Chapter V: Part 5

"What is the matter?" mused the puzzled citizen; "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.

"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 other side. It occurred to him that, as all these lots were surveyed 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, his enemy's had gone as much too far on the other. And so 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 ground, 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 tents out of the Pacific Ocean, by avoiding the bathhouse. Was this the charm that drew him forth so early? It not seldom chanced that we walked downtown 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.

"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 streetcar 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 Charlotte, Campbell, and Pittsylvania counties, in Virginia, until now. It is a sort of insanity, and it is incurable; but it is about as good a form of madness as any, and all the world is mad in some, fashion."

This was the substance of what he said of himself 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 analysis, seeing clearly the folly which he could not resist. 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 literature 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-Confederate soldiers came to San Francisco to seek their fortunes. A small room adjoining my office was vacant, and the brothers requested me to secure it for them as cheap as possible. I applied to Reese, 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 similarly in any other case, and I put this down to his credit, glad to know that there was a warm spot in 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. Perhaps 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 concerning human life, I know not. Empty-handed he entered the world of spirits, where, the film fallen from his vision, he saw the Eternal Realities. What amazement must have followed his awakening!

Uncle Nolan.

He was black and ugly; but it was an ugliness 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 reaching 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 Vicksburg, 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 went dar three or fo' Sundays, but I foun' deir ways didn't suit me, an' my ways didn'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, chillan, I'se a Southern man myself [emphatically], and I'se a Southern Methodis'. Dis is de Church I was borned in, an' dis is de Church 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 wouldn't lis'en to dat --so I foun' out dey was abberlishem niggers, an' I lef' 'em.!"

Yes, he left them, and came to us. I received 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 Southern 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 eyesight partially failed him, and it was pitiful to see him on the beach, his threadbare garments fluttering 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.

"Dem niggers in de South thinks dey is free, but dey ain't. 'Fore it's all ober, all dat ain't dead will be glad to git back to deir masters," he would say.

Yet he was very proud of his own freedom, and took the utmost care of his free-papers. He had no desire to resume his former relation to the peculiar 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 simple 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 imagination 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 didn'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 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 couldn'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 hadn't follered de Lord. Bymeby somethin' say, "Pray." Somethin' keep sayin', "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' down 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 crown on his head, an' a golden key in his han'. 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 Jesus, 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 insight 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 militant to the great company that no man can number, 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 Methodist, 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 anguish was awful. The midnight hour found him 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 personal 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, exhorting, 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 and aptness every passage of Scripture that blasted hypocrites, reproved the lukewarm, or threatened 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 lightning of a tropical storm. I remember the shock he gave a quiet and timid lady whom I had persuaded to remain for the class-meeting after service. 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 conducted in a way to suit him. He was grim, critical, 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, and then casting a sharp and scornful glance at the preachers in and around "the stand," he said:

"You preachers of these days have no gospel in you. You remind me of a man going into his barnyard 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 crowing. 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."

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 sawmill in the foothills at the time, and lodged in a little cabin near by.

Suddenly deprived of the stimulant to which it 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 screaming 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 blacksmith.

When a melodeon was introduced into the church, he was sorely grieved and furiously angry. He argued against it, he expostulated, he protested, he threatened, he staid away from church. He wrote me 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 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 modern 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 his 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 horrors of mental despair would be followed by gleams of seraphic joy. When one of his stormy moods was upon him, his mighty voice could be heard above all the sounds of that sad and pitiful company of broken and wrecked souls. The old class-meeting instinct and habit showed itself in his semi-lucid intervals. He would go round among the patients questioning them as to their religious feeling and behavior in true class-meeting style. Dr. Shurtleff one day overheard a colloquy between him and Dr. Rogers, a freethinker 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 Francisco 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 continued, with growing excitement and kindling anger at the thought, "you are the most infernal rascal that ever lived, and I'll 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 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 Francisco, 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 forgotten, 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 and 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 only the remnant of a life. But, brethren, it is this very thought that fills me with joy and gratitude 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 higher. 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 Newman; 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 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 speaking-meeting. The morning glory was on the summits 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 quivered 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 Simmons 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 newborn 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 sunlight 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:

"This is a mount of transfiguration. The transfiguration 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 be 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 melody 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 entranced. The scene that, followed beggars description. By a simultaneous impulse all rose to their feet and pressed toward the speaker with awestruck faces, and when Grandmother Bucker, the matriarch 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!"

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 Ridge breeze in May, and his wit bubbled forth like a mountain-spring. There was no bitterness 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 inspired, 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 contemplating the grandest things, and working for the most glorious ends, instructing the ignorant, consoling 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 special 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 misstep 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; cattle, thieving, slandering, murdering, and other villainy. The little episodes of politics that have given variety to my career have only 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 scramble, does that which makes devils laugh and angels weep."

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 today--you never told a single lie."

This was his remark at the close of a service in Minna street one Sunday.

"What is the meaning of that remark?"

That the exaggerations of the pulpit repel thousands from the truth. Moderation of statement is a rare excellence. A deep spiritual insight enables a religious teacher to shade his meanings 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. Religion is not in the intellect merely. The world by wisdom cannot know God. The attempt to find out God by the intellect has always been, and always must be, the completest of failures. Religion is the sphere of the supernatural, and stands not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of 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 Sacramento City. Not more tangible to Saul of Tarsus 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 fullest 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 never failed to attend the class-meetings, 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 thousands 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 Angeles 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 congenial 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 imperfect 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 brickbat may be a good political argument in the hands of a hoodlum, but it does not make its target playful. 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 inquisitiveness, as they toddle along the streets of San Francisco by the side of their queer-looking mothers. In his own land, overpopulated and misgoverned, the Chinaman has a hard fight for existence. In these United States his advent is regarded somewhat in the same spirit as that of the seventeen 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 regularity; 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 California I know not. When he came into my office to see me the first time, he rushed forward and impulsively 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 converts, 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 Solano county, lived the Rev. Iry Taylor, a member of 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 what it all meant. The Taylor's 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 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 was his daily study and delight. To his ardent and receptive nature it was a diamond mine. Two things he wanted to do. He 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 tenderness.

"I go back to China and tellee my fader and mudder allee good news," he said, with beaming face.

This peculiar development of filial reverence and affection among the Chinese is a hopeful feature of their national life. It furnishes a solid basis for a strong Christian nation. The weakening of this sentiment weakens religious susceptibility; 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.

There is an inter blending of human and divine loves; earth and heaven are unitary in companionship 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 filled with Chinese sweetmeats. Such sweetmeats! They were to strong for the palates of even young Californians. What cannot be relished 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 tropical 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 transforming power of the gospel upon all human hearts, this conversion of Ah Lee would have settled 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 Christianity 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 flowers of paradise! O cross of the Crucified! Lifted up, it shall draw all men to their Saviour! And O blind and slow of heart to believe! why could we not discern that this young Chinaman's conversion 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 I have a persuasion that is like a burning prophecy that he will be heard from again. To me he types the blessedness of old China newborn 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 California.

Had Shakespeare lived in California, he would not have written of the "winter of our discontent," 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 California, it is emphatically a season of discontent. In the mountains of the State only are these conditions not found. True, you will find dust even there as the natural 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 tolerantly. The perfect flower of its unloveliness flourishes in San Francisco, and, more or less hardily, all along the 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 everything but the nearest objects, and at a little distance hardly distinguishable from the water itself. At such times is heard the warning-cry of the foghorns 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 foghorn. The fog of the morning, however, gives way to the wind of the afternoon, which, complete master of the situation 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 maiden'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 generally among skirts and coat-tails with untiring 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 performance 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 children, or to a more direct and obvious cause, the desire to get indoors again as soon as possible, the fact remains the same--that the people of California 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 tolerably 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 he, 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 matter. The nights are of silver, if the days be not of gold. And all over the State this blessing of cool, comfortable nights is spread. At any season, one can draw a pair of blankets over him upon retiring, sure of sound, refreshing slumber, unless assailed by mental or physical troubles to which even 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 to 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 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 city to try to get warm where they cannot penetrate. Warm it may be; but the country at this season is not at its best as to looks. The flowers and the grass have disappeared 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 counties it is very different. No fairer summer could be wished for than that which reigns cloudless here; and with the sparkling champagne of that clear, dry air in his nostrils, our Eastern visitor forgets even to sigh for a summer shower to lay the dreadful dust. And even in the valleys and around the bay, we must confess that some advantages arise from the no-rain-for-six-months policy. Picnickers can set forth any day, with no fear of the fun of the occasion being wet-blanketed by an unlooked-for shower; and farmers can dispose of their crops according to convenience, often leaving their wheat piled up in the field, with no fear of danger from the elements.

Still we do get very tired of this long, strange summer, and the first rains are eagerly looked for and joyously welcomed. The fall of the first showers after such a long season of bareness and brownness is almost as immediate in its effects as the waving of a fairy's magic wand over Cinderella, sitting ragged in the ashes and cinders. The change thus wrought is well described by a poet of the soil in a few picturesque lines:

Week by week the near hills whitened, In their dusty leather cloaks;

Week by week the far hills darkened, From the fringing plain of oaks;

Till the rains came, and far breaking, On the fierce south-wester tost,

Dashed the whole long coast with color, And then vanished and were lost.

With these rains the grass springs up, the trees put out, and the winds disappear, leaving in the air a wonderful softness. In a month or two the flowers appear, and the hills are covered with a mantle of glory. Bluebells, lupins, buttercups, and hosts of other blossoms, spring up in profusion; and, illuminating every thing, the wild California poppy lifts its flaming torch, typifying well, in its dazzling and glowing color, the brilliant minds and passionate hearts of the people of this land. All these bloom on through the winter, for this is a winter but in name. With no frost, ice, or snow, it is more like an Eastern spring, but for the absence of that feeling of languor and debility which is so often felt in that season. True it rains a good deal, but by no means constantly, more often in the night; and it is this season of smiles and tears, this winter of flowers and budding trees, in which the glory of the California climate lies. Certainly nothing could be more perfect than a bright winter day in that State. Still, after all I could say in its praise, you would not know its full charm till you had felt its delicious breath on your own brow; for the peculiar freshness and exhilaration of the air are indescribable.

Sometimes in March, the dwellers on the bay are treated to a blow or two from the north, which is about as serious weather as the inhabitant of that favored clime ever experiences. After a night whose sleep has been broken by shrieks of the wind and the rattling of doors and windows, I wake with a dullness of head and sensitiveness of nerve that alone would be sufficient to tell me that the north wind had risen like a thief in the night, and had not, according to the manner of that class, stolen away before morning. On the contrary, he seems to be rushing around with an energy that betokens a day of it. I dress, and look out of my window. The bay is a mass of foaming, tossing waves, which, as they break on the beach just below, cast their spray twenty feet in air. All the little vessels have come into port, and only a few of the largest ships still ride heavily at their anchors. The hue separating the shallow water near the shore from the deeper waters beyond is much farther out than usual, and is more distinct. Within its boundary, the predominant white is mixed with a dark, reddish brown; without, the spots of color are darkest green. The shy has been swept of every particle of cloud and moisture, and is almost painfully blue. Against it, Mounts Tamalpais and Diablo stand outlined with startling clearness. The hills and islands round the bay look as cold and uncomfortable in their robes of bright green as a young lady who has put on her spring-dress too soon. The streets and walks are swept bare, but still the air is filled with flying sand that cuts my face like needles, when, later, overcoated and gloved to the utmost, I proceed downtown. Such days are Nature's cleaning days, very necessary to future health and comfort, but, like all cleaning-days, very unpleasant to go through with. With her mightiest besom does the old lady sweep all the cobwebs from the sky, all the dirt and germs of disease from the ground, and remove all specks and impurities from her air-windows. One or two such "northers" finish up the season, effectually scaring away all the clouds, thus clearing the stage for the next act in this annual drama of two acts.