"Everybody reads yours," he replied.
Spurgeon made a long battle against disease; the last few months in agony. His name is on the honour roll of the world's history, but for many years he was caricatured and assailed. He kept a scrap-book of the printed blasphemy against him. The first picture I ever saw of him represented him as sliding down the railing of his pulpit in the presence of his congregation, to show how easy it was to go to hell, and then climbing up on the opposite railing to show how difficult it was to get to heaven. Most people at the time actually believed that he had done this.
In this same month Dr. Mackenzie, the famous physician, died, and my old friend, the Rev. Dr. Hanna of Belfast, the leading Protestant minister of Ireland. Out of the darkness into the light; out of the struggle into victory; out of earth into Heaven!
There was always mercy on earth, however, for those who remained. Mercy! The biggest word in the human language! I remember how it impressed me, when, at the invitation of Dr. Leslie Keeley, the inventor of the "Gold Cure" for drunkenness, I visited his institution at Dwight, Ill. It was a new thing then and a most merciful miracle of the age. It settled no question, perhaps, but intensified the blessings of reformed thought.
There were questions that could not be solved, however, questions of industrial moment that we almost despaired of. The tariff was one of them. I felt convinced that the tariff question would never be settled. The grandchildren of every generation will always be discussing it, and thresh out the same old straw which the Democrats and Republicans were discussing before them. When I was a boy only eight years old the tariff was discussed just as warmly as it will ever be. Like my friend Henry Watterson, of Kentucky, I was a Free Trader. Politics were so mixed up it was difficult to see ahead. Cleveland was after Hill and Hill was after Cleveland; that alone was clear to everybody.
For my own satisfaction, in the spring of 1892, I went to see what Washington was really doing, thinking, living. It had improved morally and politically, its streets were still the trail of the mighty. A great change had taken place there.
A higher type of men had taken possession of our national halls. Duelling, once common, was entirely abolished, and a Senator who would challenge a fellow-member to fight would make himself a laughing-stock. No more clubbing of Senators on account of opposite opinions! Mr. Covode of Pennsylvania, no longer brandished a weapon over the head of Mr. Barksdale of Mississippi. Grow and Keitt no more took each other by the throat. Griswold no more pounded Lyon, Lyon snatching the tongs and striking back until the two members in a scuffle rolled on the floor of the great American Congress. One of the Senators of twenty-five years ago died in Flatbush Hospital, idiotic from his dissipations. One member of Congress I saw years ago seated drunk on the curbstone in Philadelphia, his wife trying to coax him home. A Senator from New York many years ago on a cold day was picked out of the Potomac, into which he had dropped through his intoxication, the only time that he ever came so near losing his life by too much cold water. Talk not about the good old days, for the new days in Washington were far better. There was John Sherman of the Senate, a moral, high-minded, patriotic and talented man. I said to him as I looked up into his face: "How tall are you?" and his answer was, "Six feet one inch and a half;" and I thought to myself "You are a tall man every way, with mental stature over-towering like the physical." There was Senator Daniel of Virginia, magnetic to the last degree, and when he spoke all were thrilled while they listened. Fifteen years ago, at Lynchburg, Va., I said to him: "The next time I see you, I will see you in the United States Senate." "No, no," he replied, "I am not on the winning side. I am too positive in my opinions." I greeted him amid the marble walls of the Senate with the words "Didn't I tell you so?" "Yes," he said, "I remember your prophecy." There also were Senators Colquitt and Gordon of Georgia, at home whether in secular or religious assemblages, pronounced Christian gentlemen, and both of them tremendous in utterance. There was Senator Carey of Wyoming, who was a boy in my church debating society at Philadelphia, his speech at eighteen years demonstrating that nothing in the way of grand achievement would be impossible. There was Senator Manderson of Nebraska, his father and mother among my chief supporters in Philadelphia, the Senator walking about as though he cared nothing about the bullets which he had carried ever since the war, of which he was one of the heroes. Brooklyn was proud of her Congressmen. I heard our representative, Mr. Coombs, speak, and whether his hearers agreed or disagreed with his sentiments on the tariff question, all realised that he knew what he was talking about, and his easy delivery and point-blank manner of statement were impressive. So, also, at the White House, whether people liked the Administration or disliked it, all reasonable persons agreed that good morals presided over the nation, and that well-worn jest about the big hat of the grandfather, President William Henry Harrison, being too ample for the grandson, President Benjamin Harrison, was a witticism that would soon be folded up and put out of sight. Anybody who had carefully read the 120 addresses delivered by President Benjamin Harrison on his tour across the continent knew that he had three times the brain ever shown by his grandfather. Great men, I noticed at Washington, were great only a little while. The men I saw there in high places fifteen years ago had nearly all gone. One venerable man, seated in the Senate near the Vice-President's chair, had been there since he was introduced as a page at 10 years of age by Daniel Webster. But a few years change the most of the occupants of high positions. How rapidly the wheel turns. Call the roll of Jefferson's Cabinet? Dead! Call the roll of Madison's Cabinet? Dead! Call the roll of Monroe's Cabinet? Dead! Call the roll of Pierce's Cabinet? Dead! Call the roll of Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet? Dead! The Congressional burying ground in the city of Washington had then 170 cenotaphs raised in honour of members.
While I was in Chicago, in the spring of 1892, there came about an almost national discussion as to whether the World's Fair should be kept open on Sunday. Nearly all the ministers foresaw empty churches if the fair were kept open.
In spite of the personal malice against me of one of the great editors of New York, the people did not seem to lose their confidence in the Christian spirit. Both Dr. Parkhurst and myself were the targets of this brilliant man's sarcasm and satire at this time, but neither of us were demoralised or injured in the course of our separate ways of duty.
In the summer of 1892 the working plans of what the newspapers generously called my vacation took me to Europe on a tour of Great Britain and Ireland, including a visit to Russia, to await the arrival of a ship-load of food sent by the religious weekly of which I was editor. Some criticism was made of the way I worked instead of rested in vacation time.