The next day being Sunday, we thought we would stay quietly in Yosemite Valley, enjoying the rest and beauty of our surroundings. The hotel was good, and the place was enticing. Here it was that the funniest thing happened we had yet encountered. A deputation of one knocked at our door at an early hour this morning. We had just finished a plain Sunday breakfast of hash, fried potatoes, corn cakes, griddle-cakes, and syrup fresh from the white-pine trees. But I am digressing, and the man is still knocking at our door. J. opened it and let him in. With many hums and haws he said that he had been sent to ask J. if he would read the prayers and preach a sermon in the drawing-room of the hotel, "its being Sunday and you being a minister."
J. was a little aghast, not exactly understanding, while I was shaking with laughter at the other end of the room, and would not have interfered for worlds for fear of losing a word of the dialogue.
"I read the gospel!" cried J.
"Yes, sir. You're a minister, ain't yer?"
"Well, yes, I am, but not the kind you mean."
The little man said, condescendingly: "We are not particular as to sect. Whether you're a Baptist or Methodist, it makes no difference as long as you will preach."
J. had difficulty in explaining in his best English that preaching was not a specialty of his. He did not add that all he did in that line was to administer occasionally a mild savon which he kept only for family use when we washed our linen at home.
The abashed ambassador left us, shaking his head, and evidently wondering why a minister, whether from Denmark or Lapland, couldn't preach, any more than a doctor who was a doctor couldn't practise.
You may be sure that this episode gave us plenty to laugh about to last all that beautiful day in the valley of Yosemite.
We stopped there altogether three days, and were lost in admiration and wonder at the beauty of everything. The greatest wonder the gentlemen met was the item on the bill for blacking boots, which was fifteen dollars. They paid without a murmur, because they wanted to tell their friends about it when they got home.