BANCROFT LIBRARY THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. BY O.^/FITZGERALD H WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BISHOP GEORGE F. PIERCE. The bearded men in rude attire, H '/'///. iter'-e* <>f *!f<'l a /n! /i carts of fire, The WO in en fen' luf fair ami .w/vvY, Like, nharimvii rixi but made up of both, starts across the fateful river, gets on very well until he reaches about half-way over, when his head be- comes dizzy, and he tumbles into the boiling flood below. He swims for his life. (Every Indian on earth can swim, and he does not forget the art in the world of spirits.) Buffeting the waters, he is carried swiftly down the rushing current, and at last makes the shore, to find a country which, like his former life, is a mixture of good and bad. Some days are fair, and others are rainy and chilly ; flowers and brambles grow together; there are some springs of water, but they are few, and not all cool and sweet; the deer are few r , and shy, and loan, and grizzly bears roam the hills and valleys. This is the limbo of the moderately-wicked Digger. The very bad Indian, placing his feet upon the attenuated bridge of doom, makes a few steps forward, stumbles, falls into the whirling waters below, and is swept downward with fearful ve- locity. At last, with desperate struggles he half swims, and is half washed ashore on the same side from which he started, to find a dreary land where the sun never shines, and the cold rains always pour down from the dark skies, where the w T ater is brackish and foul, where no flowers ever bloom, where leagues may be traversed without seeing a 22 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES, deer, and grizzly bears abound. This is the hell of very bad Indians and a very bad one it is. The worst Indians of all, at death, are trans- formed into grizzly bears. The Digger has a good appetite, and he is not particular about his eating. He likes grasshop- pers, clover, acorns, roots, and fish. The flesh of a dead mule, horse, cow, or hog, does not come amiss to him I mean the flesh of such as die nat- ural deaths. He eats what he can get, and all he can get. In the grasshopper season he is fat and flourishing. In the suburbs of Sonora I came one day upon a lot of squaws, who were engaged in catching grasshoppers. Stretched along in line, armed with thick branches of pine, they threshed . the ground in front of them as they advanced, driving the grasshoppers before them in constantly- increasing numbers, until the air was thick with the flying insects. Their course was directed to a deep gully, or gulch, into which they fell exhaust- ed. It was astonishing to see with what dexterity the squaws would gather them up and thrust them into a sort of covered basket, made of willow-twigs or tule-grass, while the insects would be trying to escape, but would fall back unable to rise above the sides of the gulch in which they had been en- trapped. The grasshoppers are dried, or cured, for winter use. A white man who had tried them told THE DIGGKRS* 23 me they were pleasant eating, having a flavor very similar to that of a good shrimp. (I was content to take his word for it.) When Bishop Soule was in California, in 1853, he paid a visit to a Digger campoody (or village) in the Calaveras hills. He was profoundly inter- ested, and expressed an ardent desire to be instru- mental in the conversion of one of these poor kin. It was yet early in the morning when the Bishop and his party arrived, and the Diggers were not astir, save here and there . a squaw, in primitive array, who slouched lazily toward a spring of water hard by. But soon the arrival of the visitors was made known, and the bucks, squaws, and papooses, swarmed forth. They cast curious looks upon the whole party, but were specially struck with the majestic bearing of the Bishop, as were the pass- ing crowds in London, who stopped in the streets to gaze with admiration upon the great American preacher. The Digger chief did not conceal his delight. After looking upon the Bishop fixedly for some moments, he went up to him, and tapping first his own chest and then the Bishop's, he said : " Me big man you big man ! " It was his opinion that two great men had met, and that the occasion was a grand one. Moraliz- ers to the contrary notwithstanding, greatness is not always lacking in self-consciousness. 24 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. "I would like to go into one of their wigwams, or huts, and see how they really live," said the Bishop. "You had better drop that idea," said the guide, a white man who knew more about Digger Indians than was good for his reputation and morals, but who w r as a good-hearted fellow, always ready to do a friendly turn, and with plenty of time on his hands to do it. The genius born to live without work will make his way by his wits, whether it be in the lobby at Washington City, or as a hanger- on at a Digger camp. The Bishop insisted on going inside the chief's wigwam, which was a conical structure of long tule-grass, air-tight and weather-proof, with an aperture in front just large enough for a man's body in a crawling attitude. Sacrificing his dig- nity, the Bishop w r ent down on all-fours, and then a degree lower, and, following the chief, crawled in. The air was foul, the smells were strong, and the light was dim. The chief proceeded to tender to his distinguished guest the hospitalities of the establishment, by offering to share his breakfast with him. The bill of fare was grasshoppers, with acorns as a side-dish. The Bishop maintained his dignity as he squatted there in the dirt his dig- nity was equal to any test. He declined the grass- hoppers tendered him by the chief, pleading that TJIE DwuK/fft. 25 he had already breakfasted, but watched with peculiar sensations the movements of his host, as handful after handful of the crisp and juicy yryllm mdgaris were crammed into his capacious mouth, and swallowed. What he saw and smelt, and the absence of fresh air, began to tell upon the Bishop he became sick and pale, while a gen- tle perspiration, like unto that felt in the begin- ning of seasickness, beaded his noble forehead. With slow dignity, but marked emphasis, he spoke : " Brother Bristow, I propose that we retire/ 7 They retired, and there is no record that Bishop Soule ever expressed the least desire to repeat his visit to the interior of a Digger Indian's abode. The whites had many difficulties with the Dig- gers in the early days. In most cases I think the whites were chiefly to blame. It is very hard for the strong to be just to the weak. The weakest creature, pressed hard, will strike back. White women and children w r ere massacred in retaliation for outrages committed upon the ignorant Indians by white outlaws. Then there would be a sweep- ing destruction of Indians by the excited whites, who in those days made rather light of Indian shooting. The shooting of a "buck" was about the same thing, whether it was a male Digger or a deer. 26 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. '"There is not much fight in a Digger unless he's got the dead-wood on you, and then he'll make it rough for you. But these Injuns are of no use, and I 'd about as soon shodf one of them as a coyote" (ki-o-te). The speaker was a very red-faced, sandy-haired man, with blood-shot blue eyes, whom I met on his return to the Humboldt country after a visit to San Francisco. "Did you ever shoot an Indian?" I asked. "I first went up into the Eel River country in '46," he answered. "They give us a lot of trouble in them days. They would steal cattle, and our boys would shoot. But we've never had much difficulty with them since the big fight we had with them in 1849. A good deal of devilment had been goin' on all roun', and some had been killed on both sides. The Injuns killed two women on a ranch in the valley, and then we sot in just to wipe 'em out. Their camp was in a bend of the river, near the head of the valley, with a deep slough on the right flank. There was about sixty of us, and Dave was our captain. He was a hard rider, a dead shot, and not very tender-hearted. The boys sorter liked him, but kep' a sharp eye on him, knowin' he was so quick and handy with a pistol. Our plan was to git to their camp and fall on em at daybreak, but the sun was risin' just as we THE DIGGERS. 27 come in sight of it. A dog barked, and Dave sung out: "'Out with your pistols I pitch in, and give 'em the hot lead ! ' "In we galloped at full speed, and as the Injuns come out to see what was up, we let 'em have it. We shot forty bucks about a dozen got away by swiimnin' the river." " Were any of the women killed?" "A few were knocked over. You can't be par- ticular when you are in a hurry; and a squaw, when her blood is up, will fight equal to a buck." The fellow spoke with evident pride, feeling that he was detailing a heroic affair, having no idea that he had done any thing wrong in merely kill- ing " bucks." I noticed that this same man was very kind to an old lady who took the stage for Bloomfield helping her into the vehicle, and look- ing after her baggage. When we parted, I did not care to take the hand that had held a pistol that morning when the Digger camp was " wiped out." The scattered remnants of the Digger tribes were gathered into a reservation in Round Valley, Mendocino county, north of the Bay of San Fran- cisco, and were there taught a mild form of agri- cultural life, and put under the care of Govern- ment agents, contractors, and soldiers, with about 2S CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. the usual results. One agent, who was also a preacher, took several hundred of them into the Christian Church. They seemed to have mastered the leading facts of the gospel, and attained con- siderable proficiency in the singing of hymns. Al- together, the result of this effort at their conver- sion showed that they were human beings, and as such could be made recipients of the truth and grace of God, who is the Father of all the fami- lies of the earth. Their spiritual guide told me he had to make one compromise with them they would dance. Extremes meet the fashionable white Christians of our gay capitals and the tawny Digger exhibit the same weakness for the fascinat- ing exercise that cost John the Baptist his head. There is one thing a Digger cannot bear, and that is the comforts and luxuries of civilized life. A number of my friends, who had taken Digger children to raise, found that as they approached maturity they fell into. a decline and died, in most cases of some pulmonary affection. The only way to save them was to let them rough it, avoiding warm bed-rooms and too much clothing. A Dig- ger girl belonged to my church at Santa Rosa, and was a gentle, kind-hearted, grateful creature. She was a domestic in the family of Colonel H . In that pleasant Christian household she developed into a pretty fair specimen of brunette young THE DIGGERS. 20 womanhood, but to the last she had an aversion to wearing shoes. The Digger seems to be doomed. Civilization kills him; and if he sticks to his savagery, he will go down before the bullets, whisky, and vices of his white fellow-sinners. THE CALIFOBNIA MAP-HOUSE, ON my first visit to the State Insane Asylum, at Stockton, I was struck by the beauty of a. boy of some seven or eight years, who was moving about the grounds clad in a strait-jacket. In re^ ply to my inquiries, the resident physician told me his history: "About a year ago he was on his way to Cali* forma with the family to w T hich he belonged. He was a general pet among the passengers on the steamer. Handsome, confiding, and overflowing with boyish spirits, everybody had a smile and a kind word for the winning little fellow. Even the rough sailors would pause a moment to pat his curly head as they passed. One day a sailor, yield* ing to a playful impulse in passing, caught up the boy in his arms, crying: " ' I am going to throw you into the sea ! ' " The child gave one scream of terror, and went into convulsions. When the paroxysm subsided,, (30) THE CALIFORNIA MAD-HOUSE. 31 he opened his eyes and gazed around with a va- cant expression. His mother, who bent over him with a pale face, noticed the look, and almost screamc'd ; "'Tommy, here is your mother don't you know me?' "The child gave no sign of recognition. He never knew his poor mother again. He was lit- erally frightened out of his senses. The mother's anguish was terrible. The remorse of the sailor for his thoughtless freak was so great that it in some degree disarmed the indignation of the pas- sengers and crew. The child had learned to read, and had made rapid progress in the studies suited to his age, but all was swept away by the cruel blow. He was unable to utter a word intelligent- . ly, Since he has been here, there have been signs of returning mental consciousness, and we have begun with him as with an infant. He knows and can call his own name, and is now learning the alphabet/' "How is his health?" " His health is pretty good, except that he has occasional convulsive attacks that can only be controlled by the use of powerful opiates." I was glad to learn, on a visit made two years later, that the unfortunate boy had died. This child was murdered by a fool. The fools 32 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. are always murdering children, though the work is not always done as effectually as in this case. They cripple and half kill them by terror. There are many who will read this Sketch who will carry to the grave, and into the world of spirits, natures out of which half the* sweetness, and brightness, and beauty has been crushed by ignorance or brutality. In most cases it is ignorance. The hand that should guide, smites; the voice that should soothe, jars the sensitive chords that are untuned forever. He who thoughtlessly excites terror in a child's heart is unconsciously doing the devil's work ; he that does it consciously is a devil. "There is a lady here whom I wish you would talk to. She belongs to one of the most respecta- ble families in San Francisco, is cultivated, refined, and has been the center of a large and loving cir- cle. Her monomania is spiritual despair. She thinks she has committed the unpardonable sin. There she is now. I will introduce you to her. Talk with her, and comfort her if you can." She was a tall, well-formed woman in black, with all the marks of refinement in her dress and bear- ing. She was walking the floor to and fro with rapid steps, wringing her hands, and moaning pit- eously. Indescribable anguish was in her face it was a hopeless face. It haunted my thoughts THE CALIFORNIA MAD-HOUSE. 33 for many days, and it is vividly before me as I write now. The kind physician introduced me, and left the apartment. There is a sacredness about such an interview that inclines me to veil its details. " I am willing to talk with you, sir, and appreciate your motive, but I understand my situation. I have committed the unpardonable sin, and I know there is no hope for me." With the earnestness excited by intense sympa- thy, I combated her conclusion, and felt certain that I could make her see and feel that she had given way to an illusion. She listened respectfully to all I had to say, and then said again : "I know my situation. I denied my Saviour after all his goodness to me, and he has left me forever." There was the frozen calmness of utter despair in look and tone. I left her as I found her. "I will introduce you to another woman, the opposite of the poor lady you have just seen. She thinks she is a queen, and is perfectly harmless. You must be careful to humor her illusion. There she is let me present you." She was a woman of immense size, enormously fat, with broad red face, and a self-satisfied smirk, dressed in some sort of flaming scarlet stuff, pro- fusely tinseled all over, making a gorgeously ridic- 3 34 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. ulous effect. She received me with a mixture of mock dignity and smiling condescension, and sur- veying herself admiringly, she asked : "How do you like my dress?" It was not the first time that royalty had shown itself not above the little weaknesses of human nature. On being told that her apparel was in- deed magnificent, she was much pleased, and drew herself up proudly, and was a picture of ecstatic vanity. Are the real queens as happy? When they lay aside their royal robes for their grave- clothes, will not the pageantry which was the glory of their lives seem as vain as that of this tin- seled queen of the mad-house ? Where is happiness, after all? Is it in the circumstances, the external conditions? or, is it in the mind? Such were the thoughts passing through my mind, when a man approached with a violin. Every eye brightened, and the queen seemed to thrill with pleasure in every nerve. " This is the only way we can get some of them to take any exercise. The music rouses them, and they will dance as long as they are permitted to do so." The fiddler struck up a lively tune, and the queen, with marvelous lightness of step and ogling glances, ambled up to a tall, raw-boned Methodist preacher, who had come with me, and invited him THE CALIFORNIA MAD-HOUSE. 35 to dance with her. The poor parson seemed sadly embarrassed, as her manner was very pressing, but he awkwardly and confusedly declined, amid the titters of all present. It was a singular spectacle, that dance of the mad-women. The most striking figure on the floor was the queen. Her great size, her brilliant apparel, her astonishing agility, the perfect time she kept, the bows, the smiles and blandishments, she bestowed on an imaginary part- ner, were indescribably ludicrous. Now and then, in her evolutions, she would cast a momentary re- proachful glance at the ungallant clergyman who had refused to dance with feminine royalty, and who stood looking on with a sheepish expression of face. He was a Kentuckian, and lack of gal- lantry is not a Kentucky trait. During the session of the Annual Conference at Stockton, in 1859 or 1860, the resident physician invited me to preach to the inmates of the Asylum on Sunday afternoon. The novelty of the service, which was announced in the daily papers, attracted a large number of visitors, among them the greater part of the preachers. The day was one of those bright, clear, beautiful October days, peculiar to California, that make you think of heaven. I stood on the steps, and the hundreds of men and women stood below me, with their upturned faces. Among them were old men crushed by sorrow, and 36 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. old men ruined by vice ; aged women with faces that seemed to plead for pity, women that made you shrink from their unwomanly gaze ; lion-like young men, made for heroes but caught in the devil's trap and changed into beasts; and boys whose looks showed that sin had already stamped them with its foul insignia, and burned into their souls the shame which is to be one of the elements of its eternal punishment. A less impressible man than I would have felt moved at the sight of that throng of bruised and broken creatures. A hymn was read, and when Burnet, Kelsay, Neal, and others of the preachers, struck up an old tune, voice after voice joined in the melody until it swelled into a mighty volume of sacred song. I noticed that the faces of many were wet with tears, and there was an indescribable pathos in their voices. The pitying God, amid the rapturous hal- leluiahs of the heavenly hosts, bent to listen to the music of these broken harps. This text was an- nounced, My peace I give unto you; and the ser- mon began. Among those standing nearest to me was " Old Kelley," a noted patient, whose monomania was the notion that he was a millionaire, and who spent most of his time in drawing checks on imaginary deposits for vast sums of money. I held one of his checks for a round million, but it has never yet THE CALIFORNIA MAD-HOUSE. 37 been cashed. The old man pressed up close to me, seeming to. feel that the success of the service somehow depended on him. I had not more than fairly begun my discourse, when he broke in : " That 's Daniel Webster ! " I don't mind a judicious "Amen," but this put me out a little. I resumed my remarks, and was getting. another good start, when he again broke in enthusiastically: "Henry Clay!" The preachers standing "around me smiled I think I heard one or two of them titter. I could not take my eyes from Kelley, who stood with open mouth and beaming countenance, waiting for me to go on. He held me with an evil fascination. I did go on in a louder voice, and in a sort of des- peration ; but again my delighted hearer exclaimed : "Calhoun!" "Old Kelley" spoiled that sermon, though he meant kindly. He died not long afterward, gloat- ing over his fancied millions to the last. "If you have steady nerves, come with me and I will show you the worst case we have a woman half tigress, and half devil." Ascending a stair-way, I was led to an angle of the building assigned to the patients whose violence required them to be kept in close confine- ment. 38 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. "Hark! don't you hear her? She is in one of her paroxysms now." The sounds that iss.ued from one of the cells were like nothing I had ever heard before. They were a series of unearthly, fiendish shrieks, inter- mingled with furious imprecations, as of a lost spirit in an ecstasy of rage and fear. The face that glared upon me through the iron grating was hideous, horrible. It was that of a woman, or of what had been a woman, but was now a wreck out of which evil passion had stamped all that was womanly or human. I involuntarily shrunk back as I met the glare of those fiery eyes, and caught the sound of words that made me shud- der. I never suspected myself of being a coward, but I felt glad that the iron bars of the cell against which she dashed herself were strong. I had read of Furies one was now before me. The bloated, gin-inflamed face, the fiery-red, wicked eyes, the swinish chin, the tangled coarse hair falling around her like writhing snakes, the tiger-like clutch of her dirty fingers, the horrible words the picture was sickening, disgust for the time almost extin- guishing pity. "She was the keeper of a beer -saloon in San Francisco, and led a life of drunkenness and li- centiousness until she broke down, and she was brought here." THE CALIFORNIA MAD-HOUSE. 39 "Is there any hope of her restoration ? " "I fear not nothing short of a miracle can re-tune an instrument so fearfully broken and jangled." I thought of her out of whom were cast the seven devils, and of Him who came to seek and to save the lost, and resisting the impulse that prompted me to hurry away from the sight and hearing of this lost woman, I tried to talk with her, but had to retire at last amid a volley of such language as I hope never to hear from a woman's lips again. " Listen! Did you ever hear a sweeter voice than that?" I had heard the voice before, and thrilled under its power. It was a female voice of wonderful richness and volume, with a touch of something in it that moved you strangely a sort of intensity that set your pulses to beating faster, while it en- tranced you. The whole of the spacious grounds were flooded with the melody, and the passing teamsters on the public highway would pause and listen with wonder and delight. The singer was a fair young girl, with dark auburn hair, large brown eyes, that were at times dreamy and sad, and then again lit up with excitement, as her moods changed from sad to gay. "She will sit silent for hours gazing listlessly out of the window, and then all at once break forth 40 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. into a burst of song so sweet and thrilling that the other patients gather near her and listen in rapt silence and delight. Sometimes at a dead hour of the night her voice is heard, and then it seems that she is under a special afflatus she seems to be in- spired by the very soul of music, and her songs, wild and sad, wailing and rollicking, by turns, but all exquisitely sweet, fill the long night-hours with their melody." The shock caused by the sudden death of her betrothed lover overthrew her reason, and blighted her life. By the mercy of God, the love of music and the gift of song survived the wreck of love and of reason. This girl's voice, pealing forth upon the still summer evening air, is mingled with my last recollection of Stockton and its refuge for the doubly miserable who are doomed to death in life. SAN QUENTIN. " T WANT you to go with me over to San Quentin L next Thursday, and preach a thanksgiving- sermon to the poor fellows in the State-prison." On the appointed morning, I met our party at the Vallejo-street wharf, and we were soon steam- ing on our way. Passing under the guns of Fort Alcatraz, past Angel Island why so called I know not, as in early days it was inhabited not by an- gels but goats only all of us felt the exhilaration of the California sunshine, and the bracing No- vember air, as we stood upon the guards, watching the play of the lazy-looking porpoises, that seemed to roll along, keeping up with the swift motion of the boat in such a leisurely way. The porpoise is a deceiver. As he rolls up to the surface of the water, in his lumbering way, he looks as if he were a huge lump of unwieldy awkw T arduess, floating at random and almost helpless ; but when you come to know him better, you find that he is (41) 42 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. a marvel of muscular power and swiftness. I have seen a "school" of porpoises in the Pacific swimming for hours alongside one of our fleetest ocean-steamers, darting a few yards ahead now and then, as if by mere volition, cutting their way through the water with the directness of an arrow. The porpoise is playful at times, and his favorite game is a sort of leap-frog. A score or more of the creatures, seemingly full of fun and excite- ment, will chase one another at full speed, throw- ing themselves from the water and turning somer- saults in the air, the water boiling with the agitation, and their huge bodies flashing in the light. You might almost imagine that they had found some- thing in the sea that had made them drunk, or that they had inhaled some sort of piscatorial an- aesthetic. But here we are at our destination. The bell rings, we round to, and land. At San Quentin nature is at her best, and man at his worst. Against the rocky shore the waters of the bay break in gentle plashings when the winds are quiet. When the gales from the south- west sweep through the Golden Gate, and set the white caps to dancing to their wild music, the waves rise high, and dash upon the dripping stones with a hoarse roar, as of anger. Beginning a few hundreds of yards from the water's edge, the hills slope up, and up, and up, until they touch the SAN QUEXTLN. 43 base of Tamelpais, on whose dark and rugged summit, four thousand feet above the sea that laves his feet on the west, the rays of the morning sun fall with transfiguring glory while yet the val- ley below lies in shadow. On this lofty pinnacle lin- ger the last rays of the setting sun, as it drops into the bosom of the Pacific. In stormy weather, the mist and clouds roll in from the ocean, and gather in dark masses around his awful head, as if the sea-gods had risen from their homes in the deep, and were holding a council of war amid the battle of the elements ; at other times, after calm, bright days, the thin, soft white clouds that hang about his crest deepen into crimson and gold, and the mountain-top looks as if the angels of God had come down to encamp, and pitched here their pa- vilions of glory. This is nature at San Quentin, and this is Tamelpais as I have looked upon it many a morning and many an evening from my window above the sea at North Beach. The gate is opened for us, and we enter the prison-walls. It is a holiday, and the day is fair and balmy; but the chill and sadness cannot be shaken off, as we look around us. The sunshine seems almost to be a mockery in this place where fel- low-men are caged and guarded like wild beasts, and skulk about with shaved heads, clad in the striped uniform of infamy. Merciful God! is this what 44 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. thy creature man was made for? How ]ong, how long? Seated upon the platform with the prison offi- cials and visitors, I watched my strange auditors as they came in. There were one thousand of them. Their faces were a curious study. Most of them were bad faces. Beast and devil were printed on them. Thick necks, heavy back-heads, and low, square foreheads, were the prevalent types. The least repulsive were those who looked as if they were all animal, creatures of instinct and appetite, good-natured and stupid ; the most repulsive were those whose eyes had a gleam of mingled sensuality and ferocity. But some of these faces that met my gaze were startling they seemed so out of place. One old man with gray hair, pale, sad face, and clear blue eyes, might have passed, in other garb and in other company, for an honored member of the Society of Friends. He had killed a man in a mountain county. If he was indeed a murderer at heart, nature had given him the wrong imprint. My attention was struck by a smooth-faced, handsome young fellow, scarcely of age, who looked as little like a convict as anybody on that platform. He was in for burglary, and had a very bad record. Some came in half laughing, as if they thought the whole affair more a joke than any thing else. The Mex- SAX QUEXTIX. 45 icans, of whom there was quite a number, were sullen and scowling. There is gloom in the Span- ish blood. The irrepressible good nature of sev- eral ruddy-faced Irishmen broke out in sly merri- ment. As the service began, the discipline of the prison showed itself in the quiet that instantly prevailed ; but only a few, who joined in the singing, seemed to feel the slightest interest in it. Their eyes were wandering, and their faces were vacant. They had the look of men who had come to be talked at and patronized, and who were used to it. The prayer that w r as offered was not calcu- lated to banish such a feeling it was dry and cold. I stood up to begin the sermon. Never be- fore had I realized so fully that God's message was to lost men, and for lost men. A mighty tide of pity rushed in upon my soul as I looked down into the faces of my hearers. My eyes filled, and my heart melted within me. I could not speak until after a pause, and only then by great effort. There was a deep silence, and every face was lifted to mine as I announced the text. God had touched my heart and theirs at the start. I read the words slowly : God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to ob~ IK in salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ. Then I said : " My fellow r -men, I come to you to-day with a message from my Father, and your Father in heaven. It is a message of hope. God help me 46 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. to deliver it as I ought! God help you to hear it as you ought! I will not insult you by saying that because you have an extra dinner, a few hours respite from your toil, and a little fresh air and sunshine, you ought to have a joyful thanks- giving to-day. If I should talk thus, you would be ready to ask me how I would like to change places with you. You would despise me, and I would despise myself, for indulging in such cant. Your lot is a hard one. The battle of life has gone against you whether by your own fault or by hard fortune, it matters not, so far as the fact is concerned; this thanksgiving-day finds you locked in here, with broken lives, and wearing the badge of crime. God alone knows the secrets of each throb* bing heart before me, and how it is that you have come to this. Fellow-men, children of my Father in heaven, putting myself for the moment in your place, the bitterness of your lot is real and terrible to ine. For some of you there is no happier pros- pect for this life than to toil within these walls by day, and sleep in yonder cells by night, through the weary, slow-dragging years, and then to die, with only the hands of hired attendants to wipe the death-sweat from your brows; and then to be put in a convict's coffin, and taken up on the hill yonder, and laid in a lonely grave. My God ! this is terrible ! " SAN QUENTIN. 47 An unexpected dramatic effect followed these words. The heads of many of the convicts fell forward on their breasts, as if struck with sudden paralysis. They were the men who were in for life, and the horror of it overcame them. The silence was broken by sobbings all over the room. The officers and visitors on the platform were weeping. The angel of pity hovered over the place, and the glow of human sympathy had melt- ed those stony hearts. A thousand strong men were thrilled with the touch of sympathy, and once more the sacred fountain of tears w r as un- sealed. These convicts were men, after all, and deep down under the rubbish of their natures there was still burning the spark of a humanity not yet extinct. It was wonderful to see the soft- ened expression of their faces. Yes, they were men, after all, responding to the voice of sympathy, which had been but too strange to many of them all their evil lives. Many of them had inherited hard conditions; they were literally conceived in sin and born in iniquity ; they grew up in the midst of vice. For them pure and holy lives were a moral impossibility. Evil with them was hereditary, organic, and the result of association ; it poisoned their blood at the start, and stamped it- self on their features from their cradles. Human law, in dealing with these victims of evil circum- 48 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. stance, can make little discrimination. Society must protect itself, treating a criminal as a crim- inal. But what will God do with them hereafter? Be sure he will do right. Where little is given, little will be required. It shall be better for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment than for Chora- zin and Bethsaida. There is no ruin without rem- edy, except that which a man makes for himself by abusing mercy, and throwing away proffered opportunity. Thoughts like these rushed through the preacher's mind, as he stood there looking in the tear-bedewed faces of these men of crime. A fresh tide of pity rose in his heart, that he felt came from the heart of the all-pitying One. " I do not try to disguise from you, or from myself the fact that for this life your outlook is not bright. But I come to you this day with a message of hope from God our Father. He hath not appointed you to wrath. He loves all his children. He sent his Son to die for them. Jesus trod the paths of pain, and drained the cup of sorrow. He died as a malefactor, for malefactors. He died for me. He died for each one of you. If I knew the most broken, the most desolate-hearted, despairing man before me, who feels that he is scorned of men and forsaken of God, I would go to where he sits and put my hand* on his head, and tell him that God hath not appointed him to wrath, but to obtain SAX QUKXTIN. 49 salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us. I would tell him that his Father in heaven loves him still, loves him more than the mother that bore him. I 'would tell him that all the wrongs and follies of his past life may from this hour be turned into so much capital of a warning experience, and that a million of years from to-day he may be a child of the Heavenly Father, and an heir of glory, having the freedom of the heavens tind the blessedness of everlasting life. O broth- ers, God does love you! Nothing can ruin you but your own despair. .No man has any right to despair who has eternity before him. Eternity? Long, long eternity! Blessed, blessed eternity! That is yours* all of it. It may be a happy eter- nity for each one of you. From this moment you may begin a better life. There is hope for you, and mercy, and love, and heaven. This is the message I bring you warm from a brother's heart, and warm from the heart of Jesus, whose life-blood was poured out for you and me. His loving hand opened the gate of mercy and hope to every man. The proof is that he died for us. O Son of God, take us to thy pitying arms, and lift us up into the light that never, never grows dim into the love that fills heaven and eternity!" As the speaker sunk into his seat, there was a e'.lenoe that was almost painful for a few moments. 4 50 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. Then the pent-up emotion of the men broke forth in sobs that shook their strong frames. Dr. Lucky, the prisoner's friend, made a brief, tearful prayer, and then the benediction was said, and the service was at an end. The men sat still in their seats. As we filed out of the chapel, many hands were extended to grasp mine, holding it with a clinging pressure. I passed out bearing with me the im- pression of an hour I can never .forget ; and the images of those thousand faces are still painted in memory. ' COKBALED." you were corraled last night?" This was the remark of a friend whom I met in the streets of Stockton the morning after my adventure. I knew what the expression meant as applied to cattle, but I, had never heard it be- fore in reference to a human being. Yes, I had been corraled; and this is how it happened: It was in the old days, before there were any railroads in California. With a wiry, clean-limbed pinto horse, I undertook to drive from Sacramento City to Stockton one day. It was in the winter season, and the clouds were sweeping up from the south-west, the snow-crested Sierras hidden from sight by dense masses of vapor boiling at their bases and massed against their sides. The roads were heavy from the effects of previous rains, and the plucky little pinto sweated as he pulled through the long stretches of black adobe mud. A cold 'wind struck me in the face, and the ride was a (51) 52 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. dreary one from the start. But I pushed on con- fidently, having faith in the spotted mustang, de- spite the evident fact that he had lost no little of the spirit with which he dashed out of town at starting. When a, genuine mustang flags, it is a serious business. The hardiness and endurance of this breed of horses almost exceed belief. Toward night a cold rain began to fall, driving in my face with the head-wind. Still many a long mile lay between me and Stockton. Dark came on, and it was dark indeed. The outline of the horse I was driving could not be seen, and the flat country through which I was driving was a great black sea of night. I trusted to the instinct of the horse, and moved on. The bells of a wagon-team meeting me fell upon my ear. I called out, "Halloo there!" "What's the matter?'' answered a heavy voice through the darkness. "Am I in the road to Stockton, and can I get there to-night?" " You are in the road, but you will never find your way such a night as this. It is ten good miles from here ; you have several bridges to cross you had better stop at the first house you come to, about half a mile ahead. I am going to strike camp myself." I thanked my adviser, and went on, hearing the " CORRALED" 53 sound of the tinkling bells, but unable to see any thing. In a little while I saw a light ahead, and was glad to see it. Driving up in front and halt- ing, I repeated the traveler's " halloo" several times, and at last got a response in a hoarse, gruff voice. "I am belated on my way to Stockton, and am cold, and tired, and hungry. Can I get shelter with you for the night?" " You may try it, if you want to," answered the unmusical voice abruptly. In a few moments a man appeared to take the horse, and taking my satchel in hand, I went into the house. The first thing that struck my atten- tion on entering the room w r as a big log-fire, which I was glad to see, for I was wet and very cold. Taking a chair in the corner, I looked around. The scene that presented itself was not reassuring. The main feature of the room was a bar, with an ample supply of barrels, demijohns, bottles, tum- blers, and all the et cceteras. Behind the counter stood the proprietor, a burly fellow with a buffalo- neck, fair skin and blue eyes, with a frightful scar across his left under-jaw and neck; his shirt-collar was open, exposing a huge chest, and his sleeves were rolled up above the elbows. I noticed also that one of his hands was minus all the fingers but the half of uiie the result probably of some 54 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. desperate rencounter. I did not like the appear- ance of my landlord, and he eyed me in a way that led me to fear that he liked my looks as little as I did his ; but the claims of other guests soon divert- ed his attention from me, and I was left to get warm and make further observations. At a table in the middle of the room several hard -looking fellows were betting at cards, amid terrible pro- fanity and frequent drinks of whisky. They cast inquiring and not very friendly glances at me from time to time, once or twice exchanging whispers and giggling. As their play went on, and tumbler after tumbler of whisky was drunk by them, they became more boisterous. Threats were made of using pistols and knives, with which they all seemed to be heavily armed ; and one sottish-look- ing brute actually drew forth a pistol, but was disarmed in no gentle way by the big-limbed land- lord. The profanity and other foul language were horrible. Many of my readers have no conception of the brutishness of men when whisky and Satan have full possession of them. In the midst of a volley of oaths and terrible imprecations by one of the most violent of the set, there was a faint gleam of lingering decency exhibited by one of his companions: "Blast it, Dick, don't cuss so loud that fellow in the corner there is a preacher!" " CORRALED" 55 There was some potency in "the cloth" even there. How lie knew my calling I do not know. The remark directed particular attention to me, and I became unpleasantly conspicuous. Scowling glances were bent upon me by two or three of the ruffians, and one fellow made a profane remark not at all complimentary to my vocation whereat there was some coarse laughter. In the meantime I was conscious of being very hungry. My hun- ger, like that of a boy, is a very positive thing at least it was very much so in those days. Glancing toward the maimed and scarred giant who stood behind the bar, I found he was gazing at me witli a fixed expression. "Can I get something to eat? I am very hun- gry, sir," I said in my blandest tones. "Yes, we've plenty of cold goose, and may be Pete can pick up something else for you if he is sober and in a good humor. Come this way/' I followed him through a narrow passage-way, which led to a long, low- ceiled room, along nearly the whole length of which was stretched a table, around which were placed rough stools for the rough men about the place. Pete, the cook, came in, and the head of the house turned me over to him, and returned to his duties behind the bar. From the noise of the up- roar going on, his presence was doubtless needed. 56 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. Pete set before me a large roasted wild-goose, not badly cooked, with bread, milk, and the inevitable cucumber pickles. The knives and forks were not very bright in fact, they had been subjected to in- fluences promotive of oxidation; and the dishes were not free from bigns of former use. Nothing could be said against the table-cloth there was no table-cloth there. But the goose was fat, brown, and tender ; and a hungry man defers his criticisms until he is done eating, That is what I did. Pete evidently regarded me with curiosity. He was about fifty years of age, and had the look of a man who had come down in the world. His face bore the marks of the effects of strong drink, but it was not a bad face ; it was more weak than wicked. "Are you a preacher?" he asked. ".I thought so," he added, after getting my an- swer to his question. " Of what persuasion are you?" he further inquired. When I told him I was a Methodist, he said quickly and with some warmth : "I was sure of it. This is a rough place for a man of your calling. Would you like some eggs? we've plenty on hand. And may be you would like a cup of coffee," he added, with in- creasing hospitality. I took the eggs, but declined the coffee, not lik- " ComtALED" 57 ing the looks of the cups and saucers, and not car- ing to wait. " I used to be a Methodist myself," said Pete, with a sort of choking in his throat, " but bad luck and bad company have brought me down to this. I have a family in Iowa, a wife and four children. I guess they think I'm dead, and sometimes I wish I was." Pete stood by my chair, actually crying. The sight of a Methodist preacher brought up old times. He told me his story. He had come to California hoping to make- a fortune in a hurry, but had only ill luck from the start. His pros- pectings were always failures, his partners cheated liim, his health broke down, his courage gave way, and he faltered a little, and then spoke it out he took to whisky, and then the worst came. " I have come down to this cooking for a lot of roughs at five dollars a week, and all the whis- ky I want. It would have been better for me if I had died when I was in the hospital at San Andreas." Poor Pete! he had indeed touched bottom. But he had a heart and a conscience still, and my own heart warmed toward my poor backslidden brother. " You are not a lost man yet. You are worth a thousand dead men. You can get out of this, and you must. You must act the part of a brave man, and not be any longer a coward. Bad luck and 58 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. lack of success are a disgrace to no man. There is where you went wrong. It was cowardly to give up and not write to your family, and then take to whisky/' "I know all that, Elder. There is no better lit- tle woman on earth than my wife" Pete choked up again. " You write to her this very night, and go back to her and your children just as soon as you can get the money to pay your way. Act the man, and all will come right yet. I have writing-materials here in my satchel pen, ink, paper, envelopes, stamps, every thing; I am an editor, and go fixed up for writing." The letter was written, I acting as Pete's aman- uensis, he pleading that he was a poor scribe at best, and that his nerves were too unsteady for such work. Taking my advice, he made a clean breast of the whole matter, throwing himself on the for- giveness of the wife whom he had so shamefully neglected, and promising by the help of God to make all the amends possible in time to come. The letter was duly directed, sealed, and stamped, and Pete looked as if a great weight had been lifted from his soul. He had made me a fire in the little stove, saying it was better than the bar- room; in which opinion I was fully agreed. " There is no place for you to sleep to-night with- " COBRALED." 59 out corral ing you with the fellows; there is but one bed-room, and there are fourteen bunks in it." I shuddered at the prospect fourteen bunks in one small room, and those whisky-sodden, loud- cursing card-players to be my room-mates for the night ! "I prefer sitting here by the stove all night," I said; "I can employ most of the time writing, if I can have a light." Pete thought a moment, looked grave, and then said : "That won't do, Elder; those fellows would take offense, and make trouble. Several of them are out now goose-hunting; they will be coming in at all hours from now till day-break, and it won't do for them to find you sitting up here alone. The best thing for you to do is to go in and take one of those bunks ; you need n't take off any thing but your coat and boots, and" here he lowered his voice, looking about him as he spoke " if you have any money about, keep it next to your body." The last words were spoken with peculiar em- phasis. Taking the advice given me, I took up my bag- gage and followed Pete to the room where I was to spend the night. Ugh! it was dreadful. The single window in the room was nailed down, and the air was close and foul. The bunks were damp 60 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. and dirty beyond belief, grimed with foulness, and reeking with ill odors. This was being corraled. I turned to Pete, saying: " I can't stand this I will go back to the kitchen." "You had better follow my advice, Elder," said he very gravely. " I know things about here bet- ter than you do. It's rough, but you had better stand it." And I did; being corraled, I had to stand it. That fearful night! The drunken fellows stag- gered in one by one, cursing and hiccoughing, un- til every bunk was occupied. They muttered oaths in their sleep, and their stertorous breath- ings made a concert fit for Tartarus. The sickening odors of whisky, onions, and tobacco filled the room. I lay there and longed for daylight, which seemed as if it never would come. I thought of the descriptions I had heard and read of hell, and just then the most vivid conception of its horror was to be shut up forever with the aggregated im- purity of the universe. By contrast I tried to think of that city of God into which, it is said, "there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomi- nation, or maketh a lie; but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life." But thoughts of heaven did not suit- the situation; it was more sug- "CORRALED." 61 gestive of the other place. The horror of being shut up eternally in hell as the companion of lost spirits was intensified by the experience and re- flections of that night when I Avas corraled. Day came at last. I rose with the first streaks of the dawn, and not having much toilet to make, I was soon out-of-doors. Never did I breathe the pure, fresh air with such profound pleasure and gratitude. I drew deep inspirations, and, opening my coat and vest, let the breeze that swept up the valley blow upon me unrestricted. How bright, was the face of nature, and how sweet her breath after the sights, sounds, and smells of the night ! I did not wait for breakfast, but had my pinto and buggy brought out, and, bidding Pete good-by, hurried on to Stockton. "So you were corraled last night?" was the re- mark of a friend, quoted at the beginning of this true sketch. "What was the name .of the propri- etor of the house?" I gave him the name. "DaveW !" he exclaimed with fresh aston- ishment. "That is the roughest place in the San Joaquin Valley. Several men have been killed and robbed there during the last two or three years." I hope Pete got back safe to his wife and chil- dren in Iowa; and I hope I may never be corraled again. THE KEBLOOMING. IT is now more than twenty years since the morning a slender youth of handsome face and modest mien carne into my office on the corner of Montgomery and Clay streets, San Francisco. He was the son of a preacher well known in Missouri and California, a man of rare good sense, caustic wit, and many eccentricities. The young man be- came an attache of my newspaper-office and an in- mate of my home. He was as fair as a girl, and refined in his taste and manners. A genial taci- turnity, if the expression may be allowed, marked his bearing in the social circle. Everybody had a kind feeling and a good word for the quiet, bright- faced youth. In the discharge of his duties in the office he was punctual and trustworthy, showing nt only industry but unusual aptitude for business. It was with special pleasure that I learned that he was turning his thoughts to the subject of religion. During the services in the little Pine-street church (62) THE EEBLOOMING. 63 he would sit with thoughtful face, and not seldom with moistened eyes. He read the Bible and prayed in secret. I was not surprised when he came to me one day and opened his heart. The great crisis in his life had come. God was speak- ing to his soul, and he was listening to his voice. The uplifted cross drew him, and he yielded to the gentle attraction. We prayed together, and hence- forth there was a new and sacred bond that bound us to each other. I felt that I was a witness to the most solemn transaction that can take place on earth the wedding of -a soul to a heavenly faith. Soon thereafter he went to Virginia, to at- tend college. There he united with the Church. His letters to me were full of gratitude and joy. It was the blossoming of his spiritual life, and the air was full of its fragrance, and the earth was Hooded with glory. A pedestrian-tour among the Virginia hills brought him into communion with Nature at a time when it was rapture to drink in its beauty and its grandeur. The light kindled within his soul by the touch of the Holy Spirit transfigured the scenery upon which he gazed, and the glory of God shone round about the young student in the flush and blessedness of his first love. O blessed days! O days of brightness, and sweetness, and rapture! The soul is then in its blossoming -time, and all high enthusiasms, all 64 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. bright dreams, all thrilling joys, are realities which inwork themselves into the consciousness, to be for- gotten never; to remain with us as prophecies of the eternal spring-time that awaits the true-hearted bu the hills of God beyond the grave, or as accus- ing voices charging us with the murder of our dead ideals! Amid the dust and din of the battle in after-years we turn to this radiant spot in our journey with smiles or tears, according as we have been true or false to the impulses, aspirations, and purposes inspired within us by that first, and brightest, and nearest manifestation of God. Such a season is as natural to every life as the April buds and June roses are to fprest and garden. The spring-time of some lives is deferred by impropi- tious circumstance to the time when it should be glowing with autumnal glory, and rich in the fruit- age of the closing year. The life that does not blossom into religion in youth may have light at noon, and peace at sunset, but misses the morning glory on the hills, and the dew that sparkles on grass and flower. The call of God to the young to seek him early is the expression of a true psy- chology no less than of a love infinite in its depth and tenderness. His college-course finished, my young friend re- turned to California, and in one of its beautiful valley-towns he entered a law-office, with a view THE REBLOOMING. 65 to prepare himself for the legal profession. Here he was thrown into daily association with a little knot of skeptical lawyers. As is often the case, their moral obliquities ran parallel with their er- rors in opinion. They swore, gambled genteelly, and drank. It is not strange that in this icy at- mosphere the growth of my young friend in the Christian life was stunted. Such influences are like the dreaded north wind that at times sweeps over the valleys of California in the spring and early summer, blighting and withering the vegeta- tion it does not kill. The brightness of his hope was dimmed, and his soul knew the torture of doubt a torture that is always keenest to him who allows himself to sink in the region of fogs after he has once stood upon the sunlit summit of faith. Just at this crisis, a thing little in itself deepened the shadow that was falling upon his life. A personal misunderstanding with the pastor kept him from attending church. Thus he lost, the most effectual defense against the assaults that were being made upon his faith and hope, in being separated from the fellowship and cut off from the activities of the Church of God. Have you not noted these malign coincidences in life? There are times when it seems that the tide of events sets against us when, like the princely sufferer of the land of Uz, every messenger that crosses the 66 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. threshold brings fresh tidings of ill, and our whole destiny seems to be rushing to a predoomed perdi- tion. The worldly call it bad luck; the supersti- tious call it fate; the believer in God calls it by another name. Always of a delicate constitution, my friend now exhibited symptoms of serious pul- monary disease. It was at that time the fashion in California to prescribe whisky as a specific for that class of ailments. It is possible that there is virtue in the prescription, but I am sure of one thing, namely, that if consumption diminished, drunkenness increased ; if fewer died of phthisis, more died of delirium tremens. The physicians of California have sent a host of victims raving and gibbering in drunken frenzy or idiocy down to death and hell ! I have reason to believe that rny friend inherited a constitutional weakness at this point. As flame to tinder, was the medicinal whisky to him. It grew upon him rapidly, and soon this cloud overshadowed all his life. He struggled hard to break the serpent-folds that were tightening around him ; but the fire that had been kindled seemed to be quenchless. An uncontrolled evil passion is hell-fire. He writhed in its burn- ings in an agony that could be understood only by such as knew how almost morbidly sensitive was his nature, and how vital was his conscience. I became a pastor in the town where he lived, and THE REBLOOMING. 67 renewed my association with him as far as I could. But there was a constraint unlike the old times. When under the influence of liquor, he would pass me in the streets with his head down, a deeper flush mantling his cheek as he hurried by with unsteady step. Sometimes I met him staggering homeward through a back street, hiding from the gaze of men. He was at first shy of me when sober, but gradually the constraint wore off, and he seemed disposed to draw nearer to me, as in the old days. His struggle went on, days of drunkenness follow- ing weeks of soberness, his haggard face after each debauch wearing a look of unspeakable weariness and wretchedness. One of the lawyers who had led him into the mazes of doubt a man of large and versatile gifts, whose lips were touched with a noble and persuasive eloquence sunk deeper and deeper into the black depths of drunkenness, until the tragedy ended in a horror that lessened the gains of the saloons for at least a few days. He was found dead in his bed one morning in a pool of blood, his throat cut by his own guilty hand. My friend had married a lovely girl, and the cottage in which they lived was one of the cosiest, and the garden in front was a little paradise of neatness and beauty. Ah! I must drop a veil over a part of this true tale. All along I have written under half protest, the image of a sad, 68 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. wistful face rising at times between my eyes and the sheet on which these words are traced. They loved each other tenderly and deeply, and both were conscious of the presence of the devil that was turning their heaven into hell. " Save him, Doctor, save him ! He is the noblest of men, and the tenderest, truest husband. He loves you, and he will let you talk to him. Save him, O save him ! Help me to pray for him ! My heart will break ! " Poor child ! her loving heart was indeed break- ing; and her fresh young life was crushed under a weight of grief and shame too heavy to be borne. What he said to me in the interviews held in his sober intervals I have not the heart to repeat now. He still fought against his enemy ; he still buffeted the billows that were going over him, though with feebler stroke. When their little child died, her tears fell freely, but he was like one stunned. Stony and silent he stood and saw the little grave filled up, and rode away tearless, the picture of hopelessness. By a coincidence, after my return to San Fran- cisco, he came thither, and again became my neigh- bor at North Beach. I went up to see him one evening. He was very feeble, and it was plain that the end was not far off. At the first glance I saw that a great change had taken place in him. THE REBLOOMING. 69 He had found his lost self. The strong drink was shut out from him, and he was shut in with his better thoughts and with God. His religious life rebloomed in wondrous beauty and sweetness. The blossoms of his early joy had fallen off, the storms had torn its branches and stripped it of its foliage, but its root had never perished, because he had never ceased to struggle for deliverance. Aspira- tion and hope live or die together in the human soul. The link that bound my friend to God was never wholly sundered. His better nature clung to the better way with a grasp that never let go altogether. "O Doctor, I am a wonder to myself! It does seem to me that God has given back to me every good thing I possessed in the bright and blessed past. It has all come back to me. I see the light and feel the joy as I did when I first entered the new life. O it is wonderful ! Doctor, God never gave me up, and I never ceased to yearn for his mercy and love, even in the darkest season of my unhappy life." His very face had recovered its old look, and his voice its old tone. There could be no doubt of it his soul had rebloomed in the life of God. The last night came they sent for me with the message, " Come quickly ! he is dying." 70 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. I found him with that look which I have seen on the faces of others who were nearing death a radiance and a rapture that awed the beholder. O solemn, awful mystery of death ! I have stood in its presence in every form of terror and of sweetness, and in every case the thought has been impressed upon me that it was a passage into the Great Realities. "Doctor/' he said, smiling, and holding my hand ; " I had hoped to be with you in your office again, as in the old days not as a business ar- rangement, but just to be with you, and revive old memories, and to live the old life over again. But that cannot be, and I must wait till we meet in the world of spirits, whither I go before you. It seems to be growing dark. I cannot see your face hold my hand. I am going going. I am on the waves on the waves ." The radiance Avas still upon his face, but the hand I held no longer clasped mine the wasted form was still. It was the end. \He was launched upon the Infinite Sea for the endless voyage, j THE EMPEEOK NOBTON. THAT was his title. He wore it with an air that was a strange mixture of the mock- heroic and the pathetic. He was mad on this one point, and strangely shrewd and well-informed on almost every other. Arrayed in a faded-blue uni- form, with brass buttons and epaulettes, wearing a cocked-hat with an eagle's feather, and at times with a rusty sword at his side, he was a conspicu- ous figure in the streets of San Francisco, and a regular habitue of all its public places. In person he was stout, full-chested, though slightly stooped, with a large head heavily coated with bushy black hair, an aquiline nose, and dark gray eyes, whose mild expression added to the benignity of his face. On the end of his nose grew a tuft of long hairs, which he seemed to prize as a natural mark of royalty, or chieftainship. Indeed, there was a popular legend afloat that he was of true royal blood a stray Bourbon, or something of the sort. (71) 72 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. His speech was singularly fluent and elegant. The -Emperor was one of the celebrities that no visitor failed to see. It is said that his mind was un- hinged by a sudden loss of fortune in the early days, by the treachery of a partner in trade. The sudden blow was deadly, and the quiet, thrifty, affable man of business became a wreck. By nothing is the inmost quality of a man made more manifest than by the manner in which he meets misfortune. One, when the sky darkens, having strong impulse and weak will, rushes into suicide ; another, with a large vein of cowardice, seeks to drown the sense of disaster in strong drink; yet another, tortured in every fiber of a sensitive or- ganization, flees from the scene of his troubles and the faces of those that know him, preferring exile to shame. The truest man, when assailed by sud- den calamity, rallies all the reserved forces of a splendid manhood to meet the shock, and, like a good bhip, lifting itself from the trough of the swelling sea, mounts the wave and rides on. It was a curious idiosyncrasy that led this man, when fortune and reason were swept away at a stroke, to fall back upon this imaginary imperialism. The nature that could thus, when the real fabric of life was wrecked, construct such another by the exer- cise of a disordered imagination, must have been originally of a gentle and magnanimous type. The THE EMPEROR NORTON. 73 broken fragments of mind, like those of a statue, reveal the quality of the original creation. It may be that he was happier than many who have worn^ real crowns. Napoleon at Chiselhurst, or his greater uncle at St. Helena, might have been gain- er by exchanging lots with this man, who had the inward joy of conscious greatness without its bur- den and its perils. To all public places he had free access, and no pageant was complete without his presence. From time to time he issued procla- mations, signed "Norton I.," which the lively San Francisco dailies were always ready to print con- spicuously in their columns. The style of these proclamations was stately, the royal first person plural being used by him with all gravity and dig- nity. Ever and anon, as his uniform became di- lapidated or ragged, a reminder of the condition of the imperial wardrobe would be given in one or more of the newspapers, and then in a few days he would appear in a new suit. He had the entree of all the restaurants, and he lodged nobody knew where. It was said that he was cared for by mem- . bers of the Freemason Society to which he be- longed at the time of his fall. I saw him often in my congregation in the Pine-street church, along in 1858, and into the sixties. He was a respectful and attentive listener to preaching. On the oc- casion of one of his first visits he spoke to me, 74 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. after the service, saying, in a kind and patronizing tone: " I think it my duty to encourage religion and morality by showing myself at church, and to avoid jealousy I attend them all in turn." He loved children, and would come into the Sunday-school, and sit delighted with their sing- ing. When, in distributing the presents on a Christmas-tree, a necktie was handed him as the gift of the young ladies, he received it with much satisfaction, making a kingly bow of gracious ac- knowledgment. Meeting him one day, in the spring-time, holding my little girl by the hand, he paused, looked at the child's bright face, and tak- ing a rose-bud from his button-hole, he presented it to her with a manner so graceful, and a smile so benignant, as to show that under the dingy blue uniform there beat the heart of a gentleman. He kept a keen eye on current events, and sometimes expressed his views with great sagacity. One day he stopped me on the street, saying "I have just read the report of the political sermon of Dr. (giving the name of a noted sensational preacher, who was in the habit, at times, of discussing politics from his pulpit). I disapprove political - preaching. What do you think?" I expressed my cordial concurrence. THE EMPEROR NORTON. 75 " I will put a stop to it. The preachers must stop preaching politics, or they must all come into one State Church. I will at once issue a decree to that effect." For some unknown reason, that decree never was promulgated. After the war, he took a deep interest in the re- construction of the Southern States. I met him one day on Montgomery street, when he asked me in a tone and with a look of earnest solicitude: "Do you hear any complaint or dissatisfaction concerning me from the South?" I gravely answered in the negative. "I was for keeping the country undivided, but I have the kindest feeling for the Southern people, and will see that they are protected in all their rights. Perhaps if I were to go among them in person, it might have a good effect. What do you think?" I looked at him keenly as I made some suitable reply, but could see nothing in his expression but simple sincerity. He seemed to feel that he was indeed the father of his people. George Washing- ton himself could not have adopted a more pater- nal tone. Walking along the street behind the Emperor one day, my curiosity was a little excited by see- ing him thrust his hand into the hip-pocket of his 76 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. blue trousers with sudden energy. The hip-pocket, by the way, is a modern American stupidity, asso- ciated in the popular mind with rowdyism, pistol- shooting, and murder. Hip -pockets should be abolished wherever there are courts of law and civilized men and women. But what was the Emperor after? Withdrawing his hand just as I overtook him, the mystery was revealed it grasped a thick Bologna sausage, which he began to eat with unroyal relish. It gave me a shock, but he was not the first royal personage who has exhibited low tastes and carnal hankerings. He was seldom made sport of or treated rudely. I saw him on one occasion when a couple of pass- ing hoodlums jeered at him. He turned and gave them a look so full of mingled dignity, pain, and surprise, that the low fellows were abashed, and uttering a forced laugh, with averted faces they hurried on. . The presence that can bring shame to a San Francisco hoodlum must indeed be kingly, or in some way impressive. In that genus the beastliness and devilishness of American city-life reach their lowest denomination. When the bru- tality of the savage and the lowest forms of civil- ized vice are combined, human nature touches bottom. The Emperor never spoke of his early life. The veil of mystery on this point increased the popu- THE EMPEROR NORTON. 77 lar curiosity concerning him, and invested him with something of a romantic interest. There was one thing that excited his disgust and indignation. The Bohemians of the San Francisco press got into the practice of attaching his name to their satires and hits at current follies, knowing that the well-known " Norton I." at the end would in- sure a reading. This abuse of the liberty of the press he denounced with dignified severity, threat- ening extreme measures unless it were stopped. But nowhere on earth did the press exhibit more audacity, or take a wider range, and it would have required a sterner heart and a stronger hand than that of Norton I. to put a hook into its jaws. The end of all human grandeur, real or imagi- nary, comes at last. The Emperor became thinner and more stooped as the years passed. The humor of his hallucination retired more and more into the background, and its pathetic side came out more strongly. His step was slow and feeble, and there was that look in his eyes so often seen in the old and sometimes in the young, just before the great change comes a rapt, far-away look, sug- gesting that the invisible is coming into view, the shadows vanishing and the realities appearing. The familiar face and form were missed on the streets, and it was known that he was dead. He had gone to his lonely lodging, and quietly lain 78 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. down and died. The newspapers spoke of him with pity and respect, and all San Francisco took time, in the midst of its roar -and -rush fever of perpetual excitement, to give a kind thought to the dead man who had passed over to the life where all delusions are laid aside, where the mys- tery of life shall be revealed, and where we shall see that through all its tangled web ran the golden thread of mercy. His life was an illusion, and the thousands who sleep with him in Lone Mount- ain waiting the judgment-day were his brothers. CAMILLA CAIN. SHE was from Baltimore, and had the fair face and gentle voice peculiar to most Baltimore women. Her organization was delicate but elas- tic one of the sort that bends easily, but is hard to break. In her eyes was that look of wistful sadness so often seen in holy women of her type. Timid as a fawn, in the class-meeting she spoke of her love to Jesus and delight in his service in a voice low and a little hesitating, but with strangely thrilling effect. The meetings were sometimes held in her own little parlor in the cottage on Dupont street, and then we always felt that we had met where the Master himself was a constant and wel- come guest. She was put into the crucible. For more than fifteen years she suffered unceasing and intense bodily pain. Imprisoned in her sick-cham- I" er, she fought her long, hard battle. The pain- istorted limbs lost their use, the patient face axed more wan, and the traces of agony were on "" 80 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. it always; the soft, loving eyes were often tear- washed. The fires were hot, and they burned on through the long, long years without respite. The mystery of it all was too deep for me; it was too deep for her. But somehow it does seem that the highest suffer most: The sign of rank in Nature Is capacity for pain, And the anguish of the singer Makes the sweetness of the strain. The victory of her faith was complete. If the inevitable whyf sometimes was in her thought, no shadow of distrust ever fell upon her heart. Her sick-room was the quietest, brightest spot in all the city. How often did I go thither weary and faint with the roughness of the way, and leave feeling that I had heard the voices and inhaled the odors of paradise! A little talk, a psalm, and then a prayer, during which the room seemed to be filled with angel-presences; after which the thin, pale face was radiant with the light reflected from our Im manual's face. I often went to see her, not so much to convey as to get a blessing. Her heart was kept fresh as a rose of Sharon in the dew of the morning. The children loved to be near her; and the pathetic face of the dear crippled boy, the pet of the family, was always brighter in her pres- ence. Thrice death came into the home-circle with CAMILLA CAIN. 81 its shock and mighty wrench ings of the heart, but the victory was not his, but hers. Neither death nor life could separate her from the love of her Lord. She was one of the elect. The elect are those who know, having the witness in themselves She was conqueror of both life with its pain and its weariness, death with its terror and its tragedy. She did not endure merely, she triumphed. Borne on the wings of a mighty faith, her soul was at times lifted above all sin, and temptation, and pain, and the sweet, abiding peace swelled into an ec- stasy of sacred joy. Her swimming eyes and rapt look told the unutterable secret. She has crossed over the narrow stream on whose margin she lingered so long ; and there was joy on the other side when the gentle, patient, holy Camilla Cain joined the glorified throng. O though oft depressed and lonely, All my fears are laid aside, If I but remember only Such as these have lived and died ! LONE MOUNTAIN. THE sea-wind sweeps over the spot at times in gusts like the frenzy of hopeless grief, and at times in sighs as gentle as those heaved by aged sorrow in sight of eternal rest- The voices of the great city come faintly over the sand-hills, with subdued murmur like a lullaby to the pale sleepers that are here lying low. When the winds are quiet, which is not often, the moan of the mighty Pacific can be heard day or night, as if it voiced in muffled tones the unceasing woe of a world under the reign of death. Westward, on the summit of a higher hill, a huge cross stretches its arms as if embracing the living and the dead the first object that catches the eye of the weary voyager as he nears the Golden Gate, the last that meets his lingering gaze as he goes forth upon the great waters. O sacred emblem of the faith with which we launch upon life's stormy main of the hope that assures that we shall reach (82) LONE MOUNTAIN. 83 the port when the night and the tempest are past! When the winds are high, the booming of the breakers on the cliff sounds as if nature were im- patient of the long, long delay, and had antici- pated the last thunders that wake the sleeping dead. On a clear day, the blue Pacific, stretching away beyond the snowy surf-line, symbolizes the shoreless sea that rolls through eternity. The Cliff House road that runs hard by is the chief drive of the pleasure -seekers of San Fraji Cisco. Gayety, and laughter, and heart-break, and tears, meet on the drive; the wail of agony and the laugh of gladness mingle as the gay crowds dash by the slow-moving procession on its way to the grave. How often have I made that slow, sad jour- ney to Lone Mountain a Via Doloroso to many who have never been the same after they had gone thither, and coming back found the light quenched and the music hushed in their homes! Thither the dead Senator was borne, followed by the tramping thousands, rank on rank, amid the booming of min- ute-guns, the tolling of bells, the measured tread of plumed soldiers, and the roll of drums. Thither was carried, in his rude coffin, the " unknown man " found dead in the streets, to be buried in potter's-field. Thither was borne the hard and grasping idolater of riches, who clung to his coin, and clutched for more, until he was dragged away 84 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. by the one hand that was colder and stronger than his own. Here was brought the little child, out of whose narrow grave there blossomed the begin- nings of a new life to the father and mother, who in the better life to come will be found among the blessed company of those whose only path to par- adise lay through the valley of tears. Here were brought the many wanderers, whose last earthly wish was to go back home, on the other side of the mountains, to die, but were denied by the stern messenger who never waits nor spares. And here was brought the mortal part of the aged disci-* pie of Jesus, in whose dying -chamber the two worlds met, and whose death-throes were demon^ strably the birth of a child of God into the life of glory. The first time I ever visited the place was to at' tend the funeral of a suicide. The dead man I had known in Virginia, when I was a boy. He was a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, and when I first knew him he was the captain of a famous volunteer company. He was as hand- some as a picture the admiration of the girls, and the envy of the young men of his native town. He was among the first who rushed to California on the discovery of gold, and of all the heroic men who gave early California its best bias none was knightlier than this handsome Virginian; LONE MOUNTAIN, 85 none won stronger friends, or had brighter hopes. He was the first State Senator from San Francisco. He had the magnetism that won and the nobility that retained the love of men. Some men push themselves forward by force of intellect or of will this man was pushed upward by his friends be- cause he had their hearts. He married a beauti- ful woman, whom he loved literally unto death. I shall not recite the whole story. God only knows it fully, and he will judge righteously. There was trouble, rage, and tears, passionate partings and penitent reunions the old story of love dying a lingering yet violent death. On the fatal morning I met him on Washington street. I noticed his manner was hurried and his look peculiar, as I gave him the usual salutation and a hearty grasp of the hand. As he moved away, I looked after him with mingled admiration and pity, until his faultless figure turned the corner and disap- peared. Ten minutes afterward he lay on the floor of his room dead, with a bullet through his brain, his hair dabbled in blood. At the funeral-service, in the little church on Pine street, strong men bowed their heads and sobbed. His wife sat on a front seat, pale as marble and as motionless, her lips compressed as with inward pain ; but I saw no tears on the beautiful face. At the grave the 86 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. body had been lowered to its resting-place, and all being ready, the attendants standing with uncovered heads, I w r as just about to begin the reading of the solemn words of the burial-service, when a tall, blue-eyed man with gray side-whiskers pushed his way to the head of the grave, and in a voice choked with passion, exclaimed: " There lies as noble a gentleman as ever breathed, and he owes his death to that fiend ! " pointing his finger at the wife, who stood pale and silent looking down into the grave. She gave him a look that I shall never forget, and the large steely-blue eyes flashed fire, but she spoke no word. I spoke : " Whatever may be your feelings, or whatever the occasion for them, you degrade yourself by such an exhibition of them here." "That is so, sir; excuse me, my feelings over- came me," he said, and retiring a few steps, he leaned upon a branch of a scrub-oak and sobbed like a child. The farce and the tragedy of real life were here exhibited on another occasion. Among my ac- quaintances in the city were a man and his wife who were singularly mismatched. He was a plain, unlettered, devout man, who in a prayer-meeting or class-meeting talked with a simple-hearted ear- nestness that always produced a happy effect. LONE MOUNTAIN. 87 She was a cultured woman, ambitious and worldly, and so fine-looking that in her youth she must have been a beauty and a belle, They lived in different worlds, and grew wider apart as time passed by he giving himself to religion, she giving her- self to the w r orld. In the gay city circles in which she moved she was a little ashamed of the quiet, humble old man, and he did not feel at home among them. There was no formal separa- tion, but it was known to the friends of the family that for months at a time they never lived together. The fashionable daughters went with their mother. The good old man, after a short sickness, died in great peace. I was sent for to officiate at the funeral-service. There was a large gathering of people, and a brave parade of all the externals of grief, but it was mostly dry-eyed grief, so far as I could see. At the grave, just as the sun that was sinking in the ocean threw his last rays upon the spot, and the first shovelful of earth fell upon the coffin that had been gently lowered to its resting- place, there was a piercing shriek from one of the carriages, followed by the exclamation: "What shall I do? How can I live? I have lost my all! O! O! O!" It was the dead man's wife. Significant glances and smiles were interchanged by the by-standers. Approaching the carriage in w T hich the woman 88 CALIFORNIA S was sitting, I laid my hand upon her arm, looked her in the face, and said : "Hush!" She understood me, and not another sound did she utter. Poor woman ! She was not perhaps as heartless as they thought she was. There was at least a little remorse in those forced exclamations, when she thought of the dead man in the coffin; but her eyes were dry, and she stopped very short. Another incident recurs to me that points in a different direction. One day the most noted gam- bler in San Francisco called on me with the re- quest that I should attend the funeral of one of his friends, who had died the night before. A splendid- looking fellow was this knight of the faro-table. More than six feet in height, with deep chest and perfectly rounded limbs, jet black hair, brilliant black eyes, clear olive complexion, and easy man- ners, he might have been taken for an Italian no- bleman or a Spanish Don. He had a tinge of Cherokee blood in his veins. I have noticed that this cross of the white and Cherokee blood often results in producing this magnificent physical de- velopment. I have known a number of women of this lineage, who were very queens in their beauty and carriage. But this noted gambler was illiter- ate. The only book of which he knew or cared much was one that had fifty-two pages, with twelve LOXE MOCXTAIX. 89 pictures. If he had been educated, he might have handled the reins of government, instead of pre- siding over a nocturnal banking institution. " Parson, can you come to number , on Kear- ney street, to-morrow at ten o'clock, and give us a few words and a prayer over a friend of mine, who died last night?" I promised to be there, and he left. His friend, like himself, had been a gambler. He was from New York. He was well educated, gentle in his manners, and a general favorite with the rough and desperate fellows with whom he as- sociated, but with whom he seemed out of place. The passion for gambling had put its terrible spell on him, and he was helpless in its grasp. But though he mixed with the crowds J;hat thronged the gambling-hells, he was one of them only in the absorbing passion for play. There was a certain respect shown him by all that venturesome frater- nity. He went to Frazer River during the gold excitement. In consequence of exposure and pri- vation in that wild chase after gold, which proved fatal to so many eager adventurers, he contracted pulmonary disease, and came back to San Fran- cisco to die. He had not a dollar. His gambler friend took charge of him, placed him in a good boarding-place, hired a nurse for him, and for nearly a year provided for all his wants. 90 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. "I knew him when he was in better luck/' said he, "and felt like I ought to stand by him." At the funeral there was a large attendance of gamblers, with a sprinkling of women whose social status was not clearly defined to my rnind. During the solemn service there was deep feeling. Down the bronzed face of the noted gambler the tears flowed freely, as he stood near the foot of the coffin. As he listened to those thrilling words from the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, there was a look of wonder, and inquiry, and awe on his face. What were his thoughts ? At the cemetery they low- ered the body tenderly into the grave, listened with uncovered heads to the closing words of the ritual for the burial of the dead, and then dispersed, doubtless going back to the old life, but it may be with some better thoughts. I was sitting in my office at work on the same afternoon, when the tall and portly form of the gambler presented itself. "Parson, you went through that funeral this morning in a way that suited me. Take this, with my thanks." As he spoke he extended his hand with ever so many shining gold pieces twenties, tens, and fives. " No," I said ; "it is contrary to the usage of my Church and to my own taste to take pay for bury- ing a fellow-man." LONE MOUNTAIN. 91 After thoughtfully considering a moment, he said : "That suits me. But would you object to wear- ing a little trinket on your watch-chain, coming from a man like me ?" Seeing his heart was set on it, I told him I would not decline taking such a token of his good-will. The gift of a most beautiful and costly Japanese crystal was the result. I wore it for many years, and when it was lost at Los Angeles, in 1877, I felt quite sorry. It reminded me of an incident that showed the good side of human nature in a circle in which the other side is usually uppermost. My pencil lingers, as I think of this far-away resting-place of the dead, and as I lay it down, I seem to hear the ocean's moan and the dirge of the winds ; and the pale images of many, many faces that have faded away into the darkness of death rise before me, some of them with radiant smiles and beckoning hands. NEWTON. THE miners called him the " Wandering Jew." That was behind his back. To his face they addressed him as Father Newton. He walked his circuits in the northern mines. No pedestrian could keep up with him, as with his long form bending forward, his immense yellow beard that reached to his breast floating in the wind, he strode from camp to cainp with the message of salvation. It took a good trotting - horse to keep pace with him. Many a stout prospector, meeting him on a highway, after panting and straining to bear him. company, had to fall behind, gazing after him in wonder, as he swept out of sight at that marvelous gait. There was a glitter in his eye, and an in- tensity of gaze that left you in doubt whether it was genius or madness that it bespoke. It was, in truth, a little of both. He had genius. Nobody ever talked with him, or heard him preach, with- out finding it out. The rough fellow who offended '(92) NEWTON. 93 him at a camp-meeting, near "Yankee Jim's/' no doubt thought him mad. He was making some disturbance just as the long-bearded old preacher was passing with a bucket of water in his hand. "What do you mean?" he thundered, stopping and fixing his keen eye upon the rowdy. A rude and profane reply was made by the jeer- ing sinner. Quick as thought Newton rushed upon him with flashing eye and uplifted bucket, a picture of fiery wrath that was too much for the thoughtless scof- fer, who fled in terror amid the laughter of the crowd. The vanquished son of Belial had no sympathy from anybody, and the plucky preacher was none the less esteemed because he was ready to defend his Master's cause with carnal weapons. The early Californians left scarcely any path of gin unexplored, and were a sad set of sinners, but for virtuous women and religion they never lost their reverence. Both w r ere scarce in those days, when it seemed to be thought that gold-digging and the Decalogue could not be made to harmon- ize. The pioneer preachers found that one good woman made a better basis for evangelization than a score of nomadic bachelors. The first accession of a woman to a church in the mines was an epoch in its history. The church in the house of Lydia was the normal type it must be anchored 94 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. to woman's faith, and tenderness, and love, in the home. He visited San Francisco during my pastorate in 1858. On Sunday morning he preached a ser- mon of such extraordinary beauty and power that at the night-service the house was crowded by a curious congregation, drawn thither by the report of the forenoon effort. His subject was the faith of the mother of Moses, and he handled it in his own way. The powerful effect of one passage I shall never forget. It was a description of the mother's struggle, and the victory of her faith in the crisis of her trial. No longer able to protect her child, she resolves to commit him to her God. He drew a picture of her as she sat weaving to- gether the grasses of the little ark of bulrushes, her hot tears falling upon her work, and pausing from time to time with her hand pressed upon her throbbing Ifeart. At length, the little vessel is finished, and she goes by night to the bank of the Nile, to take the last chance to save her boy from the knife of the murderers. Approaching the river's edge, with the ark in her hands, she stoops a moment, but her mother's heart fails her. How can she give up her child? In frenzy of grief she sinks upon her knees, and lifting her gaze to the heavens, passionately prays to the God of Israel. That prayer ! It was the wail of a breaking heart, a cry out of the depths of a mighty agony. But as she prays the inspiration of God enters her soul, her eyes kindle, and her face beams with the holy light of faith. She rises, lifts the little ark, looks upon the sleeping face of the fair boy, prints a long, long kiss upon his brow, and then with a firm step she bends down, and placing the tiny vessel upon the waters, lets it go. "And away it went," he said, "rocking upon the waves as it swept beyond the gaze of the mother's straining eyes. The monsters of the deep were there, the serpent of the Nile was there, behemoth was there, but the child slept as sweetly and as safely upon the rocking waters as if it were nestled upon its mother's breast far God was there!" The effect was electric. The concluding words, "for God was there! " were uttered with upturned face and lifted hands, and in a tone of voice that thrilled the hearers like a sudden clap of thunder from a cloud over whose bosom the lightnings had rippled in gentle flashes, It was true eloquence. In a revival - meeting, on another occasion, he said, in a sermon of terrific power: "O the hard- ness of the human heart! Yonder is a man in hell. He is told that there is one condition on which he may be delivered, and that is that he must get the consent of every good being in the universe. A ray of hope enters his soul, and he 96 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. sets out to comply with the condition. He visits heaven and earth, and finds sympathy and consent from all. All the holy angels consent to his par- don ; all the pure and holy on earth consent; God himself repeats the assurance of his willingness that he may be saved. Even in hell, the devils do not object, knowing that -his misery only heightens theirs. All are willing, all are ready all but one man. He refuses; he will not consent. A monster of cruelty and wickedness, he refuses his simple consent to save a soul from an eternal hell ! Surely a good God and all good beings in the uni- verse would turn in horror from such a monster. Sinner, you are that man! The blessed God, the Holy Trinity, every angel in heaven, every good man and woman on earth, are not only willing but anxious that you shall be saved. But you will not consent. You refuse to come to Jesus that you may have life. You are the murderer of your own immortal soul. You drag yourself down to hell. You lock the door of your own dungeon of eternal despair, and throw the key into the bot-' to in less pit, by rejecting the Lord that bought you with his blood! You will be lost! you must be lost! you ought to be lost!" The words were something like these, but the energy, the passion, the frenzy of the speaker must be imagined. Hard and stubborn hearts were NEWTON. 97 moved under that thrilling appeal. They were made to feel that the preacher's picture of a self- doomed soul described their own cases. There was joy in heaven that night over repenting sinners. This old man of the mountains was a walking encyclopedia of theological and other learning. He owned books that could not be duplicated in California ; and he read them, digested their con- tents, and constantly surprised his cultivated hear- ers by the affluence of his knowledge, and the fer- tility of his literary and classic allusion. He wrote with elegance and force. His weak point was or- thography. He would trip sometimes in the spell- ing of the most common words. His explanation of this weakness was curious: He was a printer in Mobile, Alabama. On one occasion a thirty- two-page book-form of small type was " pied/' " I undertook," said he, "to set that pied form to rights, and, in doing so, the words got so mixed in my brain that my spelling was spoiled forever!" He went to Oregon, and traveled and preached from the Cascade Mountains to Idaho, thrilling, melting, and amusing, in turn, the crowds that came out to hear the wild-looking man whose com- ing was so sudden, and whose going was so rapid, that they were lost in wonder, as if gazing at a meteor that flashed across the sky. He was a Yankee from New Hampshire, who, $9 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. going to Alabama, lost his heart, and was ever afterward intensely Southern in all his convictions and affections. His fiery soul found congenial spirits among the generous, hot-blooded people of the Gulf States, whose very faults had a sort of charm for this impulsive, generous, erratic, gifted, man. He made his way back to his New England hills, where he is waiting for the sunset, often turn- ing a longing eye southward, and now and then sending a greeting to Alabama. THE CALIFORNIA POLITICIAN. THE California politician of the early days was plucky. He had to be so, for faint heart won no votes in those^rough times. One of the Marshalls (Tom or Ned I forget which), at the beginning of a stump -speech one night in the mines, was interrupted by a storm of hisses and execrations from a turbulent crowd of fellows, many of whom were full of whisky. He paused a moment, drew himself up to his full height, coolly took a pistol from his pocket, laid it on the stand before him, and said : " I have seen bigger crowds than this many a time. I want it to be fully understood that I came here to make a speech to-night, and I am going to do it, or else there will be a funeral or two." That touch took with that crowd. The one thing they all believed in was courage. Marshall made one of his grandest speeches, and at the close (90) 100 CALiFdENiA SKETCHES. the delighted miners bore him in triumph from the rostrum. That was a curious exordium of "Uncle Peter Mehan," when he made his first stump-speech at Sonora : " Fellow-citizens, I was born an orphin at a very early period of my life." He was a candidate for supervisor, and the good-natured miners elected him triumphantly. He made a good supervisor, which is another proof that book-learning and ele- gant rhetoric are not essential where there are in- tegrity and native good sense. Uncle Peter never stole any thing, and he was usually on the right side of all questions that claimed the attention of the county-fathers of Tuolumne. In the early days, the Virginians, New Yorkers, and Tennesseans, led in politics. Trained to the stump at home, the Virginians and Tennesseans were ready on all occasions to run a primary- meeting, a convention, or a canvass. There was scarcely a mining-camp in the State in which there was not a leading local politician from one or both of these States. The New Yorker understood all the inside management of party organization, and was up to all the smart tactics developed in the live- ly struggles of parties in the times when Whiggery and Democracy fiercely fought for rule in the Em- pire State. Broderick was a New Yorker, trained by Tammany in its palmy days. He was a chief, THE CALIFORNIA POLITICIAN. 101 who rose from the ranks, and ruled by force of will. Thick-set, strong-limbed, full-chested, with immense driving -power in his back -head, he was an athlete whose stalwart physique w r as of more value to him than the gift of eloquence, or even the power of money. The sharpest lawyers and the richest money-kings alike went down before this uncultured and moneyless man, who domi- nated the clans of San Francisco simply by right of his manhood. He was not without a sort of eloquence of his own. He spoke right to the point, and his words fell like the thud of a shillalah, or rang like the clash of steel. He dealt with the rough elements of politics in an exciting and tur- bulent period of California politics, and was more of a border chief than an Ivanhoe in his modes of warfare. He reached the United States Senate, and in his first speech in that august body he hon- ored his manhood by an allusion to his father, a stone - mason, whose hands, said Broderick, had helped to erect the very walls of the chamber in which he spoke. When a man gets as high as the United States Senate, there is less tax upon hi? magnanimity in acknowledging his humble origin than while he is lower down the ladder. You sel- dom hear a man boast how low he began until he is far up toward the summit of his ambition. Ninety-nine out of every hundred self-made men 102 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. are at first more or less sensitive concerning their low birth ; the hundredth man who is not is a man indeed. Broderick's great rival was Gwin. The men were antipodes in every thing except that they be- longed to the same party. Gwin still lives, the most colossal figure in the history of California. He looks the man he is. Of immense frame, rud- dy complexion, deep-blue eyes that almost blaze when he is excited, rugged yet expressive features, a massive head crowned with a heavy suit of sil- ver-white hair, he is marked by Nature for leader- ship. Common men seem dwarfed in his presence. After he had dropped out of California politics for awhile, a Sacramento hotel-keeper expressed what many felt during a legislative session: "I find my- self looking around for Gwin. I miss the chief." My first acquaintance with Dr. Gwin began with an incident that illustrates the man and the times. It was in 1856. The Legislature was in session at Sacramento, and a United States Senator was to be elected. I was making a tentative movement toward starting a Southern Methodist newspaper, and visited Sacramento on that business. My friend Major P. L. Solomon was there, and took a friendly interest in my enterprise. He proposed to introduce me to the leading men of both parties, and I thankfully availed myself of his courtesy. THE CALIFORNIA POLITICIAN. 103 Among the first to whom he presented me was a noted politician who, both before and since, has enjoyed a national notoriety, and who still lives, and is as ready as ever to talk or fight. His name I need not give. I presented to him my mission, and he seemed embarrassed. "I am with you, of course. My mother was a Methodist, and all my sympathies are with the Methodist Church. I am a Southern man in all my convictions and impulses, and I am a Southern Methodist in principle. But you see, sir, I am a candidate for United States Senator, and sectional feeling is likely to enter into the contest, and if it were known that my name was on your list of sub- scribers, it might endanger my election." He squeezed my arm, told me he loved me and my Church, said he would be happy to see me often, and so forth but he did not give me his name. I left him, saying in my heart, Here is a politician. Going on together, in the corridor we met Gwin. Solomon introduced me, and told him my business. "I am glad to know that you are going to start a Southern Methodist newspaper. No Church can do without its organ. Put me down on your list, and come with me, and I will make all these fellows subscribe. There is not much religion among them, I fear, but we will make them take the paper." 104 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES* This was said in a hearty and pleasant way, and he took me from man to man, until I had gotten more than a dozen names, among them two or three of his most active political opponents. This incident exhibits the two types of the poli- tician, and the two classes of men to be found in all communities the one all " blarney " and self- ishness, the other with real manhood redeeming poor human nature, and saving it from utter con- tempt. The senatorial prize eluded the grasp of both aspirants, but the reader will not be at a loss to guess whose side I was on. Dr. Gwin made a friend that day, and never lost him. It was this sort of fidelity to friends that, when fortune frowned on the grand old Senator after the collapse at Ap- pomattox, rallied thousands of true hearts to his side, among whom were those who had fought him in many a fierce political battle. Broderick and Gwin were both, by a curious turn of political fortune, elected by the same Legislature to the United States Senate. Broderick sleeps in Lone Mountain, and Gwin still treads the stage of his former glory, a living monument of the days when California politics was half romance and half tragedy. The friend and protege of General An- drew Jackson, a member of the first Constitutional Convention of California, twice United States Sen- ator, a prominent figure in the civil war, the father THE CALIFORNIA POLITICIAN. 105 of the great Pacific Railway, he is the front figure on the canvas of California history. Gwin was succeeded by McDougall. What a man was he! His face was as classic as a Greek statue. It spoke the student and the scholar in every line. His hair was snow-white, his eyes bluish-gray, and his form sinewy and elastic. He went from Illinois, with Baker and other men of genius, and soon won a high place at the bar of San Francisco. I heard it said, by an eminent jurist, that when McDougall had put his whole strength into the examination of a case, his side of it was exhausted. His reading was immense, his learning solid. His election was doubtless a surprise to himself as well as to the California public. The day before he left for Washington City, I met him in the street, and as we parted I held his hand a moment, and said : " Your friends will watch your career with hope and with fear/' He knew what I meant, and said, quickly : "I understand you. You are afraid that I will yield to my weakness . for strong drink. But you may be sure I will play the man, and California shall have no cause to blush on my account." That was his fatal weakness. No one, looking upon his pale, scholarly face, and noting his fault- 106 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. lessly neat apparel, and easy, graceful manners, would have thought of such a thing. Yet he was a- I falter in writing it a drunkard. At times he drank deeply and madly. When half intoxi- cated he was almost as brilliant as Hamlet, and as rollicking as FalstafF. It was said that even when fully drunk his splendid intellect never entirely gave way. "McDouerall commands as much attention in o the Senate when drunk as any other Senator does when sober," said a Congressman in Washington in 1866. It is said that his great speech on the question of "confiscation/' at the beginning of the war, was delivered when he was in a state of semi- intoxication. Be that as it may, it exhausted the whole question, and settled the policy of the Gov- ernment. "No one will watch your senatorial career with more friendly interest than myself; and if you will abstain wholly from all strong drink, we shall all be proud of you, I knovy." " Not a drop will I touch, my friend ; and I '11 make you proud of me." He spoke feelingly, and I think there was a moisture about his eye as he pressed iny hand and walked away. I never saw 7 him again. For the first few months he wrote to me often, and then his letters came at THE CALIFORNIA POLITICIAN. 107 longer intervals, and then they ceased. And then the newspapers disclosed the shameful secret Cal- ifornia's brilliant Senator was a drunkard. Tn temptations of the Capital were too strong for him. He went down into the black waters a complete wreck. He returned to the old home of his boy- hood in New Jersey to die. I learned that he was lucid and penitent at the last. They brought his body back to San Francisco to be buried, and when at his funeral the words "I know that my Re- deemer liveth," in clear soprano, rang through the vaulted cathedral like a peal of triumph, I in- dulged the hope that the spirit of my gifted and fated friend had, through the mercy of the Friend of sinners, gone from his boyhood hills up to the hills of God. The typical California politician was Coifroth. The "boys" fondly called him "Jim" Coffroth. There is no surer sign of popularity than' a popular abbreviation of this sort, unless it is a pet nick- name. Coffroth was from Pennsylvania, where he had gained an inkling of politics and general liter- ature. He gravitated into California politics by the law of his nature. He was born for this, hav- ing what a friend calls the gift of popularity. His presence was magnetic; his laugh was contagious; his enthusiasm irresistible. Nobody ever thought of taking offense at Jim Coffroth. He could 108 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. change his politics with impunity without losing a friend he never had a personal enemy; but J believe he only made that experiment once. He went off with the Know-nothings in 1855, and was elected by them to the State Senate, and was called to preside over their State Convention. He has- tened back to his old party associates, and at the first convention that met in his county on his re- turn from the Legislature, he rose and told them how lonesome he had felt while astray from the old fold, how glad he was to get back, and how humble he felt, concluding by advising all his late supporters to do as he had done by taking "a straight chute" for the old party. He ended amid a storm of applause, was reinstated at once, and was made President of the next Democratic State Convention. There he was in his glory. His tact and good humor were infinite, and he held those hundreds of excitable and explosive men in the hollow of his hand. He would dismiss a danger- ous motion with a witticism so apt that the mover himself would join in the laugh, and give it up. His broad face in repose was that of a Quaker, at other times that of a Bacchus. There was a relig- ious streak in this jolly partisan, and he published several poems that breathed the sweetest and loft- iest religious sentiment. The newspapers were a little disposed to make a joke of these ebullitions THE CALIFORNIA POLITICIAN. 109 of devotional feeling, but they now make the light that casts a gleam of brightness upon the back- ground of his life. I take from an old volume of the Christian Spectator one of these poems as a lit- erary curiosity. Every man lives two lives. The rollicking politician, "Jim Coffroth," every Cali- fornian knew; the author of these lines was an- other man by the same name: AMID THE SILENCE OF THE NIGHT. " Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep." Psalm cxxi,. Amid the silence of the night, Amid its lonely hours and dreary, When we close the aching sight, Musing sadly, lorn and weary, Trusting that to-morrow's light May reveal a day more cheery ; Amid affliction's darker hour, When no hope beguiles our sadness, When Death's hurtling tempests lower, And forever shroud our gladness, While Grief's unrelenting power Goads our stricken hearts to madness ; When from friends beloved we 're parted, And from scenes our spirits love, And are driven, broken-hearted, O'er a heartless world to rove; When the woes by which we 've smarted, Vainly seek to melt or move ; 110 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. When we trust and are deluded, When we love and are denied, When the schemes o'er which we brooded Burst like mist on mountain's side, And, from every hope excluded, We in dark despair abide ; Then, and ever, God sustains us, He whose eye no slumber knows, Who controls each throb that pains us, And in mercy sends our woes, And by love severe constrains ms To avoid eternal throes. Happy he whose heart obeys him \ Lost and ruined who disown ! O if idols e'er displace him, Tear them from his chosen throne ! May our lives and language praise him ! May our hearts be his alone ! He took defeat with a good nature that robbed it of its sting, and made his political opponents half sorry for having beaten him. He was talked of for Governor at one time, and he gave as a reason why he would like the office that " a great many of his friends were in the State-prison, and he wanted to use the pardoning power in their be- half." This was a jest, of course, referring to the fact that as a lawyer much of his practice was in tbe criminal courts. He was never suspected of treachery or dishonor in public or private life. TITE CALIFORNIA POLITICIAN. Ill His very ambition was unselfish: lie was always ready to sacrifice himself in a hopeless candidacy if lie could thereby help his party or a friend. His good nature was tested once while presiding over a party convention at Sonora for the nomina- tion of candidates for legislative and county of- fices. Among the delegates was the eccentric John Vallew, whose mind was a singular compound of shrewdness and flightiness, and was stored with the most out-of-the-way scraps of learning, philosophy, and poetry. Some one proposed Vallew's name as a candidate for the Legislature. He rose to his feet with a clouded face, and in an angry voice said : "Mr. President, I am surprised and mortified. I have lived in this county more than seven years, and I have never had any difficulty with my neigh- bors. I did not know that I had an enemy in the world. What have I done, that it should be pro- posed to send me to the Legislature? What reason has anybody to think I am that sort of a man? To think I should have come to this! To propose to send me to the Legislature, when it is a notorious fact that you have never sent a man thither from this county who did not come back morally and pe- cuniarily ruined ! " The crowd saw the point, and roared with laugh- ter, Ooffroth, who had served in the previous ses- 112 -CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. sion, joining heartily in the merriment. Vallew was excused. Coffroth grew fatter and jollier; his strong intel- lect struggled against increasing sensual tenden- cies. What the issue might have been, I know not. He died suddenly, and his destiny was transferred to another sphere. So there dropped out of Cali- fornia-life a partisan without bitterness, a satirist without malice, a wit without a sting, the jolliest, freest, readiest man that ever faced a California audience on the hustings the typical politician of California. OLD MAN LOWRY. I HAD marked his expressive physiognomy among my hearers in the little church in So- nora for some weeks before he made himself known to me. As I learned afterward, he was weighing the young preacher in his critical bal- ances. He had a shrewd Scotch face, in which there was a mingling of keenness, benignity, and humor. His age might be sixty, or it might be more. He was an old bachelor, and wide guesses are sometimes made as to the ages of that class of men. They may not live longer than married men, but they do not show the effects of life's wear and tear so early. He came to see us one evening. He fell in love with the mistress of the parsonage, just as he ought to have clone, and we were charmed with the quaint old bachelor. There was a piquancy, a sharp flavor, in his talk that was delightful. His aphorisms often crystallized a neg- lected truth in a form all his own. He was an 8 (113) 114 CALIFORNIA original character. There was nothing common- place about him. He had his own way of saying and doing every thing. Society in the mines was limited in that clay, and we felt that we had found a real tjiesaurus in this old man of unique mold. His visits were re- freshing to us, and his plain-spoken criticisms were helpful to me. He had left the Church because he did not agree with the preachers on some points of Chris- tian ethics, and because they used tobacco. But he was unhappy on the outside, and finding that my views and habits did not happen to cross his pecul- iar notions, he came back. His religious experience was out of the common order. Bred a Calvin ist, of the good old Scotch-Presbyterian type, he had swung away from that faith, and was in danger of rushing into Universalism, or infidelity. That once famous and much-read little book, "John Nelson's Journal,*' fell into his hands, and changed his whole life. It led him to Christ, and to the Methodists. He was a true spiritual child of the unflinching Yorkshire stone-cutter. Like him he despised half-way measures, and like him he was aggressive in thought and action. What he liked he loved, what he disliked he hated. Calvinism he abhorred, and he let no occasion pass for pouring into it the hot shot of his scorn and wrath. One OLD MAN LOWRY. lib night I preached from the text, Should it be accord- ing to thy mind? "The first part of your sermon," he said to me as we passed out of the church, " distressed me greatly. For a full half hour you preached straight- out Calvinism, and I thought you had ruined every thing ; but you had left a little slip-gap, and crawled out at the last." His ideal of a minister of the gospel was Dr. Keener, whom he knew at New Orleans before coming to California. He was the first man I ever heard mention Dr. Keener's name for the episcopacy. There was much in common between them. If my eccentric California bachelor friend did not have as strong and cool a head, he had as brave and true a heart as the incisive and chival- rous Louisiana preacher, upon whose head the miter was placed by the suffrage of his brethren at Memphis in 1870. He became very active as a worker in the Church. I made him class-leader, and there have been few in that office who brought to its sacred duties as much spiritual insight, candor, and ten- derness. At times his words flashed like diamonds, showing what the Bible can reveal to a solitary thinker who makes it his chief study day and night. When needful, he could apply caustic that burned to the very core of an error of opinion or of 116 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. practice. He took a class in the Sunday-school, and his freshness, acuteness, humor, and deep knowledge of the Scriptures, made him far more than an ordinary teacher. A fine pocket Bible was offered as a prize to the scholar who should, in three months, memorize the greatest number of Scripture verses. The wisdom of such a contest is questionable to me now, but it was the fashion then, and I was too young and self-distrustful to set myself against the current in such matters. The contest was an exciting one two boys, Robert A - and Jonathan R , and one girl, An- nie P , leading all the school. Jonathan suddenly fell behind, and was soon distanced by his two competitors. Lowry, v/ho was his teacher, asked him what was the reason of his sudden breakdown. The boy blushed, and stammered out : " I did n't want to beat Annie." Robert won the prize, and the day came for its presentation. The house was full, and everybody was in a pleasant mood. After the prize had been presented in due form and with a little flourish, Lowry arose, and producing a costly Bible, in a few words telling how magnanimously and gallantly Jonathan had retired from the contest, presented it to the pleased and blushing boy. The boys and girls applauded California fashion, and the old man's face glowed with satisfaction. He had in OLD MAN LOWRY. Ill him curiously mingled the elements of the Puritan and the Cavalier the uncompromising persistency of the one, and the chivalrous impulse and open- handedness of the other, The old man had too many crotchets and too much combativeness to be popular. He spared no opinion or habit he did not like. He struck every angle within reach of him. In the state of so- ciety then existing in the mines there were many things to vex his soul, and keep him on the war- path. The miners looked upon him as a brave, good man, just a little daft. He worked a mining- claim on Wood's Creek, north of town, and lived alone in a tiny cabin on the hill above. That was the smallest of cabins, looking like a mere box from the trail which wound through the flat be- low. Two little scrub-oaks stood near it, under which he sat and read his Bible in leisure mo- ments. There, above the world, he could com- mune with his own heart and with God undis- turbed, and look down upon a race he half pitied and half despised. From the spot the eye took in a vast sweep of hill and dale : Bald Mountain, the most striking object in the near background, and beyond its dark, rugged mass the snowy sum- mits of the Sierras, rising one above another, like gigantic stair-steps, leading up to the throne of the Eternal. This lonely height suited Lowry's strange- 118 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES* ly compounded nature. As a cynic, he looked down with contempt upon the petty life that seethed and frothed in the camps below ; as a saint, he looked forth upon the wonders of God's handiwork around and above him. There was an intensity in all that he did. Pass- ing his mining -claim on horseback one day, I paused to look at him in his work. Clad in a blue flannel mining -suit, he was digging as for life. The embankment of red dirt and gravel melted away rapidly before his vigorous strokes, and he seemed to feel a sort of fierce delight in his work. Pausing a moment, he looked up and saw me. " You dig as if you were in a hurry," I said. " Yes, I have been digging here three years. I have a notion that I have just so much of the earth to turn over before I am turned under," he replied with a sort of grim humor. He was still there when we visited Sonora in 1857. He invited us out to dinner, and we went. By skillful circling around the hill, we reached the little cabin on the summit with horse and buggy. The old man had made preparations for his ex- pected guests. The floor of the cabin had been swept, and its scanty store of furniture put to rights, and a dinner was cooking in and on the little stove. His lady-guest insisted on helping in the preparation of the dinner, but was allowed to OLD MAN LOWRY* 119 do nothing further than to arrange the dishes on the primitive table, which was set out under one of the little oaks in the yard. It was a miner's feast can-fruits, can-vegetables, can-oysters, can-pickles, can-every thing nearly, with tea distilled from the Asiatic leaf by a receipt of his own. It was a hot day, and from the cloudless heavens the sun flooded the earth with his glory, and the shimmer of the sunshine was in the still air. We tried to be cheerful, but there was a pathos about the affair that touched us. He felt it too. More than once there was a tear in his eye. At parting, he kissed little Paul, and gave us his hand in silence. As we drove down the hill, he stood gazing after us with a look fixed and sad. The picture is still be- fore me the lonely old man standing sad and si- lent, the little cabin, the rude dinner-service under the oak, and the overarching sky. That was our last meeting. The next will be on the Other Side. SUICIDE IN CALIFOENIA. A HALF protest rises within me as I be- gin this Sketch. The page almost turns crimson under my gaze, and shadowy forms come forth out of the darkness into which they wildly plunged out of life's misery into death's mystery. Ghostly lips cry out, "Leave us alone! Why call us back to a world where we lost all, and in quit- ting which we risked all? Disturb us not to gratify the cold curiosity of unfeeling strangers. We have passed on beyond human jurisdiction to the realities we dared to meet. Give us the pity and courtesy of your silence, O living brother, who didst escape the wreck ! " The appeal is not without effect, and if I lift the shroud that covers the faces of these dead self-destroyed, it will be tenderly, pityingly. These simple Sketches of real California-life would be imperfect if this characteristic feature were en- tirely omitted ; for California was (and is yet) the land of suicides. In a single year there were one hun- (120) SUICIDE IN CALIFORNIA. 121 dred aud six in San Francisco alone. The whole number of suicides in the State would, if the horror of each case could be even imperfectly imagined, appal even the dryest statistician of crime. The causes for this prevalence of self-destruction are to be sought in the peculiar conditions of the country, and the habits of the people. California, with all its beauty, grandeur, and riches, has been to the many who have gone thither a land of great expectations, but small results. This was specially the case in the earlier period of its history, after the discovery of gold and its settlement by "Amer- icans," as we call ourselves, par excellence. Hurled from the topmost height of extravagant hope to the lowest deep of disappointment, the shock is too great for reaction; the rope, razor, bullet, or deadly drug, finishes the tragedy. Materialistic infidelity in California is the avowed belief of multitudes, and its subtle poison infects the minds and unconsciously the actions of thousands who recoil from the dark abyss that yawns at the feet of its adherents with its fascination of horror. Under some circumstances, suicide becomes logical to a man who has neither hope nor dread of a hereafter. Sins against the body, and especially the nervous system, were prevalent; and days of pain, sleepless nights, and weakened wills, were the precursors of the tragedy that promised change, 122 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. if not rest. The devil gets men inside a fiery cir- cle, made by their own sin and folly, from which there seems to be no escape but by death, and they will unbar its awful door with their own trembling hands. There is another door of escape for the worst and most wretched, and it is opened to the penitent by the hand that was nailed to the rugged cross. These crises do come, when the next step must be death or life penitence or perdition. Do sane men and women ever commit suicide? Yes and, No. Yes, in the sense that they sometimes do it with even pulse and steady nerves. No, in the sense that there cannot be perfect soundness in the brain and heart of one who violates a primal instinct of human nature. Each case has its own peculiar features, and must be left to the all-seeing and all-pitying Father. Suicide, where it is not the greatest of crimes, is the greatest of misfort- unes. The righteous Judge will classify its vic- tims. A noted case in San Francisco was that of a French Catholic priest. He was young, brilliant, and popular beloved by his flock, and admired by a large circle outside. He had taken the sol- emn vows of his. order in all sincerity of purpose, and was distinguished as well for his zeal in his pastoral work* as for his genius. But temptation met him, and he fell. It came in the shape in SUICIDE L\ r CAUFotwtA* 123 which it assailed the young Hebrew in Potiplmr's house, and in which it overcame the poet-king of Israel. He was seized with horror and remorse, though he had no accuser save that voice within, which cannot be hushed while the soul lives. He ceased to perform the sacred functions of his office, making some plausible pretext to his superiors, not daring to add sacrilege to mortal sin. Shut- ting himself in his chamber, he brooded over his crime; or, no longer able to endure the agony he felt, he would rush forth, and walk for hours over the sand-dunes, or along the sea-beach. But no answer of peace followed his prayers, and the voices of nature soothed him not. He thought his sin unpardonable at least, he would not par- don himself. He was found one morning lying dead in his bed in a pool of blood. He had sev- ered the jugular-vein with a razor, which was still clutched in his stiffened fingers. His handsome and classic face bore no trace of pain. A sealed letter, lying on the table, contained his confession and his farewell. Among the lawyers in one of the largest mining towns of California was H. B . He was a na- tive of Virginia, and an alumnus of its noble Univer- sity. He was a scholar, a fine lawyer, handsome and manly in person and bearing, and had the gift of popularity. Though the youngest lawyer in the 124 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. town, he took a front place at the bar at once. Over the heads of several older aspirants, he was elected county judge. There was no ebb in the tide of his general popularity, and he had quali- ties that won the warmest regard of his inner cir- cle of special friends. But in this case, as in many others, success had its danger. Hard drink- ing was the rule in those days. Horace B had been one of the rare exceptions. There was a reason for this extra prudence. He had that pe- culiar susceptibility to alcoholic excitement which has been the ruin of so many gifted and noble men. He knew his weakness, and it is strange that he did not continue to guard against the dan- ger that he so well understood. Strange? ISTo ; this infatuation is so common in every-day life that we cannot call it strange. There is some sort of fatal fascination that draws men with their eyes wide open into the very jaws of this hell of strong drink. The most brilliant physician in San Fran- cisco, in the prime of his magnificent young manhood, died of delirium tremens, the victim of a .^elf-inflicted disease, whose horrors no one knew or could picture so well as himself. Who says man is not a fallen, broken creature, and that there is not a devil at hand to tempt him ? This devil, under the guise of sociability, false pride, or moral cowardice, tempted Horace B , and he yielded. SUICIDE IN CALIFORNIA. 125 Like tinder touched by flame, he blazed into drunkenness, and again and again the proud-spir- ited, manly, and cultured young lawyer and jurist was seen staggering along the streets, maudlin or mad with alcohol. When he had slept off his madness, his humiliation was intense, and he walked the streets with pallid face and downcast eyes. The coarser-grained men with whom he was thrown in contact had no conception of the mental tortures he suffered, and their rude jests stung him to the quick. He despised himself as a weakling and a coward, but he did hot get more than a transient victory over his enemy. The spark had struck a sensitive organization, and the fire of hell, smothered for the time, would blaze out again. He was fast becoming a common drunkard, the accursed appetite growing stronger, and his will weakening in accordance with that terrible law by which man's physical and moral nature visits ret- ribution on all who cross its path. During a term of the court over which he presided, he was taken home one night drunk. A pistol-shot was heard by persons in the vicinity some time before day- break ; but pistol-shots, at all hours of the night, were then too common to excite special attention. Horace B was found next morning lying on the floor with a bullet through his head. Many a gtout, heavy-bearded man had wet eyes when the 126 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES, body of the ill-fated and brilliant young Virginian was let down into the grave, which had been dug for him on the hill overlooking the town from the south-east. In the same town there was a portrait-painter, a quiet, pleasant fellow, with a good face and easy, gentlemanly ways. As an artist, he was not without merit, but his gift fell short of genius. He fell in love with a charming girl, the eldest daughter of a leading citizen. She could not return his passion. The enamored artist still loved, and hoped against hope, lingering near her like a moth around a candle. There was another and more favored suitor in the case, and the rejected lover had all his hopes killed at one blow by her marriage to his rival. He felt that without her life was not worth living. He resolved to kill himself, and swallowed the contents of a two-ounce bottle of laudanum. After he had done the rash deed, a reaction took place. He told what he had done, and a physician was sent for. Before the doctor's arrival, the deadly drug asserted its power, and this repentant suicide began to show signs of going into a sleep from which it was certain he would never awake. "My God! What have I done?" he exclaimed in horror. " Do your best, boys, to keep me from going to sleep before the doctor gets here." SUICIDE IN CALIFORNIA. 127 The doctor came quickly, and by the prompt and very vigorous use of the stomach-pump he was saved. I was sent for, and found the would-be suicide looking very weak, sick, silly, and sheepish. He got well, and went on making pictures ; but the picture of the fair, sweet girl, for love of whom he came so near dying, never faded from his mind. His face always wore a sad look, and he lived the life of a recluse, but he never attempted suicide again he had had enough of that. <( It always makes me shudder to look at that place," said a lady, as w r e passed an elegant cottage on the western side of Russian Hill, San Fran- cisco. ''Why so? The place to me looks specially cheerful and attractive, with its graceful slope, its shrubbery, flowers, and thick greensward." " Yes, it is a lovely place, but it has a history that it shocks me to think of. Do you see that tall pumping-apparatus, with water-tank on top, in the rear of the house?" "Yes; what of it?" "A woman hanged herself there a year ago. The family consisted of the husband and wife, and two bright, beautiful children, He was thrifty and prosperous, she was an excellent housekeeper, and the children were healthy and well-behaved. In appearance a happier family could not be found 128 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. on the hill. One day Mr. P - came home at the usual hour, and, missing the wife's customary greeting, he asked the children where she was. The children had not seen their mother for two or three hours, and looked startled when they found she was missing. Messengers were sent to the nearest neighbors to make inquiries, but no one had seen her. Mr. P J s face began to wear a troubled look as he walked the floor, from time to time going to the door and casting anxious glances about the premises. About dusk a sudden shriek was heard, issuing from the water-tank in the yard, and the Irish servant-girl came rushing from it, with eyes dis- tended and face pale with terror. "Holy Mother of God! It's the Missus that's hanged herself! " The alarm spread, and soon a crowd, curious and sympathetic, had collected. They found the poor lady suspended by the neck from a beam at the head of the staircase leading to the top of the inclosure. She was quite dead, and a horrible sight to see. At the inquest no facts were devel- oped throwing any light on the tragedy. There had been no cloud in the sky portending the light- ning-stroke that laid the happy little home in ruins. The husband testified that she was as bright and happy the morning of the suicide as he SUICIDE IN CALIFORNIA. 129 had ever seen her, and had parted with him at the door with the usual kiss. Every thing about the house that day bore the marks of her deft and skillful touch. The two children were dressed with accustomed neatness and good taste. And yet the bolt was in the cloud, and it fell before the sun had set! What was the mystery? Ever afterward I felt something of the feeling expressed by my lady friend when, in passing, I looked upon the structure which had been the scene of this singular tragedy. One of the most energetic business men living in one of the foot-hill towns, on the northern edge of the Sacramento Valley, had a charming wife, whom he loved with a deep and tender devotion. As in all true love-matches, the passion of youth had ripened into a yet stronger and purer love with the lapse of years and participation in the joys and sorrows of wedded life. Their union had been blessed with five children, all intelligent, sweet, and full of promise. It was a very affec- tionate and happy household. Both parents pos- sessed considerable literary taste and culture, and the best books and current magazine literature were read, discussed, and enjoyed in that quiet and elegant home amid the roses and evergreens. It was a little paradise in the hills, where Love, the home-angel, brightened every room and blessed 9 130 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. every heart. But trouble carme in the shape of business reverses, and the worried look and wake- ful nights of the husband told how heavy were the blows that had fallen upon this hard and willing worker. The course of ruin in California was fearfully rapid in those days. When a man's financial supports began to give way, they went with a crash. The movement downward was with a rush that gave no time for putting on the brakes. You were at the bottom, a wreck, almost before you knew it. So it was in this case. Every thing was swept away, a mountain of unpaid debts was piled up, credit was gone, clamor of creditors deaf- ened him, and the gaunt wolf of actual want looked in through the door of the cottage upon the dear wife and little ones. Another %hadow, and a yet darker one, settled upon them. The unhappy man had been tampering with the delu- sion of spiritualism, and his wife had been drawn with him into a partial belief in its vagaries. In their troubles they sought the aid of the "familiar spirits" that peeped and muttered through speak- ing, writing, and rapping mediums. This kept them in a state of morbid excitement that increased from day to day until they were wrought up to a tension that verged on insanity. The lying spirits, or the frenzy of his own heated brain, turned his thought to death as the only escape from want. SUICIDE IN CALIFORNIA. 131 " I see our way out of these troubles, wife," lie said one night, as they sat hand in hand in the bed- chamber, where the children were lying asleep. "We will all die together! This has been re- vealed to me as the solution of all our difficulties. Yes, we will enter the beautiful spirit -world to- gether ! This is freedom ! It is only getting out of prison. Bright spirits beckon and call us. I am ready." There was a gleam of madness in his eyes, and, as he took a pistol from a bureau-drawer, an an- swering gleam flashed forth from the eyes of the wife, as she said : " Yes, love, we will all go together. I too am ready." The sleeping children were breathing sweetly, unmindful of the horror that the devil was hatch- ing. "The children first, then you, and then me," he said, his eye kindling with increasing excite- ment. He penciled a short note addressed to one of his old friends, asking him to attend to the burial of the bodies, then they kissed each of the sleeping children, and then but let the curtain fall on the scene that followed. The seven were found next day lying dead, a bullet through the brain of each, the murderer, by the side of the wife, still holding 132 CALIFORNIA -SKETCHES. the weapon of death in his hand, its muzzle against his right temple. Other pictures of real life and death crowd up- on my mind, among them noble forms and faces that were near and dear to me ; but again I hear the appealing voices. The page before me is wet with tears I cannot see to write. FATHER FISHEE. HE came to California in 1855. The Pacific Conference was in session at Sacramento. It was announced that the new preacher from Texas would preach at night. The boat was de- tained in some way, and he just had time to reach the church, where a large and expectant congrega- tion were in waiting. Below medium height, plain- ly dressed, and with a sort of peculiar shuffling movement as he went down the aisle, he attracted no special notice except for the profoundly rever- ential manner that never left him anywhere. But the moment he faced his audience and spoke, it was evident to them that a man of mark stood be- fore them. They were magnetized at once, and every eye was fixed upon the strong yet benignant face, the capacious blue eyes, the ample forehead, and massive head, bald on top, with silver locks on either side. His tones in reading the Scripture and the hymns were unspeakably solemn and very (133) 134 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. musical. The blazing fervor of the prayer that followed was absolutely startling to some of the preachers, who had cooled down under the depress- ing influence of the moral atmosphere of the coun- try. It almost seemed as if we could hear the rush of the pentecostal wind, and see the tongues of flame. The very house seemed to be rocking on its foundations. By the time the prayer had ended, all were in a glow, and ready for the ser- mon. The text I do not now call to mind, but the impression made by the sermon remains. I had seen and heard preachers who glowed in the pul- pit this man burned. His words poured forth in a molten flood, his face shone like a furnace heat- ed from within, his large blue eyes flashed with the lightning of impassioned sentiment, and anon swam in pathetic appeal that no heart could resist. Body, brain, and spirit, all seemed to feel the mighty afflatus. His very frame seemed to ex- pand, and the little man who had gone into the pulpit with shuffling step and downcast eyes was transfigured before us. When, with radiant face, upturned eyes, an upward sweep of his arm, and trumpet-voice, he shouted, " Halleluiah to God ! " the tide of emotion broke over all barriers, the people rose to their feet, and the church reechoed with their responsive halleluiahs. The new preacher from Texas that night gave some Californians a FATHER FISHES. 135 new idea of evangelical eloquence, and took his place as a burning and a shining light among the ministers of God on the Pacific Coast. " He is the man we want for San Francisco ! " exclaimed the impulsive B. T. Crouch, who had kindled into a generous enthusiasm under that marvelous discourse. He was sent to San Francisco. He was one of a company of preachers who have successively had charge of the Southern Methodist Church in that wondrous city inside the Golden Gate Boring, Evans, Fisher, Fitzgerald, Gober, Brown, Bailey, Wood, Miller, Ball, Hoss, Chamberlin, Mahon, Tuggle, Simmons, Henderson. There was an al- most unlimited diversity of temperament, culture, and gifts among these men ; but they all had a sim- ilar experience in this, that San Francisco gave them new revelations of human nature and of themselves. Some went away crippled and scarred, some sad, some broken ; but perhaps in the Great Day it may be found that for each and all there was a hidden blessing in the heart-throes of a serv- ice that seemed to demand that they should sow in bitter tears, and know no joyful reaping this side of the grave. O my brothers, who have felt the fires of that furnace heated seven times hotter than usual, shall we not in the resting-place beyond the river realize that these fires burned out of us 136 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. the dross that we did not know w r as in our souls ? The bird that comes out of the tempest with bro- ken wing may henceforth take a lowlier flight, but will be safer because it ventures no more into the region of storms. Fisher did not succeed in San Francisco, be- cause he could not get a hearing. A little hand- ful would meet him on Sunday mornings in one of the upper-rooms of the old City Hall, and listen to sermons that sent them away in a religious glow, but he had no leverage for getting at the masses. He was no adept in the methods by which the modern sensational preacher compels the attention of the novelty -loving crow r ds in our cities. An evangelist in every fiber of his being, he chafed under the limitations of his charge in San Fran- cisco, and from time to time he would make a dash into the country, where, at camp-meetings and on other special occasions, he preached the gospel with a power that broke many a sinner's heart, and with a persuasiveness that brought many a wanderer back to the Good Shepherd's fold. His bodily en- ergy, like his religious zeal, was unflagging. It seemed little less than a miracle that he could, day after day, make such vast expenditure of nervous energy without exhaustion. He put all his strength into every sermon and exhortation, whether ad- dressed to admiring and weeping thousands at a FATHER FISUEB. 137 great camp-meeting, or to a dozen or less "stand- bys" at the Saturday-morning service of a quar- terly-meeting. He had his trials and crosses. Those/ who knew him intimately learned to expect his mightiest pul- pit efforts when the shadow on his face and the unconscious sigh showed that he was passing through the waters and crying to God out of the depths. In such experiences, the strong man is revealed and gathers new strength; the weak one goes under. But his strength was more than mere natural force of will, it was the strength of a mighty faith in God that unseen force by which the saints work righteousness, subdue kingdoms, escape the violence of fire, and stop the mouths of lions. As a flame of fire, Fisher itinerated all over Cal- ifornia and Oregon, kindling a blaze of revival in almost every place he touched. He was mighty in the Scriptures, and seemed to know the Book by heart. His was no rose-water theology. He be- lieved in a hell, and pictured it in Bible language with a vividness and awfulness that thrilled the stoutest sinner's heart ; he believed in heaven, and spoke of it in such a way that it seemed that with him faith had already changed to sight. The gates of pearl, the crystal river, the shining ranks of the white-robed throngs, their songs swelling as the 138 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. sound of many waters, the holy love and rapture of the glorified hosts of the redeemed, were made to pass in panoramic procession before the listen- ing multitudes, until the heaven he pictured seemed to be a present reality. He lived in the atmos- phere of the supernatural; the spirit-world was to him most real. "I have been out of the body," he said to me one day. The words were spoken softly, and his countenance, always grave in its aspect, deepened in its solemnity of expression as he spoke. "How was that?" I inquired. "It was in Texas. I was returning from a quar- terly-meeting where I had preached one Sunday morning with great liberty and with unusual ef- fect. The horses attached to my vehicle became frightened, and ran away. They were wholly be- yond control, plunging down the road at a fearful speed, when, by a slight turn to one side, the wheel struck a large log. There was a concussion, and then a blank. The next thing I knew I was float- ing in the air above the road. I saw every thing as plainly as I see your face at this moment. There lay my body in the road, there lay the log, and there were the trees, the fence, the fields, and every thing, perfectly natural. My motion, which had been upward, was arrested, and as, poised in the air, I looked at rny body lying there in the road FATHER FISHER. 139 so still, I felt a strong desire to go back to it, and found myself sinking toward it. The next thing I knew I was lying in the road where I had been thrown out, with a number of friends about me, some holding up my head, others chafing my hands, or looking on with pity or alarm. Yes, I was out of the body for a little, and I know there is a spirit- world." His voice had sunk into a sort of whisper, and the tears were in his eyes. I was strangely thrilled. Both of us were silent for a time, as if we heard the echoes of voices, and saw the beckonings of shadowy hands from that Other World which sometimes seems so far away, and yet is so near to each one of us. Surely yon heaven, where angels see God's face, Is not so distant as we deem From this low earth. ? Tis but a little space, 'Tis but a veil the winds might blow aside; Yes, this all that us of earth divide From the bright dwellings of the glorified, The land of which I dream. But it was no dream to this man of mighty faith, the windows of whose soul opened at all times Godward. To him immortality was a demon- strated fact, an experience. He had been out of the body. Intensity was his dominating quality. He wrote 140 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. verses, and whatever they may have lacked of the subtle element that marks poetical genius, they were full of his ardent personality and devotional abandon. He compounded medicines whose vir- tues, backed by his own unwavering faith, wrought wondrous cures. On several occasions he accepted challenge to polemic battle, and his opponents found in him a fearless warrior, whose onset was next to irresistible. In these discussions it was no uncommon thing for his arguments to close with such bursts of spiritual power that the doctrinal duel would end in a great religious excitement, bearing disputants and hearers away on mighty tides of feeling that none could resist. I saw in the Texas Christian Advocate an inci- dent, related by Dr. F. A. Mood, that gives a good idea of what Fisher's eloquence was when in full tide : "About ten years ago," says Dr. M., "when the train from Houston, on the Central Railroad, on one occasion reached Hempstead, it was perempto- rily brought to a halt. There was a strike. among the employes of the road, on what was significantly called by the strikers 'The Death-warrant/ The road, it seems, had required all of their employes to sign a paper renouncing all claims to moneyed reparation in case of their bodily injury while in the service of the road. The excitement incident FATHER FISHES. 141 to a strike was at its height at Hempstead when our train reached there. The tracks were blocked Avith trains that had been stopped as they arrived from the different branches of the road, and the employes were gathered about in groups, discussing the situation the passengers peering around with hopeless curiosity. When our train stopped, the conductor told us that we would have to lie over all night, and many of the passengers left to find accommodations in the hotels of the town. It was now night, when a man came into the car and ex- claimed, 'The strikers are tarring and feathering a poor wretch out here, who has taken sides witli the road come out and see it! 7 Nearly every one in the car hastened out. I had risen, when a gen- tleman behind me gently pulled my coat, and said to me, 'Sit down a moment/ He went on to say: 'I judge, sir, you are a clergyman; and I advise you to remain here. You may be put to much in- convenience by having to appear as a witness; in a mob of that sort, too, there is no telling what may follow/ I thanked him, and resumed my seat. He then asked me to what denomination I belonged, and upon my telling him I was a Meth- odist preacher, he asked eagerly and promptly if I had ever met a Methodist preacher in Texas by the name of Fisher, describing accurately the ap- pearance of our glorified brother. Upon my tell- 142 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. ing him I knew him well, he proceeded to give the following incident. I give it as nearly as I can in his own words. Said he : " ' I am a California!!, have practiced law for years in that State, and, at the time I allude to, was district judge. I was holding court at [I can- not now recall the name of the town he mentioned], and on Saturday was told that a Methodist camp- meeting was being held a few miles from town. I determined to visit it, and reached the place of meeting in good time to hear the great preacher of the occasion Father Fisher. The meeting was held in a river canon. The rocks towered hun- dreds of feet on either side, rising over like an arch. Through the ample space over which the rocks hung the river flowed, furnishing abundance of cool water, while a pleasant breeze fanned a shaded spot. A great multitude had assembled hundreds of very hard cases, who had gathered there, like myself, for the mere novelty of the thing. I am not a religious man never have been thrown under religious influences. I respect religion, and respect its teachers, but have been very little in contact with religious things. At the appointed time, the preacher rose. He was small, with white hair combed back from his fore- head, and he wore a venerable beard. I do not know much about the Bible, and I cannot quote FATHER FISIIEK. 143 from his text, but he preached on the Judgment. I tell you, sir, I have heard eloquence at the bar and on the hustings, but I never heard such elo- quence as that old preacher gave us that day. At the last, when he described the multitudes calling on the rocks and mountains to fall on them, I in- stinctively looked up to the arching rocks above me. Will you believe it, sir? as I looked up, to my horror I saw the walls of the canon swaying as if they w r ere coming together! Just then the preacher called on all that needed mercy to kneel down. I recollect he said something like this: "' Every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess;' and you might as well do it now as then." The whole multitude fell on their knees every one of them. Although I had never done so be- fore, I confess to you, sir, I got down on my knees. I did not want to be buried right then and there by those rocks that seemed to be swaying to de- stroy me. The old man prayed for us ; it was a wonderful prayer! I want to see him once more ; where will I be likely to find him?' "When he had closed his narrative, I said to him: 'Judge, I hope you have bowed frequently since that day.' 'Alas ! no, sir/ he replied ; ' not much ; but depend upon it, Father Fisher is a wonderful orator he made me think that day that the walls of the canon were falling.' " 144 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. He went back to Texas, the scene of his early labors and triumphs, to die. His evening sky was not cloudless he suffered much but his sunset was calm and bright ; his waking in the Morning Land was glorious. If it w r as at that short period of silence spoken of in the Apocalypse, we may be sure it was broken when Fisher went in. JACK WHITE. THE only thing white about him was his name. He was a Piute Indian, and Piutes are nei- ther white nor pretty. There is only one being in human shape uglier than a Piute "buck" and that is a Piute squaw. One. I saw at the Sink of the Humboldt haunts me yet. Her hideous face, begrimed with dirt and smeared with yellow paint, bleared and leering eyes, and horrid long, flapping breasts ugh ! it was a sight to make one feel sick. A degraded woman is the saddest spectacle on earth. Shakespeare knew what he was doing when he made the witches in Macbeth of the feminine gender. But as you look at them you almost for- get that these Piute hags are women they seem a cross between brute and devil. The unity of the human race is a fact which I accept; but some of our brothers and sisters are far gone from original loveliness. If Eve could see these Piute women, she would not be in a hurry to claim them as her 10 (145) 146 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. daughters; and Adam would feel like disowning some of his sous. As it appears to me, however, these repulsive savages furnish an argument in support of two fundamental facts of Christianity. One fact is, God did indeed make of one blood all the nations of the earth; the other is the fact of the fall and depravity of the human race. This unspeakable ugliness of these Indians is owing to their evil living. Dirty as they are, the little In- dian children are not at all repulsive in expression. A boy of ten years, who stood half-naked, shiver- ing in the wind, with his bow and arrows, had well-shaped features and a pleasant expression of countenance, with just a little of the look of ani- mal cunning that belongs to all wild tribes. The ugliness grows on these Indians fearfully fast when it sets in. The brutalities of the lives they lead stamp themselves on their faces ; and no other ani- mal on earth equals in ugliness the animal called man, when he is nothing but an animal. There was a mystery about Jack White's early life. He was born in the sage-brush desert beyond the Sierras, and, like all Indian babies, doubtless had a hard time at the outset. A Christian's pig or puppy is as well cared for as a Piute papoose. Jack was found in a deserted Indian camp in the mountains. He had been left to die, and was taken charge of by the kind - hearted John M. JACK WHITE. 147 White, who was then digging for gold in the North- ern mines. He and his good Christian wife had mercy on the little Indian boy that looked up at them so pitifully with his wondering black eyes. At first he had the frightened and bewildered look of a captured wild creature, but he soon began to be more at ease. He acquired the English language slowly, and never did lose the peculiar accent of his tribe. The miners called him Jack White, not knowing any other name for him. Moving to the beautiful San Ramon Valley, not far from the Bay of San Francisco, the Whites took Jack with them. They taught him the lead- ing doctrines and facts of the Bible, and made him useful in domestic service. He grew and thrived. Broad-shouldered, muscular, and straight as an arrow, Jack was admired for his strength and agil- ity by the white boys with whom he was brought into contact. Though not quarrelsome, he had a steady courage that, backed by his great strength, inspired respect and insured good treatment from them. Growing up amid these influences, his features w T ere softened into a civilized expression, and his tawny face was not unpleasing. The heavy trader-jaw and square forehead gave him an ap- pearance of hardness which was greatly relieved by the honest look out of his eyes, and the smile which now and then would slowly creep over his 148 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. face, like the movement of the shadow of a thin cloud on a calm day in summer. An Indian smiles deliberately, and in a dignified way at least Jack did. I first knew Jack at Santa Rosa, of which beau- tiful town his patron, Mr. White, was then the marshal. Jack came to my Sunday-school, and was taken into a class of about twenty boys taught by myself. They were the noisy element of the school, ranging from ten to fifteen years of age too large to show 7 the docility of the little lads, but not old enough to have attained the self-command and self-respect that come later in life. Though he was much older than any of them, and heavier than his teacher, this class suited Jack. The white boys all liked him, and he liked me. We had grand times with that class. The only way to keep them in order was to keep them very busy. The plan of having them answer in concert was adopted with decided results. It kept them awake and the whole school with them, for California boys have strong lungs. Twenty boys speaking all at once, with eager excitement and flashing eyes, waked the drowsiest drone in the room. A gentle hint was given now and then to take a little lower key. In these lessons, Jack's deep guttural tones came in with marked effect, and it was delightful to see how he enjoyed it all. And the singing made his JACK WHITE. 149 swarthy features glow with pleasure, though he rarely joined in it, having some misgiving as to the melody of his voice. The truths of the gospel took strong hold of Jack's mind, and his inquiries indicated a deep in- terest in the matter of religion. I was therefore not surprised when, during a protracted-meeting in the town, Jack became one of the converts; but there was surprise and delight among the brethren at the class-meeting when Jack rose in his place and told what great things the Lord had done for him, dwelling with special emphasis on the words, "I am happy, because I know Jesus takes my sins away I know he takes my sins away." His voice melted into softness, and a tear trickled down his cheek as he spoke; and when Dan Duncan, the leader, crossed over the room and grasped his hand in a burst of joy, there was a glad chorus of re- joicing Methodists over Jack White, the Piute convert. Jack never missed a service at the church, and in the social-meetings he never failed to tell the story of his new-born joy and hope, and always with thrilling effect, as he repeated with trembling voice, "I am happy, because I know Jesus takes my sins away." Sin was a reality with Jack, and the pardon of sin the most wonderful of all facts. lie never tired of telling it ; it opened a new world 150 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. to him, a world of light and joy. Jack White in the class-meeting or prayer-meeting, with beaming face, and moistened eyes, and softened voice, tell- ing of the love of Jesus, seemed almost of a differ- ent race, from the wretched Piutes of the Sierras and sage-brush. Jack's baptism was a great event. It was by immersion, the first baptism of the kind I ever performed and almost the last. Jack had been talked to on the subject by some zealous brethren of another "persuasion," who magnified that mode, and though he was willing to do as I advised in the matter, he was evidently a little inclined to the more spectacular way of receiving the ordinance. Mrs. White suggested that it might save future trouble, and "spike a gun." So Jack, with four others, was taken down to Santa Rosa Creek, that went rippling and sparkling along the southern edge of the town, and duly baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. A great crowd covered the bridge just below, and the banks of the stream ; and when Wesley Mock, the Asaph of Santa Rosa Methodism, struck up O happy day that fixed my choice On thce, my Saviour and my God, and the chorus Happy day, happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away, JACK WHITE, 151 was swelled by hundreds of voices, it was a glad moment for Jack White and all of us. Religiously it was a warm time; but the water was very cold, it being one of the chilliest days I ever felt in that genial climate. " You were rather awkward, Brother Fitzgerald, in immersing those persons," said my stalwart friend, Elder John McCorkle, of the " Christian " or Campbellite Church, who had critically but not . unkindly watched the proceedings from the bridge. "If you will send for me the next time, I will do it for you," he added, pleasantly. I fear it was awkwardly done, for the water was very cold, and a shivering man cannot be very graceful in his movements. I would have done better in a baptistery, with warm water and a rub- ber suit. But of all the persons I have welcomed into the Church during my ministry, the reception of no one has given me more joy than that of Jack White, the Piute Indian. Jack's heart yearned for his own people. He wanted to tell them of Jesus, who could take away their sins; and perhaps his Indian instinct made him long for the freedom of the hills. " I am going to my people," he said to me ; " I want to tell them of Jesus. You will pray for me?" he added, with a quiver in his voice and a heaving chest. 152 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. He went away, and I have never seen him since. Where he is now, I know not. I trust I may meet him on Mount Sion r with the harpers harping with their harps, and singing, as it were, a new song be- fore the throne. Postscript. Since this Sketch was penciled, the Kev. C. Y. Rankin, in a note dated Santa Rosa, California, August 3, 1880, says: "Mrs. White asked me to send you word of the peaceful death of Jack White (Indian). He died trusting in Jesus." THE KABBI. OEATED in his library, enveloped in a faded w3 figured gown, a black velvet cap on his mass- ive head, there was an Oriental look about him that arrested your attention at once. Power and gentleness, child-like simplicity, and scholar! mess, were curiously mingled in this man. His library was a reflex of its owner. In it were books that the great public libraries of the world could not match black-letter folios that were almost as old as the printing art, illuminated volumes that were once the pride and joy of men who had been in their graves many generations, rabbinical lore, theology, magic, and great volumes of Hebrew literature that looked, when placed beside a modern book, like an old ducal palace along-side a gingerbread cottage of to-day. I d" not think he ever felt at home amid the hurry and rush of San Francisco. Ho could not adjust himself to the people. He wit* devout, and they were intensely worldly. Ho (153) 154 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. thundered this sentence from the teacher's desk in the synagogue one morning : " O ye Jews of San Francisco, you have so fully given yourselves up to material things that you are losing the very in- stinct of immortality. Your only idea of religion is to acquire the Hebrew language, and you do n't know that!" His port and voice were like those of one of the old Hebrew prophets. Elijah him- self was not more fearless. Yet, how deep was his love for his race! Jeremiah was not more tender when he wept for the slain of the daughter of his people. His reproofs were resented, and he had a taste of persecution ; but the Jews of San Fran- cisco understood him at last. The poor and the little children knew him from the start. He lived mostly among his books, and in his school for poor children, whom he taught without charge. His habits were so simple and his bodily wants so few that it cost him but a trifle to live. When the synagogue frowned on him, he was as independent as Elijah at the brook Cherith. It is hard to starve a man to whom crackers and water are a royal feast. His belief in God and in the supernatural was startlirigly vivid. The Voice that spoke from Si- nai was still audible to him, and the Arm that de- livered Israel he saw still stretched out over the nations. The miracles of the Old Testament were THE EADDL 155 as real to him as the premiership of Disraeli, or the financiering of the Kothschilds. There was, at the same time, a vein of rationalism that ran through his thought and speech. We were speak- ing one day on the subject of miracles, and, with his usual energy of manner, he said : " There was no need of any literal angel to shut the mouths of the lions to save Daniel ; the awful holiness of the prophet ivas enough. There was so much of God in him that the savage creatures sub- mitted to him as they did to unsinning Adam. Man's dominion over nature was broken by sin, but in the golden age to come it will be restored. A man in full communion with God wields a di- vine power in every sphere that he touches." His face glowed as he spoke, and his voice wa subdued into a solemnity of tone that told how his reverent and adoring soul was thrilled with this vision of the coming glory of redeemed hu- manity. He knew the New Testament by heart, as well as the Old. The sayings of Jesus were often on his lips. One clay, in a musing, half-soliloquizing way, I heard him say: "It is wonderful, wonderful ! a Hebrew peasant from the hills of Galilee, without learning, noble birth, or power, subverts all the philosophies of 156 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. the world, and makes himself the central figure of all history. It is wonderful ! " He half whispered the words, and his eyes had the introspective look of a man who is thinking deeply. He came to see me at our cottage on Post street one morning before breakfast. In grading a street, a house in which I had lived and had the ill luck to own, on Pine street, had been undermined, and toppled over into the street below, falling on the slate-roof and breaking all to pieces. He came to tell me of it, and to extend his sympathy. "I thought I would come first, so you might get the bad news from a friend rather than a stranger. You have lost a house; but it is a small matter. Your little boy there might have put out his eye with a pair of scissors, or he might have swallowed a pin and lost his life. There are many things constantly taking place that are harder to bear than the loss of a house." Many other wise words did the Rabbi speak, and before he left I felt that a house was indeed a small thing to grieve over. He spoke with charming freedom and candor of all sorts of people. "Of Christians, the Unitarians have the best heads, and the Methodists -the best hearts. The Roman Catholics hold the masses, because they THE RABBI. 157 give their people plenty of form. The masses will never receive truth in its simple essence; they must have it in a way that will make it digestible and assimilable, just as their stomachs demand bread, and meats, and fruits, not tneir extracts or distilled essences, for daily food. As to Judaism, it is on the eve of great changes. What these changes will be I know not, except that I am sure the God of our fathers will fulfill his promise to Israel. This generation w r ill probably see great things." " Do you mean the literal restoration of the Jews to Palestine ? " He looked at me with an intense gaze, and has- tened not to answer. At last he spoke slowly : "When the perturbed elements of religious thought crystallize into clearness and enduring forms, the chosen people will be one of the chief factors in reaching that final solution of the prob- lems which convulse this age." He Avas one of the speakers at the great Mortara indignation-meeting in San Francisco. The speech of the occasion was that of Colonel Baker, the orator who went to Oregon, and in a single cam- paign magnetized the Oregonians so completely by his splendid eloquence that, passing by all their old party leaders, they sent him to the United States Senate. No one who heard Baker's pdrora- 158 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES, tion that night will ever forget it. His dark eyes blazed, his form dilated, and his voice was like a bugle in battle. "They tell us that the Jew is accursed of God. This has been the plea of the bloody tyrants and robbers that oppressed and plundered them during the long ages of their exile and agony. Bat the Almighty God executes his own judgments. Woe to him who presumes to wield his thunderbolts! They fall in blasting, consuming vengeance upon his own head. God deals with his chosen people in judgment; but he says to men, Touch them -at your peril! They that spoil them shall be for a spoil ; they that carried them away captive shall themselves go into captivity. The Assyrian smote the Jew, and where is the proud Assyrian Empire? Rome ground them under her iron heel, and where is the empire ,r>f the Csesars? Spain smote the Jew, and where as her glory? The desert sands cover the site of Babylon the-Great. The power that hurled the hosts of Titus against the holy city Jerusalem was shivered to pieces. The ban- ners of Spain, that floated in triumph over, half the world, and fluttered in the breez.es of every sea, is now the emblem of a glory that is gone, and the ensign of a power that has waned. The Jews are in the hands of God. He has dealt with them in judgment, but they are still the children THE BABBI. 159 of promise. The day of their long exile shall end, and they will return to Zion with songs and ever- lasting joy upon their heads!" The words were something like these, but who could picture Baker's oratory? As well try to paint a storm in the tropics. Real thunder and lightning cannot be put on canvas. The Rabbi made a speech, and it was the speech of a man who had come from his books and prayers. He made a tender appeal for the mother and father of the abducted Jewish boy, and ar- gued the question as calmly, and in as sweet a spirit, as if he had been talking over an abstract question in his study. The- vast crowd looked upon that strange figure with a sort of pleased wonder, and the Rabbi seemed almost unconscious of their presence. He was as free from self-con- sciousness as a little child, and iiany a Gentile heart warmed that night to the srnple-hearted sage who stood before them pleading for the rights of human nature. The old man was often very sad. In such moods he would come round to our cottage on Post street, and sit with us until late at night, unburdening his aching heart, and relaxing by degrees into a playfulness that was charming from its very awk- wardness. He would bring little picture-books for the children, pat them on their heads, and praise 160 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. them. They were always glad to see 'him, and would nestle round him lovingly. We all loved him, and felt glad in the thought that he left our little circle lighter at heart. He lived alone. Once, when I playfully spoke to him of matri- mony, he laughed quietly, and said : " No, no my books and my poor school-chil- dren are enough for me." He died suddenly and alone. He had been out one windy night visiting the poor, came home sick, and before morning was in that world of spirits which was so real to his faith, and for which ho longed. He left his little fortune of a few thou- sand dollars to the poor of his native village of Posen, in Poland. And thus passed from Califor- nia-life Dr. Julius Eckman, the Rabbi. MY MINING SPECULATION. I BELIEVE the Lord has put me in the way of making a competency for my old age," said the dear old Doctor, as he seated himself in the arm-chair reserved for him at the cottage at North Beach. "How?" I asked. " I met a Texas man to-day, who told me of the discovery of an immensely rich silver mining dis- trict in Deep Spring Valley, Mono county, and he says he can get me in as one of the owners/' I laughingly made some remark expressive of incredulity. The honest and benignant face of the old Doctor showed that he was a little nettled. " I have made full inquiry, and am sure this is no mere speculation. The stock will not be put upon the market, and will not be assessable. They propose to make me a trustee, and the own- ers, limited in number, will have entire control of the property. But I will not be hasty in the inat- 11 (161) 162 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. ter. I will make it a subject of prayer for twen- ty-four hours, and then if there be no adverse in- dications I will go on with it." The next day I met the broad-faced Texan, and was impressed by him as the old Doctor had been. It seemed a sure thing. An old prospector had been equipped and sent out by a few gentlemen, and he had found outcroppings of silver in a range of hills extending not less than three miles. Assays had been made of the ores, and they were found to be very rich. All the timber and water- power of Deep Spring Valley had been taken up for the company under the general and local pre- emption and mining laws. It was a big thing. The beauty of the whole arrangement was that no "mining sharps" were to be let in; we were to manage it ourselves, and reap all the profits. We went into it, the old Doctor and I, feeling deeply grateful to the broad-faced Texan, who had so kindly given us the chance. I was made a trustee, and began to have a decidedly business feeling as such. At the meetings of " the board," my opinions were frequently called for, and were given with great gravity. The money was paid for the shares I had taken, and the precious evi- dences of ownership were carefully put in a place of safety. A mill was built near the richest of the claims, and the assays were good. There were Mr MINING SPECULATION. 163 delays, and more money was called for, and sent up. The assays were still good, and the reports from our superintendent were glowing. " The biggest thing in the history of California mining," he wrote; and when the secretary read his letter to the board, there was a happy expression on each face. At this point I began to be troubled. It seemed, from reasonable ciphering, that I should soon be a millionaire. It made me feel solemn and anxious. . I lay awake at night, praying that I might not be spoiled by my good fortune. The scriptures that speak of the deceitfulness of riches were called to mind, and I rejoiced with trembling. Many beneficent 'enterprises were planned, principally in the line of endowing col- leges, and paying church-debts. (I had had an experience in this line.) There were further de- lays, and more money was called for. The ores were rebellious, and our " process " did not suit them. Fryborg and Deep Spring Valley were not the same. A new superintendent one that understood rebellious ores was employed at a higher salary. He reported that all was right, and that we might expect "big news" in a few days, as he proposed to crush about seventy tons of the best rock, "by a new and improved pro- 164 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. The board held frequent meetings, and in view of the nearness of great results did not hesitate to meet the requisitions made for further outlays of money. They resolved to pursue a prudent but vigorous policy in developing the vast property when the mill should be fairly in operation. All this time I felt an under-current of anxiety lest I might sustain spiritual loss by my sudden accession to great wealth, and continued to fortify myself with good resolutions. As a matter of special caution, I sent for a par- cel of the ore, and had a private assay made of it. The assay was good. The new superintendent notified us that on a certain date we might look for a report of the re- sult of the first great crushing and clean-up of the seventy tons of rock. The day came. On Kear- ny street I met one of the stockholders a careful Presbyterian brother, who loved money. He had a solemn look, and was walking slowly, as if in deep thought. Lifting his eyes as we met, he saw me, and spoke: "Mislead!" "What is lead?' 5 " Our silver mine in Deep Spring Valley." Yes; from the seventy tons of rock we got eleven dollars in silver, and about fifty pounds of as good lead as was ever molded into bullets. J/r MIXING SPECULATION. 165 The board held a meeting the next evening. It was a solemn one. The fifty-pound bar of lead was placed in the midst, and was eyed reproach- fully. I resigned my trusteeship, and they saw me not again. That was my first and last mining speculation. It failed somehow but the assays were all very good. MIKE EEESE. I HAD business with him, and went at a busi- ness hour. No introduction was needed, for he had been my landlord, and no tenant of his ever had reason to complain that he did not get a visit from him, in person or by proxy, at least once a month. He was a punctual man as a collector of what was due him. Seeing that he was intently engaged, I paused and looked at him. A man of huge frame, with enormous hands and feet, mass- ive head, receding forehead, and heavy cerebral development, full sensual lips, large nose, and pe- culiar eyes that seemed at the same time to look through you and to shrink from your gaze he was a man at whom a stranger would stop in the street to get a second gaze. There he sat at his desk, too much absorbed to notice my entrance. Before him lay a .large pile of one -thousand -dollar United States Government bonds, and he was clipping off the coupons. That face! it was a study as he sat (166) MIKE EEESE. 167 using the big pair of scissors. A hungry boy in the act of taking into his mouth a ripe cherry, a mother gazing down into the face of her pretty sleeping child, a lover looking into the eyes of his charmer, are but faint figures by which to express the intense pleasure he felt in his work. But there was also a feline element in his joy his handling of those bonds was somewhat like a cat toying with its prey. When at length he raised his head, there was a fierce gleam in his eye and a flush in his face. I had come upon a devotee engaged in worship. This was Mike Reese, the miser and millionaire. Placing his huge left-hand on the pile of bonds, he gruffly returned my salu- tation, "Good morning." He turned as he spoke, and cast a look of scru- tiny into my face which said plain enough that he wanted me to make known my business with him at once. I told him what was wanted. At the request of the official board of the Minna-street Church I had come to ask him to make a contribution to- ward the payment of its debt. "O yes; I was expecting you. They all come to me. Father Gallagher, of the Catholic Church, Dr. Wyatt, of the Episcopal Church, and all the others, have been here. I feel friendly to the 168 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. Churches, and I treat all alike it won't do for me to be partial I do n't give to any ! " That last clause was an anticlimax, dashing my hopes rudely; but I saw he meant it, and left. I never heard of his departing from the rule of strict impartiality he had laid down for himself. We met at times at a restaurant on Clay street. He was a hearty feeder, and it was amusing to see how skillfully in the choice of dishes and the thor- oughness with which he emptied them he could combine economy with plenty. On several of these occasions, when we chanced to sit at the same table, I proposed to pay for both of us, and he quickly assented, his hard, heavy features light- ing up with undisguised pleasure at the sugges- tion, as he shambled out of the room amid the smiles of the company present, most of whom knew him as a millionaire, and me as a Methodist preacher. He had one affair of the heart. Cupid played a prank on him that was the occasion of much merriment in the San Francisco newspapers, and of much grief to him. A widow was his enslaver and tormentor the old story. She sued him for breach of promise of marriage. The trial made great fun for the lawyers, reporters, and the amused public generally; but it was no fun for him. He was mulcted for six thousand dollars and costs of MIKE REESE. 160 the suit. It was during the time I was renting one of his offices on Washington street. I called to see him, wishing to have some repairs made. His clerk met me in the narrow hall, and there was a mischievous twinkle in his eye as he said : "You had better come another day the old man has just paid that judgment in the breach of promise case, and he is in a bad way." Hearing our voices, he said, "Who is there? come in." I went in, and found him sitting leaning on his desk, the picture of intense wretchedness. He was all unstrung, his jaw fallen, and a most pitiful face met mine as he looked, up and said, in a bro- ken voice, " Come some other day I can do no business to-day ; I am very unwell." He was indeed sick sick at heart. I felt sorry for him. Pain always excites my pity, no matter what may be its cause. He was a miser, and the payment of those thousands of dollars was like tearing him asunder. He did not mind the jibes of the newspapers, but the loss of the money was almost killing. He had not set his heart on pop- ularity, but cash. He had another special trouble, but with a dif- ferent sort of ending. It was discovered by a neighbor of his that, by some mismeasurement of 170 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. the surveyors, he (Reese) had built the wall of one of his immense business-houses on Front street six inches beyond his own proper line, taking in just so much of that neighbor's lot. Not being on friendly terms with Reese, his neighbor made a peremptory demand for the removal of the wall, or the payment of a heavy price for the ground. Here was misery for the^miser. He writhed in mental agony, and begged for easier terms, but in vain. His neighbor would' not relent. The busi- ness men of the vicim%^ather enjoyed the situa- tion, humorously watching the progress of the affair. It was a case .of diamond cut diamond, both parties bearing the reputation of being hard men to deal with. A day was fixed for Reese to give a definite answer to his neighbor's demand, with notice that, in case of his non-compliance, suit against him would be begun at once. The day came, and with it a remarkable change in Reese's tone. He sent a short note to his enemy breath- ing profanity and defiance. "What is the matter?" mused the puzzled citi- zen; "Reese has made some discovery that makes him think he has the upper-hand, else he would not talk this way." And he sat and thought. The instinct of this class of men where money is involved is like a miracle. MIKE REESE. 171 "I have it!" he suddenly exclaimed; "Reese has the same hold on me that I have on him." Reese happened to be the owner of another lot adjoining that of his enemy, on the ot^pr side. It occurred to him that, as all thes^.^rots were sur- veyed at the same time by the- same party, it was most likely that as his line had gone six inches too far on the one side^lis enemy's had gone as much too far on the other. And^o it was. He had quietly a survey made of the premises, and he chuckled with inward joy to find that he held this winning card in the unfriendly game. With grim politeness the neighbors exchanged deeds for the two half feet of grouncj, and their war ended. The moral of this incident is for him who hath wit enough to see it. For several seasons he came every morning to North Beach to take sea -baths. Sometimes he rode his well-known white horse, but oftener he walked. He bathed in the open sea, making, as one expressed it, twenty-five cents out of the Pa- cific Ocean, by avoiding the bath-house. Was this the charm that drew him forth so early ? It not seldom chanced that we walked down-town together. At times he was quite communicative, speaking of himself in a way that was peculiar. It seems he had thoughts of marrying before his episode with the widow. 172 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. "Do you think a young girl of twenty could love an old man like me?" he asked me one day, as we were walking along the street. I looked at his huge and 'ungainly bulk, and into his animal face, and made no direct answer. Love! Six millions of dollars is a great sum. Money may buy youth and beauty, but love does not come at its call. God's highest gifts are free; only the second-rate things can be bought with money. Did this sordid old man yearn for pure human love amid his millions? Did such a dream cast a momentary glamour over a life spent in raking among the muck-heaps? If so, it passed away, for he never married. He understood his own case. He knew in what estimation he was held by the public, and did not conceal his scorn for its opinion. "My love of money is a disease. My saving and hoarding as I do is irrational, and I know it. It pains me to pay five cents for a street-car ride, or a quarter of a dollar for a dinner. My pleasure in accumulating property is morbid, but I have felt it from the time I was a foot-peddler in Char- lotte, Campbell, and Pittsylvania counties, in Vir- ginia, until now. It is a sort of insanity, and it is incurable; but it is about as good a form of mad- ness as any, and all the world is mad in some fashion." MIKE REESE. 173 This was the substance of what he said of him- self when in one of his moods of free speech, and it gave me a new idea of human nature a man whose keen and penetrating brain could subject his own consciousness to a cool and correct analy- sis, seeing clearly the folly which he could not re- sist. The autobiography of such a man might furnish a curious psychological study, and explain the formation and development in society of those moral monsters called misers. Nowhere in litera- ture has such a character been fully portrayed, though Shakespeare and George Eliot have given vivid touches of some of its features. He always retained a kind, feeling for the South, over whose hills he had borne his peddler's pack when a youth/ After the war, two young ex-Con- federate soldiers came to San Francisco to seek their fortunes. A small room adjoining my office was vacant, and the brothers requested me to se- cure it for them as cheap as possible. I applied to Keese, telling him who the young men were, and describing their broken and impecunious condition. "Tell them to take the room free of rent but it ought to bring five dollars a month." It took a mighty effort, and he sighed as he spoke the words. I never heard of his acting sim- ilarly in any other case, and I put this down to his credit, glad to know that there was a warm spot in 174 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. that mountain of mud and ice. A report of this generous act got afloat in the city, and many were the inquiries I received as to its truth. There was general incredulity. His health failed, and he crossed the seas. Per- haps he wished to visit his native hills in Germany, which he had last seen when a child. There he died, leaving all his millions to his kindred, save a bequest of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the University of California. What were his last thoughts, what was his final verdict concern- ing human life, I know not. Empty-handed he entered the world of spirits, where, the film fallen from his vision, he saw the Eternal Kealities. What amazement must have followed his awaken- ing! UNCLE NOLAN. HE was black and ugly; but it Was an ugli- ness that did not disgust or repel you. His face had a touch both of the comic and the pathetic. His mouth was very wide, his lips very thick and the color of a ripe damson, blue-black; his nose made up in width what it lacked in elevation; his ears were big, and bent forward ; his eyes were a dull white, on a very dark ground ; his wool was white and thick. His age might be anywhere along from seventy onward. A black man's age, like that of a horse, becomes dubious after reach- ing a certain stage. He came to the class-meeting in the Pine-street Church, in San Francisco, one Sabbath morning. He asked leave to speak, which was granted. " Bredren, I come here sometime ago, from Vicks- burg, Mississippi, where I has lived forty year,, or more. I heered dar was a culud church up on de hill, an' I thought I 'd go an' washup wid 'em. I (175) 176 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. went dar three or fo' Sundays, but I foun' deir ways did n't suit me, an' my ways did n't suit dem. Dey was Yankees' niggers, an' [proudly] I 's a Southern man myself. Sumbody tole me dar was a Southern Church down here on Pine street, an' I thought I 'd cum an' look in. Soon 's I got inside de church, an' look roun' a minit, I feels at home. Dey look like home-folks ; de preacher preach like home-folks ; de people sing like home-folks. Yer see, chillun, I 'se a Southern man myself [emphat- ically], and I'se a Southern Methodis'. Dis is de Church I was borned in, an' dis is de Churclj I was rarred in, an' [with great energy] dis is de Church which de Scripter says de gates ob hell shall not prevail ag'in it ! ["Amen ! " from Father Newman and others.] When dey heerd I was comin' to dis Church, some ob 'em got arter me 'bout it. Dey say dis Church was a enemy to de black people, and dat dey was in favor ob slavery. I tole 'em de Scripter said, 'Love your enemies,' an' den I took de Bible an' read what it says about slavery I can read some, chillun 'Servants, obey yer masters in all things, not wid eye-service, as men-pleasers, but as unto de Lord;' and so on. But, bless yer souls, chillun, dey would n't lis'eu to dat so I foun 1 out dey was abberlishen niggers, an' He fern!" Yes, he left them, and came to us. I received UNCLE NOLAN. 177 him into the Church in due form, and with no little eclat, he being the only son of Ham on our roll of members in San Francisco. He stood firm to his Southern Methodist colors under a great pressure. " Yer ought ter be killed fer goin' ter dat South- ern Church," said one of his colored acquaintances one day, as they met in the street. "Kill me, den," said Uncle Nolan, with proud humility; "kill me, den; yer can't cheat me out ob many days, nohow." He made a living, and something over, by rag- picking at North Beach and elsewhere, until the Chinese entered into competition with him, and then it was hard times for Uncle Nolan. His eye- sight partially failed him, and it was pitiful to see him on the beach, his threadbare garments flutter- ing in the wind, groping amid the rubbish for rags, or shuffling along the streets with a huge sack on his back, and his old felt hat tied under his nose with a string, picking his way carefully to spare his swollen feet, which were tied up with bagging and woolens. His religious fervor never cooled ; I never heard him complain. He never ceased to be joyously thankful for two things his freedom and his religion. But, strange as it may seem, he was a pro-slavery man to the last. Even after the war, he stood to his opinion. 12 178 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. "Dem niggers in de South thinks dey is free, but dey ain't. 'Fore it *s all ob ; er^ all clat ain't dead will be glad to git back to deir roasters," he would say. Yet he was very proud of his awn freedom, and took the utmost care of his free-*papers. He had no desire to resume his former relation to the pe- culiar and patriarchal institution. He was not the first philosopher who has had one theory for his fellows, and another for himself. Uncle Nolan would talk of religion by the hour, He never tired of that theme. His faith was sim- ple and strong, but, like most of his race, he had a tinge of superstition. He was a dreamer of dreams, and he believed in them. Here is one which he recited to me. His weird manner, and low, chanting tone, I must leave to the imagina- tion of the reader: UNCLE NOLAN'S DREAM. A tall black man came along, an' took me by de arm, an' tole me he had come for me. I said : "What yer want wid me?" " I come to carry yer down into de darkness." "What for?* "'Cause you did n't follow de Lord." Wid dat, he pulled me 'long de street till he come to a big black house, de biggest house an' de thickest walls I eber seed. We went in a little UNCLE NOLAN. 179 do', an' den he took me down a long sta'rs in de dark, till we come to a big do' ; we went inside, an' den de big black man locked de do' behin' us. An' so we kep' on, goin' down, an' goin' down, an' goin' down, an' he kep' lockin' dem big iron do's behin' us, an' all de time it was pitch dark, so I could n't see him, but he still hel' on ter me. At las' we stopped, an' den he started to go 'way. He locked de do' behin' him, an' I heerd him goin' up de steps de way we come, lockin' all de do's behin' him as he went. I tell you, dat was dreafful when I heerd dat big key turn on de outside, an' me 'way down, down, down dar in de dark all alone, an' no chance eber to git out! An' I knowed it was 'cause I didn't foller de Lord. I felt roun' de place, an' dar was nothin' but de thick walls an' de great iron do'. Den I sot down an' cried, 'cause I knowed I was a los' man. Dat was de same as hell [his voice sinking into a whisper], an' all de time I knowed I was dar, 'cause I had n't follered de Lord. Bymeby somethin' say, " Pray." Somethin' keep savin', "Pray." Den I drap on my knees an' prayed. I tell you, no man eber prayed harder 'n I did ! I prayed, an' prayed, an' prayed ! What 's dat ? Dar 's somebody a-comin' do\vn dem steps ; dey 's unlockin' de do' ; an' de fus' thing I knowed, de place was all lighted up bright as day, an' a white-faced man stood by me, wid a 180 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. crown on his head, an' a golden key in his ban'. Somehow, I knowed it was Jesus, an' right den I waked up all of a tremble, an' knowed it was a warnin' dat I mus' foller de Lord. An', bless Je- sus, I has been follerin' him fifty year since I had dat dream. In his prayers, and class-meeting and love-feast talks, Uncle Nolan showed a depth of spiritual in- sight truly wonderful, and the effects of these talks were frequently electrical. Many a time have I seen the Pine-street brethren and sisters rise from their knees, at the close of one of his prayers, melted into tears, or thrilled to religious rapture, by the power of his simple faith, and the vividness of his sanctified imagination. He held to his pro-slavery views and guarded his own freedom-papers to the last; and when he died, in 1875, the last colored Southern Methodist in California. was transferred from the Church mil- itant to the great company that no ma*n can num- ber, gathered out of every nation, and tribe, and kindred, on the earth. BUFFALO JONES. THAT is what the boys called him. His real Christian name was Zachariah. The way he got the name he went by was this : He was a Meth- odist, and prayed in public. He was excitable, and his lungs were of extraordinary power. When fully aroused, his voice sounded, it was said, like the bellowing of a whole herd of buffaloes. It had peculiar reverberations rumbling, roaring, shaking the very roof of the sanctuary, or echoing among the hills when let out at its utmost strength at a camp-meeting. This is why they called him Buffalo Jones. It was his voice. There never was such another. In Ohio he was a blacksmith and a fighting man. He had whipped every man who would fight him, in a whole tier of counties. He was converted after the old way ; that is to say, he was "powerfully" converted. A circuit-rider preached the sermon that converted him. His an- guish was awful. The midnight hour found him (181) 182 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. in tears. The Ohio forest resounded with his cries for mercy. When he found peace, it swelled into rapture. He joined the Church militant among the Methodists, and he stuck to them, quarreled with them, and loved them, all his life. He had many troubles, and gave much trouble to many people. The old Adam died hard in the fighting blacksmith. His pastor, his family, his friends, his fellow-members in the Church, all got a portion of his wrath in due season, if they swerved a hair-breadth from the straight-line of duty as he saw it. I was his pastor, and I never had a truer friend, or a severer censor. One Sunday morning he electrified my congregation, at the close of the sermon, by rising in his place and making a per- sonal application of a portion of it to individuals present, and insisting on their immediate expulsion from the Church. He had another side to his character, and at times was as tender as a woman, He acted as class-leader. In his melting moods he moved every eye to tears, as he passed round among the brethren and sisters, weeping, exhort- ing, and rejoicing. At such times, his great voice softened into a pathos that none could resist, and swept the chords of sympathy with resistless power. But when his other mood was 'upon him, he was fearful. He scourged the unfaithful with a whip of fire. He would quote with a singular fluency BUFFALO JONES, 183 and aptness every passage of Scripture that blast- ed hypocrites, reproved the lukewarm, or threat- ened damnation to the sinner. At such times his voice sounded like the shout of a warrior in battle, and the timid and wondering hearers looked as if they were in the midst of the thunder and light- ning of a tropical storm. I remember the shock he gave a quiet and timid lady whom I had per- suaded to remain for the class-meeting after serv- ice. Fixing his stern and fiery gaze upon her, and knitting his great bushy eyebrows, he thundered the question : "Sister, do you ever pray?" The startled woman nearly sprang from her seat in a panic as she stammered hurriedly, "Yes, sir; yes, sir." She did not attend his class-meeting again. At a camp-meeting he was present, and in one of his bitterest moods. The meeting was not con- ducted in a way to suit him. He was grim, crit- ical, and Contemptuous, making no concealment of his dissatisfaction. The preaching displeased him particularly. He groaned, frowned, and in other ways showed his feelings. At length he could stand it no longer. A young brother had just closed a sermon of a mild and persuasive kind, and no sooner had he taken his seat than the old man arose. Looking forth upon the vast audience, 184 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. and then casting a sharp and scornful glance at the preachers in and around "the stand," he said : " You preachers of these days have 510 gospel in you. You remind me of a man going into his barn-yard early in the morning to feed his stock. He has a basket on his arm, and here come the horses nickering, the cows lowing, the calves and sheep bleating, the hogs squealing, the turkeys gobbling, the hens clucking, and the roosters crow- ing. They all gather round him, expecting to be fed, and lo, his basket is empty ! You take texts, and you preach, but you have no gospel, Your baskets are empty.' 7 Here he darted a defiant glance at the astonished preachers, and then, turning to one, he added in a milder and patronizing tone: " You, Brother Sim, do preach a little gospel - in your basket there is one little nubbin!" Down he sat, leaving the brethren to meditate on what he had said. The silence that followed was deep. At one time his conscience became troubled about the use of tobacco, and he determined to quit. This was the second great struggle of his life. He was running a saw-mill in the foot-hills at the time, and lodged in a little cabin near by. Suddenly deprived of the stimulant to which it BUFFALO JONES. 185 had so long been accustomed, his nervous system was wrought up to a pitch of frenzy. He would rush from the cabin, climb along the hill-side, run leaping from rock to rock, now and then scream- ing like a maniac. Then he would rush back to the cabin, seize a plug of tobacco, smell it, rub it against his lips, and away he would go again. He smelt, but never tasted it again. " I was resolved to conquer, and by the grace of God I did/' he said. That was a great victory for the fighting black- smith. When a melodeon w r as introduced into the church, he was sorely grieved and furiously angry. He argued against it, he expostulated, he protest- ed, he threatened, he staid away from church. He wroteme a letter, in which he expressed his feelings thus: San Jose, 1860. DEAR BROTHER: They have got the devil into the church now! Put your foot on its tail and it squeals. Z. JONES. This was his figurative way of putting it. I was told that he had, on a former occasion, dealt with the question in a more summary way, by taking his ax and splitting a melodeon to pieces. Neutrality in politics was, of course, impossible to such a man. In the civil war his heart was 186 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. with the South. He gave up when Stonewall Jackson was killed. "It is all over the praying man is gone," he said; and he sobbed like a child. From that day he had no hope for the Confederacy, though once or twice, when feeling ran high, he expressed a readiness to use carnal weapons in defense of his political principles. For all his opinions on the subject he found support from the Bible, which he read and studied with unwearying diligence. He took its words literally on all occasions, and the Old Testament history had a wonderful charm for him. He would have been ready to hew any mod- ern Agag in pieces before the Lord. He finally found his way to the Insane Asylum. The reader has already seen how abnormal was his mind, and will not be surprised that Jiis storm- tossed soul lost its rudder at last. But mid all its veerings he never lost sight of the Star that had shed its light upon his checkered path of life. He raved, and prayed, and wept, by turns. The hor- rors of mental despair would be followed by gleams of seraphic joy. When one of his stormy moods w y as upon him, his mighty voice could be heard above all the sounds of that sad and pitiful com- pany of broken and wrecked souls. The old class- meeting instinct and habit showed itself in his semi-lucid intervals. He would go round among BUFFALO JONES. 187 the patients questioning them as to their religious feeling and behavior in true class-meeting style. Dr. Shurtleff one day overheard a colloquy be- tween him and Dr. Rogers, a free-thinker and reformer, whose vagaries had culminated in his shaving close one side of his immense whiskers, leaving the other side in all its flowing amplitude. Poor fellow ! Pitiable as was his case, he made a ludicrous figure walking the streets of San Fran- cisco half shaved, and defiant of the wonder and ridicule he excited. The ex - class - leader's voice was earnest and loud, as he said : "Now, Rogers, you must pray. If you will get down at the feet of Jesus, and confess your sins, and ask him to bless you, he will hear you, and give you peace. But if you won't do it," he con- tinued, with growing excitement and kindling anger at the thought, " you are the most infernal rascal that ever lived, and I '11 beat you into a jelly!" The good Doctor had to interfere at this point, for the old man was in the very act of carrying out his threat to punish Rogers bodily, on the bare possibility that he would not pray as he was told to do. And so that extemporized class -meeting came to an abrupt end. " Pray with me," he said to me the last time I saw him at the Asylum. Closing the door of the 188 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. little private office, we knelt side by side, and the poor old sufferer, bathed in tears, and docile as a little child, prayed to the once suffering, once crucified, but risen and interceding Jesus. When he arose from his knees his eyes were wet, and his face showed that there was a great calm within. We never met again. He went home to die. The storms that had swept his soul subsided, the light of reason was rekindled, and the light of faith burned brightly; and in a few weeks he died in great peace, and another glad voice joined in the anthems of the blood-washed millions in the city of God. TOD ROBINSON. THE image of this man of many moods and brilliant genius that rises most distinctly to my mind is that connected with a little prayer- meeting in the Minna-street Church, San Francis- co, one Thursday night. His thin silver locks, his dark flashing eye, his graceful pose, and his musical voice, are before me. His words I have not for- gotten, but their electric effect must forever be lost to all except the few who heard them. "I have been taunted with the reproach that it was only after I was a broken and disappointed man in my worldly hopes and aspirations that I turned to religion. The taunt is just" here he bowed his head, and paused with deep emotion "the taunt is just. I bow my head in shame, and take the blow. My earthly hopes have faded arid fallen one after another. The prizes that dazzled my imagination have eluded my grasp. I am a broken, gray-haired man, and I bring to my God (189) 190 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. only the remnant of a life. But, brethren, it is this very thought that fills me with joy and grati- tude at this moment the thought that when all else fails God takes us up. Just when we need him most, and most feel our need of him, he lifts us up out of the depths where we had groveled, and presses us to his Fatherly heart. This is the glory of Christianity. The world turns from us when we fail and fall ; then it is that the Lord draws nigher. Such a religion must be from God, for its principles are God-like. It does not require much skill or power to steer a ship into port when her timbers are sound, her masts all rigged, and her crew at their posts ; but the pilot that can take an old hulk, rocking on the stormy waves, with its masts torn away, its rigging gone, its planks loose and leaking, and bring it safe to harbor, that is the pilot for me. Brethren, I am that hulk; and Jesus is that Pilot!" " Glory be to Jesus ! " exclaimed Father New- man, as the speaker, with swimming eyes, radiant face, and heaving chest, sunk into his seat. I never heard any thing finer from mortal lips, but it seems cold to me as I read it here. Oratory cannot be put on paper. He was present once at a camp-meeting, at the famous Toll-gate Camp -ground, in Santa Clara Valley, near the city of San Jose. It was Sabbath TOD ROBINSON. 191 morning, just such a one as seldom dawns on this earth. The brethren and sisters were gathered around "the stand" under the live-oaks for a speak- ing-meeting. The morning glory was on the sum- mits of the Santa Cruz Mountains that sloped down to the sacred spot, the lovely valley smiled under a sapphire sky, the birds hopped from twig to twig of the overhanging branches that scarcely quiv- ered in the still air, and seemed to peer inquiringly into the faces of the assembled worshipers. The bugle-voice of Bailey led in a holy song, and Sim- mons led in prayer that touched the eternal throne. One after another, gray-haired men and saintly women, told when and how they began the new life far away on the old hills they would never see again, and how they had been led and comforted in their pilgrimage. Young disciples, in the flush of their first love, and the rapture of new-born hope, were borne out on a tide of resistless feeling into that ocean whose waters encircle the universe. The radiance from the heavenly hills was reflected from the consecrated encampment, and the angels of God hovered over the spot. Judge Robinson rose to his feet, and stepped into the altar, the sun- light at that moment falling upon his face. Every voice was hushed, as, with the orator's indefinable magnetism, he drew every eye upon him. The pause was thrilling. At length he spoke: 192 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. " This is a mount of transfiguration. The trans- figuration is on hill and valley, on tree and shrub, on grass and flower, on earth and sky. It is on your faces that shine like the face of Moses when he came down from the awful mount where he met Jehovah face to face. The same light is on your faces, for here is God's shekinah. This is the gate of heaven. I see its shining hosts, I hear the mel- ody of its songs. The angels of God encamped with us last night, and they linger with us this morning. Tarry with us, ye sinless ones, for this is heaven on earth ! " He paused, with extended arm, gazing upward en- tranced. The scene that followed beggars descrip- tion. By a simultaneous impulse all rose to their feet and pressed toward the speaker with awe-struck faces, and when Grandmother Rucker, the matri- arch of the valley, with luminous face and uplifted eyes, broke into a shout, it swelled into a melodious hurricane that shook the very hills. He ought to have been a preacher. So he said to me once: "I felt the impulse and heard the call in my early manhood. I conferred with flesh and blood, and was disobedient to the heavenly vision. I have had some little success at the bar, on the hustings, and in legislative halls, but how paltry has it been in comparison with the true life and high career that might have been mine!" TOD ROBINSON. 193 He was from the hill-country of North Carolina, and its flavor clung to him to the last. He had his gloomy moods, but his heart was fresh as a Blue Kidge breeze in May, and his wit bubbled forth like a mountain-spring. There \vas no bit- terness in his satire. The very victim of his thrust enjoyed the keenness of the stroke, for there was no poison in the weapon. At times he seemed in- spired, and you thrilled, melted, and soared, under the touches of this Western Coleridge. He came to my room at the Golden Eagle, in Sacramento City, one night, and left at two o'clock in the morning. He walked the floor and talked, and it was the grandest monologue I ever listened to. One part of it I could not forget. It was with reference to preachers who turn aside from their holy calling to engage in secular pursuits, or in politics. "It is turning away from angels' food to feed on garbage. Think of spending a whole life in con- templating the grandest things, and working for the most glorious ends, instructing the ignorant, con- soling the sorrowing, winning the wayward back to duty and to peace, pointing the dying to Him who is the light and the life of men, animating the living to seek from the highest motives a holy life and a sublime destiny! O it is a life that might draw an angel from the skies ! If there is a spe- 13 194 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. cial hell for fools, it should be kept for the man who turns aside from a life like this, to trade, or dig the earth, or wrangle in a court of law, or scramble for an office." He looked at me as he spoke, with flashing eyes and curled lip. "That is all true and very fine, Judge, but it sounds just a little peculiar as coming from you." "I am the very man to say it, for I am the man who bitterly sees its truth. Do not make the mis- step that I did. A man might well be willing to live on bread and water, and walk the world afoot, for the privilege of giving all his thoughts to the grandest themes, and all his service to the highest objects. As a lawyer, my life has been spent in a prolonged quarrel about money, land, houses, cat- tle, thieving, slandering, murdering, and other vil- lainy. The little episodes of politics that have given variety to my career have oidy shown me the baseness of human nature, and the pettiness of human ambition. There are men who will fill these places and do this work, and who want and will choose nothing better. Let them have all the good they can get out of such things. But the minister of the gospel who comes down from the height of his high calling to engage in this scram- ble does that which makes devils laugh and angels weep." TOD ROBINSON. 195 This was the substance of what he said on this point. I have never forgotten it. I am glad he came to my room that night. What else he said I cannot write, but the remembrance of it is like to that of a melody that lingers in my soul when the music has ceased. "I thank you for your sermon to-day you never told a single lie." This was his remark at the close of a service io Minna street one Sunday. "What is the meaning of that remark?" "That the exaggerations of the pulpit repel thousands from the -truth. Moderation of state- ment is a rare excellence. A deep spiritual in- sight enables a religious teacher to shade his mean- ings where it is required. Deep piety is genius for the pulpit. Mediocrity in native endowments, conjoined with spiritual stolidity in the pulpit, does more harm than all the open apostles of infidelity combined. They take the divinity out of religion and kill the faith of those who hear them. None but inspired men should stand in the pulpit. Ke- ligion is not in the intellect merely. The world by wisdom cannot know God, The attempt to liiul out God by the intellect has always been, and al- ways must be, the completest of failures. R< Jig- ion is the sphere of the supernatural, and stands not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of 196 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. God. It has often happened that men of the first order of talent and the highest culture have been converted by the preaching of men of weak intellect and limited education, but who were directly taught of God, and had drunk deep from the fount of living truth in personal experience of the blessed power of Christian faith. It was through the intellect that the devil seduced the first pair. When we rest in the intellect only, we miss God. With the heart only can man believe unto righteousness. The evidence that satisfies is based on consciousness. Consciousness is the satisfying demonstration. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. They can be revealed in no other way." Here was the secret he had learned, and that had brought a new joy and glory into his life as it neared the sunset. The great change dated from a dark and rainy night as he walked home in Sac- ramento City. Not more tangible to Saul of Tar- sus was the vision, or more distinctly audible the voice that spoke to him on the way to Damascus, than was the revelation of Jesus Christ to this lawyer of penetrating intellect, large and varied reading, and sharp perception of human folly and weakness. It was a case of conversion in the full- TOD ROBINSON. 197 est and divinest sense. He never fell from the wonder- world of grace to which he had been lifted. His youth seemed to be renewed, and his life had rebloomed, and its winter was turned into spring, under the touch of Him who maketh all things new. He was a new man, and he lived in a new world. He ;iever failed to attend the class-meet- ings, and in his talks there the flashes of his genius set religious truths in new lights, and the little band of Methodists were treated to bursts of fervid eloquence, such as might kindle the listening thou- sands of metropolitan churches into admiration, or melt them into tears. On such occasions I could not help regretting anew that the world had lost what this man might have wrought had his path in life taken a different direction at the start. He died suddenly, and when in the city of Los Ange- les I read the telegram announcing his death, I felt, mingled with the pain at the loss of a friend, exultation that before there was any reaction in his religious life his mighty soul had found a con- genial home amid the supernal glories and sublime joys of the world of spirits. The moral of this man's life will be seen by him for whom this im- perfect Sketch has been penciled. AH LEE. HE was the sunniest of Mongolians. The Chinaman, under favorable conditions, is not without a sly sense of humor of his peculiar sort; but to American eyes there is nothing very pleasant in his angular and smileless features. The manner of his contact with many Californians is not calculated to evoke mirthfulness. The brick- bat may be a good political argument in the hands of a hoodlum, but it does not make its target play- ful. To the Chinaman in America the situation is new and grave, and he looks sober and holds his peace. Even the funny -looking, be -cued little Chinese children wear a look of solemn inquisitive- ness, as they toddle along the streets of San Fran- cisco by the side of their queer-looking mothers. In his own land, over-populated and misgoverned, the Chinaman has a hard fight for existence. In these United States his advent is regarded some- what in the same spi4t as that of the seventeen- (198) AH LEE. 199 year locusts, or the cotton-worm. The history of a people may be read in their physiognomy. The monotony of Chinese life during these thousands of years is reflected in the dull, monotonous faces of Chinamen. Ah Lee was an exception. His skin was almost fair, his features almost Caucasian in their regu- larity; his dark eye lighted up with a peculiar brightness, and there was a remarkable buoyancy and glow about him every way. He was about twenty years old. How long he had been in Cali- fornia I know not. When he came into my office to see me the first time, he rushed forward and im- pulsively grasped my hand-, saying: "My name Ah Lee you Doctor Plitzjellie?" That was the way my name sounded as he spoke it. I was glad to see him, and told him so. "You makee Christian newspaper? You talkee Jesus? Mr. Taylor tellee me. Me Christian me love Jesus." Yes, Ah Lee was a Christian ; there could be no doubt about that. I have seen many happy con- verts, but none happier than he. He was not merely happy he was ecstatic. The story of the mighty change was a simple one, but thrilling. Near Vacaville, the former seat of the Pacific Methodist College, in Solan a county, lived the Rev. Try Taylor, a member of 200 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. the Pacific Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Mr. Taylor was a praying man, and he had a praying wife. Ah Lee was employed as a domestic in the family. His curiosity was first excited in regard to family prayers. He wanted to know 7 what it all meant. The Taylors explained. The old, old story took hold of Ah Lee. He was put to thinking and then to praying. The idea of the forgiveness of sins filled him with wonder and longing. He hung with breathless interest upon the word of the Lord, opening to him a world of new thought. The tide of feeling bore him on, and at the foot of the cross he found what he sought. Ah Lee was converted converted as Paul, as Augustine, as Wesley, were converted. He was born into a new life that was as real to him as his consciousness was real. This psychological change will be understood by some of my readers ; others may regard it as they do any other inexplicable phenomenon in that mysterious inner world of the human soul, in which are lived the real lives of us all. In Ah Lee's heathen soul was wrought the gracious wonder that makes joy among the angels of God. The young Chinese disciple, it is to be feared, got little sympathy outside the Taylor household and a few others. The right-hand of Christian fellowship was withheld by many, or extended in AH LEE. 201 a cold, half-reluctant way. But it mattered not to Ah Lee ; he had his own heaven. Coldness was wasted on him. The light within him brightened every thing without. Ah Lee became a frequent visitor to our cottage on the hill. He always came and went rejoicing. The Gospel of John w r as his daily study and de- light. To his ardent and receptive nature it was a diamond mine. Two things he wanted to do. lie had a strong desire to translate his favorite Gospel into Chinese, and to lead his parents to Christ. When he spoke of his father and mother his voice would soften, his eyes moisten with ten- derness. "I go back to China and tellee my fader and mydder allee good news," he said, with beaming face. This peculiar development of filial reverence and aifection among the Chinese is a hopeful feat- ure of their national life. It furnishes a solid basis for a strong Christian nation. . The weaken- ing of this sentiment weakens religious suscepti- bility; its destruction is spiritual death. The worship of ancestors is idolatry, but it is that form of it nearest akin to the worship of the Heavenly Father. The honoring of the father and mother on earth is the commandment with promise, and it is the promise of this life and of life everlasting. 202 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. There is an interblending of human and divine loves; earth and heaven are unitary in compan- ionship and destiny. The golden ladder rests on the earth and reaches up into the heavens. About twice a week Ah Lee came to see us at North Beach. These visits subjected our courtesy and tact to a severe test. He loved little children, and at each visit he would bring with him a gayly- painted box tilled with Chinese sweetmeats. Such sweetmeats ! They were too strong for the palates of even young Californians. What cannot be rel- ished and digested by a healthy California boy must be formidable indeed. Those sweetmeats were but I give it up, they were indescribable! The boxes were pretty, and, after being emptied of their contents, they were kept. Ah Lee's joy in his new experience did not abate. Under the touch of the Holy Spirit, his spiritual nature had suddenly blossomed into trop- ical luxuriance. To look at him made me think of the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. If I had had any lingering doubts of the trans- forming power of the gospel upon all human hearts, this conversion of Ah Lee would have set- tled the question forever. The bitter feeling against the Chinese that just then found expression in California, through so many channels, did not seem to affect him in the least. He had his Chris- AH LEE. 203 tianity warm from the heart of the Son of God, and no caricature of its features or perversion of its spirit could bewilder him for a moment. He knew whom he had believed. None of these things moved him. O blessed mystery of God's mercy, that turns the night of heathen darkness into day, and makes the desert soul bloom with the flower? of paradise ! O cross of the Crucified ! Lifted up, it shall draw all men^to their Saviour! And blind and slow of heart to believe! why could we not discern that this young Chinaman's conver- sion was our Lord's gracious challenge to our faith, and the pledge of success to the Church that will go into all the world with the news of salvation? Ah Lee has vanished from my observation, but 1 have a persuasion that is like a burning proph- ecy that he will be heard from again. To me he types the blessedness of old China new-born in the life of the Lord, and in his luminous face I read the prophecy of the redemption of the millions who have so long bowed before the Great Red Dragon, but who now wait for the coming of the Deliverer. THE CLIMATE OF CALIFOKNIA. HAD Shakespeare lived in California, he would not have written of the "winter of our discontent,' 7 but would most probably have found in the summer of that then undiscovered country a more fitting symbol of the troublous times referred to; for, with the fogs, winds, and dust, that accompany the summer, or the "dry season," as it is more appropriately called in Cali- fornia, it is emphatically a season of discontent. In the mountains of the State only are these con- ditions not found. True, you will find dust even there as the n'atural consequence of the lack of rain ; but that is not, of course, so bad in the mountains; and with no persistent, nagging wind to pick it up and fling it spitefully at you, you soon get not to mind it at all. But of summer in the coast country it is hard to speak tolerarjtly. The perfect flower of its unloveliness flourishes in San. Francisco, and, more or less hardily, all along the (204) THE CLIMATE OF CALIFORNIA. 205 coast. From the time the rains cease generally some time in May through the six-months' period of their cessation, the programme for the day is, with but few exceptions, unvaried. Fog in the morning chilling, penetrating fog, which obscures the rays of the morning sun completely, and, dank and "clinging like cerements," swathes every thing with its soft, gray folds. On the bay it hangs, heavy and chill, blotting out every thing but the nearest objects, and at a little distance hardly dis- tinguishable from the water itself. At such times is heard the warning-cry of the fog-horns at Fort Point, Goat Island, and elsewhere a sound which probably is more like that popularly supposed to be produced by an expiring cow in her last agony than any thing else, but which is not like that or any thing in the world but a fog-horn. The fog of the morning, however, gives way to the wind of the afternoon, which, complete master of the situ- ation by three o'clock P.M., holds stormy sway till sunset. No gentle zephyr this, to softly sway the delicate flower or just lift the fringe on the maid- en's brow, but what seamen call a "spanking breeze," that does not hesitate to knock off the hat that is not fastened tightly both fore and aft to the underlying head, or to fling sand and dust into any exposed eye, and which dances around gen- erally among skirts and coat-tails with untiring 206 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. energy and persistency. To venture out on the streets of San Francisco at such times is really no trifling matter ; and to one not accustomed to it, or to one of a non-combative disposition, the per- formance is not a pleasant one. Still the streets are always full of hurrying passengers ; for, whether attributable to the extra amount of vitality and vim that this bracing climate imparts to its chil- dren, or to a more direct and obvious cause, the desire to get in-doors again as soon as possible, the fact remains the same that the people of Califor- nia walk faster than do those of almost any other country. Not only men either, who with their coats buttoned^up to their chins, and hats jammed tightly over their half-shut eyes, present a tolera- bly secure surface to the attacks of the wind, but their fairer sisters too can be seen, with their fresh cheeks and bright eyes protected by jaunty veils, scudding along in the face or the track of the wind, as the case may be, with wonderful skill and grace, looking as trim and secure as to rigging as the lightest schooner in full sail on their own bay. But it is after the sun has gone down from the cloudless sky, and the sea has recalled its breezes to slumber for the night, that the fulfillment of the law of compensation is made evident in this mat- ter. The nights are of silver, if the days be not of gold.. And all over the State this blessing of THE CLIMATE OF CALIFORNIA. 207 cool, comfortable nights is spread. At any season, one can draw a pair of blankets over him upon re- tiring, sure of sound, refreshing slumber, unless a?~ sailed by mental or physical troubles to which ever this glorious climate of California cannot minister. The country here during this rainless season does not seem to the Eastern visitor enough like what he has known as country in the summer tc warrant any outlay in getting there. He must, however, understand that here people go to the country for precisely opposite reasons to those which influence Eastern x tourists to leave the city and betake themselves to rural districts. In the East, one leaves the crowded streets and heated atmosphere of the great city to seek coolness in some sylvan retreat. Here, we leave the chilling winds and fogs of the ci^ to try to get warm where they cannot penetrate. Warm it may be; but the country at this season is not at its best a? to looks. The flowers and the grass have disap- peared with the rains, the latter, however, keeping in its dry, brown roots, that the sun scorches daily, the germ of all next winter's green. Of the trees, the live-oak alone keeps to the summer livery of Eastern forests. Farther up in the mountain coun- ties, it is very different. No fairer summer 7) 258 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. This was Uncle Joe, a perfect specimen of the old Virginia " Uncle," who had found his way to California in the early days. Yes, he was a per- fect specimen black as night, his lower limbs crooked, arms long, hands and feet very large. His mouth was his most striking feature. It was the orator's mouth in size, being larger than that of Henry Clay in fact, it ran almost literally from ear to ear. When he opened it fully, it was like lifting the lid of a box. Uncle Joe and I became good friends at once. He honored my ministry with his presence on Sun- days. There was a touch of dandyism in him that then and there came out. Clad in a blue broad- cloth dress-coat of the olden cut, vest to match, tight -fitting pantaloons, stove-pipe hat, and yel- low kid gloves, he was a gorgeous object to be- hold. He knew it, and there was a pleasant self- consciousness in the way he bore himself in the sanctuary. Uncle Joe was the heartiest laugher I ever knew. He was always as full of happy life as a frisky colt or a plump pig. When he entered a knot of idlers on the streets, it was the signal for a humorous uproar. His quaint sayings, witty repartee, and contagious laughter, never failed. He was as agile as a monkey, and his dancing was a marvel. For a dime he would "cut the pigeon- A VIRGINIAN IN CALIFORNIA. 259 wing," or give a "double-shuffle" or "breakdown" in a way that made the beholder dizzy. What was Uncle Joe's age nobody could guess he had passed the line of probable surmising. His own version of the matter on a certain occasion was curious. We had a colored female servant an old-fashioned aunty from Mississippi who, with a bandanna handkerchief on her head, went about the house singing the old Methodist choruses so naturally that it gave us a home-feeling to have her about us. Uncle Joe and Aunt Tishy became good friends, and he got into the habit of dropping in at the parsonage on Sunday evenings to escort her to church. On this particular occasion I was in the little study adjoining the dining-room where Aunt Tishy was engaged in cleaning away the dishes after tea. I was not eavesdropping, but could not help hearing what they said. My name was mentioned. "O yes," said Uncle Joe; "I knowed Massa Fitchjarals back dar in Virginny. I use ter hear 7 im preach dar when I was a boy." There was a silence. Aunt Tishy could n't swallow that. Uncle Joe's statement, if true, would have made me more than a hundred years old, or brought him down to less than forty. The latter was his object; he wanted to impress Aunt Tishy with the idea that lie was young enough to 260 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. be an eligible gallant to any lady. But it failed. That unfortunate remark ruined Uncle Joe's pros- pects: Aunt Tishy positively refused to go with him to church, and just as soon as he had left she went into the sitting-room in high disgust, saying: "What made clat nigger tell me a lie like dat? Tut, tut, tut!" She cut him ever after, saying she would n't keep company with a liar, " even if he was from de Souf." Aunt Tishy was a good woman, and had some old- time notions. As a cook, she was discounted a lit- tle by the fact that she used tobacco, and when it got into the gravy it was not improving to its flavor. Uncle Joe was in his glory at a dinner-party, where he could wait on the guests, give droll an- swers to the remarks made to call him out, and enliven the feast by his inimitable and "catching" laugh. In a certain circle no occasion of the sort was considered complete without his presence. There was no such thing as dullness when he was about. His peculiar wit or his simplicity was brought out at a dinner-party one day at Dr. Bas- com's. There was a large gathering of the lead- ing families of San Jose and vicinity, and Uncle Joe was there in his jolliest mood. Mrs. Bascom, whose wit was then the quickest and keenest in all California, presided, and enough good things were said to have made a reputation for Sidney Smith A VIRGINIAN IN CALIFORNIA. 261 or Douglas Jerrold. Mrs. Bascom, herself a Vir- ginian by extraction, had engaged in a laughing colloquy with Uncle Joe, who stood near the head of the table waving a bunch of peacock's feathers to keep off the flies. "Missus, who is yer kinfolks back dar in Vir- giniiy, any way?" The names of several were mentioned. " Why, dem 's big folks," said Uncle Joe. "Yes," said she, laughingly; "I belong to the first families of Virginia." "I do n't know 'bout dat, Missus. I was dar 'fore you was, an' I do n't 'long to de fus' fam- ilies ! " He looked at it from a chronological rather than a genealogical stand-point, and, strange to say, the familiar phrase had never been heard by him before. Uncle Joe joined the Church. He was sincere in his profession. The proof was found in the fact that he quit dancing. No more "pigeon- wings," "double -shuffles," or "breakdowns," for him he was a "perfessor." He was often tempted by the offer of coin, but he stood firm. " No, sah ; I 's done dancin', an' do n't want to be discommunicated from de Church," he would say, good-naturedly, as he shied off, taking himself away from temptation. 262 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. A very high degree of spirituality could hardly be expected from Uncle Joe at that late day; but he was a Christian after a pattern of his own kind-hearted, grateful, simple-minded, and full of good humor. His strength gradually declined, and he was taken to the county hospital, where his patience and cheerfulness conciliated and elicited kind treatment from everybody. His memories went back to old Virginia, and his hopes looked up to the heaven of which his notions were as simple as those of a little child. In the simplicity of a child's faith he had come to Jesus, and I doubt not was numbered among his little ones. Among the innumerable company that shall be gathered on Mount Zion from every kindred, tribe, and tongue, I hope to meet my humble friend, Uncle Joe. AT THE END. AMONG my acquaintances at San Jose, in 1863, was a young Kentuckian who had come down from the mines in bad health. The exposure of mining -life had been too severe for him. It took iron constitutions to stand all day in almost ice-cold water up to the waist with a hot sun pouring down its burning rays upon the head and upper part of the body. Many a poor fellow sunk under it at once, and after a few days of fever and delirium was taken to the top of an adjacent hill and laid to rest by the hands of strangers. Others, crippled by rheumatic and neuralgic trou- bles, drifted into the hospitals of San Francisco, or turned their faces sadly toward the old homes which they had left with buoyant hopes and elastic footsteps. Others still, like this young Kentuck- ian, came down into the valleys with the hacking cough and hectic flush to make a vain struggle against the destroyer that had fastened upon their (263) 264 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. vitals, nursing often a vain hope of recovery to the very last. Ah, remorseless flatterer! as I write these lines, the images of your victims crowd be- fore my vision : the strong men that grew weak, and pale, and thin, but fought to the last inch for life; the noble youths who were blighted just as they began to bloom ; the beautiful maidens ethe- realized into almost more than mortal beauty by the breath of the death-angel, as autumn leaves, touched by the breath of winter, blush with the beauty of decay. My young friend indulged no false hopes. He knew he was doomed to early death, and did not shrink from the thought. One day, as we were conversing in a store up-town, he said: " I know that I have at most but a few months to live, and I want to spend them in making prep- aration to die. You will oblige me by advising me what books to read. I want to get clear views of what I am to do, and then do it/' It need scarcely be said that I most readily complied with his request, and that first and chiefly I advised him to consult the Bible, as the light to his path and the lamp to his feet. Other books were suggested, and a word with regard to prayerful reading was given, and kindly received. One day I went over to see my friend. Enter- AT THE END. 265 ing his room, I found him sitting by the fire with a table by his side, on which was lying a Bible. There was an unusual flush in his face, and his eye burned with unusual brightness. "How are you to-day?" I asked. "I am annoyed, sir I am indignant," he said. "What is the matter?' 7 "Mr. , the preacher, has just left me. He told me that my soul cannot be saved unless I perform two miracles: I must, he said, think of nothing but religion, and be baptized by immer- sion. I am very weak, and cannot fully control my mental action my thoughts will wander in spite of myself. As to being put under the water, that would be immediate death; it would bring on a hemorrhage of the lungs, and kill me." He leaned his head on the table and panted for breath, his thin chest heaving. I answered: "Mr. is a good man, but narrow. He meant kindly in the foolish words he spoke to you. No man, sick or well, can so control the action of his mind as to force his thoughts wholly into one channel. I cannot do it, neither can any other man. God requires no such absurdity of you or anybody else. As to being immersed, that seems to be a physical impossibility, and he surely does not demand what is impossible. My friend, it really makes little difference what Mr. - says, 2GG CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. or what I say, concerning this matter. What does God say? Let us see." I took up the Bible, and he turned a face upon me expressing the most eager interest. The blessed Book seemed to open of itself to the very words that were wanted. " Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him." "He knoweth our frame, and remembereth that we are dust." " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come to the waters." Glancing at him as I read, I was struck with the intensity of his look as he drank in every word. A traveler dying of thirst in the desert could not clutch a cup of cold water more eagerly than he grasped these tender words of the pitying Father in heaven. I read the words of Jesus : " Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." " Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out." "This is what God says to you, and these are the only conditions of acceptance. Nothing is said about any thing but the desire of your heart and the purpose of your soul. O my friend, these words are for you!" The great truth flashed upon his mind, and flooded it with light. He bent his head and wept. We knelt and prayed together, and when we rose AT THE END. 267 from our knees he said softly, as the tears stole down his face : " It is all right now I see it clearly ; I see it clearly!" We quietly clasped hands, and sat in silent sym- pathy. There was no need for any words' from me; God had spoken, and that was enough. Our hearts were singing together the song without words. " You have found peace at the cross let nothing disturb it," I said, as he pressed my hand at the door as we left. It never was disturbed. The days that had dragged so wearily and anxiously during the long, long months, were now full of brightness. A sub- dued joy shone in his face, and his voice was low and tender as he spoke of the blessed change that had passed upon him. The Book whose words had been light and life to him was often in his hand, or lay open on the little table in his room. He never lost his hold upon the great truth he had grasped, nor abated in the fullness of his joy. I was with him the night he died. He knew the end was at hand, and the thought filled him with sol- emn joy. His eyes kindled, and his wasted feat- ures fairly blazed with rapture as he said, holding my hand with both of his: "I am glad it will all soon be over. My peace has been unbroken since that morning when God 268 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. sent you to me. I feel a strange, solemn joy at the thought that I shall soon know all/' Before day-break the great mystery was disclosed to him, and as he lay in his coffin next day, the smile that lingered on his lips suggested the thought that he had caught a hint of the secret while yet in the body. Among the casual hearers that now and then dropped in to hear a sermon in Sonora, in the early days of my ministry there, was a man who inter- ested me particularly. He was at that time edit- ing one of the papers of the town, which sparkled with the flashes of his versatile genius. He was a true Bohemian, who had seen many countries, and knew life in almost all its phases. He had written a book of adventure which found many readers and admirers. An avowed skeptic, he was yet respectful in his allusions to sacred things, and I am sure his editorial notices of the pulpit efforts of a certain young preacher who had much to learn were more than just. He was a brilliant talker, with a vein of enthusiasm that was very delightful. His spirit was generous and frank, and I never heard from his lips an unkind word concerning any human being. Even his partisan editorials were free from the least tinge of asperity and this is a supreme test of a sweet and courte- AT THE END. 269 ous nature. In our talks he studiously evaded the one subject most interesting to me. With gentle and delicate skill he parried all my attempts to introduce the subject of religion in our conversa- tions. "I can't agree with you on that subject, and we will let it pass," he would say, with a smile, and then he would start some other topic, and rattle on delightfully in his easy, rapid way. He could not stay long at a place, being a con- firmed wanderer. He left Sonora, and I lost sight of him. Retaining a very kindly feeling for this gentle-spirited and pleasant adventurer, I was loth thus to lose all trace of him. Meeting a friend one day, on J Street, in the city, of Sacramento, he said : " Your old friend D - is at the Golden Eagle hotel. You ought to go and see him." I went at once. Ascending to the third story, I found his room, and, knocking at the door, a feeble voice bade me enter. I was shocked at the spec- tacle that met my gaze. Propped in an arm-chair in the middle of the room, wasted to a skeleton, and of a ghastly pallor, sat the unhappy man. His eyes gleamed with an unnatural brightness, and his features wore a look of intense suffering. " You have come too late, sir," he said, before I had time to say a word. "You can do me no good now. I have been sitting; in this chair three weeks. 270 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. I could not live a minute in any other position. Hell could not be worse than the tortures I have suffered! I thank you for coming to see me, but you can do me no good none, none ! " He paused, panting for breath; and then he continued, in a soliloquizing way: "I played the fool, making a joke of what was no joking matter. It is too late. I can neither think nor pray, if praying would do any good. I can only suffer, suffer, suffer ! " The painful interview soon ended. To every cheerful or hopeful suggestion which I made he gave but the one reply: " Too late!" The unspeakable anguish of his look, as his eyes followed me to the door, haunted me for many a day, and the echo of his words, "Too late!" lin- gered sadly upon my ear. When I saw the an- nouncement of his death, a few days afterward, I asked myself the solemn question, Whether I had dealt faithfully with this light-hearted, gifted man when he was within my reach. His last look is before me now, as I pencil these lines. "John A is dying over on the Portrero, and his family wants you to go over and see him." It was while I was pastor in San Francisco. A - was a member of my Church, and lived on AT THE END. 271 what was called the Portrero, in the southern part of the city, beyond the Long Bridge. It was after night when I reached the little cottage on the slope above the bay. " He is dying and delirious," said a member of the family, as I entered the room where the sick man lay. His wife, a woman of peculiar traits and great religious fervor, and a large number of children and grandchildren, were gathered in the dying man's chamber and the adjoining rooms. The sick man a man of large and powerful frame was restlessly tossing and moving his limbs, mut- tering incoherent words, with now and then a burst of uncanny laughter. When shaken, he would open his eyes for an instant, make some meaning- less ejaculation, and then they would close again. The wife was very anxious that he should have a lucid interval while I was there. "O I cannot bear to have him die without a word of farewell and comfort!" she said, weeping. The hours wore on, and the dying man's pulse showed that he was sinking steadily. Still he lay unconscious, moaning and gibbering, tossing from side to side as far as his failing strength permitted. His wife would stand and gaze at him a few mo- ments, and then walk the floor in agony. "He can't last much longer/' said a visitor, who felt his pulse and found it almost gone, while his 272 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. breathing became more labored. We waited in silence. A thought seemed to strike the wife. Without saying a word, she climbed upon the bed, took her dying husband's head upon her lap, and, bending close above his face, began to sing. It was a melody I had never heard before low, and sweet, and quaint. The effect was weird and thrilling as the notes fell tremulous from the sing- er's lips in the hush of that dead hour of the night. Presently the dying man became more quiet, and before the song was finished he opened his eyes as a smile swept over his face, and as his glance fell on me I saw that he knew me. He called my name, and looked up in the face that bent above his own, and kissed it. " Thank God ! " his wife exclaimed, her hot tears falling on his face, that wore a look of strange se- renity. Then she half whispered to me, her face beaming with a softened light : "That old song was one we used to sing together when we were first married in Baltimore." On the stream of music and memory he had floated back to consciousness, called by the love whose instinct is deeper and truer than all the science and philosophy in the world. At dawn he died, his mind clear, and the voice of prayer in his ears, and a look of rapture in his face. AT THE END. 273 Dan W , whom I had known in the mines in the early days, had come to San Jose about the time my pastorate in the place began. He kept a meat-market, and was a most genial, accommodat- ing, and good-natured fellow. Everybody liked him, and he seemed to like everybody. His ani- mal spirits were unfailing, and his face never re- vealed the least trace of worry or care. He " took things easy," and never quarreled with his luck. Such men are always popular, and Dan was a gen- eral favorite, as the generous and honest fellow deserved to be. Hearing that he was very sick, I went to see him. I found him very low, but he greeted me with a smile. "How are you to-day, Dan?" I asked, in the off-hand way of the old times. "It is all up with me, I guess/' he replied, paus- ing to get breath between the words; "the doctor says I can't get out of this I must leave in a day or two." He spoke in a matter-of-fact way, indicating that he intended to take death, as he had taken life, easy. " How do you feel about changing worlds, my old friend?" " I have no say in the matter. I have got to go, and that is all there is of it." That was all I ever got out of him. He told me he had not been to church for ten years, as "it 18 274 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. was not in his line." He did not understand mat- ters of that sort* he said, as his business was run- ning a meat-market. He intended no disrespect to me or to sacred things this was his way of put- ting the matter in his simple-heartedness. "Shall I kneel here and pray with you?" I asked. "No; you needn't take the trouble, parson," he said, gently; "you see I've got to go, and that's all there is of it. I do n't understand that sort of thing it J s not in my line, you see. I J ve been in the meat business." "Excuse me, my old friend, if I ask if you do not, as a dying man, have some thoughts about God and eternity?" "That 's not in my line, and I could n't do much thinking now any way. It 's all right, parson I 've got to go, and Old Master will do right about it." Thus he died without a prayer, and without a fear, and his case is left to the theologians who can understand it, and to the "Old Master" who will do right. I was called to see a lady who was dying at North Beach, San Francisco. Her history was a singularly sad one, illustrating the ups and downs of California life in a startling manner. From opulence to poverty, and from poverty to sorrow, AT THE END. 275 and from sorrow to death these were the acts in the drama, and the curtain was about to fall on the last. On a previous visit I had pointed the poor sufferer to the Lamb of God, and prayed at her bedside, leaving her calm and tearful. Her only daughter, a sweet, fresh girl of eighteen, had two years ago betrothed herself to a young man from Oregon, who had come to San Francisco to study a profession. The dying mother had ex- pressed a desire to see them married before her death, and I had been sent for to perform the cer- emony. "She is unconscious, poor thing!" said a lady who was in attendance, " and she will fail of her dearest wish." The dying mother lay with a flushed face, breath- ing painfully, with closed eyes, and moaning pite- ously. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she glanced inquiringly around the room. They understood her. The daughter and her betrothed were sent for. The mother's face brightened as they entered, and she turned to me and said, in a faint voice: "Go on with the ceremony, or it will be too late for me. God bless you, darling!" she added as the daughter bent down sobbing, and kissed her. The bridal couple kneeled together by the bed of death, and the assembled friends stood around in solemn silence, while the beautiful formula of the 276 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. Church was repeated, the dying mother's eyes rest- ing upon the kneeling daughter with an expression of unutterable tenderness. When the vows were taken that made them one, and their hands were clasped in token of plighted faith, she drew them both to her in a long embrace, and then almost instantly closed her eyes with a look of infinite restfulness, and never opened them again. Of the notable men I met in the mines in the early days, there was one who piqued and puzzled my curiosity. He had the face of a saint with the habits of a debauchee. His pale and student-like features were of the most classic mold, and their expression singularly winning, save when at times a cynical sneer would suddenly flash over them like a cloud-shadow over a quiet landscape. He was a lawyer, and stood at the head of the bar. He was an orator whose silver voice and magnetic qualities often kindled the largest audiences into the wildest enthusiasm. Nature had denied him no gift of body or mind requisite to success in life; but there was a fatal weakness in his moral consti- tution. He was an inveterate gambler, his large professional earnings going into the coffers of the faro and monte dealers. His violations of good morals in other respects were flagrant. He worked hard by day, and gave himself up to his vices at AT THE END. -277 night. Public opinion was not very exacting in those days, and his failings were condoned by a people who respected force and pluck, and made no close inquiries into a man's private life, because it would have been no easy thing to find one who, on the score of innocence, was entitled to cast the first stone. Thus he lived from year to year, in- creasing his reputation as a lawyer of marked ability, and as a politician whose eloquence in every campaign was a tower of strength to his party. His fame spread ontil it filled the State, and his money still fed his vices. He never drank, and that cool, keen intellect never lost its balance, or failed him in any encounter on the hustings 01 at the bar. I often met him in public, but he never was known to go inside a church. Once, when in a street conversation I casually made some reference to religion, a look of displeasure passed over his face, and he abruptly left me. I was agreeably surprised when, on more than one occa- sion, he sent me a substantial token of good-will, but I was never able to analyze the motive that prompted him to do so. This remembrance soft- ens the feelings with which these lines are penciled. He went to San Francisco, but there was no change in his life. " It is the old story," said an acquaintance of whom I made inquiry concerning him: "he has 278 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. a large and lucrative practice, and the gamblers get all he makes. He is getting gray, and he is failing a little. He is a strange being." It happened afterward that his office and mine were in the same building and on the same floor. As we met on the stairs, he would nod to me and pass on. I noticed that he was indeed "failing." He looked weary and sad, and the cold or defiant gleam in his steel-gray eyes was changed into a wistful and painful expression that was very pa- thetic. I did not dare to invade his reserve with any tender of sympathy. Joyless and hopeless as he might be, I felt instinctively that he would play out his drama alone. Perhaps this was a mistake on my part: he may have been hungry for the word I did not speak. God knows. I was not lacking in proper interest in his well-being, but I have since thought in such cases it is safest to speak. "What has become of B ?" said my land- lord one day as we met in the hall. " I have been here to see him several times, and found his door locked, and his letters and- newspapers have not been touched. There is something the matter, I fear." Instantly I felt somehow that there was a trage- dy in the air, and I had a strange feeling of awe as I passed the door of B 's room. AT THE END, 279 A policeman was brought, the lock forced, and we went in. A sickening odor of chloroform filled the room. The sight that met our gaze made us shudder. Across the bed was lying the form of a man partly dressed, his head thrown back, his eyes staring upward, his limbs hanging loosely over the bedside. "Is he dead?" was asked in a whisper. "No," said the officer, with his finger on B 's wrist; "he is not dead yet, but he will never wake out of this. He has been lying thus two or three days." A physician was sent for, and all possible efforts made to rouse him, but in vain. About sunset the pulse ceased to beat, and it was only a lump of lifeless clay that lay there so still and stark. This was his death the mystery of his life went back beyond my knowledge of him, and will only be known at the judgment-day. One of the gayest and brightest of all the young people gathered at a May-day picnic, just across the bay from San Francisco, was Ada D . The only daughter of a wealthy citizen, living in one of the lovely valleys beyond the coast-range of mountains, beautiful in person and sunny in tem- per, she was a favorite in all the circle of her asso- ciations. Though a petted child of fortune, she 280 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. was not spoiled. Envy itself was changed into affection in the presence of a spirit so gentle, un- assuming, and loving, She had recently been grad- uated from one of the best schools, and her graces of character matched the brilliance of her pecu- niary fortune. A few days after the May-day festival, as I was sitting in my office, a little before sunset, there was a knock at the door, and before I could answer the messenger entered hastily, saying: " I want you to go with me at once to Amador Valley. Ada D is dying, and wishes to be baptized. We just have time for the six o'clock boat to take us across the bay, where the carriage and horses are waiting for us. The distance is thirty miles, and we must run a race against death." We started at once : no minister of Jesus Christ hesitates to obey a summons like that. We reached the boat while the last taps of the last bell were being given, and were soon at the landing on the opposite side of the bay. Springing ashore, we en- tered the vehicle which w T as in readiness. Grasp- ing the reins, my companion touched up the spir- ited team, and we struck across the valley. My driver was an old Californian, skilled in all horse- craft and road-craft. He spoke no w r ord, putting his soul and body into his work, determined, as he AT THE END. 28 L had said, to make the thirty miles by nine o'clock. There was no abatement of speed after we struck the hills: what was lost in going up was regained in going down. The mettle of those California- bred horses was wonderful ; the quick beating of their hoofs upon the graveled road was as regular as the motion of machinery, steam-driven. It was an exciting ride, and there was a weirdness in the sound of the night-breeze floating by us, and ghost- ly shapes seemed looking at us from above and below, as we wound our way through the hills, while the bright stars shone like funeral -tapers over a world of death. Death! how vivid and awful was its reality to me as I looked up at those shining worlds on high, and then upon the earth wrapped in darkness below! Death! his sable coursers are swift, and we may be too late ! The driver shared my thoughts, and lashed the panting horses to yet greater speed. My pulses beat rap- idly as I counted the moments. "Here we are!" he exclaimed, as we dashed down the hill and brought up at the gate. "It is eight minutes to nine," he added, glancing at his watch by the light of a lamp shining through the window. "She is alive, but speechless, and going fast," said the father, in a broken voice, as I entered the house. 282 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. He led me to the chamber of the dying girl. The seal of death was upon her. I bent above her, and a look of recognition came into her eyes. Not a moment was to be lost. " If you know me, my child, and can enter the meaning of what I say, indicate the fact if you can." There was a faint smile and a slight but signifi- cant inclination of the fair head as it lay envel- oped with its wealth of chestnut curls. With her hands folded on her breast, and her eyes turned upward, the dying girl lay in listening attitude, while in a few words I explained the meaning of the sacred rite and pointed her to the Lamb of God as the one sacrifice for sin. The family stood round the bed in awed and tearful silence. As the crystal sacramental drops fell upon her brow a smile flashed quickly over the pale face, there was a slight movement of the head and she was gone ! The upward look continued, and the smile never left the fair, sweet face. We fell upon our knees, and the prayer that followed was not for her, but for the bleeding hearts around the couch where she lay smiling in death. Dave Douglass was one of that circle of Ten- nesseans who took prominent parts in the early history of California. He belonged to the Sum- AT THE END, 283 ner County Douglasses, of Tennessee, and had the family warmth of heart, impulsiveness, and cour- age, that nothing could daunt. In all the polit- ical contests of the early days he took an active part, and was regarded as an unflinching and un- selfish partisan by his own party, and as an open- hearted and generous antagonist by the other. He was elected Secretary of State, and served the peo- ple with fidelity and efficiency. He was a man of a powerful physical frame, deep-chested, ruddy- faced, blue-eyed, with just enough shagginess of eyebrows and heaviness of the under-jaw to indi- cate the indomitable pluck which was so strong an element in his character. He was a true Doug- lass, as brave and true as any of the name that ever wore the kilt or swung a claymore in the land of Bruce* His was a famous Methodist family in Tennessee, and though he knew more of politics than piety, he was a good friend to the Church, and had regular preaching in the school-house near his farm on the Calaveras River. All the itinerants that traveled that circuit knew "Doug- lass's School-house" as an appointment, and shared liberally in the hospitality and purse of the Gen- eral (that was his title). " Never give up the fight !" he said to me, with flashing eye, the last time I met him in Stockton, pressing my hand with a warm clasp. It was 284 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. while I was engaged in the effort to build a church in that place, and I had been telling him of the difficulties I had met in the work. That word and hand-clasp helped me. He was taken sick soon after. The disease had taken too strong a grasp upon him to be broken. He fought bravely a losing battle for several days. Sunday morning came, a bright, balmy day. It was in the early summer. The cloudless sky was deep-blue, the sunbeams sparkled on the bosom of the Calaveras, the birds were singing in the trees, and the perfume of the flowers filled the air and floated in through the open window to where the strong man lay dying. He had been affected with the delirium of fever during most of his sickness, but that was past, and he was facing death with an unclouded mind. "I think I am dying/' he said, half inquiringly. " Yes is there any thing we can do for you ? " His eyes closed for a few moments, and his lips moved as if in mental prayer. Opening his eyes, he said: "Sing one of the old camp-meeting songs." A preacher present struck up the hymn, "Show pity, Lord, O Lord forgive." The dying man, composed to rest, lay with folded hands and listened with shortening breath and a rapt face, and thus he died, the words and the mel- AT THE END. 285 ody that had touched his boyish heart among the far-off hills of Tennessee being the last sounds that fell upon his dying ear. We may hope that on that old camp-meeting song was wafted the prayer and trust of a penitent soul receiving the kingdom of heaven as a little child. During my pastorate at Santa Kosa, one of my occasional hearers was John I . He was dep- uty-sheriff of Sonoma County, and was noted for his quiet and determined courage. He was a man of few words, but the most reckless desperado knew that he could not be trifled with. When there was an arrest to be made that involved spe- cial peril, this reticent, low- voiced man was usually intrusted with the undertaking. He was of the good old Primitive Baptist stock from Caswell County, North Carolina, and had a lingering fond- ness for the peculiar views of that people. He had a weakness for strong drink that gave him trouble at times, but nobody doubted his integrity any more than they doubted his courage. His wife was an earnest Methodist, one of a family of sisters remarkable for their excellent sense and strong religious characters. Meeting him one day, just before my return to San Francisco, he said, with a warmth of manner not common with him : "I am sorry you are going to leave Santa Kosa. 286 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. You understand me, and if anybody can do me any good, you are the man." There was a tremor in his voice as he spoke, and he held my hand in a lingering grasp. Yes, I knew him. I had seen him at church on more than one occasion with compressed lips strug- gling to conceal the strong emotion he felt, some- times hastily wiping away an unbidden tear. The preacher, when his own soul is aglow and his sym- pathies all awakened and drawn out toward his hearers, is almost clairvoyant at times in his per- ception of their inner thoughts. I understood this man, though no disclosure had been made to me in words. I read his eye, and marked the wishful and anxious look that came over his face when his conscience was touched and his heart moved. Yes, I knew him, for my sympathy had made me re- sponsive, and his words, spoken sadly, thrilled me, and rolled upon rny spirit the burden of a soul. His health, which had been broken by hardships and careless living, began to decline more rapidly. I heard that he had expressed a desire to see me, and made no delay in going to see him. I found him in bed, and much wasted. "I am glad you have come. I have been want- ing to see you," he said, taking my hand. " I have been thinking of my duty to God for a good while, and have felt more than anybody has suspected. AT THE END. 287 I want to do what I can and ought to do. You have made this matter a study, and you ought to understand it. I want you to help me." We had many interviews, and I did what I could to guide a penitent sinner to the sinner's Friend. He was indeed a penitent sinner shut out from the world and shut in with God, the merciful Fa- ther was speaking to his soul, and all its depths were stirred. The patient, praying wife had a wishful look in her eyes as I came out of his room, and I knew her thought. God was leading him, and he was receptive of the truth that saves. He luid one difficulty. "I hate meanness, or any thing that looks like it. It does look mean for me to turn to religion now that I am sick, after being so neglectful and wicked when I was well." "That thought is natural to a manly soul, but there is a snare in it. You are thinking what oth- ers may say, and your pride is touched. You are dealing with God only. Ask only what will please him. The time for a man to do his duty is when he sees it and feels the obligation. Let the past go you cannot undo it, but it may be forgiven. The present and an eternal future are yours, my friend. Do what will please God, and all will be right." The still waters were reached, and his soul lay at rest in the arms of God. O sweet, sweet rest! 288 CALIFORNIA SKETCHES. infinitely sweet to the spfrit long tossed upon the stormy sea of sin and remorse. O peace of God, the inflow into a human heart of the very life of the Lord ! It is the hidden mystery of love divine whispered to the listening ear of faith. It had come to him by its own la\v when he was ready to receive it. The great change had come to him it looked out from his eyes and beamed from his face. He was baptized at night. The family had gathered in the room. . In the solemn hush of the occasion the whispers of the night-breeze could be heard among the vines and flowers outside, and the rippling of the sparkling waters of Santa Rosa Creek was audible. The sick man's face was lu- minous with the light that was from within. The solemn rite was finished, a tender and holy awe filled the room ; it was the house of God and the gate of heaven. The wife, who was sitting near a window, rose, and noiselessly stepped to the bed, and without a word printed a kits on her hus- band's forehead, while the joy that flushed her features told that the prayer of thirty years had been answered. We sung a hymn and parted with tears of silent joy. In a little while he crossed the river where we may mingle our voices again by and by. There is not money enough in the California hills to buy the memory of that visit to Santa Rosa.