Alice Cogswell Bemis: A Sketch by a Friend

								

the covered wagon, but knows only from others of the slow journey to
Buffalo, thence by boat to Detroit, and the continued journey to
Chicago, then Fort Dearborn, where they did not remain for fear of
being eaten by mosquitoes or of having fever and ague, and so camped at
what is now Oak Park. Thence they moved on to Lighthouse Point, Ogle
County, Illinois, where the Bemis family found a temporary lodging in a
log cabin and the others lived in covered wagons until they had built a
comfortable cabin for themselves.
From the beginning of the making of the new home on the empty prairie,
the children took their full share in the work it involved. Mr. Bemis
has told us that he was doing from one-half to two-thirds of a man's
work on the farm when he was twelve years old, the year in which his
wife was born into the well-established life of a fine old New England
town, rich for her in all the inheritances that seven generations gave;
all the way before her made as smooth as love and ample means could make
it.
At the age of nineteen Mr. Bemis left the farm and began his business
career in Chicago as clerk to a shipping firm. After six years, with
only his own savings for his capital, and helped by the loan of some
machinery supplied by a cousin, he went to St. Louis and began the
business which has borne his name for over sixty years, a name that is
a synonym in all the business world for ability and integrity. His
success did not come by accident, or by any so-called good fortune, but
as the result of patience and perseverance, steadily following the
principles and the rules he laid down for himself very early in life. He
speaks with gratitude of the fact that he had to learn by force of
circumstances "the blessedness of drudgery and the value of time and
money in his long hours of work and in the closest practice of economy."
We have seen how different were the outward circumstances of their early
lives. In temperament also Mr. and Mrs. Bemis differed much; but in
sympathy on all great matters, in their ideals of life, and their
unfailing recognition of their own personal obligation and duty, they
were always one. In the reminiscences he has written for his
grandchildren, Mr. Bemis says: "Parents can lay the foundation for each
child by their own life. They are giving daily examples by their actions
and by word of mouth. If parents are living well-ordered and Christian
lives, their children will be likely to follow their example. They will
know nothing else. Good boys and girls make good men and women. An
educated and scientific carpenter will hew and mortise the timbers to
fit the keys that bind the frame to a complete and solid house, so that
storm and winds pass it by unharmed. So with boys and girls; if their
characters are moulded in truth, mortised and keyed together with
obedience to God and man, when they become men and women they will
withstand the environment of bad persons and escape unscathed. Hence