Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 271, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1912 — FORMER PASTOR AT REMINGTON WRITES [ARTICLE]

FORMER PASTOR AT REMINGTON WRITES

Sow Paator of Los Angeles Church N. H. Sheppard Writes to Old Friends In This County. The following letter was written on July 10th, 1912, by R#t. Nathan Hoyt Sheppard, of Los Angeles, Cal., to Mr. and Mrs. Frank E. Fisher, of Remington, and is published in The Republican at the earnest solicitation o? friends. Rev. Sheppard was formerly pastor of the Christian church at Remington and had a wide aequaintanct as a minister. The letter will be- read with interest by all who have known him. It is as follows: 133 W. 39th St., Los Angeles, Cal. July 10, 1912. Frank E. Fisher and Wife, Remington, ind. Dear Friends: My mind turns back today in memory of youth, and so 1 will write you a short letter while in that mood. Since our little boy was taken so tragically by revolver accident August 19, 1909, life to me has not been that gala day it was before, and correspondence with old time friends has not been so regular.

I am forty-eight years old the 14th of July, next Sunday, and so am not as young as I used to be. We arrived in Los Angeles October 16th, ,1911, and took the pastorate of the South Main street Christian church October 18th, two days thereafter. We have twenty-three Christian chucrhesjn Los Angeles and the church for which I minister, while not a large church, is a live wire and we are getting along nicely in the work. In the nine months we have been here we have had twenty-five additions to the church membership. I remember when I graduated in the law at Valparaiso in 1888. I receivec a letter from my old teacher’s nurse from this place telling me that my old teacher, Will A. Redding, who taught the Rosy Ridge school in Gilboa township when I was eight and nine years old, was lying critically ill, almost a skeleton, in the sands of southern California, taking the sand baths for his treatment, and while he was unable to write me himself, he congratulated me on my finishing the law course, and praised me for my struggle against adverse circumstances, and so I have found a severe struggle all the way along life’s pathway against poverty, ignorance, sin and death, having lost four of my own house through tragical deaths, having four, a wife, a hoy and two girls still with me in the flesh. I have gained considerable mastery over poverty, ignorance and sin, but the death of those 1 loved so dearly has been the hardest for me to submit to, but I feel that it will all turn out right in the great afterwhile for “I shall see my Pilot's face when I have crossed the bar,” and meet my little ones again so long gone before. “It doth not yet appear that we shall be but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” I want to refer again to W. A. Redding and say that the last time I heard from him he was living in Navarre, Kansas, perfectly cured of a disease of which he was so desperately ill, that all of the excrement coming from his body unnaturally passed through his mouth, and he said that he was cured by Faith, Brothers Charley is in lowa, Will ii New Mexico, Ed in Minneapolis, Win in Montana, and sisters Dotie is in Montana, Jennie in South Dakota and myself in the Golden Southland. Is not that a s,catterment? Father came from New Jersey by the Atlantic and his youngest son beholds the peaceful Atlantic one in a while when he travels to it thirteen miles- aWay, this in two generations and seventy years. California climate is a marvel. When we were reading in March of people freezing to death in Chicago we were having beautiful autumn weather and now we are reading of heat prostrations and deaths in that city by the lake, the alternating breezes from the mountains and the ocean make of Los Angeles and vicniity an eternal summer resort. The great drawback is the long dry months from April to December, and its accompanying dust and monotony, but as to comfortable atmosphere we have it to perfection, three and four covers at night in winter and one or two all through the summer. It gets very hot at times and in the sun when the breeze stops a while, but most all of the time the breeze from one or the other source gives us a paradisfe in which to live. They say back in the valley where the breeze does not strike, near Arizona, in the Imperial Valley, it gets so hot three months that it is like an oven or the Sahara Desert. Up at San Francisco, the breezes and the fog are more stimulating to the body. They sat that after you live here a few years your blood gets thin and you get lazy and cold blooded and so can’t stand much cold, not even that little we have here, but I guess that if one from the East still keeps up his hustle he will never get that way. Perhaps the next generation will get that thin blooded but not the one from Indiana. They dry farm one crop here in some places in the spring that is like back East, without irrigation, but more than that they must irrigate. Alfalfa irrigated grows a crop .each month for seven months of one to two tons per acre, worth sl2 per ton. Oranges must always be irrigated and so must lemons and all semi-tropical fruits. Oranges are ripening on Jhe same tree at least six months in the year and a lemon tree in the yard has had lemons on it at different stages of development ever since we have been here, nine months. When an orange Is ripe you can hold it well- preserved on the tree by irrigation and careful attention -for three or four months and so market it when the market is the best. But, oh! land is so high near here; from SSOO to $5,000 per acre. Away of in the valleys or desserts where you have to put In pumping plants to irrigate costing several thousand dollars, unimproved land can be bought for

SSO per acre. There was a boom in Los Angeles property twenty years ago, and then a terrible slump. About ten years ago the boom came again and to stay. People are coming in here all the time, summer and winter, at the rate of one thousand per week. Large fortunes have been made in real estate'in the last ten years and money placed carefully in real estate now doubles in> from one to five years.i 1 had a small sum of money and placed it in some lots at Wilmington where Los Angeles will connect by a strip of land with the ocean and build a great harbor by the help of the federal government costing several millions of dollars and I look for it to double in value when the Panama canal opens in 1915. ‘ Los Angeles in 1880 had 10,900 people; in 1900 it had 121,000; in 1910 it had. 319,000, and now it has 400,000. In 1912 they count on 1,000,000 and by the end of the century they look for it to be the metropolis of the world. To the north and east the mountains tower in granduer twenty-five miles away; to the south and west thirteen miles away, the ocean rolls and tosses on forever surrounded on all sides by rich soils and a splendid climate. The attractions are so great that people are rushing in here by the thousands and tens of thousands, from Japan, India, Russia, China and the islands of the seas. Ten years ago there were fourteen Christian preachers in Indianapolis. Three of us now have churches in or near Los Angelas. Progressive thought is in the air. Japanese Buddhist temples, Christian Science temples, Spiritualist churches and all else you can think about fill the city with worhsipers. Recall of judges, initiative and referendum are here and Mrs. Sheppard will vote for President in the November, 1912, elec' tion. Forever your old friend, NATHAN HQYT.E SHEPPARD. 133 W. 39th st., Los Angeles, California