California Sketches Part 17

"That's not in my line, and I couldn'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, ill.u.s.trating the ups and downs of California life in a startling manner. From opulence to poverty, and from poverty to sorrow, 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 G.o.d, 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 expressed a desire to see them married before her death, and I had been sent for to perform the ceremony.

"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, breathing painfully, with closed eyes, and moaning piteously. 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. G.o.d 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 a.s.sembled friends stood around in solemn silence, while the beautiful formula of the Church was repeated, the dying mother's eyes resting 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 cla.s.sic 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 const.i.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 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 ent.i.tled to cast the first stone. Thus he lived from year to year, increasing 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 until 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 on 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 pa.s.sed over his face, and he abruptly left me. I was agreeably surprised when, on more than one occasion, he sent me a substantial token of goodwill, but I was never able to a.n.a.lyze the motive that prompted him to do so. This remembrance softens 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 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 pa.s.s 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 pathetic. 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. G.o.d 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 landlord 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 tragedy in the air, and I had a strange feeling of awe as I pa.s.sed the door of B--'s room.,

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 temper, she was a favorite in all the circle of her a.s.sociations. Though a petted child of fortune, she was not spoiled, Envy itself was changed into affection in the presence of a spirit so gentle, una.s.suming, and loving. She had recently been graduated from one of the best schools, and her graces of character matched the brilliance of her pecuniary 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 ash.o.r.e, we entered the vehicle which was in readiness. Grasping the reins, my companion touched up the spirited team, and we struck across the valley. My driver was an old Californian, skilled in all horse craft and road-craft. He spoke no word, putting his soul and body into his work, determined, as he 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 ghostly, 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 rapidly 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.

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 significant inclination of the fair head as it lay enveloped with its wealth of chestnut curls. With her hands folded on her breast, and her eyes turned upward, the dying girl lay in listening att.i.tude, while in a few words I explained the meaning of the sacred rite and pointed her to the Lamb of G.o.d 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 Dougla.s.s was one of that circle of Tennesseans who took prominent parts in the early history of California. He belonged to the Sumner County Dougla.s.ses, of Tennessee, and had the family warmth of heart, impulsiveness, and courage, that nothing could daunt. In all the political contests of the early days he took an active part, and was regarded as an unflinching and unselfish partisan by his own party, and as an openhearted and generous antagonist by the other. He was elected Secretary of State, and served the people with fidelity and efficiency.

He was a man of a powerful physical frame, deep-chested, ruddy-, faced, blue-eyed, with just enough s.h.a.gginess of eyebrows and heaviness of the under-jaw to indicate the indomitable pluck which was so strong an element in his character. He was a true Dougla.s.s, 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 schoolhouse near his farm on the Calaveras River. All the itinerants that traveled that circuit knew "Dougla.s.s's Schoolhouse" as an appointment, and shared liberally in the hospitality and purse of the General--(that was his t.i.tle).

"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 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 handclasp 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 melody 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 Rosa, one of my occasional hearers was John I--. He was deputy-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 special 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 fondness for the peculiar views of that people. He had a weakness for strong drink that gave him trouble at times, but n.o.body 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 Rosa. 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 struggling to conceal the strong emotion he felt, sometimes hastily wiping away an unbidden tear. The preacher, when his own soul is aglow and his sympathies all awakened and drawn out toward his hearers, is almost clairvoyant at times in his perception 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 responsive, and his words, spoken sadly, thrilled me, and rolled upon my 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 wanting to see you," he said, taking my hand. "I have been thinking of my duty to G.o.d for a good while, and have felt more than anybody has suspected. 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 G.o.d, the merciful Father 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. G.o.d was leading him, and he was receptive of the truth that saves. He had 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 others may say, and your pride is touched. You are dealing with G.o.d 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.