“I am too old now,” he said, wistfully, I thought.

“Is it the Atlantic you object to?” I asked.

“Oh!  I am not afraid of the ocean,” he said, as though there were perhaps some other reason.

“Tell your country I watch every turn of its history with a heart of innermost admiration,” he called after me.  I carried Gladstone’s message at once, going straight from Hawarden to America, as I had intended when leaving London.

I was prepared for a reception in Brooklyn on my return, but I never dreamed it would be the ovation it was.  It becomes difficult to write of these personal courtesies, as I find them increasing in the progress of my life from now on.  I trust the casual reader will not construe anything in these pages into a boastful desire to spread myself in too large letters in print.

When I entered the Thirteenth Regiment Armoury on the evening of February 7, 1890, it was packed from top to floor.  It was a large building with its three acres of drill floor and its half mile of galleries.  There were over seven thousand people there, so the newspapers estimated.  Against the east wall was the speaker’s platform, and over it in big letters of fire burned the word “Welcome.”

On the stage, when I arrived at eight o’clock, were Mayor Chapin,
Colonel Austen, General Alfred C. Barnes, the Rev. J. Benson Hamilton,
Judge Clement, Mr. Andrew McLean, the Rev. Leon Harrison, ex-Mayor
Whitney, the Hon. David A. Boody, U.S.  Marshal Stafford, Judge Courtney,
Postmaster Hendrix, John Y. Culver, Mark D. Wilber, Commissioner George
V. Brower, the Rev. E.P.  Terhune, General Horatio C. King, William E.
Robinson and several others.

The Trustees of the Tabernacle, like a guard of honour, came in with me, and as we made our way through the crowds to the stage, the long-continued cheering and applause were deafening.  The band, assisted by the cornetist, Peter Ali, played “Home, Sweet Home.”  For a few minutes I was very busy shaking hands.

The most inspiring moment of these preliminaries was the approach of the most distinguished man in that vast assembly, General William T. Sherman.  He marched to the platform under military escort, while the band played “Marching through Georgia.”  Everyone stood up in deference to the old warrior, handkerchiefs were waved, hats flew up in the air, everyone was so proud of him, so pleased to see him!  Mayor Chapin introduced the General, and as he stood patiently waiting for the audience to regain its self-control, the band played “Auld Lang Syne.”  Then in the presence of that great crowd he gave me a soldier’s welcome.  I remember one sentence uttered by Sherman that night that revealed the character of the great fighter when he said, “The same God that appeared at Nazareth is here to-night.”

But nothing on that auspicious evening was so great to me as when Sherman spoke what he described as the soldier’s welcome: