02 Early Indications of Character
Chapter 2 EARLY INDICATIONS OF CHARACTER A WIDE main street, very dusty or deeply mired according to the weather, lined with dwellings toward either extremity, and with stores at the center of the village, that, for the most part, was the quiet South Carolina town called Woodruff. In the section where the shops clustered was a large frame residence, the only home that faced the street in that locality. A magnificent magnolia, fifty feet high, stood in the front yard. The tree had been brought from Charleston at the close of the Civil War. The Andersons who lived in this home were relatives of Captain Woodruff, the founder of the town. W. A. Anderson, the father, came as a boy of nineteen to work for his great-uncle, the Captain. His own father had died when he was quite young, and the uncle had agreed to adopt him. With his grandfather and mother and brothers, Mr. Anderson worked nineteen years to pay off war debts, owing for slaves set free. Lawyers had advised the grandfather to repudiate the debts, for the creditors were well-to-do and were not pushing their claims, but he insisted on paying all. The mother taught school to help earn the money. The grandfather died before the debt was canceled, but the boys paid off the last dollar. It was Mr. Anderson’s great ambition to go to college and he begged his uncle with tears to let him go, but it was impossible for his uncle, who had no son, to spare him from the work on the farm. Denied a college education himself, he cherished in his heart the purpose to send all his children, of whom there were eight, to college when they were grown. Six have already graduated.
Such the stock of which John Todd Anderson, the oldest son of William A. Anderson, was born, April 20, 1887. Limited in opportunity, it was rich in integrity and ambition. John early committed himself to Christ. He recalled years afterward his uncle’s speaking to him down at the barn, asking him whether he did not want to be a Christian. During a country "protracted meeting," his father and he knelt alone, hard by the old church, and John gave himself to the Lord, joining the church at the age of twelve. He early knew the sweat of toil, and he loved to work and worked hard. At fourteen he planned and built a cotton house to protect the cotton picked in the fields before it was taken to the gin. The house is still standing, its door still swinging true. He knew how to plow and had a section of the farm as his own to cultivate. At fifteen he began to help dig artesian wells with a well-machine, and when he had finished high school he was sent to Georgia by his father to drill wells on his own account. Largely because of John’s own energy and initiative, his father’s home was the first in Woodruff to have water works and plumbing facilities. John dug the well, put up the water tank, and put in the fixtures. Later neighbors, observing these conveniences, asked to be connected up with the tank and the town water system had its genesis in the Anderson back yard. In the fall of 1905 John entered college at Furman University, Greenville, South Carolina. He came on to the campus carrying the suitcase of one of the upper classmen. His face bore a smile, the smile that became famous around the college, of one who had already learned the lesson ― "Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles," and do it cheerfully. At the beginning of his second year he was called home to take up well-drilling again, to tide over financial difficulties in the family. Telegrams had come from Georgia saying:
Send your son John out here and he can get all the work and more than he can do. His father called him on the long distance telephone:
"John, you know how I am pressed. You will be worth one thousand dollars to me next year in Georgia. Will you promise me to go and then return to Furman a year hence?"
John replied:
"Father, I will do what you tell me." His father said:
"If you are in doubt about being able to return to college later, stay where you are, but if you will go, pack your trunk."
John went to Georgia and made the thousand dollars. It was characteristic of his relations with his parents. His father has said that he never disobeyed him but once, and that time he came to him and acknowledged his fault saying:
"Father, I will never disobey you again." Like the boy Jesus, whose outlook was far wider than his parents’, he was yet submissive unto them. In succeeding summers he was engaged in well-drilling, making funds to carry him through school. The machine was driven along the country roads from town to town where contracts were secured for wells. He was his own engineer and repair man and business manager. Regular reports on the progress made in digging were sent to his father and itemized accounts. Some interesting sidelights on his character come out in letters written home from Georgia.
Mother was saying that she felt so sorry for me because I have to work so hard in the sun. Well, I am sorry that she cannot be in the same fix that I am and enjoy the sun and the good health that I am enjoying. I am going to take care of myself and am working only eleven hours a day. In another letter he writes:
I am staying at the hotel here. The fare is very poor, but I can make out on anything. The weather has been hot, but I have not felt at all bad a single moment that I have been here. My hands and arms and face have been sore with blisters and peeling skin. It has not hurt me, though, and I am about tough. My work yesterday was to rise at four and work on the boiler until the negro helpers came to work. While they were at dinner I took the engine to pieces and filed the brasses. In a letter to his father he gives as his motto:
Look on the bright side and work so hard that you cannot think of the other side of life. As he was conscientious and industrious in his work, so was he faithful and devoted to the church. On Sundays he was regularly at the services and attended Sunday School if the place had one. He invariably comments on the sermon in his Sunday letters home and on the state of the religious life of the community. For instance:
I have spent a Sunday in another Georgia town about the size of the last one. I went to church this morning, but did not hear of any Sunday School. Mr. E invited me to dinner. They have a fine large house. They did not go to church. They are friendly people, but full of this world. In a certain town where he went to drill a well, no home would take him in to board except the poorest couple in the place. There was only one wash pan in the house and no water bucket. Ablutions had to be performed at the well. As he remained in town at work, some of the other people came to know that he was of good family and asked him to move over to another place. He refused, however, to leave the poor folk who first took him in.
One rainy day when they had stopped work, a man of the town noticed John and his helpers standing in the shelter of some freight cars. It was damp and chilly, and one of the men drew out a flask of whiskey for a drop of cheer. When it came out of his pocket, the townsman saw John speak to the fellow, but could not hear the words. In a moment the flask was returned to the pocket and not a drop was touched by any of them. His experiences in Georgia were making their contribution in training and development for the career that lay ahead. Already there were indications of those traits which made his friends later regard him as the most Christ-like man they knew.
"In my reading to-day I came across the following which I memorized," he writes in a letter from a town in Georgia. My Prayer In my home life may I be made a blessing; A tender comfort when days are full of pain;
Always thinking of others before myself. And in my daily calling may I work not for the wages I may receive, But so as to please Jesus, my Master. In my inner life I desire to be kept pure and holy.
O Holy and Spotless One, be in me a crystal fountain of purity.
Teach me what my talents are and help me to make the two four and the five ten.