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,