"This A.M.—Got up at the usual starting hour, 7 o'clock, and as it looked only dark we decided to go. At breakfast it started to rain again and Mamma and the Doctor began to back out, but Maud and I talked to some advantage. We argued that if we were going to sit around waiting for a fair day in this country we might just as well give up seeing anything more interesting than hotel parlours and dining-rooms.
"We started, and just as a 'send off' the old sky opened and let down a deluge of water. It rained all the time we were on Loch Lomond, but that didn't prevent us from being up on deck on the boat. From under umbrellas we saw the most beautiful scenery in Scotland. Part of this trip was made by coach, always in the pouring rain. We drove on and on through the hills, seeing nothing but sheep, sheep, sheep. Doctor Talmage asked the driver what kind of vegetables they raised in the mountains and the driver replied—'mutton.' We had luncheon at a very pretty little hotel on Loch Katrine, and here boarded a little steamer launch, 'Rob Roy,' for a beautiful sail. I never, no matter where I travel, expect to look upon a lake more beautiful. The mountains give wildness and romance to the calm and quiet of the lake, and the island. Maud read aloud to us parts of 'The Lady of the Lake' as we sat out on deck."
In Edinburgh Dr. Talmage preached his well-known sermon upon unrequited services, at the request of Lord Kintore, the son of the Earl of Kintore, who had suggested the theme to him some years before. In fact the Doctor wrote this sermon by special suggestion of the Earl of Kintore.
Incidents great and small were such a large part of the eventful trip to Europe that it is difficult to make those omissions which the disinterested reader might wish. The Doctor, like ourselves, saw with the same rose-coloured glasses that we did. We were very pleasantly entertained in Edinburgh by Lord Kintore and others, but the most interesting dinner party I think was when we were the guests of Sir Herbert Simpson, brother of the celebrated Sir James Y. Simpson, the man who discovered the uses of chloroform as an anæsthetic. We dined in the very room where the discovery was first tested. When Dr. Simpson had decided upon a final experiment of the effects of chloroform as an anæsthetic, he invited three or four of his colleagues and friends to share the test with him. They met in the very room where we dined with Sir Herbert Simpson and his family. The story goes that when everything had been prepared for the evening's work, Dr. Simpson informed "Sandy," an old servant, that he must not be disturbed under any circumstances, telling him not to venture inside the door himself until 5 a.m. Then, if no one had left the room, he was to enter. "Sandy" obeyed these instructions to the letter, and came into the room at 5 in the morning. He was very much shocked to find his master and the others under the table in a stupor. "I never thought my master would come to this," said Sandy. He was still in the employ of the family, being a very old man.
Dr. Talmage's engagements took him from Edinburgh to Liverpool, where he preached. It was while there that we made a visit to Hawarden to see Mrs. Gladstone. The Doctor had been to Hawarden before as the guest of Mr. Gladstone, and was disappointed to find that Mrs. Gladstone was too ill to be seen by anyone. We were entertained, however, by Mrs. Herbert Gladstone. I remember how much the Doctor was moved when he saw in the hall at Hawarden a bundle of walking sticks and three or four hats hanging on the hat-rack, as Mr. Gladstone had left them when he died.
From Liverpool we went to Sheffield, where Dr. Talmage preached to an immense congregation. It was in May, the time when all England is flower-laden, when the air is as sweet as perfume and the whole countryside is as fascinating as a garden. It was the coaching season, too, and the Doctor entered into the spirit of these beautiful days very happily. We took a ten days' trip from Leamington after leaving Sheffield, coaching through the exquisite scenery around about Warwick, Kenilworth, and the Shakespeare country in Stratford-on-Avon. Most of these reminiscences are full of incidents too intimate for public interest. Like a dream that lifts one from prosaic life into the places of precious remembrance I recall these long, happy days in the glorious sunset of his life.
We returned to London in time for the Doctor's first preaching engagement there on May 28, 1900. The London newspapers described him as "The American Spurgeon."
"And now before the services opened at St. James' Hall a congregation of 3,000 people waited to hear Dr. Talmage," says a London newspaper. Then it goes on to say further:—
"Dr. Talmage, who has preached from pulpits all over the world, may be described as an 'American Spurgeon.' None of our great English speakers is less of an orator. Dr. Talmage is a great speaker, but his power as an orator is not by any means that of a Gladstone or a Bright. It lies more in the matter than in the manner, in his wonderful imagery, the vividness with which he conjures up a picture before the congregation. He is a great artist in words. Dr. Talmage affects nothing; he is naturalness itself in the pulpit, and the manner of his speech suggests that he is angry with his subject. The sermon on this occasion lent itself well to a master of metaphor such as Dr. Talmage, it being a review of the last great battle of the world, when the forces of right and wrong should meet for the final mastery."
Dr. Talmage rarely preached this sermon because it was a great tax on his memory. It included a suggestion of all the great battles of the earth, a vivid description of the armies of the world marching forward in the eternal human struggle of right against wrong until they were masked for the last great battle of all, when "Satan would take the field in person, in whose make-up nothing bad was left out, nothing good was put in."