My literary work became extensive in its demand upon my time, and my weekly sermons were like a sacred obligation that I could not forego.  I never found any difficulty in finding a pulpit from which to preach every Sunday of my life.  There were some ministers who preferred to sandwich me in between regular hours of worship, if possible, so as to maintain the even course of their way and avoid the crowds.  I never could avoid them and I never wanted to.  I was never nervous, as many people are, of a crowded place—­of a panic.

The sudden excitement to which we give the name of “panic” is almost always senseless and without foundation, whether this panic be a wild rush in the money market or the stampede of an audience down the aisles and out of the windows.  My advice to my family when they are in a congregation of people suddenly seized upon by a determination to get out right away, and to get out regardless as to whether others are able to get out, is to sit quiet on the supposition that nothing has happened, or is going to happen.

I have been in a large number of panics, and in all the cases nothing occurred except a demonstration of frenzy.  One night in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, while my congregation were worshipping there, at the time we were rebuilding one of our churches, there occurred a wild panic.  There was a sound that gave the impression that the galleries were giving way under the immense throngs of people.  I had been preaching about ten minutes when at the alarming sound aforesaid, the whole audience rose to their feet except those who fainted.  Hundreds of voices were in full shriek.  Before me I saw strong men swoon.  The organist fled the platform.  In an avalanche people went down the stairs.  A young man left his hat and overcoat and sweetheart, and took a leap for life, and it is doubtful whether he ever found his hat or coat, although, I suppose, he did recover his sweetheart.  Terrorisation reigned.  I shouted at the top of my voice, “Sit down!” but it was a cricket addressing a cyclone.  Had it not been that the audience for the most part were so completely packed in, there must have been a great loss of life in the struggle.  Hoping to calm the multitude I began to sing the long meter doxology, but struck it at such a high pitch that by the time I came to the second line I broke down.  I then called to a gentleman in the orchestra whom I knew could sing well:  “Thompson, can’t you sing better than that?” whereupon he started the doxology again.  By the time we came to the second line scores of voices had joined, and by the time we came to the third line hundreds of voices enlisted, and the last line marshalled thousands.  Before the last line was reached I cried out, “As I was saying when you interrupted me,” and then went on with my sermon.  The cause of the panic was the sliding of the snow from one part of the roof of the Academy to another part.  That was all.  But no one who was present that night will ever forget the horrors of the scene.