ral government
that you may be saved in your sins! O fools, fools, fools! there is no
place but hell for such a folly as this!"

His haggard face, the stern solemnity of his voice, the sweep of his
long arms, the gleam of his deep-set eyes, and the vigor of his
inexorable logic, drove that sermon home to the listeners.

He was the keenest of critics, and often merciless. He was present at a
camp-meeting near San Jose, but too feeble to preach. I was there, and
disabled from, the effects of the California poison-oak. That deceitful
shrub! Its pink leaves smile at you as pleasantly as sin, and, like sin,
it leaves its sting. The "preachers' tent" was immediately in the rear
of "the stand," and Sanders and I lay inside and listened to the
sermons. He was in one of his caustic moods, and his comments were racy
enough, though not helpful to devotion.

"There! he yelled, clapped his hands, stamped, and--said nothing!"

The criticism was just: the brother in the stand was making a great
noise, but there was not much meaning in what he said.

"He made one point only--a pretty good apology for Lazarus's poverty."

This was said at the close of an elaborate discourse on "The Rich Man
and Lazarus," by a brother who sometimes got "in the brush."

"He isn't touching his text--he knows no more theology than a
guinea-pig. Words, words, words!"

This last criticism was directed against a timid young divine, who was
badly frightened, but who has since shown that there was good metal in
him. If he had known what was going on just behind him, he would have
collapsed entirely in that tentative effort at preaching the gospel.

Sanders kept up this running fire of criticism at every service, cutting
to the bone, at every blow, and giving me new light on homiletics, if he
did not promote my enjoyment of the preaching. He had read largely and
thought deeply, and his incisive intellect had no patience with what was
feeble or pointless.

Disease settled upon his lungs, and he rapidly declined. His strong
frame grew thinner and thinner, and his mind alternated between moods of
morbid bitterness and transient buoyancy. As the end approached, his
bitter moods were less frequent, and an unwonted tenderness came into
his words and tones. He went to the Lokonoma Springs, in the hills of
Napa county, and in their solitudes he adjusted himself to the great
change that was drawing near. The capacious blue sky that arched above
him, the sighing