Dr. Talmage’s engagements took him from Edinburgh to Liverpool, where he preached.  It was while there that we made a visit to Hawarden to see Mrs. Gladstone.  The Doctor had been to Hawarden before as the guest of Mr. Gladstone, and was disappointed to find that Mrs. Gladstone was too ill to be seen by anyone.  We were entertained, however, by Mrs. Herbert Gladstone.  I remember how much the Doctor was moved when he saw in the hall at Hawarden a bundle of walking sticks and three or four hats hanging on the hat-rack, as Mr. Gladstone had left them when he died.

From Liverpool we went to Sheffield, where Dr. Talmage preached to an immense congregation.  It was in May, the time when all England is flower-laden, when the air is as sweet as perfume and the whole countryside is as fascinating as a garden.  It was the coaching season, too, and the Doctor entered into the spirit of these beautiful days very happily.  We took a ten days’ trip from Leamington after leaving Sheffield, coaching through the exquisite scenery around about Warwick, Kenilworth, and the Shakespeare country in Stratford-on-Avon.  Most of these reminiscences are full of incidents too intimate for public interest.  Like a dream that lifts one from prosaic life into the places of precious remembrance I recall these long, happy days in the glorious sunset of his life.

We returned to London in time for the Doctor’s first preaching engagement there on May 28, 1900.  The London newspapers described him as “The American Spurgeon.”

“And now before the services opened at St. James’ Hall a congregation of 3,000 people waited to hear Dr. Talmage,” says a London newspaper.  Then it goes on to say further:—­

“Dr. Talmage, who has preached from pulpits all over the world, may be described as an ‘American Spurgeon.’  None of our great English speakers is less of an orator.  Dr. Talmage is a great speaker, but his power as an orator is not by any means that of a Gladstone or a Bright.  It lies more in the matter than in the manner, in his wonderful imagery, the vividness with which he conjures up a picture before the congregation.  He is a great artist in words.  Dr. Talmage affects nothing; he is naturalness itself in the pulpit, and the manner of his speech suggests that he is angry with his subject.  The sermon on this occasion lent itself well to a master of metaphor such as Dr. Talmage, it being a review of the last great battle of the world, when the forces of right and wrong should meet for the final mastery.”

Dr. Talmage rarely preached this sermon because it was a great tax on his memory.  It included a suggestion of all the great battles of the earth, a vivid description of the armies of the world marching forward in the eternal human struggle of right against wrong until they were masked for the last great battle of all, when “Satan would take the field in person, in whose make-up nothing bad was left out, nothing good was put in.”