His symptoms the following day were very serious, and one cannot but be glad that he had at his side at the time his daughter--Commander Eva Booth. Under her loving care, and with all the help of Doctors and Masters that could be got in Chicago, The General recovered so as to be able to go on after a few days with his interrupted tour, after which he wrote in his farewell letter to his American Troops:--
"I have been impressed with the great improvement in the devotion, spirituality and Blood and Fire character of the forces already in existence. I have also most pleasantly gratified by a conviction of the possibility of raising a force in the United States that shall not only be equal to the demand made upon it by the conditions of the country but of supplying me with powerful reinforcements of men and money for the mighty task of bringing the whole world to the feet of Jesus."
During this visit, The General and the Commander were received by President Roosevelt at the White House. The General was presented with the freedom of the City of Philadelphia, and after going through the gigantic final week described alone in New York was able to sail direct to Germany for his usual great Repentance Day in Berlin, and he was already seventy-eight years old.
Need it be said that whilst in this book little mention is made of any one but The General himself, it not having been his habit in his journals to refer to those with whom he was for the time associating, we are not to suppose that at any rate in recent years he was anywhere fighting alone. In Heaven no doubt the victory won in many a crowded building was put down to the credit of someone whom few if any of those occupying the front of the platform would have mentioned; but as a result of whose prayers, faith and effort the audience was gathered or the results attained.
It would have been very unfair to the great majority of his Officers to have called frequent or special attention to the small English Staff who usually accompanied him, for not only the Commissioners and Chief Secretaries but the Officers of every nationality laboured systematically to make the most of his visits to any particular place and to render to the largest possible extent the results of each visit permanent.
This may possibly seem specially and curiously unfair in the United States and Denmark, yet it will only make[1] the principle of this omission from The General's own records and ours the more clear.
It will doubtless be expected that I make some comment upon the painful separation from him of three of his own children which were amongst the saddest events of The General's life, and, yet, I feel it best to say nothing.
It is not within the scope of this book to tell "all about it," and telling part could only cause misunderstanding. So I leave it, and hope everyone else will do the same.