the detection of the parties who hauled away the steps of the new
Presbyterian Church, C Street, Sandy Bar, during divine service on
Sabbath evening last. Captain Scott adds another hundred for the capture
of the miscreants who broke the magnificent plate-glass windows of the
new saloon on the following evening. There is some talk of reorganizing
the old Vigilance Committee at Sandy Bar."
When, for many months of cloudless weather, the hard, unwinking sun of
Sandy Bar had regularly gone down on the unpacified wrath of these
men, there was some talk of mediation. In particular, the pastor of the
church to which I have just referred--a sincere, fearless, but perhaps
not fully enlightened man--seized gladly upon the occasion of York's
liberality to attempt to reunite the former partners. He preached an
earnest sermon on the abstract sinfulness of discord and rancor. But
the excellent sermons of the Rev. Mr. Daws were directed to an ideal
congregation that did not exist at Sandy Bar,--a congregation of beings
of unmixed vices and virtues, of single impulses, and perfectly logical
motives, of preternatural simplicity, of childlike faith, and grown-up
responsibilities. As, unfortunately, the people who actually attended
Mr. Daws's church were mainly very human, somewhat artful, more
self-excusing than self-accusing, rather good-natured, and decidedly
weak, they quietly shed that portion of the sermon which referred to
themselves, and, accepting York and Scott--who were both in defiant
attendance--as curious examples of those ideal beings above referred
to, felt a certain satisfaction--which, I fear, was not altogether
Christian-like--in their "raking-down." If Mr. Daws expected York and
Scott to shake hands after the sermon, he was disappointed. But he did
not relax his purpose. With that quiet fearlessness and determination
which had won for him the respect of men who were too apt to regard
piety as synonymous with effeminacy, he attacked Scott in his own house.
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