From time to time we were thrown together, and I was glad to know that the Great Question was still in his thought, and the hunger for truth was still in his heart.  Ill health sometimes made him irritable and morbid, but the drift of his inner nature was unchanged.  His mind was enveloped in mists, and sometimes tempests of despair raged within him; but his heart still thirsted for the water of life.

A painful and almost fatal railway accident befell him.  He was taken to his ranch among the quiet hills of Shasta County.  This was the final crisis in his life.  Shut out from the world, and shut in with his own thoughts and with God, he reviewed his life and the argument that had so long been going on in his mind.  He was now quiet enough to hear distinctly the Still Small Voice whose tones he could only half discern amid the clamors of the world when he was a busy actor on its stage.  Nature spoke to him among the hills, and her voice is God’s.  The great primal instincts of the soul, repressed in the crowd or driven into the background by the mob of petty cares and wants, now had free play in the nature of this man whose soul had so long cried out of the depths for the living God.  He prayed the simple prayer of trust at which the gate flies open for the believing soul to enter into the peace of God.  He was born into the new life.  The flower that had put forth its abortive buds for so many seasons, burst into full bloom at last.  With the mighty joy in his heart, and the light of the immortal hope beaming upon him, he passed into the World of Certainties.

A Virginian in California.

“Hard at it, are you, uncle?”

“No, sah—­I’s workin’ by de day, an’ I an’t a-hurtin’ myself.”

This answer was given with a jolly laugh as the old man leaned on his pick and looked at me.

“You looked so much like home-folks that I felt like speaking to you.  Where are you from?”

“From Virginny, sah!” (pulling himself up to his full height as he spoke).  “Where’s you from, Massa?”

“I was brought up partly in Virginia too?”

“Wbar’bouts, in Virginny?”

“Mostly in Lynchburg.”

“Lynchburg! dat’s whar I was fotched up.  I belonged to de Widder Tate, dat lived on de New London Road.  Gib me yer han’, Massa!”

He rushed up to the buggy, and taking my extended hand in his huge fist he shook it heartily, grinning with delight.

This was Uncle Joe, a perfect specimen of the old Virginia “Uncle,” who had found his way to California in the early days.  Yes, he was a perfect specimen—­black as night, his lower limbs crooked, arms long, hands and feet very large.  His mouth was his most striking feature.  It was the orator’s mouth in size, being larger than that of Henry Clay—­in fact, it ran almost literally from ear to ear.  When he opened it fully, it was like lifting the lid of a box.

Uncle Joe and I became good friends at once.  He honored my ministry with his presence on Sundays.  There was a touch of dandyism in him that then and there came out.  Clad in a blue broadcloth dress-coat of the olden cut, vest to match, tight-fitting pantaloons, stove-pipe hat, and yellow kid gloves, he was a gorgeous object to behold.  He knew it, and there was a pleasant self-consciousness in the way he bore himself in the sanctuary.