THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES Cr6(A)e// (3. c5V^/^ 97% Totals $9,315.31 $23.63 $23,661.47 $25.25 154% One expression of the growth of Temple Church was made in its support of two of the City Missions. A struggling Mission among the poorer class of citizens known as Hewitt Street Mission was taken over and supported during 1904 — 5, and finally returned to hands who promised to make it self-support- ing, and by resolution its name was erased from the Church books. Another Mission having been started by the Baptist City Mission on Temple Street, in which the Assistant Pastor had been most interested, in January, 1908, the Temple Church decided to take control and permit the Assistant Pastor to con- duct Sunday School and preaching service there Sunday morn- ings. This Mission known as the Echo Park Branch has the services of the Assistant Pastor and Mrs. Mary J. Weldy, who is engaged as Resident Visitor. Interest in Support of Two Foreign Missionaries Dr. and Mrs. Freeman Johnson, who went from Temple Church to the mission field in Burma, are in a sense the special care of the Temple. The Adult Bible Class makes a definite contribution to them, Dr. A. J. Scott contributed a beautiful The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 111 case of instruments, members of the Women's Union furnished a fine camera, and they are considered "our missionaries." *Templeisms In addition to the regular services already set forth at length every Tuesday afternoon, the Prayer Circle, organized by Mrs, Louise M. Potts, meets in Children's Hall for one hour of special prayer, their frank and earnest petitions being concentrated on some one object at each meeting. While this is not confined to women only, it might be called the Women's Prayer-meeting, and the Pastor and workers of the Church feel the strength and support that comes from this hour of consecration on the part of this band of earnest women. Sunday morning prayer-meeting is held in one of the church parlors by those who wish to pray for an especial blessing on the services of the day and every pastor realizes the help and power there is in the feeling that some of his congregation at least, have not only asked for the needed blessing on his efforts, but have put themselves in the mental and heart attitude to receive the message. The Sacrament of Communion is observed the first Sabbath in the month following the morning service. The "right hand of fellowship" is then extended to the new members admitted during the previous month. A list of the new members taken month after month warrants the statement without fear of challenge that Temple Church is the most cosmopolitan Church in the world. As Los Angeles is a cosmopolitan city and the Pastor of Temple was known wherever English-speaking people live throughout the world. Temple Church naturally attracts to its membership people of its denomination from all states and countries. A stranger visiting here in March previous to the beginning of the Auditorium Building, in writing to his home paper said: "Twenty persons were received into membership, * "Templeisms" include those things incident to Temple Church life and peculiar to the Temple, and can be mentioned only briefly. 112 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold some upon profession of faith and some by letters. The acces- sions were from the states of Rhode Island, Ohio, Illinois, Wis- consin, Montana, Washington and Michigan, as well as from California." To this list might have been added Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Toronto, Manitoba, England and Wales. The ordinance of baptism is administered regularly the last Sabbath in the month and frequently between these dates, and since coming into the permanent home there has never been a baptismal Sunday without baptism save during the absence of the Pastor. A notable baptism took place in the Jordan Baptistry on Easter Sunday, April 19, 1908, when there was baptized by the Pastor twenty-one candidates ranging in age from nine years to eighty-three. The Sunday school was most strongly represented. Little friends, brothers and sisters, husband and wife, father and grandfather entered into the Church through this gate to stand side by side with loved ones already within the fold. As they stepped down into the waters of the baptistry, each bearing a spray of Easter lilies, and came up out of the water still bearing this symbol of purity, they left a message not to be forgotten. The first Sunday evening in each month is known as "Musi- cal Evening," when extra music is given and the Pastor preaches a "sermonette." The music is selected to express the spirit of the topic of the "sermonette," which is rather more popular than the other sermons of the month. During the last year the evenings have been devoted to the songs, the music, and the contributions of some given nation to the Church life of the world. They have proven most attractive and to the over- flowing throngs that come, there must be many hearts that receive the message which could not otherwise reach them. It has its particular place, under the Spirit's guidance, and the effect has been notable. The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 113 A service entirely unique in the history of the Baptist de- nomination has been instituted by the Pastor of this Church that, in some sense, corresponds to the "christenings" of other churches. The "Name Service" as conducted by Dr. Burdette, is very simple and beautiful. A brief scripture, a charge to the parents, the naming, and a prayer of consecration, commits the child to the care of the dear Heavenly Father and the parents to a pledge of religious training for the little one. This grew out of the deep-seated belief on the part of the Pastor that children should not be left to the evils of life until parents or child come to the mature judgment that having sinned it was time to re- pent. A far greater thing is to keep them from the sin of the world by knowing "no other way" than righteous and beautiful living. A Pastor's Reception is held by the Pastor and Pastoress the last Monday evening of each month, when all the Church are invited to gather in the Church parlors and become acquainted with the new members and each other. The special guests of honor include from time to time, the Board of Deacons, the Board of Trustees, the Choir, the staff of ushers, the officers of the Bible School, the Deaconess Committee, giving the Church members an opportunity to become acquainted with their elected and appointed bodies as such. As the Pastor finds it impossible to call on the Church members except those who are sick, or in trouble, or strangers, this reception stands in the place of "calls," the expected social duty that has oftenest rung the death knell of a Pastor's pulpit and spiritual usefulness. Many accessions to the Church have come from the opportunity here afforded to get acquainted with people and its value has been worth the effort. The Temple Pin bearing the monogram, T. B. C, and shown on the title page of this history, is worn as a badge by the men, women and children of the Church. It is not only a "sol- dier's" regimental decoration, but it usefully identifies the wearer 114 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold to the usher as a member of the church when the throngs of worshipers exceed the seating capacity of the Auditorium. The annual Feast of Tabernacles and supper has a fixed place in the Church calendar as has the Annual Sociable and Supper of the Officers and Teachers of the Bible school. The former is held the Wednesday after the third Sunday in Septem- ber, and the latter in February. The Sunday School Orchestra, organized under the leader- ship of C. B. Hamerich, and of great service to the Bible School, to social gatherings and special meetings of the Church, meets for rehearsal Tuesday evenings in Berean Hall, and this gift of music on the part of our young people is as much a service to the Lord as any other service in the Church. Among the Templeisms that is most interesting, as well as unusual, is the fact that there was enrolled at one time on the Sunday School registry the names of sixteen children that con- stituted eight sets of twins. They are the especial delight of the School and most promising junior Church members. During the five years' life of Temple Church there has come into its fellowship more than a score of members ordained to preach the gospel. While Temple Church was started and is known as a layman's Church, it is a singular coincidence that it has drawn to its membership so large a proportion of ministers. During the five years of its life there has come into its fellow- ship more than a score of members who had been ordained to preach the gospel. At the date of its fifth birthday it still has fourteen ordained ministers beside the Pastor, Dr. A. P. Graves, D. D., the evangelist, being the oldest in point of time of service. "Like the priests of the Temple of Ne- hemiah," said the Pastor, speaking of his ordained brethren in the pews, "the priests of this Temple have made ample proof of their ministry and 'can all find their register among those that are reckoned by genealogy, children of Jedaiah, Immer, Pashur and Harim.' Sons of Aaron and Hur are they The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 115 — every one of them a blessing to the Church and a help to the Pastor — a real help. I will never forget the kindUness and the great benefit of their wise suggestions, their tender warnings, their brotherly co-operation — the unmeasured value of their long experience, so freely and so unassumingly tendered when- ever and wherever they can be of service. May God bless them even as they have been a blessing to the Temple Church." The Temple-Herald One of the most important and helpful, silent services rendered to church Hfe is imparted to those who read with their souls as well as their eyes the Temple-Herald that waits the coming of the great congregation at each of the Sabbath servi- ces. Here is found the order of Sabbath services, the printed hymn in place of the cumbersome Hymnal, the responsive reading in full, the announcements of the week, a "thought for the week," a list of officers of the Church, and a list of new members with their addresses. Temple-Herald has always generously an- nounced the meetings of the Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's Christian Association, feeling they were supplemental work of the Church. That the Temple-Herald has been unusually attractive is due, perhaps, to a fact that is little appreciated by the layman in such work. It weekly requires as much time and careful thought to prepare the manuscript for the Herald as it does to write a sermon ; and the first page, con- taining as it does a carefully selected cut to illustrate the topic of the sermon, and an original poem by the Pastor each week to give expression to the spirit of the cut, is no small contribution to what is acknowledged to be one of the most attractive church calendars in the United States. The acknowledgment of its value is found in the fact that there are regular paid subscrip- tions for it by people of the East, the amount realized being turned into the fellowship fund. 116 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold One Templeism that has been a matter of education is best explained by quoting a paragraph from the Herald: By the Authority of the Golden Rule "Out of Christian consideration for others, the women will please remove their hats before the beginning of the sermon." This has required repeated encouragement on the part of the Pastor because of the large number of strangers in each con- gregation, but the comfort for all, the ability to see and hear the preacher without the annoyance of an obstruction that is continually changing its relative position, has been so ap- parent to everyone, the custom has become universal. Possibly the fact that frequently over fifty per cent of the congregation is men who say they enjoy coming because of this particular com- fort, is sufficient compensation for the kindly act on the part of the women. The Auditorium Company provided on the back of each seat a cup holder for the commtmion chalice, and by leaving a perforation in the bottom of it, the removed hat is easily fastened to it by passing the hat pin through the hat and through the opening, thus disposing of the hat during service. "Templeisms" may not be adapted to any other Church but for the Temple they have been the individualisms that have marked its strength and growth. THE PASTOR. ROBERT J. BURDETTE, D. D. CHAPTER V Pastor and Pastoress [Contributed] The Pastor To write of the Pastor of Temple Baptist Church of Los Angeles is to write of a man who does not belong to a church but to the Church; who is not a citizen of Los Angeles but of the entire United States; who is known not only and first as a Pastor, but as an author, editor, lecturer, humorist, preacher, soldier, political speaker, after-dinner orator and a lover, for, over and above everything else, his ca- pacity for rare devotional love, for his family, his friends, his work and for humanity, has made him better known than gift of intellect or word of speech. So much greater is heart than brain. When Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Burdette were visiting in London, at the time of the World's Baptist Congress, there ap- peared in the London Daily Mail, under date July 11, 1904, the following statement: "Among the 4,000 representatives of the Baptist Church now in London, according to the Rev. J. H. Shakespeare, the Secretary, they come from everywhere except Java and Palestine — it would be hard to select the most interesting. Well in the front ranks, however, would be the Rev. Robert J. Burdette, of Los Angeles, who has had a varied career." If Mr. Burdette proved "interesting" to those whom he met abroad, he is surely so to his many friends and admirers [121] 122 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold at home, and doubtless all those to whom he has so often made his bow on the lecture platform, will be equally ready to enjoy his smile and word of greeting now that he fills the pulpit of perhaps the best known church in the Golden State of California. In Temple Church may be found the strange anomoly of a church formed by laymen, managed by laymen, jealous of laymen's prerogatives and yet centered in their Pastor, revolv- ing around their Pastor, and making his wish their first con- sideration. Not that they are weak or lack virility, but that a sincere, tender regard exists for his plans and wishes, and an appreciation of the fact that he has been the magnet that called and held them together until their own spirit and wisdom ce- mented them into a solidarity. When he received the call to become an active Pastor, he was fifty-nine years of age, a time when most men are thinking of taking a little well-earned rest. He was still, as he had been for years, a humoristic lecturer of wide reputation, a poet and a writer, as well as a licensed preacher of the Baptist Church. Though not a seminary -bred, theological preacher, he is well versed in knowledge of God's word and knowledge of humanity, two branches of learning that have stood him in good stead. But always before the lecturer, before the writer, before the preacher, was the man. "What care we for robe or stole? It is the soul! It is the soul! What for crown, or what for crest? It is the heart within the breast." Two questions are often asked and naturally so, "Why did Robert J. Burdette leave the lecture platform to become a preach- er and what is his creed?" He has answered them himself in this fashion — that he was not drawn to the pulpit by any love of ease, for the lyceum with its changing audiences, its shifting scenes of travel, and the half-dozen lectures that would last the rest of his life-time was far lighter work than the pulpit with its The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 123 demand for two new sermons each week, and its daily round of pastoral duties making heavy drains upon strength of body, brain, soul and sympathy. Nor was it for hope of gain, for the income for the lyceum winter far surpassed the annual salary of the pastorate. Moreover he was just ready for a few years' rest, and had passed the "ministerial dead line" of fifty years. Why should he enter the ministry with never a day of so-called theological education or seminary training? A half-organized Church waiting upon his answer cried, "Come!" People whom he thought he might help in their troubles, and cares, and doubts, and sorrows, called to him, "Come!" And the voice of God whispered in his soul, "Go!" This same spirit was breathed in a sentence uttered in a prayer after he became a Pastor, uttered perhaps unconsciously to himself, has lived in the mind of one listener as the exponent of his call to the ministry: — "O Lord, we would reach one hand up to Thee and one down to poor, fallen, struggling humanity *and thus draw each to the other." And his creed? Again he makes answer, " 'Love is the fulfillment of the Law.' Love, and love alone brought Jesus Christ from heaven to men; and only love can lift men to heaven." When asked what was his secret for attracting men his deep-meaning reply was, "Preaching the simple Gospel. Men do not want philosophical treatises and literary essays; they want more evangelism." And in an article contributed by him to a religious publication he says under the caption, "This same Jesus," "I believe the greatest theme on earth at this time is the study, the declaration and exaltation of the character and di- vinity of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of men, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. There is that in the description and proclamation, the divine and human portraiture of Jesus that awakens the sincerest interest in the human mind, the ten- derest love in the human heart, and the profoundest reverence in the human soul, Jesus Christ and Him crucified and glori- 124 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold fied, His humanity and His Divinity — this be our theme. Men will respond to this, to the presentation of the personality of Jesus Christ as they will to no other thought." These deep and spiritual convictions were not born of the moment. They were the harvest of the years of God's spirit working within the human soul. Dr. A. P. Graves, D. D., the noted evangelist in writing to The Watchman in 1905, said of Temple Church: "From the first, plans were made to plant this Church in the center of the business portion of the city that it should be a felt power with all the people. God has greatly honored the movement. The Church is now about twenty-two months old and has 580 mem- bers. As a minister of the gospel just coming to the pulpit from long years in the lecture field, Mr, Burdette is in character a marvel of grace. Large crowds come to his ministry. In matter he preaches the gospel in love and power. It may truly be said he preaches Jesus. The humorous traits that character- ized his lectures are scarcely discerned in his sermons. He so arranges the songs of his large choir that they are devotional to every heart. His prayers are full of aptness, deeply impressive and spiritually inspiring to the whole congregation." Though called upon suddenly to take up this crowning work of his life, he possessed preparation for it by the enrichment of a life of varied experiences and by a legacy from his Baptist an- cestors of two centuries of pulpit orators. Robert Jones Burdette, was born in Greensborough, Greene County, Pennsylvania, on July 30, 1844. His ancestors, on both the father's and mother's side, were possessed of strong traits, intellectual and moral, and the good sense, sharp insight, and determined views, loyalty to conviction, which has marked the Preacher, came to him by direct inheritance. In 1846 his father removed to Cincinnati, and six years later to Peoria, Illinois, where at the age of 17, the boy finished his education in the schools, graduating at the High School, the third in his The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 125 class. His collegiate and post-graduate course was to be taken from the "Book of Nature" and of human life, which have granted him a continuous degree of "Master of Hearts." In 1862 he enlisted in the 47th Regiment of Illinois Volun- teers, and served in the ranks throughout the war, taking part in the battle of Corinth, in the siege of Vicksburg, and in the Red River expedition. While detailed to hospital service, the characteristics which were to prove his power in later life were recognized by the sick and the dying, when his cheery, sympathetic words tided them through suffering and kept hopeful the spark and dying life. After the war he returned to Peoria and en- tered the railway post-office service. Some of his chalk sketches on a black-board soon after attracted the attention of a gentle- man interested in art, who persuaded young Robert to go to New York, where he could cultivate the gift with which he was evidently endowed. In accordance with this invitation he went to that city and entered a studio, but the death of his friend changed his plans, and he abandoned the study. He has retained his fond- ness for drawing, and letters to his friends of the inner circle are often profusely illustrated with mirth-provoking sketches. Some of those to whom he writes in the freedom of loving in- timacy have talked of printing a collection of such letters, with cuts of the figures which are scattered over the pages. If the design is ever carried out, the owners of the volume will have, in text and illustration, a sunny book. To procure a little pocket-money while in New York in 1869, the young artist wrote to the Peoria Transcript letters des- criptive of scenes and occurrences around him. These attracted the attention of the editor, and Burdette was invited to return to Peoria and take a position on the paper. He accepted the offer, and began a regular newspaper life, which continued for some years. On the 4th of March, 1870, he was married to Carrie Garrett, 126 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold "Her Little Serene Highness," as he affectionately called her, who through her fourteen years of personal suffering was his comfort and inspiration. Many are the pen-pictures deservedly drawn in glowing expressions of his unselfish devotion, and love and tender nursing of the invalid wife, and while bearing in his own heart the constant pain of seeing his nearest and dearest a hopeless sufferer, touching as with fairy wand the fountains of mirth and laughter and cheer for others. With a devotion such as few men are capable of, his brave young strength was freely, sweetly, tenderly given to her whom he had promised through life to protect. Then it was that he learned the lesson day by day that, "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." He remained in Peoria until 1874, when he removed to Iowa and became one of the editors of the Burlington Hawkeye. The paragraphs from his pen, sparkling with wit and genius, soon gave the Hawkeye a national circulation ; they were widely copied and the name of "Bob Burdette" became familiar to all newspaper readers. That the wife, to whom he was tenderly so attached, might have the best medical skill the country could furnish, Mr. Burdette removed about the year 1881 to Phila- delphia, After the death of his wife in 1884, he made his home with his son, Robbie, and his sister-in-law, at Bryn Mawr, Penn- sylvania, where in "Robin's- nest" he spent many years contrib- uting to current literature, and lecturing from five to ten months in the year, for it was inevitable in America that such a man should try his powers as a public speaker. His first lecture, technically so-called, was given in Keokuk, Iowa, in 1876, at the suggestion of a friend. It was repeated in other places, and the ability which had made his name famous as a writer was soon as widely and heartily recognized on the platform. His services were in demand in all directions, and now (1908), after twenty-eight continuous years and four years of occasional en- gagements on the lecture platform, in the face of changed public The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 127 conditions and style of entertainment, he is in constant demand, and is the only one who began with him in the lecture field, to still hold his audiences alone without "accessories." He has endeared himself to hosts of friends the world over by his genuine manliness and his keen sympathy. On the platform and in the press his humor has some char- acteristics that are never absent. Its influence and tendency are always unmistakably for the right, never even by implica- tion against it. His sense of the facetious does not dim his appreciation of all that is good. His shafts of ridicule find no target in innocence, virtue or reverence. He does not jest with anything that ought to be sacred with man, or cherished by woman. Against the theories and views of those who would undermine the faith or lower the standard of public morality, he employs both wit and wisdom. His exposure of their falla- cies and refutation of their reasoning is enjoyable and complete. His fun, free from stain, is a help to whatever is manly and honest. His advice to the young, often given with a rollicking revelation of earnestness, is advice which any parent would be glad to see a son follow. His public addresses have been by no means confined to the lecture platform; oftener than any one man in his community, is he heard on special occasions in Baccalaureate Sermons before High Schools and Colleges; Grand Army occasions, study and political clubs, and in social gatherings, his ready wit, unfailing aptness, and winning personality are ever sought. The great lines of religious activity have ever found him a willing helper — a constant, devoted and life-long reader of the Bible; a believer in its inspiration, an admirer of its literature and poetry, an artist's appreciation of its marvelous word paint- ing, a student's comprehension of its history and its prophesies ; he is the possessor of a power to interpret the Scriptures with a clearness, modernity and convincing narrative equalled by few 128 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold men, and is in and out of the pulpit a most successful Bible teacher. He for many years occupied the pulpit of his own Church, the Baptist, at his home during the summer months, and when on his lecture tours preached all winter in the pulpit of all de- nominations in every State in the Union, though never for remuneration. It was therefore not an usual thing that he should become acting Pastor of a Presbyterian Church for over a year, and finally the regular Pastor of one of the largest Baptist Churches on the Pacific Coast. When in 1899, March 25th, he married Mrs. Clara Bradley Baker, of California, a charming and brilliant woman, he came to Pasadena to live, where Southern California received him with the warmth of their clime, and they were soon as old neigh- bors in their loyal devotion. Between Mrs. Baker and Mr. Burdette there had existed a long and pleasant friendship, dating back to their meeting in the pulpit in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, twenty-five years before when Burdette was the preacher and Mrs. Baker, then Mrs. Wheeler, read the hymns. Her husband. Prof. N. Milman Wheeler, after- wards Professor of Greek in Lawrence University at Appleton, Wisconsin, was at that time Principal of the Eau Claire College, and between himself and the humorist there grew a deep and sincere friendship, which extended to the two families. After the death of the first Mrs. Burdette, the grieved husband and his little son visited the Wheeler's at Appleton, and the two children, afterward to become brothers, thus met in the child- hood of one and the infancy of the other, for Roy B. Wheeler, now a Harvard graduate and literary man, was a babe in his mother's arms. Failing health took Prof. Wheeler to California, where he passed away after a brave struggle for life, and here in the course of years, the two friends were re-united. The Easter Sunday following Mr. Burdette's marriage, the preacher-humorist delivered his first sermon as Pastor of the The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 129 Presbyterian Church in Pasadena, in the beauty and power of the simple gospel preached, untouched by witticism or jokes; for over a year the congregation listened with increasing interest and loving devotion. The loyalty to the teachings and con- victions of over fifty years, was severely tested when Mr. Bur- dette was invited and urged to turn from the Church of his fathers to become the permanent Pastor of these loving people of another denomination, but with a conviction and a sense of duty that is the final salvation of every man during the ups and downs of years, he declined to serve them longer, saying, "A man of your own faith is entitled to lead such loyal followers." After fourteen months abroad, he returned to the lecture platform, until the summer of 1903, when he decided to retire to his desk and do literary work that should be more permanent. Already the author of five books of prose and one of poetry, and a constant contributor to current literature, he had but to take up the delightful task and continue to fill the place he had already made in the world of letters. But as if God had planned otherwise for him, without even his knowledge, this to-be large and influential Church was organized in Los Angeles, and be- cause he heeded the call, "This is the way, walk ye in it," the Lord has blessed him with the power like unto that of the Mas- ter he serves to "draw all men unto him," for "Bob, the Beloved," may not sound ministerial but it is the heart title of this Prince of Humorists — this "second Spurgeon." The root and spring of his character, making him all that he is and giving shape to all that he does, is his inborn sympathy — sympathy with life everywhere, with life in all its manifestations. This is the source both of his humor and his pathos. The smiles which he evokes are often more akin to true compassion than are many tears. With a poetical love of nature — a wide and varied exper- ience with men — a keen intuitive sense of the weaknesses of human nature, but a belief in the positive good in every human 130 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold being, he is pre-eminently a "man's man." It is needless to say that the possession of his gift of humor was not, as it has sometimes been with "professed humorists," an unexpected dis- covery. In such cases the discovered endowment must be nur- tured and trained, not infrequently at the expense of those who are brought in contact with the non-professional hours, when the jollity on the platform is succeeded by gloom in private, the loquacious fun produced by determination and effort reacting in silence and ill-temper. Those most intimate in his household affectionately testify to his continual bouyancy and absolute lack of reaction of spirit. Mr. Burdette's perception of the ludicrous was born in him, and his power of presentation was manifest in boyhood. Years before he was known to the public, his associates recognized his keen sense of the ludicrous and his power to describe a scene or narrate an incident with an artistic eye to the arrangement and setting. At the table, at the fireside, in "the den," in the stroll on the country road, he is the sunniest of companions. His wit has no sting in it; no one fears for himself or for others any jest that might irritate or annoy. In personal appearance he is impressive but not imposing. Though small of stature there is about him a dignity of bearing which, in connection with his merry eye and contagious smile, at once wins the respect and sympathy of audience or friend. In the charming home at Pasadena, called "Sunnycrest," the Humorist-Preacher is spending the closing years of his life in "Afternoon Land" — though it is a very busy working after- noon. His study is one of the most delightful imaginable, with windows that woo the morning, afternoon and evening sun, shaded by pines, and acacia and camphor trees, which sift the brightness of the California sunshine. The study adjoins that of his wife, who is in every way as busily occupied as her husband. The home, described by its name, crowns the crest The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 131 of a hill which is a forest of palms, pines, oleanders, and a wilder- ness of ever-blooming flowers. As a host, "Our Bob" is a prince among men. His devotion to his friends is an eternity of love ; if he sets his seal of friend- ship upon your brow, it is forever. His fountain of kindly fun is constantly bubbling over for the entertainment of his guests and his dear ones, but the strong under-current of his life has its fountain source in an un-wavering, abiding faith in the power of God over a man's life, that has made of him, a Christian-Humorist, and a Preacher of sunshine, cheer and eternal hope. In the years of his life many have been the words spoken and written of Robert J. Burdette, but through them all, like a golden thread, runs ever the same thought, the loving heart and the helpful hand. Three writers of verse, widely separated in thought, position and ability, have expressed each in his own style the same germ thought of this brother-poet. The first is by Robert Mclntyre, D. D., the noted lecturer and Methodist Bishop, who, in his poem, "The Sage of Sunny- crest," says: "Sometimes I get to thinking there is nothing worth our while But just to weave through sorrow's tears the rainbow of a smile, To halt along the highway and to reach an honest hand To help a brother who is bogged to rise again and stand. It seems that every science, every art, and every creed Sink into something very small beside a kindly deed. And then I always think of him who does such things the best. Our royal Robert J. Burdette, the Sage of Sunnycrest." The second contains the same thought, though in different phraseology, and written by one whose heart is also sympathetic and appreciative. 132 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold "I tell you one thing pleases me about the little man. He always says the kindest things about folks that he can. Perhaps they're gnarled and crooked as a twisted stick o' wood, But "Bob" he seems to think that they'd be better if they could. An' somehow he just makes you feel you'd like to take his hand, An' try an' walk along o' him towards the Better Land. Ye know he'd not be hard on ye if you stumbled now and then — Perhaps he's had troubles o' his own that makes him feel for men." But perhaps of all the tributes paid to the "Sunny-hearted Philosopher," that of James Whitcomb Riley, one of Nature's truest poets and writers, is the sweetest; and though written long ago, is as true today as though fresh from his pen. He says in part: "He wasn't honored, maybe — For his songs of praise were slim — Yet I never knew a baby That wouldn't crow for him; I never knew a mother But urged a kindly claim Upon him as a brother, At the mention of his name. The sick have ceased their sighing, And have even found the grace Of a smile when they were dying As they looked upon his face ; And I've seen his eyes of laughter Melt in tears that only ran As though, swift dancing after, Came the Funny Little Man. He laughed away the sorrow, And he laughed away the gloom, We are all so prone to borrow From the darkness of the tomb. And he laughed across the ocean Of a happy life, and passed With a laugh of glad emotion Into Paradise at last. The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 133 And I think the Angels knew him, And had gathered to await His coming, and ran to him Through the widely opened gate — With their faces gleaming sunny For his laughter-loving sake, And thinking — "What a Funny Little Angel he will make!" We appreciate the patience of the Angels, and would give them their full meed of praise for they have waited long, but we hope their waiting time is not over by many years and years, for though the Temple Church Pastor recently said in a sermon, "I have lived my life. I am ready any time, and if the Lord should call me tomorrow, I would not ask for another day," yet are there many hearts that would ask for him another day, and yet another; for surely in this world of sin and sorrow, weariness, despair and death, the presence of the "Man with the Merry Heart," the sunshine in his soul, is more needed than in that city where "There shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, for God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." Though well on in the afternoon of life, Mr. Burdette is still strong and vigorous and does not show his years. His utterances from pulpit and platform are vivid and glowing with the thrill of life. There is nothing stale or stereotyped about his utterances, and one great charm lies in the fact that no one knows what he will say next — "the unexpected is always happening," and thus the attention is caught and riveted. Though he "would rather make one man laugh than ten men cry," yet he does not hesitate to stand up for the right in all matters of conscience and principle, be it national, civic, or moral unrighteousness that he is compelled to denounce. He has learned the secret of perpetual youth is keeping the heart young. "No man is older than he feels," and Montague says, "The most manifest sign of wisdom is a perpetual cheerfulness." The sunshine he has shed over the pathway of others has reflected back upon him- 134 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold self, and as he goes through Hfe he extracts the sweetness from its daily occurrences as a bee extracts honey from the flowers of the wayside. Being asked once by a Los Angeles Times reporter if he would not like to be young again, he replied, "Yes, my boy, and I'm going to be, when I get ten or fifteen or twenty years older. But I don't want to be young again in this world, be- cause then I would have to grow old again. It is a sign of weak- ness — intellectual, physical, and moral weakness, to want to be younger in this life, A man ought to be ashamed of such a feeling. My son Robert wrote to me on one of my birthdays, 'A man's years are his retainers, and the more birthdays he has, the stronger and greater is his following.' " Growing richer in birthdays, friends and service, no better picture of him can be given at this fifth birthday of the Temple Church than to reproduce two tributes of brother-ministers. The first one was written for The Watchman and was des- criptive of the Sunday night service before Christmas: "The service is unique. It is eminently homelike. Dr. Burdette is 'Mr. Great Heart' of Pilgrim's Progress. His heart is bigger than the Auditorium itself. The great humorist-preacher has been facetiously- described as 'all heart, some brains, and the rest arms and legs.' He never breathes — except to breathe affection. He never eats — if he can serve a fellow man by going without a meal. When he takes his heart to heaven, earth will be the poorer. Bruce's heart was embalmed among the Scottish soldiers; Livingston's was embedded in a tree in Africa; but Burdette's is enshrined in the souls of the people of Los Angeles. "The service is a musical service this Sunday night before Christmas, just as it was on the Christmas night so long ago in the plains of Bethlehem. The program for the evening embraces selections from that master-piece, 'The Holy City.' The soloists come forward, the quartette advances and retires, the chorus breaks into volume just at the right moment, and all transpires with the precision of clock work, and without announcement. Selections in the words of Scripture, 'A new heaven and a new earth,' 'These are they that come out of great tribulation,' and other renditions, transport the listener to the New Jerusalem. The audience glances at the program once in a while to note the transitions, but that is the only motion. The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 135 "A heavenly silence prevails. Audiences never listen like that unless their deepest emotions are touched. "The homelikeness to which allusion has been made is restful and that is why the masses like to come to the Auditorium. Together with the members of the Church they constitute one great family. Dr. Burdette frequently punctuates his discourses with the expression, 'my children.' Everybody 'belongs' and everybody is given to understand that every- thing, the Pastor included, belongs to him. So the great family gathers around the Sunday Christmas fireside and listens to the choristers warble like veritable songsters. The singers seem to be happy, too, in their contribution of song. A consecrated voice is a Magi's gift to the Manger King. "Then come the sermon by the father of the family. It is distinctly announced as a sermonette. (It might be announced as a Burdette.) It occupies seventeen minutes. The same stillness prevails. The mar- velous imaginative preacher evidently does not wish to disturb the rest- ful picture of the Holy City. The subject of the discourse is 'The Little Town of Bethlehem.' The poem is recited and then with matchless power, the word-painter limnes a canvas of the one Christmas town, the only town in the world that once a year is the cynosure of all eyes. He explains why he leads all hearers from the manger to the throne and beseeches all, that the Babe may not have been born in vain. "The hands are raised in prayer; the benediction is pronounced; and the great congregation melts away, subdued with a holy calm, as though angelic voices had sung, 'List! the cherubic host,' and a heavenly messen- ger had called them to 'The Holy City.' " Another pen picture sketched by one of the most prominent men of the denomination, Dr. Benjamin A. Green, of Evanston, 111., while visiting in California, and sent to The Standard in July, 1907: "We heard Robert J. Burdette in his new Temple June 30th. We had a card admitting us to his box, which is the Pastor's pew, and sat beside his talented, courteous, charming wife. She afterwards showed us the building, the many rooms for Bible School, Prayer Service, and all the varied activities. * * * * Y)v. Burdette preached to the graduating class of the Los Angeles High School; text Gen. 12:1: 'Get thee out of thy country * * into a land that I will show thee.' His topic, 'Under Sealed Orders.' He began by reciting a poem, descriptive of life as a voyage, then proceeded, in medias res, to give the best of fatherly advice. 136 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold It was not theological, it was not sermonic after the usual style. It was the rich overflow of a full heart, a profound experience, a tropical imagi- nation leaping and flashing into every variety of literary force and beauty. Boys and girls of yesterday were men and women today. They had left High School life for life out in the great world. It was natural to look back wistfully, but if you do you may miss some visions of the present. Day by day the shore will recede; old faces, old opinions, old creeds, must be given up. Sail by God's stars — they correct the faults of man's chronometer. A new constellation may be new to you but it has always been there. God calls and only He can lead; He lays the course. No captain knows his sealed orders when he leaves port. Down in your soul you know God gives you orders. Woe to the man who tears up his sealed orders and throws them on the deck of his little life. Sail on in fog-bank of doubt, sail on and hope shall come. Not tomorrow nor to- morrow, nor tomorrow, but the next tomorrow. There is a country God will surely show you if you follow his sealed orders. These sentences are trellis sticks over which a wealth of intellectual, flowery processes grew in wild luxuriance. Not a suggestion of humor, but dead-earnest, moral appeal of a man who knows life in its deeps and its heights, where it dips down to yawning chasms of disaster and where it lifts itself up to- ward God and the hilltops of heavenly companionship. The preacher comes toward you with the wideness and the naturalness and the sym- pathy of the human, and draws you toward the wideness of the out- stretched arms of God. "I came away from the service profoundly thankful there was such a unique man in the pulpit of Temple Baptist Church, of Los Angeles, who could draw such an audience in the heart of such a cosmopolitan city and bring them so close to heaven they could hear the whisper of God's voice and catch snatches at least of the eternal music." Loving and beloved as is the Pastor of Temple Church, he would not be human were there not faults and weaknesses of head and judgment, possibly rather than of heart, but whatever they be, with them all, and through them all, God is wonderfully using him and blessing his service as one consecrated to the spirit of Ehzabeth Barret Browning's lines: "We must be here to work. And men who work can only work for men, And not to work in vain, must understand Humanity; and so work humanly And raise men's bodies still by raising souls, As God did first." THE PASTORESS, CLARA B. BURDETTE The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 137 "The Pastoress" "Women will love her, that she is a woman. More worth than any man; men, that she is The rarest of all women." — Shakespeare. In the consideration of life in general and the life of the individual much is said today of the atmosphere, meaning the indescribable influence, coloring and radiation of such life. The atmosphere of the life of the Temple Baptist Church of Los Angeles is considered by all, near and far, as most unique. Perhaps the farther away the more unique it seems because not always clearly understood. One of the unique things is the fact that they have as a membership always addressed their preacher, their shepherd, as "Pastor," no matter what others might call him, and the other unique feature is that Mrs. Burdette has been called "Pastoress" and accepted as such in a very peculiar and loyal manner. The question has frequently been asked, more by outsiders than the church-membership themselves, per- haps, "where is there another Church with such a Pastoress?" Surely she was Heaven-sent to the young Church, launched upon such a wide sea. She came to it with a wonderful diversity of gifts and a great breadth of experience in the affairs of practical life, many of which lay beyond the range of the life of the aver- age pastor's wife. Always interested in philanthropic, humani- tarian and religious activities, none of them quite enclosed by the boundaries of any Church organization, she brought to the Temple breadth of view and practical grasp of vital problems of social and religious life and interests that helped materially to place the young society in the front rank of the religious work in the city, side by side with the older churches. The "Pastoress" of Temple Church, as she was called from the day of its organization, was a teacher of girls, a preceptress of an academy on the Hudson at an age when most girls are yet in school ; she was the help-meet of her first husband, N. Milman 138 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold Wheeler, Greek Professor in Lawrence University, in class-room and pulpit, and more than once preached for him when his last illness prostrated him; she was an instructor in the University of Southern California in its earlier days; her natural business sense enabled her, in days of prosperity, to manage her own estate to its yearly increase in value ; men of commercial life and great financial affairs sought her concerning large projects. Because of her clarity of mental vision and rare business acumen, she became as well known in the banks and the board rooms of great activities as she was in the circles of society of the highest and best. Interested in everything that concerned the education and welfare of women, she was a pioneer in women's club life in Wisconsin in the early 80's and later in Los Angeles. She built the first club house for women by a woman in the United States — the old Ebell "Greek Temple," on Broadway, Los An- geles, California, and when the Ebell Club, of which she was a char- ter member, out-grew those quarters, she bought a new building site and held the property until the club was able to purchase it. She was president of Ebell. Having successfully federated the clubs of California in 1900, after two failures by other leaders, she was elected the first president of the California Federation of Women's Clubs; she was First Vice-President of the General Federation of Women's Clubs — a world organization; she built and gave to the city of Pasadena a Maternity Hospital in 1904, and has been for years an active member of the Hospital Board ; she is actively connected with the Humane Society of Pasadena, and was the first, and perhaps the only woman in California to wear a police star, being appointed by Mayor Vedder a special policeman, wearing star No. 36 — her duty being the protection of little children from cruel treatment. She has been for many years a member of, and is at present the one woman member of the Board of Trustees of Throop Polytechnic Institute — one of the greatest schools of its class on the Pacific Coast ; she is presi- dent of the Los Angeles Board of Association of Collegiate The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 139 Alumnae; organizer and first regent of the Pasadena Chap- ter of the Daughters of the American Revolution; member of the Board of Directors and Second Vice-President of the Auditorium Company, of Los Angeles; one of the organizers of the Associated Charities of Pasadena, and its first Pres- ident; she founded the Woman's Exchange of Los An- geles; she accompanied her husband, until he became Pas- tor of the Temple Church, on his long lecture tours; lecturing with him before Lyceums, High Schools and Societies, sometimes taking his place on the platform because she had gone ahead of threatened storms to keep engagements that could not otherwise be kept — notably at Louisville, Kentucky, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Fairmount, Nebraska. She has been in all these years in constant demand from clubs and so- cieties for lectures and addresses; she is a contributor for magazines and newspapers; she has addressed mass meet- ings of the citizens in the campaigns of school elections and elections for civic betterments and improvement; with voice and pen she has been active in the world that thinks and acts, that plans and accomplishes. All this time she kept her place in the social life, and the assemblages of the brightest and cleverest knew her as one of their own. For nearly fifteen years her monthly salon at "Sunnycrest" has drawn together a notable circle of thinkers and workers. Wealth and social prominence alone can not purchase admission into that charmed circle. The man or woman who would enter must have "done some- thing." And, moreover, in all this round of diversified activi- ties she has "kept house," or in her own favorite phrase, "kept home." There is nothing about her home that a servant can do, that the mistress cannot do — and on occasion does do — quite as well. From garret to cellar she knows everything about her home — manages its affairs in true womanly fashion; sews and mends and darns; and is as housewifely at home as 140 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold she is alert in the market place. "Her children rise up and call her blessed, her husband also, and he praiseth her." Clara Bradley Burdette was born in East Bloomfield, New York, July 22, 1855, of Puritan stock, her ancestry running back through the old New England Bradleys and the English Bradleighs. She was educated in the public schools of Syracuse, graduating from the High School and entering Syracuse Uni- versity in 1872. Like many others who represent the highest type of the American girl, she was confronted by the problem of poverty and education, which she promptly solved by making her brains and hands her servants to carry her through a uni- versity career. Her love of service for others became a domi- nant note in her young life, which has continued throughout the years. In her fifteenth year she became the teacher of a Sunday School class of about fifty little ones, children of an Orphan Asylum in Syracuse — a class whose restless, eager minds had wearied the patience and exhausted the tact of older teachers. The grown-up children today gratefully and lovingly remember how with tactful gentleness this child-teacher of children held their attention and won their affection. Clara Bradley was baptized in the Jordan mode — at the age of eleven, into the membership of the Methodist Church, the child herself insisting upon immersion as the only baptism into which her New Testament led her — a remarkable indication of her habit of independent research and thought, at a time when the controversies upon immersion and sprinkling were intensely earnest and bitter in theological partisanship. Later she united with the Presbyterian Church, and is today a member of the First Presbyterian Church in Pasadena, of which, for a little over a year, her husband was the Baptist Pastor. Though differing in denominational belief and polity, yet is the love of Christ which constraineth them broader and deeper than any denominational confession of faith and the activities of their lives are one in aim, sympathy and loyalty. The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 141 In all her life and its activities there has been this deep and steadfast religious foundation. No matter how broad have been the humanitarian lines along which she has wrought, she has ever held the Church to be first and most important because she believes Christianity to be the corner stone of all true and lasting work for mankind and its uplift. While a student in the University of Syracuse sitting one day with a group of college girls in one of their rooms, talking in girl fashion of hopes and plans, ambitions and purposes, they proposed, and in impulsive girl fashion organized for a systematic plan for enduring association along lines of womanly helpful- ness and out of this conference grew the Alpha Phi Sorority which has increased in wisdom and stature, in strength and use- fulness until it now numbers its chapters in the leading colleges and universities, and everywhere among them "The Little Mother," as Alpha Phi delights to call Mrs. Burdette, is held in aflectionate esteem. Immediately upon graduation from the university Miss Bradley entered upon her work as a teacher, receiving an appointment to a very responsible position — Pre- ceptress to a school for girls at Nyack-on-the-Hudson, where the innate motherhood of her nattire and her infectious earnest- ness gave her a lasting influence over her pupils, some of whom were older than herself. In 1878 she was married to N. Milman Wheeler, who had been a fellow student at Syracuse. They removed to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where Professor Wheeler was at the head of an academy. Shortly afterward he was appointed to the Greek Professorship in Lawrence University, at Appleton, where a little son, Roy Bradley Wheeler, was born to them. Professor Wheeler's failing health suddenly com- pelled their removal to Los Angeles, where in 1886, after a heroic struggle through long and painful illness Milman Wheeler died. A man of splendid attainments; strong intellect; high culture; refined and scholarly — a gentleman. Between Milman Wheeler and Robert J. Burdette there had existed a warm friendship, 142 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold founded upon mutual esteem, and a human liking of the Teacher and the Humorist for what each found in the other. The friend- ship between the families was constant and affectionate. When the invalid Mrs. Burdette — "Her Little Serene Highness" — died in 1884, Mr. Burdette with his little son, Robert, visited the Wheeler home in Appleton. After the Professor's death, Mrs. Wheeler remained in California with her little boy, taking up the duties of life in her loneliness, 3,000 miles from any one whom she could call kin. In 1890 she was married to Colonel Presley C. Baker, a gentleman of rare abilities and marked charm of mind and person; a Kentuckian, and a Colonel of Cavalry in the Confederate army. His death occurred in 1893. On March 25, 1899, was the wedding day of the Pastor and Pastoress to-be, but in all their dreams and plans and thoughts of future possibilities on that day. Temple Baptist Church had no place. And yet it was the only child with which God planned to bless their marriage. In the fullness of time they received this gift of God, consecrated with the words of Hannah — "As long as he liveth he is granted to the Lord." Four years after their wedding day, Temple Church was born into their hearts and lives, and has since that day been the center of their thoughts and activities. So there came to this woman of broad and diversified in- terests and intense activities the life of a young Church — younger than some of the babies in the nursery ward of her Ma- ternity Hospital. When her husband said to her, "Here is a new Church and the newest creature in it is its Pastor, for I have yet to be ordained;" she smothered the sigh of a woman's sacrifice — for they had just decided to give up the lecture field and travel abroad for a few years — and said "You settle the question between yourself and God and if you decide this is the work He wants you to do I will do all I can to help you." And this was to be expected of Mrs. Burdette for she has often been heard to say with all the public positions offered her, "there can The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 143 be no greater work for a wife than to help her husband to suc- cess." And gladly and more than willingly she brought to the young Church all the strength of her social and commercial acquaintance and influence, all the resources of her experience in organization; her ready tact; her business sense; her ability to command co-operation; her wide acquaintance throughout the country; her intense purposefulness; her tireless industry; her clear perception of opportunities and her ready grasp of commercial questions and the confidence which business men had in her judgment. Think what all this meant to a new Church, with the youngest Pastor in the city — though he was a man already beyond the generally accepted ministerial dead line of fifty. The Pastoress entered into the life of the Church just as it was her life-long habit to take up any work — as though it were the one thing in the world worth thinking of — the only thing in the world worth doing. Surely "she was come to the kingdom for such a time as this." At once she organized the women of the Church on a line that was new, and which suggested itself to her working judg- ment from her organization of study and working clubs among women. All the women of the Church were organized into the Women's Union, with the various societies as Departments, elsewhere described. It brought about a complete sodality of the womanhood of the Church such as nothing else could have accomplished, and yet left the organization flexibly adjustable to the improvements and expansion which later experience suggested to the women of the Union, and which they have most wisely made. Then by and by came the purchase of costly property and the erection of an expensive building for the new Church home by a Church poor in purse and weak as yet in numbers, and the Pastoress gave herself with all her strength of body and mind and heart and soul to the material interests of the Temple. And well nigh was the Temple her tomb. For the intense strain, unremitting through long weeks and months 144 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold broke down even her elastic nervous energy. One Wednesday night, in January, 1906, she utterly collapsed, while on her way from prayer-meeting to the home in Pasadena. Within the next two months, she was placed under the surgeon's knife more than once and for many weeks hovered between life and death. "She had to stop, this ardent Rainbow Chaser," writes a chronic- ler of the time, "and rest long by the wayside, but even while she waited, God spoke daily peace to her heart, and messages from the other seekers floated back to her, telling of the quest. So she was cheered. A praying Church carried her in its heart and prayers through the long and weary Valley of the Shadow, and sang for joy when at last she made her next public appear- ance in a prayer-meeting, July 11th." During this period of anxiety and sorrow the first words from the Sunday pulpit, after the invocation, was the Pastor's announcement of the condition of the beloved Pastoress. Into all her life-duties, Mrs. Burdette carries the same in- tense and native earnestness. She loves to "do things." Her husband once said of her, "Singularly enough, she has little am- bition for leadership. If she were a machinist, I believe she could — and would — build the fastest locomotive in America. She would run it over its trial trip, and after that, any body might run the train who w^anted to. She would rest awhile and then go to work to build a better one." Her life, in theory and prac- tice, is the outgrowth of strong convictions. She believes in the old-fashioned Sabbath — the sacredness of the Rest-day, and so observes it. There is never a "Sunday reception," or "Sunday afternoon tea," at "Sunnycrest." Nor does she attend such functions at the homes of her friends. "I get enough of that during the week," she says; "I want my Sunday at home; and I want it to be a Sabbath." Cards and card tables are unknown at "Sunny- crest." "I can entertain my guests," said the mistress of The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 145 "Sunnycrest," "without winning their money or permitting them to win mine or its equivalent." For many years a friend and admirer of Francis Willard; no wine is ever served upon her table, nor kept in her home. The home as the focus of womanly life, she idealizes. It must be to her the sacred and gracious center of womanly ac- tivities. In her well known "Club Creed," which hangs in hun- dreds of women's club houses and W. C. T. U. assembly rooms in the United States and England, the second article speaks her thought — "I believe that woman has no right to undertake any work whatsoever outside the home, along the lines of philanthrophy, church, temperance or club life, that does not emanate from the home, and in its final and best results, return to the Home. Home must always be the center, but not the limit, of woman's life." "There is something delightfully feminine about Mrs. Bur- dette," says a well-known newspaper writer, "that keeps im- pressing upon one how easy it is to be a power even if one is just one of the women whose circle is small. But with all this, Mrs. Burdette has great ideas for women whose circle is great." She is every woman's friend, and the friend of every true woman- ly cause. Though like all people of strong character, she is positive and resolute in defending her principles and advocating her cause, yet her womanliness and graciousness, her tolerant spirit, her native kindliness, make it impossible for her to be the enemy of any woman. Keenly sensitive, evenly poised, one of the ruling qualities in her life is her sense of justice. Nothing so quickly moves her to anger as an act of injustice, especially against the weak and the friendless. "If all men dealt justly with one another," she says, "mercy might take a long vacation. There would be little for her to do. Justice is kindly-hearted as pity." Mrs. Burdette's public benefactions are matters of public 146 The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold knowledge. But the thousand and one kindnesses, the gener- osities of the open purse, the helping hand, the inspiring word and the sympathetic heart, these are known only to the women whose hands she has strengthened and whose burdens she has lightened. One who has never seen this "well-known club woman" — as much of the world calls her — in the home where she is radiantly happy as she is happily busy; the happy wife of a husband who adores her, and the sweetheart mother of two grown-up boys who are doing men's work in the world, little knows her highest life in all its reality. Here idolized and idealized by three men and beloved by all the household of "Sunnycrest," she is at her best in the work of heart and head and hand, because she is the happy mistress of a woman's Great Little Kingdom — a well ordered Home. The Rainbow and the Pot of Gold 147 OUR MOTTO "Keep Sweet and Keep Movin' " Homely phrase of our southland bright — Keep steady step to the flam of the drum; Touch to the left — eyes to the right — Sing with the soul tho' the lips be dumb. Hard to be good when the wind's in the east; Hard to be gay when the heart is down; When "they that trouble you are increased," When you look for a smile and see a frown. But "Keep sweet and keep movin'." Sorrow will shade the blue skies gray — Gray is the color our brothers wore ; Sunshine will scatter the clouds away; Azure will gleam in the skies once more — • Colors of Patience and Hope are they, Always at even in beauty they blend. Tinting the heavens by night and by day, Over our hearts till our journey's end. "Keep sweet and keep movin'." Hard to be sweet when the throng is dense. When elbows jostle and shoulders crowd; Easy to give and to take offense When the touch is rough and the voice is loud. "Keep to the right" in the city's throng, "Divide the road" on the broad highway. There's one way right when every thing's wrong' Easy and fair goes far in a day. "Keep sweet and keep movin'." The quick taunt answers the hasty word — A hfe time's chance for a "help" is missed. The muddiest pool is a fountain stirred, A kind hand clinched makes an ugly fist. When the nerves are tense and the mind is vexed, The spark lies close to the magazine ; Whisper a hope to the soul perplexed — Banish the fear with a smile serene — Just "Keep sweet and keep movin'." — Robert J. Burdette. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. m Form L9-Series 4939 I /\ vj I u \y • L. ,„tnrnia Los Angeles IJniv.MSilV 0' '"'3''' I 007 411 423 Z