Jack never missed a service at the church, and in the social-meetings he never failed to tell the story of his newborn 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.  He never tired of telling it; it opened a new world 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, telling of the love of Jesus, seemed almost of a different race from the wretched Piutes of the Sierras and sagebrush.

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 thee, my Saviour and my God,

and the chorus—­

   Happy day, happy day, when
   Jesus washed my sins away,

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 rubber suit.  But of all the persons I have welcomed into the Church during my ministry, the reception of no one has given use 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.