ncil these lines.

"John A--is dying over on the Portrero, and his family wants you to go
over and see him."

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
ma