And then we go on to the journey during which he was hoping “to get some extra sleep”!

     “At twelve, left for Bendigo, arriving about four o’clock.  Was very
     weary on the journey, and had to turn out two or three times to
     address the crowds waiting to listen to me on station platforms.

“Bendigo is a town of some 30,000 people, entirely made and sustained by the gold-digging industry.  An immense amount of the precious metal has been taken here, and sufficient is being secured still to make it a paying concern, although the miners have to go to a considerable depth in order to secure the quartz.

“We had a public reception, and they had made a general holiday of it in the place.  People must have come in from miles around to help make up such a crowd.  They pulled up at a splendid fountain in the centre of the town, intending to separate with three cheers for The General; but I could not withstand the temptation, and made quite a little sermon about saving their souls, and serving God.”

It is this interest both in the everyday occupations and resources of the people, and of the tours they made which, joined with all his intense concern about the soul, constituted The General and all who truly follow him, the true brethren of all mankind.  It must ever be remembered, to the credit of Australia, that its leading men were the first to recognise this characteristic of our Officers, and to lend them all the influence of their public as well as private countenance and sympathy.  It is this fact which makes it a permanent pleasure to record their kindnesses to The General.

“Came on to Melbourne, on my way to Sydney.  Met a body of representative men to lunch, amongst them Sir James McBain, President of the Upper Chamber, Mr. Deakin, an ex-Cabinet Minister, a very nice fellow indeed, a man who appears to me to have more capacity than any one I have yet met in the Colonies.  He made a speech, and at the close drew me on one side, and said he wanted to do something for us, and if I could only tell him what it should be on my return to Melbourne, he would be very glad to do it.

     “I am sure he is prepared to be a good friend.  He is a coming Prime
     Minister, I should think.”

(The General had no idea then that all Australasia would, so soon, be united into one Commonwealth, much less that Mr. Deakin would, for so many of the next ten years, be Premier of the whole.)

But a remark he once made respecting the reported scepticism of some highly-placed Colonials might be made with regard, alas! to many “statesmen” of Christian lands nowadays, and we cannot but see in that fact, and in the friendliness of so many such persons with us, a token of the meaning both of the scepticism, and The Army’s position.  In how many instances have men, moving in influential circles, met with a Christianity manifestly formal and carrying with it no impress of reality!  How natural for them to sink into scepticism!  But the moment they encounter men who convince them instantly that they believe the Bible they carry, scepticism retires in favour of joyous surprise, and without any desire to discuss doctrines, they become our lifelong friends.