until the year 1856.  As a result of its firmness, its promptness in punishing criminals, and its high-minded aims, the land had rest for twenty years.  A weak administration of justice is an encouragement to wrong doing.  Municipal and state officials can best serve their city and country by dealing quick and severe blows at lawlessness; but to be effective they must be men of integrity, above reproach, and withal just.  To-day San Francisco is one of the most orderly and best governed cities in the United States.  During my rambles through its streets I went to and fro at all hours without being molested.  I never met a drunken man or a disorderly person.  The city feels the effect of the Committee’s good work even to this latest hour.  It serves as an example.  Justice is dealt out speedily to offenders.  There are few if any technical delays of the law and the criminal rarely escapes without punishment.  Some examples have occurred recently which show that the judges of the superior courts are alive to their duty and that they can perform it when the occasion arises.  A man named John H. Wood, a former soldier, was convicted of highway robbery, and he was speedily sentenced to imprisonment for life in Folsom Penitentiary.  Judge Cook who passed sentence on him took the position that a man who used a deadly weapon in the commission of his crime should receive the full penalty of the law.  A man who holds a pistol to shoot will take life, therefore he ought to have a life sentence.  Wood, who belongs to a wealthy family in Texas, has a checkered history.  He served as a soldier for a time in the Philippine Islands.  Here he deserted his post and committed highway robbery.  He was tried by court martial for larceny and convicted.  Then he was brought to San Francisco and put in the military prison on the Island of Alcatraz.  He was finally discharged from the army in disgrace.  A few months ago he tried to rob a showcase man and held a revolver at his head while he seized a watch and chain.  He was immediately arrested by three officers, and a month after he was sentenced for life.  As showing the depravity of the man he said after receiving sentence:  “That is an awful dose, and I haven’t had my breakfast yet.”  Possibly in prison he will reflect upon his evil life, and be softened, and repent.  He might have been a good citizen, worthy of his country; but he hardened his heart and sank deeper and deeper in his degradation.  Oh, the hardening of the heart!  It was Pharaoh’s sin.  It is the sin of many an one now.

Another highway robber, Edward Davis, was sentenced at the same time with Wood to serve in the State Penitentiary for thirty-three years.  He also pointed a pistol to the head of his victim.  But thirty-three years!  He will probably die in prison.  It is a life thrown away, one of God’s best gifts.  But if stern justice be meted out here in this world, what must the unrepenting sinner, who has trampled the divine law under foot, expect in the world to come?  San Francisco teaches a lesson which reaches farther than an earthly tribunal.  The judge on his bench is an image of the Judge who weighs human life in His balances.