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"Many names are dear." (P. Skene)
Some of you will remember the little card that hung on the cabin walls, "A Word to Visitors"; one of
its suggestions for prayer was "for our neighbors on the surrounding hillsides." They have been good
neighbors. The Littles and the Klebes have been described in Chapter VII. You will remember some of the others
as I name them. Mr. and Mrs. Almon Cross, dear, beautiful, generous Mrs. Cross--three miles down the road; even
the hospitable house is gone now; two miles down, the Rowans, who used to manage the Big Pond; and the Cummings
six miles down, with "the white ribbon" and the many sons and two daughters; a cabin, -now a name and
no cabin--"John Brisette's"--one mile down; Mr. "Charley" Heath beyond the sugar grove, at
the apple orchard, (all this in walking terms); Mrs. Williams along the same road; "Old Mr. Noyes", now
a memory, of venerable figure and white hair; the lady preacher at Stewartstown; the helpers at the "old farm,"--Mr.
Jordan, the Purringtons, and all the rest.
In old days, before I came, there was the family of Barney Carr on the first road towards the Balsams. It was my
privilege to go to their later home in Colebrook after one parent had died, and to be present once while Catholic
and Protestant were made "all one" as John Stone knelt in prayer beside the one who was soon to go; also
to know Alice, Sarah and Joe,--but all after they had left our immediate neighborhood. It was Joe Carr, as I have
told in Chapter VIII, who planted the trees for Mrs. Taylor along the Camp Street to replace the old ones that
had to be cut down.
Our friends at the Big Pond; no one ever had better neighbors than Mr. and Mrs. Louis Ramsay; we see him mending
the road, and going to the State Legislature. We see her welcoming us at the scales, and smiling. What a pity,
from our point of view, that they have no children; we would like to think that this association would go on,--and
on,--and on. Others with cottages at the Big Pond; our family doctor, Dr. Noyes of Colebrook, our friend in 1936,
--and before,--and after; just now (in May 1941) gone where there is no more pain or sorrow.
Mr. and Mrs. Sellers, of fishing fame--near Norman Knight's old cabin.
Norman recalls the other guides, our friends of the North Woods, Barney Reeves, Arthur Swett, Owen Crimmins, mentioned
previous]y; and I must name one more, a winter and summer friend of many years, "Deacon" Cahill, fighting
his long fight against his tragic enemy; almost "the road wound uphill all the way" for Deacon; but humble,
victorious, always witty, helping others, loving and beloved, sending us at the end his verses:
"My one great wish when I am gone, That others have a Diamond Pond. My days are few on earth I know, He washed
my sins as white as snow.
In God's own time He lifted me And made me absolutely free. 'Tween Him and me there is a bond, A tender memory,
Diamond Pond."
Camp never reached higher than that ;--it began in 1908 and it lasted to the end.
And now I must not include the whole of Coos County but return to the families at Camp. Most of those who were
there before I came, and from 1908 to 1911, have already been mentioned as they came into the narrative, so I will
plunge in where I left off.
Beginning at the farthest cabin from the center, Uplands, I will mention some of the Erdmans that came after "the
Charleys." First Mr. and Mrs. Walter Erdman of Korea and their four children: Livingstone, now a doctor, Winn,
now a minister, Marjorie and Mary Cordella. Korea is in these days called "Chosen," and Walter and Julia
are living in Germantown, but they were very much the Korean Erdroans in 1911. Julia and her brother, Merle Winn,
had been missionary children themselves, born in Japan. Merle led so many new games and parties and clever imitations
that Mrs. Strong remarked, "The 'heathen' will have a good time when Merle gets to the foreign field."
Alas, though he went to Japan, with his handsome face and bright spirit, he did not live long, to give all that
he had to give. The second brother was Dr. Fred Erdman, who practices a very successful kind of medicine--that-is-not-medicine;
an invalid who was cured himself, the first wedding he ever artended was his own; so Mrs. Fred joined us at Camp.
Next came the parents of these three brothers, "Grandpa" and "Grandma" Erdman, (and Mrs. Erdman's
twin sister, looked equally beneficient). Perhaps it will not seem adequate to say of the widely known Bible scholar
and teacher, Dr. W. J. Erdman, (who helped to edit the "Schofield Bible," and exchanged postcards with
Dr. Campbell Morgan in London, point by point, on the Scriptures),--that he sat at "the pie place" at
the foot of Mr. Aziscoos all day long and wrote place-card verses with my sister Clara, while the rest of us climbed
and had our picnic; but that was the kind of thing that endeared the great and gentle old gentleman to us at Camp.
(His verses were genial and subtle, aiming both to tease and please,--as this for Mrs. Frick, who had insomnia:
"Still waters run deep,
She's awake while others sleep.")
Driving through Dixville Notch that day, it was charming to hear him say, "Why, I tramped through this very
road while it was only a trail, when I was in college twenty years ago,--no, thirty,--no, forty,--no, fifty,--why
bless me, sixty years ago." He was over eighty and as lively as ever. (I hope some young persons will read
this: it may "sound funny" to them. It sounded so very funny in 1911 to the present writer; it does not
sound funny now at all.)
And now we go over to the Glen. The Strongs as a family came at about the same time as the Walter Erdmans. I think
I first saw the Strong family complete, on the train, on the first day of summer 1911 ;--John and Lyde, (as I am
now privileged to call them), and their three children, Bill and "Bossy" (Elizabeth) and "Emmy"
(Emily), including Emmy's curls. Dr. John H. Strong was at that time still at Rochester, (where his father, who
wrote the "Concordance," was president of the Baptist Theological Seminary; later on he had Eutaw Place
Baptist Church in Baltimore and still later was connected with Dr. White's Bible School in New York; he is a member
of the Council of the C.I.M.) He had been a friend of Mr. Speer's when they were boys at Andover Academy. That
will have been a long time ago, and whether as school-boys on Saturday nights they discussed the Patristic Writings
and the state of India as they did when we were fishing "down the stream", or whether they just played
poker like other boys, I would not know. Did anyone ever have to teach them to clean their own fish? We have known
them a long time ourselves (speaking editorially): Mrs. Strong making tea on the Log outside the Glen (house) in
the Glen (glen), with her mother and sister, (Mrs. McCreary and Miss McCreary of Pittsburgh); later in Baltimore,
and indirectly on the Pacific Coast this winter, 1941, when she wrote me about William's death. (I still see Bill
tramping the Balsams Road with Libs and Ellloft and Harry Luce, when they were all one size and age.) Dr. Strong
has been our Camp's greatest mountain climber, together with their daughter Elizabeth (or Boss). He told us in
advance, for my older son, the ways of the Matterhorn guides. A mystic, he will be amused to know that he is remembered
especially at Camp as a wit: the originator of "fish-hash," "derisive sheep," and the suggestion
that John Stone, generously going outside the tents to spend the night in the open with the guides, "had sent
us all to bed, and was carousing with the Dienstleuter."
Returning for a moment to the Erdman or "Uplands" cabin,--it was used one summer as a so-called "Y.
W. C. A.", having a number of secretaries from New York including Miss Teresa Wilbur, who had recently become
Mrs. Charles Paste, and her husband. The Y. W. C. A. was also represented in Arden, Mrs. Speer being president
of the National Board for ten years. Other Y. W. C. A. secretaries at Camp were Miss Irene Shepherd from South
America (early) and Helen Barrett, a Bryn Mawr girl, from our Norristown Y. W. C. A., (in "middle years"),
now Mrs. William Speers. (Her husband is manager of McCutcheon's in New York, a son of Mr. James M. Speers.) At
another time the Erdman cabin was used by the Wilder family, somehow transferred in various seasons from Bide-A-While
and from the Glen.
Here again it may not seem entirely component with the service and achievement of Dr. Robert Wilder to recall him
as "the Wilder girls' father", saying in his kindly way, "Ping Pong is a great game, isn't it, Marnie?"
He was the founder of the Student Volunteer Movement (aided by the prayers of his sister Grace, for whom his daughter
Grace was named); he was missionary in India, leader in Student work on three continents, student of some twenty-two
languages,--(speaker in eight or ten?) --it was he who opened the Bible quietly to hundreds of students in the
universities of Europe merely by saying, "A student has the right to see the sources of his subject,"
one of the epochal pronouncements in the history of religious freedom. But at the Chalet we remember something
more etherial, the voices floating up from the Uplands porch, in the dusk' or starlight as the six Wilders sat
together there and sang the Crusaders' Hymn, "Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of All Nature." Scattered now,
Elizabeth, the artist, married an American, Mr. Vreeland, (who came and taught us Indian calls from the Southwest,
where he had travelled and studied); Grace an Englishman, (Dr. Stanley Hoyte of the C. I. M.); Ruth another American,
Mr. Braisted,--(they are working with the Baptist Board in Burmah, where Adohiram Judson laid the trail); Dorothy
(or "Stossie"), the pianist, the second artist, (with whom I did my first oil "paintings" which
my husband kindly hung in the dining-room at 1326), married an Egyptian gentleman, and thus added a fourth continent.
Hig went to see Dr. Wilder in Norway shortly before he died and he was just the same. Dear comforting Norwegian
Mrs. Wilder remains there. One wonders if there is any family to whom the line applies more sacrifically "as
o'er each continent and ocean",--but in those days at Camp they were all "still under one roof";
(to borrow a phrase from Dr. Speer, as so many are borrowed in this paper, and in our family, from him or Mrs.
Speer or Marnie--"the family all under one roof--and the little shoes drying under the stove"). Can anyone
remember how wet our shoes got the night we all went to hear Stossie Wilder and John Snyder play the piano at a
recital in Colebrook and walked part-way home? I am sure Dr. Corum can.
Perhaps a follower of the work of the Presbyterian Board of Evangelism would also think it inadequate to say of
Dr. George Gordon Mahy that he stood on the Boardwalk and watched the black flies through July and said, "They
think of my white hair as a snow bank, and they just crawl in." One can see them all, sweet Mrs. Mahy, who
has gone from us, Louise, Margaret, Gordon, and the twins, Dorothy and John.
The Glen (house) has many traditions, among them Dr. and Mrs. Henry Luce, from the Shantung College of the Presbyterian
Board, in China, and their four children, Emma Vail (Mrs. Severinghaus of Haverford School); Elizabeth, now married
in New York and working for China Relief; Harry, (or Henry), the oldest, now owner and editor of Time, Fortune,
Architecture, and Life; and Sheldon. (They had a prize book of Harry's on the corner shelf in the Glen that he
had won from the C. I. M. School at Chefoo,--a portent,--but I see him best as walking off to the Balsams and back
with his contemporaries for a ping pong ball.) Sheldon, a small boy then, was told one day not to make so much
noise, so he invented a game called "Steamboat," in which he was the whistle and had to toot all day
long. He is now associated with his distinguished brother on Time. All retain their interest in China.
The Moodys also made a tradition at the Glen, Mr. and Mrs. Will Moody from Northfield and their four daughters,
Mary, Connie, Peggy and Betty. (This Betty was not Elizabeth but Beatrice. The Moodys' nicknames are "past
finding out".) One summer they brought with them a tall English boy, six feet four, who followed another tradition
by losing himself in the woods and being found at Owen Crimmins' farm on the Swift Diamond. Mr. Moody preached
for us an especially beautiful sermon about the disciples in Galilee after the Resurrection. He once told us he
"was known as the husband of the woman who wrote 'Moment by Moment.'" Mrs. Moody indeed sang beautifully,
and she-taught the smallest children a hymn for Sunday Church, "I have such a wonderful Saviour that everybody
should know," so earnestly that we heard it resounding in shrill trebles from behind every tree with varied
emphases, for weeks,--"Everybody should know." Mrs. Stuart Holden from London was with them, in 1909,
I think. Mr. Holden was a member of the British Council of the C.I.M. She was a lovely warm-hearted Scottish "Jessie,"
one of the people who "belonged" at once,--and helped us at giving parties in the Assembly Hall.
The Glen was seldom empty in early days. The Speers had it one summer when Dr. Speer was abroad--and we shared
the Northern Lights. At a later time it was revived for Marnie on her first return from China with her friend Dr.
Augusta Wagner, also of Yenching College. Augusta is a Wellesley graduate (and Columbia Ph.D.), and a friend of
Madame Chiang Kai Shek, who sometimes uses their college home as a sanctuary. The Glen also once housed Rudie,
who arranged his chocolate for the mice.
The Stuart Holdens remind us of the various members of Home Boards, and secretaries, for Foreign Missions, so let
us name here some of our other friends from the Home bases of the C.I.M. Fairly recently, Dr. and Mrs. Robert Hall
Glover came, (successor to Dr. Frost as Director for North America), with their two daughters, Florence and Marjorie,
and son "Bob" (Dr. Robert P. Glover, mentioned especially in Chapter XII), and Mrs. Rorke.
Years ago some Canadian friends came: lovely Olive McNeill, with Irish blue eyes and black hair and beautiful voice,
("Calla Herrin"), with her mother and her little boy. The husbands of each of these ladies had been Council
Members of the C. I. M. in Toronto I think-- (Olive leant me her good cook "Canadian Lizzie" for one
winter). And also ScottishCanadian Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Imbrie and their three boys with Scottish names.
A little later Mr. and Mrs. Whittlesey were much appreciated. He has passed on some years ago. Mrs. Whittlesey
contributed a favorite quotation which applied to me though not to her and which we still employ whenever we see
each other. We said we could not be like Mrs. Taylor, but we could try to be "a glow-worm on the cellar stairs."
They were former missionaries from the C. I. M. home center in Germantown, as were also the Schlichters when they
came, Alfred and Helen, (tennis player and hostess par excellence), and their two children, Helena and Betty. Helena
was John's first "date"; they were seated in the rumble of Rudie's car, chaperoned by Betsy Ann Ristine,
Rudie and myself in the front seat, for a ride to Colebrook. As we drove away from Camp, Miss Thompson said, "Oh,
Oh," from the office porch, and John remarked afterwards, "It's hard enough to take a girl on a date,
without having Miss Thompson call 'Oh, Oh.'" But true to the history of first dates, they discussed the immemorial
stars. (Of course we know, because we heard them.)
From the C. I. M. in the Foreign Field, we cannot forget the Dreyers, Mr. Dreyer,--(again,--known
all over China for his superb work on the new vernacular dictionary) but at Camp Diamond for his laying of stones
on the Chalet trail,--his own idea,--we did not suggest it), and Mrs. Dreyer, who was such a wonderful nurse and
taught us all to weave baskets as at the Mayos', and splendid Edith, who became a head nurse, and "Chesh"
(or Fred), the doctor. (See Chapter X, on 1923.) Mr. Dreyer gave two sermons we can never forget, among all the
fine ones at Camp Diamond, using object lessons, one on "The Vessels", (using coffee pots and old tin
cans for which he searched the neighborhood on Saturday evening,--to surprise us on the Sabbath,--and so on, up
to a container for Mrs. L. Taylor's $50,000 pearls); another on growing up--in which he showed a Boy Scout knife
and said, "This would be a very wonderful knife to Fred Corum and Johnny Coleman,--not so grand to Bill Speer
and Horry Coleman,--and",--(triumphantly) ,--"you don't see Dr. David Baron and Dr. Van Meter sitting
on the Boardwalk with a jack-knife playing mumble-de-peg !"
Here indeed was triumph of maturity: Dr. John B. Van Meter, who came from Baltimore with his two daughters, Miss
Johnetta and Mrs. Childs and one granddaughter Jeannette, has been referred to in Chapter VIII and was the learned
and beloved Dean of Goucher College.
And at the table of "the Barons and the Kings" one saw four of the humblest and best people :--David
Baron was the great Hebrew scholar, born in Russia, evangelist wherever Jewish souls were found, founder and head
of the "Hebrew Christian Testimony to Israel" in London, with all its branches; Mrs. Baron was an English
lady and an excellent Egyptologist; they were indeed revered and beloved at Camp. Those who saw it can never forget
their final departure, carrying all their packages--(and these surmounted last of all by the true British "string
bag") ;--we felt and knew, and some of us said, "We shall not look upon their like again." Drs.
Baron and Van Meter, representing conservative and liberal points of view in Bible study, did in fact sit on the
Boardwalk hour after hour and day after day, with their great store of learning, arguing the Scriptures every inch
of the way--and coming to love each other so utterly that they continued their discussions in Baltimore (where
Dr. Van Meter was unfortunately living momentarily in the Belvedere Hotel,--and the discussions had to be prosecuted
under the disadvantage of a dining-room orchestra! One thinks in what celestial peace they must be continuing them
today).
The Kings, who were associated with these Barons, were of the C. I. M. at home and abroad, and both endeared to
us beyond any customary manner. Mr. William Y. King (or Mr. "Willie" King, as he was affectionately called),
a successful business man in Toronto, had gone into the home office of the W. I. M. there, and later in Germantown;
there never was such a man for listening quietly while others talked, and for carrying heavy babies all afternoon
while others picnicked and had tea; the heavy infant Hig was his special responsibility and devoted admirer; nor
was any one more mourned when he died,--(I remember Mr. Speer telling me at New Year's time in Englewood with a
sense of shock, "Aunt Helen, our dear friend, Mr. King, is gone"). I remember, too, his dear wife coming
to visit us soon after, and betaking her brave and lovely spirit to China at her own expense in more ways than
one, to help train young students for service there.
Nor can we forget the Hochmans of the C.I.M. Mrs. Hochman sat all night for several nights in the central room
of the Ch&let (because she was deaf and could not hear them from a distance)--to nurse both Catherine and Hig
with measles--before I arrived with John. The older son taught John to read. The younger son became the Red Cross
doctor who was grievously killed in his work of mercy by the untimely explosion of a bomb in Abyssinia.
From the C. I. M. also, and more than once, came Dr. and Mrs. Frank A. Kellar. Shall we mention the great hospital
at Changsha and the "Bible Bands" that went from it all over the country, permeating the nation with
truth and courage that has stood them well ? Or shall we say, "You can see his picture 'down the stream' with
Speer and Stone and Coleman, and it was he who took the pictures on the postcards made in 1915"? (And we have
used no others since!) Seeing pictures of certain grown men in the Coleman family in Los Angeles in 1941---he quickly
asked me, "Which one is Buzzy-bee"? (H. Jr.'s early nickname). Dr. Kellar endeared himself to me personally,
though he will not remember this, by a casual remark the day he sewed up Elliott's leg on the floor of the Stone
Cabin by saying, "The profession lost a good nurse, Mrs. Coleman." His wife, (you would somehow know
this anyhow from her gentle face), is called "Beth," and his mother was the lady who preached a sermon
silently in all languages by going to China to live with them when she was very old, "so that they would not
have to stay at home to take care of her," and the Chinese people liked her all the better of course for her
great age. We knew them all at Camp. It was at the Kellars' home in China that Mr. Hudson Taylor died.
Dr. Paul Adolph (M. D.) was at Camp for a short time one fairly recent summer in July before I arrived. I did not
meet him until 1941 in Los Angeles.
Another specially fine doctor from the C. I. M. spent a summer with us, Dr. Jessie McDonald, of Toronto and of
Honan-Fu, (the hospital which was first Dr. Taylor's and afterwards Dr. Whitfield Guinness's). Miss Craig was with
her, the nurse, (recently married). We remember the paintings and the iodine at Camp--and Dr. McDonald's present
work in the Chinese-Japanese war zone.
We remember Mr. and Mrs. Flagg and their two young children--and Mr. Flagg's ability to walk
any distance.
"The German Sisters" from Pao Ting, C.I.M. Deaconesses from Friedenshort, will be mentioned further in
Chapter X.
From 1934 Mr. William Taylor (Canadian), director of the C. I. M. work for a large province in China, will be remembered
with his "good, gray head," in the quiet of Birch Log porch. In 1936, Mr. and Mrs. Judd and their two
daughters were in Arden.
Other missionaries, as we recall them from other countries (mostly of the Presbyterian Board) were: from Persia
the Labarees, Mrs. Benjamin Labaree, and her sister, and Clara and Leonard; the Coans and Susie Shedd. (See later
for the Hutchisons and Armajani.) From South America: delightful Miss Florence Smith, visiting the Speers; from
Japan Louise Dunlop when a young girl, also with the Speers. From Russia (in 1933 I think) the lovely young Baroness
who married Rev. Paul Wooley of Philadelphia ;--of course, their little child was called "the wooly baby."
Numerous ministers and their families came: Dr. Hayes from Western Pennsylvania; Drs. Estey and Chafer from the
Middle West and Texas; Drs. Minot Morgan, Senior and Junior, with Mr. Morgan Junior's numerous young "parishioners,"
(whom Mr. Grant, dressed as "Bluebeard? helped him to entertain),--and eventually Mrs. Morgan, Jr.
Up until this moment I have tried to make some allowance for chronology, but now I will give myself a treat and
leap around the decades and enumerate the Ristines. (No biographer, if she had five hundred years, could write
out the five hundred delightful traits of each and every one of this delightful clan, so names must, alas, suffice.)
Mr. Fred came first, with straw hat, in a rainy season--he did not look suitable---but he excelled in tennis and
singing--and he stayed. Mrs. Fred followed and Betsy Ann, who were part of everything at Camp for so long, and
Fred Junior (or Freddy) ,-- (how can I bear to condense here? And again here:) Miss Betty and Miss Helen, the two
sisters who have come most frequently,--(Helen or "Pat" now my champion of Chinese Checkers); the other
sister, Miss "Bobbie," and her friend, Miss Samson; and Mrs. Deacon, Mr. Deacon, Sue and Sally. (Dear
Sue, before she went so young to Heaven, gave us one memorable afternoon which I cannot forget: we were sitting
in the "parlor" of Fisherman's Lodge in the season of "The Boys' Camp," doubtless debating
"some mischief still to do,"--all of the bad people, which means of course the young people and Mrs.
Coleman. Rudie was there and perhaps Mary Williams, (who also left us so untimely young for Heaven), Hannah? Patty?
Lee and Harvey? and Kit Bird? Well, all my children no doubt, and possibly the Pastor, who often associated himself
with such a group. Suddenly Sue took up a little anthology of poetry she had brought from school and read aloud
her favorite verses. We all called for others; time went on, with her young voice, for a golden hour,--one of those
afternoons of sheer magic sometimes granted in this world when people are suddenly welded together who have come
from distances,--and perhaps will not meet again. Poetry can do it. We had no other thought or wish till the spell
was broken. (But speaking of those "bad people,"--who ever let us come? and let us stay? and started
the Camp in the first place? None other than Rudie's "admiral," Horace Coleman, Senior, who was not in
the midst of us that day,but without whom none of us would ever have been there at all.)
Returning to the Ristines, a nice nephew, Simes Richards, came one year to work,--and many many
visitors and friends, as the Benderes, Colonel and Mrs. Bettison, Mrs. Summerfield, Mr. and Mrs. John Clegg, Dr.
and Mrs. J. Tracy Lay, the Bridges from Baltimore, (Mrs. Bridges came on her second visit in 1940), Mrs. Wenzel,
and Mr. Bentz.
And now we come to "the Bucks," (and where could we come better?): Mr. and Mrs. Charles Ristine, her
children, "Sis" (or Helen), Jack and Pete Cantrell,--(Sis alone would be counted a real institution at
Camp, very specially one of us) ,--and "Dotsy" Ristine, who has grown from the little child who played
with the dogs "Pegga and Puppa," (and called across the dining-room to my husband, when showing him her
new clothes--"Oh, and Coleman,--my panties!"), to the sophisticated and popular young lady we have with
us in the 1940's. These valiant Ristines stayed with "the remnant" in the cold September of 1940,--and
did anyone ever look better, dressed for faithful fishing, than our Mrs. Buck? We often feel that Judge Swartz
and Mr. Snyder turned over the Lake to the Corums and the Bucks.
Other friends from Pennsylvania, much appreciated, have been Mr. and Mrs. John Pittock, and recently
the Cousleys, Mr. and Mrs., Jean, Marjorie, and John, now such a part of the Camp group that we feel as if they
had always been with us.
Mr. John Sissell came from New York, and Mr. Wiggin's secretary; from Philadelphia Mr. Maurice Wynn, Mr. Edward
Lambert Jones, Mr. and Mrs. David Lobdell, Mr. Lionel Friedmann with his attractive wife and daughters, and many
others. At one time the Speer Cabin, "Arden," was occupied by "five married men all without their
wives," as Dr. Taylor said in a hushed English whisper! The secret, Doctor, was that their wives did not understand
fishing, and were having a brief vacation from fishing talk--and from golf records. The Yarnalls from Philadelphia,
for two seasons long ago, are remembered so very pleasantly, she who feared the "thundergusts," and he
who rushed to succor her.
Judge Swartz was always our first citizen. This eminent jurist was elected three times and thus served almost thirty
years as Judge in Montgomery County. I have been told that he was elected on all tickets, and that no one ever
ran against him. (The ballots must have looked amusing if they were printed as they were meant, in re this staunch
Republican:
"For Judge, Republican, Hon. Aaron S. Swartz,
" " Democrat, " " " "
" " Socialist, " " " "
" " Prohibition, " " " "
" " Bull Moose, " " " "
" " Anarchist, " " " ")
His record was almost unique. After the first decade or two as Judge, the Federal Courts would never even look
over his decisions, for he never had one reversed--until at last, to his intense pride, one,--argued by his own
son, Aaron Junior, recently president of the Pennsylvania State Bar; (our friends, Aaron Jr. and Jean, with Aaron
3rd, Rosalie and Walter ("Buck") have also visited the Camp. Buck stayed with John one summer at the
Chalet. He went to Haverford and Lawrenceville and Washington and Jefferson, has joined the Canadian 'Navy and
will soon become an officer.)
I have left the Swartzes until now for they somehow were not at Camp during the first year or
two of my stay, but they came repeatedly for a period of more than fifty years and, in my time, lived at Hillcrest.
You will recall the Wilders' song,
"Here's to our Mrs. and Fisherman Swartz,
He counts up his fishes by pints and by quarts;
While he goes fishing, she sits on the porch."
(But any citizen of Norristown could write a double biography; it would concern not only Honorable
Aaron Swartz, Churchman and American citizen, but also his beloved wife Louisa, equally honorable, good citizen
and Churchwoman. How we all remember her learning to make Italian rye bread during the last war--and then teaching
our foreignborn neighbors. And how the Church remembers both of them,--and the Sunday School,--and the "Ladies'
Aid").
This learned and distinguished judge, who spent his life interpreting the law, and who was fated to be the first
judge in Pennsylvania who had to send a man to the electric chair, told me once with profound simplicity, (the
secret, no doubt, of both his learning and his greatness), that the verse he loved best in all the Bible was this:
"Judge not, that ye be not judged."
Probably no other group has been more consistently associated with the Camp than this; for from the Swartzes it
is only a step to the Snyders, who also came repeatedly over a long period, as I have mentioned in Chapter I. Of
them all, Mary Snyder (Mrs. John Brister), who still comes up to see us from Colebrook, and will come this summer,
from across the river in Vermont, has perhaps visited Camp continuously over a longer period than any other one
person noxv among us. During several of the summers of course, she was on sea duty across the world with Admiral
Brister --helping every soul in the United States Navy and in every spot it touched, and in every Navy Hospital.
I purposely omitted the institution of the "Summer Christmas Tree" in the chapter on Customs to leave
it for Mrs. Zieber and Mrs. Fry. Mrs. Zieber was the wife of Mr. Snyder's law partner in Reading, Pa., and Rev.
Franklin Fry, Sr., was her brother. Mrs. Speer had suggested the summer Christmas program, and my husband had the
tree cut down, and the children trimmed it and recited pieces, but these two ladies did the superb Colebrook shopping.
It was they who hunted out the great numbers of washcloths and little cakes of soap, which were to make up a treat
for children in foreign lands, and wrapped them to send back for next year's Christmas Sunday School party with
Miss
Florence Smith for South America or with Mrs. Coan for Persia.
Many friends came with the Bristers, the LeMaitres, the Rakestraws, their niece Hope and her bridegroom, and their
nephew Bill, from Dartmouth, with fiance, but again time would fail me; except that I must include Dr. Brister's
stepmother, Mrs. William Brister, a charming older lady who spent a summer in Idle Hour and entertained the children
and Miss Thompson by playing "The Soldiers' Retreat" realistically and artistically on her guitar.
It is little less than a crime to "lump" the Norristown visitors--they have been so nice. But they have
been numerous too (and as with Christmas Cards, "We write those whom we see less often !"), I can only
name them,--the Larzeleres, the Wildmans, the Eisenhowers, the Wonsetlers, the Greshes, the Knipes, the Walton
Woods, the Slinglugs, the Yeakles, the Watts, the Foxes, (it was Leslie Fox who designed the "new farm house"),
Mr. Wilcomb the inventor, (see picture alone in the woods fishing in mackinaw), and Eleanor Fields, organist at
our Norristown Church, now Mrs. Holden. I have mentioned earlier the Eisenhowers and Palmers. Marian Wildman McLaughlin
will remember reading "Pere Goriot" with me while she was still in the throes of Bryn Mawr summer reading.
The Harrys. The "T." Wolfendens. Many others.
Many friends from scattered places come to mind: the Reist family from 1923, "Dot" and her nice mother
and her father whose good nature was immortalized by Field Day picture just as he fell over in the race! The Austins
from Summit will be mentioned in Chapter X, under Nat and Sarah. All the Forsyths from Chicago,--and how delightful
they were.
Mrs. Speer's friend, Mrs. Cushman from New York, (who went with us to watch Dr. Adam play golf at the Balsams).
The "Sam" Carters? Do I remember. the Burnham Carter whose name now heads the current fiction list?
The delightful Peters family from Englewood. Will Mrs. Peters remember that she told me: "You
can always manage breakfast in bed. I trained Elsie early to carry a roll and Freddy a cup of coffee in the roughest
camp" (not Diamond) ?
Many of the young people had visitors, of course--such as Elliott's friend, "Pit" Van Dusen, (now Rev.
Henry Pitney Van Deusen of Union Seminary), and Marnie's friends, Polly, Jane, Rose; others with Betsy Ann Ristine,
or with Helen Canttell.
Years ago Dr. Fabyan Franklin from Baltimore, editor of the Baltimore "Sun-Paper," (or could it have
been the "American" or "News"?) who dropped in at a birthday party (Drs. Speer and Stone),
the very one for which Dr. Erdman wrote the verses. From Princeton Dr. and Mrs. Canby, the writer, brother of Henry
Seidle Canby of Yale.
John Snyder's friends, Charlie Russell, his mother and sister, later his wife. In an early summer, among friends
from other lands, a nice Chinese student who cheerfully bore his name, "Jumping" Wong, (for his courtesy),
and was Mrs. McCreary's protector in his little cabin at the foot of the steps to the Heights, while she awaited
her husband's return from down the stream.
From New England I should like to mention: long ago, Mr. Rines, late owner of the Congress Square Hotel in Portland,
Maine, who took excellent pictures of every resident and cabin including one of himself arranged by strings; and
who, the next summer, brought his bride. In recent years, Ralph Howe from Connecticut, and two of his beautiful
daughters. And again from New England, long ago, two whom we can never forget, Chief Joseph with his little grandson,
when the Indians still came selling sweet-grass baskets ;--and the organ grinder who walked out from Colebrook.
(See classic photograph.)
We seem to have covered a great deal of history before
we come to our own Pastor and "Sherpherdess," (original term, by her predecessor at Camp, Mrs. Stone;
and it was Dorothy or "Stossie" Wilder who first made current the expression, "Shall we go to the
Pastor?"). At all events Dr. and Mrs. Jesse M. Corum, Jr., have now been at the First Presbyterian Church
in Norristown for more than twenty years, and at Camp they are our friends in need. Dr. Corum is a sort of Chaplain
there, and anyone who ever saw Mrs. Corum flying out to help the neighbors will understand her nickname "Energine".
They are mentioned throughout the story, and Frederick Corum will be referred to again in Chapter XII. The younger
son, Jesse III, has not been with us so often since his earlier youth. 'Now he has grown past school, (the cheer
leader !)--and will be off for Bowdoin and the wide, wide world like all the rest.
The Corums and the Hutchisons have more or less taken over many of the traditional functions of the Speers and
Stones. (Thus again "the old order changeth, yielding place to new, and life fulfills itself in many ways".)
The Hutchisons, Dr. and Mrs. R. C. Hutchison, have also now reached the place of an institution and the red table
cloth at Balsam Lodge, (doubtless an inheritance from the original builder of that habitation, H. C. Coleman himself
;--and how it holds its color), is a red badge of hospitality at that corner from Harriet's home. "Hutch,"
(for he can be called no other), made his first appearance at Camp portals (See Chapter X) in 1923 as a hitch-hiker
with his young brother Jim--(Dr. James E. Hutchison, now the distinguished surgeon in Denver, Colorado). (Helen,
Jim's wife, my name-sake, you must come East to Diamond Pond and bring your David to see where his father "sat
on scrap baskets" with Patty, and with one-and-all of us in 1923). Marfan Hutchison, the sister, came in 1936
with her hushand, Dr. Rex Clements, and little Richard--they are now at the Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church. And
chief of the Hutchison family, great and good and dear Judge William Easton Hutchison, Chief Justice of the State
of Kansas, also honored our boardwalks with his gentle, kind, benevolent, learned, reasonable and sympathetic presence,--in
1936. "Hutch" when he came in '23, had only started walking, he had only four or five degrees from Lafayette,
Harvard, Princeton, Penn,--was only a Lieutenant and instructor in aviation, with a brief record in Turkey--but
he was on the way; on the way to incorporate the American College at Teheran under the Board of Regents of New
York, (to the music of his wife's Choir and Glee Club),--on the way to giving out those orange and black sweaters
to the scrub team in Persia, (and the maroon ones to the first team, of course), so that he could pseudo-see Princeton
defeated by Lafayette each week-- (Wishful thinking," the psychologists call this). Creative thinking we call
it now, as he continues in "religious education," President of Washington and Jefferson College, with
Harriet Presidentess of course, and Persian-born Mary-Jahn, ("Jahn" does not mean John--it means "dear"--and
she is one), and Big Bill as Presidentess. (He is still walking forward--and still on the way--I am speaking from
the corner of the old folks at home, and I know.)
Have I told about the Dickinsons? The father was head M. D. for sending nurses to the last great war. Dr. and Mrs.
Dickinson were in Uplands just after that war with their two daughters, Dorothy and Jean. When George, (now Professor),
Barbour came to America from Edinburgh and his four years of war service, to "court" Dorothy Dickinson,
(as we say in the South), he knew only four groups of people in this country, the Dickinsons, the Wilders, who
were of course international, the Speers, who were like his own family, and Miss Abernethy, who had lived with
them in Scotland,--and all were in th~ same little spot; so he came to Camp Diamond,--and like many another, became
engaged.
His very fine and interesting younger brother, Dr. Robert F. Barbour, the psychiatrist, also came to Camp later
with his wife, our Patty Speer; and one of two other psychiatrists have followed in their train.
Here are some people I haven't mentioned but would like to assemble once again:
Catherine's friends, "Laura and Phil", who came together, Phil more than once. Laura is now a Ph.D.,
Mrs. Colwyn. For Phil see Chapter XII. Sam Higginbottom, Jr., from India, while at Camp "a man of two ideas,
fishing and algebra"; he tutored Catherine for her Bryn Mawr algebra exam. (He also ate a mushroom--or was
it a toadstool? Mary Brister and I stood, like Dido, on the margin of the water and waved our Doctor to come again
to Sam! But Ed Workman, his housemate in the Wildcat, reported all was well.) Hig's friend, Victor Roberts, Jr.,--(his
father also came to Camp before my time--and his mother long ago), a grandson of Judge Swartz. And those who came
only for short calls, like Victor's uncle, Dr. Read Roberts, (our family physician in Norristown), who came to
fetch him away--and more or less invented open cars at Camp. (Karabuk papers please copy.)
Mr. Max Reich, the widely known Jewish Bible teacher, with Oxford voice, spent a well remembered day or two with
us. Dear Mary Hood, my husband's cousin, drove over from the Balsams. Mr. and Mrs. Philip Howard, of the Sunday
School Times, have paid a more or less annual call from their summer home in Franconia, bringing one or more of
the children, and on one occasion the fine young Armenian missionary, Arousiag Stepanian. (Occasionally they have
replaced our copies of "Fishin' Jimmy," which was written by the great-aunt of Mrs. Howard and of her
brother, Mr. C. G. Trumbull).
In 1936 Harriet Souders and Jane Halford, of Norristown.--Oh, time and pages, you are speending on--)
Let me recall one more, a beloved and picturesque friend of long ago, once the welter-weight
champion prize-fighter of the Middle West, who came with Dr. Stone in 1911. ("My boy, you're either a blacksmith
or a prize fighter.") None other than Rev. Dick Ferrell; he turned up in Norristown recently after a lifetime
of superb endeavor among the lumberjacks of the Northwest.
I have left till towards the end the group of Mrs. Livingstone Taylor, (or "the John Wanamaker of Cleveland"),
who strode our trails in Iarge white suit for many years, (notably the Stone trail, which she magnificently embellished),
and went into residence at Stony Point, (which she also emblazoned, with bathrooms, open fire, and parlor organ).
Somehow she has come and gone now--and the space she filled has resumed its normal size. She brought innumerable
relatives,--her nieces, Mrs. Baker, and Jean McMillan, with brothers David and Stirling, (none of whom were allowed
to murmur between two and three P. M. ). She had uncounted guests, including the dear Ewings, for whom she improved
Balsam Lodge. (To Rhea, producing a match, to light her lamp on arrival, she said, "Mind you, I do not call
it a sin, but I think it a dreadful habit !" i. e., smoking implied). And guests from her great store, William
Taylor & Sons, including Mr. and Mrs. Nau; and there was the little girl who painted the boathouse and said,
"How could I be so wonderful ?"; one friend of her childhood who talked with her on equal ground, (for
which we all applauded), Mrs. "Birdie" Winn. She did not "countenance" the movieactors--(and
of course did not lend her car for purposes of those who did). She invited most of us to call, (but not young men
who were not freshly shaven). She had cut down a great many trees, for views in various new directions, including
a really lovely vista towards the lake. We all breathed a sigh of relief when my husband stopped her just in time,
before she put up "signs" in the Assembly Hall. (They were to be Scripture verses, so we could not point
objections! But we were traditionalists and liked the "face of nature" to remain unchanged.) Mrs. Taylor
had strong opinions and strong character; she even had a strong sense of humor when you could find it. She was
a good sport, a lavish friend and generous supporter; she was a staunch defender of the faith. She did untold good
and a thousand kindnesses,--with children's hospital in Cleveland, and electric plant for Teheran, (traveling over
Persia in a chartered Junkers plane, ("no smoking"). All of us were happy when she gave Armajani a summer
job and home; she was ready to adopt children wholesale,--the young Erdmans temporarily, switching out their tonsils
in the twinkling of an eye,--(Miss Truedley had their daily care),--and she offered to adopt all Viney's children
and take them home or to hospital en masse. These are all only journalistic notes--not comments or estimates, as
in a history. I am in no position to form an estimate of one who was doubtless a creative genius, and of course
I would not if I could ;--the business world is a special field; and I know so very little about it. It must be
very difficult to spend one's life in financial work and yet present the constant appearance of unselfishness.
(I am glad, however, that I was privileged to know one man,--before the "good old days" of the Individualistic
System came to the cross-roads, who worked as hard as she did, in the same field, but whose real humility was as
patent as that of "a little child".)
Mrs. Taylor brought many interesting contemporaries to the Camp: Mrs. Borden, (mother of "Borden at Yale"),
with her daughter, Joyce; Mrs. Griffith-Thomas, with her daughter, Winifred; Mrs. Wolverton, (with her son and
daughter); they had a young friend visiting them at the Balsams in whose work they were interested, who turned
out to be Frank Buchman in his earlier days.
Another friend of Mrs. Taylor, and another stalwart defender of the faith, who came to Camp on her own, was Miss
Charlesanna Lukens Huston of Germantown. She was a cousin of Mrs. Speer and a sister of Mr. Charles Huston of Coatesville.
(See Chapter VI.) She lived alone in Woodcroft in the old grand "iron master" manner. It is refreshing
to remember Miss Huston, and how her loving heart was constantly overflowing and flooding her strong convictions,
--not drowning them out of course, but suffusing them with warmth and light. I think it was she who gave the China
Inland Homes in Germantown and Princeton, and we all loved her.
Let us make her now the transition to another friend of Mrs. Livingstone Taylor, and of us all, who came to be
one of our most lovely memories at Camp--Dr. Charles Hurlburt, founder and head of the Africa Inland Mission. He
brought with him his youngest son Paul and Doctor Elizabeth, with their little children, Rebekah and Charles II.
Dr. Hurlburr was our "Bishop" at Camp, our great walker and our best reader,--one of the most profound
saints I have ever known. Probably without extensive formal education in his youth, and perhaps in earlier days
a little uncouth and gaunt, (as Lincoln was uncouth--or Saint Stephen, with his face "as it had been the face
of an angel"), he had become, when I met him at the age of sixty-three, a great creative leader. He was marked,
(almost as the saints were said to be marked with the stigmata), by scars of suffering and obviously slated for
some kind of martyrdom, but always radiant. He had that rare quality for which the Church of England gives its
Bishops the name that fitted him, "our father in God." He was an example of the two supreme Christian
virtues, love and humility; a mystic, an ardent,-- (if there is such a word),--his life was one long devotion;
one of the few people of whom one could say, "You could prove Christianity,--if proof were lacking,--by that
life alone."
I knew him well and loved him dearly, but he was the one person in all this story whom I couM never imagine anyone's
calling by his first name; (though my husband spoke it more than once, "Charley Hurlburt",--fancy that,
now); he seemed already removed from this world--yet no one was ever simpler. For an afternoon's pleasure the gaunt
gigantic old man would gently lift the two-year old Rebekah to his shoulder and, his enormous frame surmounted
by her tiny one, but otherwise unaccompanied, would stalk through the woods to Knapp's Hill and the North Clearing.
When I saw him for the last time, I knew how the Ephesian elders felt when they went down to the beach with St.
Paul and wept because they would see his face no more. It was set steadfastly.
Well, of course, no one was ever trying to make a case for "houses or lands" or show or possessions,
in this story -- or it would never have been begun. The things we remember at Camp are the unselfish and unconscious
little things, like these:
Grandfather Hurlburt's enormous hands disentangling Rebekah's tiny ones from her wooly jacket; his deep voice reading
"Wray's Translation of the Letters of St. Paul"; Alice Beam taking care of the children after her day's
work was over; Walter Erdman nursing Livingstone in Wildcat in "the chicken-pox summer"; Elliott taking
old ladies on picnics (and liking it); Marnie typing Mrs. H. Taylor's manuscript on her vacation (and throwing
in her own life for China, for good measure); Patty, keeping up morale, the summer Marhie left for China; Eddie
(Captain) Reber missing his Commencement; Mary Brister going to call on her distinguished husband's casual patient
and staying to nurse all day; Jack Brister (the Admiral) walking across the dining-room with his offering of fish;
valiant Eva chasing the Chalet fleas; Mary Willjams as a little girl sending her wire to her mother, adding an
eleventh word "love", saying with utmost trust in Western Union, "Of course they give you that word
free'; Phil and Laura patting and praising each other's dresses, "Margaret, you look so nice"; Lillian
Holmes destined for great tragedy, offering to give massage after the dining-room work was done; Rudie walking
down to Nathan's Pond alone rather than lose his temper; Guy Kidder lending his canoe which was practically all
he had; Gordon Mahy practicing patiently on his ocarina after his strange working hours at the Farm (and just as
patiently later on, giving up his splendid opportunity at home, to go with his wife to take the place of her sister
and brother-in-law in China,--John and Betty Stam); Lucy Cross always giving, always ready with "maple mousse"
for everyone; Howard Taylor lying all night on the floor beside his patient's bed because he could not hear him
from across the room; Hannah Alvine, the Speers' nurse, working with her sore arm, (and telling no one except nurse
Coleman); Rob Speer saying the little Coleman boys' noises in the morning were "like music"! (Emma Speer
had taken them as refugees). Anna Eisenhower and Margaret Munroe lending their best new books before they had read
them. Ida singing.
Bessie Stone feeding all her guests, and singing to them, and giving them Indian baskets to top off; John Stone,
lifting Barney's pack; Henrietta Thompson's light in the office window, working at night; Elizabeth Ristine sewing
on pink taffeta to make balsam pillows for every living soul,--(the Ristines run to Elizabeths; in this instance
I mean Mrs. Fred, mother of Betsy, and grandmother of Ann); Betty and Helen coming over the trail and watching
the boys play tennis, ("Aunt" Betty this time); Laura Corum mending the neighbors' stockings; Klemmy
picking flowers on Saturday afternoon in the rain; Paul Harrison lifting Paul, Jr., out of the mud,--and then letiing
him settle back in it, as he preferred, (Paul, Jr., who paddled so many hours in our mud, now "a riveter");
Emma Snyder working twenty-four hours a day and crying when there was no more that she could do; Coley waiting
to ask for "Blessed Assurance" on Sunday evenings, and when his turn came, asking for it eagerly,--"as
a little child."
These are just little flashes that came at random, in no order; you could add a thousand more, ("the second
mile"). Reader, if you have read thus far, it must have been because you were g]ad to see again the names
in this long chapter, and glad, (as I am), to have met the Church Unselfish,--the Church in the Forest,--at Diamond
Pond.
And now, without further ado,--Lux Perpetua Eis Luceat,--(and "God bless us every one").
"0, Lord, support us all the day long of this troublous life until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes
and the busy world is hushed and the fever of life is over and our work is done. Then in thy great mercy grant
us lodging and a holy peace and rest at the last."
(Old Liturgy)