o fell at Kennesaw--all Californians; all Americans,
true soldiers, who had a sword for the foe in fair fight in the open
field, and a shield for woman, and for the noncombatant, the aged, the
defenseless. They fought on different sides to settle forever a quarrel
that was bequeathed to their generation, but their fame is the common
inheritance of the American people. The reader is beginning to think I
am digressing, but he will better understand what is to come after
getting this glimpse of those stormy days in the sixties.

The guests at the Springs were about equally divided in their sectional
sympathies. The gentlemen were inclined to avoid all exciting
discussions, but the ladies kept up a fire of small arms. When the mails
came in, and the latest news was read, comments were made with flashing
eyes and flushed cheeks.

The Sabbath morning dawned without a cloud. I awoke with the earliest
song of the birds, and was out before the first rays of the sun had
touched the mountaintops. The coolness was delicious, and the air was
filled with the sweet odors of aromatic shrubs and flowers, with a hint
of the pine-forests and balsam-thickets from the higher altitudes.
Taking a breakfast solus, pocket-bible in hand I bent my steps up the
gorge, often crossing the brook that wound its way among the thickets or
sung its song at the foot of the great overhanging cliffs. A shining
trout would now and then flash like a silver bar for a moment above the
shaded pools. With light step a doe descending the mountain came upon
me, and, gazing at me a moment or two with its soft eyes, tripped away.
In a narrow pass where the stream rippled over the pebbles between two
great walls of rock, a spotted snake crossed my path, hurrying its
movement in fright. Fear not, humble ophidian. The war declared between
thee and me in the fifteenth verse of the third chapter of Genesis is
suspended for this one day. Let no creature die today but by the act of
God. Here is the lake. How beautiful! how still! A landslide had dammed
the stream where it flowed between steep, lofty banks, backing the
waters over a little valley three or four acres in extent, shut in on
all sides by the wooded hills, the highest of which rose from its
northern margin. Here is my sanctuary, pulpit, choir, and altar. A
gigantic pine had fallen into the lake, and its larger branches served
to keep the trunk above the water as it lay parallel with the shore.
Seated on its trun