Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/41

Rh cities that, had he cared, would have made him the man at the dinner table; but his modesty forbade him to seek to shine. To the distress of entertainers who knew his attractiveness, he shunned "society" functions and preferred a quiet talk, with four feet on the fender. He was in demand as a speaker or chairman at public meetings to draw an audience, but unless he had some special message he wished to deliver, he declined such requests, and would go off, instead, to some little meeting in an obscure hall to encourage a down-hearted worker. But if he avoided the public platform, where he felt no special call to speak, he loved to be in touch with the life of the people. Often he would slink away of a Saturday afternoon to some football field in the East End, where he could find himself (to use one of his own picturesque phrases) "the only man with a collar in the whole crowd." He cared as little for great ecclesiastical as for great social functions, but his friends could count upon him turning up at odd functions in the underground life of the people—such as "Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Services" for canal boatmen or evangelistic meetings for thieves and ex-convicts.

Drummond was at home amongst boys. Watching a cricket or football match, he forgot that he was a professor and became a boy again. He had a rich repertoire of conundrums, incidents of adventure, and thrilling ghost stories. In the country a cowslip or an elm-tree in blossom would give him a text for explaining the wonderful devices of nature for the fertilization of flowers. At the fireside or in the woods he never failed to excite the enthusiasm of boys. The poor boys of Glasgow stirred his interest. He had at one time designed a special basket for message boys, to lighten the burden of little fellows struggling under ill-adjusted loads. By his pen and by his addresses he rendered invaluable service to a modern institution—the Boys' Brigade—which has done much for the well-being of thousands of the lads of our cities, and it was fitting that the body of the Boys' Friend should have been laid to rest in Stirling cemetery to the sound of the bugles of the Boys' Brigade.

The ordeal of criticism to which the man and his teaching were subjected for years gave Drummond an opportunity of revealing the strength and beauty of his character. No bitter word did he ever write or speak in reply to his most merciless or un-generous critics. In his earlier years he was the darling of the evangelistic world. In later years the broadness of his teaching alarmed many of his former admirers, and some of the religious papers attacked him with a fierceness which bordered on malignity. I know how some of the attacks, imputing unworthy motives and traducing his character, made Drummond's sensitive nature wince; but not only did he not break the silence, but he nourished no bitter grudge in his heart. One instance of his magnanimity to an opponent may be worth recalling. A very able theologian had reviewed in the pages of an influential journal the booklet "The City without a Church," not only in a trenchant, but in a somewhat personally bitter fashion. "What ails So-and-so at me?" was Drummond's comment to a mutual friend; and when he was asked a few weeks afterward by an American theological college to recommend a Scottish theologian for a course of lectures, he named his castigator.

Drummond was a hard worker, but he knew the value of recreation as an intellectual tonic. His favorite pastime was salmon or trout fishing on a lonely Highland loch. He appreciated the solitudes of natrure as keenly as the roar of the tide of life in a great city. If there was finished grace in his writing and speaking, there was a finished grace even in his casting of a line. But even more striking than his skilful angling was his happy way with his boatman. With a courtesy and brotherliness which were conspicuous in his bearing toward servants, he would win the boatman's confidence, and learn the story of his life, long before the day's sport was over; he would tell him interesting facts about birds and flowers and insects, and retail stories for his information and amusement, and in the evening the fortunate boatman would gladden his own fireside with an account of a happy day's experience. Drummond preached the duty of making others happy in the common intercourse of life, and what he preached he himself practised.

From the beginning of 1895, Professor Drummond was the victim of pain and weakness. His disease, which baffled medical diagnosis, seized upon the muscles and bones of the trunk of the body, and rendered him, for the most part, a helpless invalid. His illness was but a fresh opportunity for the revelation of the beauty of his character and the charm of his personality. To the last he kept up his interest in what was going on in the intellectual and political world, and his interest in the movements of his friends was as lively as if he had been the strong one caring for