The congregation at the Bishop’s church was precisely like one you would meet in New York, Philadelphia, or Boston.  To be sure, the identity of the service makes one feel at once at home, but the people were alike, nearly all of the English race, though from all parts of the Union.  The latest French bonnets were at the head of the chief pews, and business men at the foot.  The music was without character, but there was an instructive sermon, and the church was full.

I found that there were no services at any of the Protestant churches in the afternoon.  They have two services on Sunday; at 11 A.M., and after dark.  The afternoon is spent at home, or in friendly visiting, or teaching of Sunday Schools, or other humane and social duties.

This is as much the practice with what at home are called the strictest denominations as with any others.  Indeed, I found individuals, as well as public bodies, affected in a marked degree by a change of oceans and by California life.  One Sunday afternoon I was surprised at receiving the card of a man whom I had last known, some fifteen years ago, as a strict and formal deacon of a Congregational Society in New England.  He was a deacon still, in San Francisco, a leader in all pious works, devoted to his denomination and to total abstinence,—­ the same internally, but externally—­ what a change!  Gone was the downcast eye, the bated breath, the solemn, non-natural voice, the watchful gait, stepping as if he felt responsible for the balance of the moral universe!  He walked with a stride, an uplifted open countenance, his face covered with beard, whiskers, and mustache, his voice strong and natural,—­ and, in short, he had put off the New England deacon and become a human being.  In a visit of an hour I learned much from him about the religious societies, the moral reforms, the ``Dashaways,’’—­ total abstinence societies, which had taken strong hold on the young and wilder parts of society,—­ and then of the Vigilance Committee, of which he was a member, and of more secular points of interest.

In one of the parlors of the hotel, I saw a man of about sixty years of age, with his feet bandaged and resting in a chair, whom somebody addressed by the name of Lies.[1] Lies! thought I, that must be the man who came across the country from Kentucky to Monterey while we lay there in the Pilgrim in 1835, and made a passage in the Alert, when he used to shoot with his rifle bottles hung from the top-gallant studding-sail-boom-ends.  He married the beautiful Dona Rosalia Vallejo, sister of Don Guadalupe.  There were the old high features and sandy hair.  I put my chair beside him, and began conversation, as any one may do in California.  Yes, he was the Mr. Lies; and when I gave my name he professed at once to remember me, and spoke of my book.  I found that almost—­ I might perhaps say quite—­ every American in California had read it; for when California ``broke out,’’ as the phrase is, in 1848, and so large a portion