"Do you think, sir, it will do for a Presbyterian clergyman to commence horse-racing _so soon_ after reaching the Springs?" He was as much startled as I had been--in fact, so startled that he could not say a word, and I left him without any reply, and went in to supper. When I returned from the dining-room I found him at the door, and he approached me in the most subdued and respectful manner and said: "Allow me to speak to you again, sir. I wish to apologize, sir; I beg your pardon, sir; I assure you, sir, that nothing would induce me knowingly to insult a clergyman." I responded, very pleasantly: "I am certain, sir, that no insult was intended, and therefore there is no pardon to be granted." He thanked me very warmly for my kind construction of his motives, and left me with a lighter step and brighter face. His companions were all greatly pleased with my treatment of the matter; and, as I have elsewhere said, there was a general turnout of all the gamblers--of whom he was one of the most prominent--to hear me preach in the ballroom the next Sabbath. But I need not say, to any one at all familiar with life in the Southwest, that he had to "stand treat" all around among his companions, for being thus, in the vernacular of the country, "picked up" by the preacher. In passing through another part of this county the following winter, I rode up to a blacksmith-shop to get a shoe tightened. As soon as the blacksmith came out he said: "Wasn't you at the Springs last summer with this mare?" I replied in the affirmative, and, on looking at him, recognized the man that kept a little shop there, and had shod her in the summer. "Well," said he, leaning upon her neck, patting her affectionately, and looking into vacancy with a pleased expression, as if living over some pleasant scene in the past, "they got her out, preacher, and run her, any way." And then, as if to make the matter all right with me, he looked up into my face and said, with the most satisfied smile and emphatic nod: "And, preacher, she beat, she did. He won his money!"