Her painting was beauty;
she was streaked with light and sprinkled with blood. Her
crew were the Apostles and Prophets, her passengers true
believers, her captain the Prince of Peace. Her cargo was
Truth, and her broad Danner bore the inscription "Glory
to God in the Highest: Peace on earth, good will to men."
She was sailing over a tempestuous sea. The billows of
error drove furiouly against her bows, but her bulwarks
were impregnable. She sailed from the port of heaven and
her destination was to all the habitable parts of the earth,
and her mission to the ends of it. The nations hailed her
approach with joy. She scattered blessings in her course,
and returned homeward bound freighted with living souls
and cast her anchor in the haven of life under the throne
of God and of the Lamb."

With this "vision" Mr. Fletcher closes his record
of the year 1879. During it his words and his life
among the seamen had brought help and encour-
agement to many a burdened heart, and hope to
many a despairing breast. His cheerful presence,
his light-like smile always stirred to better
thoughts and higher ambitions all those with

116 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

whom he mingled, and the memory of them sailed
in the minds of hundreds of sailors on every sea.
Whenever the sailor's thoughts would turn toward
Portland, "Father Fletcher," was in his mind's eye;
and to very many of them already it was his tender
countenance, his vigilant guardianship, his Chris-
tian counsel awaiting him on the Portland docks
that constituted the strongest desire to again re-
turn to rest for a little on the peaceful bosom of
the Oregon port.

CHAPTER IX.

BROADENING LIFE.

Through seas more vast than these of earth,

Blown straight by heavenly wind,
They sail with freight of precious worth,

These merchantmen of mind.

In alien zones, through sun and cloud,

With varied cargoes fraught,
What intercourse and traffic crowd

The argosies of thought.

O, happy they who walk the strand

Whereon those billows roll,
Whose ports, by right divine, command

The commerce of the soul."

—Clarence Urmy.

|^ ROM the closing date of the last chapter for
•*• five years Mr. Fletcher continued the iden-
tical character of work described there. He had
charge of one of the most important classes of Tay-
lor Street Church, and led its members forward in
the cultivation of the graces of the spirit with the

118 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

same care and success as attended his work among
the seamen. Members committeed to his care by
the successive pastors of the church under whom
he served, were never neglected or forgotten, and
very few, if, indeed, any of those put under his
guidance ever strayed from the ways of well doing.
"By their fruits ye shall know them," is an eternal
principle of judgment as to character and life.
Judged by this test Mr. Fletcher's life had rare per-
fection. Its influence over others was always, even
uniquely, pure. It had in it a living principle or
germ of growth, and so it spread its fructifying
sap through every fibre and vesicle of the souls it
touched. Souls born into the Kingdom by his
fatherhood carried a vigorous life in them from the
very hour of their birth. Parenthood germinally
conditions sonship, spiritually as well as physically.
To be well begotten and well bred is to inherit
character and quality and power. "Blood will
tell." By the application of these principles to the
life of converts the character of those by whom
they were begotten in the Gospel is clearly defined.
In the case of those among whom Mr. Fletcher's
work was mostly done during this time there was
need of a vigorous inborn life to carry them

BROADENING LIFE. 119

through the comparatively stormy conditions of
their early Christian life. Out on the wild seas, al-
most before they have lived a single day in the
consciousness of their new life of faith, visiting
distant ports, surrounded by rollicking, roaring
mobs of sin-intoxicated men; mocked at, ridiculed,
opposed — if the life in them was not strong and
forceful at the very beginning it were no great
wonder if they did not endure. For these and
other reasons which will appear hereafter, we see
the uniqueness of the work of Mr. Fletcher, as well
as the exalted qualities of the spiritual nature that
he put into it. He so impressed himself and his
own spiritual life upon those with whom and for
whom he labored that, as a presence invisible to
others, and yet visible to them, he walked the
streets of the city, rode on the waves of the sea,
sat in the pews in the church, joined in the songs
of the sanctuary with those children of his beget-
ting and love wherever they were. In this respect,
in a finite way and with a few, he was with them
to the end of the world, as Christ in an infinite
way, and with all that knew him, pledged that he
would be "always."

It is in this way that good lives are perpetuated;

120 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

given an immortality outside of themselves. One
said "the evil that men do lives after them, but the
good is often interred with their bones.'' This say-
ing can hardly be accepted in its broadest sense.
It is because good once done does not die, but
"lives" after he who did it has gone back to dust,
that good makes any gain over evil. "The eternal
years of God" belong to good and truth, while
"the death that never dies" is the doom of evil and
falsehood. This is the vital motive to goodness of
action and purity of life. "The righteous shall be
in everlasting remembrance, but the memory of
the wicked shall rot." So the memory of this
friend and servant of the humblest occupant of the
forecastle on the poorest ship that came to the
port where he labored so long and faithfully will be
green with verdure of immortality when the very
name of the proudest captain that ever sailed the
seas, whose life was evil and wicked, shall rot out
of all mention by men or angels. God keeps the
records of the book of lives, and He never forgets.
"Father Taylor" once described the career of a
young man who came from the country to the city,
who fell into one temptation after another till he
became a degraded castaway. When he seemed

BROADENING LIPB. 121

to have reached the lowest depth of horror, Father
Taylor, with a look and tone that chilled the very
marrow of the bones of those that heard him,
cried: "Hush! Shut the windows of Heaven.
He's cursing his mother!" He would, if possible,
keep the horrid degradation of this boy, who had
thus desecrated the holiest name on earth and thus
defiled himself, from the eye of the recording angel.
So goodness does not seek to perpetuate the mem-
ory of wickedness, but rather to blot it out. But
it does seek to perpetuate, to keep alive, the re-
membrances of the righteous.

In connection with his work among the seamen
and also in the church during the five years from
1879 to the opening of 1886, Mr. Fletcher contin-
ued as janitor of the Portland High School, where
several hundred of the brightest young people in
the city shared his attentions and enjoyed his
friendship. He won their confidence and so they be-
came his friends, and in no small measure their love
of him widened all his subsequent opportunity for
doing good, and in no slight degree accounts for
the very remarkable hold he secured on the confi-
dence of the best citizens of Portland. But the
time was nearing for which providence had been

122 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

preparing him, when he was to withdraw from
some of the fields in which he had wrought so long,
and devote all his time to the benefit of the sea-
men.

About the first of January, 1886, Chaplain R. S.
Stubbs was transferred by the Seaman's Friend
Society from the charge of the Bethel work in
Portland to the superintendence of the work of
that society on Puget Sound. On his retirement
Mr. Fletcher was left in charge of that work in
Portland. This brought him to the conclusion to
which providence had long been pointing, that this
was to be his one field of ultimate toil. Accord-
ingly we find this entry in his journal at this time:

Jan. 1.— I intend, when my school year closes, if it be the
Lord's will, to enter entirely upon the Bethel and ship work
in behalf of the "men of the sea," and make it my life-
work, and try to save these dear men in Jesus; for I know
by sad experience of my own how terrible are their beset-
ments, while they are in port.

Jan. 3.— This Sabbath I visited the ship Carmarthen
Castle and met with the steward who was converted when
he was here eight years ago in the ship Robert Lee, and
also four more converted men in the ship with him. I had
a most precious season with them.

Jan. 21.— I was visiting some of the ships this morning
down at the Mersey docks. The sailors had just come on

BROADENING LIFE. 123

board half drunk, as they had been on a spree all night,
and were quarreling with each other, as I was standing on
the dock debating in my mind whether I should go on
board just at that time or not, I asked the Lord what I
had best do. The blessed Holy Spirit applied the words to
my heart that God spoke to Moses: "Now, therefore, go,
and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou
shalt say." Exodus iv., 12. I said, "It is enough. Lord," and
I Just stepped aboard and met the captain on the poop.
After shaking hands with him, he said, "See, there is a
specimen of our British sailors," pointing to his men. I
told him tnat his men would be all right but for the cursed
whiskey that was in them; that that was the cause of all
the trouble with his men. I told him that I would just step
down into the waist of the ship and see what I could do to
break up the row among them. He said: "You had better
not go among them," but I said: "I have no fears at all";
so I stepped down to where they were wrangling. As one
of them saw me coming towards them he came to meet me.
I took him by the hand and said to him: i am sorry to see
you men at loggerheads this morning. But I can sympa-
thize with you for I have been in the same way more than
once myself, and I know just how you feel." Just then
another of them came to hear what I was saying, another
one went and spoke to another, and one or two went for-
ward, so the whole thing broke up, and there was no fight.
I then went forward and said: "Men, I am sorry to see
you in the way you are this morning, but I am thankful
you are not in the lock-up, but on board of your own ship."
I talked a little while with them, gave them some roading
and left them. I then went aft and said to the captain.

124 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

"Blessed are the peacemakers." "Well," said he, "you had
more courage than I have to go down among those fel-
lows in the condition they were in." I then left him and
went on board the ship Dovenby, and had a very profitable
conversation with Captain Steele and his wife. So ended
my morning's work on the ships."

Thus, Sunday by Sunday, year following year,
did Mr. Fletcher find his way from deck to deck
with his messages of "peace" and his invitations to
Christ to officer and sailor alike. Sincerely hum-
ble, yet never shrinking from duty, full of a calm
courage, yet never boasting of his bravery, this
man of God constantly went forth to serve God by
helping and saving lost humanity. Is there any
other way of serving Him?

In April of this year Mr. Fletcher was put in
charge of the Bethel work by the Portland Sea-
man's Friend Society, at its annual meeting. Since
the removal of Chaplain Stubbs there had been no
preaching in the Bethel, and Mr. Fletcher entered
upon that field under discouraging conditions. In
his usual way, however, he gave himself into God's
hands for guidance and help in the broader field
into which His providence had brought him, seek-
ing the "Blessed Spirit's" aid in all he did. It
seemed a propitious fact that this enlarged respon-

BROADENING LIFE. 125

sibility came to him when he was amidst the ten-
der memories attending the 26th anniversary of his
own conversion, and the 19th anniversary of his
experience of perfect love. It is not strange that
he says, in referring to this fact, as Isaiah said so
long before him, "O Lord, I will praise Thee, for
though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is
turned away and thou comfortest me. Behold,
God is my salvation, I will trust and not be afraid,
for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song;
He also is become my salvation."

With this evident call to the consecration of all
his time and powers to the work of the seamen
came the necessary duty of surrendering other
work, which, however important in itself, and how-
ever pleasant to him it might be, would neverthe-
less occupy a large portion of his time. So in the
early summer he surrendered his place in connec-
tion with the High School of the city, and, as it
will give the reader a clear insight into his mo-
tives of life and rules of conduct in all that he was
01 did, his reflections on the occasion are given.

Under date of July 1st, 1886, he says:—

"I have resigned my positon as janitor of Park-street
High School, which I have held for the last seven years, to

126 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

enter more fully upon the Bethel and ship work. When I
entered upon my school work seven years ago, I entered
it as the Lord's work, and looking back now I can truly say
it was of the Lord's appointment. I have been blessed both
in spiritual and temporal things. The Lord has given me
favor with both teachers and pupils, and also with the
directors. I have never had an unkind word spoken to me
during these seven years by any one connected with the
school. I always kept the Lord and His work before me,
and as I went in and out before them from day to day, I
tried to set before them the example of a godly life both
by my walk and conversation. O, I have enjoyed so many
precious prayers for my teachers and pupils. I always felt
it was the Lord's work I was doing, and now, as I give up
my stewardship to Him who gave it to me, I ask Him to
bless the seed that I have tried to sow in the hearts of
these dear teachers and children during my seven years
work with them.

"When I entered my school work, I received a salary of
fifty-five dollars a month. The second year they gave me
sixty, the third year seventy, and after that seventy-five
dollars, so I can say the Lord has greatly blessed me in the
labor of my hands. It seemed a great grief to the teach-
ers and children that I should leave them.

"I had been enabled to build me a new two-story house on
my lot on which I live, costing me $2,400, and is now bring-
ing me $36 per month rent, and have left a balance of $800
in my bank account up to date. I can surely say that
"goodness and mercy have followed me all the days of my
life.' The Lord has brought me now to the place T have
been working up to, so that I could give myself entirely to
the work of the Bethel and the ships."

BROADENING LIFE. 127

In this extract the reader will be able to see
some of the elements of character that made the
life of Mr. Fletcher such an eminently useful one
in the sphere in which he moved. Stability of
purpose, patient industry, unswerving' fidelity, de-
voted piety, wrought out in the life of this once
careless and godless sailor boy such a history of
good deeds and noble works as really few have ever
had recorded to their credit in the book of destiny.
Feeling the call of God within him to devote him-
self to the benefit of that class of men amongst
whom his own early life had been cast, he followed
the openings God's providence made with the care-
fulness of a hunter on the track of game, never
losing his purpose and never relaxing his effort un-
til now he sees the desire of his heart accomplished
and he is ready to fully enter into the call of his
gracious Lord. If his erstwhile companions before
the mast will carefully study this life and imitate it
in the measure of their opportunity, how many a
noble man will spring from the hard places of such
service to the high and blessed places of such
power for good as was his.

CHAPTER X.

WORK AMONG SEAMEN.

"And men who work can only work for men;
And not to work in vain, must comprehend

Humanity, and work humanely,
And raise men's bodies still by raising souls

As God did first."

| "3 ELIEVED now from the burden of his
-*- V. school work, Mr. Fletcher was at liberty
to devote himself to his work in the Bethel service.
He had hoped that a chaplain who was a minister
would have arrived before he entered fully upon
it, but as his coming was delayed and the demand
was so urgent, and so many sailors seemed waiting
for some one to guide them in the right way, that
he could but enter the open door in the name
of the Lord. So on the evening of Sabbath, July
4th, he began "Gospel meetings" in the chapel of
the Mariner's Home. A large congregation was

WORK AMONG SEAMEN. 129

present, and one sailor was converted. On the fol-
lowing Sabbath night another large congregation
met him again at the same place, and two were
converted to God. During the week he followed
this result up by visitations and prayer with the
sailors in their rooms, and on the following Sunday
evening his faithfulness was rewarded with two
more conversions. The same character of work
with the same result of weekly conversions contin-
ued for many weeks. It is not likely that any pop-
ular pulpit in Portland gathered such a harvest of
souls for the Master during this summer month of
July as did this worker among the sailors in the
"Mariner's Home."

On the 22d of August Mr. Fletcher records a ser-
vice held for him by Rev. T. L. Sails, at that time a
very evangelical and successful minister in the Ore-
gon Conference of the M. E. Church. Mr. Sails
had been a sailor, and reached Portland some years
before as such, "having no hope and without God
in the world." He chanced to fall into Taylor
Street Church one evening when revival services
were being conducted by its pastor, Rev. G. W.
Izer, and was led to seek God at its altar. It was
not long before he was converted, and soon after

130 WILLIAM s. FLETCHER.

his natural gifts of speech and his evident consecra-
tion commended him to the church as called of
God to the Gospel ministry. He was licensed as a
preacher, and entering the ministry of Oregon, for
about ten years he fulfilled it with a fervency and
zeal that gave promise of far more than average
usfulness and success in his calling. When in the
culminating vigor of his work he sickened and
died, having vindicated his Christian character by
the authority of a spotless life and most heroic
ministerial service. Having been a sailor in his
youth, and being skilled in the vocabulary of the
seas, and with a warm, sympathetic heart, and
genial and bounding spirits, he was admirably
adapted to the work among the seamen. Many
thought, and among them Mr. Fletcher, that he
should enter that work.

His visit at this time to the Bethel was a marked
event. He was among his brethren of the sea.
He knew a sailor's heart. He understood their
temptations. He sympathized with their weak-
nesses. He pitied like the Master. And having
traveled the way himself, he knew well how to
guide a repentant sailor's soul to God. "Brother
Sails was perfectly at home among my sailors, and

WORK AMONG SEAMEN. 131

let himself out," writes Mr. Fletcher. "He had
great freedom in speaking and was assisted by the
blessed Holy Spirit himself, which carried the
truth home to the hearts and consciences of all
these wanderers from God. We had a glorious
meeting. He spoke on the "Prodigal Son," of
which there were many present.''

From July to about the first of September Mr.
Fletcher had full charge of the Bethel work in
Portland. At this latter date Rev. Mr. Gilpin, of
England, arrived as Chaplain. The period during
which Mr. Fletcher had charge of the work in the
Bethel was marked by more conversions and a
deeper spirituality than any other of its history.
During the five months, besides his three weekly
public services in the chapel, and his visits to and
care over the sailors when they were on land, he
made 148 visits to ships in port and conversed with
their officers and crews, distributed 6000 pages of
tracts and other reading matter. He also visited
a large number of families in the interests of his
Bethel work. Twenty-eight sailors were convert-
ed and he gave fourteen Bibles to those converted
who had none. This is a record of work and suc-
cess of which any pastor might well be proud.

1S2 WILIAM S. FLETCHER.

Mr. Fletcher, in his usual grateful way, gives "all
the praise and glory of this blessed work to the
Holy Spirit," who so obviously attended and sanc-
tified all his services. And yet the human basis of
it all was in Mr. Fletcher's own adaptation to the
work in which he was engaged. His naturally
broad humanness, his plain, unstudied common
sense, his kindly interest in every one that needed
help, his calm fearlessness, coupled with a real hu-
mility, were the constitutional personal elements
that adapted him to his work. Then there was an-
other fact, well stated by himself in his journal,
when accounting for the failure of a chaplain, that
at the same time accounted largely for his own suc-
cess. He says:—

"It takes a man who has been to sea himself, and has
lived in a ship's forecastle and has gone through its trials
and hardships. It is only such a man who can fully enter
Into the sympathies of these dear men of the sea. I feel
thankful to God that I had spent my younger days on the
sea, and had such an experience that the Lord Is now enab-
ling me to use it to call these dear men of the sea out of
darkness Into His marvelous light."

In the course of his visitations to the large num-
ber of ships that lay in the harbor during the pres-
ent season, Mr. Fletcher found a large number of

WORK AMONG SEAMHN. 185

Christian captains, as well as many seamen who
were truly devoted laborers for the Master. On
the 8th day of January, 1888, he records the fact
that Captain Lloyd, of the bark Dora Ann,
preached at night at the Bethel with excellent ef-
fect. The congregation were mostly sailors. It
seemed to point out to him the approach of the
time when "the abundance of the sea shall be con-
verted to God," and the very ships of commerce
should become flying evangels carrying to every
land the "glad tidings of great joy" to all people.

Not far from the Mariner's Bethel the Portland
corps of the Salvation Army had, at this time, its
barracks. Many sailors attended these meetings,
and many of them were converted. Mr. Fletcher
wrought in harmony with them, often attending
their services, giving them much aid in their work.
While he was receiving encouragement and help
from them, and with the broad Christian charity
that always distinguished him, extending to them
all the encouragement in his power, Chaplain Gil-
pin, who had charge under the Seaman's Friend
Society, of the Bethel work in the port, took a
violent stand against them. This fact greatly em-
barrassed the work of that society, and while Mr.

134 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

Fletcher's personal influence remained unimpaired
among the sea-going people of the port, kept the
seamen away from the Bethel services. But ship
visitation was continued by him with equal and
even increased diligence and effectiveness, and
with no diminution of results. A few extracts from
his daily record will show his faithfulness in this
work, as it will also some of the results of the same
method of work in other years.

"Jan. 27, 1888.— I spent the forenoon iu visiting six ships
at the Albina docks, and had a profitable talk with the of-
ficers and men, some of whom are to leave on their way to
their home ports today and tomorrow. May the Lord keep
them on their way."

"Feb. 2.— Visited six ships. I met one of the men of the
four-masted ship Ben Dauran, who was here eight years
ago when we had a great revival among the ships in port.
He knew me as quick as he saw me, and we found that as
"iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the counten
ance of his friend." One of the men of the bark Peebles-
shire, who was converted at the Salvation Army meetings,
and left for home in his ship this evening, promised to
write me on his arrival there. May the Lord give him a
prosperous voyage, and make him abundantly useful in
bringing his shipmates to Christ,"

"Feb. 15.— Visited six ships this afternoon and held con-
versations with both officers and men. I had a long talk
with Mr. Mortimer, the first officer of the ship Cimara. He

WORK AMONG SEAMEN. 135

is a good Christian man, and is much liked by his crew.
He was converted here in our ship meetings some eight
years ago, and is much interested in our Bethel work, but
feel that we cannot succeed in it without a change in our
chaplain."

"Feb. 16.— This afternoon I visited two ships and had
one of the best times I have enjoyed in talking to the first
officer and carpenter of the bark Kier. They wanted me to
give them an account of my conversion. The Holy Spirit
gave me words to speak to them, and I hope and trust the
same Holy Spirit carried it to their hearts and consciences
to the saving of their souls. I have been asking the blessed
Holy Spirit for some time that he would teach me how to
perform my duty in the best possible manner among my
brethren of the sea. I want Him to fill me with His unc-
tion, to enable me to speak with power to the hearts and
consciences of these sailors. I can truly say that he Is
answering my prayer, for He is giving me more liberty in
speaking and praying in the last few weeks than I have
ever enjoyed before.'

Thus from day to clay and from month to
month, year after year, Mr. Fletcher went his un-
wearied way of good doing, and thus the sailors
that went out of the port of Portland over all seas
and to all parts of the world bore the memory of
this good man in their hearts, while the fruits of
his toil for them ripened in their lives of devotion
in every land.

The writer does not intimate that all this good

186 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

was the entirely independent result of Mr. Fletch-
er's work. He had many sympathetic helpers;
many who loved him, prayed for him, encouraged
him; but he gathered into his own life the impulse
of their devotion and friendship and gave it out
again to others, enriched, enlarged, sanctified, and
mighty for larger good. Among those who oc-
cupied this situation to him was Dr. Samuel Nel-
son. Alike in many of their qualities, but unlike
in others, they were knit together in a friendship
and trust like that of David and Jonathan. Their
Christian experience was of the same type; deep,
steady, and well expressed in the phrase, "perfect
love." The writer has known few if any in all his
life who more nearly demonstrated a practical and
constant fulfillment of the Saviour's summa-
tion of the perfect law of God: "Thou shalt love
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all
thy mind, and with all thy soul and with all thy
strength and thy neighbor as thyself," than in the
lives of these two men. Charitable, tender-hearted,
pure in thought and speech, gentle as sanctified wo-
manhood, yet stable as the strongest manhood,
they walked before the Lord and before the world
with open and uplifted countenances continually.

WORK AMONG SEAMEN. 187

On the 1st day of February, 1888, Dr. Nelson
was translated. On the 3d his funeral was held in
Grace Church, of which he, as well as Mr. Fletcher
was a member. It would not be proper to omit,
in this record, the tender reference to this event,
and to the character of this dear friend in the jour-
.nal of Mr. Fletcher for that day:

"I attended to-day the funeral services of that dear old
saint of God, Dr. Samuel Nelson. Dr. H. K. Hines deliv-
ered a most affectionate and touching tribute to his mem-
ory. My own heart responded to every word he said of
him, for I knew the inner life of Dr. Nelson better than
any other member of the church. He was a lover of the
doctrine of holiness, and knew the power of its blessed ex-
perience as well as myself. I first met the doctor in 1865
at the Ames Chapel camp meeting. I formed his friendship
then, and as the years went by our love for each other in-
creased. I always found him a brother beloved in the
TvOrd."

They two, with a number of others connected
with the most practical Christian work in the city,
and who also enjoyed the most exalted Christian
experience, walked in closest personal communion
for many years. Often they sung what was but a
reflection of their constant sentiment towards each
other: —

138 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

"Blest be the tie that binds

Our hearts iu Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred minds

Is like to that above."

In reading, the record of Mr. Fletcher's work
from day to day as it is given in his journal, one is
greatly impressed with his sustained faith and en-,
thusiasm in it. It lacked all the contagious inspi-
ration that comes out of crowded assemblies, vocal
with music and thrilling with eloquent discourse,
with all the accessories of public worship, but was
simply the quiet, unobserved, hand to hand strug-
gle of a single man, full of faith and love, with
other single men without either faith or love, in a
desperate endeavor to win these other men to the
"like precious faith" and the like "perfect love"
that filled his own heart. No braver, truer work is
ever done than that. The preacher in the pulpit is
helped and uplifted by the magnetic eye-flash of
approving or applauding hearers. He is in the
warm, comfortable shurch, shut away from the
storm, and shut away from the sight of human deg-
radations for the time, in what, both in surround-
ings and society, "is almost heaven." But one like
Mr. Fletcher threads dark alleys alone, buttons his

WORK AMONG SEAMEN. 139

plain overcoat about him to break off the cold
blast, walks icy decks, goes down into dark fore-
castles, looks on human degradation in its darkest
deeps, grasps the filthy hand of the most fallen sin-
ner, listens to the bacchanalian revels of the
drunken and profane instead of the sweet, pure
voices of the church orchestra, all to save those
lost; all to rescue those fallen. Surely the Christ
must needs be incarnate again in the very purpose
of His first incarnation in such a man or he could
not and would not do such work.

During the month of March in this year, 1888,
he records the visiting of forty-six ships and con-
versing with officers and sailors, distributing relig-
ious literature, magazines, and current secular pa-
pers, and, in addition, made four visits to the hos-
pitals of the city, and kept up his attendance on
his class and prayer meetings in the church of
which he was a member.

It will be recalled that Mr. Fletcher was labor-
ing under the general direction of the "Portland
Seaman's Friend Society." On the second day of
May its annual meeting was held in the parlors of
Ladd&Tilton's bank, and was presided over by Mr.
James Steel, a prominent business man and a lead-

140 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

ing member of the First Congregational Church of
Portland, and one of the steadfast friends of the
work of Mr. Fletcher among the seamen. A syn-
opsis of the report of work done by him during the
year just past will very clearly indicate its extent
and value. He says:

"Since my last annual report I have made 408 visits to
ships in port, and had many profitable conversations with
officers and men and apprentice boys. I have attended
twenty-two ship's services with our chaplain, and have
made thirty visits TO the hospitals and enjoyed many pre-
cious seasons in speaking and praying with a great number
of the patients in their several wards. I have written
many letters to the men and boys at the different ports to
which they sailed irom here, and have received many en-
couraging letters from them. I have also received a large
number of letters from the mothers of many of these dear
boys, inquiring about them. I find this is becoming a very
important part of my work. T have distributed thousands
of pages of choice reading matter on the ships, for which
all are very grateful. I wish especially in their behalf,
to thank the many kind friends who have furnished me so
much of this literature. I have often visited our "Seaman's
Home" and conversed with its inmates, and tried to ad-
vance the Bethel and ship work by all means in my power.
The officers and men and apprentice boys have always
treated me kindly, and much good has been apparently
done among them."

CHAPTER XL

ON SHIP AND ON SHORE.

If you cannot, on the ocean, sail among the swiftest fleet,
Rocking on the highest billow, laughing at the storm you

meet,
You can stand among the sailors anchored yet within the

bay,
You can lend a hand to help them as they launch their

boats away."

—Phillips.

IT has been observed by the reader that for some
time the work of the Chaplain of the Bethel
had not been prosperous. The incumbent had
high ideas of personal dignity, with a somewhat ex-
alted churchism, and felt that it was his place to
command and the sailors place to obey, even in
matters of religion. He could not understand that
Jack on shore was a freeman, and the very fact that

142 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

he had been compelled to submit to a vigorous dis-
cipline on the ship made him the more certain to
assert his independence when on the land. He was
then on an independent cruise, and he rather de-
lighted in running close by the most dangerous
reefs, if only to show his own skill in avoiding ship-
wreck. He could be touched, but not by cold and
high-headed dignity. He did not care for a clerical
garb. He resented sing-song cant. Bustling rit-
uals meant nothing to him. He was not looking
for men of that ilk at all. In fact, he was not look-
ing for anybody. Least of all was he on the hunt
for a man shut up in stone walls, sitting in a high
pulpit, and in a solemn air waiting for some rollick-
ing tar to come in and bow down and say: "Most
Reverend Sir, won't you please condescend to tell
me how I may be saved?" Such a man, sitting in
"the dim — very dim — religious light" of such a
place is not very likely to have many "mourners '
at his "bench;" certainly not many of the gallani
and light hearted boys of the sea. The wonder is
not that they do not come, but that he sits there
and expects them to come. The free street, the
wide open door, the generous invitation going
straight to the heart, the manly recognition of the

ON SHIP AND ON SHORE. 143

sailor-boy's own manhood, the tender reference to
his far-away mother, or the watching, waiting
sweetheart, anxious for her absent lover's good, and
praying for his safe return, these and such thoughts
as these will gain his ear and hold his heart. When
he learns to love the representative of Christ he
will soon love the Christ he represents. There is
no other avenue to the sailor's heart.

Unfortunately the Chaplain at this time in the
Bethel had never learned this lesson. A good man
undoubtedly, he was stern and inflexible. He was
a bit of the rock of Horeb that by some accident
had been dislocated and fallen upon the blood-
bathed, love-illumined summits of the mount of
the Cross and of the Transfiguration. He was the
everlasting thunder of the law, jarring its discords
of wrath amidst the heavenly symphonies of "grace
and truth."

Mr. Fletcher, while doing the things of the law,
always sang and talked and lived according to the
strains of the "New Song," "Peace on earth, good
will to men." This difference in feeling and its re-
sultant expression in action, brought to him much
trial, and, what was infinitely worse, greatly re-
tarded the general work of the society. The ser-

144 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

vices at the Bethel under the direction of the
Chaplain were nearly deserted, notwithstanding the
work of Mr. Fletcher on ship-board and elsewhere
among the sailors was prosecuted with his usual
diligence and success. He did all he could to
remedy the evil by the most hearty assistance he
could render at the Bethel, and with some good re-
sults, but not so marked as he desired. By some
solicitation he succeeded in persuading the Chap-
lain to go out on the streets for a short service of
song before the hour for chapel services, and by
this means gather a larger number inside to listen
to the sermon which followed. Still even this
seemed not strong enough to overcome the evil
influence that paralyzed the public work at the
Bethel. It is no wonder that Mr. Fletcher earnest-
ly prayed that "'the Lord would send a change
soon in the Chaplaincy of the Bethel.''

On the 12th of May he notes one of the peculiar-
ly sad class of incidents that are always occurring
in seaports. The carpenter of the bark Clynder,
while endeavoring to cross a railroad trestle on his
way to his ship, while under the influence of liquor,
fell from it and was killed. His name was Jacob
Bremner, of Hamburg, Germany. Only a few days

ON SHIP AND ON SHORE. 146

before Mr. Fletcher had visited the ship on his
Sabbath morning round, and spent a half hour in
talking to the men in the forecastle, and distribut-
ing books and papers among them. This man was
doubtless among those who shared the loving min-
istrations of this lover of men at that time. It was
doubtless the last call of that kind he ever listened
to. It is not wonderful that the one who was God's
messenger in uttering that call should say, "I am
more than ever impressed with the necessity of my
work among these dear men of the sea, and that
what I have to do for them must be done quickly.
This makes the seventeenth that we have laid away
in our new mariner's cemetery since it was opened."
Sad as is that last record, there is a very glad one
that stands against it, namely, that many times that
number had come to this port "dead in trespass and
in sins" but had sailed away again with a new spirit-
ual life in their hearts. While the sad hearts of the
friends of those who sleep in that cemetery will
turn towards Portland and think of their dead who
slumber there, many more will turn towards it and
think of their living who were born there unto the
new and incorruptible life. While the first will
think of Mr. Fletcher as the one whose hands

146 WILLIAM S. FLETCHEK.

gently smoothed the dying pillow of wandering
sons or brothers or lovers, and whose care gave
them Christian sepulchre under the distant skies of
Oregon, the latter will think of him as the priest
ministrant at the altar of divine consecration when
their sons or brothers or lovers were "born into the
Kingdom of God." Or, they themselves, thus and
here born into that divine life, will turn back to it
in ever-recurring remembrance of the natal hour
and natal spot that will forever monument their
spiritual birth. They will sing: —

'•There is a spot to rne more dear

Than native vale or mountain;
A spot for which affection's tear

Springs grateful from its fountain."
'Tis not where kindred souls abound.

Though that were almost heaven;
But where I first my Saviour found

And felt my sins forgiven

O, blessed hour! O, hallowed spot

Where love divine first found me!
Wherever falls my distant lot,

My heart still lingers round thee.
And when from earth I rise and soar

Up to my home in heaven,
Down will I cast my eyes once more

Where I was first forgiven."

ON SHIP AND ON SHORE. 147

And to many a one that spot will be the beauti-
ful port of the Willamette, and the gentle pilot,
who led the inquiring soul into the haven of rest
and life will bear the name of Fletcher; and they
"will glorify God in him."

Early in June of this year the receipt of a letter
from a young man who had been a member some
years before of the Sabbath morning class of Mr.
Fletcher in Taylor Street Church, brought many
pleasant and grateful memories to his mind which
he thus records:

"I received a letter to-day from Brother E. K. Zimmer-
man, now of the Kansas Conference, and stationed at
Reamsville, Kansas. This dear brother was put into my
class by Rev. C. C. Stratton. our pastor, when he was con-
verted. It was Brother Stratton also who appointed me
leader of that class. While Brother Zimmerman was a
member of my class he received the blessings of perfect
love, and felt himself called to preach the gospel. So he
went to the theological seminary in Boston for three years.
After he got through Avith his studies he entered the Kan-
sas conference, where he has been a good and faithful
minister ever since. I had not heard from him for some
years and my heart rejoices at the good news from him
In looking over my old class-books from 1869 to 1880, I
flnd that there are now live members of that Sabbath
morning class preaching the gospel, and one died a few
months ago. The first was Brother Zimmerman, then came

148 W1LLIM S. FLETCHER.

T. L. Sails, then S. O. Royal and A. J. McNamee, and later
E. A. Shoreland and .7. C. Teter, th*1 last two now in Africa
under that dear man of God, Bishop Taylor."

This quotation from Mr. Fletcher's journal is
given specially to show how the small seeds of
grace sown in human hearts, under the silent in-
fluences of pious culture, spring up and bring forth
their great harvests of goodness over all the world.
In this little class-room, under the guidance of this
unpretentious leader, these young men were being
trained in the most essential culture of a successful
career, a deep, profound religious experience. T.
L. Sails, a sailor rescued from his wide-world rov-
ings by his conversion in Taylor Street Church, be-
came one of the best beloved and most successful
of Oregon pastors, and then went up to his rest.
Stanley O. Royal is at this writing among the hon-
ored and useful members of the Cincinnati Con-
ference. After some years of most devoted mis-
sionary toil under Bishop Taylor in Africa, E. A.
Shoreland stepped into the ascending chariot on
the banks of the Congo. J. E. Teter wrought no-
bly for the Master under the same great leader-
ship in the "Darkest Africa," when he returned to
another field in Florida. Not one of them but

ON SHIP AND ON SHORE. 149

bore some impress of the moulding spirit of Mr.
Fletcher into all their splendid life-work. Surely
"the children of the kingdom are the good seed,"
not so much by what they say and teach, as by
what they are and do.

Only a month after the entry in Mr. Fletcher's
journal made in relation to E. A. Shoreland, he
chronicles the news of his death. Mr. Fletcher had
so much to do with the first religious life of Mr.
Shoreland that it appears proper to make some
larger reference to him, and to the noble place he
was filling even in his early manhood, in the work
of the Master.

Shoreland was an English sailor, and came to
Portland as such, and. like the great mass of sailors
who came to this port at that time, wild and reck-
less. He had a strong, forceful, passionate nature;
just such as must pour itself out either in good or
evil. Here he left his ship and resolved to try his
fortunes on the land, at least for a time. He soon
found employment in such work as an uneducated
sailor might do. His contact with men on the
shore in the active business of life gave a new bent
to his thoughts, and it was not long before his
mind began to grasp the ide«. that there was some-

ibO WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

thing better in the world for men to do than to con-
sume the strong forces of mind and body in dissipa-
tion and revel, if not in crime. His powers of ob-
servation were keen, and he soon came to the con-
clusion that the moral help and the intellectual
stimulus he needed to make a man of himself could
only be had in the associations and fellowship of the
church. With full consecrations he began a relig-
ious life. His mental ambition was born with his
new spiritual birth. When his soul touched saving
grace his mind ignited at contact with "the mind
of Christ." So he became "altogether" Christian.
Soon he was licensed as a preacher, and labored in
an energetic though humble way in the chapels
and missions in and about the city. Laboring
earnestly during the week at such toil as came to
him, on the Sabbaths and in the evenings he
wrought in the spiritual and intellectual quarries
to save souls and to gain knowledge. He suc-
ceeded in both. It was not long until the door of
the Annual Conference opened to him and he took
his place in the line of the approved and improving
young pastorate of the church. Souls everywhere
were his hire in the fields of his labor. His sturdy,
well-knit frame seemed fitted to the heaviest bur-

ON SHIP AND ON SHORE. 151

dens of a rugged pioneer itinerancy. The church in
Oregon began to count on him as one whose work
would pillar her future with strength and beauty.

Just at this time the work of Bishop Taylor in
Africa was drawing the vision of the church
thitherward with a strange enchantment. Shore-
land's was a soul to feel the contagion of Taylor's
enthusiasm and consecration. He was brave
enough to respond to it, and he entered the work
in that dark land with an enthusiasm and a judg-
ment that put him far towards the front of the
workers there. But on March 31, 1888, his strong
body succumbed to the burning grip of the African
fever, and at Lorando he surrendered his purified
soul to God and passed into the heavens.

When the intelligence of his death reached Ore-
gon it awakened great sympathy in the heart of the
church. The present writer, who was at that time
editor of the Pacific Christian Advocate in Port-
land, and who had been Mr. Shoreland's pastor in
the years of his early Christian life, gave the fol-
lowing notice of the event in his paper of July 12,
1888:-

"So this dear brother has given his life for Africa. He
gave it really when he went there, for no one can RO on

152 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

such a mission ;is that without giving his life to it. The
whole for life or death is determined when the work is
undertaken. So it was with Brother Shoreland. Only a
few minutes before he stepped on board the cars that bore
him away from this city on his mission to Africa, we bade
him adieu. Tears were in his eyes and ours, as we looked
the last look of love, spoke the last word of fellowship.
We have borne him on our heart daily since that hour. We
resign that strong and consecrated manhood to death reluc-
tantly, if we dare say that, ana yet feeling that someway
his going to Africa and dying there is a part of the price of
Africa's redemption, and so our regrets are mingled with
rejoicing at his entrance into the life eternal. Sails and
Shoreland! How they loved each other; and how they
have met so soon."

Mr. Fletcher's reference to Shoreland, when he
received the intelligence of his death, was charac-
teristically tender. He says:

"I have seen by the Advocate to-day the news of the
death of our dear Brother Shoreland, who went out with
Bishop Taylor under the call of God to help redeem Africa.
Well do I remember when I flrst met him years ago with
other English sailor lads, who had left their ships on this
coast, wild and reckless, just as I myself used to be before
the grace and spirit of God found me, as it afterwards
found Brother Shoreland. Now he is gone to heaven to
meet our beloved shipmate, T. L. Sails, who has just gone
before him. I am still left to sow a little more seed of
the kingdom, and, if possible, to save a few more of these

ON SHIP AND ON SHORE. 153

dear sailor lads, so they too may become like these who
have gone above, mighty through God in the saving of
their fellows. May God till me with grace and power for
this great work

CHAPTER XII.

CORRESPONDENCE.

"It is a great mistake to think of converting the world
without the help of the sailor. You might as well think of
melting a mountain of ice with a moonbeam, or of heating
an oven with snowballs; but get the sailor converted, and
he is off from one port to another as if you had put spurs

to lightning."

—Taylor.

T \URING the summer months the ships that
-J — ' trade with Portland are mostly on their
voyages out, and they do not generally begin to
arrive in port for cargo until autumn. Consequent-
ly during these months there is little "ship work"
unless "a wanderer" chances along. Much corres-
pondence was generally carried on by Mr. Fletch-
er at this time with captains and sailors from their
home ports. It was almost entirely with those
who owed him some special gratitude for his care
over them religiously when they were here, or from
those who by his influence had been led to Christ

CORRESPONDENCE. 155

and had gone away Christians, even though they
came condemned sinners. Not infrequently the
friends, as mother, sister, brother or father of some
poor wanderer who had been sick and perhaps
died here, and had been tenderly watched over by
Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher while living or lovingly laid
away to rest when dead, would send some tender
and pathetic acknowledgment of that care and love.
A brief chapter of this correspondence, selected
from a few of the many letters received by them at
different times and on various occasions, cannot
but be interesting and profitable to the readers of
these pages; as they will show the high esteem
in which these lovers of their race were personally
held by those whom they so heartily and generous-
ly comforted and aided when they were strangers
in a strange land. Besides they will give some
glimpses of the trying life of the sailor and of the
terrible moral strain that is upon him to lead him
away from all good and truth and virtue, against
which the efforts of such men and women as Mr.
and Mrs. Fletcher, are about the only safeguard
and protection. They will be introduced without
any special chronological order, as they are used
only for the ends named above. The first is from a

156 WILLIAM S. FLETCHEK.

lady of Birkenhead, England, in a full, round beau-
tiful chirography, and is signed by "Kate Mac-
lean," and is as follows:

"Dear Mrs. Fletcher:— My brother Hughie has told us so
much about you and Mr. Fletcher, that we all feel as if we
knew you; and we all feel so very grateful to you for all
the kindness you showed him during his stay in Portland,
Oregon. He did so enjoy being with you, and said it always
gave him a taste of home when he went to your house. *
* * * We shall always think ot you with feel-
ings of love and gratitude for all your goodness to Hughie."

It is suitable that this letter from the loving
sister should be followed by one from the sailor
brother over whose welfare she so tenderly
watched. It was also dated at Birkenhead. April
23, 1890; and reads as follows:

"Dear Mr. Fletcher: — I suppose you have quite given up
all hope of ever hearing from me again. I feel quite
ashamed of myself for not writing you sooner, after all the
kindness received by me from you and Mrs. Fletcher,
which was so much more to me as I was in a strange place
and so far from home.

"I have been working on board the ship for the past fort-
night, so that will be in part excuse for not writing. We
sail tomorrow for Sydney, New South Wales, with part of
the cargo for Newcastle. I have often thought of the many
happy evenings I spent in Grace Chapel, and how homelike

CORRESPONDENCE. 157

it felt to get among kind people, and I feel quite sure that
it the congregation knew how happy they make boys feel
when in a strange land, and far from their friends, by their
shake of the hand, it would pay them ten-fold. I suppose
you are quite at home in your new church by this time, aud
I hope it pleases everybody, but if 1 ever go to Portland
again I think I would foel more at home by going to the
nice little chapel than to the new church.

"My father and sisters all wish to be kindly remembered
to you and Mrs. Fletcher for your kindness to me; and I
close with love and best wishes to you both from us all.
"Yours sincerely,

"HUOHIE MACLEAN."

What a beautiful glympse of real human brother-
hood and sisterhood is opened to the mind of the
reader in these two letters. The sailor-boy, swim-
ming over distant seas on the rolling ship; the
loving sister in the cottage-home following him
day by day over the wide main with her heart's
best love and her faith's most ardent prayers; the
true, human-hearted Christian standing on the
dock, half way round the world, awaiting, with
wide open and protecting arms, the sailor coming
from the seas; the little chapel out of whose doors
and windows streams the inviting light of the Gos-
pel; the congregation of loving worshipers ex-
tending their hands in glad greeting to the sea-

158 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

worn sailor from another clime to the strong'
brotherhood and the loving sisterhood of the
church; these are all a part of the beautiful whole
of the scene these letters paint to the mind. Surely
such facts and such work go far to prove that, even
if humanity was all lost in Adam, it was all re-
gained in Christ.

A sailor-boy who has been cared for and instruct-
ed by Mr. Fletcher and his wife while in port is
now about to sail away on his long voyage. His
vessel had dropped down the Columbia to Astoria,
and just before she put to sea he wrote Mr. Fletch-
er the following letter:

"Dear Brother in the Lord:— I thought it good to write a
line before we leave for home. We thank God for the visits
which you have paid to ns from time to time since we ar-
rived in Portland. It is to be hoped that we will see the
fruits of them some day if not now. We thank you for the
reading which you gave us, especially for the book of ser-
mons. It is singular but it is the very thing that I desired,
so I consider the Lord sent it. Blessed ever be His holy
name for His kind care of me. This is like the Lord in
all His dealings with me. He supplies all of my wants
and takes all of my cares. I did intend to visit you before I
left, but you see the Lord sent what I wanted. I hope that
your mission room will soon open. You cannot know what
a comfort it is to have a place to go to where we may find

CORRESPONDENCE. 159

Christian fellowship with those Avho love the Lord and love
to speak of these things. In my case you are the only one
I have had a word Avith since I came there, I never neglect-
ed to try to lead any who were around me in the ship in
the right, and had good hopes that all was well with some
of them, but having no place where I could direct thorn
when they might meet with what they needed to keep thorn
from temptation they seem all to have fallen away. I
think more of this as I see the need of their finding some
kind friend who has influence to keep them from the "run-
ners" and "boarding house masters." One of our men es-
pecially I will mention. He has a wife and little one at
home. He had remained firm until the last day or two.
when, through drink, he fell away and left. Here is a wife
and little one left to get their bread as best they can, as
the half-pay that she had stopped. I am sure if proper in-
fluence had been brought to bear on him the boarding-
masters would not have got him.

"The papers and books that you gave will be read and
distributed around on the ship.

Yours, in Christ,

WILLIAM BUNTING."

Member Seaman's Christian Life Boat Crew. Motto— "He
that wiuneth souls is wise."

This letter indicates one class of perils to which
the sailor in port is always exposed. Mr. Fletcher
himself, in his early life, when on the sea had suf-
fered from them, and he was the better prepared
to guard those who came under his influence from

160 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

them. There are always in every port land pirates
who lie in wait to make Jack their prey. False,
immoral, treacherous men. yea. and women too.
whose sole business is entrapping the unwary into
their dens of infamy and then robbing them of
whatever they may have of worth, and then casting
them out into the street, careless whether they live
or die. Many and many were the sailor-boys Mr.
Fletcher guided away from these haunts of death —
these chambers of hell. He led them to the
church. He took them to his own home. He was
brother, father, protector to them. Mrs. Fletcher
was sister, mother, friend to them. No wonder
the sisters, mothers and fathers of these sailor-boys
all over the world love and revere the names of
these two angels of help to their brothers and sons
in Portland. The Christ himself will say unto
them, "inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least
of these, ye have done it unto Me."

Some of these letters show something of the hard
and harsh treatment given the sailors on board
some of the ships. Tn a letter bearing date at Liv-
erpool, from David Jones, we find the following:—

"I arrived here Monday night, and we laid six days hi
Queenstown. The ship I came home on. (the Edward

CORRESPONDENCE. 161

O'Brien,) I need hardly tell you, was a very hot one; but I
am pleased to say that I got along better than I did in any
other ship. I have the chance of going back, either as
third mate or second boatswain, but I would not go in her
for $100 a month and have to beat men the way the officers
did. There were four men in that ship triced up by the
1 numbs for threatening to kill the mate. One of them had
a revolver in his breast at. the time he was hanging up on
the line; but he had no chance to use it. I suppose.

We had a very stormy passage. Two men were washed
overboard, but we got them again with a great deal of
trouble, more dead than alive. Another seaman fell from
the rigging while reefing the sails, and broke his leg and
cut his face."

This letter from David Jones was followed not
long after by one dated Liverpool, August 26th.
1889, from Mr. E. Jones, the father of David, which
has great interest as indicating the excellent influ-
ence of Mr. Fletcher over the life and destiny of
these sailor-boys in all respects. The letter of Mr.
Jones. Senior, says:

"Dear Mr. Fletcher: I now take the pleasure of writing
you, hoping these few lines will find you in good health.
David received your kind letter, Avhich I think he answered
the same week after receiving it. We were very pleased to
have him home, also to see him looking so well. We
scarcely knew him when he came, ho has altered so much,
but were pleased to see such a change in him for the better.

162 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

He is settling down better than we thought he would, and
looks at things iu a more sensible light than he formerly
did. And, above all, we were pleased to see that he is a to-
tal abstainer. He Avas telling us he had not touched drink
since he left the Arethusa, and we have no fear now of his
falling away again. Many thanks for the kindly influence
you have had on him, and the interest you have taken in his
Avelfare. We assure you we have appreciated your kindness
very much, although we can return you but poor thanks
by letter. His mind seems settled on America, especially
the district you reside in.

Well, he has left us once more. He did not go back on
Ihe Kdward O'Brien. As there was very cruel treatment
on board during her passage here, we did not wish him to
go in her again. He sailed from Liverpool on the 12th of
August on the Loch Broom, for Calcutta, and intends ship-
ping from there to 'Frisco if he can. We hope he will soon
meet with a ship from there. As he seems to have his
mind on America, we think he would do better to settle
ashore. With kind regards to Mrs. Fletcher,
Sincerely yours,

E. JONES."

One cannot read such letters without feeling
that it is really easy to do good. A kind, sympa-
thizing heart, good common sense, an earnest
spirit and a soul in fellowship with the soul of
Christ can hardly avoid doing good. It does not
need great professions or even great abilities, only
sincerity, truth and love. They were the elements

CORRESPONDENCE. 103

that bore the mastery in the life of Mr. Fletcher,
and that found for him so ready an opening into
the hearts of sailor-boys with whom he came into
contact. How many they lifted from profanity to
prayer, from drunkenness to devotion, from revel-
ry to reverence, from a life of aimless folly to a life
of high and holy purpose, only eternity will dis-
close. It is the conviction of the writer that many
a man who has stood in the high places of the
church on earth may be found far below him in the
preferments of the Church Triumphant. God
does not forget, nor the Recording Angel keep the
book incorrectly. If "patient continuance in well
doing," if constant "looking for glory and honor
and immortality" gives any assurance of "eternal
life/' or gives an advanced grade of heavenly re-
ward, surely he will shine among the brightest
"stars in the firmament forever and ever."

One other letter written by a young man of evi-
dently more than average intelligence, must close
this chapter of correspondence. It was written on
board the English ship "Clan McPherson," in San
Francisco harbor, January 11, 1891, and is as fol-
lows:

164 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

"Dear Mr. Fletcher:— Just a few lines to inform you of
our safe arrival here, for which I humbly thank God, for
only He knows how near we were to death on this
passage. We arrived here last Wednesday after a very
quick but a most terrible and disastrous voyage. We
experienced nothing but gales of wind the whole way; in
fact we have never had a dry deck until the day we arrived
here. The worst hurricane we encountered was on Christ-
mas eve. Without exaggeration the sea ran mountains
high, and caused a tremendous amount of damage, and un-
fortunately some accidents, one of which nearly proved
fatal. This was in the case of an apprentice of the name
of Killam. The poor boy was knocked down by a large sea
and nearly drowned, so that it took us nearly two hours to
bring him to consciousness. He Avas horribly cut and
bruised about the head and on the body, so that we all
despaired of his life; but I am glad to say he is now recov-
ering. The same sea threw the ship on her beam ends and
the cargo shifting we remained in that dangerous predica-
met throughout the gale. Every wave that broke over us
that dreadful night threatened to swamp us, and every
minute we thought she would founder. We had a miserable
Christmas, Mr. Fletcher, as we were in the hold trimming
cargo all the time, with nothing for our Christmas cheer
but rum and biscuit, as nothing could be cooked in the
galley. Our two boats on the house were washed away,
the pigs and the pigsty, the posts along our bulwarks, and
everything that was movable on our decks. In fact, we
were a complete wreck. How grateful we are to God for
His goodness to us in enabling us to reach our destination,
I will leave you to imagine.

CORRESPONDENCE. 165

-Remember me to dear Mrs. Fletcher, and tell her again
how grateful I am for her kindness to me while in Port-
land. I remain your sincerely attached young friend,

"G. J. SPINK."

What a picture of the perils of a sailor's life is
here presented, not in the fancy paintings of a
Marryatt or a Reid, but in the experience of this
young sailor, who had this hard wrestle with the
winds and the waves on this awful Christmas day.
Surely these "sailor-lads," as Mr. Fletcher so of-
ten and so tenderly calls them, deserve the kind-
liest treatment of those for whose comfort and
pleasure they "go down to the sea in ships and do
business in great waters." Brave? The warrior
before the cannon's mouth is not braver! When
"the sea shall give up the dead that is in it," many
and many will rise from their coral beds and sea-
weed shrouds to wear the whitest robes and bear
the brightest crowns in Paradise.

CHAPTER XIII.

WON FOR GOD.

"Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shall find it
after many days."— Bible.

OWARDS the last of August, of 1888, the
first vessel of the autumn merchant fleet
arrived in Portland, and Mr. Fletcher hastened to
greet its sailors with his usual messages of good.
The summer had been spent largely in work in the
mission Sunday school, and, as opportunity offered
in services on the street and in the Bethel. But
the prospects of the work in the Bethel were still
clouded by the unfortunate condition of its chap-
laincy. This, of course, was a sore trial to the pa-
tience and Christian forbearance of Mr. Fletcher,
but he bore it with courage, and labored on to
build up the general work, and to reach and save
the individual seamen. He notes that at one of
the Bethel prayer meetings a young sailor who had
just arrived in port introduced himself and inquired

WON FOli GOD. 167

if he recognized him, and when informed that he
did not, replied, ''Well, I know you. I was here
eight years ago, when I was a boy, and you held
meetings on our ship, the "Robert Lee." At that
time the captain of the ship and four of the men
were converted, this boy among them, and he still
remained steadfast and gave good promise of a
useful life among his shipmates. Thus the bread
cast literally upon the waters was found again "af-
ter many days."

Early in September of this year the annual mer-
chant fleet began to arrive in port and for the three
following months Mr. Fletcher was kept busy in
visiting these vessels, and, as he had opportunity,
doing good of every kind to all on board. The
cabin-boy and the apprentice was no more over-
looked in these efforts than were the officers. He
had the foresight to understand that the cabin-boy
of to-day will be the master of to-morrow, and that
a child saved to-day meant a man or woman pre-
pared for the work of the Master after a time. So
he let no opportunity pass to impress the young
mind aright. And it must be said that there have
been very few within the scope of the writer's ac-
quaintance who have been as successful in this

168 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

work as W. S. Fletcher. Guileless and open heart-
ed himself, low-voiced and tender in his speech, and
with a face lit up with the holy contentment and
satisfaction of his pure spirit, it was easy for him to
win the love of the young to himself, and then to
transfer that love over to the Master whose servant
and lover he was. His journal is full of references
to "picture cards," "lesson papers/' &c., that were
left in the hands of the children on board the ships,
on the streets and in the Bethel Sabbath-school.
Especially as a ship was about to put to sea he
would appear on its decks with bundles of papers,
pictures, books, magazines, for all on board.
Many a heart was made glad at this thoughtful-
ness, and one can easily imagine the pleasure and
profit these contributions brought to cabin and
forecastle alike during the weary months of the
long voyages to the ports of the neiher world.

In the midst of this most interesting work Mr.
Moody entered upon evangelistic services in Port-
land. Mr. Fletcher entered most heartily into
that work, and while he did not neglect his ship
work nor his general care for the sailors, he found
time to be present at many of the afternoon and
neary all of the evening services of the great evan-

WON FOK GOD. 169

gelist. He was not only present, he was an active
worker in the cause, and not a few souls were con-
verted by his instrumentality during the meetings.
He records one conversion that occurred during
the meetings that, on some accounts, was worthy
to be recorded among the really wonderful tri-
umphs of divine grace that are sometimes seen in
the progress of the Christian religion. It was the
case of a man of national fame as a lawyer and
a statesman, who had reached the age of probably
fifty-five years, and whose position and influence
was second to those of no man on the Pacific
Coast, Hon. George H. Williams. Mr. Williams
had been a citizen of Portland for thirty-five years.
For many years he had been the leading legal au-
thority in the state, both as a judge upon the
bench and a practicing attorney in the courts.
For six years he had been United States Senator
from Oregon. For four years he had been Attor-
ney General of the United States in the cabinet of
General Grant. He was a member of the Joint
High Commission that settled the Alabama claims.
He was the author of some of the most important
and useful of the reconstruction acts under which
the states latelv in rebellion resumed their places in

170 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

the National Union. He was nominated by Gen-
eral Grant for Chief Justice of the United States
after the death of Chief Justice Chase. Intellect-
ually he was the peer of the great statesmen of that
day of great men. But up to this time, the latter
part of December, 1888, he "had never bowed his
knee in prayer," though he was a man of high
moral character.

The reflections of his own mind had been bring-
ing him nearer and nearer to the faith of the Gos-
pel, and the unsatisfactory character of mere world-
ly success had pressed itself more and more upon
his heart as he had gone higher and higher in pub-
lic standing and worldly fame. Mr. Moody's meet-
ings were the occasion of bringing his mental con-
victions to the crisis of public action.

On the night of December 21, Mr. Williams
stood up publicly, before a congregation of not
less than 3,000 people in the "Tabernacle," and an-
nounced his convictions in clear and unmistakable
words. He recited the movements of his mind as
he was coming to the final conclusion intellectual-
ly, as well as the character of his action in finding
his way, from darkness to light and from the power
of Satan unto God;" and how, at last, that very

WON FOR GOD. 171

day, in Mr. Moody 's room, when the evangelist
was opening to his mind the Scriptures and kneel-
ing with him in prayer, God sent peace into his
soul, and for the first time in his life he was made
to understand what it means to have the spirit of
God bear witness with his spirit that he was a child
of God.

The effect of the conversion of Judge Williams
was wonderful. His great, logical intellect, his
high personal character, his almost world-wide
fame, everything in his great history conspired to
make this the most notable conversion that ever
occurred on this coast.

In his plain, straight-forward remarks made on
this occasion of his public avowal of conversion to
the faith of Christ. Mr. Williams took occasion to
say that he had been brought to his present step
by careful study and long observation, and that it
was not a sudden impulse or supernatural impres-
sion that led him to this public action, but a sense
of duty and of fidelity to his profoundest convic-
tions. It was a giving up to God worthy of such
a man; and from that hour the position and action
of Judge Williams on all questions of Christian ser-
vice and life has been that of a true and humble fol-

172 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

lower of the "meek Nazarene." Mr. Fletcher, who
was present on the occasion, speaks of it as "one
of thrilling interest."

It is well that we close up the record of Mr.
Fletcher's work for 1889, and give the beginning
of it for 1890, in the words of his own journal:

"Dec. 31. — Mr. Moody closed up his mission here with a
watch night meeting at the tabernacle. It was one of great
power. The Tabernacle was packed from seven o'clock to
midnight. The most of the city pastors gave short ad-
dresses, and Judge Williams gave a most thrilling account
of his experience. Eternity alone can tell the good that has
been accomplished by these meetings. I have been greatly
profited by them. In the inquiry room I have spoken to
and prayed with seventeen. Some of them were back-
sliders, some seekers, and some doubters. As the result of
my speaking and praying with them five have professed to
be converted, and two reclaimed from back sliding, and my
own soul has been greatly blest.

I have written to Dr. Stitt, the secretary of the "Ameri-
can Seaman's Friend Society," and also visited two ships
to-day. In looking over my work for the year that has
just closed, my heart has been made sad at the little that
has been accomplished in our Bethel work. It has been
impossible to get the sailors or the longshoremen and their
families to attend, the Chaplain's ways are so arrogant and
domineering. Over two years ago we had a good congrega-
tion in the Bethel, both of sailors and longshoremen and
their families, and a good supply of faithful workers, but

WON FOR GOD. 173

now they are all gone.I do feel thankful to God that my
way has not been hedged up in my ship work. My Heaven-
ly Father gives me favor with both officers and men so I
can do them good. That work has been greatly blest both
to my own soul and my brethren of the sea, and the bread
tli at before had been cast upon the waters has been found
after many days. To God be all the glory."

Although Mr. Fletcher's work received the gen-
eral support of the master's of the ships in which
he labored, yet occasionally one was found who did
not enter into his plans. On Sunday. December
6th, he refers to an incident that illustrates this.
He says: —

"I visited one ship this morning and had a very profitable
conversation with Captain Vaile on my spiritual work
among the sailors. He is one of those men that believe
it is all labor lost to try to do good to sailors. I think that
I fully convinced him that so far as my own work is con-
cerned, at least, I had led some of them to Christ and to a
better life. I then gave him some of my own experience
when I went to sea and was knocking around myself, and
how the devil always used to keep to windward of me,
but when I gave my heart to God then I got windward
of him, and by the power of the blessed Holy Spirit I was
able to keep him ever after under my lee. I then went for-
ward and spoke to the men and boys and spent about an
half hour with them with much profit to them and to my-
self.

174 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

"The way of the wicked is as darkness. They
know not at what they stumble." This is as true
in regard to the opinions of wicked men as in re-
gard to their actions. The things of the Spirit are
only spiritually discerned. Blinded hearts make
blinded eyes. Men who themselves have not
learned to "walk by faith/' nor realized in what
mysterious ways God can work and does work in
saving men, reason but to error on such a theme.
It is not strange, nor does it necessarily imply any
unusual perversity, that such opinions are held and
expressed by such men. One like Mr. Fletcher,
whose own feet had been taken out of the mire and
the clay of wickedness, and had been put upon a
rock, with his goings established in righteousness
and true holiness, knows that grace is omnipresent
to save the lowest and most degraded, and so he
labors on rescuing the lost, lifting up the fallen,
turning many to righteousness who "shall shine as
the stars forever and ever." But for such workers
our whole humanity would sink to fathomless
depths of degradation. It is only such that go
down to the lower stratas of social life, on which
really all above depends, and raise the whole by
purifying and elevating the foundations. We can-

WON FOR GOD. 175

not be too thankful for them, nor too grateful to
them. Illustrating this, on the 2Gth of February
he makes the record that "I had three of the sailors
of the ship M. E. Watson to spend the evening at
our house. Had also Miss Nellie Viggers with us.
\Ye had some good singing and spent a most pleas-
ant time, and closed with some refreshments that
wife got ready for us and a precious season of
prayer. The boys left for their ship, which lay at
the Albina dock, very much pleased with their
visit."

After such an evening and with the sacred home-
feeling that it must needs have inspired in their
hearts, these boys would walk safely for a while
amidst any temptations. Only those who never
tried these holy experiments of love on the hearts
and lives of others doubt their efficacy to save even
the wayward and the prodigal. It is when they are
out in the cold world of consuming sin, with no
Christly hand stretched out to their help, and no
welcoming home-door opening to the cheering fel-
lowship of home-love that these men fall such easy
victims to the evils that allure with the false prom-
ises and counterfeit seeming of that which the
heart so deeply craves.

176 WILLIAM S. FLETCHEK.

"There lies at the bottom of each man's heart
A longing and love for the good and pure;
And if but an atom or larger part

I tell you this shall endure, endure,
After this world has gone to decay;
After the universe passes away

The longer I live and the more I see

Of the struggle of souls towards the heights above,
The more this truth comes home to me

That the universe rests on the shoulders of Love:
A love so limitless, deep and broad

That men have renamed it and called it Love.

—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

CHAPTER XIV.

SHIT WORK.

"Ah! ruy jolly tar. hero you are in port again. God bless
you. See to your helm and you will see a fairer port by
and by. Hark! don't you hear the bells of Heaven over
the sea?'1

—Father Taylor.

A MONG the important services rendered by
-*— *- Mr. Fletcher to the seamen visiting Port-
land was the procuring the passage of a law by the
legislature of Oregon to guard them from that sys-
tem of land-piracy known as "sailor snatching," or
the enticing of the sailors from vessels and harbor-
ing them, and then, in any way possible, making
merchandise of them for the profit of the pirate.
Its provisions were stringent, and the penalty of
its violation was both fine and imprisonment.
This was a law greatly needed, as many seamen
fell under the wiles of these most infamous
wretches, and were led to become faithless to their

178 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

own honor and to the interests of those in whose
service they were. While he was laboring for the
spiritual and social uplift of these men of the sea,
there was no danger that so observant and
thoughtful a friend would fail to note the advant-
age of having a shield of law spread between the
sailor and his enemy and destroyer. Up to the
winter of 1888 and 1889 he had been practically
the prey of these spoilers. Now the despoiler him-
self was put under bonds to let the sailor alone.
The results of this enactment were exceedingly
beneficial, and it was obvious that the work of
spiritual and intellectual culture so earnestly
sought by Mr. Fletcher and the society whose
agent he was, could be much more promisingly
prosecuted than before. This bill, and Mr. Fletch-
er's agency in procuring its passage, were very
highly commended by the American Seaman's
Friend Society, through its general secretary, Rev.
W. C. Stitt.

The evangelist, in the crowded congregation,
amid the exciting accessories of music and song,
of prayer and appeal, or even the popular preacher
in the ordinary pulpit of the city, would be likely
to account the daily and constant plod of Mr.

SHIP WORK. 179

Fletcher among the careless sailor-boys aship and
ashore, dull and profitless work. It was little seen,
not much heard of, but it is very doubtful if any
pastor in the city or any evangelist in the churches
brought, year by year, so many individual souls to
Christ as did Mr. Fletcher during the years we have
traced his history. And after all, it is these indi-
vidual souls that finally make up the aggregate of
the great power and life of the church of God. A
single grain of sand cannot shore a sea, but no sea
can be shored without the single grains of sand.
A single atom of granite cannot make a great
mountain, but no great mountain can be lifted to-
wards the sky without the atom of granite. One
converted man cannot make a great church, but no
great church can be made without the converted
man. The trumpet's blare, the cymbals clang, the
preacher's rhetoric, the evangelist's appeals, the
singer's chorus, all and each, are of themselves
nothing, and they often blare and clang and shout
into the wind for naught. But when a man like
Mr. Fletcher sits down beside a sailor-boy and with
the strong tug of his loving heart draws that sail-
or-boy's heart to Christ, and invites him with a
consciousness of his own redeemed manhood, and

180 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

puts him among God's children and Christ's follow-
ers, something- real is done; a soul is saved from
death, a new power for good is loosened in the
world of religious dynamics.

Over and over this fact appears to us as we read
the story of his daily work. See: —

"March 3, 1889. Visited the ship Hornsby Castle, over at
the Albina docks, and took a fine lot of reading to both
officers and men, and als« invited them to come to church
to-morrow. I also visited the bark Gartmore, which leaves
for Astoria to-morrow morning at five o'clock, and bade
Mrs. Richey, the wife of the captain, good-bye. I also bade
the boys good-bye. Some of those dear boys have attended
church and prayer meeting with me at Grace Church
while here in Portland. I always like to keep the run of
these dear boys.

March 31. Sabbath morning I visited one ship and talked
with the officers and boys, and gave them reading matter
and invited them to church. After attending to my ship-
visiting I attended Dr. Dickson's class at 1 A. M. and en-
joyed a most precious season in prayer and testimony.
This was my old nine o'clock class in the years gone by. I
met some of my old classmates that used to meet with me
then. I used to have conversions in my morning class. O
how many of these dear sailor boys I used to gather in
with me in the class on Sunday morning, and persuade
them to give their hearts to Jesus; and I can say, to the
praise of God, that not a few of them went out of that
classroom "new creatures in Jesus Christ." Why canno*

SHIP WORK. 181

such results continue if we make such efforts to secure
them? The Lord hasten the day when we shall see them
again!"

Yes; five hundred people in the great audience
room, an eloquent oration in the lofty pulpit, grand
music in the orchestra; and in an hour the pleas-
ing entertainment over! Down, or up, in a little
room, a consecrated leader, bowing with some peni-
tent hearts at the mercy seat, teaching some in-
quiring souls the straight way to God, and in an
hour leading them out into that light that never
was seen on sea or land, and yet is the Light of
Life! What a difference. Where is the hiding of
God's power? In that little room, with that little
band. "There is joy in heaven over one sinner
that repenteth."

One peculiarity of Mr. Fletcher's work, as indi-
cated in his daily record, was the promptness with
which he always attended to it. Scarcely had a
ship dropped her anchors in the river, or tied up to
her dock before he was on her deck. Careful, gen-
tle, never obtrusive, he was apt at hand to render
any good service and helpful assistance to officers
or men. Before the pirates of the shore had
reached them he had pre-empted their attention.

182 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

and often won their hearts. He shows how care-
ful and observant he was in this regard in the fol-
lowing : —

May 8. Visited the bark Earl Duuraveii this morning,
which has just arrived at the Albina docks. Had an inter-
esting talk with officers and men and invited them to our
meetings at Grace Church while they remained in port.
There is this peculiarity about sailors: if I can get them
to attend service on arrival they will attend regularly while
in port. They are not very particular as to what church
they attend, but whichever they go to first they will make
their church home while they remain. I got a good many
of them to go to Grace Church, although it is so far up
town, and quite away from their latitude."

Passing on May 12th, the 29th anniversary of his
conversion, Mr. Fletcher makes most grateful men-
tion of it. For nearly a generation he has lived
and wrought and talked for God and humanity.
From a careless rover of the seas he had become a
stable citizen of the "Land of the free and the home
of the brave.'' From a prodigal wasting his sub-
stance in riotous living he had become the owner
of a good home and a fair competence of the
wealth of the world. He had found a home in the
hearts of a great multitude of people that he had
led to Christ in the citv where he dwelt. By his

SHIP WORK. 183

unwavering fidelity to duty, and his constantly im-
proving intellectual and spiritual capability, he had
secured to himself the friendship and trust of the
good people of all denominations. He had broken
the alabaster box of precious ointment over so
many hearts and lives that the perfume of his good
deeds filled all the world much more literally than
would be true of the vast majority of Christian
men. Surely he well might monument with praise
and song the day on whose decision all this blessed-
ness and all this success in life turned. Not only
thus, but it were but natural that he should make
it a day of new consecration; of a higher uplook
and a wider outlook for his future life. This he
did, and moved out into that future life with the
spirit and mien of a conqueror. He did this, not
by becoming exalted above the work he had been
doing, but by consecrating himself more complete-
ly, if possible, to it. So he says: —

"Sabbath morning, May 26. Visited the bark Assaye,
Captain Ritchie. He is a Christian captain. I distributed
a choice selection of reading matter, both forward and aft,
and spent a most profitable time with both officers and
men in trying to persuade them to become sailors for
Jesus, and not to remain in the Devil's service any longer.
I find on nearly every ship more or less Christian sailors.

184 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

especially this last year. Captain Ritchie, who was raised
a Presbyterian, told me how much he enjoyed the services
at Taylor Street Church, and that that is to be his church
while in port. I took him to the city park and from there
to my home for lunch, and then to visit the new High
School and other places, which he was greatly delighted
with."

Not long after the last date there occurred one
of those incidents that open to one's view the sad
vistas of so many lives. Mr. N. L , a respect-
ed and quite prominent resident of Salem, Oregon,
called on Mr. Fletcher to make inquiries concern-
ing his son, W. L , who had run away from

home, and the father had heard that he had gone
to sea on the Otterpool, from Astoria. The boy
was a good scholar, and the father and family had
denied themselves of many of even the necessaries
of life to educate him. He could get sixty dollars
per month in Salem. Loved and cherished at
home, educated through the self-denial of his fam-
ily so that he could be useful and honorable in the
world, he had fallen into the ruinous ways of im-
moral youth and men about him, and had cast all
his own prospects and all his family's trust and
hope to the winds and gone off, spurning a
mother's prayers and a father's benedictions. The

SHIP WORK. 185

father besought Mr. Fletcher's help to find some
trace of his lost boy. The ship Otterpool had
sailed for Londonderry, and Mr. Fletcher could do
no more than write to the captain at his home port.
How many changes and chances are against the
future of all such young men. How few of them
ever "recover themselves out of the snare of the
devil."

On the first day of August Mr. Fletcher writes:

"Visited the ship Scottish Glens at the Albina docks and
had a long and profitable talk with Captain Whiteford.
He is an Irishman and a Roman Catholic. He asked me if
I did not belong to the Catholic Church. I told him I was
brought up in it, and then I told him some of my experi-
ences as a Methodist. I told him after I left my ship in
San Francisco how I went to the mines, and through the
influence of a Cornish miner, who was a Wesleyan local
preacher, I gave my heart to God and became a Christian
man. My experience, I trust, did him good. I left him in
a good humor, and he earnestly invited me to make him
another visit before he left port. He said that he always
read all the magazines and papers that I brought him, and
was very glad to get them.

"August 15. I have written a long letter to Captain
Morris Evans, of the ship Otterpool, to Londonderry, Ire-
land, in regard to the young man mentioned before. Mr.

I; desires to use my influence with Captain Evans to

have 1he young man return home as soon as possible.

186 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

"September 1st, Sabbath morning. Visited the ship Cam-
brian Queen. Had a close conversation with Captain
Thomas, and invited him to Taylor Street Church to hear
Bishop Bowman preach; also his officers and men. Some
of them went with me, and more came a little later. The
Bishop preached a most soul-refreshing sermon from "Bles-
sed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the un-
godly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the
seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the
Lord and in His law doth he meditate day and night."
The church was crowded, and hundreds had to be turned
away for want of room.

"September 2. Attended the services of the Oregon
Conference to-day and heard Dr. H. K. Hines give one of
the most impressive addresses I ever heard on the floor of
an annual conference, in behalf of a theological school to
be established in connection with the Willamette Univer-
sity. The conference closed after a most pleasant session.
May the blessed Holy Ghost go with all these dear men of
God and give them great efficiency and power during the
conference year.

"September 3. I settled up my bank account and left ou
deposit one thousand dollars at five per cent, per annum.
I have got to the place now in my financial matters that I
have been working ahead for for some years. My Heaven-
ly Father has greatly blessed me in my work and in my
health, so that I have been able by strict economy to lay
this amount by, so that, in God's good providence myself
nor wife should be disabled by sickness we should have this
to fall back upon, and not be dependent on any one. It is
all the Lord's, and shall be used as He shall direct."

SHIP WORK. 187

This is a statement that has in it more than a
mere financial exhibit. This young, careless sail-
or, whose entire earnings while he followed the sea
were absorbed by the usual course of evil habits
and evil companionship that keep so many by sea
and land in destitution and almost beggary; this
miner still following the same improvident course,
had been lifted by religion out of all these habits
that so sadly despoiled him, and put upon a career
of industry and economy, and, not only so, upon
one of very wide usefulness, and now, just as age
was beginning to gray his temples had made him
to possess a fair competency of the good of this
world. It was, as he so often says, all of God
through the faithful service he had given his Heav-
enly Father. It was a vindication of God's prom-
ise, made of old, but made for all time, "them that
honor me I will honor; but they that despise me
shall be lightly esteemed."

CHAPTER XV.

WIDENING WORK.

"Surpassing grateful for this friendly light,
I baste to raise it to a flame more uright;

And lo! it grows

Beneath my fostering care until its ray
Illumines far and wide the treacherous way.

Nor limit knows."

—La Tourette.

r I ^ HE autumn of 1889 brought a large increase
-*• of the merchant fleet to the port of Port--
land, and consequently added largely to the labors
and responsibility of Mr. Fletcher. With the cap-
tains and crews of the vessels that had been annual
visitors for years he had formed a pleasant and use-
ful acquaintance, and that acquaintance had been
the means of making his character and work well
known to many whom he had never seen, and they
were thus prepared to receive him with respect and
attention on their arrival. It is to be noted, too,
in the course of his journal that there were many

WIDENING WORK. 189

more Christian officers and men of the vessels than
there had been in former years. Large numbers
of these had been converted in this port, and main-
ly under his influence and direction, and to them it
was a kind of home-coming, and they greeted Port-
land as their spiritual birth-place, and Mr. Fletcher
as their spiritual father. The relations between
himself and his spiritual children grew more and
more tender and confiding, and his influence over
them more and more helpful. His ceaseless, un-
wearied attention to them, the kindly hospitality
of his home, the soft and tender tones of his voice
while his eyes would glisten with the tear of sym-
pathy and solicitude, drew them near to him, and
held them with silken cords to his heart. One of
the most familiar sights on the streets of Portland
was "Father Fletcher," as he was now beginning
to be called, in the midst of a company of his "sail-
or-lads," conversing with them with animated and
victorious countenance, guiding them away from
the traps and pitfalls that were set on every side
for their unwary feet, and leading them towards the
safe harbor of the Bethel or the Church. "Jack"
was his love, and helping and saving him was the
inspiration of his life.

190 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

During the month of September he visited at
least two ships a day, conversing with officers and
men, distributing reading and looking most care-
fully after their spiritual and temporal interests;
entertained many of them at his own home, intro-
duced them to the churches, and thus put a bright
spot into the life of these boys and men that would
be an influence for help to them ever thereafter.
On the 6th of September he writes:—

"I visited five ships and had two of the apprentice bo.ys
of the Cambrian Queen spend the evening with us at our
home. On going to their ship my wife gave them a large
basket of prunes to take on board with them, so that all
hands might have a good 'blow out' with them. These
dear boys always like to come and spend an evening with
us at our home. They receive so little kindness either on
sea or shore that they greatly appreciate that that we are
able to extend to them while here.

"Met Captain Frazier and his wife on shore. They at-
tend Taylor Street Church when in this port, and the Cap-
tain always has services on board his ship at sea.

"On the 10th I visited four ships, and found that Mr.
Elliot and Mr. Dodson, first and second officers of the
bark 'Star of Denmark,' and four of the boys went to Tay-
lor Street Church Sunday night. They are Wesleyan Meth-
odists belonging to Belfast, Ireland, as does their ship.

"October 10th. I had two of the bark Nagpore boys,
three of the bark British Army boys, and Mr. Gunn, the

WIDENING WORK. 191

carpenter, to spend the evening with us at our home. Af-
ter some time spent in singing and conversation, wife got
the boys some nice refreshments, which they greatly en-
joyed, after which I read a chapter of Scripture and we
had a season of prayer, and about ten o'clock the boys left
for their ships, highly pleased with their visit, and promis-
ing to come again before they sailed for home. I receive
many letters from the parents of these boys thanking us
for our kindness to them. It makes us happy to be thus
remembered by those we have tried to 'serve in the Lord.'

"October 30, Sabbath. I visited the ship Kooringa and
had a profitable conversation with the boys and men. I
had thirteen of them with me at church at one night ser-
vice. I was greatly put out with our pastor. I had asked
him several times to remember my 'sailor-boys,' as well
ns my brethren of the sea in his public prayers, but he,
like thousands of others, seems to think that poor Jack
may look out for himself. There is no class of men that
deserves more sympathy and help from the church than
sailors, and none that are more bold and steadfast in con-
fessing Jesus than they. Once get 'Jack' converted and ho
will stand right up and show his colors in any port.

"November 2. We buried to-day James Henderson, aged
40 years, of London, England. He leaves a wife and two
children. He was carpenter of the ship Herniione. He
died while I had hold of his hand talking with him. I
hope the dear man was saved.

"October 13. I had a long talk with some of the boys
and men of the ship 'General Filton,' which was burned off
Cape Horn with a cargo of coal on board, bound for the
west coast. The crew had a very narrow escape, for, just

192 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

as the fire Avas breaking through the hatches, the ship
'Glen McPherson' hove in sight, and took all hands off.
When the last boat left the burning ship she was one sheet
of flanie. The 'Glen McPherson' brought all the officers and
crew to Portland. There were twenty-two of them on
board. , !SSl£f!

"November 17. Sabbath morning I visited the bark Glen-
effice, left reading matter and invited the boys to church.
Visited the hospital in the afternoon, and read for Brother
Hoe the experience of Bishop Foss in his sickness, some
years ago. I also read lor him the 14th chapter of John
and had a precious season of prayer with him. We had a
large turnout of the sailor-boys at the services at Grace
Church at night. It was a good day for my soul. Praise
the Lord!

"November 28, Thanksgiving Day. It has been a very
happy day to me. I was able to get 2G of my young sailor
lads to attend the dinner at the Y. M. C. A. rooms. They
compared very favorably with any other 26 lads that were
there. They were well behaved and did credit to them-
selves.

"December 1st. Visited the ship Eskdale, Captain Mur-
dock. He was here six years ago in the Eskdale. as was
also his second officer, who was then an apprentice in her.
I had a long talk with the officers and men, and invited
them to Grace Church for the night service. We had two
from the 'Clan McPherson,' two from the 'Ben Nevis,' four
from the 'General Gordon,' and two from the 'Crown of
England.' I am thankful to God for the favor He gives me
with these dear boys.

"December 4. Visited four ships, and met with one of

WIDENING WORK. 193

the apprentice boys who was here in the bark Archer six
years ago. He is now second mate of the ship Clemioue.
He is a fine young fellow, and above all he is a lover of
our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the reason he has forged
ahead so, and I would not wonder to see him master of
some fine ship in a short time.

"December G. Visited 8 ships and bid the boys of the
ship 'Crown of England' good-bye, as they are going away
in the morning for England. Myself and wife have enjoyed
many precious visits from these dear boys during their stay
in port. One young lad is the son of an Episcopal Bishop
of Cloyne, Ireland. I know well where it is. He told me
that three years ago he was in Nenagh, within two miles of
where I was born, and we talked of many places I used to
see when I was a little barefoot boy before I ran away
from home to go to sea. How thankful I am to God that
His kind providence has been over me, and that now, in
my declining years He has placed me here to look after
these dear boys and keep them from falling into the hands
of wicked men while in port. Another one of the boys is
the son of Rev. Mr. Morris, an Episcopal minister at Mil-
ford Haven, Pembrokeshire, and I am to write to his fath-
er about his far away boy."

In this way Mr. Fletcher closed up the year
1889. His work among the seamen had never
been more blest, and he was realizing more and
more the results of his earlier and more difficult
labors among them. Much of the seed that he
had so industriously and prayerfully cast into the

194 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

hearts of his "dear lads of the sea," years ago had
sprung up and grown into a ripened harvest, and he
was permitted to see it "after many days." The
increase of the number of Christian officers and
sailors visiting the port was very gratifying to him,
and the more especially as he was enabled to con-
nect so many of them with his own efforts in bring-
ing them to Christ. Connected with this was the
completion of an enterprise in which his heart had
been deeply interested and to which he had contri-
buted to the amount of several hundred dollars in
money, namely, the completion and dedication of
Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, in the city of
Portland. His record of the services on the oc-
casion shows how intensely he rejoiced, especially
under the influence of the sermon of Rev. G. W.
Izer, D. D., in the evening of the day. No doubt
a large part of his joy arose from the fact that
Grace Church, while in their small chapel, had been
very hospitable to his "sailor-boys," welcoming
them most pleasantly to the church services, as
well for the love all the churches bore to "Fathei
Fletcher," as for the good they could do to sailors
themselves. This interest always continued, even
after the society was housed in its new and beauti-

WIDENING WORK. 195

ful house. "Jack" was always welcome to this
beautiful church home. Illustrating the results of
his work in this regard, we quote from his journal
of February 9, 1890:

''Sabbath morning I visited the ship Patterdnle ami spent
a pleasant hour with Captain Tuphain and his officers and
uieu and boys. The captain and some of his boys came
with me to Grace Church, and also Captain Steel and his
wife and two children, of the bark Lorton, with some of his
boys; and at night we had Captain Tupham and eight or
ten from other ships. I praise the blessed Holy Spirit who
gives me so much favor in the eyes of these, my shipmates
and brethren of the sea.

February 12th. I got Captain Tupham to come with me
to prayer meeting at Grace Church, and he enjoyed it very
much, and gave us a good exhortation. He is a good
Christian man and holds services every Sabbath on his
ship at sea, when the weather permits."

About this time a change was made in the chap-
laincy of the Seaman's Bethel, Chaplain Gilpin be-
ing relieved and ordered back to England. His
personal peculiarities had greatly retarded the
Bethel work since his appointment, and, in fact, the
success of Mr. Fletcher in his ship work and among
the longshoremen was all that prevented a com-
plete failure of the work for seamen in the port of
Portland for all the time that Mr. Gilpin had oc-

19G WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

cupied the post of chaplain. Even Mr. Fletcher's
work was not nearly as successful as it would have
been had such a chaplain occupied the Bethel as
would have secured the confidence of the seamen
and the respect of the general public. As it was he
had to overcome the prejudice the men and officers
felt against the chaplain before he could greatly
influence them for good. A man of less excellent
character and less tender and sympathizing nature
than Mr. Fletcher would have failed utterly where
he succeeded in accomplishing so much. The
method and spirit of his work are shown in the fol-
lowing extracts from his annual report to the Sea-
man's Bethel Society, rendered in May, 1890: —

"The year has been oiie of much profit, I trust, iu my
work. Not having any preaching in our old Bethel or on
shipboard by Chaplain Gilpiu, I have been enabled to get
quite a large number of the officers and apprentice boys to
attend services in the different churches. The reason so
few sailors from the forecastle are found in our church
services is their want of suitable clothing. They Avill not
attend the church services in their shirt sleeves, yet that
would not hinder them from attending the Bethel, as they
look upon that as their own church. 1 have made 574
visits to the ships and supplied every ship with a choice
package of reading matter, as well as held conversations
with many of the officers, sailors and apprentice boys. I

WIDENING WORK. 197

have made 67 visits to the hospitals, and attended three
funerals of seamen. Twenty-seven apprentice boys ami
some officers attended with me the Thanksgiving dinner
given by the Y. M. C. A., at their hall. * * * I have had
four visits from Captains and eleven from officers and
forty-one from the apprentice boys at my home to spend
social evenings with us; my wife always providing re-
freshments for them, and we always ending by reading a
portion of Scripture and prayer, by which I try to benefit
the dear boys that come here in ships. I also keep up a
correspondence with many of the officers and boys, and re-
ceive many grateful letters from them, which greatly en-
courage me in my work. I return thanks to the many
Christian families in Portland for the abundant supply of
excellent reading matter they have given me for my sea-
man's work. * * * * By the opening of our new Bethel with
a new and efficient chaplain, I look forward to the building
up of a large society in the north end of our city. I am
thankful to God for the favor He has given me with the
officers, seamen and apprentice boys while visiting their
ships."

This brief summary of the work done by him
during the year exhibits only that part of the work
that can be counted in numbers. But the greatest
good of all his work was in that department that
cannot be seen nor counted, in the souls saved and
the lives uplifted by his instrumentality.

"This will survive the empire of decay,
When cold in dust his buried heart will lay."

CHAPTER XVI.

BETHEL WORK REVIVING.

"Prayer is the tide for which the vessels wait

Ere they come to Port, and if it be
The tide is low, then how canst thou expect

The treasure ship to see?"

IN the early part of 1891 a new chaplain, Rev.
Richard Hayes, a Presbyterian minister from
Fort Wayne, Indiana, arrived to take charge of the
Bethel work in Portland, in connection with the
Bethany Mission of that church in the north end
of the city. This was a matter of great satisfac-
tion to Mr. Fletcher. For a long time, not only had
nothing been accomplished in the immediate work
of the Bethel, but its influence had been detrimen-
tal to the missionary work of Mr. Fletcher. Mr.
Hayes had had no experience in seaman's work,
but he was a man of good abilities, and a sincere
and devoted Christian, and of a kind and gentle
spirit, and was well adapted to the work to which

BETHEL WORK REVIVING. 199

he had been assigned. Mr. Fletcher entered hear-
tily into his plans, gave him all the assistance in his
power in every way, and thus enabled him to reach
the sailors fore and aft readily and efficiently. He
made a most excellent impression on the mind of
Mr. Fletcher as a man, a minister, and as to his
adaptation to the seaman's work. He says of Mr.
Hayes: "He makes a fine chaplain, both officers
and sailors taking kindly to him.'' Indeed, Mr.
Fletcher, in recording a visit of Chaplain Hayes
and his wife at his own home, says that "the chap-
lain and his wife and daughter, seventeen years of
age, are well adapted to the Bethel work. I think
he is the best preacher, and the most spiritual one
in the city, and the Lord is greatly blessing his
work at the 'north end.' '

Within a few weeks after the chaplain's arrival a
"ten day's meeting was held at the Bethel. At the
first service, of which there was a large attendance,
and several arose for prayers. The meeting result-
ed in a very marked revival, not far from forty be-
ing converted, and the entire Bethel work being
greatly strengthened. Mr. Fletcher records the
conversion of one "fine young Irishman, who was
educated a Catholic priest." Mr. Fletcher's own

200 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

deliverance from Catholicism disposed him always
to the most kindly efforts for the deliverance of
others, and he greatly rejoiced when one was
brought into the conscious "freedom of the sons of
God."

Mr. Fletcher's records of ship visitation during
the autumn of 1891 show most clearly how very
deeply the minds and hearts of his beloved "sailor-
boys" had been affected by his work and that of the
new chaplain of the Bethel. Some of these records
should be given: —

"October 14. We had a most blessed time last night at
our prayer meeting at the Bethel. All the boys of the
crew of the ship Silver Stream, and five of them go
home in her as Christian men, and four others asked
our prayers. Visited the bark Cumbrian, Captain Lorton.
Found him to be a Christian man. We had nine of his
crew and five of Blythwood's crew at our Bethel service at
night.

"November 1st. This has been one of our best Sabbaths
at the Bethel. We had fine congregations both morning
and evening. We had three captains and a good many of
our sailors in attendance. Our chaplain ahvays gives an
invitation to all who want to seek salvation to manifest it
by rising to their feet at the close of our services. Four
young men arose for prayers, and in our after-meeting
came forward to the altar and three of them gave their

BETHEL WORK REVIVING. 201

hearts to Jesus, and the other one I hope is not far from
the kingdom.

"Fourth. Visited the four masted ship Principality. Cap
tain Jones, and met one of my boys that was here two
years ago in the ship Euersdale, as an apprentice. He is
now second mate of this tine ship. I am so glad to see so
many of my dear boys 'forging ahead,' and looking to be-
come masters. May the Lord bless them."

The influences of the life and example of Mr.
Fletcher upon the ambition of these young sailor
boys, and the constant and affectionate attention
that he and his wife gave them while in port, assid-
uously endeavoring to lead them to an earnest
Christian life, accounts largely for the splendid pro-
gress so many of them made in their profession.
Those of them who became Christians at once
gained a standing with those who employed them,
and if they had the intelligence for higher service
they were sure soon to rise to it. A sailor is not
necessarily able to take command of a ship because
he is a Christian; but a Christian young sailor is
far more likely to soon become able to do so than
one who is not. He is more studious and steady,
has a sense of duty that the other has not, wins the
confidence of his employers by his trustworthiness,
and soon finds himself well up towards the respon-

202 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

sibility and opportunity of command, while the
others grope and tug before the mast from year to
year until all aspiration dies out of the heart, and
they give up the struggle of life to what they call
"fate," but which is really only folly. The one
thing that made the uneducated and careless sailor
boy, "Bill Fletcher," the esteemed and honored
citizen, the earnest and successful "seaman's mis-
sionary'' for more than forty years in one of the
great ports of America, made many of these "cab-
in boys" and "forecastle lads" officers and comman-
ders of great ships, and that one thing was Relig-
ion ; the love of Christ and the service of God.

"November 29. This has been another good day in our
Bethel services. At the night service we had a large con-
gregation, and at the after-meeting six came to the altar
for prayers, four of whom were my sailor-boys. Three of
them gave their hearts to Jesus, and have taken Him as the
great 'Captain of their Salvation,' for the remainder of
their voyage of life. I told them that with Christ in the
vessel they could smile at the storm.

"January 3, 1892. Sabbath morning. Visited the ship
Kirkciidbrightshire, Captain Furdy. He has his wife and
child on board with him. I left them i-eading and picture
cards, and invited them to our services, then went forward
and spoke to the men and had a good time with them, and
got several of them to go to the services with me. As this

BETHEL WORK REVIVING. 203

is the week of prayer we will hold services every night.
We had one of the best congregations to-night that I have
ever seen at our Bethel. Fully forty of our sailors were
with us in our after-meeting. Twenty came to the altar
for prayer, among whom were ten of our sailors. How my
heart leaped for joy as 1 bowed with them in prayer to
(Jod. and before the meeting closed to hear from their own
lips that Jesus had pardoned their sins and they had taken
Him as their companion and friend for the remainder of
the vovage of life."

This character of work continued steadily day
after day, week after week, and month after month;
illustrating the peculiar tenacity and fixedness of
the character of Mr. Fletcher. "His heart was
fixed, trusting in the Lord." Whether others were
faithful or faithless, earnest or negligent, he never
faltered nor turned back. His heart was ever go-
ing forth in quest of his oft-mentioned "brethren
of the sea." and his steps were never so light as
when he was piloting them to the house of the
Lord, or guiding them to a resting place in the
shadow of the sanctuary of God.

In July, 1892, he was granted, in the kind provi-
dence of God. an unspeakable satisfaction in meet-
ing the devoted Christian woman, who, thirty-two
years before, was the instrument of guiding his dark

204 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

and ignorant soul to the Saviour in the wild moun-
tains of California, and whom he had not seen for
nearly thirty years, Mrs. Renny, whose name the
reader will recollect in the early part of this narra-
tive. Herself and husband, passing through the
city, took pains to seek out their old mining friend,
and for a few hours there was such an interchange
of heart as does not often come in the lives of wan-
dering mortals. Old hours were new again; old
but not forgotten loves were rekindled, old songs
were sung, and with a newer, sweeter life, both
went on their way to the final reunion where there
will be no separation. It will come at last.

"There union shall be sweet,
At the dear Redeemer's feet,
When they meet to part no rnpre,
Who have loved."

The closing up of this year in the work of the
Bethel with which Mr. Fletcher's ship work was so
closely identified, showed it to have been a year of
signal prosperity. The annual meeting of the
Bethel Society occurred in March, and the reports
of Chaplain Hayes and Missionary Fletcher showed
that more than 1200 seamen had attended the ser-
vices, and over 100 sailors had been converted in the

BETHEL WORK REVIVING. 205

meetings. The reports throughout were of the
most encouraging character. Mr. Hayes makes
special mention of the labors of Mr. Fletcher, "who
has performed his duties, not of labor, but of love,
faithfully and well." It had been a very happy
year to Mr. Fletcher. The change in the chap-
laincy had brought spirituality and life, where there
had been formality and death. It was no longer
necessary for him to try to get his "sailor-lads"
from the forecastle to the cushioned pew of the
fine church among a fashionable congregation in
order to bring them under the influence of a gospel
that would save. They were far more ready to go
to their own church, the Bethel, where they felt
much more at home, and where, during the past
year, they were sure to have a pure gospel interest-
ingly and lovingly preached, and where a warm-
hearted chaplain was as ready to speak the kindly-
word to "Jack" in his shirt-sleeves as he was to ad-
dress the "gentleman" in broadcloth, and where
such kind-faced saints as "Father and Grandma
Fletcher" were ever ready to give him the help and
hope that only true love can give another. At
these Bethel services he reaped the results of his
sowing of the seeds on the decks of the ships among

20(i WILLIAM S. FLETCHEK.

"the sailor-lads," and gathered many a sheaf into
Christ's garner, the seed for whose growth had
been sown in some kind word spoken, some leaflet
put in the hand, some smile written on the sailor -
boy's heart in the forecastle. His work was helped
now, not hindered, by the spirit and work of the
chaplain and his family. It was all a joy and de-
light, and Mr. Fletcher's heart was filled with grat-
itude and his life with praise.

Sufficient time had now elapsed since Mr.
Fletcher began his work among the young seamen
and apprentice boys on the ships visiting Portland
for him to begin to see the splendid results of that
work. Some, of whom we have spoken in our ear-
lier pages as being led by him to the services of the
church and the Bethel and there yielding their
young heart's to God, are now reappearing in posi-
tions of trust and confidence, still steadfast in their
Christian faith and abounding in the work of the
Lord. Some reference to some of them, indicating
the mutual affection existing between them, may
profitably be made. Thus he speaks: —

"August 4th. I have written a long letter to Hughie
McLean, one of nay sailor boys who is now in San Fran-
cisco, in his old ship, City of Madras, as her second officer.

BETHEL WORK REVIVING. 207

Hughie is a tiue Christian boy of a good family in Eng-
land. I expect to see him captain of some large ship yet.
How I love to see these dear boys forging ahead. I have
seen many of them come here in their ships wicked and
godless, and after being with us a few weeks go home in
their ships Christian boys. I trust, by my humble efforts in
leading them to Christ while here in port.

"September 24. Sabbath morning. Visited the ship City
of York, Captain Jones. He is a new captain. She was here
on her last voyage and three of our Christian boys are yet
on her. I was glad to find them still faithful to Jesus as
their Captain, and they were glad to be at our services
again. At one night service Mr. Francis Millman. third
mate of the ship Vandurara. united with us and will take a
letter from us home. We also had another of the boys of
the bark Forfarshire converted at our night service. This
makes five of her boys that have been converted since she
came to Portland this time. This has been the best voy-
age these boys have ever made, and they will never forget
Portland as their spiritual birthplace."

During the remainder of the year 1893, about
three months, Mr. Fletcher was very actively en-
gaged in visiting ships, distributing reading mat-
ter among the sailors, inviting officers and men to
the services at the Bethel, and in every way helping
forward the "men of the sea" in the good life. He
made not less than a hundred visits to ships, and
records the conversion of a large number of sailor-

208 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

boys. The year closed most prosperously for the
Bethel work. The year went out on a Sabbath,
and Mr. Fletcher makes this record of its closing
day: —

"Sabbath morning. Visited the bark Arnubree, Captain
Steel. I had a good visit with the captain. He visited this
port on his last voyage. He has new officers with him this
time, and only two of his old boys are with him on board.
The morning being stormy, we only had a small turnout at
our service, but at night we had a full house, with a large
number of our officers and seamen. Our chaplain preached
a good, strong sermon from Isaiah i, 18: "Come now, and
let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins
be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they
be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.' At the close at
least thirty arose for prayers, and eternity alone can re-
veal the good that was done. The year is closing up well
with us in our Bethel work. I praise God for the favor He
has given us with our brethren of the sea."

CHAPTER XVII.

SOWING AND REAPING.

"We must be here to work.

And men who work can only work for men,

And, not to work in vain, must comprehend

Humanity, and so, work humanly.

And raise men's bodies still by raising souls.

As God did, first."

—Mrs. Browning.

"^ HE whole course of this narrative illustrates
how clearly Mr. Fletcher comprehended
the motives and purposes of the average man, and
how skillfully he was able to appeal to him for his
good. He worked humanly and yet with a divine
intent. Always watching for an opportunity to
do more good, he was never obtrusive in his ap-
proaches. When on shipboard he never, in the
slightest degree, interfered with the men when
they were employed. The officers soon learned
that not only did his presence not interfere with
the attention that the sailors were expected to give

210 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

to their duties, but that his example of precision
and care was a real benefit to them. Many officers
who paid little or no attention personally to his
teaching soon learned to welcome his coming
among the sailors because they were the more at-
tentive and tractable for his presence. This was
the highest possible testimony to his worth, as, in
fact, it was to the things he taught. His own life,
through the very reaction of his faith on himself,
was rounding constantly into a more complete and
symmetrical fulness, and all men "took knowledge
of him that he had been with Jesus." He did not
depend on his own eloquence of speech, nor on any
power of personal appeal, nor yet on any worldly
influence that he could command to dispose men to
enter a new life, but he tried simply to introduce
them to Christ, and then trusted to the power of
the Divine Spirit to make his instrumentality sav-
ingly effective in their salvation. His success in
his simple methods was often marvelous, so that he
was really a divinely accredited evangelist without
any of the professional evangelist's conceit and pre-
tense. He wrote his name not so much on the
pages of the public prints as on the living hearts
of the men he so earnestly and lovingly sought to

SOWING AND TIKAPIMJ. 211

bring to Christ. He could not but be conscious
of his influence over the men of the sea, but it did
not exalt him, though it kindled the deepest grat-
itude in his heart. As the years wore on, and the
number of those converted by his instrumentality
multiplied, his home in Portland became more and
more a Mecca to sailors, officers and masters of
ships from all over the seas, and in it Mr. Fletcher
and his wife dispensed to them all a simple, charm-
ing hospitality, that was always sancitfied by the
presence and Spirit of Him who stilled the waves
and hushed the storms of Gallilee, and they looked
with an ever increasing affection on the man who
had led them to the peace which His presence im-
parts. Masters of ships, whom, as wild, wayward
sailor boys, he had led to Christ, and then watched
over tenderly while in port, following them with
letters after they had gone away over the seas filled
with counsel and encouragement, came back again
to crown his aging brow with the garlands of their
gratitude and bless his ever-young heart with their
benedictions.

Tn the report of the work of the Bethel for 1894
occurs this significant sentence: "The number of
vessels in port has not been as large this year as

212 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

last, but one hundred and five have professed faith
in Jesus, and trust in Him above for salvation. It
has not been an unusual thing to see captain and
officers of the same ship making profession of their
faith and to hear their voices in prayer as they met
with us in the house of the God." While we do
not claim all this as the result of Mr. Fletcher's la-
bors alone, still for many years he had been the
moral centre around which this great work had
gathered, and without him it could not have been.

Early in the autumn of this year the health of
Mrs. Fletcher began to fail under the influence of
advancing years, and she was compelled to spend
several weeks in the hospital under the care of
trained nurses and skillful physicians. His care of
her and attention to all her wants was marked by
especial tenderness, and, added to the unrelaxed
calls of his work among his sailor-boys, pressed his
vigorous body and busy mind to their utmost.
Yet no duty was neglected and no call of affection
unheeded. His strength was as his day, and re-
joicingly he bore his burdens of duty and love on-
ward by the ever-present help of Him who helpeth
man.

Among the many plans for the happiness and im-

SOWING AND REAPING. 213

provement of his "sailor-boys," in which Mr.
Fletcher took a deep interest was the opening of a
"Reading Room" in the Mariner's Home. About
the close of November, 1894, it was completed,
well furnished with books and periodicals, and
ready to be dedicated to its intended use. A large
gathering of the pastors and members of the vari-
ous churches of the city was in attendance, togeth-
er with many officers and sailors from the ships in
port, and with speeches and songs and good cheer
it was set apart to its beneficent work. This was a
very pleasant and helpful resort for seamen, taking
them away from those places for drinking and gam-
bling which always abound in seaport towns, and
surrounding them with a refining Christian in-
fluence and a pure religious life.

The annual merchant fleet that reached Portland
this fall was so large, and Mr. Fletcher's visits to
them so numerous that it is impossible to give
more than an occasional reference to them. On
the 27th of January, 1895, he writes: —

"Visited the ship Carnarvon Bay. I met her owner, who
is here on a visit. He is a Welshman, and owns several
ships, and is here looking after their interests. He is a
j;ood Christian man, and told me he had just discharged

214 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

the captain of this ship for drunkenness, and sent him
home. He wanted me to look after his hoys for him while
they were in port. At our night service in the Bethel we
had over sixty officers and seamen present. I gave them a
fifteen minutes exhortation. The blessed Holy Spirit great-
ly helped me in urging upon them His service.

"February 20th. Visited six ships at the Albina docks
and met some of the boys that were here three years ago.
Some of them were converted while here then, and they are
still faithful to Jesus as the Captain of their salvation.
Out of all the young men and boys that have been con-
verted while here in Portland with us, I have not found
one that has backslidden; all have been faithful, and some
of them have done good work in the saving of their ship-
mates on the way home from here. It is a great comfort
to me to know that my humble labor for them has not been
in vain. So I thank God and take courage."

In this connection it is proper to notice the re-
port of the Rev. W. O. Forbes, who had taken the
place of the former successful chaplain. Rev. Mr.
Hayes, in which he speaks very approvingly of the
work of Mr. Fletcher, relating especially to the in-
fluence of the Reading Rooms which had come to
be called the Seaman's Institute. He says: —

"That the work has been appreciated may be seen not
only from the attendance, but from the numerous letters
that have been received from seamen after leaving. Here
are a few of these testimonials: A chief officer says: 'I am
only sorry I did not go to the institute sooner. It seems

SOWING AM) UK APING. 213

now more like leaving home than going home. B« sure
the next time I come to Portland che first place I make for
will be the mission.' An apprentice writes: 'I have never
been in a port where the boys have been so well cared for
as in Portland. You have the best place of the kind I have
ever seen in any country.' A second officer says: 'I've been
in almost every port in the world, and I've never been in a
place where so much pains is taken with the seamen as
here, and I'm only sorry they don't appreciate it more.
A sailor said to me: 'I've been all over the world and in
many Institutes, but for Jack this is the best place I've
ever been in. Everybody seems 10 be treated alike here.'
And just this morning I received this letter from a chief
ofncer: 'The boys all seemed terribly downhearted in leav-
ing Portland, and I quite believe that the attractiveness in
the evenings of your admirably conducted Institute has
much to do with it. * * * * You may not meet with all the
reward from the sailors you deserve, but when good seed
is sown there is always some cast on soil that bears good
fruit; and then, above all, there is Christ's reward.' "

This was the beautiful culmination of the self-
denying work that Mr. Fletcher had been doing
for so many years; much of the time alone, often
amidst great discouragements, yet going steadily
on sowing the good seed in the early morning and
in the late evening, hoping, praying, believing, that
God would water it from on high, and in His own
irood time let him see the bountiful harvest. Sure-

216 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

ly the workman was receiving his hire. Mr.
Fletcher writes, May 7, 1895: —

"I attended the funeral of William Norman Harzeel, an
apprentice on the ship Highland Home, a native of Devon-
shire, England. He was drowned yesterday morning. He
was a good Christian boy, converted with several other
boys in our Bethel meetings here two years ago. He was at
our services last Sabbath, and I had conversed with him
just before he left the Bethel to go on board his ship. I
little thought then that it was the last conversation I would
ever hold with the dear boy.

"September 1st. Our young people connected with our
Bethel work have organized a 'Floating Society of Chris-
tian Endeavor,' in connection with our seaman's work. I
have been trying for some time to get it started, and have
succeeded at last. I am sure it will be a great blessing to
the young men and boys of the ships. I look for a most
blessed work among them this winter.

"September 3d. Visited the fine four masted ship Drum-
onur, Captain Withois, just arrived from New Castle, Aus-
tralia. As I was standing on the dock Mr. Sitford, her first
officer hailed me. I did not recognize him at first, until
he jumped ashore and took me by the hand. I asked him
if I did not call him 'Jock' when he was here, an apprentice,
some nine years ago on another ship. He said he was the
same 'Jock.' He was a good Christian boy when I used to
call him 'Jock,' and he is now first officer of. a fine ship,
and a good Christan man. His captain is a Christian, and
more than half of his crew are Christians. They have ser-

SOWING AND REAPING. 'JIT

vice every Sunday at sea, both fore and aft. There is no
swearing nor vile talking aboard that ship.

"October 2d. Visited the bark Glenafton, Captain Beattie.
He is one of the young lads that I used to bring up to
spend a social evening with us when he was here some
years ago. He had passed out of my recollection, though
myself and wife did not pass out of his. He said he had
never forgot the many little acts of kindness we had shown
him and the other boys when they were with us in port;
but what cheered me most was his saying that he had put
into practice the counsel I had given him, to give his heart
to God and take Christ as his Captain. I find him to-day
a fine young Christian captain; one who is respected and
loved by his officers and crew. I had a precious visit with
him. Praise the Lord."

The reader will see that by this time in the life of
Mr. Fletcher there was much of the ripened fruit of
the seed he had so long been industriously and
prayerfully sowing being brought back to him to
his great satisfaction and enjoyment. Boys had
grown up to be men since he began his work. The
frail little apprentices that he and his good wife
looked after so tenderly, whom they fathered and
mothered so anxiously while they were in port, and
from the door of whose hearts they hunted away
the wolf of sin so vigorously and courageously, had
passed through the necessary grades of service and

218 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

not a few of them walked the quarterdeck digni-
fied and able commanders of the finest ships that
entered the harbor. Others of them had gone out
from his guiding hand into the even more honora-
ble work of the gospel ministry. Is it any wonder
that, as Mr. Fletcher passed beyond his three score
years and began to study, in the light of a fulfilled
hope, the results of his work that his heart grew
warm, and praises were continually mounting to his
lips. Surely to have lived so long and lived so
well, and in that life have wrought so faithfully for
God and so successfully for humanity, were an oc-
casion of triumph that comparatively few ever en-
joy. Then, too, that beautiful ripeness of heart
that is often manifested in people who are nearing
the end of the hard, foot-sore journey of life, and
can already see the open door through which they
are so soon to pass into the life immortal, was clear-
ly seen in him. And there was yet another fact
that threw over all he did and said and was an odor
and a radiance from the groves and the sunshine of
the Paradise of God. The wife, who had been to
him so loving a companion, so steadfast a friend,
so courageous a helper, so devoted a mother to his
"dear sailor-boys," was rapidly dropping off the

SOWING AND HEAPING. 211»

mortal and just as rapidly putting on the immortal.
Thus he was talking and walking in the very lan-
guage of Canaan, and under the very verdurous
shades of the groves that margin the river whose
waters make glad the city of God. On Sabbath
morning, January the 17th, 1896, she passed gently
out of his sight, and was at rest with the Lord.

CHAPTER XV11I.

"GKANDMA FLETCHER."

She was sent forth

To bring that light which never wintry blast
Blows out, nor rain nor snow extinguishes—
The light that shines from loving eyes upon
Eyes that love back, till they can see no more."

—Lander.

TT^ROM various notices given in the preceeding
-*~ pages it has been made obvious to the read-
er that Mr. Fletcher found his most constant and
sympathizing helper in the great work he wrought
among the seamen, in his wife; well known by
nearly every sea-faring man visiting Portland as
"Grandma Fletcher." This was with them a term
of endearment and respect. She was so true, so
constant, so tender, so attentive to her sailor-boys
and so constantly caring for their comfort and safe-
ty while in port, and prayed so earnestly and lov-
ingly for them when away, awaiting their return
with so much solicitude, and welcoming them back

GRANDMA FLETCHER. 221

again to her heart and home with such motherly
affection that they could not but bear her image
with them as they sailed all seas and anchored in all
ports. It was not that she was young and beau-
tiful, for she was aged and plain. It was not that
she was brilliant and fascinating in talents and con-
versation, for she was simple and childlike. Why
was it, then, that the thoughts and remembrances
of that plain, unostentatious wroman did more to
influence and fashion hundreds and thousands of
lives towards beauty and goodness all over the
world than almost any of her more favored sister-
hood in the city where she dwelt? From quarter-
deck to forecastle she was beloved by all alike.
Her friendship was cherished while she was living,
and her memory is revered and honored now that
she is dead. None can tell except that in that frail,
plain body dwelt an angel soul; a soul that walked
so deeply and so constantly in communion with
God and the good world that it became a vital
bond of connection between heaven and earth.
Aching hearts felt the consolation of the land of
rest and comfort through her mediation. The
wandering and wayward felt the draw and tug
of her prayers and counsels at their heart-strings,

222 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

even when she was far away. The good and
pure felt the sympathy of a common spirit
in fellowship with her; while the bad sighed for
a new life when they saw the beauty and felt
the fragrant atmosphere of hers breathing over
them. In her, one inhabitant of heaven walked
among the sons and daughters of earth, if not in
silken and jeweled robes, then in "a meek and quiet
spirit," of greater price in God's eyes than rubies
and silver. Never was purer love on earth than
the love wherewith she was loved by her sailor-
boys as they sailed away or floated back to port.

Her church membership was held in Grace
Methodist Episcopal Church; a church whose
membership and congregation have exceptional in-
telligence and social standing. She held the same
sweet place in their hearts while she lived, and her
memory is cherished with the same tenderness now
that she has departed, as in the minds and hearts
of her sailor-boys. When it was known that
"Grandma Fletcher," as she was lovingly called by
all, had passed out of the back door of the church
militant and entered the "gate beautiful" of the
church triumphant, all hearts thrilled with a tender
sorrow for their "loss," mingled with a sweet joy

GKANDMA FLETCHER. 223

for her "gain;" for surely for her to die was gain.

Those who were present at her funeral, and thev
were many, will ever remember how "on the verge
of heaven" seemed the fair temple where they cel-
brated her immortal crowning that day., Her pas-
tor, Rev. Henry Rasmus, D.D., whose lips know so
well how to weave the witchery of loving and elo-
quent speech, and whose own heart parented the
words his lips uttered on the occasion, delivered
an address that might well have been the funeral
oration of a Confessor of the church of the purer
and loftier ages, which may fittingly crown this
chapter of tribute to "Grandma Fletcher,'' but
without which the chapter itself would be without
a coronet.

"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, 1
have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a
crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge
shall give me at that day and not unto me only but unto
all them also that love His appearing," II Timothy, 4th
chapter, 7th and 8th verses.

There could not possibly be found a more appropriate
text than this for the occasion of this morning's sermon.
It was the exclamation of triumph fitting the close of a no-
ble Christian life many centuries ago. It has been fitting-
ly applied to many a Christian life since, and it becomes
very appropriate at this time, a tribute of respect and af-

224 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

fection to the venerable friend whom it has pleased God
to remove from our society and exalt into His own more
immediate presence.

After a life of probably more than three score years and
ten devoted in an eminent degree to the glory of the Sa-
viour and the temporal and spiritual welfare of her fellow
creatures, she has gone from the battle to the crowning;
from the keeping of the faith to where faith is lost in the
divine wonderland of sight. Though gone, she still speaks
to us, her friends, her brethren, in an example of Christian
piety as pure and beautiful and attractive I think as the
church militant in these latter days is wont to exhibit; and
now in contemplation of such a life all beautiful with holi-
ness and shining more and more unto the perfect day, what
is there in it to attract, to uplift, to inspire? Much that we
never would know of unless we pause to look and think
and learn.

Who was this plain little woman upon whose memory
we place this tribute to-day? I shall answer, first of all,
she was a beautiful specimen of what the religion of the
Lord Jesus Christ can do for all. Born again in the state
of New York, on the Atlantic coast, perfected in love in Ore-
gon on the Pacific coast, she stood a living monument of
the amazing grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. I might chal-
lenge you to bring from all the ranks of those who have
despised the religion of Jesus a single example of one who
served his generation as faithfully as she served hers. She
was not great as the world counts greatness. She was
humble; she belonged to the lowliest of the earth. Her
name will never be heard outside of a limited few, but I
think God spoke to His angels saying, "Watch over her for

GKANDMA FLETCHEK. 225

I will teach men through this comparatively obscure life
that the religion of my sou can make the lowliest life glo-
rious." We can do her memory no greater service than to
say that only the grace of God can make a character like
hers.

You want a religion that gives a perfectly satisfactory
experience? You want a religion that triumphs over the
frets and worries of life; you want a divine grace that can
meet life just as life is aud transform it into a temple of
holiness, a song of peace? Then you can have it in the
same religion she enjoyed. The transforming, transporting
religion of Jesus.

Again, if you were to ask me who she was, I should an-
swer, "A contribution from that type of Christianity called
Methodism." If I have the purpose of God aright in the
mission of the Methodist Church, it is her privilege lo
develop what? First of all, to take the spiritually lame,
the halt and the blind and make them leap for joy, and
after having done that by putting upon them the impress
of her peculiar doctrine, send them forth a peculiar people
to spread scriptural holiness over the land.

I think when this woman of God went up to the gate
of Heaven there was at that gateway a group of that type
of redeemed ones to greet her. I might name some of
them: Father Noon, and Northrup and Nelson and More-
land. This church remembers them when in years past
they were mighty for God in prayer and testimony and
daily life and as you think of them and then of a type of
Christianity that is recognized only by me spiritual crutch-
es it is compelled to use; by its halting and limping, how
are you impressed by the comparison? Which type moves

220 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

men towards the cross of Jesus Christ? These rugged, ro-
bust men of God, or those who are fearful lest they should
go too far if they should launch out into the deep sea of
God's grace? Oh, for more lives that are out on the mid-
sea of God's mercy. Oh, for more of such living examples
read and known of all men, whose fragrance you can no
more fence in than you can fence in the perfume of a grove
of magnolias in full bloom.

Nor would I pass unnoticed the large sympathies that
characterized this amiable yet great life. She belonged to
that class of Christians who loved the world as Jesus loved
it. Coming down upon its level and meeting its conditions
in a manner not repelling but inviting; that bends under
the burdens of others and sends a thrill through the nerves
of the coming race. In a brief biography prepared by
Father Fletcher, I find these words concerning her: "Many
are the young men she started in the better way by plead-
ing with them on the streets to attend religious services
and by every means available get them under the influence
of the gospel." I do not know that any more luminous
commentary could be given of any life than this: He loved
the souls of men. Better have that written upon the tomb-
stone than the most applauding epitaph that wealth or
social position or anything merely worldly can chisel.
Right glorious is it that we are coming out into the horizon
of such a sympathy. Of infinitely more value is one
life to whom in a religious way the blossoming orchard is n
living censer before the throne; to whom the sky is a gal-
lery and the clouds are pictures done in water colors than
a hundred whose religious experience is a barren landscape.
May it please God to baptize this church with the gospel of

GRANDMA FLETCHER. 227

holy sympathy which stretches out its hands after the souls
of men.

Then I would not fail to remind you of the simplicity of
her faith. It was the charming simplicity of a little child
asking for what it had no thought of being denied. To her
the religion of Jesus was not an intricate system hard to
he understood and difficult to put into practice, but was the
simple asking and receiving from the hand of her Heaven-
ly Father. Is not that the lesson we all need to learn in a
fuller way than we have yet learned it? When Christ be-
gan the world's conquest, what kind of a religion did he
offer to men? The plainest that had ever been formulated
for humanity. Why did he not go down into Rome where
there were plenty of great intellects and there get his dis-
ciples? Why did he, instead of these, take men who were
as plain as the fishing boats by the Galilean sea? I will
tell you why. It was because when his words and religion
were to be delivered to the world he did not wish them put
into learned sayings and apologetics, but in the plainest
phraseology so that the humblest could understand them.
The religion of Christ never clouded the mind of any one.
It is only man's attempt to enlarge upon it that throws the
clouds around its plain simple ruggedness. Here is the
whole plan of salvation in a few sentences: Man lost be-
cause of sin. .Tesus Christ the only Saviour. Simple faith
in God, simple faith in His Son, simple faith in the Holy
Ghost; the one triune God. blessed and glorious. No need
to get lost in that creed. Do you want to know who this
infinite God is? No need to speculate about it. Ask Him
and He will demonstrate who He is in a way that all hu-
man philosophy can never overturn. Are you in the throes

228 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

of any great difficulty or trouble? Simply ask Him to help
you out arid do your best, and He will come as certain as
God is on the living, eternal throne.

Suppose we were to exercise that simple faith in the
Bible instead of a spirit of criticism, what would be the re-
sult to our individual lives? There is no book in the world
that demands such simplicity of belief as the scriptures and
yet nine-tenths of Christian men think it is an enigma, hard
to unravel and understand. There is only one way to take
this letter from our Father's hand, written in the light of
our Father's face. Does it say "He hath loved you with an
everlasting love? Believe it? Does it say He has a father's
kiss for the prodigal's return? Believe it and get that kiss
of welcome as speedily as possible. Does it say He will
never leave you nor forsake you? Believe it and go right
forward, though it may be into the face of flashing light-
ning and the angry mutterings of the storm. Just as certain
as you begin to question whether His promises are certain
or not. you have closed those golden lips and their assur-
ance is hushed to you and they become null and void.

Do you still ask me who this woman was who went out
to God last Sabbath morning? I reply, she was a woman
of much prayer. Prayer was the chalice in which like
Rachael in olden times, she brought the waters from the
everlasting well. It was the ladder by which she climbed
up to gather the grapes hanging over the walls of heaven.
It was the ship that carried away her wants and came back
with a return cargo of divine help. This plain little woman
found what the philosophers failed to discover, the power
that moves the world. Prayer was the lever, the divine
promise, the fulcrum and the arm of her faith pressing

GRANDMA FLETCHER. 229

down on such a lever, she possessed the medium that can
move not only the earth but heaven also. This church has
no doubt lost in this Mother in Israel who for several
years was confined to her home, one of its strongest pillars.
Around that pillar was twined the beautiful, the true, the
love of prayer as the acanthus leaf around the Corinthian
pillar. You may not lack in active, devoted vigorous nieu
and women, but if this church has one intercessor left, one
so mighty with God, one who so loved to talk with Christ
about blood-bought souls; one such Miriam to hold up the
hands that are ready to fall: if so, it will prove a vital
church.

This, the spirit of earnest prayer, some of us need most of
all. What is the infidelity and moral corruption and world-
liness of an entire city over against one faded face, wrink-
led with years, uplifted to God in almost continuous suppli-
cation? Nothing but a starveling; a retreating foe. No
wonder that Havelock went on from victory to victory. If
his army was to march at six o'clock, he would rise at
four o'clock and spend the two hours upon his knees before
the throne. You had better not get in the way of a man or
woman who has been looking into the face of Jesus Christ,
for they may prove a thunderbolt swung by the arm of the
Lord omnipotent.

Then, still further, I cannot avoid the conclusion that the
latter years of this saint of God have exhibited one of the
most attractive instances it has been my good fortune to
notice of a beautiful Christian old age. Her religion was
so vital and pervading that it seemed always young, al-
ways instinct with the freshness and joyousness of perpet-
ual youth, and her religion stamped its impress upon her

230 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

whole character, and it seemed to refresh her soul with
living waters and make her body a continuous temple of
the Holy Ghost. To this established dominion of control-
ing grace I ascribe it, that Mrs. Fletcher was to the day of
her death exempted beyond most other aged persons from
the weaknesses of old age. She had not the slightest spirit
of captiousness, of complaining or discontent. But with
all of the saintly love, she was as amiable and meek and
gentle as an angel's presence. Hers was indeed a peaceful
and glorious sunset not behind clouds, but dipping into the
golden sea.

I do not know through which of the twelve gates of
heaven she entered when she ascended a week ago, but I
think it must have been the most glorious of all. And now
as we stand in the presence of these three score years that
may seem to us like a little sea, each billow crowned with
glory and honor, the reflection comes to us that life is in-
explicable except as a probation. Why does man live?
Why does he die? Take the answer of the old catechism,
"to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." What is the true
theory of life; what with all its trials, sufferings, heart-
aches? This: a place of probation; the first stage of an
endless being; the waiting room of eternity, where we
stay a little while for instruction and discipline, prepara-
tory to the higher pursuits and enjoyments to which if
found worthy we are shortly to be promoted. Three score
years and ten constitute a period long enough for the pur-
poses of religion. We note as an historical fact that the
foundations of piety are almost always laid in early life,
and that very few are converted after 60 or 70 years of
age. For all practical purposes the probation of the impen-

GRANDMA FLETCHER. 231

itent sinner has usually closed before extreme age has rob-
bed his limbs and his intellect of their vigor. Continue his
life to the probation of Methuselah and it would be use-
less. It would be heaping up wrath against the day of
wrath. If we could see as God sees, how many unwritten
epitaphs we might read like this: "Ephriam is joined to
his idols. Let him alone."

What is the meaning of every church tower from Port-
land to New York; from London to St. Petersburg; from
Moscow to Rome? They are God's finger boards forever
reminding men that just a little farther on the life's proba-
tion will close and then not an eternal sleep, not an-
nihilation, not another period of probation, but after
that, the judgment. In New England they have
what they call a passing bell, tolled whenever one
in the village dies. I think I can hear in the ringing
of every church bell the warning, "Some one gone from the
family, gone from the church, gone from the last opportuni-
ty of salvation. Probation ended." With that overmaster-
ing thought in my mind, I must ask you to-day, have God's
overtures been accepted? Have you settled it? Do you
not know that hours once dead can never be resuscitated,
that upon all the drops of dew that fall on the grave there
will not be one tear of repentance? Better listen to the
warning ringing through this old world, ringing for two
thousand years; ringing for every man, saying, "How shall
we escape if we neglect so great salvation? Now is the
day of salvation." And then closely associated with this,
comes the other reflection that life after all is only a pil-
grimage. Very frequently when her husband would come
home from his work among the seamen, he would sit down

232 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

and talk to her about the glorified ones with whom she had
been associated in church fellowship in this city. Then her
face would light up with the smile of anticipated meeting
and she would say, "Come along, Grandpa; let's go. What
is the use of waiting?" Life to her, as it is to all of us
who believe in a coming glory, is only a little pilgrimage.
Some of us stop here 20 years, some 40, some 50, some 80.
A few are accommodated in the first-class hotels, more in
the second, the vast majority in the third-rate resorts, but
at the end of the journey it will be all the same a resting
place under the flowers and the clods of the valley. Then
what is immortal of us, if we have been true to God, moves
on and up. If you have any idea that the man or woman
who has fallen asleep in Jesus lies decaying in Riverview
or Lone Fir cemeteries, I have no share in your belief.
They have passed on to a more glorious condition. We
make toilsome journeys to visit beloved relatives and
friends; we gladly cross stormy seas that we may see
magnificent or historical structures or renowned cities or
landscapes or celebrated statutes and paintings, but they
have taken the easier and shorter passage to heaven, where
Jesus in His glory sits at the right hand of God, where are
the glories of immortalized sculpture, worked not in cold
stone, but in tbo living marble of heaven, where are the
landscapes that never fade, where is the city whose splen-
dor outshines tlie sun. Why, my friends, you cannot un-
derstand fully the difference between life here and life
where light is dimless. More difference than between an
eagle in an iron cage and an eagle pitched from Mt. Hood
toward the sun. They have gone out to be deathless as

GRANDMA FLETCHER. 233

God is deathless. Brothers, are you ready to close earth's
pilgrimage and go out to such au existence?

But there conies yet one other reflection. I could not help
thinking, as I rode down the winding hillside after having
put her to rest in Riverview Cemetery, what a glorious day
the resurrection will be. When the sea shall give up Its
dead; when the earthquake shall split the polished granite
pillar as well as the plain slab. Those monuments upou
which perhaps are but two or three words: "Our Child,"
"Our Father." "Our Mother," "Our Loved One."

There is the one promise more certain than the eternal
hills: "As they have borne the image of the earthly, so
shall they also bear the image of the heavenly." They will
come up again. The faces that were once dear, that are
in our memories now fairer than any lily of the field, shall
be ours again. Can you think of anything more beautiful
than the return of those from whom we have been parted?
I do not care which way the body may fall If God's plow-
share shall turn back the soil and give me back my lost
treasure again.

The idea of the resurrection gets easier to understand as
I listen to the scientific appliances whereby the world Is
made a whispering gallery. We shall hear the voices that
were hushed long ago once more when the eternal morning
shall break over the hills, when the voice of Jesus shall say,
"Come up. You have slept long enough," when there shall
be the flash of rekindled eyes and the joy of the greeting.
When following the chariot of Christ up the highway of
the sky, we shall look back at the place where we slept so
long on the hillside, in the valley under the soughing trees
and as they disappear forever, from our lips shall go the

234 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

shout, "O death where is thy sting, O grave where is thy
victory." May God give us all a part in the first resurrec-
tion.

It will not be amiss to close this brief notice of
the life and influence of "Grandma Fletcher" with
some account of her life before she entered upon
that special work that made her such a notable
power for good in Portland.

Her maiden name was Brown. She was born
in the city of Buffalo, N. Y., in 1821, and was left
an orphan in her childhood, but was taken into a
noble Christian household, that of Mr. Bond, who,
with his wife and three daughters of an exception-
ally pure and lovely character, were devoted mem-
bers of the old Niagara Street Methodist Episcopal
Church. Here her surroundings were of the
choicest kind. In her fourteenth year she was
converted and became also a member of the same
church, entering at once into all the relations and
opportunities it afforded her for Christian improve-
ment and work. The Bible was her constant com-
panion and study, and much of it was there com-
mitted to memory, and gave tone and substance to
her thought all through her life. She was much
loved by the members of Mr. Bond's family, and es-
pecially by Miss Grace Bond, who became the wife

GRANDMA FLETCHER. 235

of Rev. W. P. Stowe, D.D., for many years agent
of the Western Book Concern of the M. E. Church
in Cincinnati. In 1861 she removed to California
and became a member of the First M. E. Church
of Oakland. In 1870 she removed to Portland,
Oregon, with Col. Flint and family, and connected
herself with the First M. E. Church of that city.
Here she became acquainted with Mr. Fletcher,
and on the 24th day of May, 1871, they were mar-
ried by Rev. William Roberts, D. D., then pastor
of that church. Not long after this she entered
into the experience of "perfect love," and its reality
was testified in all her subsequent life and work.

In 1874 the "Woman's Temperance League"
was organized, Mrs. Fletcher becoming one of its
first members. In all the work of "The Crusade"
that followed she was never absent from a meeting,
and always answered to her name at roll call for
street work. With six other Christian ladies she
was arrested and put in jail twice for daring to op-
pose drunkenness and crime with prayer and song
and Christian entreaty. When, on the occasion of
her second imprisonment, her husband visited her
to ascertain if she needed anything for her comfort
in the prison at night, holding his hand and look-

236 WILIAM S. FLETCHER.

ing tenderly up into his face she said: "No; I
have the presence of Jesus, and that is all I need."
Her experience in the work of the crusade led
her into a wider field of Christian work. Every
Sunday morning she went abroad visiting hotels,
boarding houses and jails distributing tracts and
inviting the people to church, and visiting the poor
and the needy during the week, helping and com-
forting them in every way possible. Only God's
Recording Angel has kept the record of the hearts
she cheered and homes she gladdened during the
many years she threaded the streets, the lanes and
the alleys of Portland, bent on her holy mission.
Soon becoming known everywhere, she was wel-
comed, as she truly was, a messenger of good to
the high and the lowly alike. Scores were started
by her on a better life. In all her home was open
to those for whom she felt such a motherly solicit-
tude. Sailors from before the mast, officers of
ships, captains and their wives and families, shared
and appreciated alike her hospitality, while the
best Christian homes of the city welcomed her
coming with delight. She often sought the fel-
lowship and sympathy of such devoted and cul-
tured Christian circles as filled the parlors of such

GRANDMA FLETCHER. 237

families as the Gills, Northrups, Akins, Connells,
Dickinsons, Hills, Hayes, Izers, because her own
heart was reinforced by their counsels and prayers
for her ceaseless round of duty and toil. Few, in-
deed, of those whose chances were better than
hers, and whose opportunities were much wider
than hers, in the city of Portland ever took more
steps or did more kindly deeds for the Master and
His dear ones than "Grandma Fletcher," and now
that she is gone none are more missed in the
abodes of want or where aching hearts sigh for
comfort, than she.

CHAPTER XIX.

COMING OF THE END.

The tide rolls up, the rippling suiiny tide,

The tossing waves throw diamonds to the sun;

They laugh about the gray old rocks,

And fill the air with breezy vigor as they run.

The tide rolls out, the clouds hang dark and chill,
And sadness creeps along the sea and shore;

The dripping rocks stand silent and alone,

Like silent ghosts of days that are no more.

O life, how sweet thou art when tides flow in!

When skies are bright and health is in the air,
The sunny waves run o'er the golden sands,

And radiant hope laughs gaily at despair.

Yet sure as life, there comes the ebbing tide,

When joy and hope flow backward from the shore,

And dreary wastes, and dull and solemn hours.
Come in the place of the bright days of yore.

O weary heart, look upward to that shore,

Where hope is lost in sight that's never dim!

There only is assurance, rest, and peace;
For there forever does the tide flow in.

—Sir Henry Taylor, in Toilers of the Deep.

COMING OF THE END. 239

r I ^HOSE who followed the unpretentious story
-*- of the every-day life of Mr. Fletcher from
the time we first introduced him to them must have
been impressed with the difference between the
man of nearly three score and ten, as he now ap-
pears, and the young ignorant Irish boy that he
then was. Then he was a thoughtless waif float-
ing on a rough and stormy sea. A score of years
afterwards he was but a beaten and buffeted sailor
boy, unable to read, given up to ungodliness, with-
out intellectual or moral aspiration, and having
no hope in this world or the next. Now he is a
well-read man, a close and clear student of relig-
ious truth, a well-informed citizen, a devoted
member of the church and zealous Christian work-
er and the friend and associate of the intelligent and
wealthy people of the city in which he has resided
so long, and his name is a household word among
the seamen of every port in Christendom. It is
not far nor difficult to find the cause of this g'-eat
change. One single fact alone explains it. It was
his conversion to God, followed by a constant and
entire consecration to His service, and the conse-
quent employment of all his powers in doing good
to men. The writer does not remember a case in

240 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

a fifty years' ministry where a man made his relig-
ion more the chief part of himself, and subordin-
ated every fact and interest of his personal life to
God's service as the Holy Spirit revealed it unto
him, than did William S. Fletcher. It is in this
that his life is a worthy model, and it is in this that
he will yet speak long after "we shall see his face
no more." It is, therefore, with a feeling that the
tracing out and recording of the facts and incidents
of this life of singular devotion has been a means
of personal grace, and with a conviction that the
record will be a like means of grace to those who
read it, that the writer comes to the concluding
chapter of this volume.

In the middle of the year 1897 Mr. Fletcher re-
cords the final conclusion of his mind in regard to
the publication of this memoir while he was yet
alive. He had expected that it would be published
after his departure, but his best friends desired that
he himself might see it while living, and have the
pleasure of using it personally for the benefit of
his "brothers of the sea," as he concluded his work
among them in his last and ripest days. This de-
cision made, and all needful arrangements for its
early completion perfected, he decided to fulfill a

COMING OF THE END. 241

long felt desire to revisit some of the scenes of his
early life on the Pacific coast, and especially San
Francisco, with which he was so familiar when it
was but a straggling hamlet of tents and dingy
wooden buildings among the sand hills that begirt
San Francisco Bay. It was the middle of 1897
when he was ready to take his departure on this
long-desired trip, and, in his journal for June 26th,
he begins the record of this, a brief pause from the
constant toil and care of ship and hospital visita-
tion, and from those other constant demands upon
his waning strength that clamor at the door of the
heart of all those who are ready to respond to hu-
man want by Christ-like help. He says:—

"I leave to-night on the steamer Columbia for San Fran-
cisco for a four week's cruise, and I pray that the Lord
will keep my little home and all that belongs to me in my
absence, and if it is His will that I may be returned again
that I may be better prepared for my work in behalf of
my brethren of the sea."

Thus hrst in his mind always was his relations to
the men for whom he had spent so many years of
tender care and earnest prayers. On his arrival in
San Francisco he went directly to the "Sailor's
Home," choosing that as his residence while in the

242 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

city that he might be the nearer those for whom he
felt such earnest solicitude. He found great
numbers of seamen at the "Home" under the su-
perintendency of Captain Staples, and the "Sea-
man's Institute" conducted by Mr. Fell, the resort
of large numbers of sailors, and speaks approving-
ly of the influence of them both over the men of the
sea. We will let him tell in his own language how
he spent his first Sabbath in San Francisco: —

"Sabbath morning, June 20. I attended the morning class
at the Central M. E. Church. Had a good class, which I
greatly enjoyed. Heard Dr. Dillie preach a good sermon,
but before its close we had quite a shock of earthquake
which caused a big scare in the congregation, and knocked
the remainder of the sermon out of the doctor. At night
I attended the services at the Mariner's Church, where we
had a good sermon by Chaplain Rowell, followed by an af-
ter meeting, at which three of the seamen were converted,
which brought joy and gladness to their hearts as well as
to my own. So ended my first Sabbath in San Francisco.

As this is Jubilee week, there are a large number of sail-
ors ashore from the ships on leave. I meet many who had
been to Portland on other voyages. As soon as I was rec-
ognized by them I was introduced to their shipmates as
"Mr. Fletcher, from Portland, who always looks out for
us boys." It seems like home to be among them."

The "seed cast upon the waters" is being gather-

COMING OF THE END. 243

ed now in the gratitude of those to whom he had
been the instrument, in the hand of God, of bring-
ing good in other days. So it is ever. "He that
goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed,
shall doubtless come again with rejoicing bringing
his sheaves with him." Sometimes, it is true, the
time seems to be long, and the harvest may even be
left for others to gather. Mr. Fletcher found
David Jones, a sailor who had often been in Port-
land, and for whom he had labored most earnestly
in the past, bui he found him, as he writes: —

"The same old David, still in his sins. I talked to him
faithfully, and he promised to come to see me and have a
talk with me in my room at the Home, which he did. I
spent three hours with him. I dealt with him faithfully.
I read portions of Scriptures for him, and got him upon
his knees while I prayed for him. I wanted him then and
there to make a clean breast of his sins to God, and take
Jesus as his Captain and Saviour. He was greatly broken
up, but he would not yield to the blessed stirrings of the
Spirit. It was then about half past eleven o clock, and he
had to leave to catch the last boat to Oakland. He prom-
ised me that he would read his Bible and do better."

This incident shows the intense earnestness and
sincere faithfulness of the work of Mr. Fletcher .
with his "sailor-bovs." With tears in his eyes,

244 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

with tenderness in his voice, yet with a faithfulness
to truth that is worthy of all praise, he would set
before them the "error of their ways" and then,
kneeling with them, put their case before God.
His prayers were trustful, confidential talks with
God. They two were acquainted. They were
friends, as God and Abraham were friends. They
walked and talked together and trusted each other
with a perfect trust.

One of the most refreshing visits made by Mr.
Fletcher in San Francisco was with the family of
Dr. John Dillon, the son of Rev. Dr. Isaac Dillon,
one of his intimate friends and helpers for many
years in the city of Portland. He speaks of it with
most intense satisfaction, and the more especially
as he found Dr. Dillon, whom he had known inti-
mately in his boyhood in Portland, a most worthy
Christian man.

The weeks of his stay in San Francisco passed
very rapidly and pleasantly. He did not fail to
improve all opportunities for good doing, and es-
pecially among the sailors wherever he found them.
On the evening of the 4th day of July he attended
the services at the Seaman's Institute. He makes
the following record concerning the services,

COMING OF THE END. 245

which, as it incidentally reveals his own high sense
of religious obligations, as well as indicates his firm
conviction of the nature of the life a seaman's
chaplain should live, we copy:

"I attended the night service at the Seaman's Institute,
as I wanted to see how the Chaplain conducts his work.
There was quite a large number of the sailor lads, besides
several ladies present. I thought it strange to see Mr. F.
through the week playing billiards and smoking and car-
rying on with the boys, and then to see him don his sur-
plice on Sunday night and read prayers to them. I thought
if this was the way he attempted to win the boys to Jesus
he had greatly mistaken his calling. He might conduct
in this way until doomsday and never win over one boy
to Christ."

With a most genial disposition Mr. Fletcher
could brook no such trifling spirit in one who
sought to "negotiate 'twixt God and man as God's
ambassador," and he never failed in one way or an-
other to put the seal of his disapprobation upon it.
Besides, he rightly judged that a Christianity that
draws no line of distinction between the practices
and pastimes of the Christian and worldly man is a
Christianity in word only, and not in deed and in
truth. No one is quicker than the men that sail

246 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

before the mast to detect the counterfeit present-
ment of a Christian life, and no one turns away
from it with a deeper disgust. But the real Chris-
tian life wins and holds their confidence, and he
who lives it commands their respect and honor.
Thus it is always and everywhere.

The time he had assigned himself for his visit to
San Francisco having expired on the 12th day of
July, he took passage on the steamer Columbia for
Portland. On his departure he says: —

"Forty-seven years ago I arrived in what is now San Fran-
cisco. Then there was no city here. I was then a sinful,
wicked young sailor. When I witness the great changes
that have taken place in the city since then, I feel that
none of them have been so great as that which has taken
place in my poor heart. Glory be to God! Then careless
and wicked, now a child of God, full of faith and of the
Holy Ghost, I cannot find words to express my great love
to my Heavenly Father, to Jesus Christ, my Saviour, and
to the Holy Ghost, nay Sanctifier, for their great love to
xne."

Surely Mr. Fletcher was right. No material
change can in any wise equal that which transpires
in the soul and life of one "born of a new celestial
birth," "by the power of the word of God which
liveth and abideth forever."

COMING OF THE END. 247

On reaching Portland Mr. Fletcher resumed his
work of ship visitation, with the same fidelity and
tenderness that had always characterized it. Still
he earnestly sought a new spiritual endowment for
the work before him. He set apart the hour be-
tween six and seven every morning for a special
reading of the Scriptures, meditation and prayer
that he might be filled with an enlarged faith and
increased power in his work. As the autumn came
on the largest fleet of merchantmen that had ever
visited Portland arrived, and it tasked Mr. Fletcher
to the utmost to meet the demands upon his time
and means in caring for the spiritual and temporal
good of his dear "lads of the sea." The ships were
all visited, and not one sailor escaped the attention
and advice of this lover of his kind. On the last
day of November, 1897, he writes: —

"I have put on board of nineteen ships this month 1273
pieces of reading matter, 200 magazines, 189 picture cards
with Scripture texts on them, with a large number of
tracts. There has been the largest fleet of ships and steam-
ers in port this season that I have ever seen here, and I
look for at last 150 more of them before the season closes."

Farly in January, 1898, Mr. D. W. Potter and
Mr. E. F. Miller, of Chicago, entered on a season

248 WILLIAM S. FLETCHER.

of evangelistic work in Grace Church, in Portland.
Their coming was hailed with delight by Mr.
Fletcher, and he entered into the work they inau-
gurated with great faith and fervor. He records
his impressions of the work as follows: —

"I have not seen such a revival in Portland for many
years. It has been a great blessing to Grace Church, and
will result, I think, in fifty accessions to the church. The
meetings were made a great blessing to myself. The
blessed Holy Spirit gave me great liberty in getting a large
number to the altar. He used me particularly in that part
of the work. I had the unspeakable pleasure of seeing
seven of my sailor boys give their hearts to God. I had set
apart about three weeks before the commencement of the
meeting from five to seven o'clock every morning for read-
ing and prayer for the endowment of power for my work,
and I must say to the glory of God that the Holy Spirit did
greatly bless me in my work during the meeting. I also
had a great deal of ship visiting to do during the time of
the meeting, and I trust very many of the men of the sea
were greatly benefitted.

"January 19. I attended the meeting at the Third Pres-
byterian Church, where all the afternoon meetings were
held. While we were singing as the congregation were com-
ing in, to our great surprise Amanda Smith walked into
the church. As soon as Mr. Potter got his eyes upon her
he cried out: "Why, here is Amanda Smith!" I jumped to
my feet, and sure enough my eyes had seen Amanda
Smith. I had read her book twice over, and read much

COMING OF THE END. 240

about her, but never did I think thai I should have the
unspeakable happiness of meeting her in the flesh. O how
my heart was thrilled when I heard her sing and pray and
speak for the blessed Jesus under the power and presence
of the blessed Holy Spirit, as he was manifested in the
words of her testimony. Praise His holy name, such a
meeting was never witnessed before in East Portland.
The result so far of the meeting on the East Side has been
most gratifying from the large numbers that have been
converted at the altar.

"February 5, 1898. Visited the bark Nithsdale. Captain
Steven. I was glad to meet with him and his first officer.
He was here fourteen years ago, as well as on his last voy-
age. He is a Christian captain and attends (irace Church
when in port. I gave him, and also his boys and men, a
fine lot of reading to take to sea with them. I have put on
board the ships for the mouth of January 797 papers, 150
magazines, 120 cards, G'2 calendars, 7 comfort-bags, 13 new
Testaments, and quite a number of tracts. It has been a
busy month with me in my ship and Bethel work. It ap-
pears to me the older I get the more I have to do, but the
Blessed Lord gives me strength according to my duty.
Praise His name."

Thus, as the early months of the present year
passed by, Mr. Fletcher, in the ripened fullness of
grace, continued his loved and consecrated toil.
Confined to his home for some weeks by an acci-
dent, he was greatly cheered by the constant atten-
tions of the dear Christian people whom he loved

250 WILLIAM S. FLETCHEK.

so tenderly, and who reciprocated all his love, and
especially by a very fraternal communication from
his old comrade and friend in his Bethel and ship
work in Portland, Rev. R. S. Stubbs. In his re-
sponse to Mr. Stubbs he says: —

"I have been in dry dock for the last few weeks. I have
had a good opportunity to work up my latitude and longi-
tude, and lind out my bearings. My dear chaplain, I can
say with you, by taking good heed to my chart and sailing
orders I have no fear of making shipwreck of faith, for I
don't intend to have any dead reckoning to work up at
the end of life's voyage, for I want an 'abundant entrance'
and to be safely moored with our loved ones at last. Praise
the Lord."

Thus for so many years we have traced the
course of the life of this true saint of God from its
unpropitious beginnings in his low-roofed Irish
home through the reckless and untaught career of
a man "before the mast;" through the struggles
and adventures of a miner; in the church, in
plain and earnest Christian toil, until we find him,
as his years touch three score and ten, an honored
Man, a trusted Friend, a consecrated Christian,
waiting only the good call of God to his final glori-
fication. Not more fittingly did Paul say of him-

COMING OF THE END. 251

self, as he nearecl the end of his earthly career, than
Mr. Fletcher can say as he nears the same goal: —

"1 have fought .a good light;
I have finished my course;
I have kept the faith."

FINIS.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES

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