“’Mr. Kent, I told you this morning that I couldn’t sing the song you asked for, but these girls know it, and have come to sing it for you.’

“Then, waving his hand gently toward us, he said: 

“‘Sing, children.’

“We did so, and when we had finished he knelt and offered a prayer, not for the poor man’s recovery but that he might put his trust in the Lord and meet death without fear.  I have never been more deeply impressed nor felt more confident in the presence of death, for the man died soon after, soothed into perfect peace.”

On another occasion he was sitting with some friends in front of the courthouse in his town, talking and sunning himself, when a neighbor came running up in great excitement, calling: 

“Mr. White, Mr. White, come, right quick.  Mrs. Sadler wants you.”

He explained that the woman in question was dying, and, being afraid she would strangle in her last moments, had asked the bystanders to run for him, her old acquaintance, in the efficacy of whose prayers she had great faith.  The old patriarch was without a coat at the time, but, unmindful of that, hastened after.

“Mr. White,” exclaimed the sick woman excitedly upon seeing him, “I want you to pray that I won’t strangle.  I’m not afraid to die, but I don’t want to die that way.  I want you to offer a prayer for me that I may be saved from that.  I’m so afraid.”

Seeing by the woman’s manner that she was very much overwrought, he used all his art to soothe her.

“Have no fear, Mrs. Sadler, now,” he exclaimed solemnly.  “You won’t strangle.  I will ask the Lord for you, and this evil will not come upon you.  You need not have any fear.”

“Kneel down, you,” he commanded, turning upon the assembled neighbors and relatives who had followed or had been there before him, while he pushed back his white hair from his forehead.  “Let us now pray that this good woman here be allowed to pass away in peace.”  And even with the rustle of kneeling that accompanied his words he lifted up his coatless arms and began to pray.

Through his magnificent phraseology, no doubt, as well as his profound faith, he succeeded in inducing a feeling of peace and quiet in all his hearers, the sick woman included, who, listening, sank into a restful stupor, from which all agony of mind had apparently disappeared.  Then when the physical atmosphere of the room had been thus reorganized, he ceased and retired to the yard in front of the house, where on a bench under a shade tree he seated himself to wipe his moist brow and recover his composure.  In a few moments a slight commotion in the sick-room denoted that the end had come.  Several neighbors came out, and one said, “Well, it is all over, Mr. White.  She is dead.”

“Yes,” he replied with great assurance.  “She didn’t strangle, did she?”

“No,” said the other, “the Lord granted her request.”

“I knew He would,” he replied in his customary loud and confident tone.  “Prayer is always answered.”