Such a ministry as the Pilot's springs from a heart of kindness--from a pure and understanding love of all mankind. "Boys," said he, once, in the superintendent's office, after the sermon in the bunk-house, "I'll never forget a porterhouse steak I saw once. It was in Duluth. I'd been too busy to have my breakfast, and I was hungry. I'm a big man, you know, and when I get hungry I'm _hungry_. Anyhow, I wasn't thinking about that when I saw the steak. It didn't occur to me that I was hungry until I happened to glance into a restaurant window as I walked along. And there I saw the steak. You know how they fix those windows up: a chunk of ice and some lettuce and a steak or two and some chops. Well, boys, all at once I got so hungry that I ached. I could hardly wait to get in there.
"'Look here, Higgins,' thought I, 'what if you didn't have a cent in your pocket?'
"Well, that was a puzzler. 'What if you were a dead-broke lumber-jack, and hungry like this?'
"Boys, it frightened me. I understood just what those poor fellows suffer. And I couldn't go in the restaurant until I had got square with them.
"'Look here, Higgins,' I thought, 'the best thing you can do is to go and find a hungry lumber-jack somewhere and feed him.'
"And I did, too; and I tell you, boys, I enjoyed my dinner."
It is a ministry that wins good friends, and often in unexpected places: friends like the lumber-jack (once an enemy) who would clear a way for the Pilot in town, shouting, "I'm road-monkeying for the Pilot!" and friends like the Blacksmith.
Higgins came one night to a new camp where an irascible boss was in complete command.
"You won't mind, will you," said he, "if I hold a little service for the boys in the bunk-house to-night?"
"All I want to do," Higgins protested, mildly, "is just to hold a little service for the boys."
Again the boss ordered him to clear out: but Higgins had come prepared with the authority of the proprietor of the camp.
"I've a pass in my pocket," he suggested.
"Don't matter," said the boss; "you couldn't preach in this camp if you had a pass from God Almighty!"
To thrash or not to thrash? that was the Pilot's problem; and he determined not to thrash, for he knew very well that if he thrashed the boss the lumber-jacks would lose respect for the boss and jump the camp. The Blacksmith, however, had heard--and had heard much more than is here written. Next morning he involved himself in a quarrel with the boss; and having thrashed him soundly, and having thrown him into a snowbank, he departed, but returned, and, addressing himself to that portion of the foreman which protruded from the snow, kicked it heartily, saying: "There's one for the Pilot. And there's another--and another. I'll learn you to talk to the Pilot like a drunken lumber-jack. There's another for _him_. Take that--and that--for the Pilot."