He ought to have been a preacher. So he said
to me once:
"I felt the impulse and heard the call in my early manhood. I conferred
with flesh and blood, and was disobedient to the heavenly vision. I have
had some little success at the bar, on the hustings, and in legislative
halls, but how paltry has it been in comparison with the true life and
high career that might have been mine!"
He was from the hill-country of North Carolina, and its flavor clung to
him to the last. He had his gloomy moods, but his heart was fresh as a
Blue Ridge breeze in May, and his wit bubbled forth like a
mountain-spring. There was no bitterness in his satire. The very victim
of his thrust enjoyed the keenness of the stroke, for there was no
poison in the weapon. At times he seemed inspired, and you thrilled,
melted, and soared, under the touches of this Western Coleridge. He came
to my room at the Golden Eagle, in Sacramento City, one night, and left
at two o'clock in the morning. He walked the floor and talked, and it
was the grandest monologue I ever listened to. One part of it I could
not forget. It was with reference to preachers who turn aside from their
holy calling to engage in secular pursuits, or in politics.
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