CHAPTER XXXI.

"SAVE ME FROM MY FRIENDS."

ON Sunday afternoon, October 2, 1853, I was preaching on the Plaza to about a thousand hearers from the text, "And he, trembling and astonished, said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" In the midst of the discourse a drunken fellow began to mutter, and tried to create a disturbance, when another, pretty well intoxicated also, said to me:

"Captain, I hope you will not consider it an interruption, and I will beat this contemptible fellow like

I won't allow a preacher, a good man like Father Taylor, to be interrupted in the discharge of his duties. No, that I won't," clinching his fist at the same time, and making a push toward his antagonist.

"Stop, my friend," said I. "I know you are my friend, and that you want to preserve order; but that fellow is pretty badly scared now, and will, I have no doubt, remain perfectly quiet without a whipping. If he will not, then it will be time enough to pitch into him.' Just hold on now, if you please."

"Very well," said he; "I'll do just as you tell me. If he don't behave, I am on hand to give him the heaviest licking he ever got in all his born days."

My friend, a man I never saw before nor since, had already made a great deal more disturbance than the foe, but quiet was very soon restored, and the preached word was manifestly attended by the Spirit of the Lord. At the close I sung Bishop Hedding's hymn: "Ye angels who mortals attend, And minister comfort in woe, Come listen, ye heavenly friends, My happier story to know. I sing of a theme most sublime,

No sorrow my song can control:

I sing of the rapturous time,

When Jesus spoke peace to my soul," etc.

I took the wounded from the Plaza to the Bethel and that night we had eleven persons at the altar for prayers, three of whom then, and the rest soon after, professed to experience pardoning grace.

Meeting a young man in the street, he thus addressed me: "How are you, captain? I know you; I heard you preach on the Plaza. I encouraged you then; I contributed toward building the Bethel. I was sober then, and respected God. Now I am drunk, now I respect the devil." The devil elicits a great amount of respect by the wholesale and retail rum traffic, in which he is so extensively engaged.

CHAPTER XXXII.

DEFENSE OF THE SABBATH.

IN January, 1853, an article appeared in the "Alta California," a popular dayly of this city, over the signature of "Merchant," against the Sabbath as a day of religious observance. He attempted to prove, from the Hebrew Bible, that nothing more was contemplated in the institution of the Sabbath than a day of recreation, feasting, and dancing. He announced that that was the first of a series of articles on the same subject. The Sabbath following, January 30, I had a large audience on Long Wharf, and took my text from "Merchant's" article in the newspaper, and preached on the origin and design of the Sabbath. The merchant, unhappily for himself, had chosen Nehemiah as his favorite author, so we sent Nehemiah after him to deal with him, as he did with "the merchants and sellers of all kind of ware" which he expelled from the city of Jerusalem, for doing "as these Long Wharf merchants do here every Sunday." How successful I was in presenting the truth, and in "showing up" the fallacy of "Mer

chant's" positions, could, perhaps, better be decided by the congregation in attendance. But the rest of "Merchant's" series on the same subject never appeared. By the way, I had the pleasure of numbering our good Bishop Ames among my auditors on that occasion. Our street congregations usually stand up, but I honored our good bishop with a seat on a pile of wood which lay on the side of the wharf; and I will be pardoned for the liberty I take in saying, that he looked as good-natured and maintained his dignity as creditably to himself on that pile of wood as I have ever seen a bishop in his chair in Conference.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

EVIL TIDINGS.

THE following extract from my journal was written, as per date, from the best information I could get from passengers who were witnesses to the scene described, and to newspaper reports:

“Friday, April 1, 1853.-Yesterday was a day of evil tidings. We had an arrival of the surviving passengers of the wrecked steamship Independence.

"The wreck occurred February 16, on Margarita Island. After striking a reef, which caused a very bad leak, a sail was drawn over the broken part, and the ship was headed in for the shore, for a convenient place to beach her. They succeeded, after a run of four miles, in grounding her, but the breakers were very heavy, and the first boat sent ashore with a line, swamped. The second boat succeeded in carrying a hawser ashore; but by this time the water had so risen in the ship as to stop the lower flues, and throw the fire out of the furnace doors, and in a moment the ship was in flames. An indescribably horrible scene ensued. Hundreds jumped overboard,