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947
Chaplain J. Stewart Pearce, First Infantry, Camp Travis, is always present at the conventions of the Old Time Trail Drivers' Association. He is the son of a cowman, and is himself a former cow-puncher, and is chaplain of the Association. On one occasion, during the annual memorial service, Chaplain Pearce, with feeling said of the departed trail drivers :
"Their language may not always have been couched in terms accepted of the church. Their prayers may not have always been as dignified, or their hymns as pure in tone as they might have been, but within the breasts of the men who braved the hardships of those early days beat hearts as true as those which beat within the breasts of any of God's children. I was reared in San Antonio. I knew most of the men whose names have been read in the memorial resolution. Some of them many a time have spent the night in my father's home. And I know that the cowboy frequently was not all he should have been. Many of you have wondered why San Antonio's streets are so crooked, and that's the reason. The boys came in straight but they went out crooked. But whatever they may sometimes have seemed to be on the surface, down beneath all that they were true blue. Uncle Ab was my first boss. Uncle Ab used to let his mouth run wild sometimes, as we have all have done on occasions. But whatever Uncle Ab's language may have been, he had a heart that was pure and good and beautiful. I remember one time we came into a border town with a herd of cattle. And you know what happens when cowboys come into town after six or eight months on a ranch. But Uncle Ab came to me and said, `If I were you, I wouldn't go across the river with the other boys tonight.' He knew I had just joined the church."