I
On October 10, 1856, about four hundred people were camped in Tasajara
Valley, California. It could not have been for the prospect, since a
more barren, dreary, monotonous, and uninviting landscape never
stretched before human eye; it could not have been for convenience or
contiguity, as the nearest settlement was thirty miles away; it could
not have been for health or salubrity, as the breath of the
ague-haunted tules in the outlying Stockton marshes swept through the
valley; it could not have been for space or comfort, for, encamped on
an unlimited plain, men and women were huddled together as closely as
in an urban tenement-house, without the freedom or decency of rural
isolation; it could not have been for pleasant companionship, as
dejection, mental anxiety, tears, and lamentation were the dominant
expression; it was not a hurried flight from present or impending
calamity, for the camp had been deliberately planned, and for a week
pioneer wagons had been slowly arriving; it was not an irrevocable
exodus, for some had already returned to their homes that others might
take their places. It was simply a religious revival of one or two
denominational sects, known as a "camp-meeting."
A large central tent served for the assembling of the principal
congregation; smaller tents served for prayer-meetings and class-rooms,
known to the few unbelievers as "side-shows"; while the actual
dwellings of the worshipers were rudely extemporized shanties of boards
and canvas, sometimes mere corrals or inclosures open to the cloudless
sky, or more often the unhitched covered wagon which had brought them
there. The singular resemblance to a circus, already profanely
suggested, was carried out by a straggling fringe of boys and
half-grown men on the outskirts of the encampment, acrimonious with
disappointed curiosity, lazy without the careless ease of vagrancy, and
vicious without the excitement of dissipation. For the coarse poverty
and brutal economy of the larger arrangements, the dreary panorama of
unlovely and unwholesome domestic details always before the eyes, were
hardly exciting to the senses. The circus might have been more
dangerous, but scarcely more brutalizing. The actors themselves, hard
and aggressive through practical struggles, often warped and twisted
with chronic forms of smaller diseases, or malformed and crippled
through carelessness and neglect, and restless and uneasy through some
vague mental distress and inquietude that they had added to their
burdens, were scarcely amusing performers. The rheumatic Parkinsons,
from Green Springs; the ophthalmic Filgees, from Alder Creek; the
ague-stricken Harneys, from Martinez Bend; and the feeble-limbed
Steptons, from Sugar Mill, might, in their combined families, have
suggested a hospital, rather than any other social assemblage. Even
their companionship, which had little of cheerful fellowship in it,
would have been grotesque but for the pathetic instinct of some mutual
vague appeal from the hardness of their lives and the helplessness of
their conditions that had brought them together. Nor was this appeal
to a Higher Power any the less pathetic that it bore no reference
whatever to their respective needs or deficiencies, but was always an
invocation for a light which, when they believed they had found it, to
unregenerate eyes scarcely seemed to illumine the rugged path in which
their feet were continually stumbling. One might have smiled at the
idea of the vendetta-following Ferguses praying for "justification by
Faith," but the actual spectacle of old Simon Fergus, whose shot-gun
was still in his wagon, offering up that appeal with streaming eyes and
agonized features was painful beyond a doubt. To seek and obtain an
exaltation of feeling vaguely known as "It," or less vaguely veiling a
sacred name, was the burden of the general appeal.
The large tent had been filled, and between the exhortations a certain
gloomy enthusiasm had been kept up by singing, which had the effect of
continuing in an easy, rhythmical, impersonal, and irresponsible way
the sympathies of the meeting. This was interrupted by a young man who
rose suddenly, with that spontaneity of impulse which characterized the
speakers, but unlike his predecessors, he remained for a moment mute,
trembling and irresolute. The fatal hesitation seemed to check the
unreasoning, monotonous flow of emotion, and to recall to some extent
the reason and even the criticism of the worshipers. He stammered a
prayer whose earnestness was undoubted, whose humility was but too
apparent, but his words fell on faculties already benumbed by
repetition and rhythm. A slight movement of curiosity in the rear
benches, and a whisper that it was the maiden effort of a new preacher,
helped to prolong the interruption. A heavy man of strong physical
expression sprang to the rescue with a hysterical cry of "Glory!" and a
tumultuous fluency of epithet and sacred adjuration. Still the meeting
wavered. With one final paroxysmal cry, the powerful man threw his
arms around his nearest neighbor and burst into silent tears. An
anxious hush followed; the speaker still continued to sob on his
neighbor's shoulder. Almost before the fact could be commented upon,
it was noticed that the entire rank of worshipers on the bench beside
him were crying also; the second and third rows were speedily dissolved
in tears, until even the very youthful scoffers in the last benches
suddenly found their half-hysterical laughter turned to sobs. The
danger was averted, the reaction was complete; the singing commenced,
and in a few moments the hapless cause of the interruption and the man
who had retrieved the disaster stood together outside the tent. A
horse was picketed near them.
The victor was still panting from his late exertions, and was more or
less diluvial in eye and nostril, but neither eye nor nostril bore the
slightest tremor of other expression. His face was stolid and
perfectly in keeping with his physique,--heavy, animal, and
unintelligent.
"Ye oughter trusted in the Lord," he said to the young preacher.
"But I did," responded the young man, earnestly.
"That's it. Justifyin' yourself by works instead o' leanin' onto Him!
Find Him, sez you! Git Him, sez you! Works is vain. Glory! glory!"
he continued, with fluent vacuity and wandering, dull, observant eyes.
"But if I had a little more practice in class, Brother Silas, more
education?"
"The letter killeth," interrupted Brother Silas. Here his wandering
eyes took dull cognizance of two female faces peering through the
opening of the tent. "No, yer mishun, Brother Gideon, is to seek Him
in the by-ways, in the wilderness,--where the foxes hev holes and the
ravens hev their young,--but not in the Temples of the people. Wot sez
Sister Parsons?"
One of the female faces detached itself from the tent flaps, which it
nearly resembled in color, and brought forward an angular figure
clothed in faded fustian that had taken the various shades and odors of
household service.
"Brother Silas speaks well," said Sister Parsons, with stridulous
fluency. "It's fore-ordained. Fore-ordinashun is better nor
ordinashun, saith the Lord. He shall go forth, turnin' neither to the
right hand nor the left hand, and seek Him among the lost tribes and
the ungodly. He shall put aside the temptashun of Mammon and the
flesh." Her eyes and those of Brother Silas here both sought the other
female face, which was that of a young girl of seventeen.
"Wot sez little Sister Meely,--wot sez Meely Parsons?" continued
Brother Silas, as if repeating an unctuous formula.
The young girl came hesitatingly forward, and with a nervous cry of
"Oh, Gideon!" threw herself on the breast of the young man.
For a moment they remained locked in each other's arms. In the
promiscuous and fraternal embracings which were a part of the
devotional exercises of the hour, the act passed without significance.
The young man gently raised her face. She was young and comely, albeit
marked with a half-frightened, half-vacant sorrow. "Amen," said
Brother Gideon, gravely.
He mounted his horse and turned to go. Brother Silas had clasped his
powerful arms around both women and was holding them in a ponderous
embrace.
"Go forth, young man, into the wilderness."
The young man bowed his head, and urged his horse forward in the bleak
and barren plain. In half an hour every vestige of the camp and its
unwholesome surroundings was lost in the distance. It was as if the
strong desiccating wind, which seemed to spring up at his horse's feet,
had cleanly erased the flimsy structures from the face of the plain,
swept away the lighter breath of praise and plaint, and dried up the
easy-flowing tears. The air was harsh but pure; the grim economy of
form and shade and color in the level plain was coarse but not vulgar;
the sky above him was cold and distant but not repellent; the moisture
that had been denied his eyes at the prayer-meeting overflowed them
here; the words that had choked his utterance an hour ago now rose to
his lips. He threw himself from his horse, and kneeling in the
withered grass--a mere atom in the boundless plain--lifted his pale
face against the irresponsive blue and prayed.
He prayed that the unselfish dream of his bitter boyhood, his
disappointed youth, might come to pass. He prayed that he might in
higher hands become the humble instrument of good to his fellow-man. He
prayed that the deficiencies of his scant education, his self-taught
learning, his helpless isolation, and his inexperience might be
overlooked or reinforced by grace. He prayed that the Infinite
Compassion might enlighten his ignorance and solitude with a
manifestation of the Spirit; in his very weakness he prayed for some
special revelation, some sign or token, some visitation or gracious
unbending from that coldly lifting sky. The low sun burned the black
edge of the distant tules with dull eating fires as he prayed, lit the
dwarfed hills with a brief but ineffectual radiance, and then died out.
The lingering trade winds fired a few volleys over its grave and then
lapsed into a chilly silence. The young man staggered to his feet; it
was quite dark now, but the coming night had advanced a few starry
vedettes so near the plain they looked like human watch-fires. For an
instant he could not remember where he was. Then a light trembled far
down at the entrance of the valley. Brother Gideon recognized it. It
was in the lonely farmhouse of the widow of the last Circuit preacher.