The Lumberjack Sky Pilot

While I waited for a train, a woodsman entered the station. He was dressed in a rough Mackinaw jacket; coarse socks held his trousers close to his legs, and on his hands were heavy woolen mittens. Everything proclaimed him to be a man of the camps.

"Hello, Jack," I said in greeting, "how were the woods this winter? Anything new in the camps?"

Jack jammed the Peerless into his strong-smelling pipe, struck a match and replied: "Snowed so blank hard that half the gang jumped the job, and us fools that stayed worked up to our necks trying to get out the stuff. This winter was Hades, but not quite so warm-no, not by a jugfull. Why say, neighbor, in our camp the whisky froze up and kept the bunch sober until we got a new supply."

He paused, looked me over, and began again:

"You're a preacher, ain't you?"

"I am," I replied.

"Well, then, here's news you'll enjoy. We're all thinking of joining the church-us fellows in the camps. Funny, ain't it? The gospel sharks are in the tall timber and are getting bags of game that would shame a pot hunter. The cloth has donned overalls and is preaching at us. Savvy, Preacher?-we've actually got so civilized that they're preaching at us God-forsaken lumberjacks. How does that strike you for news?"

He paused to see the effect this intelligence was having on me, then continued:

"The sermons we get are the real thing. No sun-proof paint on them, no 'by-your-leave,' but the straight goods, the pure stuff-chips, bark and timber. Everything we get is government sealed, punk proof, top-loaded and headed for the landing-which is us. It all comes our way and we hold our noses and take the medicine. What party do you happen to hitch to?"

"Denomination?" I asked, "I am a Presbyterian."

"Good! So am I. I don't happen to belong yet, but if they keep on hewing to the line, I'll have to join-or hike. Our Sky Pilot, Frank Higgins, belongs to your crowd. Probably you know him?"

"I have known him a long time," I replied.

"Shake! If you're a friend of his you'll do. He's onto his job, and if this keeps up, the guy that splashes ink on the church roll will be kept busy adding our names. There's my train."

He was gone. May the day soon come when the half jesting prophecy of the lumberjack will be fulfilled.

*****

Stately and green is the forest of the North Star State. From Lake Superior the great pineries of Minnesota extend unbroken until the fertile silt of the Red River Valley limits the growth of the pines. Two hundred miles is the width of the forest and the evergreen covers the northern half of the state. This is "the woods" of Minnesota-the center of the logging industry.

About five hundred camps mar this beautiful region with their rude shacks and temporary shelters, some of them being scores of miles from the permanent settlements. During the winter months twenty thousand men labor in the scattered camps of this vast territory, removing the growth of ages that the farms and cities may have comfort and protection. The primeval forest has been invaded, and on the zero air of the north the ring of the ax, the tearing of saws and the strange oaths of the teamsters mingle with the crash of falling trees.

The workers of the forest are called lumberjacks. In all the country there is scarcely a more interesting group of men-interesting because so wayward and prodigal in life and habit, while their forest home appeals to every leaf-loving soul. They are the nomads of the west-farm hands and railroad constructionists in summer, woodsmen in winter-with no settled abode, no place they call home. A few years ago Michigan claimed them; later their habitat was in the forests of Wisconsin; now the woods of Minnesota is their rendezvous.

LUMBER CAMP IN THE LONG, LACE-LIKE NORWAYS

The typical lumberjack is a man of large heart and little will. He sins with willing freedom, because he has almost lost the power to check his evil desires, and it is so easy to yield to the vultures who make sin convenient and righteousness hard. The saloon and brothel are ever alluringly near, while the church and bethel are slow to approach. The harpies of sin wait at every turn to prey upon the woodsman-though they damn his soul it matters not, if they obtain the cash.

The railroads push their iron arms into the heart of the wooded lands, and the villages follow the railways, desiring to be near the camps for the trade they bring. Almost without exception the first places of business are the saloons, to which are attached the outfits of the gamblers, and conveniently near are the places of shame. One new town in the pineries had between forty and fifty saloons (forty-six I believe is the number), five large brothels, and the gambling hells were many, yet the population of the place was little over two thousand. It was evident to the casual visitor that its chief industry was to separate the campmen from their earnings by preying on their weaknesses. Another village is beautifully situated at the junction of two rivers. All around it is well timbered land, and from the nature of the soil the place is destined to be of importance in the coming years, but at the time of this writing the village with its adjacent territory only contains a population of about two hundred. The village has less than a dozen houses, but six saloons do a thriving business and the brothel has appeared. You ask where the places obtain their patronage? From the camps. The foresters are the source of profit; the population of the town would not be able to keep one saloon in business. Nor are these solitary instances. The same conditions are to be found in almost every hamlet and village in the woods. Day and night they ply their sinful trade, and soon the gold, which the lumberjack risked his life to win, jingles in the coffers of the shameless or gleams in the till of the saloon or gambling hell.

Sunday is the harvest day of iniquity. The men are released from labor and pour into the villages to spend the hours of rest. The wheel, whisky and women separate them from their earnings, and like the withered leaves of autumn the strong wielders of the ax and canthook fall easy victims. One night "to blow in the stake," regrets for a moment-then back to the loneliness of the winter woods again. He is said to be a poor lumberjack who can keep his wages over night.

Jack is not always a willing victim. Often by knockout drops he is reduced to insensibility and robbed. He may complain of the treatment, but he is helpless through lack of evidence, and is told to "go up river," or is hustled unfeelingly out of town. "He's only a lumberjack and is better off when all in." This is all the sympathy the Ishmaelite receives. No place is open to him except the one he should avoid. The churches are too weak to meet the large demands, and so no place of refuge opens its doors of hope to the prodigal. The balm of sympathy comes to him limitedly; humanity is as cold as the frozen streams of his winter's retreat. Civilization is viewed only as a place of unbridled license where the law favors the spoiler. God is dead. Christ is only a word of convenient profanity. The church has forgotten the prodigal while caring for the souls of the saved. Thus he views life. In his wretchedness he labors for the keepers of the gates of death and is satisfied, if, by the sweat of his brow, he can win an hour of forgetfulness in the place of riot and shame.

No picture was ever painted so dark as to exclude all light. God made it so. Even in the neglected sons of the lumber-camps is seen a hopeful ray-for their hearts are as rich in charity as their lives are dark with sin. Their sympathies can easily be touched. It is through the open freedom of their generous nature that the reforming power of the gospel can enter. The only remedy for the campmen is the sustaining power of the Man of Nazareth. When they shall learn to know the Christ of God as the Savior of men, the darkened lives of the foresters will be transformed, and the fruits they shall bring forth will be the wished for deeds of righteousness.

When the Rev. Francis Edmund Higgins, the Lumberjack Sky Pilot, began his work among these neglected Ishmaelites, no religious society was making an effort to raise the moral and spiritual condition of the campmen. The Catholic church, then as now, devoted itself to the hospital work in the nearby towns, but no denomination invaded the camps to lead the bunkmen to right living. At the time of this writing the Presbyterian church is the only religious organization having special missionaries in the lumbercamps.

Regardless of denominational prejudice, the work of Frank Higgins appeals to the whole Christian church, not only on account of its peculiar type, but also because of the interesting man conducting it. Fitted by nature and training for his work, he is striving with heart and hand in a large and lonely field. He is the pastor of a large and scattered flock which for long and weary years has known no shepherd. Depraved men are being reached, lifted and kept for God through him-men alone are his parishioners.

Seldom is a pastor more beloved by his people. The rough but kindly hearts of the lumberjacks go out to this fearless minister who self-sacrificingly breaks the bread of life to the husk-fed prodigals of the far north country. The lumberjacks will fight for their Sky Pilot; and even the ranks of the enemy-the saloonmen, the gamblers, the brothel keepers-are compelled to admire this earnest Christian minister who is valiantly fighting a hard battle for God and righteousness.

The Rev. Frank Higgins is a resolute character, full of zeal and undaunted courage. God gave him a strong body and he is using it for the Giver. That rare virtue we call tact, or sanctified common sense, shows itself in all his dealings with men. False dignity is absent from him, but the dignity of sterling purpose and determined endeavor is ever present. He is no slave to custom, but is a man who does things in his own way, and does them well. The title the loggers have conferred upon him is one of affection; he is the Lumberjack Sky Pilot, and if you heard his forest parishioners speak that name, you would realize that his ordination was threefold-ordained of God, by the presbytery and by the lumberjacks.

Frank E. Higgins was born in the Queen City of the West, Toronto, Ontario, on the nineteenth day of August, 1865. He was the seventh child to come into the home, but the only one to survive the vicissitudes of infancy. His parents were both Irish, but his father, Samuel Higgins, was born in the Dominion, and for some years prior to his death kept a hotel in Toronto on the site where the Walker House now stands. In this house Frank was born. Ann Higgins, the mother, first saw the sun in the Ulster settlement of Ireland, her parents bringing her to Canada when she was four years old. Samuel Higgins died when Frank was seven years of age.

Two years after the death of Frank's father, Ann Higgins married John Castle, an Englishman, who shortly afterwards moved the family to Shelburne, Dufferin County, Ontario. Here in the untouched wilderness the settlers began to force an opening for cabin and crops. The country was new. Few white families were near, but on the Higgins homestead were several camps of Sioux Indians. The land was forest covered, the towering cedar and hemlock stretched their graceful fingers heavenward, the spreading maples delighted the eye, and the white robes of the slender birch lent variety to the sylvan scene. With painful effort the sentinels were felled and squared for cabin and sheds, and fields of grain succeeded the fallen forest.

The companions of Frank Higgins were the children of the Sioux Indians, whose tepees were near the homestead. With the children of the Indians he took his lessons in woodcraft, learned to draw the bow, or childishly labored at the tasks of the growing braves. One of his early recollections is of secretly carrying a loaf of bread from his home to trade with an Indian youth for bow and arrows. Perhaps the subsequent strapping he received had something to do with the permanency and vividness of the recollection. For three years the Indians were his constant playmates. From the warlike Sioux, fearlessness was imbibed, their love of the forest became his, and an ineffaceable delight in tree and stream was stamped in the character of the growing boy. "I feel it now," he said to me, but recently when we were in the city together, "I want to get back to the solitudes where the trees have voices and every stream a story. I love the camps rather than the cities. I have never passed from my boyhood love-my first love-the trees, the hills, the brooks. In the pineries I feel as if I were a boy back in the old days again."

STEAM-JAMMER AT WORK

These were days of gold and purple when the child was learning the mysteries of life, days of ceaseless roaming in which nature taught her truths through leaf and twig, through dew and whispering breeze. He was nature taught-all that touches "the wild and pillared shades" belongs to his free, frank nature. Unknowingly he was beholding the beauty of his future kingdom and unconsciously equipping himself for the years of zealous toil among the white nomads whose weapons are the ax, the saw and the peavey-a change in equipment and complexion, with the same stage setting.

Few school privileges came to the forest lad. When he should have been at his studies there was no school to attend; when the school came, only brief periods were allowed to him. At twelve he took his place by his stepfather's side and assisted in supporting the family. Every hand was needed, and the boy's little counted for much. There was ground to clear of trees and underbrush, there were rails to split and fields to fence, and in the winter logging, claimed his labor for the cash it gave in return.

Dufferin County could offer few advantages in those days. Its sparsely settled condition meant absence of amusements and communal privileges. Most of the new settlers were of English blood, and while they were willing to stint and sacrifice, yet they demanded the presence of the church. A church was organized near the Castle home, to which John and Ann Castle gave their united support. Frank's stepfather was a godly man, in whose life was reflected the spirit of our Master's teaching. Service and fellowship were the watchwords of the home. Of material wealth the cabin could not boast, but in spiritual gifts its occupants were far from poor. It was largely through these examples of Christian living that Frank Higgins acquired a knowledge and interest in the things of God.

When Frank was eighteen years old a wave of religious awakening swept through the community, and the stepson of John Castle was one of the first to surrender to the Master. Immediately he interested himself in the welfare of his companions, doing personal work among them. The result was that most of his companions joined the company of believers. These young men then organized a semi-weekly prayer meeting in the schoolhouse and Frank Higgins led the first meeting. Nine of those who attended those prayer meetings have since gone forth to preach the everlasting Gospel. There must have been good stuff among the settlers of Dufferin County.

The ministry always had its charms for Frank Higgins. Long before he united with the church, the desire to preach had possessed him. Many were the sermons he delivered to the cattle, stumps and trees, while going the rounds of his daily labor. On one occasion the stepfather and hired man hid behind the stumps that they might receive edification from the discourses that so often wasted their sweetness on the desert air. Unaware of their presence, Frank worked a while, then, laying aside his ax, mounted a log and began his sermon to the stumps. Vigorously he chided them for their inactivity. Emphatic were the woes he pronounced upon them who were at ease, while the harvest called loudly for workers. Enthusiastically he bade the stumps march forward and with unsheathed sword take possession of the Promised Land. The hidden ones, suppressing mirth that almost injured them, silently thrust their heads above the hiding place and looked with forced solemnity at the big, lonely preacher. So unexpected was their appearance, that he, who a moment before was willing to lead an army of stumps to victory, retreated to the cover of the forest, pursued by the convulsing laughter of his friends. Years afterwards, when commenting on the above incident, he said: "You see, it was a sermon to men after all. I had intended it for stumps, but it produced action among men." He laughed.

Men have always been his auditors. From the time of his stump sermon they have listened to his story of the Cross, and today among the stumps of the pineries he preaches with results that cause the angels to laugh in gladness.

At the age of twenty Frank Higgins returned to Toronto, the city of his birth, where he resided with relatives. He there entered the public schools, taking up the studies which the conditions in Dufferin County prevented him from acquiring in boyhood. It took courage to enter the sixth grade of the city schools, a big brawny man among babes. Unaccustomed to cities and civilization, he felt ill at ease away from his native woods. His hands were better acquainted with the ax than with the pen and pencil, but he stuck to his task while the blush of shame mounted his cheek as he sat among the little children of the grade. His teachers did not find him an apt scholar, but they bowed before the originality of his untutored mind.

Three years were spent in the grades and two in the high school, after which he left the Dominion of Canada and came to Minnesota, at the age of twenty-five.

In the fall of 1890 he began lay preaching in the Methodist Episcopal church at Annandale, Minnesota, and for two years labored in that field; doing very successful work. He was fortunate in the companionship of Dr. A. M. Ridgeway, a young physician who had recently begun to practice in the village. This friend did all he could to cover the defects of the frontiersman and to aid him to self-improvement. It was largely through Dr. Ridgeway's persuasion that Higgins gave up his work at Annandale and went to Hamline University to continue his studies. For two years he applied himself to books, but owing to the scarcity of funds he was compelled to preach on the Sabbaths, and the small salary thus obtained helped to support him in the University. The name of the late Rev. L. M. Merritt, of Onesta M. E. Church, Duluth, Minnesota, is held by him in revered memory for the timely encouragement and assistance rendered him at this period.

In 1895 the way opened for him to enter the service of his mother church. The Presbyterian Church at Barnum, Minnesota, was offered to him and the layman found himself in the denomination of his youth. The work at Barnum, Minnesota, changed the whole course of his life.

RIVER CREW ON LAKE BEMIDJI