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College-" Boy Waiters at a Summer 'Resort in Tennessee.
"1 T was August, 1903. Darkness fell over
the hills, and the supper bell at Hotel
Cumberland failed to ring. Ten or
twelve colored dining-room waiters
stood at the foot of the kitchen steps in
deep consultation. A strike was on—
for what? The manager had been unex
pectedly called to Asheville on the
J noon train. It was pay-day and he had
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forgotten to settle with them. “I’ll not move a
peg toward serving supper,” muttered the leader.
“Pack your grips, boys, and we’ll leave on the
9 o’clock train tonight!”
The head cook—also colored—came to the kitch
en door, and kindly exhorted: “Come ahead, boys,
this will never do, put on your aprons and jackets,
and serve supper like honorable men! I’ve work
ed for ‘the Boss’ two years, and know him to be
all right. He will pay you before sunset tomor
row, see if he don’t!”
His appeal was successful, but it was their last
season on the mountain. In May, 1904, the fol
lowing letter went to the President of Bethel Col
lege, located at Russellville, Ky.:
Prof. R. V. Harrison:
Dear Sir: I wish to employ ten or twelve of
your students, to do dining-room work, at a summer
resort in the Tennessee mountains. I will pay them
sl2 per month and railroad fare one way. The
work is light, and they will have spare time to de
vote to their studies.
My wife is anxious that a few ministerial .students
come along with the others, as the Baptist cause
here is weak.
Please read this aloud in the chapel, and oblige,
Yours very truly,
J. F. Miller.
In due time, letters were received from several of
the Bethel College students who were anxious to go
(among them three ministerial students), while the
rest were secured from “Castle Heights” prepara
tory school, located at Lebanon, Tennessee, and
other places.
Such books as “The Successful Waiter,” “The
Dining Room Guide,” etc., were secured, and stud
ied, that they might obtain some idea of the work
before them. It is delightful to realize that the
time has come in the old South, when a certain false
pride no longer exists.
These fine young men belonged to the representa
tive families of Tennessee and Kentucky, and felt
that gentlemanly security that comes with honest
industry and took up their work with a zest and
spirit that adds dignity to labor. A few weeks
after they began work the Tennessee Woman’s
Press and Authors’ Club held its three days’ an
nual session at Hotel Cumberland, and among them
as honorary member and invited guest of the writer,
was Mrs. Mary E. Bryan, of Clarkston, Ga., editor
of the household department of the Sunny South,
published at Atlanta.
Mrs. Bryan was highly pleased with the dining
room service and made complimentary mention of
the college students in the following issue of the
Sunny South. An amusing incident occurred dur
ing this Press Club meeting worthy of mention.
When the dining room was crowded, as on this
occasion, the head waiter, Rev. W. S. Shipp, don
ned an apron and jacket, and helped the other boys
serve meals.
It happened on the last day of the meeting,
well as the last meal before their train left, he
waited on a table of newspaper and magazine Writ
ers, among whom was a talented woman from
Clarksville. Tenn., who, on leaving the table, left
a liberal “tip” which he refused. Both parties
were embarrassed, and after she repaired to her
room, she sent profuse apologies, by saying she was
a Baptist who only wished to make a small dona
tion to the Baptist cause. While Rev. Shipp ap
preciated her position in this instance, yet in the
main he regarded the principle of giving and receiv-
The Golden Age for February 14, 1907.
Sy HATTIE PXRKS HILLES
ing tips a species of bribery, which should be dis
couraged in hotel service.
“What to give, and what to keep,
Requires a headpiece, wide and deep.”
As stated above, the Baptist cause at Monterey,
the little mountain town a short distance from Ho
tel Cumberland, was weak. During the winter of
1903. Rev. Earle D. Simms, returned missionary
from China, and at present Slate Evangelist, located
at Nashville, Tenn., held a week’s revival there and
organized a Baptist church of fourteen members.
They had no church edifice, but they had 'Chris
tian zeal, and rented a small second story room over
a drug store, in which to worship. (I am glad to
state they now have a very neat little church build
ing, which will be ready for occupancy as soon as
they are able to buy seats.)
The college-boy waiters soon learned of the little
Baptist band of the drug store upper chamber, and
went thither each Sabbath to assist in some kind of
worship, (Sunday school, choir practice, or preach
ing.
Miss Myrtle Morris, a talented deaf mute, of
Georgia, or Alabama (I fail to remember just now),
was there and conducted a Sunbeam Society in
which she was ably assisted by the ministerial stu
dents. Miss Morris is at present doing mission
work among the deaf mutes of Havana, Cuba.
Os all the good influences exercised by these young
men during their three months’ stay in the moun
tains. I recall none of more value than the change
wrought in a poor widow’s home. In the mountain
regions of Tennessee, as well as many other states,
there is a class of illicit distillers known as “moon
shiners.” During the summer of 1902 two broth
ers operated a still, in a seemingly inaccessible
ravine near Monterey. But the fearless revenue
raider found them out and they were sent to the
state prison, the eldest leaving behind a wife and
four small children, poverty stricken. In a short
time the husband and father was stricken with slow
fever, and died.
Soon after his death his widow went one Sun
day night to hear one of the Bethel College boys
preach. He preached a strong temperance sermon,
and closed by saying: “0, that the whiskey demon
could be cast out from the face of the earth, and
our God-given world would certainly be a serpent
less Eden! ”,
She wept aloud and left the church before the
benediction was pronounced. Out in the darkness
she wended her way to the lonely cabin on the
mountain side, where slept the orphan children, in
nocent of a mother’s anguish. She raised a trap
door and gazed below at thirty or forty gallons of
moonshine whiskey in jug's—the undiscovered rem
nant of the dead husband’s still, which, two hours
before, she had considered her future support. “I
have heard enough; this is the last night my little
ones shall sleep above our family curse. God help
me, I pray, to raise them right.”
Monday morning she rose early and emptied the
jugs into a ravine near by, but before she ‘had quite
finished a stranger with a gun on his shoulder con
fronted her. She was not afraid, for he had the
stamp of a gentleman.
“Madam, may I ask what this means?” She
briefly related her sad story, and he passed on. Tn
a few weeks a bill of lumber was hauled to her
humble home, and soon thereafter a two-room box
house, ceiled, and a stack chimney between, was
Tiers. Some wealthy ladies at Hotel Cumberland
put her name on their charity list, and she and
her children have not since suffered for food, or
raiment.
While on the temperance question, I heg leave
to make a second mention of Mrs. Mary E. Bryan,
of Clarkston, Ga. When packing her trunk to
attend the Tennessee Woman’s Press and Authors’
Club meeting at Monterey, she put in several copies
of her beautifully bound “Stories and Poems in
Verse,” as presents to friends. (The writer luck
ily fell heir to one,) Tn looking over the indp.x
I saw, “The Imprisoned Moonshiner,” and suggest
ed it as a suitable recitation for an entertainment
the college students proposed giving for the purpose
of raising church funds. It ran thus:
“The swift rain tramples upon the roof;
Wild the sound as the rushing hoof
Os a spectral horse from a ghostly flight;
It bears my spirit away tonight.
I hear the winds on my native hills,
I hear the roar of a hundred rills,
As they rush in foam down the mountain side.
Oh! my mountains! the free, the wide!
Oh! to you on the winds to ride!
“My cabin—’tis dearer far than a shrine;
On the mountain side I see it shine,
Like a star dropped down—the star is mine—
’Tis the blaze on my hearth of the mountain pine,
In its light I see my Amy’s face
And the baby’s crib in its corner place,
And my boy with his sun-burned arm around
The neck of old Bumper, my trusted hound.
Ho! Bumper! Ho! Tricks! ’Tis a night for the
coon.
Dark—with no glimmer of star or moon;
The rain is done, or it will be soon;
With a good pine torch and my trusty gun,
Tonight, old boys, we can have some fun.
“What’s that? My God, ’tis the rattling chain!
My home! ’twas the dream of a fevered brain!
I am back in this stifling cell again!”
It was well rendered by a young man from
southern Kentucky, who afterward had nt published
in the form of tracts, which he scattered over the
mountain districts in which he was doing mission
work.
The strike was “a blessing in disguise.”
■Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee—
Psalm 76 :10.
The influences for good shed abroad by these
young men cannot be measured. They seemed called
as it were to the fields that needed such workers, and
they went, believing with a great and lamented Ten
nesseean, that “Character is the one Godlike strength
in man; he who has it is blessed with an everlast
ing salvation, and he who has it not, is cursed
with all curses. Let him walk whithersoever he
may, let him nail with a hammer or preside over
a court, let him conduct a bank, or plow a field,
let him sing the songs of faith, or be sad of heart
in doubt, he shall walk in honor and safety, for his
hand is held in a mightier—he cannot fall.”
Dr. Broughton’s Evangelistic Work.
Dr. Broughton, pastor of the Baotist Tabernacle,
this city has all his ministerial life been given to
evangelistic work in connection with his duties as
pastor. During his very busy ministrv here in At
lanta he has been constantly on the go in this kind
of work. He has held great meetings in all sect’ons
of this country and. abroad. Only recently in Char
lotte, N. C., and Greenville, S. 0.. he has been
greatly blessed in evangelistic work, holding two
really great meetings in which hundreds were led
to confession of Christ.
But this busy man has been forced to limit such
engagements to only a few. The calls from all
parts of the country for this kind of work are so
numerous that he has been forced to say that no
more engagements can possibly be considered be
fore next October.
He lias just had to turn down an urgent appeal
from the Ministers’ Association of Peoria. Til., to
follow Gypsy Smith. who has been having a most
wonderful levival there. They wanted Dr. Brough
ton to come this week and preach in the Audito
rium twice a. day for a week, the interest is so
great.
Dr. Broughton had to decline this, as well as all
others, his new building enterprise and Bible school
work in Atlanta demanding all lijs time at present.
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