We returned to Washington after this spring lecturing tour, where the Doctor resumed his preaching twice on Sunday, and his mid-week lecture, till June.  Then, according to Dr. Talmage’s custom, we went to Saratoga for a few weeks before the crowds came for the season.  The Doctor found the Saratoga Springs beneficial and made it a rule to go there for a time each summer.  On July 3, 1898, we started for the Pacific coast on what Dr. Talmage called a summer vacation.  On his desk there was always a great number of invitations to preach and lecture awaiting his acknowledgment or refusal.  The greatest problem of the last years of his life was how to find time for all the things he was asked to do and wanted to do.  In vain I tried to make him conform to the usual plans of a summer outing.  He asked me if he might take a “few lectures” on our route to California, and he did, but he always managed to slip in a few extra ones without my knowledge.  When I would protest about these additional engagements he would say that the people wanted to hear him, that they were new people he had never seen, which meant more to him than anything else; then, of course, I had to yield my judgment.

It had been Dr. Talmage’s original plan to go to Europe during this first summer of our marriage, but the outbreak of the Spanish war made him afraid he might not be able to get back in time for his church work in October.  Although ostensibly this was a vacation trip, it was so only in the spirit and gaiety of the Doctor’s moods.  Three times a week Dr. Talmage lectured, and preached once, sometimes twice, every Sunday.  From Cincinnati westward to Denver, we zigzagged over the country, keeping in constant pursuit of the Doctor’s engagements.  No argument on our part could alter these working plans which my husband had made before we left Washington.  He was so happy, however, in the midst of his energies, that we forgot the exertion of his labours.

The three places where, by agreeable lapses, Dr. Talmage really enjoyed a rest, were Colorado Springs, the Yellowstone Park, and Coronado Beach in California.  Aside from these points, we were travelling incessantly in the Doctor’s reflected glory, which was our vacation, but by no means his.  While at Colorado Springs, where we stayed two weeks, Dr. Talmage preached once, and once in Denver, but he did not lecture.

In Salt Lake City the Doctor preached in the Tabernacle, the throne room of polygamy, that he had so often attacked in previous years.  That was a remarkable feature of these last milestones of his life, that all conflicts were forgotten in a universal acknowledgment of his evangelism.  His grasp of every subject was always close to the hearts of others, and it was instinctive, not studied.

During our visit in the West, he talked much of the effect of the Spanish war, regarding our victory in Cuba and the Philippines as an advance to civilisation.