I shall not forget the exciting night I met him.  I was getting out of a carriage at the door of a church in London where I was to lecture when a ruffian struck at me, crying, “He that believeth not shall be damned.”  The scoundrel’s blow would have demolished me but for the fact that a bystander put out his arm and arrested the blow.  From that scene I was ushered into the ante-room of the church where the Earl of Kintore was awaiting my arrival.  From that hour we formed a friendship.  He had been a continuous reader of my sermons, and that fact made an introduction easy.  I have from him five or six letters.

Lord and Lady Aberdeen had us at their house in London in the summer of 1892.  Most gracious and delightful people they are.  I was to speak at Haddo House, their estate in Scotland, at a great philanthropic meeting, but I was detained in St. Petersburg, Russia, by an invitation of the Emperor, and could not get to Scotland in time.  Glad am I that the Earl is coming to Canada to be Governor-General.  He and the Countess will do Canada a mighty good.  They are on the side of God, and righteousness, and the Church.  Since his appointment—­for he intimated at Aberdeen, Scotland, when he called upon me, that he was to have an important appointment—­I have had opportunity to say plauditory things of them in vast assemblages in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, London and Grimsby Park.

In a scrap book in which I put down, hurriedly, perhaps, but accurately, my impressions of various visits to the White House during my four years pastorate in Washington, I find some notes that may be interesting.  I transmit them to the printed page exactly as I find them written on paper: 

“May 1, 1896.  Had a long talk this afternoon with Mrs. Cleveland at Woodley.  I always knew she was very attractive, but never knew how wide her information was on all subjects.  She had her three children brought in, and the two elder ones sang Easter songs for me.  Mrs. Cleveland impresses me as a consecrated Christian mother.  She passes much of her time with her children, and seems more interested in her family than in anything else.  The first lady of the land, she is universally admired.  I took tea with her and we talked over many subjects.  She told me that she had joined the church at fourteen years of age.  Only two joined the church that day, a man of eighty years old and herself.  She was baptised then, not having been baptised in infancy.  She said she was glad she had not been baptised before because she preferred to remember her baptism.

“She said she did not like the great crowds attending the church then, because she did not like to be stared at as the President’s wife.  But I told her she would get used to that after a while.  She said she did not mind being stared at on secular occasions, but objected to it at religious service.  She said she had long ago ceased taking the Holy Communion at our church