known in many a home.  Mrs. Gladstone told me that when she and her husband had read it, it recalled their own loss of a child under similar circumstances.  Dean Stanley read it aloud to Lady Augusta Stanley in the Deanery of Westminster; and when I took him to our own unrivalled Greenwood Cemetery he asked to be driven to the spot where the dust of our dear boy is slumbering.  Many thousands have visited that grave and gazed with tender admiration on the exquisite marble medallion of the childface,—­by the sculptor, Charles Calverley,—­which adorns the monument.

Fourteen years afterwards, in the autumn of 1881, “the four corners of my house were smitten” again with a heart-breaking bereavement in the death, by typhoid fever, of our second daughter, Louise Ledyard Cuyler, at the age of twenty-two, who possessed a most inexpressible beauty of person and character.  Her playful humor, her fascinating charm of manner, and her many noble qualities drew to her the admiration of a large circle of friends, as well as the pride of our parental hearts.  After her departure I wrote, through many tears, a small volume entitled “God’s Light on Dark Clouds," with the hope that it might bring some rays of comfort into those homes that were shadowed in grief.  Judging from the numberless letters that have come to me I cannot but believe that, of all the volumes which I have written, this one has been the most honored of God as a message-bearer to that largest of all households—­the household of the sorrowing.  Let me add that I have published a single volume of sermons, entitled “The Eagle’s Nest,” and a volume of foreign travel, “From the Nile to Norway”; but all the remainder of my score of volumes have been of a practical and devotional character.  Of the twenty-two volumes that I have written, six have been translated into Swedish, and two into the language of my Dutch ancestors.  Thanks be to God for the precious privilege of preaching His glorious Gospel with the types that out-reach ten thousand tongues!  And thanks also to a number of friends, whose faces I never saw, but whose kind words have cheered me through more than a half century of happy labors.  I cannot conclude this brief chapter without expressing my deep obligations to that noble organization, the “American Tract Society,” which has given a wide circulation to many of my books—­including “Heart-Life,” “Newly Enlisted; or, Counsels to Young Converts”—­and “Beulah-Land,” a volume of good cheer to aged pilgrims on their journey heavenward.

CHAPTER IX

SOME FAMOUS PEOPLE ABROAD.

Gladstone.—­Dr. Brown.—­Dean Stanley.—­Shaftesbury, etc.