he received hundreds of letters from him, and they are very interesting reading. What chiefly attracted him to the Maréchale was her intimacy with Christ, which was the reward, as he saw, of self-sacrifice. His words on this theme go very deep.
"It is a struggle hard and long, but it is only the struggling, who spend their life-blood in the cause, that can claim blood-relationship with the Lord Jesus. The rest are second-cousins or not even as near as that. They don't know Him very intimately or feel much at home with Him when they pay Him a morning call.... He makes the entrance high and the gate strait that it may be prized when gained—I believe that is the key to the mystery of life, or at least to a large part of it. To let us up to the top for the prayer of a moment and the sacrifice of nothing would in many cases at any rate be impossible and useless. Tell me soon more of how to climb. I am a slow learner."
Mr. Crossley's nature had a pensive strain which the Maréchale's friendship helped to modify. Regarding such a matter he felt that "speech should not go near the length of feeling," but ere long we find him writing, "Das hallelujah Vögelein singt in meinem Herzen."
His donations to the work of the Army both at home and in France were very generous. He gave the Maréchale many thousand pounds a year. His liberality was part of his worship of Christ. Nothing could be finer than the following: "I know you will be thinking it is a serious slice off my capital. Well, it is a branch off the tree. 'They broke off branches from the palm trees and strewed them in the way and shouted Hosanna,' and so do I." And again: "You are very grateful to me for what I have been able to give you, but if you knew how indebted and grateful I also felt to you, you would see how God makes us unequal that we may teach ourselves by the aid and necessary services He enables us to render." Mr. Crossley wished the Maréchale to accept a gift of £10,000 for the maintenance of her family, that she might be personally free from financial care, and also offered to build her a home outside Paris, but she declined both these offers, not wishing to be in a different position from the other officers of the Army.
In 1891 the Maréchale went to America to raise funds for the work in France. Accompanied by her secretary, Mme. Peyron—who was her Geneva convert Mlle. Roussel—she sailed in October by the Columbia for New York, and visited twenty-eight of the principal cities of the States and Canada, holding sixty meetings, travelling sometimes for thirty or forty hours at a stretch, and once with the added experience of being snowed up for twelve hours. She was everywhere very cordially received, and all the buildings in which she spoke were densely crowded. Ministers offered her churches in which a woman had never spoken before. After one meeting she received invitations from a Bishop and seventeen pastors to address congregations on her work.
The reporters everywhere found her and her utterances good copy. "She was not able to see representatives of the press in New York, although they came by dozens," as one learns from the Boston man who claimed to be "her first American interviewer." He found that "her life in France has given a Gallic twist to this Englishwoman's tongue. She is quite as French in manner as her staff-captain, Madame Peyron, the dark-eyed Frenchwoman who travels with her."
One morning she got a great reception from the divinity students of Yale, to whom she spoke at length on the qualifications necessary for "saving souls," namely, the possession of a pure heart and the baptism of the Holy Spirit. "When she had finished her address she said she was willing to answer any questions they might have to ask, and for half an hour the students and several of the professors poured a host of questions upon her that would have embarrassed and muddled the clearest-brained ministers of the country under similar circumstances. She, however, showed that she had answered questions before, and gave answers that brought both laughter and applause, for her wit is keenly cultivated."
It is interesting to see her through Yale eyes. "Her face is a study the like of which an artist or a sculptor might seek for years without finding. In repose it reminds one of the pictures of the Madonnas of Michael Angelo, but when she speaks its earnestness is so intense that it is almost stern. Her voice is one that any actress might well covet for its depth and strength. It is the equal of the great Bernhardt's, and yet it is sweet and soft, and has none of the harshness of the masculine tone. Her accent is something charming, for it has all the attractiveness of the English tongue made even more sweet by long familiarity with the French language. From her long acquaintance with the lower classes, the socialists and all free-thinkers of France, she has acquired that fiery directness and ease and attractiveness in her speaking which is so characteristic of French oratory and so fascinating to Americans. It is no injustice to this remarkable woman to say that, had she chosen the stage for her rôle in life, her name would have certainly been as famous in that profession as it is to-day as the Maréchale of the French Salvation Army."
In America she had the immense happiness of being reunited with her brother Ballington, who, being a year older than herself, had been her chum in childhood, and his wife, née Maud Charlesworth, who had been her brave girl-comrade in the first days of persecution in Switzerland.
In the end of January, 1892, the Maréchale returned to France, after an absence of three months and a half. America had given her $60,000 for her work, and memories of unlimited kindness.