Lest The General should have been too much puffed up by all his successes and the praises showered upon him, God almost at the end of the tour allowed an accident which might easily have ended his career; but which only gave him an opportunity to show more conspicuously than ever his resolution to persevere in his ceaseless labours.

It was whilst passing along a dark passage in New York that The General stumbled, and, but for God’s great goodness, would have fallen into a cellar.  As it was, one leg was very much bruised and hurt.  He thus described, in writing, to a friend what followed:—­

     “March 13, 1903.—­The accident came at a very unfortunate moment,
     and at the onset it looked like spoiling the closing chapters of
     the Campaign.

“But God is good.  I was favoured with the services of one of the most skilful and experienced surgeons in New York.  He put my leg into starch, and then into a plaster of Paris jacket.  And by dint of resolution, and the supporting Spirit of my Heavenly Father, I went through the last Meeting with apparent satisfaction to everybody about me, and some little comfort to myself.

“It was a great effort.  The Hall is one of the finest and most imposing I ever spoke in.  Three tiers of boxes all round full with the swell class of people in whom you are so much interested, with two galleries beyond.

“It called for some little courage to rise up with my walking-stick to steady me; but God helped me through.  I hung my stick on the rail, and balanced myself on my feet, and talked the straightest truth I could command for an hour and twenty minutes.

“A little spectacular function followed in the shape of trooping the Colours of the different nationalities amongst whom we are at work in the States, and a midnight torchlight procession, with a massed farewell from the balcony of the Headquarters, closed the Campaign.

“I am doing the voyage fairly well.  Of course, it is very wearisome, this lying all the time.  The ship is rolling and tossing and pitching considerably, and it looks like doing so, until we get under shelter of the land.”

The probable after-effect of these distant Campaigns of The General could not be better described than in the words of one of our American Officers, himself known throughout The Army as one of our most spiritually-minded and intelligent observers:—­

“Seventeen years ago,” he says, “the writer first heard The General, and it has been his privilege to hear him many times since.  Each succeeding effort and series of Meetings seems to eclipse all the rest.  It was so in Pittsburg, which, being one of the greatest business centres and home of some of the most virile men of the world, deeply appreciates him.

“He was very weary from his heavy