arly. He groaned, frowned, and in other
ways showed his feelings. At length he could stand it no longer. A young
brother had just closed a sermon of a mild and persuasive kind, and no
sooner had he taken his seat than the old man arose. Looking forth upon
the vast audience, and then casting a sharp and scornful glance at the
preachers in and around "the stand," he said:

"You preachers of these days have no gospel in you. You remind me of a
man going into his barnyard early in the morning to feed his stock. He
has a basket on his arm, and here come the horses nickering, the cows
lowing, the calves and sheep bleating, the hogs squealing, the turkeys
gobbling, the hens clucking, and the roosters crowing. They all gather
round him, expecting to be fed, and lo, his basket is empty! You take
texts, and you preach, but you have no gospel. Your baskets are empty."

Here he darted a defiant glance at the astonished preachers, and then,
turning to one, he added in a milder and patronizing tone:

"You, Brother Sim, do preach a little gospel in your basket there is one
little nubbin!"

Down he sat, leaving the brethren to meditate on what he had said. The
silence that followed was deep.

At one time his conscience became troubled about the use of tobacco, and
he determined to quit. This was the second great struggle of his life.
He was running a sawmill in the foothills at the time, and lodged in a
little cabin near by.

Suddenly deprived of the stimulant to which it had so long been
accustomed, his nervous system was wrought up to a pitch of frenzy. He
would rush from the cabin, climb along the hill-side, run leaping from
rock to rock, now and then screaming like a maniac. Then he would rush
back to the cabin, seize a plug of tobacco, smell it, rub it against his
lips, and away he would go again. He smelt, but never tasted it again.

"I was resolved to conquer, and by the grace of God I did," he said.

That was a great victory for the fighting blacksmith.

When a melodeon was introduced into the church, he was sorely grieved
and furiously angry. He argued against it, he expostulated, he
protested, he threatened, he staid away from church. He wrote me a
letter, in which he expressed his feelings thus:

San Jose, 1860.

Dear Brother:--They have got the devil into the church now! Put your
foot on its tail and it squeals.

Z. Jones.

This was his figurative way of putting it. I was told that he had, on a
former occasi