Help Britain and It Won't Happen Here

Cincinnati Enquirer | 24 October 1940

"But we can do a service to democracy . . ."

The Continent, Volume 49 | March 21, 1918

Poughkeepsie Eagle-News | June 3, 1922

"The Rev. Jesse Halsey, pastor of the Seventh Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio, and the sign that adorns the front of his church. Someone wrote to the Rev. Mr. Halsey that the church was full of hypocrites and the wise preacher added: 'There is Always Room for One More.' This is the explanation of the strange sign which worries many who happen to pass the fashionable and wealthy church located in the suburb of Walnut Hills."

By Default

Jesse Halsey / Radio Address c1935

The World Court protocols have again failed to pass our Senate. If the prestige of a President, who can get a blank check for four billion, could not bring the Senators into line, what can? Apparently, a “barrage of telegrams” is more effective than the influence of the Chief Executive.

Anyone who listened to Father Couglin or Senator Reynolds or Huey Long, when they were on the air, realized, as never before, the awful power of the radio in the hands of propagandists, not to say demagogues.

(I realize it is very easy to call the other fellow bad names.) If we are to change the picture, we must, in the future, not take anything for granted; but begin to organize our forces and be prepared to make vocal, in Washington, such public opinion as we can create and direct. This presupposes a consistent policy of education in the cities and at the crossroads, to proclaim the ideals of brotherhood and the international implications of the Gospel, to make “Americanism” something more than a narrow nationalism, to take the best idealistic traditions of our history and to exalt them.

Whoever is responsible for the policies of mission study deserves credit for placing the emphasis on Japan for this year. With current increase in armaments and our naval gestures in the Pacific, it is of great value for the churches to be studying and trying to understand Japan. Certainly, it is but a drop in the bucket, but, as a wise woman said, “The place for the drop is in the bucket.”

The Senators from Ohio voted on opposite sides on the World Court. The day following the vote, from Washington comes a dispatch to our morning paper, intimating that the anti-Senator has been deluged with telegrams of congratulations whereas the pro-court Senator had received no congratulatory messages. However large the “barrage” of anti telegrams may have been, eight names are mentioned in our paper. None of them happens to be known to me (and I have lived in our town for over twenty years). However, an array of fifty or sixty names of our “leading citizens” appear on the letterhead of our World Court Organization. None of us apparently have wired and, likely, few have written, either congratulating our pro-Court Senator or criticizing our anti. I imagine that is symptomatic the country over.

It is our business to sow the seed and plant the leaven, but on occasion it seems necessary that we count our sheaves or bake our loaves of bread. In other words, put pressure where it will make votes in Washington, or, quite frankly, engage in straight-forward, above-board “lobbying.” For our encouragement in this dark time when we desperately need it, let me rehearse in brief a bit of history that ought to give us hope and teach us some lessons.

President Nicholas Murray Butler [of Columbia University], after spending some time with Premier Briand, came home and, in a Sunday evening address to less than four hundred citizens at an eastern summer resort, outlined in substance what we now know as the “Pact of Paris.” A small committee of citizens selected that night went to Washington. President Coolidge and Secretary Kellogg thought the plan impossible and “unconstitutional.” Senator Borah said that he “would not oppose it”; and there it seemed to stall.

A Roman Catholic member of this citizen’s committee said to the others that the only method of approach was through the Federal Council. They saw Dr. Cadman and started the Council’s machinery and as it became evident that individuals and groups the country over were interested, the plan began to take form. Its unilateral feature became multilateral, and other minor changes were introduced, but under the pressure of public interest in high places, it became possible and constitutional and, curiously enough, in most quarters it now bears the name of the “Kellogg Pact.”

Apparently, we do have the machinery to make vocal our idealism. None of us say that the League of Nations is a synonym for the Kingdom of God nor that the World Court will bring universal peace, but we do feel ashamed and humiliated that our great country, whose statesmen designed and set up the machinery of peace, seems afraid to use it herself. The world must judge that we have things or fear things in the future, that we are afraid to adjudicate of public opinion. Nationalism is in the ascendant; preparedness races are eminent. America, at least officially, begins to line up with the unidealistic and anti-Christian forces. The next decade will be a “testing time”—a period of judgment. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. We need to teach and live, but it is perfectly legitimate and entirely necessary that we make vocal in places where it will count our determined opposition to increased armaments, to isolationist policies—to Chauvinism in all its forms.

"The sea tugged at his heart--"

(Gentlemen—I didn’t mean to preach. This was written primarily for my children. I have hoped they would catch some of my enthusiasm that Grenfell gave to me.)

The last time we talked (in Spring of 1940), we both wished that we were young enough to go to the English Channel now. Twenty years ago we went as did our ancestors three hundred years before us. We also reluctantly admitted that our boys are not so eager to go as were we, or their ancestors twelve generations ago. They do not see the treat—to Dover sands and all else besides that we covet dear. We (old fellows) wondered if the stock is running out.

For thirty years he was my hero—and still is. He spoke of life and treated it as “An Adventure.” He could steer his ship by the stars or the sun or by dead reckoning. He used to say that a poor chart was worse than none at all. Many poor charts he revised, and many a storm he has outridden (these things are a parable). He wrecked some boats and bumped the bottom of others, but he built a ship railway to repair his own and those of all others.

The sea tugged at his heart—He’s off on another voyage. That’s what he believed. And I believe it too; he taught me. The first books he ever gave me were on immortality. He used to talk about it—quite naturally, just as he talked of other things. I listened, but I wasn’t entirely interested. But now . . . well, one gets older . . . things gain perspective . . .

from "Ill Wind"

IV

Sunday night and the hour of evening service. The little village is bathed in sunshine, the air is cool and calm. The tall spire of the white church dominate the landscape. The last bell is ringing for church. Presently, the men from the churchyard file into the building and the organ and bass-viol announce the majestic strains of Old Hundredth.

After the doxology, in the hushed silence the minister prays as he stands in the high pulpit with this mahogany rail, and great sounding board and big Bible (Neddie, in pop-eyed wonder notes every detail while his grandmother, with him in the back gallery, remembers every word.)

“O God, who rulest the ragings of the sea and makes the wrath of men to praise Thee, we bless Thy name that we have dwelt in security as in the hollow of Thy hand while the elements have raged about us . . . Especially do we thank Thee for the courage of Thy servants in the hour of peril and of danger that, counting their lives not dear unto themselves they have hazarded all for the saving of others.”

The concluding sentences were lost to the old Indian. Neddie nudged her and she opened her eyes to see Miss Patience, the village belle, softly tiptoe to her pew with a distinct switch of crinoline, audible all over the meeting-house.

--Reverend Jesse Halsey c1932

Misc. Notes

Those who tread this last physical, those who tread its last 1,000 feet tread the physical limits of the world. Smyth imagined that a Shape climbed with him, and that “if it slipped he would hold me.” Sir E. Shackleton and his 2 companions climbing the inhospitable mts of S Georgia after the terrible voyage in an open boat from Elephant Island, [thought] that a fourth walked with them All three men were persuaded that an unseen presence was guarding them.

***

Christian men who hold industrial and political power in their hands would be far more amenable to the persuasive pressure of the socially-minded Christian church than any of us dream. Their conservatism, is in the main, honest.

Reverend Jesse Halsey

Moses, my servant, is dead . . . thou therefore arise.

George Washington is one of the few men in history who gained the approval and praise of his contemporaries. He lived to see some of the fruit of his labors. During his service his detractors were many, in the army and without, but his persistence and perseverance in the end won him the acclaim of most of his fellow citizens and of the best judgment in other nations.

It is a common thing for humanity in time of crisis to express its approbation of greatness by calling the great to come back. During the way, the British sailors had a myth that Nelson was seen at Jutland. Francis Drake, of Armada fame, comes back, according to legend, in every crisis of England’s need. Vachel Lindsay has Lincoln as our contemporary during our Great War, walking the streets of Springfield. “Milton thou shoulds’t believing now, England hath need of thee.” Once and again humanity calls back its great heroes, but they never come, except in spirit; and it does happen that sometimes the spirit of Elijah doth rest up Elisha.

--Reverend Jesse Halsey

Brevity without haste. Simplicity without coldness.

Note on the publication of A Living Hope: Suggestions for Funeral Services 

(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1932)
Jesse Halsey

Brevity without haste. Simplicity without coldness.

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.

It is hoped that the brotherhood will e led by this beginning to send to publisher or compiler material that has proved helpful to be included in future editions if this prove useful.

The form is loose leaf, so that arrangement of the selected material can be made in the cover, for us on individual occasions.

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.

She knoweth that her hour is come

B. Andrews told me that one of the revealing moments of God was when he laid his hand on his wife’s abdomen and felt the first stirring of new life before the advent of their first baby.

I knew I was grown up and must take the places of the Fathers when Heckie, of all souls, the most cheerful and courageous through the years, looked to me for comfort in her last days. When I repeated Samuel Rutherford, “deep waters crossed life’s pathway,” etc., she said something that was like the accolade of knighthood after a long vigil; I knew I had been initiated.

--Reverend Jesse Halsey

Calvinisms

By Jesse Halsey c1937

2726 Cleinview Ave.,

Cincinnati, Ohio, 24385

[rejected by The Reader’s Digest, Pleasantville, N.Y.]

We had come up through the hills along the twisting roads, brushing the wisps of fog that half hid the mountains and blanketed the lakes. It was early and we were looking for breakfast—and other things to follow. An old man who was trudging along the road leaning heavily on a light pole, such as the Bible would call a staff, stepped aside to let us pass. I stopped the car to ask the way to Plymouth.

“Top of the hill, turn right fer the cemetery, the village’s t’th’ left”—direct Yankee fashion.

No, he would not ride.

“Good day t’yer”—like that.

We drove to the cemetery. Wrong light for pictures. But the severity of the place, and the simplicity of those two stones in granite, made their impression. Films not needed.

Some unknown hand that very morning, beside the President’s stone, has laid a handful of goldenrod, rosemary, and yarrow. The Coolidge name is common in that cemetery. Seven generations lie there. Always a “John” or a “John Calvin.”

Breakfast was not ready, “yet.” So to the post-office store.

It is hardly a village, just a few houses and barns scattered about with a flagpole, a store and a church snuggling where the roads meet in a triangle.

A “tea-room,” in thrift and cleanliness, stands down the road. “Open at eight.”

While we waited for our griddle-cakes and maple syrup (made famous in the White House), we asked questions of the postmistress (a thousand times repeated, she said!) and looked in on the room where “he was born” and visited the house across the way where “he was sworn in, by a kerosene lamp,” and there bought some maple syrup, “in the very room,” and made, “on this very farm.”

Hurrying back, half-famished, toward the tea-room, we found our ancient guide, now sitting on a corner of the post-office stoop, titled back in a Windsor chair, balancing with the aid of his stick.

Breakfast over and light favorable, I began to take pictures. When I snapped the store, the old man turned his face away. The second time, before focusing, I asked him to turn around.

“No,” he said, “I don’t like it.” “Lots o’ times they been here taking pictures when the President was home, but I always went inside. Somehow, I just don’t like it.”

So I have my pictures of the place where Coolidge was born, there in the back room of his father’s store, and of his father’s house across the street, (which later became his own), but I have no picture which shows the face of that old man on the post-office steps.

He was, however, glad enough to talk, when later, I asked him some questions—and he found out that I wasn’t a reporter.

His name was Brown, he said.

“Knew the President?”

“Well, he’d oughter! Had talked with him many times while they waited with the neighbors on the steops for the mail.”

Neighbor Brown, Miss Cilley, and the keeper of the tea house tell you interesting things, but you glean no gossip; there is none to glean. Their memories of their famous neighbor are wholesome; they have a genuine respect and affection. You feel you are back in the presence of some of the simplicities and realities that helped make the nation. More generous, the setting (and these characters) might be. Care and prudence are in evidence, but not parsimony.

At the time of the Civil War the township had fifteen hundred population and now it is less than four. But the contemporary Plymouth did its bit, and under the great elm stands a granite stone to a dozen World War veterans.

I asked about the old homestead across the way. He told of the new addition, never used, with its fireplace and extra bath—“so they could have company”—the furniture and gifts from Washington, never unpacked. A small house in trim New England weather-boarding with clean white paint, one building attached to another, the house, the sheds, the barn, strung together, all white and glistening in the early morning light, but with some kind of green composition roof. I listened while looking. Somehow, that roof was not properly acclimated.

Brown told about the man—“the President,” their neighbor. He told me many things—they were all true to form, “a plain man, well respected.” And then, this, which I remember almost word for word, though the drawl and accent I can’t convey by my pen.

“I was settin’ there, right on the top step.” His long stick tapped the spot. “I was settin’ there waitin’ fer the mail one day when the President was home on his vacation. That was the year, likely, they put on that new roof you was askin’ about. I was settin’ here when he come across the street and sets down on that lower step, awhittlin’ on a stick he carried. Not sayin’ much, but whittlin’ slow and careful. Bym’bye the President he says to me, ‘Brown, that looks like a nickel’—pointin’ toward the road with his stick he was whittlin’. Then he gets up, goes down the step, bends over, and picks up somethin’ out of the dirt, and comes back. ‘By Jiminy, Brown, it is a nickel,’ he says, and puts it into his vest pocket.”

Luckily, I didn’t interrupt and he went on.

“A few days later I saw Mrs. Coolidge. She passed the time o’day with me, and I says to her, ‘Mrs. Coolidge, excuse me, ma’am, but what did the President do with that nickel he found in the road, t’other day?’”

“’Why, Mr. Brown, he’s put it to work,’ says she.”

We talked on. That roof still interested me. I had seen Sunday supplement pictures, some years back, of Mr. Coolidge cleaning up old shingles while his father’s house was being repaired. He had worn a curious kind of over-all-apron, and had his arms full of old shingles ready for the woodhouse.

In that country, in the heart of the wooded New England hills, it seemed a pity to put anything except wooden shingles, with their deep shadows, on that old house. But I is now resplendent (and “tight,” no doubt) in a coat of fire-resisting, green-colored composition asbestos—imitation slate. (I am not expert enough in such things to give the name of the brand.”

A leaky roof, it seemed, had “been the botheration of the Colonel” (the President’s father) who had long since sold his store and moved to the little house across the road. While he was looking round for a carpenter, so Mr. Brown said, and pricing wooden shingles, a salesman from a concern that manufactures asbestos ones appeared and offered to cover the house and barn and connecting sheds and woodhouse—all of them—with his superior product, free of all cost to the owner—“just for advertising.” After due investigation, the Colonel accepted the offer and told the agent to “go ahead.”

A few days later, along came another agent extolling the quality of another kind of composition shingles. He offered to cover the buildings—and to pay a premium of $5,000 for the privilege! “Good advertising, I suppose,” said Brown.

“And what did the Colonel do?” I asked.

“Do? Why he told that second feller there was ‘nothing doin’ . . . ‘the thing was settled’ . . . ‘a contract was a contract, whether it was signed or not’ . . . ‘He’d told the other man, that was the end of it.’”

“And that,” said Mr. Brown, tapping the top step with his staff and squinting up at me as the sun came into full view above the mountains, with the fog “all burned off,” “that’s the other side of yer nickel.”

The East Riding of Yorkshire

By Jesse Halsey, c1938

The East Riding of Yorkshire. Thus it was called in the early days. The name has changed but the savor of the old time lingers.

Farmhouses low and sturdy with gray weathered shingles punctuate the flat countryside. Shingles three feet long, rived from red cedar that grew in the swamps, worn thin now where they have defied the east-wind-driven storms of two hundred winters and the bristling heat of as many summers, but with butts still thick enough to cast healthy shadows in endless parallel windows where the long sweeping roofs on the north side slope almost to the ground.

“Regardless of the direction of the highway those houses were set by their builders always facing the south—and the sun and the sea. Farm houses like that, gray and weathered but trim and tight against the weather, were built, some on village streets and some at the hub of the surrounding acres.

Tiny windowpanes peek out, diamond, and square and oblong, most from the days when glass came from over the water and was priced in shillings and pence and is bubble-scarred and blue streaked and is enchantingly distorting as one peers out.

Lanes there are that wind as one did the cow-paths. Lanes with names like this: Job’s Land, Gin Lane, Loylsome Lane, Hither Lane, Further Land, Middle Lane. Some lead through the woods and some across the meadows but all come at long last—or short—to some water, great or small, fresh or salt—any one of a dozen bays or ponds, or the beach banks and the Ocean.

Squat and square brick chimneys anchor the houses to the ground. Within, these chimneys are fed by fireplaces, one in each and every room. Floorboards creak when you enter, boards half as wide as puncheon head. Low ceilings, paneled woodwork, musical H and L hinges on gently squeaking doors.

Leaning barns and wood sheds where eel-spears and clam rakes and harpoons prod the latest agricultural machinery. A discarded seine is sometimes seen, used now for a net for tennis or volley ball, but a swift reminder of days when corn was grown with fish for fertilizer—“two bunkers to a hill.”

By trim white Churches, surmounted by pointing spires, one comes upon ancestral burying rounds where rhymed epitaphs quarrel with life’s adventures to attempt to perpetuate the excellence of some village worthy—or mayhem his idiosyncrasies.

Names nostalgic attach to the villages, reminiscent of Old England—Southwold, Maidstone, Southampton. The music of the Indian words echoes in geographic designations –Quoque, Quioque, Ponquogue, Kumsebog, Shinnecock, Amagansett, Montauk, as the New Yorkers say. Or as the natives say, Montawk. (I am a native.)

Hamlets, two house or a dozen, a mile apart, or two, the names come back as you flash through, remembering the days when in the springless farm wagon it took half the day to take a grist to the mill. Littleworth, Good Ground, Scuttle Hole, and Hecox. Tuckahoe, Seabonac, North Ben, or Hog Neck. Towd and Cobb and Little Cobb, Flying Point, the Sea Poose, and Wickapoque. Then there was—and is—Scuttle Hole and Wainscott, Sag and Sag Harbor, Water Hill and North Sea and Canoe Place.

Captain’s Neck is there, and Cooper’s Neck, First Neck, and Halsey’s Neck is there, and Cooper’s Neck, First Neck, and the Great and Little Plains.

Windmills, a dozen or so, some in wreck, some in good repair, one, or maybe two, still grinding! And Whalebone Landing, Sandy Hollow, and Coopers Hill, The Twelve Acres or Reeves’ Orchard. In each of these my grandfather owned parcels of woodland. They furnished fuel aplenty for his many fire-placed house. He had inherited the woodland from his father, and he from his, for seven generations since the settlement date. I own it now. It is worth little, that land, but it has furnished fuel for Halsey households for nigh on to three hundred years, one generation after another—ten of them now. A cutting of new growth, is ready, say, once each thirty years.

Some of the wood from those parental acres I heap upon the fire tonight—steady burning hickory with a back of fragrant cedar—and in its glow of memory many things come back some out of the dim past. For I have lived a long time. Sometimes I think it must be close on to two centuries. What I mean is this—in fifty years, and odd, I’ve seen in the village where I was born the change from colonial simplicity in belief, in practice, and in custom to the usages of modern mechanized today.

I can remember for example when one family in our community kept Sabbath from Saturday sundown to Sunday evening, when everyone kept Sabbath in some strict form, when many people had candle moulds and some used them. When the few cottagers were called Yorkers. When most families raised and cured their own pork and canned their own fruit and dried their own vegetables. When potatoes and turnips and cabbage were the sole and staple vegetables for nine months of the year. Salt pork, salt codfish, steady diet. Carrots were for horses, pumpkins would keep only up to Christmas and were never canned, hence the untiring profusion of “pumpkin” pie this time of year.

It is as it were, a sprightly evening in early winter and a fire is burning on the hearth. It seldom snaps; it never smokes for grandfather was a skilled mason and knew his trade. Supper is over and the dishes cleared away, from the kitchen come the sounds of cleaning up and the stirring of buckwheat cakes being “set to rise” for breakfast. A Kerosene lamp burns on the erstwhile dining table now covered with a turkey-red damask cloth. In a Boston rocker by the fire sits and old man and on a foot-stool, toasting his shins, stretches a little boy. Whether he is six or eight or ten I cannot quite tell—no it is not the smoke, grandfather was a capable mason—it must be my eyes. Against the wall, so near that the boy can lean on it, is a seaman’s chest. The old man is reading, the boy listening, when he gets drowsy he leans his head on the chest and dozes off, waking with a start as Napoleon leaves Moscow, or Alexander reaches Babylon.

We must open that chest. Its stout rope handle smell of oakum, its battered exterior betrays its history knocking ‘round the seven seas in more than one forecastle. We should like to see what’s inside. The hand-hammered strap hinges gently protest but the boy turns back the lid. I’ve read in William James that smells quicken sure remembrance—well, they are here in urgent suggestions of far Cathay, the Moluccas, of the Celebes and other spice islands. The old people call it “cassia,” though we say cinnamon; this chest must have brought home cassia on occasion: at any rate its lined with strips of red cedar and San Domingo mahogany and sandal wood. It has fragrance when opened that to me is pleasant, though pungent and pervasive.

The boy explores the contents while his father holds the lamp. A broken backed leather bound Bible, with s’s that look like f’s, an old log book, some maps and charts, a volume of town records, a bunch of yellow letters tied with a faded blue linen rag, a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress, a Bodwich’s Navigator and a box that used to hold a sextant. These and some sea shells from the south seas, (the boy holds one to his ear to hear the throbbing ocean), a few small nuggets of gold from California, more books—a lot of junk, so the boy thought—then. Now—with reverence he closes the lid realizing that the chest is empty—except for memories.

"and seems to me I’ve been asleep"

[March 1939]

Dear Jess,

I hope you got to Pittsburgh for the Alliance and I hope Helen is better from the grip. Several girls are in the Infirmary with it.

I left a black silk slip and an old bl. felt hat in my closet. If Helen is sick please ask Abbie to wrap that up and send it to me. I need the slip.

I like your Thank You a lot and know Bill had a kick out of it. Had a nice letter from Ibby today. They were well and the kiddies happy. It was her birthday the 24^th—31 years. Boo’s baby had a cold in his ears. He gets them, little lad. Louise gets lonely, but has Vi and Donald Warner near. They have a new daughter. Here is a nice letter from Add you will enjoy reading with news of Ted Kinsey’s marriage. Shy little Ted. He’s done well. I hope he has a wife half as good as Mary was.

I have a dollar to last me till Mar 15—paid too many bills I guess. I need very little but car fares are 10c to Troy and I guess you’d better send me a little. I’ll get paid for my work when I’m through. I can’t work any harder than I do seems to me. I have a pageant written, but it’s not inspired yet and after I talk it over with Miss Kellas shall know better what she wants. And the light will come. I find plenty of sleep is my best preparation—my mind clears and thoughts converge. The eyes are better. I hope your back is and that you are on your feet again and Helen is getting over her grip.

Give my love to Freck. I want you to read right away “Heroes of Thought” buy Middleton Murry an English critic. It is a wonderful book. Miss Potswell is reading it aloud to me. It is very searching. 12 men Chaucer, Shakespere, Cromwell, +. Don’t fail to get it.

I miss you all, but this is a lonely place to be. I’ve just begun my work and am happy in it. I’ve been to a concert tonight.

Bishop Dallas of New Hampshire spoke to our girls Sunday. Such a missionary talk I never heard, gentle and tender and inspiring. Spoke of their church (any church) in which they had been reared, what did it mean to them? What were they going to do about it? Then he told them what other girls had done about it: a girl working in Alaska in a remote mission, another one in Japan in these trying times holding to Christ’s way of love, another in a mountain town in New Hampshire far from R.R. among dire poverty teaching the Christ way. It was beautiful, practical. He was a tall dark man, about 65 I should say, looking—I thought with a pang—what Warren Kinsey might have looked like and been if---.

Yesterday I went out to Albany hospital to see my old friend Blanche Felter (Hieles) who is lying very ill after an operation. We graduated together in Newburgh, again in New Paltz, taught together in Westfield, again in Haverford. Only by the light from her eyes would I have known her. She knew me and said, “How wonderful you came.” Then when the nurse came could not tell her who had brought her the red rose. All life gone by—in a flash, like that—and I doubt if I will see her again. It is all so short, so beautiful, and seems to me I’ve been asleep. Good-night dear—

Ab.

Organization Versus Freedom

These causes appear to me to have been of three kinds: Economic technique, political theory, and important individuals. I do not believe that anyone of these three can be ignored or wholly explained away as an effect of causes of other kinds.

Economic technique must be regarded as the most important cause of change in the Nineteenth Century, it cannot be regarded as the sole cause; in particular, it does not account for the division of mankind into nations. I do not believe that, if Bismark had died in infancy, the history of Europe in the past seventy years would have been at all closely similar to what it has been.

--Jesse Halsey

1902

"Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord"; the words came slowly but with firm enunciation, deep groanings and checked sobs were impounded by their cadence no doubt. The habit of years could not be broken. The family were at morning prayers though the oldest son had just died. My father, past seventy, read on, for fifty years this had been the daily routine, now it stood him in good stead, as it had before. Twenty years ago his young wife had died, now it was his eldest son; "He knoweth our frame, He remembreth . . ." He hesitated then stopped. It was a good terminus; the rest was so obvious just now.

--Jesse Halsey

Petrograd

Guarding the Russian Dictator: Two of Lenin's Red Guards | Smolny at Petrograd

(excerpt from Jesse Halsey's Russia recollections)

It was late in January of nineteen eighteen. The night was clear and cold. The place was Petrograd. We found a sleigh and driver—and a horse. In those days most horses looked like skeletons. This driver had gone without his bread and given it to his horse and his horse was full of energy and spirit and we flew along.

And we went to Smolny. Five miles or more we flew. Such a night crackling clear and stars brilliantly alight. No street lights blurred the heavens. Orion and Betelgeuse I remember flashed in the eastern sky. For it was early evening.

Exhibit A

(excerpt from Jesse Halsey's Labrador recollections)

"One day I was under the hospital putting in steam pipes. Earl Gray, the Governor General of Canada, was the guest of the mission. After he had looked around and seen the medical and industrial work, meeting several doctors and others, he asked Dr. Grenfell where the minister was. Sir Wilfred saw my skin boots, he says, disappearing under the hospital. At any rate, he pulled me out and presented me as Exhibit A of a missionary to Lord Grey."

Irish Linen

Jesse Halsey

2726 Cleinview Av

Cincinnati, Ohio

Bowling along at fifty while the signs said forty, suddenly I sensed the staccato put-put of an accelerating motor-cycle coming up behind.

The Grand Boulevard that writhes its intricate way round successive suburbs to the north of The Metropolis was crowded with hustling morning traffic. Car after car with a New York license had passed me. When in Rome I am a Roman, but this time it hadn’t worked. For while all the cars perceptibly slowed down at the sound of that Cop’s barking exhaust, of all the dozen in sight he picked on me with the out-of state license.

He came along side; paralleled me for a mile (while I kept forty). Then he motioned me into a right hand intersection. I pulled up and he dismounted. Out of his pocket cam a little blue book. Then with some clumsiness he adjusted a carbon sheet and began to write.

“Ohio ais it? Yes thinks yes can get away with oinything cause ye have no driver’s license. I’ve got yer number, now what’s yer name?”

“Reverend,” I began meekly.

He looked up the word half written.

“Revener nothin’,” he exploded, “yer don’t bamboozle me. With yer red neckie and blue shirt . . . Revener.” He spat with vigor.

I produced an envelope. He spelled out the first word; REV-ER-END.

“Well, oil be domed . . . Now why wouldn’t youse guys dress like a priest oughter? If Oid a known I wouldn’t be givin’ ye a ticket now, maybe.”

Again he looked me over.

“Oid like to let ye go, bygor, but now Oi’ve wrote in me little book.” He fumbled with the carbon sheet. It wouldn’t erase—“REVER—”

“Oil have ter take yer name.”

I brought out the letter and he began laboriously to copy REVEREND J-O-H-N-B-A-Y-S-O-N. Then he spelled it over.

“John Bayson and Revener” he said slowly, half aloud, as he tilted back his trim white cap and scratched his head. “John Bayson, Oi used to know a fellow with that name in Soithampton.” He looked at me hard.

“Be gor, is youse the Jock Bayson whose father had a farm on the East Sea Road? Ye bald headed old cuss, ye can’t be. Excuse me me language, Revener.”

“Yes, I’m Jack Bayson alright, but who in the world are you?” I queried.

“Be gor, don’t yer know me?” He took off his stiff white cap with its resplendent traffic emblem, and stood straight. I hadn’t the dimmest recollection. This handsome military figure didn’t register in my memory.

“Youse oughter know me alright coming ter yer house fer milk fer me mother with narry a cent and yer old aunt a givin’ us all that first winter after we landed, and yer father keepin’ us in pertatoes when me father was sick, and all us kids. Yer ought ter know, me, Oi’m Michael Burke, be gor.”

It all came back, after forty years. Mike Burke! I was out of the car now. We were talking fast, while the traffic on the Grand Boulevard whizzed by unheeded. As boys we had played together. I was the older—and a great tease. But luckily he had forgotten that. Only the kindness of my people to his people was remembered. Over and over he told it. “Irish and Catholic,” he said, “green as grass” they found kindness and understanding in the New England village where fate had thrown them. And the Puritan Deacon, “be gor” had more than once loaned them a horse and buggy to drive the ten miles to the Harbor to Mass, “be gor.”

A raucous siren blatted into our conversation, coming nearer. ON went his cap and the officer came to quick attention, his official self again.

“That’s the patrol with a change of detail,” he said. And then as if in pain, he wailed, “Me gor, what shall Oi do?” I thought he had had a heart attack.

“Why, Mike, what’s the matter?” I gasped.

“Matter, me gor, ‘tis matter enough. ‘Tis this domed little book. Yer name’s in it and I can’t rub it out, be gor. It don’t rub out loike the old slates we used to use,” he smiled ruefully.

The patrol was coming close now, horn howling at intervals, while I volunteered, “Well never mind, Mike, I’ll pay the fine. Don’t worry.”

“Be domed if yer do,” says Mike. And with that he jerked open the hood of my car and smeared his cambric handkerchief with the grease and gas in the pan under the engine, struck a quick match, and as the patrol drew up, in answer to his whistle, was beating out a tiny but very smoky fire under my left running board with his white cap.

The sergeant came running from the patrol with a fire extinguisher (there was one unused one on Mike’s motor-cycle) and we both got spattered.

The officer Burke got down on his knees, reached under my car and came up swearing volubly.

“Me loittle book, be gory. This baldheaded, careless cuss, he gits his car ofire and Oi try to help him put it out and I drops me book, be gor.”

Mike handed the book to the sergeant. Sure enough some two pages were crisp and illegible, “clean gone,” in fact.

“This’ll cost you three days suspension, Burke,” snapped the sergeant.

The relief officer held the traffic while I pulled into the Grand Boulevard, headed toward home. The last I saw of my friend Burke, he was climbing in to the patrol wagon, one eye on me, unconsciously dusting his once-white cap on his chevroned sleeve.

“Us young heathens”

COPY

Wednesday, January 18, 1939

[Cincinnati]

Dear Dr. Higginbottom,

It was a joyful treat to hear you this evening and to hear you speak of Daddy. When you and Mrs. Higginbottom come back on furlough each five years you both look younger and happier each time. And—from what you say, India’s climate is not particularly comfortable.

This note is to warn you that there will be a group of “Us young heathens” at Mother’s on Saturday. Many of my young married friends for one reason or another try to, and do, live good Christian lives—but find very little time to go to church and renew their faith.

So, in your own wonderful way, won’t you please re-interpret the actual value of Christ’s commands for us? Your simple vivid teaching tonight, using some of our American slang, brought home again to me the same sturdy faith in the Bible that was my father’s. Thank you! Then, too, it is good for us to be reminded that in the Foreign field all Christian faiths and denominations do work together in fact as well as in spirit. If you ever do come back to the United States more or less permanently, I hope you’ll help us untangle such problems as flood control and soil erosion. I’m sure you could.

Please use the enclosed for whatever you think best, be it more grapefruit trees, or a multiple pen for saving your time in signing the very fine letters you send home—some 3000, Mrs. Higginbottom says! Of course this comes in remembrance of Allen Collier, and of Charlie Vail too, both of whom worked at the same task as yours but in other fields. If possible to do so, I’ll try to send the same amount to you quarterly.

Cordially yours,

Caroline Collier Russel

P.S. Albert had to spend tonight at work with a client; he is looking forward to seeing you on Saturday. C.C.R.

"she is making a man of Chas"

W.W. Bishop

Clearview Farm

Southampton, N.Y.

March 9, ‘39

Dear Jesse,

My daughter makes a terrible fuss every time I write using single spacing and I suppose other people mind it just as much but don’t dare speak up, so I’ll try to remember to keep the double space on. I have been trying to write to you for a month now—but don’t worry I won’t try to write all I’ve thought in this note. First of all, we wall want to thank you for the grand cheese—we use it on every occasion and still wwe have a good size hunk left—I can’t write a poem but we are enjoying it very much just the same.

Last week I had a chance to ride to Baltimore with Oyie (Wiltshire) and spent a day with Helen—she has been having some sinus trouble but is better now—heading south and a bit west made me think of last Spring and wish that I was repeating my visit but guess I’ll have to stick here for the present. Chas brought his family down for the weekend and he tells me that you will be coming east in March and will plan to take time to come out here—we’ll be counting on it and just let me know where you want me to meet you and I’ll be there at the specified time. We did enjoy Cameron so much—he is a little monkey and lots of fun. I tell you there are few girls like Justine—she is making a man of Chas (I always said he’d grow to be a good one some day but she is speeding the process).

Potatoes are almost gone from our farm and we are expecting the new seed in next week and if we get a few dry days we will be plowing: are you going to be sending any messages over the radio to the “Farmers on Eastern LI” at plowing time this year?

Rented the other house finally—very nice people and guess I’ll have to be satisfied with $35 a month—it is better than having the house stand empty and will help pay some of the expense of the properties that Mother and Dad left me; so far they have been mostly expense—there is lots of real value in the things but they don’t pay any dividends now; just finished paying Harri Micah this week, $865—came rather hard out of potatoes at $.72 per bu.

I wish you were a smoker—just discovered a tobacco that is cured with Vermont maple syrup and Jamaica rum—I haven’t used a pipe for years but this is so good that I’m back it hard as ever.

My row boat is already in the water and in commission and I know just where the clam rakes are—all we need now is a little heat in the water and we can go right on where we left off last Summer. I burned off all the paint this year from the boat and have adorned her with a new coat of light gray and green—she’s a bird. The other day I went up to Scallop Pond and tried my luck with boots but only dug out four clams—I never could do anything till I get in nearly to my neck.

Just to make you sore I’ll tell you that “Did” Beeman brought us a good mess of fat long clams today and tonight we are going to have fried crisp with crumbs in deep fat—yum yum.

Must get back to work now and be sure not to let anything interfere with the plants to get out here next time you come east.

Love,

Bill