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that after seven years passed in much trouble, pain, and moral servitude, God hath permitted me, for Jesus' sake, to return unto his gracious favor." So with great joy did the bishop blow the trumpet in Zion on that April day, while a multitude of the country people gathered around the foundation walls.

In his address at the laying of the corner stone the bishop emphasized the fact that, in accordance with the intention of the benefactors, the institution was to be primarily theological, a school of the prophets, where ministers of the Gospel should be trained, "which end, therefore, is never to be merged into any other." "All things being conducted according to the well known principles and worship of the Protestant Episcopal Church * the design and will of the donors and founders of this institution will be answered and not otherwise."

*

The chapel was first erected, then the school room opening into it, and long afterwards the west wing with dormitories. At times the work was suspended for want of funds, but the bishop never lost hope or failed in faith. "Jehovah Jireh!" (The Lord will provide) was his motto, and often his prayer of faith was most impressively answered.

In the winter of '39 and '40, while work on the college was mostly suspended, he made a long journey in the South and secured substantial aid. He was cordially received nearly everywhere, especially in New Orleans, in Georgia and in the Carolinas. It is perhaps not known to many that in 1840 a few people in Charleston, S. C., contributed $10,000 to endow a professorship in Illinois. The bishop was also greatly encouraged and aided by further contributions from the East and from England, amounting to several thousand dollars. Some of these contributions were for his own and for his dear wife's use, and with these he made his Robinsnest more commodious and comfortable. The building of the college went on, and temporary houses for a store and shelter of students were erected. A frame structure of fourteen rooms, designed for a girls' school, was built, to which the bishop later removed his family and received a few young ladies. They did not recite with the young men of the college but were taught separately. While the bishop approved of "higher education" for women he would not consent to confer degrees upon them. His own granddaughter, who mastered all the studies of the college course, was never honored in that way.

In 1840 Mrs. Chase, in a letter to a friend in England, says: "It would do your heart good to look into Jubilee chapel; the pulpit, desks, and folding-doors of black walnut, the pews painted in imitation oak, everything plain but neat and in very good taste. The sound of the bell almost makes me weep." A visitor in November of 1840, as quoted by Bishop Chase in his "Reminiscences," says: "For the purpose designed I have never seen a spot combining so many advantages. In the first place, it is easily accessible by means of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers and Michigan canal. The prospect is remarkably beautiful and attractive. On the ground there is an abundance of clay for making brick, and wood to burn them. There are inexhaustible beds of bituminous coal. Only a half a mile

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distant, a quarry of freestone has recently been opened; nor must I forget to mention an abundance of pure water, two bold springs uniting their currents near by."

In those days when a fifteen mile drive to the postoffice in a farm wagon, fording streams on the way, was thought nothing of, Jubilee College might be said to be "easily accessible." Yet, even then, during the flood time of the Kickapoo, the bottom land was impassable except on horseback. The bishop once nearly lost his life in trying to reach his home after a visitation. As railroads became the common means of travel in the West, Jubilee was isolated, and its location was unfortunate for educational purposes. In "The Motto," June, 1851, the bishop gives an account of a flood almost surrounding the college, which carried away corn fields, fences, hay-stacks, and 30 or 40 acres of turnips. For several days the college was shut off from the world. Similar floods have since occured. There is no railroad station within six miles of Jubilee, nor is there prospect of any in the future.

Bishop Chase, even long past the age of sixty, was leading a very strenuous life. Too heavy to ride much on horseback, he was compelled to make long journeys over dangerous roads, by stage or in the old family coach. Several times he came near losing his life, suffering from exposure and accidents. Some one has declared that every bone in his body, except his head, had been broken; some of his ribs were broken several times. Along the rivers the way was somewhat easier by steamboat, yet speed was not always assured. Starting on Tuesday from St. Louis, by the steamboat America, the bishop arrived in Alton on Wednesday morning, twenty-two miles in eleven hours. Leaving the river at some point, he was taken with his luggage in a "dearborn" to Rushville. "But the roads, O the roads!" he writes. "For nearly a quarter of a mile the water had overflown the path about two feet, and this together with the deep mud below, rendered our progress almost impossible." On the Sunday following he consecrated the new church, confirmed two, baptzied five children, administered the communion to seven persons, and preached both morning and evening. "The night was spent in tossing to and fro, as usual after excessive fatigue." Going on to Sterling, he says the roads were exceedingly bad, "but the strength of our team and the blessing of God overcame all obstructions." The town consisted of about forty small houses. The bishop preached in the school house, "to get at which I had some difficulty, on account of the mud," and there was plenty of it on the floor inside. This was in March, 1837. The bishop frequently accepted the courtesy of Methodist and Presbyterian brethren, holding services and preaching in their churches, always taking the prayer book and instructing the people in its use. In hotel offices, stores, and even in a blacksmith's shop the bishop preached and baptized. He notes the prevalence of speculation and worldliness, a tendency to intemperance, coarseness, and profanity everywhere, and is deeply concerned for the future of a country which is opening under so many evil influences. "Infidelity and sin stalk fearlessly abroad wherever I travel," he says. "Our whole country seems to be forgetting God. In all their ways they

acknowledge not God, nor think that he exists, much less that he will bring them to an awful account for abused favors. My heart seems to sink within me as I contemplate the down-hill course of my dear country."

The bishop was taken ill at Oquawka, where in March he had to sleep on the floor in a very poor cabin, "the best lodging these affectionate people could give me." He pushed on to Monmouth and held two services. After spending several hours "in pious conversation" with the neighbors who dropped in after evening service, the bishop retired to a cold room and soon was "in great agony." By the aid of two physicians he was relieved, and two days after, in an open wagon, continued his homeward way, with more than sixty miles before him. It both snowed and rained. Spoon river was a raging torrent. The horses and wagon were driven through; the bishop followed in a canoe, a log of black walnut with the bark on, hollowed out in the middle. The canoe sank almost to filling, as it was pushed out into the stream with the bulky bishop amidship. "Can you swim?" shouted the man in the stern. "Like a duck," was the reply; "all I fear is, if she turns over I cannot extricate myself from my squeezed position on the log." With grateful hearts they reached the shore and mounted the muddy bank. There they satisfied their thirst from the overflowing of the clean troughs, filled with the fast droppings of the delicious sugar water. They were sheltered in a cabin during a stormy night, and pushed on over rapid streams, overflowed prairies, and muddy sloughs, the snow "blowing horizontally." All this time the bishop was a sick man. The greatest exposure and peril, however, he encountered almost in sight of Robinsnest, when he came to the Kickapoo, which he was assured could not be crossed, either by swimming or by a canoe. "But I must see my family," he declared. "I must be ministered to or perish." His passage through a part of the flood by wagon, and then over the stringers of a skeleton bridge, is an exciting story. "Never had I more reason for the blessing of a clear head and a firm faith in God's supporting hand." Praising (tod he got safely over.

These are only illustrative incidents in his laborious life. Whatever he found to do, he did it with all his might, on the farm, in his visitations, soliciting for his colleges, directing laborers, writing letters and "Reminiscences." Nothing was too great to be attempted, nothing so small as to be lightly regarded. He gratefully accepts from a friend a package of rutabaga (turnip) seed, and by good attention to planting secured a large crop of "that excellent vegetable."

Bishop Chase had a vein of humor and of poetry in his soul. Some sheep which he bought with money paid to him by the stage company as damage for breaking his bones, he called his "ribs." He had scriptural names for his pastures, and the shepherd of his flocks carried the traditional crook. He called his family carriage "Noah's Ark." The names that he gave to places were striking and enduring. "Robinsnest" is certainly very pretty as well as humorous. selection of sites for his homes and colleges showed a fine apprecia

His

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