was freely discussed at head-quarters, coming at last to some correspondent who gave it to the world. The anecdote had quite a run at the time, but not long ago I saw it attributed to another general, who has only attained a great military reputation since the war, and who is probably "dieting for a political nomination.

At another time some wag belonging to the staff suggested to a Jew that he could bring General Dodge to terms by making him presents. This effort was commenced by sending him a box of very choice cigars, accompanied by a note asking for a letter of introduction to the head of the Treasury Department. The writer's spelling was a little defective, and he wrote the word "Treachery " instead of Treasury. General Dodge at once forwarded the letter to the Treasury Department, with a statement that the Jew seemed to be singularly fortunate in his new designation of the great fountain of greenbacks! Of course this story also got out and was published far and wide at the time. It is safe to say that no illegitimate traffic was ever carried on where Dodge was in command.

How General Dodge became one of Grant's most valued and most efficient lieutenants-especially in rebuilding Southern railroads which had been destroyed; how he fell almost mortally wounded before Atlanta, these things and many others in his illustrious career are fully chronicled in General Grant's Personal Memoirs. Then, after the war closed, General Dodge became Chief Engineer of the Union Pacific railway, where his indomitable energy was one of the most important factors in the construction of that stupendous national work.

It is to be hoped that the life of this great hero and engineer—who is as modest as he is great-may yet be written and given to the world.

lehener Aldrich

WEBSTER CITY, IOWA.

THE STORY OF ROGER WILLIAMS RETOLD

The beginning of Roger Williams's remarkable life may ever remain, as now, a mystery. For nearly three hundred years common authority has located the place of his birth somewhere in Wales, but recent genealogical researches among dusty archives in London have disclosed sundry important papers which it is claimed prove that he was a native of that city. One of these papers, a will of Alice Williams, dated in 1634, speaks of her son Roger, his wife and child, who were beyond the seas, which statement evidently referred to the subject of this sketch. Letters have also been found written by the Roger of London, whose signature corresponds with that of the Roger of Rhode Island, and where the contents of the correspondence would imply identity. Whether these documents prove anything more than that Roger Williams was at one time a resident of London, which no one doubts, is still an open question. The date of his birth, though not universally conceded, is fixed by the best authorities in 1599.

This year, the fourth before the death of England's great queen Elizabeth, was marked by the birth of two boys, distantly related—one in the fens of Huntingdon, the other probably in the mountain fastnesses of Wales, possibly in London or Cornwall-kindred spirits whose influence on civil and religious freedom was to be felt throughout two continents and the world itself: the one, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, who made the name of Englishman as great as that of Roman; the other, Roger Williams, who became in America the champion of religious liberty. The foundation of his future usefulness was laid in early life. He says: "From my childhood, the Father of lights and mercies touched my soul with a love to himself, to his only begotten the true Lord Jesus, and to his Holy Scriptures." The serious-minded boy taking notes of the sermons in church and the evidence in the courts in. the Star Chainber attracted the attention of Sir Edward Coke, the famous lawyer, to whom he was probably indebted for his education, taking his degree with honor at the Cambridge university. After graduation, possibly influenced by Sir Edward Coke, he commenced the study of law, but soon turned his attention to theology and was ordained a minister of the established church,

It was an important period in English history. The great struggle

which commenced with the Reformation was revived, and all England was stirred with the bitter strife between churchman and dissenter. Hatred of Popery and everything connected with it in those days was a mighty passion; it meant "love of truth, love of England, love of liberty, love of God." Elizabeth, though supposed to be friendly to the Protestants, loved the pomp and show of the Romish ceremonials, and insisted on retaining many of them in the established church. The court of high commission, the "Protestant Inquisition," instituted by Elizabeth-who hated the non-conformists more than she did the Papists-and perpetuated in the reign of her successor James I., was in full power. Ministers who refused to comply with its demands were fined, imprisoned, or deprived of their livings. The test given them was, "Ye that will submit to this order, write Volo; ye that will not submit, write Nolo. Be brief, make no words." If they refused to take this oath, they were imprisoned for contempt; if they took it, they were fined or imprisoned on their own confession. Others, "of whom the world was not worthy," "had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings; destitute, afflicted, tormented, they wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth." Finally there were only two thousand ministers left for ten thousand churches.

Under these circumstances Roger Williams with his Welsh temperament, excitable, generous, courageous, firm, became a Puritan of the straitest sect, a Brownist, keen, resolute, and uncompromising. The follower of a man who had been imprisoned twelve times for his opinions, where often it was so dark he was unable to see his hand before him at noonday-what to him were all the ties of country and home where liberty of conscience was at stake? Eleven years after the departure of the Pilgrims, this Puritan minister came also a fugitive from English intolerance, with high hopes and Utopian ideas of a religious paradise, to seek a home in the new world. Vain expectations! On arriving in Boston he found that human nature was the same on both sides of the ocean. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay colony had come to America to enjoy their own religious liberty, not to grant it to their neighbors, and they were not prepared to welcome this apostle of a purer and broader Puritanism, who had a mission peculiarly his own, and refused to unite with their church because they would not declare publicly that they repented having communed with the church of England. It would seem that men who like the Puritans had left their homes to avoid persecution for their religious faith, would have welcomed him and his teachings with delight, but instead they bitterly opposed both.

From Boston Williams went to Salem, a town the older by three years, and was welcomed there as teacher and assistant pastor. He taught the great doctrine the sacredness of the right of belief-that "the civil magistrate should restrain crime but never control opinion, should punish guilt but never violate the freedom of the soul, and persecution for the cause of conscience is most evidently contrary to the doctrine of the Lord Jesus."

Here as a citizen of the colony and a minister of the oldest church in America, he endeared himself to all. But the authorities at Boston, holding that the people of Salem had no right to choose a minister whom they of Boston did not approve, were constantly making trouble, and for the sake of peace Williams resigned his pastorate and removed to Plymouth, where he found warm friends and spent two happy years as pastor of their church. Wishing to carry the gospel to the Indians, he spent much time, he says, in “their filthy, poky holes to gain their tongue,” securing at the same time the friendship of Canonicus, Miantinomi, and other chiefs, who were afterward to prove themselves his truest friends in his time of greatest need.

Returning to Salem at the earnest request of his former people, he became again their pastor in spite of the opposition of Boston. Here he continued to advance many new opinions-that it was not right for an unregenerate man to pray or for Christians to pray with such, or to take an oath before a magistrate, even one of allegiance to the state; that King Charles had no right to the Indians' lands, and hence the colonists' charter was invalid; that the government had no right to restrain or direct the consciences of men, and anything short of unlimited toleration for all religious systems was the bitterest persecution. While demanding all this from others, he refused communion to all persons who did not believe just as he did, forbidding his church at Salem to communicate with the churches at the Bay, and on their refusal to comply left them and held meetings in a private house. He even refused to associate with his wife because she attended the church at Salem, and with his children because they were not Christians. Like some of later days, "Orthodoxy was his doxy, heterodoxy his neighbors' doxy."

His associates were men like-minded with himself, who had suffered persecution for their faith, and abhorred every symbol, badge, and practice associated with their oppressors. One of them, Endicott, who had been a magistrate and lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts, instigated by one of Williams's sermons, in a transport of religious frenzy cut the cross from the royal standard, and many of the soldiers, catching the contagion, de

clared they would no longer follow a flag on which the Popish emblem was painted.

Meanwhile as a punishment to the Salem church for ordaining Williams, the Bay colony refused to grant them a title to their lands, and on their remonstrance denied them representation in court, and imprisoned Endicott who had dared to speak in their behalf. Williams was again and again brought before the court to defend his church and himself, and refusing to submit to their authority was banished from the colony. His doctrines, they claimed, would overthrow the authority of government; he was "a dangerous man, a teacher of heresy," and hence banished, and his church debarred all rights as citizens till apologies had been made for listening to his preaching. Cotton Mather, in his Magnalia, compared him to "a windmill whose rapid motion would set the country on fire." Was it a prophecy?

His sentence was to take effect in six weeks. He returned to Salem to find his church at the feet of the magistrates and his wife reproaching him for not submitting to their requirements. Still he stood firm to his convictions. The whole town was in an uproar at his sentence, for they loved and respected the godly, disinterested man. During this time of trouble his second child was born, and with almost prophetic vision was named Freeborn.

Learning that arrangements were being made to send him to England in a ship about to sail, he left his congregation, who gathered around him with prayers and tears, to find a home in the Narragansett wilderness. With only his pocket compass for a guide, he wandered here for fourteen weeks in the bitter winter season, not knowing, as he says, "what bed or

bread did mean."

The sufferings of that winter can never be told. Its effects were felt to old age. Had it not been for the Indians whose friendship he had gained at Plymouth, the fierce Canonicus loving him as his own son, he must have perished. From his old friend Massasoit he obtained a grant of land in Seekonk, where he commenced building a house. Crops were planted and in vigorous growth, and it seemed at last that the weary traveler had found a resting-place. But no, he was not yet out of the jurisdiction of the colonies, and soon received orders, with many professions of love and affection, to move farther on, where he could have the country free before him. Without remonstrance or complaint he embarked in a canoe with five others to seek again a home in the wilderness. After landing at "Slate Rock," and receiving from the Indians their friendly greeting, "What cheer, Netop, what cheer!" he ascended the Providence