BAPTISTS
in San Francisco are few in numbers. I had the privilege of preaching for the First Church people one morning. Dr. Wood, the pastor, is a strong preacher, and seems to have an aggressive church. My membership was here when I was a boy. But I was not a very loyal member, as the reader later will find how I attended the services of Dr. Scott on account of my Southern proclivities. A Southern preacher in California is a rarity, I judge, but he meets with a hearty welcome. Old Southerners, of course, greet him with a style he is used to, and the Yankees crowd about him as if he were a curiosity. "I knew you were from the South," said one: "Why?" I asked. "Are you a Southern man?" "No, but I was down in that country on the other side from you in the war." From the handshake he gave me, one would not have guessed that we had at one time been enemies. "Reckon" is a good word peculiar to the South and so is "Tote." These are the two words, the use of which anywhere in the North, will betray the speaker as a Southern man. The words they use to express the same ideas are "Guess" and "Pack." I submit these are no improvement on ours. In my sermon I had occasion to say, "You reckon"—instantly the face of every Northerner was lit up with a smile. I was greatly pleased with the heartiness with which most everyone in the congregation entered into the singing. An instrument was used, but a leader stood on the platform and led the congregation. The pastor explained to me, rather apologetically, that since their building was destroyed a few years ago, with their fine organ, a choir had not been organized. I thought: "The Lord be praised for a fire if it gives us such singing as that in place of the music of the average city choir."