Consequently, the red highway that skirted the eastern angle was bare
and shadeless, until it slipped a league off into a watered valley and
refreshed itself under lesser sycamores and willows. It was here the
newly-born city of Excelsior, still in its cradle, had, like an infant
Hercules, strangled the serpentine North Fork of the American river,
and turned its life-current into the ditches and flumes of the
Excelsior miners.
Newest of the new houses that seemed to have accidentally formed its
single, straggling street was the residence of the Rev. Winslow Wynn,
not unfrequently known as "Father Wynn," pastor of the first Baptist
church. The "pastorage," as it was cheerfully called, had the glaring
distinction of being built of brick, and was, as had been wickedly
pointed out by idle scoffers, the only "fireproof" structure in town.
This sarcasm was not, however, supposed to be particularly distasteful
to "Father Wynn," who enjoyed the reputation of being "hail fellow,
well met" with the rough mining element, who called them by their
Christian names, had been known to drink at the bar of the Polka Saloon
while engaged in the conversion of a prominent citizen, and was
popularly said to have no "gospel starch" about him.
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