Part 27

It was while I was pastor in San Francisco. A--was a member of my Church, and lived on what was called the Portrero, in the southern part of the city, beyond the Long Bridge. It was after night when I reached the little cottage on the slope above the bay.

"He is dying and delirious," said a member of the family, as I entered the room where the sick man lay. His wife, a woman of peculiar traits and great religious fervor, and a large number of children and grandchildren, were gathered in the dying man's chamber and the adjoining rooms. The sick man--a man of large and powerful frame--was restlessly tossing and roving his limbs, muttering incoherent words, with now and then a burst of uncanny laughter. When shaken, he would open his eyes for an instant, make some meaningless ejaculation, and then they would close again. The wife was very anxious that he should have a lucid interval while I was there.

"O I cannot bear to have him die without a word of farewell and comfort!" she said, weeping.

The hours wore on, and the dying man's pulse showed that he was sinking steadily. Still he lay unconscious, moaning and gibbering, tossing from side to side as far as his failing strength permitted. His wife would stand and gaze at him a few moments, and then walk the floor in agony.

"He can't last much longer," said a visitor, who felt his pulse and found it almost gone, while his breathing became more labored. We waited in silence. A thought seemed to strike the wife. Without saying a word, she climbed upon the bed, took her dying husband's head upon her lap, and, bending close above his face, began to sing. It was a melody I had never heard before--low, and sweet, and quaint. The effect was weird and thrilling as the notes fell tremulous from the singer's lips in the hush of that dead hour of the night. Presently the dying man became more quiet, and before the song was finished he opened his eyes as a smile swept over his face, and as his glance fell on me I saw that he knew me. He called my name, and looked up in the face that bent above his own, and kissed it.

"Thank God!" his wife exclaimed, her hot tears falling on his face, that wore a look of strange serenity. Then she half whispered to me, her face beaming with a softened light:

"That old song was one we used to sing together when we were first married in Baltimore."

On the stream of music and memory he had floated back to consciousness, called by the love whose instinct is deeper and truer than all the science and philosophy in the world.

At dawn he died, his mind clear, and the voice of prayer in his ears, and a look of rapture in his face.

Dan W--, whom I had known in the mines in the early days, had come to San Jose about the time my pastorate in the place began. He kept a meat-market, and was a most genial, accommodating, and good-natured fellow. Everybody liked him, and he seemed to like everybody. His animal spirits were unfailing, and his face never revealed the least trace of worry or care. He "took things easy," and never quarreled with his luck. Such men are always popular, and Dan was a general favorite, as the generous and honest fellow deserved to be. Hearing that he was very sick, I went to see him. I found him very low, but he greeted me with a smile.

"How are you today, Dan?" I asked, in the offhand way of the old times.

"It is all up with me, I guess," he replied, pausing to get breath between the words; "the doctor says I can't get out of this--I must leave in a day or two."

He spoke in a matter-of-fact way, indicating that he intended to take death, as he had taken life, easy.

"How do you feel about changing worlds, my old friend?"

"I have no say in the matter. I have got to go, and that is all there is of it."

That was all I ever got out of him. He told me he had not been to church for ten years, as "it was not in his line." He did not understand matters of that sort, he said, as his business was running a meat-market. He intended no disrespect to me or to sacred things--this was his way of putting the matter in his simple-heartedness.

"Shall I kneel here and pray with you?" I asked.

"No; you needn't take the trouble, parson," he said, gently; "you see I've got to go, and that's all there is of it. I don't understand that sort of thing--it's not in my, line, you see. I've been in the meat business."

"Excuse me, my old friend, if I ask if you do not, as a dying man, have some thoughts about God and eternity?"

"That's not in my line, and I couldn't do much thinking now any way. It's all right, parson--I've got to go, and Old Master will do right about it."

Thus he died without a prayer, and without a fear, and his case is left to the theologians who can understand it, and to the "Old Master" who will do right.

I was called to see a lady who was dying at North Beach, San Francisco. Her history was a singularly sad one, illustrating the ups and downs of California life in a startling manner. From opulence to poverty, and from poverty to sorrow, and from sorrow to death--these were the acts in the drama, and the curtain was about to fall on the last. On a previous visit I had pointed the poor sufferer to the Lamb of God, and prayed at her bedside, leaving her calm and tearful. Her only daughter, a sweet, fresh girl of eighteen, had two years ago betrothed herself to a young man from Oregon, who had come to San Francisco to study a profession. The dying mother had expressed a desire to see them married before her death, and I had been sent for to perform the ceremony.

"She is unconscious, poor thing!" said a lady who was in attendance, "and she will fail of her dearest wish."

The dying mother lay with a flushed face, breathing painfully, with closed eyes, and moaning piteously. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she glanced inquiringly around the room. They understood her. The daughter and her betrothed were sent for. The mother's face brightened as they entered, and she turned to me and said, in a faint voice:

"Go on with the ceremony, or it will be too late for me. God bless you, darling!" she added as the daughter bent down sobbing, and kissed her.

The bridal couple kneeled together by the bed of death, and the assembled friends stood around in solemn silence, while the beautiful formula of the Church was repeated, the dying mother's eyes resting upon the kneeling daughter with an expression of unutterable tenderness. When the vows were taken that made them one, and their hands were clasped in token of plighted faith, she drew them both to her in a long embrace, and then almost instantly closed her eyes with a look of infinite restfulness, and never opened them again.

Of the notable men I met in the mines in the early days, there was one who piqued and puzzled my curiosity. He had the face of a saint with the habits of a debauchee. His pale and student-like features were of the most classic mold, and their expression singularly winning, save when at times a cynical sneer would suddenly flash over them like a cloud-shadow over a quiet landscape. He was a lawyer, and stood at the head of the bar. He was an orator whose silver voice and magnetic qualities often kindled the largest audiences into the wildest enthusiasm. Nature had denied him no gift of body or mind requisite to success in life; but there was a fatal weakness in his moral constitution. He was an inveterate gambler, his large professional earnings going into the coffers of the faro and monte dealers. His violations of good morals in other respects were flagrant. He worked hard by day, and gave himself up to his vices at night. Public opinion was not very exacting in those days, and his failings were condoned by a people who respected force and pluck, and made no close inquiries into a man's private life, because it would have been no easy thing to find one who, on the score of innocence, was entitled to cast the first stone. Thus he lived from year to year, increasing his reputation as a lawyer of marked ability, and as a politician whose eloquence in every campaign was a tower of strength to his party. His fame spread until it filled the State, and his money still fed his vices. He never drank, and that cool, keen intellect never lost its balance, or failed him in any encounter on the hustings on at the bar. I often met him in public, but he never was known to go inside a church. Once, when in a street conversation I casually made some reference to religion, a look of displeasure passed over his face, and he abruptly left me. I was agreeably surprised when, on more than one occasion, he sent me a substantial token of goodwill, but I was never able to analyze the motive that prompted him to do so. This remembrance softens the feelings with which these lines are penciled. He went to San Francisco, but there was no change in his life.

"It is the old story," said an acquaintance of whom I made inquiry concerning him: "he has a large and lucrative practice, and the gamblers get all he makes. He is getting gray, and he is failing a little. He is a strange being."