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Pilgrim’s letters.

Bits of History.

Rev. Joseph E. Roy, D.D., author of the neatly printed volume bearing this title, is a man of quick and accurate observation.  In the days when “Missionary Campaigns” were in vogue, and the representatives of the several Congregational Societies held missionary meetings from town to town, Dr. Roy, in an hour or two after our arrival at a place, would contrive to pick up so many facts about the history of the town, its distinguished men of the past, its ancient church edifices, etc., etc., as to surprise and perhaps enlighten the pastor and some of the people, as he skillfully introduced these facts into the opening of his address.  Dr. Roy had an equal facility in writing down his observations in graphic and vigorous English.  What some other men would labor in penning with frequent hesitation and erasures, he would dash off currente calamo.  It has fallen to the lot of Dr. Roy to have had another advantage.  He has been a pastor for several years, and subsequently a Secretary alternately of the A.M.A. and the A.H.M.S. for nearly thirty years.  His duties have called him into all parts of the United States, and especially into the West and South.  In all his journeys he has jotted down his rapid and yet careful observations, and the Letters of Pilgrim in the Congregationalist, the Independent and the Advance, have become as familiar as household words in the pastor’s study, and the homes of Congregationalists throughout the land.  The thoughtful care and deft fingers of Pilgrim’s wife have clipped out these letters and pasted them into suitable blank books until they became almost a library.  The topics covered by these letters are as varied as the place in which they were written.  They begin as far back as 1857, and describe events in the Border war of Kansas, the great Rebellion, the steps of Reconstruction as well as the more peaceful but no less interesting proceedings of National Councils, great Missionary Anniversaries and the quiet, yet lifelike scenes gathered from pastors’ lives, and the homes of the people settling in the far West, or of the negroes in their new life as Freedmen.

This volume contains the gems gathered out of this great casket.  The reader must not expect to find in it consecutive history or full details on every topic, but he will be surprised, we think, at finding so much and such accurate information on so many interesting items in regard to the events that have transpired in the Nation, and especially in the Congregational Churches, during the last thirty years.  It is, as the second title indicates, bits of history.

Dr. Roy was very much beloved in the South, by preachers, teachers, and the people.  No Superintendent or other worker of the A.M.A., from the North, ever had so many negro children named for him.  Indeed we are told that one family were so ardent in their attachment that they had their boy christened with the names and titles in full—­Reverend Joseph E. Roy, D.D.