There is a silence.  I break it by telling them how I spent the day, and then they are very quiet.

The next Sabbath every soul at the place united in a request for a religious service, the list headed by a high-spirited and brilliant Pennsylvania lady who had led the opposing forces the previous Sunday.

Winter-Blossomed.

I think I saw him the first Sunday I preached in San Jose, in 1856.  He was a notable-looking man.  I felt attracted toward him by that indefinable sympathy that draws together two souls born to be friends.  I believe in friendship at first sight.  Who that ever had a real friend does not?  Love at first sight is a different thing—­it may be divine and eternal, or it may be a whim or a passing fancy.  Passion blurs and blinds in the region of sexual love:  friendship is revealed in its own white light.

I was introduced after the service to the stranger who had attracted my attention, and who had given the youthful preacher such a kind and courteous hearing.

“This is Major McCoy.”

He was a full head higher than anybody else as he stood in the aisle.  He bowed with courtly grace as he took my hand, and his face lighted with a smile that had in it something more than a conventional civility.  I felt that there was a soul beneath that dignified and courtly exterior.  His head displayed great elevation of the cranium, and unusual breadth of forehead.  It was what is called an intellectual head; and the lines around the eyes showed the traces of thought, and, as it seemed to me, a tinge of that sadness that nearly always lends its charm to the best faces.

“I have met a man that I know I shall like,” was my gratified exclamation to the mistress of the parsonage, as I entered.

And so it turned out.  He became one of the select circle to whom I applied the word friend in the sacredest sense.  This inner circle can never be large.  If you unduly enlarge it you dilute the quality of this wine of life.  We are limited.  There is only One Heart large enough to hold all humanity in its inmost depths.

My new friend lived out among the sycamores on the New Almaden Road, a mile from the city, and the cottage in which he lived with his cultured and loving household was one of the social paradises of that beautiful valley in which the breezes are always cool, and the flowers never fade.

My friend interested me more and more.  He had been a soldier, and in the Mexican war won distinction by his skill and valor.  He was with Joe Lane and his gallant Indianians at Juamantla, and his name was specially mentioned among those whose fiery onsets had broken the lines of the swarthy foe, and won against such heavy odds the bloody field.  He was seldom absent from church on Sunday morning, and now and then his inquiring, thoughtful face would be seen in my smaller audience at night.  One unwelcome fact about him pained me, while it deepened my interest in him.