Chapter 7

When we finished up in Denver we all took a short rest before we were to meet again at
Los Angeles. When we were there in 1903 Dr. Bresee engaged Dr. Fowler, Dr. H. C. Morrison, J.
M. and M. J. Harris and this writer to give him the month of May, 1904. At the close of my
convention in Denver I ran down to Texas and while I rested I ran over to Birmingham, Alabama,
and held a convention and from there went across the country to McAlester, Oklahoma, and closed
a meeting there the last Sunday of April, 1904.

        In that convention Brother C. K. Spell joined me. He went home with me and we left
Peniel, Texas, headed for Los Angeles, California, on the last Tuesday of April, 1904. Brother C.
K. Spell made the statement that he was going to Los Angeles and take in the general conference
which was to be held in the month of May, 1904. He said in taking in the conference he would get
some sense. He said he was going then to San Francisco and attend a great conference by Dr. B.
Carradine and there he said he would get him some religion. Then he had planned to go to Salt
Lake City, and said, "There I will be sure to get me a wife," and sure enough, before he had
finished the convention in Salt Lake City he had fallen in love with Miss Annie Price, who later
became his wife. There is some history that I helped to make for I arranged this slate for Brother
Spell.

        Our convention with Dr. Bresee for the month of May, 1904, was one of the greatest I have
ever worked in. As I have just stated, the general conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church
was in session in Dr. Bresee's tabernacle. We had services in the afternoon and night and that gave
us a chance to visit the general conference every morning. I will never forget some of the great
debates between Dr. J. M. Buckley, editor of the New York Christian Advocate, and Dr. B. F.
Neeley, who was elected bishop at that conference. I think there was scarcely a morning for a
month that those great men didn't cross swords on some question. They were both men of master
minds and great thinkers. There were a number of great men elected bishops in that conference: Dr.
Neeley, Dr. Berts from Rome and Rev. Joseph Berry, editor of the Epworth Era. Dr. Berry was
elected on the first ballot. Also Dr. Lewis was elected bishop, who was at that time president of
the Morningside College, a suburb of Sioux City, Iowa. I think Dr. Day of Syracuse, New York,
was elected bishop but he refused to be consecrated.

         We had in the great Nazarene tabernacle more than five hundred people saved. After we
had run there for a week or two, it was arranged that every afternoon when the general conference
adjourned Bishops Joyce, Mallalieu and McCabe put on what is known as the pentecostal
services, held every afternoon at four o'clock at the great Baptist temple and then Dr. Bresee
arranged for our regular afternoon services from two to four so we could go to the pentecostal
services. Rev. Joseph H. Smith was appointed to do the most of the preaching, but they called on
Dr. Morrison to preach a number of times. Bishop Joyce arranged one afternoon for Dr. P. F.
Bresee, pastor of First Church of the Nazarene, to bring a message to the great multitude of perhaps
three thousand people and J. M. and M. J. Harris were called on to do a good deal of singing at
that pentecostal rally. One afternoon, without consulting me, which was very exciting, Bishop
Joyce called me from the congregation to come to the platform and to quote for the people the
Fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah's prophecy. The dear old bishop pulled his handkerchief and wiped the
tears off his eyes and said, "Thank God, that there is a man who can read the Bible without looking
at it."

         About that time an old Methodist preacher from the Puget Sound conference, Rev. John
Flynn, who was then eighty-eight years old, got up and began to leap in the air and praise God with
a loud voice. Bishop McCabe jumped up and said, "People, people, people, listen to me! Take one
good look at that man. He is eighty-eight years old and he won't superannuate. As you look at him
just remember that the devil has no happy old men." It was the first time I had heard that expression
and it stayed with me like burrs in the sheep's wool. While dear Brother Flynn was leaping and
shouting his dear old wife jumped up and said, "Friends, I am feeling just like John is acting," and
the shouts of the people broke up the meeting. When the shouting subsided Bishop Joyce called for
Brother and Sister Harris to come forward and sing that old hymn, "The Old Fountain." Before
they finished it I believe a thousand people were waving handkerchiefs and hands. Bishop Joyce
said, "Beloved, beloved, this is a pentecostal meeting and God is able to send pentecostal waves
of glory today as He did in olden times." Those were days that I will never forget.

        Before leaving this I might recall one incident that was very interesting. On the last
Saturday of April, before opening our great convention, Dr. Bresee, Dr. Morrison, J. M. and M. J.
Harris, C. K. Spell and Bud Robinson, with a number of others, made our way to Long Beach,
California, and secured a fine fishing boat. That is, we all paid the man and his son to take us as

far as eight miles out on the ocean for deep water fishing. They furnished all the fishing tackle and
we got all we caught. There were probably twenty-five or thirty in the party. As we went on with
our trolls out about four miles in the ocean we ran through a school of the big fish called
yellowtails. The fish looked almost like a big river trout but the big fins on their tails were as
yellow as gold. They were simply beautiful. We caught four at the same time. Within ten seconds
of each other our lines were pulled under and all hands began to whoop and yell and scream.
Sister Harris shouted, "I caught the first one," and I think her hook was pulled under first. It was so
near the same time we caught the four that you could scarcely tell who caught the first but we gave
Sister Margaret credit for catching the first. I think Dr. Morrison's hook and mine went down at the
same moment. Dr. Morrison stood up and waved his hat and shouted while the man and his son that
ran the boat pulled in our books. No boy ever had a greater time than Dr. Morrison on that fishing
trip. These four fish weighed about seventy pounds. They weighed seventeen or eighteen pounds
each. Our whole party caught several hundred pounds. I remember in the afternoon I caught a big,
long, round fish that they called a barracuda. He only weighed four or five pounds but he was
between four and five feet long and was very interesting and fine eating.

        I brought mine to Los Angeles and took them to a good friend of mine, Brother Clyde T.
Dilley, who a year before had come from Waco, Texas, and located in Los Angeles. It was during
this great convention that Dr. Bresee took Brother and Sister Dilley into the Church of the
Nazarene. At that time I belonged to the Methodist Episcopal church and did not unite with the
Church of the Nazarene until the sixth of April, 1908. Of course I was on the log for some four or
five years and finally the Holy Spirit pushed me off the log and I fell into the Church of the
Nazarene. We'll see about that a little later on.

         At the close of this great convention, which was the last Sunday of May, Dr. and Sister C.
J. Fowler, J. M. and M. J. Harris and this writer left Los Angeles for the Des Moines, Iowa, camp.
We made the trip by El Paso, Kansas City, Missouri, and on across to Des Moines. This also was
a great convention. at the close of that convention I worked again for Dr. Fowler until fall. But I
did not join in their coast-to-coast campaign again until a number of years later. From that on to
1908 Brother Will Huff and I preached as far north as Washington and Oregon, North and South
Dakota, Minnesota, as far east as Old Orchard, Maine, and as far down in the southeast as Key
West, Florida. We held a number of great meetings in Florida. We went four years in succession to
Bennettsville, South Carolina. One year I. G. Martin went with us and had charge of the music and
then Brother Charles J. Tillman stayed at least three years with us. Brother John Langrom, the
blind boy, presided at the piano and Brother Bowen Grandfield, at that time just from Wales, was
one of the finest flute and piccolo players I had ever heard. At one time he was a member of King
Edward's band in England. He was with us nearly every year after that. He and I held meetings in a
number of places in the South. In some of our meetings, Brother C. P. Currie led the singing. He is
now one of the leading Southern Methodist preachers of Oklahoma. At Bennettsville we met for
the first time that great old southern warrior, Brother Jim Williams, at one time a great blacksmith.
He got saved and sanctified and went into evangelistic work. He wore out not less than fifteen
good gospel tents in North and South Carolina and Georgia. He was a very remarkable man.

       In one of our great campaigns in Bennettsville a young man by the name of Baxton
McLendon, who at the present time is known as "Cyclone Mac," was gloriously and powerfully
saved. Today Cyclone Mac is by far the greatest preacher in the Southland. Before his conversion

he was one of the wildest, wickedest and most desperate and dangerous men in South Carolina. I
prayed seventeen days and nights for Baxton McLendon. I will never forget the first night he came
under the big tent. He sat near the back, his black eyes fairly glittering. As I looked him over I had
the strangest feeling concerning him that I had ever had in looking into the face of a stranger. I left
the platform and walked back to him. His keen eyes almost struck through me. I laid my hand on
him and said, "Young man, the devil is using you to do dirt," and turned and walked away. That
was one of the most peculiar experiences I ever had. But God used that statement some way to
send an arrow of conviction to his precious heart. For seventeen days B. F. McLendon literally
rolled and groaned and wallowed, but God's hook stayed in him, and he couldn't shake it off. I was
sure God had marked that boy for a great preacher, and God knows whom He wants. Sometimes
He has to wait a number of years for His man but sooner or later God will land him. If anyone who
reads this has never heard him, if he comes within five hundred miles of your town, you go to hear
him, for you never will regret it.

         Brother Huff and I, after working all the southern states in January of 1908 made our way
back North. While Brother Huff went to Sioux City for a two weeks' visit with his wife and
children, I went to Chicago and had one of the greatest meetings I ever had in my life, where I did
all the preaching for Rev. C. E. Cornell, who was at that time pastor of the First Church of the
Nazarene. When we made the first coast-to-coast campaign with Dr. Fowler, Brother Cornell
lived in Cleveland, Ohio, and was publishing a little paper called the Soul Winner. He hired me to
write for the Soul Winner. He was the first man who ever paid me for writing for a paper. That
was the opening of my writing for papers and journals. I made my start with Brother Cornell but
the next year Brother Morrison hired me to write for the Pentecostal Herald, and for ten years I
wrote what was known as "Bud Robinson's Corner." When we begin to write and think over our
trips, how many great and good men stand out in our lives. There is no way to tell what the life and
influence of one good man like C. E. Cornell has meant to the world. From January, 1903, until the
present Brother Cornell and I have been like David and Jonathan. For many years he has been my
pastor.

        I left Chicago the middle of January headed for the Northwest and the night I left Chicago
Rev. Will Huff left Sioux City. We met the next morning in St. Paul, Minnesota. We had a good
hugging spell, for we had not seen each other for two or three weeks. There we secured our
sleepers and through tickets from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Everett, Washington. There we had some
fine meetings in the old holiness tabernacle. A few years before that Rev. I. G. Martin and Milton
Williams had held some great conventions through the Northwest and had organized the Holiness
Association and built a very large holiness tabernacle. At that time Brother Sherwood, a fine
school teacher, was president and Sister Lewis, the wife of a good doctor, was secretary, and we
were called to Everett by the president and secretary of the association.

        At the close of this great convention we found that we had more meetings to hold than we
had time to stay in the Northwest, so we divided, and Brother Huff went to Greenlake, a suburb of
Seattle, and held a meeting for Brother McKinley, one of the finest Free Methodist preachers in the
nation. While he was there I went back to the beautiful little town called Snohomish, nestling on
the banks of the Snohomish river, near the foothills of those gigantic Cascade mountains, whose
tops are so high that it seems that they would tickle the bottoms of the angels' feet if they were to sit
on the doorsteps and swing their feet off. I held my meeting for Brother Sayres, a fine Methodist

Episcopal preacher, and stayed in the home of Brother and Sister Seeley. They also had a fine
preacher boy at that time stationed at Bellingham, on the northern border of Washington, a few
miles from the Canadian line, and he came down and stayed with us a few days. He and I became
warm friends. I remember while I was in Snohomish, that the little fish called the smelt, came up
the streams and rivers. The reader may think I am out of my mind or this is an exaggeration, but the
farmers backed their wagons into the rivers and took their forks and loaded the wagons with these
fish and hauled them out onto the ground for fertilizer, notwithstanding they are the best fish I ever
put down my neck, and anybody who ever ate those smelt in Oregon and Washington while they
are fresh, will agree that they are the limit for goodness. Brother and Sister Seeley had gone to
Washington in early days from western New York, where their relatives still live. They had been
back on a visit and brought back West a big cake of maple sugar. They gave me a block of it that
weighed two pounds. I wrapped that up and carried it in my suitcase until I reached home in
Peniel, Texas, the first day of April.

        At the close of my meeting in Snohomish I went to Seattle, where Dr. Reese, pastor of the
First Methodist church, was at that time building the great First Methodist church and they had
erected a large tabernacle to worship in until their church was completed. The holiness association
of Seattle secured this big tabernacle for us to hold a great convention in and Dr. Reese, the pastor,
joined in with us and we had there a very remarkable convention. One of the leading men then in
the First Methodist church was Tom Lippe, who had become a millionaire by operating gold mines
in the Klondike. He and his wife went out among the first ones when the gold rush opened up in the
Klondike and Mrs. Tom Lippe was the first woman to go into the gold mines. At the close of our
convention Brother Lippe requested that we be paid off in gold and we had more gold than we
probably ever had before or since at one time. At that time Brother R. L. Wall was president of the
Holiness Association in Seattle and at this writing he is president of the Southern California
Holiness Association. He has been a personal friend of mine for twenty-seven years. He is a
traveling shoe man, one of the most cultured Christian gentlemen that you will meet in a lifetime.

        At the close of our great convention in Seattle, Brother Huff, Brother Wall, Brother
McKinley and this writer planned a trip by boat down through Puget Sound and up to Victoria in
British Columbia. It is the most beautiful city in the Northwest and is the capital of British
Columbia. Our trip was lovely. We got there in time to take in the state house and we spent the
night in the King Edward's hotel. The next morning we went back to Seattle and went out in the
afternoon to the home of Brother Tom Lippe to a big holiness meeting that was held by Sister
Lippe. Brother Huff made a talk and there were nine women at the altar for sanctification.

       From Seattle we went down to Portland, Oregon, and gave one afternoon and night to
Brother A. O. Henricks, who had just taken charge of the Church of the Nazarene that had been
organized only a few weeks before. We had two great services and from there we went to
Ashland, Oregon, for a ten days' meeting. We had a fine revival there and met a number of good
people who have been warm friends of mine from that day until this. One of them was good
Brother Rice, who worked for a number of years in our Publishing House. He is now in Southern
California but with the same smile on his face.

      From Ashland we made our next stop in Oakland, California. Here Brother P. G.
Linaweaver was pastor. Brother Huff and I had worked with him in Illinois a year before. He had

come from another church to the Church of the Nazarene. He took us across the bay to the
headquarters of the great Southern Pacific railroad system to their general passenger agent and got
us clergy rates from San Francisco to Los Angeles with a ten days' stop over and from there to
Greenville, Texas. We had two beautiful days with Brother Linaweaver. We came from there to
Los Angeles and held a meeting for Dr. P. F. Bresee, closing on the last Sunday of March. While I
was there I learned that Dr. Bresee wanted to go East and I asked him to come through Texas and
come to Peniel and organize a Nazarene church. He said he would do that. He asked me how many
I thought would come in. I told him I thought there would be a number, but I knew for sure there
would be one for he could take me in. He said that would be worth the trip.

        I reached home on the first day of April. I had notified my wife that I was going to present
her an April Fool on the first day of the month and sure enough my train pulled in just before
midnight on April first. She met me at the train with my two beautiful girls, little Sally and baby
Ruby. I notified the people that Dr. Bresee was coming and two days later he arrived and preached
for us until the first Sunday of April. On Sunday night, April the sixth, he organized the first Church
of the Nazarene in the state of Texas. At that time Dr. E. P. Ellyson, who is now the editor of the
Sunday school literature of the Church of the Nazarene, assisted by his good wife, was the college
president. Today he is one of the best Sunday school editors in the United States of any
denomination. I doubt whether there is any better Sunday school literature published in the world
than is sent out by our headquarters at Kansas City, Missouri. Dr. Bresee organized with 103
members, and thank the Lord the Nazarene work was started in Texas.

Chapter 8