One Sunday while attending church, D.L. met J. Stillton, a Presbyterian elder and architect from New York who was in Chicago to supervise the building of the Custom House. J. Stillton confided in D.L. that he felt compelled to do something for the sailors who traveled the Great Lakes. He handed tracts and New Testaments to sailors at their boarding houses and boarded ships to distribute them. D.L. felt an immediate bond with the man, and the two became fast friends. D.L. told his new friend of his dream to start his own mission Sunday school near North Side Market, and the two men prayed about this together.
Another man, John V. Farwell, became a good friend of D.L.’s at this time. D.L. greatly admired John as the embodiment of the rags-to-riches story that D.L. himself was seeking. John had hitched a ride to Chicago on a hay wagon with less than four dollars in his pocket. At age thirty-one, he now owned the city’s largest dry goods store, Cooley, Farwell & Co., worth millions of dollars. John and D.L. attended the same Methodist church. As time passed, the two men bonded over their mutual desire to share the gospel with the poorest of the poor.
Meanwhile, D.L. was honing his skills as a shoe salesman. At the end of 1857 he was offered a job as a traveling salesman for the C. H. Henderson Company, a boot and shoe wholesaler. The job would pay three times what he was making at the Wiswall Shoe Store, and it would allow him to see the entire midwestern United States. The thought thrilled D.L., but the job had one drawback: Mr. Henderson expected D.L. to be away from Chicago most of the time and would pay only for one trip back to the city a month. “That should be enough,” he told D.L. “You are a young man, only twenty years old, and you tell me you don’t have a wife or a lady friend. I don’t see anything to pull you back to Chicago more frequently, do you?”
D.L. did. He had become attached to the children in the Sunday school and to his dream of starting his own Sunday school. But how could that happen if he was in Chicago only twelve Sundays a year? The dilemma ate at D.L. He wanted to move forward in his business life, and this was a wonderful job opportunity. But he also felt that God wanted him to work among the poor. What should he do?
D.L. sought the advice of Colonel Hammond, a thoughtful man he had met at church. Colonel Hammond was the superintendent of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. He listened carefully as D.L. explained his predicament. D.L. wanted to take the job with the C. H. Henderson Company because it would help to further his business goals. At the same time, he wanted to pursue his commitment to the Sunday school and to preaching the gospel to the needy of Chicago.
Colonel Hammond rocked gently in his chair behind his desk as he listened. He finally and firmly said, “Take them both.”
D.L. gave the colonel a puzzled look.
“Tell Mr. Henderson you’ll take the job,” the colonel added, “and be back here every Sunday for your Sunday school.”
D.L. was confused. He had already explained to the colonel that that was impossible. Returning to Chicago every weekend would take every penny D.L. earned, and then some. Surely his friend couldn’t be serious in his recommendation.
Colonel Hammond reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a pink card. “This will help you do both,” he said as he handed the card to D.L. “It’s a free pass for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad. Show the conductor that, and you can ride free on any of our trains, no questions asked. That way you can easily be back here each Sunday.”
Now D.L. understood, and the small pink card worked wonders. Wherever D.L. went, he showed the free pass to the conductor, who, with a tip of his hat, allowed him to board the train. D.L. loved visiting newly opened western territories and states of Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, and Minnesota. Yet, wherever he went, his heart was never far from home. Every Friday night or Saturday he would take a train back to Chicago so that he could spend Sunday at church and Sunday school.
D.L. was satisfied with the direction of his life. He was making enough money to live on, to give to his Sunday school work, and to save. He was also in the enviable position of crisscrossing the newest states and territories in the Union, selling shoes and meeting interesting people. As far as he was concerned, D.L. could do this for the rest of his life.
Chapter 6
A Growing Sunday School
During the cold winter of 1857, while back in Chicago on the weekends, D.L. spent many hours checking up on his Sunday school attendees. The poverty and need that he encountered drove him on. Most of the children lacked proper winter clothes to stave off illness in the bitter, snowy weather. Some of the children used this as an excuse not to go to Sunday school. Others shrugged their shoulders and told D.L. that Sunday school was boring, that the teaching did not hold their interest.
D.L. was troubled by this. He remembered how enthusiastic the children had been at first, and now they hid when they saw him coming. He realized the children were right: the Sunday school lessons were dry, and there was not enough singing. Children who lived in slums without much adult supervision didn’t sit still for long—they needed lots of activities.
With that in mind, D.L. decided in the fall of 1858 to start his own Sunday school, and with the most unlikely group of partners ever—the boys who had dropped out of the first Sunday school. D.L. went into the slums to ask these boys how they thought a Sunday school should be run. He got some interesting answers. The boys wanted to be able to pick their own teachers, and if a teacher got boring, they wanted to be able to join a different class. They also wanted a lot more singing, not dreary old hymns but new, catchy choruses like “Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus.” And they wanted prizes!
Such responses gave D.L. a lot to think about. His friends asked him if he thought it wise to let a group of illiterate ragamuffins tell him how to run a Sunday school. The answer was clear to D.L. If he wanted to reach the poorest children of The Sands, he needed these boys on his team.
The following week the new Sunday school was born. The only place D.L. could find to hold the Sunday school was in an old saloon. Fourteen boys from the slums—all characters with nicknames like Red Eye, Smikes, Madden the Butcher, Black Stove Pipe, Rage-Breeches Cadet, and Darby the Cobbler—promised to attend the new Sunday school and recruit others to come along. In return, D.L. dubbed these boys his “Body Guard” and promised each of them a new suit if they attended class every Sunday until Christmas.
D.L. redoubled his efforts to recruit more children for his Sunday school, and he often ran into stiff opposition in doing so. He was given a piebald pony, which he rode through the roughest areas of town. The pony was useful on two counts: it attracted a crowd, and it allowed D.L. to cover greater distances in a shorter time. Often on Sunday mornings he would lead the pony back to Sunday school with children sitting on it and others clinging to its tail.
D.L. was concerned about the home life of many of the students in his Sunday school. Often the children’s parents, particularly the fathers, were drunk and abusive, and the children had little, if anything, to eat. One Sunday morning D.L. entered a house in The Sands to collect several bedraggled children and take them to his Sunday school. The children’s father happened to be out at the time, and sitting on the kitchen table was a jug of whiskey the father intended to drink that day. Not only did D.L. take the children from the house, but he also took their father’s jug of whiskey and poured it out in the street.
The next Sunday, when D.L. returned to collect the children for Sunday school, their father was waiting for him. “Did you pour out my whiskey?” the angry father snarled. “I’ll thrash you for that.”
The father took off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves, ready to fight. D.L. stood his ground. “I broke the jug and poured out the whiskey for the good of you and your family,” he said. “If I am to be thrashed, let me pray for you all before you do that.”
The surprised father watched as D.L. kneeled and began to pray out loud for the family’s physical and spiritual well-being. When D.L. had prayed, he got back on his feet, ready for his beating. Instead of receiving a thrashing, D.L. watched as the father dropped his head in shame and mumbled, “You had better just take the kids, not a thrashing.” With that, D.L. herded the children out of the house and escorted them to his Sunday school.
Many of the families who lived in The Sands were Irish immigrants who had brought their struggle between Protestants and Catholics with them across the Atlantic Ocean. As D.L.’s Sunday school grew, those who attended came under attack from Catholic children. Windows in the old saloon building where the Sunday school was held were broken, and some of the boys would try to disrupt the proceedings. He decided that something had to be done, and he paid the Catholic bishop a visit.
D.L. arrived at the door of Bishop Duggan’s residence and knocked. A maid answered, and D.L. explained that he would like to see the bishop. When the maid informed him that the bishop was currently busy and was not seeing anyone, D.L. stepped through the open doorway and informed her that he was quite content to wait until the bishop was free. The surprised maid stepped aside as D.L. entered the residence and stood in the hallway to wait.
Eventually Bishop Duggan appeared in the hallway. After introducing himself, D.L. came right to the point, explaining about his Sunday school and how it was working with poor children from the slums. He then told the bishop that it would be a shame if the Sunday school could not continue because of the harassment by some Catholic boys. He suggested that perhaps the bishop could instruct the parish priests to forbid the young men in their churches from harassing the Sunday school children.
At first Bishop Duggan refused to believe that it was Catholic boys doing this. But when D.L. told him the reason he knew the boys were Catholic was because they had told him so, the bishop backed down.
The two men talked some more about the problem, and D.L. asked Bishop Duggan whether he would pray with a Protestant. When the Bishop replied that he would do so gladly, the two of them knelt together in the hallway and prayed.
Following D.L.’s visit with the bishop, Catholic boys no longer harassed the Sunday school children. Not only that, but also D.L. and Bishop Duggan became lifelong friends.
Within a year three hundred children were coming every week to D.L.’s Sunday school, and all but one of the original group of boys who made up Moody’s “Body Guard” had earned a new suit and a place in history.
It quickly became obvious to D.L. and his supporters that the old saloon building was just too small. Each Sunday the building was packed with children and had no room for new attendees. One of D.L.’s friends introduced him to Long John Wentworth, a man he thought could help find a larger facility. Long John, the former mayor of Chicago, soon managed to secure rent-free the use of the North Market Hall for D.L.’s Sunday school.
North Market Hall was a large brick public hall located above one of the downtown markets. Even though it was dark and grimy inside, its size made it a perfect venue for the Sunday school. The fact that D.L. could use it rent-free made it even more appealing. It had just one drawback: every Saturday night a German society hired the hall out for a dance and party. Unfortunately, the society members did not clean up after themselves. They left behind empty beer kegs, puddles of spilled alcohol, cigar butts, paper, and sawdust. Before Sunday school could be held, the facility needed a thorough cleaning. Since D.L. refused to hire anyone to clean on the Sabbath, he would get up at six o’clock each Sunday morning, regardless of how late he arrived back in Chicago the night before, and set to work cleaning up the mess. He and Jimmy Sexton, a volunteer worker at the Sunday school, would roll the empty beer kegs outside; sweep up the paper, sawdust, and cigar butts; and mop up the puddles of alcohol.
