St Olaf College - Viking Yearbook (Northfield, MN)

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The circuit rider played an important part in the early development of Northfield; he was a preacher, a counsel- lor and, in cases of extreme emergency, he was even a doctor.

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p. G. SCHMIDT C. B. HELGEN LORRAINE CARLSON SISTER LILLIAN GROH NORA JENSEN MATHILDA NYLAND Twenty-three

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FACULTY Not wilderness nor flood, nor hundred mile Long prairie trail, nor blizzard fury, grim With drowsy death, nor redman ' s slinking threat, Stand bar to circuit rider ' s way: by sun And star and mother-wit he rode the wood And hill, and brought to silence-ridden shacks The news of God and man; when bodies ailed. His simples eased the flesh, his words the heart; When spirits dropped, by melancholy crazed. He lifted up and fortifled the souls With Words of One he staunchly served; for want Of walls, he cut a cross into an oak And called the ground beneath the tree a church. Adoring God where winds blew freely on; And came and went, and rode away by dusk Or dawn, his face turned upward to the sky.