“He told me this was his workshop, and looked me in the face with a merry twinkle in his eye to see whether I was surprised or pleased.”

Then I asked the reporter to “sit down,” which he promptly did.  I was closely watched to see how I opened my mail.  Nothing startling happened.  I just opened “letter after letter.”  Some I laid aside for my secretary, others I actually attended to myself.

A letter from a young lady in Georgia, asking me to send her what I consider the most important word in my vocabulary, I answered immediately.  The ever-watchful reporter observes that to do this “I pick up a pen and write on the margin of the girl’s letter the word ‘helpfulness.’” Then I sign it and stick it in an envelope.  Then I “dash off the address.”  Obviously I am not at all original at home.  I replied to a letter from the president of a theological seminary, asking me to speak to his young men.  I like young men so I agree to do so if I can.  I “startle” the reporter finally, by a sudden burst of unexpected hilarity over a letter from a man in Pennsylvania who wants me to send him a cheque by return mail for one hundred thousand dollars, on a sure thing investment.  The reporter says:—­

“I am startled by a shrill peal of laughter, and the great preacher leans back in his chair and shakes his sides.”

The reporter looks over my shoulder and sees other letters.

“A young minister writes to say that his congregation is leaving him.  How shall he get his people back?  An old sailor scrawls on a piece of yellow paper that he is bound for the China seas and he wants a copy of each of Dr. Talmage’s sermons sent to his old wife in New Bedford, Mass., while he is gone.  Here is a letter in a schoolgirl’s hand.  She has had a quarrel with her first lover and he has left her in a huff.  How can she get him back?  Another letter is from the senior member of one of the biggest commercial houses in Brooklyn.  It is brief, but it gives the good doctor pleasure.  The writer tells him how thoroughly he enjoyed the sermon last Sunday.  The next letter is from the driver of a horse car.  He has been discharged.  His children go to Dr. Talmage’s Sunday School.  Is that not enough to show that the father is reliable and steady, and will not the preacher go at once to the superintendent of the car line and have him reinstated.  Here is a perfumed note from a young mother who wants her child baptised.  There are invitations to go here and there, and to speak in various cities.  Young men write for advice:  One with the commercial instinct strongly developed, wants to know if the ministry pays?  Still another letter is from a patent medicine house, asking if the preacher will not write an endorsement of a new cure for rheumatism.  Other writers take the preacher to task for some utterance in the pulpit that did not please them.  Either he was too lenient or too severe.  A young man wants to get married and writes to know what it will cost to tie the knot.  A New York actress, who has been an attendant for several Sundays at the Tabernacle, writes to say that she is so well pleased with the sermons that she would be glad if she could come earlier on Sunday morning, but she is so tired when Saturday night comes that she can’t get up early.  Would it be asking too much to have a seat reserved for her until she arrived!”