California Sketches Part 4

"That won't do, Elder; those fellows would take offense, and make trouble. Several of them are out now goose-hunting; they will be coming in at all hours from now till daybreak, and it won't do for them to find you sitting up here alone. The best, thing for you to do is to go in and take one of those bunks; you, needn't takeoff any thing but your coat and boots, and"--here he lowered his voice, looking about him as he spoke--"if you have any money about, keep it next to your body."

The last words were spoken with peculiar emphasis.

Taking the advice given me, I took up my baggage and followed Pete to the room where I was to spend the night. Ugh! it was dreadful. The single window in the room was nailed down, and the air was close and foul. The bunks were damp and dirty beyond belief, grimed with foulness, and reeking with ill odors. This was being corralled.

I turned to Pete, saying:

"I can't stand this--I will go back to the kitchen."

"You had better follow my advice, Elder," said he very gravely. "I know things about here better than you do. It's rough, but you had better stand it."

And I did; being corralled, I had to stand it. That fearful night! The drunken fellows staggered in one by one, cursing and hiccoughing, until every bunk was occupied. They muttered oaths in their sleep, and their stertorous breathings made a concert fit for Tartarus. The sickening odors of whisky, onions, and tobacco filled the room. I lay there and longed for daylight, which seemed as if it never would come. I thought of the descriptions I had heard and read of h.e.l.l, and just then the most vivid conception of its horror was to be shut up forever with the aggregated impurity of the universe. By contrast I tried to think of that city of G.o.d into which, it is said, "there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie; but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life."

But thoughts of heaven did not suit the situation; it was more suggestive of the other place. The horror of being shut up eternally in h.e.l.l as the companion of lost spirits was intensified by the experience and reflections of that night when I was corralled.

Day came at last. I rose with the first streaks of the dawn, and not having much toilet to make, I was soon out-of-doors. Never did I breathe the pure, fresh air with such profound pleasure and grat.i.tude. I drew deep inspirations, and, opening my coat and vest, let the breeze that swept up the valley blow upon me unrestricted. How bright, was the face of nature, and how sweet her, breath after the sights, sounds, and smells of the night!

I did not wait for breakfast, but had my pinto and buggy brought out, and, bidding Pete good-by, hurried on to Stockton.

"So you were corralled last night?" was the remark of a friend, quoted at the beginning of this true sketch. "What was the name of the proprietor of the house?"

I gave him the name.

"Dave W--!" he exclaimed with fresh astonishment. "That is the roughest place in the San Joaquin Valley. Several men have been killed and robbed there during the last two or three years."

I hope Pete got back safe to his wife and children in Iowa; and I hope I may never be corralled again.

The Reblooming.

It is now more than twenty years since the morning a slender youth of handsome face and modest mien came into my office on the corner of Montgomery and Clay streets, San Francisco. He was the son of a preacher well known in Missouri and California, a man of rare good sense, caustic wit, and many eccentricities. The young man became an attache of my newspaper-office and an inmate of my home. He was as fair as a girl, and refined in his taste and manners. A genial taciturnity, if the expression may be allowed, marked his bearing in the social circle.

Everybody had a kind feeling and a good word for the quiet, brightfaced youth. In the discharge of his duties in the office he was punctual and trustworthy, showing not only industry but unusual apt.i.tude for business It was with special pleasure that I learned that he was turning his thoughts to the subject of religion. During the services in the little Pine-street church he would sit with thoughtful face, and not seldom with moistened eyes. He read the Bible and prayed in secret. I was not surprised when he came to me one day and opened his heart. The great crisis in his life had come. G.o.d was speaking to his soul, and he was listening to his voice. The uplifted cross drew him, and he yielded to the gentle attraction. We prayed together, and henceforth there was a new and sacred bond that bound us to each other. I felt that I was a witness to the most solemn transaction that can take place on earth--the wedding of a soul to a heavenly faith. Soon thereafter he went to Virginia, to attend college. There he united with the Church. His letters to me were full of grat.i.tude and joy. It was the blossoming of his spiritual life, and the air was full of its fragrance, and the earth was flooded with glory. A pedestrian tour among the Virginia hills brought him into communion with Nature at a time when it was rapture to drink in its beauty and its grandeur. The light kindled within his soul by the touch of the Holy Spirit transfigured the scenery upon which he gazed, and the glory of G.o.d shone round about the young student in the flush and blessedness of his first love. O blessed days! O days of brightness, and sweetness, and rapture! The soul is then in its blossoming-time, and all high enthusiasms, all bright dreams, all thrilling joys, are realities which inwork themselves into the consciousness, to be forgotten never; to remain with us as prophecies of the eternal springtime that awaits the true-hearted on the hills of G.o.d beyond the grave, or as accusing voices charging us with the murder of our dead ideals! Amid the dust and din of the battle in after-years we turn to this radiant spot in our journey with smiles or tears; according as we have been true or false to the impulses, aspirations, and purposes inspired within us by that first, and brightest, and nearest manifestation of G.o.d. Such a season is a natural to every life as the April buds and June roses are to forest and garden. The springtime of some lives is deferred by unpropitious circ.u.mstance to the time when it should be glowing with autumnal glory, and rich in the fruitage of the closing year. The life that does not blossom into religion in youth may have light at noon, and peace at sunset, but misses the morning glory on the hills, and the dew that sparkles on gra.s.s and flower. The call of G.o.d to the young to seek him early is the expression of a true psychology no less than of a love infinite in its depth and tenderness.

His college-course finished, my young friend returned to California, and in one of its beautiful valley-towns he entered a law-office, with a view to prepare himself for the legal profession. Here he was thrown into daily a.s.sociation with a little knot of skeptical lawyers. As is often the case, their moral obliquities ran parallel with their errors in opinion. They swore, gambled genteelly, and drank. It is not strange that in this icy atmosphere the growth of any young friend in the Christian life was stunted. Such influences are like the dreaded north wind that at times sweeps over the valleys of California in the spring and early summer, blighting and withering the vegetation it does not kill. The brightness of his hope was dimmed, and his soul knew the torture of doubt--a torture that is always keenest to him who allows himself to sink in the region of fogs after he has once stood upon the sunlit summit of faith. Just at this crisis, a thing little in itself deepened the shadow that was falling upon his life. A personal misunderstanding with the pastor kept him from attending church. Thus he lost the most effectual defense against the a.s.saults that were being made upon his faith and hope, in being separated from the fellows.h.i.+p and cut off from the activities of the Church of G.o.d. Have you not noted these malign coincidences in life? There are times when it seems that the tide of events sets against us when, like the princely sufferer of the land of Uz, every messenger that crosses the threshold brings fresh tidings of ill, and our whole destiny seems to be rus.h.i.+ng to a predoomed perdition. The worldly call it bad luck; the superst.i.tious call it fate; the believer in G.o.d calls it by another name. Always of a delicate const.i.tution, my friend now exhibited symptoms of serious pulmonary disease. It was at that time the fas.h.i.+on in California to prescribe whisky as a specific for that cla.s.s of ailments. It is possible that there is virtue in the prescription, but I am sure of one thing, namely, that if consumption diminished, drunkenness increased; if fewer died of phthisis, more died of delirium tremens. The physicians of California have sent a host of victims raving and gibbering in drunken frenzy or idiocy down to death and h.e.l.l! I have reason to believe that my friend inherited a const.i.tutional weakness at this point. As flame to tinder, was the medicinal whisky to him. It grew upon him rapidly, and soon this cloud overshadowed all his life. He struggled hard to break the serpent-folds that were tightening around him; but the fire that had been kindled seemed to be quenchless. An uncontrolled evil pa.s.sion is h.e.l.lfire. He writhed in its burnings in an agony that could be understood only by such as knew how almost morbidly sensitive was his nature, and how vital was his conscience. I became a pastor in the town where he lived, and renewed my a.s.sociation with him as far as I could.

But there was a constraint unlike the old times. When under the influence of liquor, he would pa.s.s me in the streets with his head down, a deeper flush mantling his cheek as he hurried by with unsteady step.

Sometimes I met him staggering homeward through a back street, hiding from the gaze of men. He was at first shy of me when sober, but gradually the constraint wore off, and he seemed disposed to draw nearer to me, as in the old days. His struggle went on, days of drunkenness following weeks of soberness, his haggard face after each debauch wearing a look of unspeakable weariness and wretchedness. One of the lawyers who had led him into the mazes of doubt--a man of large and versatile gifts, whose lips were touched with a n.o.ble and persuasive eloquence--sunk deeper and deeper into the black depths of drunkenness, until the tragedy ended in a horror that lessened the gains of the saloons for at least a few days. He was found dead in his bed one morning in a pool of blood, his throat cut by his own guilty hand.

My friend had married a lovely girl, and the cottage in which they lived was one of the coziest, and the garden in front was a little paradise of neatness and beauty. Ah! I must drop a veil over a part of this true tale. All along I have written under half protest, the image of a sad, wistful face rising at times between my eyes and the sheet on which these words are traced. They loved each other tenderly and deeply, and both were conscious of the presence of the devil that was turning their heaven into h.e.l.l.

"Save him, Doctor, save him! He is the n.o.blest of men, and the tenderest, truest husband. He loves you, and he will let you talk to him. Save him, O save him! Help me to pray for him! My heart will break!"

Poor child! her loving heart was indeed breaking; and her fresh young life was crushed under a weight of grief and shame too heavy to be borne.

What he said to me in the interviews held in his sober intervals I have not the heart to repeat now. He still fought against his enemy; he still buffeted the billows that were going over him, though with feebler stroke. When their little child died, her tears fell freely, but he was like one stunned. Stony and silent he stood and saw the little grave filled up, and rode away tearless, the picture of hopelessness.

By a coincidence; after my return to San Francisco, he came thither, and again became my neighbor at North Beach. I went up to see him one evening. He was very feeble, and it was plain that the end was not far off. At the first glance I saw that a great change had taken place in him.

He had found his lost self. The strong drink was shut out from him, and he was shut in with his better thoughts and with G.o.d. His religious life rebloomed in wondrous beauty and sweetness. The blossoms of his early joy had fallen off, the storms had torn its branches and stripped it of its foliage, but its root had never perished, because he had never ceased to struggle for deliverance. Aspiration and hope live or die together in the human soul. The link that bound my friend to G.o.d was never wholly sundered. His better nature clung to the better way with a grasp that never let go altogether.

"O Doctor, I am a wonder to myself! It does seem to me that G.o.d has given back to me every good thing I possessed in the bright and blessed past. It has all come back to me. I see the light and feel the joy as I did when I first entered the new life. O it is wonderful! Doctor, G.o.d never gave me up, and I never ceased to yearn for his mercy and love, even in the darkest season of my unhappy life?"

His very face had recovered its old look, and his voice its old tone.

There could be no doubt of this soul had rebloomed in the life of G.o.d.

The last night came--they sent for me with the message,

"Come quickly! he is dying."

I found him with that look which I have seen on the faces of others who were nearing death--a radiance and a rapture that awed the beholder. O solemn, awful mystery of death! I have stood in its presence in every form of terror and of sweetness, and in every case the thought has been impressed upon me that it was a pa.s.sage into the Great Realities.

"Doctor," he said, smiling, and holding my hand; "I had hoped to be with you in your office again, as in the old days--not as a business arrangement, but just to be with you, and revive old memories, and to live the old life over again. But that cannot be, and I must wait till we meet in the world of spirits, whither I go before you. It seems to be growing dark. I cannot see your face hold my hand. I am going--going. I am on the waves--on the waves--." The radiance was still upon his face, but the hand I held no longer clasped mine-the wasted form was still. It was the end. He was launched upon the Infinite Sea for the endless voyage.

The Emperor Norton.

That was his t.i.tle. He wore it with an air that was a strange mixture of the mock-heroic and the pathetic. He was mad on this one point, and strangely shrewd and well-informed on almost every other. Arrayed in a faded-blue uniform, with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and epaulettes, wearing a c.o.c.ked-hat with an eagle's feather, and at times with a rusty sword at his side, he was a conspicuous figure in the streets of San Francisco, and a regular habitue of all its public places. In person he was stout, full-chested, though slightly stooped, with a large head heavily coated with bushy black hair, an aquiline nose, and dark gray eyes, whose mild expression added to the benignity of his face. On the end of his nose grew a tuft of long hairs, which he seemed to prize as a natural mark of royalty, or chieftains.h.i.+p. Indeed, there was a popular legend afloat that he was of true royal blood--a stray Bourbon, or something of the sort. His speech was singularly fluent and elegant. The Emperor was one of the celebrities that no visitor failed to see. It is said that his mind was unhinged by a sudden loss of fortune in the early days, by the treachery of a partner in trade. The sudden blow was deadly, and the quiet, thrifty, affable man of business became a wreck. By nothing is the inmost quality of a man made more manifest than by the manner in which he meets misfortune. One, when the sky darkens, having strong impulse and weak will, rushes into suicide; another, with a large vein of cowardice, seeks to drown the sense of disaster in strong drink; yet another, tortured in every fiber of a sensitive organization, flees from the scene of his troubles and the faces of those that know him, preferring exile to shame. The truest man, when a.s.sailed by sudden calamity, rallies all the reserved forces of a splendid manhood to meet the shock, and, like a good s.h.i.+p, lifting itself from the trough of the swelling sea, mounts the wave and rides on. It was a curious idiosyncrasy that led this man, when fortune and reason were swept away at a stroke, to fall back upon this imaginary imperialism. The nature that could thus, when the real fabric of life was wrecked, construct such another by the exercise of a disordered imagination, must have been originally of a gentle and magnanimous type. The broken fragments of mind, like those of a statue, reveal the quality of the original creation. It may be that he was happier than many who have worn real crowns. Napoleon at Chiselhurst, or his greater uncle at St. Helena, might have been gainer by exchanging lots with this man, who had the inward joy of conscious greatness without its burden and its perils. To all public places he had free access, and no pageant was complete without his presence. From time to time he issued proclamations, signed "Norton I.," which the lively San Francisco dailies were always ready to print conspicuously in their columns. The style of these proclamations was stately, the royal first person plural being used by him with all gravity and dignity. Ever and anon, as his uniform became dilapidated or ragged, a reminder of the condition of the imperial wardrobe would be given in one or more of the newspapers, and then in a few days he would appear in a new suit. He had the entree of all the restaurants, and he lodged--n.o.body knew where. It was said that he was cared for by members of the Freemason Society to which he belonged at the time of his fall. I saw him often in my congregation in the Pine-street church, along in 1858, and into the sixties. He was a respectful and attentive listener to preaching. On the occasion of one of his first visits he spoke to me after the service, saying, in a kind and patronizing tone:

"I think it my duty to encourage religion and morality by showing myself at church, and to avoid jealousy I attend them all in turn."

He loved children, and would come into the Sunday-school, and sit delighted with their singing. When, in distributing the presents on a Christmas-tree, a necktie was handed him as the gift of the young ladies, he received it with much satisfaction, making a kingly bow of gracious acknowledgment. Meeting him one day, in the springtime, holding my little girl by the hand, he paused, looked at the child's bright face, and taking a rose-bud from his b.u.t.ton-hole, he presented it to her with a manner so graceful, and a smile so benignant, as to show that under the dingy blue uniform there beat the heart of a gentleman. He kept a keen eye on current events, and sometimes expressed his views with great sagacity. One day he stopped me on the street, saying:

"I have just read the report of the political sermon of Dr.--(giving the name of a noted sensational preacher, who was in the habit, at times, of discussing politics from his pulpit). I disapprove political-preaching. What do you think?"

I expressed my cordial concurrence.

"I will put a stop to it. The preachers must stop preaching politics, or they must all come into one State Church. I will at once issue a decree to that effect."

For some unknown reason, that decree never was promulgated.

After the war, he took a deep interest in the reconstruction of the Southern States. I met him one day on Montgomery street, when he asked me in a tone and with a look of earnest solicitude:

"Do you hear any complaint or dissatisfaction concerning me from the South?"

I gravely answered in the negative.

"I was for keeping the country undivided, but I have the kindest feeling for the Southern people, and will see that they are protected in all their rights. Perhaps if I were to go among them in person, it might have a good effect. What do you think?"

I looked at him keenly as I made some suitable reply, but could see nothing in his expression but simple sincerity. He seemed to feel that he was indeed the father of his people. George Was.h.i.+ngton himself could not have adopted a more paternal tone.

Walking along the street behind the Emperor one day, my curiosity was a little excited by seeing him thrust his hand into the hip-pocket of his blue trousers with sudden energy. The hip-pocket, by the way, is a modern American stupidity, a.s.sociated in the popular mind with rowdyism, pistol shooting, and murder. Hip-pockets should be abolished wherever there are courts of law and civilized men and women. But what was the Emperor after? Withdrawing his hand just as I overtook him, the mystery was revealed--it grasped a thick Bologna sausage, which he began to eat with unroyal relish. It gave me a shock, but he was not the first royal personage who has exhibited low tastes and carnal hankerings.

He was seldom made sport of or treated rudely. I saw him on one occasion when a couple of pa.s.sing hoodlums jeered at him. He turned and gave them a look so full of mingled dignity, pain, and surprise, that the low fellows were abashed, and uttering a forced laugh, with averted faces they hurried on. The presence that can bring shame to a San Francisco hoodlum must indeed be kingly, or in some way impressive. In that genus the beastliness and devilishness of American city-life reach their lowest denomination when the brutality of the savage and the lowest forms of civilized vice are combined, human nature touches bottom.

The Emperor never spoke of his early life. The veil of mystery on this point increased the popular curiosity concerning him, and invested him with something of a romantic interest. There was one thing that excited his disgust and indignation. The Bohemians of the San Francisco press got into the practice of attaching his name to their satires and hits at current follies, knowing that the well-known "Norton I." at the end would insure a reading. This abuse of the liberty of the press he denounced with dignified severity, threatening extreme measures unless it were stopped. But nowhere on earth did the press exhibit more audacity, or take a wider range, and it would have required a sterner heart and a stronger hand than that of Norton I. to put a hook into its jaws.

The end of all human grandeur, real or imaginary, comes at last. The Emperor became thinner and more stooped as the years pa.s.sed. The humor of his hallucination retired more and more into the background, and its pathetic side came out more strongly. His step was slow and feeble, and there was that look in his eyes so often seen in the old and sometimes in the young, just before the great change comes--a rapt, far-away look, suggesting that the invisible is coming into view, the shadows vanis.h.i.+ng and the realities appearing. The familiar face and form were missed on the streets, and it was known that he was dead. He had gone to his lonely lodging, and quietly lain down and died. The newspapers spoke of him with pity and respect, and all San Francisco took time, in the midst of its roar-and-rush fever of perpetual excitement, to give a kind thought to the dead man who had pa.s.sed over to the life where all delusions are laid aside, where the mystery of life shall be revealed, and where we shall see that through all its tangled web ran the golden thread of mercy. His life was an illusion, and the thousands who sleep with him in Lone Mountain waiting the judgment-day were his brothers.