Cincinnatians Visit Miami | 28 September 1934 | Cincinnati Enquirer

"Where the hearth is warm and friends are near . . ."

Abigail Fithian Halsey | 1923 | Southampton

Jesse Halsey notes on the back of the card that: “Dr. John Withrow Pres Cin Board of Education christened her 'Happy Halsey' when she taught in Cin Univ School.”

"Home Songs"

Bald Hill School | Descendants of First Pupils Recall Events

August 23, 1929
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle

"The only former pupil and teacher [present] was Mrs. Amanda Terry Ruland of Terryville. Among those present were . . . Mrs. W. G. Corwin, Mrs. Thomas Corwin, Miss Ethel Corwin, Miss Ethel Corwin, Mr. and Mrs. L.W. Ruland of Southampton . . .the Rev. Jesse Halsey and Miss Abigail Halsey of Cincinnati, Ohio; Mrs. Luella M. Terry of Patchogue."

"The Bald Hills Schoolhouse"

In eighteen hundred seventeen

When James Monroe was President and when

Long Island’s Middle Country road

Was but a footpath way,

The few settlers

In the shadow of Bald Hills

Built a schoolhouse for their children.

A good school makes a settlement,

And others came, and children grew

To womanhood and manhood

Making homes.

In eighteen fifty three the school out grown

Was sold to one James Clark,

And on this site

The present one was built:

‘Tis known today both far and wide as Farmingville.

My Mother went to school here,

I can see her now,

Little Melvina, trudging on between

Her brothers, Tom and Dan’l,

Holding by the hand

Her little sister, Lyd

Who grew to teach the school,

That is my story

Yours is just the same,

Each one of you who gather’s here today.

Your Mother went to school here or your Father –maybe both,

Their names are carved upon the trees and in the desks.

Their feet have worn the door sills, as with laugh and shout and lessons done they whooped their way to freedom through that door.

Their road, to knowledge, rough perchance, and steep

Grew many flowers of joy along its way

Whose odors sweet are wafted down the years.

Their fathers all were farmers,

Men who owned their land,

And every man a king in his own right.

And in this place they gathered on the Sabbath to acknowledge Him, the giver of all good—Almighty God.

They took their joys, their sorrows

And their planting and their harvests from His hand.

Their children growing here in this good land,

(Inhaling freedom in the air they breathed),

Grew up together making their own homes and teaching to their children

As their fathers taught to them,

Lessons of uprightness and thrift.

Some went away, some wandered far,

But once a year we all come home.

Here in the schoolhouse in the wood

We meet to pay homage due those noble souls

Our fathers and our mothers, true Americans

This is America

This spot of ground

Where freeborn men and women

Made their homes and reared their children

In the fear of God,

Afraid of none

And bound to none

And envying non:--

God save America

By Abigail Fithian Halsey

For the Fiftieth anniversary

Of the Farmingville Reunion Association, 1935

"Let Us Give Thanks!"

November 1932 | Cincinnati Enquirer

"Ye Did Unto Me"

Earth | Calvin Dill Wilson

"I am so much farther north than you that you hardly see it so early in the evening as I."

Letter from Harriet Bishop to Jesse Halsey

39 Lewis Street

Southampton, L.I.

Jan 7, 1935

Dear Jesse,

Your little poem was sweet and recalled the past very vividly to my mind. I can see the entrance to your old home and the dining room and kitchen as though it was only yesterday that I was there. Often I dream about Lizbeth and she is still to me a very real and quite undimmed personality. She once said some verses of Sara Teasdale’s and told me how much she liked them. I wrote them in my scrap book. I love to think that after all the adverse winds of her life ceased, she could “straighten like a flame.” It would be such a clear, bright light, don’t you think? Whenever I am on the beach I stand “on the seaward dune” and call her to my mind.

It is heartening to know you find time, in the full life you live, to remember me.

Love and good wishes always.

Harriet M. Bishop

On the Dunes—Sara Teasdale

If there is any life when death is over

These tawny breaches will know much of me,

I shall come back as constant and as changeful

As the unchanging, many-colored sea.

If life was small, if it has made me scornful,

Forgive me; I shall straighten like a flame

In the great calm of death, and if you want me

Stand on the seaward dune and call my name.

"O glowing day of summer gone, so full"

The first day passed

And summer’s time returns to winter

Ere the day that lingers yet so wistfully

Has turned to dark. A stillness broods

In air that’s all alight with sunset’s glow.

The clock strikes six, the crickets chirp the time

That yesterday was seven, and in the west

A small moon hangs scarce brighter than the light

Which fades so slowly that a twittering bird

Has sung his last goodnight ere dark sets in.

O glowing day of summer gone, so full

Of life and light and love and happiness

So radiant in our retrospect,

We hail in sweet remembrance one

Who like this day

Has now turned back upon eternal time,

And in her garden, looking to the west

We raise our eyes above the sunset glow,

And farther, past the bright young moon

To catch a point of light—

The evening star.

by Jesse Halsey 

Open Prayer

Complied by Jesse Halsey | Abingdon-Cokesbury Press |1951
In Memoriam
Frederick Isham Halsey
1912-1939

The sea tugged at his heart with all its tides,

            Its colors and rhythms and tumults; and tall ships

Passing at dawn or pausing at twilight were always

            In his eyes and his talk and at his finger tips.

Beautiful, big-eyed, with rebellious hair

            I watch him in a stiff wind with his boat,

Letting her have it; and I watch him roping her

            Down at the dock and the spray all over his coat.

And we watch him again at the wharf

            With the rising wind and the water suckling him out to sea;

And he gets in his boat and heads into the dawn-drift.

            To chat with a certain Captain from Galilee.

-from a poem by Joseph Auslander

Preface to: A Living Hope

Suggestions for Funeral Services 

(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1932)

By Jesse Halsey
 

In Loving Memory of 

Wilmun H. Halsey

1920-1928

“The Little Levite”

O give me Samuel’s mind

A sweet unmurmuring faith,

Obedient and resigned

To Thee in life and death,

That I may read with childlike eyes

Truths that are hidden from the wise.

--James D. Burns, Evening Hymns

The ministry of consolation makes large demands upon one’s reserves. Collected from many sources, these pages are offered by way of suggestion and guidance in the enrichment of the ministry.

Brevity without haste is to be desired; dignity without coldness; sympathy without sentimentalism. A Christian hope and faith should pervade all.

It is hoped that this material will be amplified by the brotherhood. The publisher or the compiler will be glad to receive contributions of helpful selections for use in future editions.

The funeral address is being less often used. The prose selections and the poems are offered in hope that they may supply the personal tough that was present, though often overdone, in the old type of funeral “sermon.”

[A decided trend in non-liturgical circles [is] to make the funeral service more simple and more stately, and in liturgical circles to add warmth.

The purpose of this book is to furnish material suitable for all occasions and in line with the present tendency. The funeral sermon or address is disappearing; some bit of appropriate prose from a worthy source, or some lovely poem may well take its place. A short but telling reference to the life and character of the departed is appreciated, whereas a long extempore eulogy is often out of place and offensive.]

The form is loose leaf, so that arrangement of the material selected for use on a given occasion may be assembled in consecutive order, thus avoiding fumbling of pages.

Many blank pages are left in each section. Obviously, as many as are desired can be added by the owner. Room is left in the General Index for growth of the book in the owner’s hands. Its usefulness will depend on the extent to which it is rearranged and added to by the user. There is no completely arranged service in the book, but there is material for many of the emergencies that a pastor is called upon to meet.

[Three of the services as used by the editor are available in print and may be given to the bereaved family with such additions as the minister may make.]

"The Sea Tugged at His Heart"

(In Memoriam: S. C.)

The sea tugged at his heart with all its tides,

            Its colors and rhythms and tumults; and tall ships

Passing at dawn or pausing at twilight were always

            In his eyes and his talk and at his fingertips.

He would show me drawings I only half understood:

            Mechanical plans and charts of schooners and whalers,

Brigs and brigantines, luggers and galleys and galleons—

            And salt was in his talk like the talk of sailors.

Beautiful, big eyed, with rebellious hair,

            I watch him in a stiff wind with his boat,

Letting her have it; and I watch him roping her

            Down at the dock and the spray all over his coat.

And I watch him again at our sloshy old wharf with the rising

            Wind and water suckling him out to sea;

And he gets in his boat and heads into the dawndrift.

            To chat with a certain Captain from Galilee.

To show Him his charts and plans as sailor to sailor,

            To speak as one seaman to another, observing

The beauty of ships, the bravery of men, the terrible

            Glory of the gray gulls plunging and swerving.

Dead? This boy with the sea in his eyes and the morning

            Still great and new in his blood like a trumpet with tones

Lavish and marvelous? Dead? With the sea birds crying

            And the wind and the water crying in his head.

By Joseph Auslander

[On July 1, 1937, Joseph Auslander began his term as the first Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Auslander was noted for his war poems; his best-known work, The Unconquerables (1943), is a collection of poems addressed to the German-occupied countries of Europe.
Auslander was selected for the position, which originally had no fixed term, by Librarian of Congress Herbert Putnam. Auslander served as consultant until December 8, 1941, by which time subsequent Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish had decided to rotate the consultantship among American poets.]

“The Skipper”

In Memoriam

The Rev. Jesse Halsey, D.D.

1882-1954

The sea was always in his eyes

As in his blood;

The English earth his heritage,

His sires, the skippers of proud ships

Out of Southampton’s

New World port

Two hundred years agone.

He lov’d the salt-tang’d air,

The restless, rolling water drew him

From a thousand miles,

Like tides upon his heart

Toward home and rest and peace.

His hands were seaman’s hands,

Busy, apt to any task

To build, to smooth,

To climb where few would dare,

To set a gentle flower,

To bind a wound,

To brush aside a tear,

To pray.

Like season’d oak, his heart,

Handwrought and mellowed,

Weathered fitting by the foul and fair;

He knew his craft—the hearts of men

And like his Master,

No stranger he to ax and plane,

Or storm-toss’d day,

The satisfying weariness of eventide;

His art—the ships he built—

The lives he sent out from his ways

Sound wrought and rigged,

To wrest and bring

A hard-won cargo safely home.

His heart a skipper’s Heart,

The Master’s Order, his;

And certain as a chart that fact

To all

Who signed on in his company.

No wonder to his mates,

The Master, satisfied,

Called out, “Cast off!”

And he obeyed.

By Samuel Gregory Warr

Assistant to Dr. Halsey, Seventh Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1940-1941.

"the end of a golden string"

I give you the end of a golden string;

 Only wind it into a ball,

It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate,

 Built in Jerusalem’s wall…

--William Blake, from "Jerusalem," as inscribed in Jesse Halsey’s Bible, 1917

Most Used Books

Jesse Halsey

Bible

Authorized Version

Moffatt’s Translation

Strong’s Concordance

Hasting’s Bible Dictionaries

Hasting’s Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics

Marcus Dods, “The Bible, Its Origin and Meaning”

Moffatt, “The Approach to N.T.”

*C.H. Dodd, everything

Vincent, “Word Studies in N.T.”

Expositor’s Greek Testament

Driver’s Introduction

Davidson, “O.T. Theology”

G.A. Smith, “Isaiah” “Minor Prophets”

Marcus Dods, “Genesis and John” (Expositor’s)

On the Psalms: Briggs, Buttenweiser

On the Gospels: Moffat’s Commentaries

Mathew Henry, high spots

Alex Maclaren, some

Inter-Critical, some

Major, Mansen & Wright, “Message and Meaning of the N.T.”

Theology

*W.N. Clarke, Outline

Fairbairn, “The Place of Christ in Modern Theology”

*W.A. Brown, Outline

*James Denney, Studies “Death of Christ”

Bowne, “Theism”

*Streeter, “Reality”

Lyman, “The Meaning of Truth and Religion”

Oman, everything

Baillie, “Invitation to Pilgrimage” “Our Knowledge of God”

Lote

*Martineau

Rauschenbusch, “Theology for Social Gospel”

Cairns, “Reasonableness of Christian Faith” “The Riddle of the World”

Foster, “Life and Sayings”

Sermons

Hubert Simpson

Gossip

*Coffin

Fosdick

Gilkey (James G.)

--

Matheson, “Studies in Portrait of Jesus” “Representative Men of Bible”

*Whyte, “Character Studies in Bible” “Bunyan’s Characters”

Peabody, “Mornings in a College Chapel,” etc.

*Watson, “Inspiration of our Faith”

Devotional

Stalker, “Trial and Death of Jesus Christ”

*Bunyan, “Pilgrim’s Progress”

Wm. Law, “Devout and Serious Call”

Matheson, “Rests by the River”

Baillie, “Diary of Private Prayer”

Orchard, “The Temple”

*Merjikowski, “Jesus Manifest” “Jesus Unknown”

Public Prayer

*Hunter, “Devotional Services”

Common Prayer; Common Worship

Scottish, “Euchalogion”

History and Theory of Worship

Maxwell, “Outline of Christian Worship”

Hyslop, “Our Heritage in Public Worship”

*Coffin, “The Public Worship of God”

Micklem, Ed. “Worship

--

Clarke, “The Ideal of Jesus”

Buttrick, “On the Parables”

Bruce, “The Training of the Twelve”

*Schweitzer, “Quest of Historical Jesus”

Inge, “Faith and Its Psychology”

Pratt’s books on psychology of religion

*Robertson, “Hidden Romance of N.T.”

Eidersheim, “Life of Jesus”

*T. R. Glover, “Jesus of History” (and everything)

Biography

*Reid, “The Great Physician” (Osler)

Whipple, “Lights and Shadows”

Grenfell, “Forty Years for Labrador”

Allen, “Phillips Brooks”

Pupin, “From Immigrant to Inventor”

Boswell, “Johnson”

Pepy’s “Diary”

Parkhurst, “My Forty Years in New York”

Freeman, “Robert E. Lee”

Wm. Lyon Phelps

Clarke, “Forty Years with the Bible”

History

Woodrow Wilson, “American History”

Froude’s Studies

Goldwin Smith

Caldwell, “Short History of the American People”

Josephus

Macauley

Ferrero, “On Rome”

Moulton, “Life in the Middle Ages”  “The River” series

Youth

*Forbush, “Boy’s Life of Christ” “Young People’s Problems” “The Boy Problem”

Johnson, “Problems of Boyhood”

Hoben, “The Minister and the Boy”

Erdman Harris, “Twenty One”

Hunting, “Story of the Bible”

Hodges, “How to Know the Bible”

Webster’s Dictionary (Unabridged)

Thesaurus

Stevenson, “Home Book of Verse” “Home Book of Quotations”

Crabb’s Synonyms

Fernald, “Connective of English Speech” “Grammar”

Poets

Browning

Tennyson

Whittier

Lanier

*Francis Thompson

Vachel Lindsay

E. R. Sill

--

John Livingston Low, “Essays in Literary Appreciation”

Elkstein, “Lives”

Fiction—Modern

“The Case of Sergeant Greisha”

Hamsun, “The Growth of the Soil”

Practical

*Coffin, “What to Preach”

Yale Lectures on Preaching

notably, Watson, “Cure of Souls”

Brooks

Beecher

Dean Brown

*Oman, “Concerning the Ministry”

Dykes, “The Christian Minister”

Most helped by Watson (Ian Maclaren), Coffin, William Newton Clarke, W.A. Brown,

Fosdick, Glover, Marcus Dods, Forbush, Martineau, Peabody, Streeter, L.P. Jacks, William James, and Hocking. I find myself most often quoting these and using (consciously and unconsciously) their ideas.

(No pretentions that this is an “Ideal Book List.” Just those that one run-of-mine pastor found useful years on end.)

*Most used

List of Southampton Folks Influential to Jesse

from the folder marked "HALSEY AUTOBIOGRAPHY Carbons," this half page of notes reads:

Ed Foster – Natural Prayer

Miss Mallory – Cheating Boy

Frank Corwith – Fold Paper

Pop Johnson – Black Shoes

Madison - Boy like that.

Jen Baird- Ella Bennett

Father and 46 Psalm

Dr. Campbell – Leave it there

Wilson – Any other way

Edgar Hildreth

M Jagger-

Lil Halsey

Chas Foster – Pro Bono Publico

Encouragement – M. Jagger

Chas A. Jagger

Wm H Pierson

M. A Herrick – Thank God; best part of Education

Warren Hildreth – Don’t you think you ought to?

Honesty. Encouragement –

Abigail and Book – Poetry

“The Skipper”

Southampton Press, Thursday, Jan. 21, 1954

In Memoriam

The Rev. Jesse Halsey, D.D.

1882-1954

The sea was always in his eyes

As in his blood;

The English earth his heritage,

His sires, the skippers of proud ships

Out of Southampton’s

New World port

Two hundred years agone.

He lov’d the salt-tang’d air,

The restless, rolling water drew him

From a thousand miles,

Like tides upon his heart

Toward home and rest and peace.

His hands were seaman’s hands,

Busy, apt to any task

To build, to smooth,

To climb where few would dare,

To set a gentle flower,

To bind a wound,

To brush aside a tear,

To pray.

Like season’d oak, his heart,

Handwrought and mellowed,

Weathered fitting by the foul and fair;

He knew his craft—the hearts of men

And like his Master,

No stranger he to ax and plane,

Or storm-toss’d day,

The satisfying weariness of eventide;

His art—the ships he built—

The lives he sent out from his ways

Sound wrought and rigged,

To wrest and bring

A hard-won cargo safely home.

His heart a skipper’s Heart,

The Master’s Order, his;

And certain as a chart that fact

To all

Who signed on in his company.

No wonder to his mates,

The Master, satisfied,

Called out, “Cast off!”

And he obeyed.

By Samuel Gregory Warr

Assistant to Dr. Halsey, Seventh Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1940-1941.

Two Poems | Abigail Fithian Halsey

THE PROOF

How would I prove my love?

By some fair deed,

Some joyous sacrifice,

Some swift relief

Unto your utmost need,

Some glowing revelation

That, like sunlight on a distant hill,

Should show you all my heart

In one glad moment yours.

How do I prove my love?

By standing just aside,

By seeing you go on,

Day after day,

In ways I may not tread;

By watching your dear feet

Stumble in paths

My word could save you from,

Yet never speaking it;

By knowing past all doubting

That the day will come,

When, all else gone,

Alone,

Deserted,

You will turn your face

To meet my waiting eyes,

And there

Behold your own.

THE SOURCE

Dear comrade, do they call you dead?

Ah no, not I.

Last night the moon lay white on all the land,

A boat was anchored

Here beside the stream.

Oh, ‘twas a merry party

Setting forth,

And you were here,

And those we loved,

And I.

One took the oars

And rowed us toward the hills.

The woods closed in,

The stream grew dark,

And then

The boat was grounded sudden on the shoals,

And I

Said quickly that perhaps

We’d come too far.

Too far, they all agreed,

And turned us back.

Then quietly you rose and stepped ashore,

And with a smile to me,

Said,

“I am going on

To find the source,”

And left us there,

And I—

Dear comrade, do they call you dead ?

Ah no, not I!

By Abigail Fithian Halsey

Published in Contemporaneous Verse, Jan. 1917, p. 8-9 —

"The Old Mill" by Abigail F. Halsey

"The Old Mill"

On the hill stood the mill a watch tower of old,

In the door stood the miller all dusty and bold,

Up the hill came the farmers with grist to be ground

As the wings of the mill turned so merrily round.

Oh, life had a flavor in days long ago,

A tang and a savor we never shall know.

All the news of the village was ground into flour,

The wind and the weather, the tide and the hour,

The crops and the crews and the favoring breeze,

The births and the deaths the ships on the seas.

A tang and a savor we never shall know.

There was plenty of time and plenty of work,

And “plenty” to do it and no one to shirk,

Then no one was rich and no one was poor,

Religion was real and hell-fire was sure,

Oh, talk had a flavor in days long ago,

A tang and a savor we never shall know.

The news from New York when it came once a week

Was turned with the cud to the sou’ sou’ west cheek,

But the sight of a whale from the top of the mill

Sent a blast that would waken the dead down the hill,

When the Whale Rally sounded at night or at morn

The call was a rival of Gabriel’s horn.

Alas for the darkness that shrouded the mill

In the strange march of “Progress” it moved with the hill,

Alone in its exile and shorn of its wings,

The old mill sits brooding on far away things—

On life and its flavor in days long ago,

Its tang and its savor we never shall know.

Let us bring back the mill while the old beams are strong,

Let us give back its wings for the days that are gone,

That our sons may remember the good old days of old

When millers were seamen and semen were bold,

To give life a flavor of days long ago

Whose tang and whose savor we never shall know.

ABIGAIL F. HALSEY

Long Island, N.Y. Thursday, March 14^th, 1929