By the end of the week, D.L. had no job and no prospects. His Uncle Lemuel took him aside. “What are you going to do now?” he asked.
“If there’s no one who wants me in Boston, I’ll walk to New York,” D.L. blurted out.
Uncle Lemuel laughed. “Now, Dwight, I don’t think it has to come to that. Go and ask Uncle S.S. if he has a job for you. It might not be the job you want, but if you ask humbly, he might have something you could do.”
“He knows well enough that I am looking for work,” D.L. sulked. “Let him ask me!”
“It’s up to you, but being pigheaded won’t get you anywhere in life. Go and ask him for a job, and be direct about it. That’s my advice,” Uncle Lemuel said.
Later that day D.L. took his uncle’s advice. Uncle S.S. was not enthusiastic when D.L. made his request. “You like to run things, and you are full of opinions,” he told his nephew. “That’s a problem to me. I know how things need to be done around here, and I want them done right. You might be my nephew, but you can’t go throwing your weight around with the other employees. They answer to me, not you. Do you understand?”
D.L. nodded. Did this mean he had the job?
“The work will be doing odd jobs out back and running errands. And absolutely no talking to customers. I have a few other rules for you. You can take them or leave them. You have to stay at a reputable boarding house. No drinking, no going out at night, and you will be at the Mount Vernon Church every Sunday morning for Sunday school and service. That’s my offer to you, Dwight. Think about it for a couple of days and get back to me.”
D.L. didn’t need a couple of days or even a couple of minutes to think it over. One week in Boston had shown him how hard it was to get a job, and he was not about to let this opportunity slip through his fingers. “I’ll do it all, Uncle,” he replied. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be the best employee you ever had, and I won’t boss the others around, though I do have a few ideas about the window display.“ He stopped short when he saw the expression on his uncle’s face. “But that’s not what I’m here for. I understand that. It’s a perfectly fine display, perfectly fine. When can I start?”
“Tomorrow,” Uncle S.S. said guardedly. “And you’d better be at church on Sunday.”
“I will, I will, Uncle,” D.L. promised. “Nothing will stop me.”
Later that day D.L. used the last of the five dollars George had given him to move into a boarding house that Uncle S.S. approved of. Then he wrote a letter home, reassuring his mother and family that everything was going well, even though he hated to write and had a hard time coming up with the right spelling of words. “I do not bord out to Uncle SS now I bord in the city Calvin and I are going to room together bimb bi that word is not spelt rite I guess. I have a room up in the third story and I can open my winder and there is 3 grat buildings full of girls the handsomest thare is in the city they will swar like parrets.”
D.L. felt on top of the world as he lay on the foldable mattress in the boarding house. Opportunities were spread out before him, and he intended to make the most them all. He drifted off to sleep thinking of ways to improve his uncle’s shoe store.
Chapter 4
A New Life in Boston
He sat in the Sunday school class, spirits dropping by the minute. This was so different from anything D.L. had ever experienced in Northfield. For one thing, the church in Boston that Uncle S.S. insisted he attend was Congregational, and in Northfield he had attended a Unitarian Church. One of the other young men in the Sunday school had told him that the two churches preached quite different things, but D.L. had no idea what the man was talking about. He was not interested in dissecting church teaching any more than he was interested in listening to his new Sunday school teacher, Mr. Kimball, talk about new life in Christ.
“Turn to the Gospel of John, chapter three,” Mr. Kimball said.
The other young men in the class all flicked through the Bibles provided and settled on a page, but D.L. was lost. Where was the Gospel of John? He opened his Bible at the beginning—Genesis—and began turning pages. He hoped the Gospel of John wasn’t that far into the book.
D.L. felt heat in his face when he realized that all eyes were on him. Of all the things he had imagined going wrong in Boston, being made to feel ignorant in church was not one of them. At home he had been a natural leader. He could plow a deep, straight furrow and cut a wide swath with a scythe. Now he was sitting in Sunday school with a group of men who probably didn’t even know which end of a scythe to hold.
Mr. Kimball handed his Bible over. “Here you are, D.L., I’ve found the spot for you.”
D.L. gratefully exchanged Bibles with the teacher and kept his head low. He did not like the feeling of being the ignorant one of the group, and determined to improve himself.
Working at Uncle S.S.’s shoe store proved to be a challenge for D.L., who didn’t like having to stay in the back of the store away from customers. D.L. bubbled over with ideas for arranging and selling shoes, and within a few weeks his uncle relented and allowed his nephew to serve out front during slow times. Now D.L. was happy. He loved to persuade people to buy shoes. When no one was inside the shop, he walked up and down the pavement outside, searching for people who needed boots or shoes.
Life in Boston soon fell into a satisfying pattern. D.L. worked hard at the shoe store, attended Sunday school and church as arranged, and signed up for the best self-improvement deal in Boston: the Boston Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA). For a dollar a year, D.L. had a home away from home. The YMCA was a new idea, and the Boston branch was the first in the United States. The organization had been founded in London, England, in 1844 by twenty-two-year-old George Williams, a draper. George had been concerned for the young men migrating to London from the rural areas of England. The city contained many bad influences for newly arrived boys, and George had decided to do something about it. He gathered eleven of his friends to organize the first Young Men’s Christian Association, whose purpose was to provide a place to nurture the boys’ spiritual well-being through Bible study and prayer. Several years later a retired Boston sea captain, Thomas Sullivan, had noticed a similar need to create a safe home away from home for sailors, merchants, and other young men who flocked to the city. In December 1851 he had formed the first branch of the YMCA in the United States at Old South Church in Boston.
D.L. made sure he got his dollar’s worth at the YMCA, which had a reading room and a free library. He checked out books and attended free lectures by interesting people. In 1854 Boston was the intellectual center of the Northeast and had more than its share of interesting citizens. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Lloyd Garrison, educator Bronson Alcott, and poet John Greenleaf Whittier all lectured at the YMCA, and D.L. went to hear them all.
One of the most debated topics these men spoke on was the abolition of slavery in the United States. Boston was a main “station” on the Underground Railway, which provided numerous hiding places for fleeing slaves headed north to freedom in Canada. Until this time D.L. had not thought much about slavery. The people he had grown up with in the Connecticut River Valley were all white farmers. Besides, slavery had been abolished in Massachusetts long before he was born. But now, in Boston, the inhumanity of slavery once again raised its head, as everyone, including D.L., waited anxiously for a resolution to the case of Anthony Burns.
Anthony Burns was a young African American man who had escaped from his slave-owning master in Virginia. He had made his way to Boston, where he had lived as a free man and worked as a clerk at a fabric store just around the corner from Holton & Co. Anthony’s owner had tracked him down in Boston and demanded that his “property” be returned to him. Anthony was arrested, and a court case followed.
The arrest of Anthony Burns stirred up resentment and unrest in Boston among abolitionists who did not want the young man returned to his life as a slave in Virginia. However, President Franklin Pierce decided to make an example of the Anthony Burns case to show those in the South, where slavery was still very much alive, that as president he was willing to strongly enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, which declared that all runaway slaves be returned to their masters.
On May 26, 1854, a court hearing was held to try to stop Anthony from being returned to Virginia and to a life of slavery. A large, angry crowd of abolitionists gathered in the streets around the courthouse. D.L. considered himself to be one of the luckiest young men in town that day. He had a front row seat to the courthouse proceedings. D.L. and a fellow clerk, George Bean, climbed from a second-story window at the shoe store and crawled onto the roof. From there, among the chimney tops, they had a bird’s-eye view of the courthouse entrance. As they waited for the outcome of the case, a large crowd of abolitionists surged down the street and surrounded the building.
“It’s over. Burns has been ordered back to slavery,” D.L. heard someone yell from below.
“Shame on the court! Shame on the judge!” another man yelled.
Suddenly the crowd in the street turned to storm the courthouse and free Anthony. Police and U.S. marshals tried to keep them back, and a huge riot and brawl ensued. U.S. troops were sent in to help restore order in the streets around the courthouse. Despite the desperate attempts of the abolitionists, the police managed to maintain custody of Anthony Burns, who was taken directly to the docks and put on a ship bound for Virginia.
From his perch on the roof, D.L. watched all the action. Boston certainly had turned out to be an exciting city! He wrote home to his mother to tell her he would never go back to live in Northfield. “I would not go back a gain to liv for nothing I never enjoyed myself so well be for in my life the time goes like a whirl wind.”
And so it did. D.L. kept busy working hard—tobogganing in winter, and swimming in the bay during the summer. He faithfully attended church each Sunday and often stayed awake during the entire sermon by Dr. Edward Norris Kirk. Dr. Kirk spoke of things D.L. did not understand, things like trusting Jesus and how He had died for all mankind. As D.L. listened, he realized that on many occasions Dr. Kirk urged members of the congregation to accept Christ as their Savior. While D.L. was not too clear on what this meant, he felt sure that it could wait for many years. He promised himself that when he was an old man, he would do whatever the pastor said he needed to do to get into heaven.
This approach worked out perfectly fine until Saturday, April 21, 1855. The day started like any other day. D.L. got up, ate his breakfast at the boarding house, and walked to work. It was a busy spring morning, and D.L. enjoyed chatting with the customers as they tried on shoes. He was in the back room wrapping pairs of shoes and placing them on a shelf when a man walked silently up behind him and placed his hand on his shoulder. D.L. turned to see Mr. Kimball, his Sunday school teacher, standing there. There was something about the moment that D.L. could not explain. He could see tears in Mr. Kimball’s eyes as he asked D.L. to come to Christ. Somehow all D.L. could do was comply. The two of them prayed a short prayer, and Mr. Kimball left as quickly and silently as he had arrived. Those few moments the two of them had shared in the back room of the shoe store had changed D.L.’s life.
The next morning as D.L. headed for church, he felt a new lightness about him. The sun looked brighter than ever, and as he walked through Boston Common, he heard birds singing in the trees and felt grateful to live in a world with chirping birds—something he had never even thought about. And while the outside world was cleaner and brighter, so too was his inside world. For the first time that he could recall, D.L. felt no bitterness or resentment toward anyone. His heart seemed to overflow with love, and he smiled at everyone he met.
