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 tenderness.  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 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, Annie P—­, leading all the school.  Jonathan suddenly fell behind, and was soon distanced by his two competitors.  Lowry, who was his teacher, asked him what was the reason of his sudden breakdown.  The boy blushed, and stammered out: 

“I didn’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 him curiously mingled the elements of the Puritan and the Cavalier—­the uncompromising persistency of the one, and the chivalrous impulse and openhandedness 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 society then existing in the mines there were many things to vex his soul, and keep him on the warpath.  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 below.  Two little scrub-oaks stood near it, under which he sat and read his Bible in leisure moments.  There, above the world, he could commune with his own heart and with God undisturbed, 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 summits 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 strangely 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.