He was a deacon still, in San
Francisco, a leader in all pious works, devoted to his denomination
and to total abstinence,- the same internally but externally- what a
change! Gone was the downcast eye, the bated breath, the solemn,
non-natural voice, the watchful gait, stepping as if he felt
responsible for the balance of the moral universe! He walked with a
stride, an uplifted open countenance, his face covered with beard,
whiskers, and mustache, his voice strong and natural,- and, in short,
he had put off the New England deacon and become a human being. In a
visit of an hour I learned much from him about the religious
societies, the moral reforms, the "Dashaways,"- total abstinence
societies, which had taken strong hold on the young and wilder parts
of society,- and then of the Vigilance Committee, of which he was a
member, and of more secular points of interest.
In one of the parlors of the hotel, I saw a man of about sixty years
of age, with his feet bandaged and resting in a chair, whom somebody
addressed by the name of Lies.* Lies! thought I, that must be the
man who came across the country from Kentucky to Monterey while we lay
there in the Pilgrim in 1835, and made a passage in the Alert, when he
used to shoot with his rifle bottles hung from the top-gallant
studding-sail-boom-ends.
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