Post by MIRIAM JACOB on Jun 26, 2008 1:01:24 GMT -5
MISSIONARY WARRIOR - Charles E. Cowman
By Lettie B. Cowman (Mrs. Charles E. Cowman)
Author of "Streams in the Desert"
Copyright @ 1928 By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
~ out-of-print and in the public domain ~
Chapter Three -
BREAKING HOME-TIES
"A Hand
Always above my shoulder pushed me."
- R. Browning.
The years of his childhood were passing. The fledglings had outgrown their sheltered retreat.
David and Mary Cowman realized that another change was inevitable. Charles had passed his
fifteenth year and was in need of advanced schooling. Quite unconsciously an unseen Hand was
leading him forward. Truly a Hand, other than his, was at the helm and the eternal forces had his
life-plan in their mighty onward sweep. Another home was established, but how little did the
parents dream of the changes that would occur during the months which were to follow.
There came to the town where they moved, a young telegraph operator. He was a winsome
youth, one educated above his fellows. A warm friendship very soon sprang up between the two
lads and Charles spent many an hour in the telegraph office, fascinated by the click of the
instruments. During vacation he studied telegraphy with no thought whatever of anything but
pastime. He never meant to make it his profession, but when he was able in several months, to
send and receive messages and dispatch trains, the temptation became very strong to accept a
position which had been offered him at a railway station some miles from home. He begged his
parents to permit him to accept it until the opening of the autumn term of school. Very
reluctantly they gave their consent and the boy of fifteen cut loose from his moorings and started
out upon an unknown sea.
This was a marked turning point which affected his entire life.
It was the first time that he had ever been away from home for a night and his parents were very
anxious about him, fearing that he would fall asleep while on duty and allow the trains to pass
by; but this wide-awake lad never slept at his post. Because of his youth he became quickly
known from one end of the line to another as "the boy operator." The trainmen loved him, and
the oldest conductors of the road said they had never met a more promising lad.
It was a new world in which he now lived; his boyhood days seemed ended and before him was
the hard, serious business of life - the training school for the still greater days ahead. When
autumn came, he had no desire to return to school, but he pursued his studies with an eagerness
and interest that never waned. All times of transition are crises. The old is broken up, but what
the new shall be is ours, under GOD, to determine.
Was it a grave mistake that he never returned to school? Who can think so in his particular case?
When we see a person making such an outstanding success as did Charles Cowman, it were folly
to wish that he had been a college-bred man.
A reminiscence of the writer's girlhood days will be pardoned.
How true it is that all the ten thousand crossings and touchings of human paths have a divine
purpose in them. There is no chance in this world. The smallest thing in our lives, the seemingly
least important incidents are included in our Father's plan, in His care for us. "It chanced -
eternal GOD, that chance did guide." Again, GOD made our paths to cross - his and mine. My
childhood home, the "Burd Estate," was a short distance from the village. One day my mother
went to the village and on her return home said, "I met a dear lad today. He had such a frank,
open countenance, but there was an air of loneliness about him and I thought he must be away
from his home and parents for the first time. When I spoke to him I found that it was even so.
His name is Charles Cowman and he is the night operator at the railway station. I invited him to
the house, as I feel that he needs a little bit of mothering."
I was but a mere school girl, had just passed my thirteenth birthday. The village school was
separated from my home by a small lake and a deep, rolling meadow. Morning and evening I had
to cross the steps of the railway station to reach the roadway leading to our gate. Often Charles
would accompany me home, opening the heavy meadow gates, and upon mother's invitation,
would remain to evening tea.
A warm welcome was found in our home and a great deal of his spare time was spent there when
away from his office. We learned much of his boyhood and my mother was delighted to know
that he was the boy who had spent the night with his parents and sister in this home some
thirteen years before. A lifelong friendship sprung up between his family and mine.
The pupils of Madame Barnhart were giving a musical entertainment at the Methodist church in
our village. I was her pupil and had a part on the program. Nearly every girl whose name was on
the program, had a brother about her own age; mine were all grown up. The brothers were to
accompany their sisters to the church and march down the aisle with them to the platform.
Several days before the entertainment I received a brief note. which read as follows:
"Miss Lettie Burd,
"May I have the privilege of accompanying you to the concert on Friday evening?
"Yours sincerely, Charles Cowman."
To this, mother gave her consent. The evening came, the church was filled to its limit, and down
the aisle marched the pupils led by Madame Barnhart. Charles and myself followed immediately
behind her. My dress was snowy white and I carried an armful of roses. Something whispered to
mother at that moment, "Somewhere through the coming years, your little girl will be walking
down the aisle with that boy to the marriage altar."
Some weeks later, a promotion was offered to Charles and he was transferred from the small
station to a divisional center many miles away. As quickly as he received the news he came at
once to tell my mother, but he told me something else. Our parents smiled at our childhood
romance, but made no objection. From the first time we met we were sweethearts and to the last
breath he drew, we were sweethearts still.
A year passed when another promotion was offered to him and when he was but seventeen he
was occupying the position of train dispatcher at one of the largest divisional centers of the
Burlington Railway. At eighteen he was transferred to Chicago, to fill a still more important
position in the Railroad Office of the same company.
One promotion followed another in rapid succession and he began climbing the ladder of
success. At nineteen he was receiving the same salary as the employees who had been in the
service for many years.
When Sunday came, without any other thought, he went to church, just as he had been taught;
but the great city congregation seemed entirely different from the humble village meeting-house,
where all were acquainted with one another. He missed the familiar faces and the cordial manner
of his former church friends. Again and again he listened to the same sweet gospel hymns, the
same gospel story, but not finding the interest his young heart craved, he returned to his lodging
with a touch of genuine homesickness. After a time his work kept him at his desk on the Lord's
Day, and little by little church attendance was neglected. This soon drifted into indifference, and
the voice of GOD died out in his soul.
Temptations were present in his life as in the lives of other young men. The city streets were full
of allurements, and companions were ever ready to lead him into forbidden paths; however, his
early training, the example and prayers of father and mother, and the overshadowing mercy of
God prevented his young life from being blighted. Many sought his companionship and tried to
induce him to follow them into questionable amusements.
Numbers had come from sheltered homes, just as he, but away from the godly influence they had
given up church attendance and had fallen away entirely. He saw many of his young fellowworkers,
ignorant of the ways of the world, wreck their lives through debauchery and drink. He
resolved to keep away from them; and how graciously was he preserved from the sins of youth!
He was living in an entirely new world; new experiences were the lot of the boy away from
home. To be steadfast in such surroundings and under such influences, calls for the stuff of
which martyrs are made.
There is no stronger force in a man's life than the memory of home and mother like that which
belonged to Charles Cowman. He who has it, let him daily Thank GOD for this incomparable
blessing. It is an anchor to windward, holding him fast whatever storms may arise or winds blow.
The realization that he belonged to a family whose escutcheon has never been stained has held
many a young man firm in the hour of testing.
The temptations which surrounded the young man of nineteen in the large city caused his parents
much anxiety.
When a call came to him to accept the position as manager of the Western Union Telegraph
Office at Glenwood Springs, Colorado, a lovely watering place in the heart of the Rockies, they
strongly advised the change. He accepted the offered position.
But even there, he found himself in a strange environment which would have tested and tried
many an older person.
His dealings were chiefly with mining officials who gambled with mining stock losing and
gaining fortunes overnight. These men admired the accuracy and carefulness with which the
steady young telegraph operator handled their business. Often a bill would be slipped into his
hand by men who wished to see some private telegrams which would have let them into the
secret of the daily market, but the bill was quietly refused by this honest young man.
Money considerations were not allowed to influence him in any way, although it might have
become a great attraction and a snare, but he had no love for money. He lived in modest lodgings
and from his monthly salary laid aside sufficient funds with which to purchase a home.
He remained in this position until his twenty-first birthday. On June 8, 1889, our childhood
dream was realized, and a honeymoon began which increased in joy and love, lasting for thirtysix
years.
Our first home was in the heart of the Rockies, where we lived for several years. It seemed that
for us Heaven had begun. We were ideally happy together; but GOD whose ways are as much
higher than our ways, as the Heavens are higher than the earth, had to stir up that cozy nest - that
His purpose for the future might be carried out. The altitude proved too high for me, and several
times it looked as if life itself would flicker out. Once a doctor was hastily summoned and
memory will ever carry a picture of my loving young husband kneeling by my bedside, while the
doctor tried to find my feeble pulse. How earnestly he prayed, "Oh, GOD, spare her life.
Remember the boy who used to pray!" GOD did hear and He did restore. A change of altitude
was necessary and he was granted a transfer back to the city of Chicago.
By Lettie B. Cowman (Mrs. Charles E. Cowman)
Author of "Streams in the Desert"
Copyright @ 1928 By Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
~ out-of-print and in the public domain ~
Chapter Three -
BREAKING HOME-TIES
"A Hand
Always above my shoulder pushed me."
- R. Browning.
The years of his childhood were passing. The fledglings had outgrown their sheltered retreat.
David and Mary Cowman realized that another change was inevitable. Charles had passed his
fifteenth year and was in need of advanced schooling. Quite unconsciously an unseen Hand was
leading him forward. Truly a Hand, other than his, was at the helm and the eternal forces had his
life-plan in their mighty onward sweep. Another home was established, but how little did the
parents dream of the changes that would occur during the months which were to follow.
There came to the town where they moved, a young telegraph operator. He was a winsome
youth, one educated above his fellows. A warm friendship very soon sprang up between the two
lads and Charles spent many an hour in the telegraph office, fascinated by the click of the
instruments. During vacation he studied telegraphy with no thought whatever of anything but
pastime. He never meant to make it his profession, but when he was able in several months, to
send and receive messages and dispatch trains, the temptation became very strong to accept a
position which had been offered him at a railway station some miles from home. He begged his
parents to permit him to accept it until the opening of the autumn term of school. Very
reluctantly they gave their consent and the boy of fifteen cut loose from his moorings and started
out upon an unknown sea.
This was a marked turning point which affected his entire life.
It was the first time that he had ever been away from home for a night and his parents were very
anxious about him, fearing that he would fall asleep while on duty and allow the trains to pass
by; but this wide-awake lad never slept at his post. Because of his youth he became quickly
known from one end of the line to another as "the boy operator." The trainmen loved him, and
the oldest conductors of the road said they had never met a more promising lad.
It was a new world in which he now lived; his boyhood days seemed ended and before him was
the hard, serious business of life - the training school for the still greater days ahead. When
autumn came, he had no desire to return to school, but he pursued his studies with an eagerness
and interest that never waned. All times of transition are crises. The old is broken up, but what
the new shall be is ours, under GOD, to determine.
Was it a grave mistake that he never returned to school? Who can think so in his particular case?
When we see a person making such an outstanding success as did Charles Cowman, it were folly
to wish that he had been a college-bred man.
A reminiscence of the writer's girlhood days will be pardoned.
How true it is that all the ten thousand crossings and touchings of human paths have a divine
purpose in them. There is no chance in this world. The smallest thing in our lives, the seemingly
least important incidents are included in our Father's plan, in His care for us. "It chanced -
eternal GOD, that chance did guide." Again, GOD made our paths to cross - his and mine. My
childhood home, the "Burd Estate," was a short distance from the village. One day my mother
went to the village and on her return home said, "I met a dear lad today. He had such a frank,
open countenance, but there was an air of loneliness about him and I thought he must be away
from his home and parents for the first time. When I spoke to him I found that it was even so.
His name is Charles Cowman and he is the night operator at the railway station. I invited him to
the house, as I feel that he needs a little bit of mothering."
I was but a mere school girl, had just passed my thirteenth birthday. The village school was
separated from my home by a small lake and a deep, rolling meadow. Morning and evening I had
to cross the steps of the railway station to reach the roadway leading to our gate. Often Charles
would accompany me home, opening the heavy meadow gates, and upon mother's invitation,
would remain to evening tea.
A warm welcome was found in our home and a great deal of his spare time was spent there when
away from his office. We learned much of his boyhood and my mother was delighted to know
that he was the boy who had spent the night with his parents and sister in this home some
thirteen years before. A lifelong friendship sprung up between his family and mine.
The pupils of Madame Barnhart were giving a musical entertainment at the Methodist church in
our village. I was her pupil and had a part on the program. Nearly every girl whose name was on
the program, had a brother about her own age; mine were all grown up. The brothers were to
accompany their sisters to the church and march down the aisle with them to the platform.
Several days before the entertainment I received a brief note. which read as follows:
"Miss Lettie Burd,
"May I have the privilege of accompanying you to the concert on Friday evening?
"Yours sincerely, Charles Cowman."
To this, mother gave her consent. The evening came, the church was filled to its limit, and down
the aisle marched the pupils led by Madame Barnhart. Charles and myself followed immediately
behind her. My dress was snowy white and I carried an armful of roses. Something whispered to
mother at that moment, "Somewhere through the coming years, your little girl will be walking
down the aisle with that boy to the marriage altar."
Some weeks later, a promotion was offered to Charles and he was transferred from the small
station to a divisional center many miles away. As quickly as he received the news he came at
once to tell my mother, but he told me something else. Our parents smiled at our childhood
romance, but made no objection. From the first time we met we were sweethearts and to the last
breath he drew, we were sweethearts still.
A year passed when another promotion was offered to him and when he was but seventeen he
was occupying the position of train dispatcher at one of the largest divisional centers of the
Burlington Railway. At eighteen he was transferred to Chicago, to fill a still more important
position in the Railroad Office of the same company.
One promotion followed another in rapid succession and he began climbing the ladder of
success. At nineteen he was receiving the same salary as the employees who had been in the
service for many years.
When Sunday came, without any other thought, he went to church, just as he had been taught;
but the great city congregation seemed entirely different from the humble village meeting-house,
where all were acquainted with one another. He missed the familiar faces and the cordial manner
of his former church friends. Again and again he listened to the same sweet gospel hymns, the
same gospel story, but not finding the interest his young heart craved, he returned to his lodging
with a touch of genuine homesickness. After a time his work kept him at his desk on the Lord's
Day, and little by little church attendance was neglected. This soon drifted into indifference, and
the voice of GOD died out in his soul.
Temptations were present in his life as in the lives of other young men. The city streets were full
of allurements, and companions were ever ready to lead him into forbidden paths; however, his
early training, the example and prayers of father and mother, and the overshadowing mercy of
God prevented his young life from being blighted. Many sought his companionship and tried to
induce him to follow them into questionable amusements.
Numbers had come from sheltered homes, just as he, but away from the godly influence they had
given up church attendance and had fallen away entirely. He saw many of his young fellowworkers,
ignorant of the ways of the world, wreck their lives through debauchery and drink. He
resolved to keep away from them; and how graciously was he preserved from the sins of youth!
He was living in an entirely new world; new experiences were the lot of the boy away from
home. To be steadfast in such surroundings and under such influences, calls for the stuff of
which martyrs are made.
There is no stronger force in a man's life than the memory of home and mother like that which
belonged to Charles Cowman. He who has it, let him daily Thank GOD for this incomparable
blessing. It is an anchor to windward, holding him fast whatever storms may arise or winds blow.
The realization that he belonged to a family whose escutcheon has never been stained has held
many a young man firm in the hour of testing.
The temptations which surrounded the young man of nineteen in the large city caused his parents
much anxiety.
When a call came to him to accept the position as manager of the Western Union Telegraph
Office at Glenwood Springs, Colorado, a lovely watering place in the heart of the Rockies, they
strongly advised the change. He accepted the offered position.
But even there, he found himself in a strange environment which would have tested and tried
many an older person.
His dealings were chiefly with mining officials who gambled with mining stock losing and
gaining fortunes overnight. These men admired the accuracy and carefulness with which the
steady young telegraph operator handled their business. Often a bill would be slipped into his
hand by men who wished to see some private telegrams which would have let them into the
secret of the daily market, but the bill was quietly refused by this honest young man.
Money considerations were not allowed to influence him in any way, although it might have
become a great attraction and a snare, but he had no love for money. He lived in modest lodgings
and from his monthly salary laid aside sufficient funds with which to purchase a home.
He remained in this position until his twenty-first birthday. On June 8, 1889, our childhood
dream was realized, and a honeymoon began which increased in joy and love, lasting for thirtysix
years.
Our first home was in the heart of the Rockies, where we lived for several years. It seemed that
for us Heaven had begun. We were ideally happy together; but GOD whose ways are as much
higher than our ways, as the Heavens are higher than the earth, had to stir up that cozy nest - that
His purpose for the future might be carried out. The altitude proved too high for me, and several
times it looked as if life itself would flicker out. Once a doctor was hastily summoned and
memory will ever carry a picture of my loving young husband kneeling by my bedside, while the
doctor tried to find my feeble pulse. How earnestly he prayed, "Oh, GOD, spare her life.
Remember the boy who used to pray!" GOD did hear and He did restore. A change of altitude
was necessary and he was granted a transfer back to the city of Chicago.