person was of such a character that she did not think there should be a suspension of sentence. And frequently, before the prisoner was convicted, she would make an investigation, and if judgment was suspended she would, especially in the case of young women, take them into her charge, procure situations for them, and exercise a general supervision over them for a considerable time, helping them wisely. She had a little place, up somewhere on the Sound, where she took some of these. For others she would procure lodgings, and frequently, when a woman was sentenced and sent to prison, she would look out for her children; and where men were sentenced she would look out for their wives, procure means to help them-give them food and clothing, procure work for them. Her ministrations were not by any means devoted entirely to women, although they were the principal object of her charity.

She

"She worked at all times-in the heat of summer and the cold of winter. would go to the very limit of her strength, until, absolutely exhausted, she would faint. The court officers were all very fond of her, and when she was overcome some big policeman would lift her up and carry her to a place of rest as tenderly as though she were a baby.

"Her absolute sincerity and purity of motive impressed itself upon every one and led them to trust her. She would never take any money from the judges. Lots of times I have tried to give her money for some particular case-where she had made expenditures to take care of the family while the man was in jail. She would say: 'No, I cannot take any money from any of the judges. I know the judges who are here now would not think I was coming to them with the hope of getting some, but there might come judges here who would not feel that way about it. They would get to look upon me as a nuisance, and they would feel they ought to offer me money.''

Here was a little light on the character I was seeking to know, but I felt that it was only a partial revelation. Good judgment and an insight not readily deceived were the qualities that had impressed the judges. They might make her a valuable ally to the court, but they could not explain the reason for her labor. No woman

would have devoted years of her life to such exhausting toil in so lugubrious a world, without pay, simply for love of exercising her powers of discrimination. The judge put these first, but it was evident that they must have been incidental so far as she was concerned. They served to make her more effective in what the deeper qualities of her nature prompted her to do.

"Where did she get the money that she used? She did not receive much as probation officer, did she?"

"The law creating probation officers was passed only about a year ago. She was doing this work many years before that, and she served out of pure benevolence, without pay. I don't know where the money she spent came from. I think she had some means of her own."

I went to the iron-barred door of the Tombs, and was admitted. The sheriff received me in his dingy office, in the rear of a long, narrow room, an ill-lighted, poorly ventilated passage to the cells.

The sheriff, a big-boned, heavily-built Irishman, met me with a challenging stare from his suspicious, cold blue eyes, but when I told him my errand his attitude became less harsh and forbidding.

"How long have you known Mrs. Foster?" I asked.

I've

"Ever since I have been here. been around the Tombs here, one way and another, for about twelve years."

"And you saw a good deal of her?" "I saw her about every day. She came here every morning, regular as clockwork."

"To see the prisoners, in general?"

"Well, there was always one or more particular cases she was looking after, and then there was always a lot of ex-prisoners and dead beats and people in trouble hanging around outside for her. She always came around here to see them. Of course, if it was cold or stormy, we let them wait inside for her."

"What did she do for these peopleget them work ?"

"Most of 'em didn't want work. Of course, if they did, she would find 'em something. something. But most of those hanging round here were dead-beats looking to her for a stake."

"What did she do with them?"

"Oh, she always staked 'em to some

thing-a quarter or a half or so.

There was a fellow named Appo-an ex-convict and a regular Bowery bum-used to show up about so often, and get a half or a dollar off her."

"Fooling her with promises of reform?" "Not much. You couldn't fool Mrs. Foster. She was on to 'em all right. She never talked reform to such people. Just slipped a half or a dollar into their fist on the quiet, with a joke or a pleasant word, and told 'em to come and see her again."

"What was her idea?"

"Don't know as she had any idea. Talk don't do those dead-beats any good. She seemed to think a lot of them in a queer kind of way-kind of joking and tender."

"She was tender-hearted ?"

"Of course she was, but not soft like some. She was always bright and cheery, and had a laugh or a joke or a pleasant word for every one. She used to come whisking in every morning, and trip through the place, saying good-morning to every one by name. She always came bustling into my office as breezy and chipper as a young girl. It was always 'Good-morning to you, Sheriff; are you good-natured to-day?' You couldn't help warming up to her. Another woman might have seemed bold and forward, but she didn't. Every morning it was just the same.

'I've got some people to see,' she would say. 'Can I go into the cells?' She'd always ask. She could have gone right in, coming for twelve years that way, and everybody knowing her, but she always asked, and when I said, 'Why, of course you can,' she'd say, 'Thank you kindly, Sheriff; thank you kindly.'"

The big fellow's face flushed up as he spoke of her, and his blue eyes were warm and moist.

A quiet, unobtrusive little woman in the court-room-just and of good judgment. A breezy, joking, bustling spirit about the Tombs; full of cajolery and flattery for officials of a brief authority, open-handed, shrewd, and tender with the odds and ends of poverty, misfortune, worthlessness, and crime that gathered there. Was this conscious acting, and if so, for what ambition was the effort spent?

Every morning, before going to the

Tombs, Mrs. Foster went to Calvary Church, at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-first Street. I called there several times to discover why. One afternoon I found the sexton in. He had served in that capacity for a number of years, and had known Mrs. Foster well.

The vestibule of Calvary Church is long and wide. Its low ceiling and narrow windows of stained glass give it a resemblance to an ancient castle hall. It is a dimly lighted, cool, and somber place, where people tread softly and seldom speak aloud.

"It is empty now," said the sexton, glancing down its length, "but when Mrs. Foster was alive, there was 'most always some one here waiting in the hope of her dropping in. There were twenty or thirty of 'em here in the morning about her time to come. She used this as her uptown office, and she kept the clothes and things she gave away in the basement. She was always collecting every kind of thing and sending it here. Sometimes a wagon

would drive up and unload."

"How old was she?"

66

Well, to look at her, you would say she was no more than thirty-eight or nine, but she must have been over fifty."

"Was she attractive? How did she look and dress?"

"She had handsome eyes, kind of dancing and thoughtful too. She always dressed well, in black, and her clothes fitted. She had a trim, good figure, and ways like a girl-light on her feet, quick and graceful. It was a wonder to me she could go about at all times of night and in all kinds of places alone and never have no harm come to her. She would go anywhere and do anything without thinking. One time she had been to a dinner at some fine place or other and got back to the hotel late. An old woman was waiting for her, and told her about a daughter that had got astray and was leading a bad life in a low resort on the Bowery. She had been gone from home a little over a week, and they had just found out where she was, but the divekeeper had hid her away and the mother couldn't get to her. Well, Mrs. Foster got a cab and drove, just as she was, evening dress and all, right to the door of the dive.

"She went in alone, and as she walked

scattered Spanish, Mexican, and Indian families in this region.

"There is much that I can still do for them," he said. "I have been at the Josephine quicksilver mine, where a poor ore-carrier was killed the other day, to see what can be done for his family. His father once owned six square leagues of land, with much cattle.

"So you are a teacher? You will have Spanish children in school, and many Americans, too. Teach them to be friends; teach them, too, that all work is good. When I was young I learned many trades, and none of them came amiss. I have helped to make tiles, and brick, and saw lumber, and shape ironwork also."

Thus we talked together till he came to a low Spanish house in the cañon; there he lived; there I might share his simple meal, and ride on to the village by moonlight. There he suddenly said, with a shy, proud look, "The blessing of an old man who has lived long in California and who loves it I give to you, though you are not of my church."

Hardly a week later, in a rugged land of oaks and pines, on the heights from whence bright rivers flowed east and west, a serious-minded man in the prime of life drove by the log-cabin school-house with a load of rawhide-bottomed, handmade chairs for sale. He was the Baptist preacher of the district, and he paid his own way as he went over the rough mountain roads, by Morro, Cayucas, and San Simeon on the coast, or far inland to the Nacimiento, Cholamé, and Salinas. The village stores gladly took his chairs for trade or cash, to sell them again, but as a rule he chose to carry them from cabin to cabin, or deliver to those who sent orders to his home. When, a little later, I knew the old chair-maker of Big Oak Flat, I found that his book-learning was small, but that his views of life were simple and helpful. Every one called on him in time of need, and he did all that was within his power. I think he preached at regular intervals and in many places, over an area of about two hundred square miles, and I found that he knew and was on excellent terms with the old Spanish priest with whom I had spoken.

The day that he preached in my schoolhouse was, I suppose, an example of his

regular services. People began coming at nine o'clock in the morning-backwoodsmen and their families-from five and even ten miles away. A kindly, practical sermon followed, then dinner; then another sermon; then supper, succeeded by a third sermon. But the sermons were largely conversational, and addressed to people whom he knew through and through as they knew him, and sometimes he was interrupted with questions, or would himself ask, "Does that seem all right, Brother Zach ?" The prevailing elements in the ministry of this unlettered chair-maker were his faith and earnest

ness.

"There is a great deal in this Bible that none of us understands," I heard him say, "but we can stick to the plain Scripture. When it says, Blessed are the merciful, for they can obtain mercy,' every one here knows what that means." Then followed a talk which, owing to recent local events, went straight home to that little frontier community.

I saw the chair-maker in his own cabin once, "spoke-shaving" the oaken rounds for chairs; his children were cutting rawhide strips, boring holes, weaving, or "putting together;" through the open door he looked out across his corn-fields and hillside pastures; from the springhouse came the sound of the churn. By the fence were “bee-gums" or hives, made by sawing off lengths of hollow trees and nailing boards on top. Morning-glories, sweet-williams, hollyhocks, and other oldtime flowers bloomed in the small garden. When noon-time came, he sat under the wide-spreading oak and talked about the people he visited, their lives, their besetting sins, and more especially about the young men and women. I wondered even then at the simplicity and intelligence of his views. I know now that he was a man of unusual ability, and a great help to that region.

Frontier ministers of this type have necessarily been rare everywhere, but I have known several such. One very effective minister in early days in this district, a Methodist, worked on his landclaim four or five days in the week, and yet cared for a large frontier community. An old Campbellite preacher whom I knew about this time always "put in a piece of land," as the local phrase went, to hay and grain; and since in those days