just enough shagginess 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 Douglass, 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 “Douglass’s Schoolhouse” as an appointment, and shared liberally in the hospitality and purse of the General—­(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 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 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: