“My Precious General,—­

“I am still on the wing.  We were at St. Louis on Sunday, where we had, in some respects, a rather remarkable day.  The entire feeling of the city has been distinctly different since your visit—­the sympathy now is most marked.

“I also spoke for ‘fifteen minutes’ (stretched a little) in the Merchants Exchange, a huge marble structure.  No woman, they say, has ever been heard there before.  This was on Saturday at noon, and quite a number of the leading business and money men turned up at Sunday’s Meetings.

     “Can’t write more.  How I wonder how you are!  Up above us all so
     high, like a diamond in our sky, though perhaps I ought to say
     cyclone or race-horse, or—­but there is no simile fine enough.

     “Good-night!  Would that you were here, so that I could say it, and
     hear all that you would like to say, and then start off again to
     try and carry out your wishes with better success, as

     “Your unfailing Emma.”

Alas, alas, for the uncertainties of human life!  Little did she imagine that before the letter could reach him she would be gone from another train, for ever from his side.

Her own devotion to the War, from her very childhood, had always been such as to set an example to all who knew her.  As head, for ten years, of our Training Home for women Officers, she did more than can ever be known to ensure the purity and excellence of The Army’s leaders, so that it may be easily guessed how much her father valued her.

As joint leader with her husband of our forces in India, and afterwards in the United States, she never spared herself, but, in spite of repeated illnesses, and without, in any way, neglecting her duties as mother of six children, she travelled and laboured incessantly.

Starting out at one o’clock in the morning of October 28th, from Colorado, to ride to Chicago, she managed to make a rush-call, between trains, in Kansas City, to view a new building The Army was about to take as an Industrial Home.  Throughout most of the two days’ journey, she was in conversation with one or another Officer as to coming extension of the work until, finding that Colonel Addie, whose Province she last passed, had composed a new song, she asked him to sing it over to her, and to repeat three times the last verse, which was as follows:—­

    Time and place will cease to know you,
      Men and things will pass away;
    You’ll be moving on to-morrow,
      You are only here to-day.

Little did either of them imagine how terribly the words were to be verified within four hours of their being sung.

Just as she was leaving her place in one carriage, to go to the sleeping berth prepared for her in another, a tremendous crash announced to all the passengers that the car through which she and one of our Officers were passing had left the rails and been destroyed.  Both were buried in the debris.  The Colonel (Holland) survived, but Mrs. Booth-Tucker, after lingering in unconsciousness a couple of hours, passed away.