What he said to me in the interviews held in his sober intervals I have
not the heart to repeat now. He still fought against his enemy; he still
buffeted the billows that were going over him, though with feebler
stroke. When their little child died, her tears fell freely, but he was
like one stunned. Stony and silent he stood and saw the little grave
filled up, and rode away tearless, the picture of hopelessness.

By a coincidence; after my return to San Francisco, he came thither, and
again became my neighbor at North Beach. I went up to see him one
evening. He was very feeble, and it was plain that the end was not far
off. At the first glance I saw that a great change had taken place in
him.

He had found his lost self. The strong drink was shut out from him, and
he was shut in with his better thoughts and with God. His religious life
rebloomed in wondrous beauty and sweetness. The blossoms of his early
joy had fallen off, the storms had torn its branches and stripped it of
its foliage, but its root had never perished, because he had never
ceased to struggle for deliverance. Aspiration and hope live or die
together in the human soul. The link that bound my friend to God was
never wholly sundered. His better nature clung to the better way with a
grasp that never let go altogether.

"O Doctor, I am a wonder to myself! It does seem to me that God has
given back to me every good thing I possessed in the bright and blessed
past. It has all come back to me. I see the light and feel the joy as I
did when I first entered the new life. O it is wonderful! Doctor, God
never gave me up, and I never ceased to yearn for his mercy and love,
even in the darkest season of my unhappy life?"