in, anticipating their special business, and remarked: "Gentlemen, I suppose you have heard something of my change of life and conversion? It is true, I have changed. We have been good friends and boon companions for several years, and I am glad to say that I believe that I have found a better way to live. Now, if you have no objections, I will be glad to read a chapter from the Bible and have a word of prayer before you depart." Of course, to that they could not decidedly object, and consented. He read and read impressively from the old Family Bible. In prayer, he asked God's blessing on the visitors and on all his old associates in sin, that God's truth might find them, as it had him. The prayer was also impressive and tender, and I hope made a salutary impression on the visitors. On their return to the saloon they reported that, in their opinion, there was a great change in Austin, and that there was no doubt he was truly converted. When I last heard from him through others he was faithful and active in Church work, and this occurred over thirty years ago.

The incident of the conversion of Moses Austin made so deep an impression on my mind, that while passing from the stable to my house this passage of Scripture came to me with such force and pertinence to what had transpired in the last two hours that a whole sermon lay in outline before me without premeditation. It is this, "Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life." This has been among the most effective sermons in my ministry. Not a great sermon for some men, but effective for me, because God made it such by my connection with the facts related in this notable conversion. It seemed to me something of a revelation, as I had no possible knowledge of that man's spiritual state and the conflict he was passing through from infidelity to faith in Christ. I know now that God does reveal some things to susceptible souls, that they could not know otherwise.

During my connection with the Napa Collegiate Institute in California, some time in the year 1865, I was called up in the night to come to the bedside of a Mr. Samuel

Heald, who was supposed to be dying. He was a fine type of a moral business man, and an active temperance advocate. The doctor had announced to the family that nothing more could be done for the patient, and the family had gathered in anxious suspense to witness the departure. Mrs. Heald was anxious that I should talk with her husband about his outlook for the future. His mind was perfectly clear. I said: "Friend Heald (for we were firm friends), are you ready for the change awaiting you?" He was satisfied the end was very near. He said, "No, I am not, I fear." "Can you not throw yourself on the mercy of God through Jesus Christ?" "No, that would be a cowardly and unmanly act. I have known for years that I ought to be an active Christian, but have tried to satisfy myself that morality would do." I urged him to make the surrender now, and that God would accept him and Jesus would save him at this late hour, even "the eleventh hour;" but he adhered to his feeling that it would be unmanly to ask God for salvation now. I felt under the circumstances of his firmness at some loss what reply to make; but I finally said: "Brother Heald, if you were certain that God would, so to speak, meet you half way and protract your life, would you be manly enough to become a Christian?" "I most certainly would." Now a sudden change took place that hour, and the next day, to the surprise of the doctor and all of us that had met in that chamber of death, Samuel Heald got well. The first Sabbath that he was able to leave the house he attended the church, which was "hard by" his dwelling. I was present on that Sabbath, and saw Mr. Heald take his seat near the door. At the close of the sermon he arose and asked permission to speak a word, which was granted. He referred to his late sickness, and the promise he had made of God would spare his life that he would become an active Christian. "I am here before this congregation and my neighbors to fulfill that vow." I need not say that there was a breakdown in that Church that day. There was an honest man, and he showed that God could trust him. Samuel Heald lived several years after this, and

was a blessing to his family and the Church. I shall never forget that night and that Sabbath in Napa City.

I desire to make this record, that much of my best and most permanent work of my long ministry has been accomplished by my pastoral work, done tenderly but faithfully in such cases as are here recorded.

INDIAN RESERVATIONS.

During President Grant's Administration the Indian reservations were parceled out among the religious denominations of the country. The Round Valley and Hoopa Reservations of Northern California were under the care of the Methodist Episcopal Church. These were both within the bounds of my district, and under my special oversight in Church matters, as we had pastors at both reservations. These I visited quarterly for a period of four years, and had opportunity to see the fruits of religious care and improved social, educational, and religious development on the Indian mind. They had English schools in which the children make creditable advancement. They learned trades, blacksmiths, harnessmakers, carpenters, millers, and farmers. I found some who were capable of running engines in grist and saw. mills, and also in the harvest fields. At the Round Valley Reservation I attended a Fourth of July celebration conducted largely by the Indians, that was quite creditable. A boy fourteen years of age, who received his education in the Indian school, read the Declaration of Independence, and threw in the shade for excellence more than three or four readers that I have heard at American celebrations. The Indian is a natural orator.

A large dinner for the crowd of four of five hundred people, white and Indian, was entirely in the hands of the Indian men and women. The waiters were mostly well-dressed women-dresses made by Indian seamstresses. The Indians were well behaved-much better than many whites on such occasions-showing careful training on the part of the agent and teachers placed over

them. On this occasion I heard an Indian, who had been on this reservation a few years from rude barbarism, say publicly that day: "I begin to feel that I am an American citizen. I thank the Government and the Church for what they are doing for my people and my own children." This he said in broken English, and was deeply affected.

Rev. J. L. Burchard, agent on this reservation, was a man of six feet and two inches, weighing over two hundred pounds, and every inch a man physically, mentally, and morally. He was loyed and respected by the Indians, and feared by desperate white men who sometimes prowled about the reservation. He had an Indian police that he used to good account as occasion required. There was a desperado called Texas, who gave them trouble by bringing whisky on the grounds, and selling it to some of the Indians. Burchard and two of his police laid for him and caught him. Burchard seized and threw him, and the police tied and carried him to the lockup. This act of the agent greatly surprised the Indians, who feared Texas. Another act of Burchard worthy of note was this: The reservation had a large tract of fine pasture land, and stockmen trespassed on it with their cattle in former times, but learned that they could not do so under his administration, so they attempted to bribe him. They sent an agent with a sack of twenty-dollar gold pieces as a nominal sum for the privilege. The man entered his office and laid the gold on his table, and told Burchard that was at his personal disposal. Burchard reached for his heavy cane, and told him to take the money and leave. He left. That agent was absolutely incorruptible. I knew him well. He was a man of a thousand possessing remarkable administrative ability, and the most successful agent I ever knew, unless it was Father Wilbur of the Yakima Reservation in the State of Washington.

There were two Indians in our Church at Round Valley whom I desire to mention, as to the effect the Church had upon the Indians generally, and these particularly. They both professed conversion, and exemplified it in

their lives, as did many others whom I can not speak of in this narrative. One of the two told of his conversion one day in a love-feast in my hearing. He spoke in broken English. He had been, by his own and others' account, a desperate man. He represented that his "moral condition was like a fellow with ragged clothes, all befouled with mud and filth, and who had been washed clean and dressed in clean, new clothes." He could not read a word of English, and did not know that the Bible says that the convert is "a new creature in Christ Jesus." If you could have seen his illumined face that day as he told his simple and forcible experience, you would not have doubted its reality.

It

The other case was an Indian named Sam Ray, a man I should say about thirty-five years old. He also had been a bad Indian, and had lived with a notoriously bad white family by the name of Ray before coming to the reservation. He could talk fair English, and usually spoke and prayed in English, but was fluent in his own tongue. He was not boisterous or demonstrative, as some of them are, but clear and remarkably reverent, especially so in prayer. I do not now remember having heard any white Christian who impressed me as he did in prayer. seemed as if God was standing by his side, and he in reverential attitude before the Almighty! A gentleman skeptic was present on one occasion when Sam led in prayer, and remarked that it was "wonderful and unusual!" His was one of the most convincing facts of the supernaturalism of Christianity that I have witnessed. This Indian's piety and spirituality were so unique that certain white people, and especially the family he had lived with, undertook to have him arrested and brought before the court to prove him insane and taken to the asylum. They caught him and tied him with ropes, and hauled him many miles in an open wagon in the hot sun to the county seat. He pleaded with them to release him, and told them he was not insane, and said that there was a time when he would have fought them; but now that he was a Christian he could not fight. The court did not