The Corvallis gazette. [volume] (Corvallis, Or.) 1862-1899, 1879-12-12
AN OAKLAND EPISODE.

From the Daily Statesman.
AN OAKLAND EPISODE.
A very extraordinary event lately oc-
| Cured in Oakland, which I think will in
terest the Methodistical portion of your
readers, which is neither small nor unimpor-
tant, as I well know.
| A young man, who was engaged to be
married, proved recreant to his betrothed,
and fell violently in love with young
woman of the-town. His friends did every
thing in their power to cure him of his in
fatuation, but in vain. Not having courage
to marry the young girl, and being still III :
| able to give her up, he become frantic, took
poison, and afterwards shot himself. The
girl, hearing the report, ran into the room.
seized the smoking pistol, and likewise shot
herself throug IN the heart, fell, and died be-
side her lover.
The relatives and friends of the young
man, who had occupied respectable sta
tion in society, gave him demonstrative
burial, and strewed his grave with flowers !;
and in the meantime his companion in guilt
and death was lying in the morgue, appar-
emily forsaken by all save few of her frail
companions. She was extremely beautiful
and in death looked like the sculpture of
another Phidias. As one and another went
into the dismal death chamber to view the,
poor remains, a sentiment went abroad that
while one sinner had been buried with such
demonstrations Of love and respect, it was
cruel inhuman, and unchristian to suffer
the other to be buried like dog in the
Potter's Field.
Some good Samaritans went to- the Rev.
Thomas Guard, and asked him if he would
not conduct Christian service over the re-
mains of the poor outcast, and he did so
+ n,,fo n faf. VIora
more than two thousand people to the
M. E. church, where DR.. Guard preached
the most eloquent sermon ever heard IN that
city, and seemed to eleetrify the vast
throng, who were wrought up to the highest
tension of. sympathetic excitement. doubt
whether such another scene was ever beheld
in this country, and l do not think any
other has been more exciting and pathetic
since the drama of Jairus' daughter
The foregoing will explain the ensuing
letter:
BEAUTY IN RUINS.
never felt so warm sentiment towards
the people of Oakland as did when read
ing in the Times about the extraordinary OBJ
seluies of the poor, outcast i.ide 1t was
brave thing to do, but it was gloriously
done, yet, hardly so much as Christ did. If
Tom Hood had been there, it would have
spoiled the pathos of his heart breaking
dirge. should have expected as much OF
the splendid and magnanimous DIR. Guard,
whom the Methodists of Oakland will be-
gin to appreciate and lament, after the in
exorable ordinances of their church shall
have taken him away to shine in the bright
est constellation of Methodisn in Baltimore
or some other focus of Christian enlighten-
ment; but hardly thought the people
would do and dare SO splendidly-so like
the Son of God. Nevertheless when read
that the pathetic clay, fashioned so slen-
derly," was lying in such melancholy ap-
peal at the Morgue, l thought perhaps the
ice would break presently, and that the
pent up fountains of mercy would overflow.
How Colonel Baker would have shivered
that obdurate, Horeb-rock by one tremen-
dous lightning glance: There is not in all
this earth a creature so forsaken of man, so
afraid of God, so hunted to cities of refuge,
that could not find heart to pity, and a
tongue to speak in her defense, though
around her head all the waves of public
opinion should rage and roar and roll, as the
ocean rolls round the rock
God forgive me, if l have not quoted that
great saying just right. 1t is twenty-three
years since 1 heard it spoken, and thought
the blood had frozen in my veins.
DIR. Guards maledic.ions on the destroy
er of the hapless girl remind me of a pas
sinner, and published in Cincinnati paper
twenty-five years ago:
"The voice of woman forever
Runs sobbing after my soul
Day night, night day, 1 can never
Escape its mournful control.
Its moaning musical dole
Pursues me fovever and ever.
Oh what II that voice be immortal,
And where the blisses begin
Shall come and welcome me in
With joy to the heavenly portal?"
1t is not true that good women are obdu-
rate and cruel to their erring sisters it is
not true that women, in general, are natur-
ally so. But a great many good women, as
well as men, lack moral courage /; and it re-
quires bold heart and steady eye to en-
counter the forbidding gaze of society.
There are five thousand women in Oakland
who would have taken that poor girl into
their houses to die, if they had dared-if
there had been no other spectator than God
But it is not long since that variety of hui
man dust was denied Christian burial, and
since the bodies of suicides were staked
down in their graves. Give the whirligig of
many of our existing inhumanities will have
disappeared.
A few more incidents like the burial of
the outcast girl would put stop to Bob In
gersolls accursed ribaldry about the unchar-
ity of Christian people. What must be the
depravity of = mercenary wretch, who, for
pitiful half-dollar, dropped into his beg
carly hat, would undermine and destroy the
faith of tottering old man, and turn him
out on the crumbling verge of Time, with
nowhere to go beyond the grave! When
heard the Atheist-reviler at Dietz Hall. poi
soning the hearts of the throng of young
men and women, and listened to his cut and
dried highfalutin, which some call elo-
quence, l wanted dead cat to throw at
him, in testimony of my critical esteem.
After forty years OF wandering in the
wilderness of sin have come to the conclu-
sion that, after all, the moral forces of
Christian people are the controlling powers:
of society, and that the young man who ar
rays himself against that momentous and
irresistible force. is a fool. am, therefore,
rejolced to hear that the most eloquent cler.
gyman in all California voluntarily went
dewn into the .ghostly twilight of the Pot
teris Field and gave Christian sepnlture to
the pathetic dust which had been purged of
all uncleanness by the awful baptism Of mis-
cry and death. c. B. MAcDoNALD.
Sacramento Cal, NOV. 4