Dr. Talmage’s instincts were big, evangelical impulses.  I often used to urge him to relinquish his pastorate; but he would reply that after all the Church was his candlestick; that he must have a place to hold his candle while he preached to a world of all nations.  Yet he often said he would rather have been an unfettered evangelist, bent on saving the world, than the pastor of any one flock or church.  To preach to the people was the breath of his life.  It was the restless energy of his soul that kept him for ever young.  He would put all his strength into every sermon he preached, and every lecture he delivered.

Dr. Talmage had absolutely no personal vanity.  He was a man absorbed in ideas, indifferent to appearances.  He lived in the opportunities of his heart and mind to help others; although he had been one of the most tried of men, he had never spared himself to help others.  He never lost faith in anyone.  There were many shrewd enough to realise this characteristic in him, who would put a finger on his heart and draw out of him all he had to give.

On one occasion we were travelling through Iowa, when a big snow storm made it evident that we could not make connections to meet an engagement he had made to lecture that evening in Marietta, Ohio.  He had just said to me that after all he was glad, because he was very tired and needed the rest.  Will Carleton was on the same train, bound for Zanesville, Ohio, to give a lecture that night.  He was very much afraid that he, too, would miss his engagement.  He asked the Doctor to telegraph to the railroad officials to hold the limited at Chicago Junction, which the Doctor did.  The result was that we were whisked in a carriage across Chicago and whirled on a special car to the junction, where the limited was held for us, much to the disgust of the other passengers.

He saw the mercy of God in every calamity, the beauty of faith in Him in every mood of earth or sky.  One spring day we were sitting in the room of a friend’s house.  There were flowers in the room, and Dr. Talmage loved these children of nature.  He always said that flowers were appropriate for all occasions.  Some one said to him, “Doctor, how have you kept your faith in people, your sweet interpretation of human nature, in spite of the injustice you have sometimes been shown?” Looking at a great bunch of sweet peas on the table, he said:  “Many years ago I learned not to care what the world said of me so long as I myself knew I was right and fair, and how can one help but believe when the good God above us makes such beautiful things as these flowers?”

His creed, as I learned it, was perfect faith, and the universal commands of human nature to live and let live.  Although I was destined to share less than five years of his life, there was in the whole of it no chapter or incident with which he did not acquaint me.  He was not a man of theory.  No one could live near him without awe of his genius.