“I cannot preach to-morrow,” he said.  “This is too horrible.  McKinley has been shot.  What shall I do?” And he stood there utterly stunned; unable to think.  “Well, we will stop at the hotel to-night, at any rate,” I said, “let us go in.”

Later the Doctor tried to explain to those in charge at Ocean Grove that he could not preach, but they prevailed upon him to deliver the sermon he had with him, which he did, prefacing it with appropriate remarks about the national disaster of the hour.

The following telegram was immediately sent to the Chief of the Nation, cut off so ruthlessly in his career of honour and usefulness:—­

    “Long Branch, September 6th.

    “President McKinley, Buffalo, N.Y.

    “The Nation is in prayer for your recovery.  You will be nearer and
    dearer to the people than ever before after you have passed this
    crisis.  Mrs. Talmage joins me in sympathy.

    “T.  DEWITT TALMAGE.”

After the death of the President the Doctor preached his sermon “Our Dead President” for the first time in the little church at East Hampton, where it had been written in his study.  In October the Doctor was called upon to preach at the obsequies of the Rev. Dr. Sunderland, for many years pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Washington.  What a long season of obsequies Dr. Talmage solemnised!  And yet, with what supreme optimism he defied the unseen arrow in his own life that came to pierce him with such suddenness in April, 1902.

The Doctor had been a good traveller, and he was fond of travelling; but, toward the end of his life, there were moments when he felt its fatiguing influences.  He never complained or appeared apprehensive, but I remember the first time he showed any weariness of spirit.  I almost recall his words:  “I have written so much about everything, that now it becomes difficult for me to write.  I am tired.”  It frightened me to hear him say this, he was so wonderful in endurance and strength; and I could not shake off the effect that this first sign of his declining years made upon me.  He was then sixty-nine years old, and the last of the twelve children, save his sister.

The last sermon he ever wrote was preached in February, 1902.  The text of this was from Psalms xxxiii. 2:  “Sing unto Him with the Psaltery, and an instrument of ten strings.”  This was David’s harp of gratitude and praise.  After some introductory paragraphs on the harp, its age, the varieties of this “most consecrated of all instruments,” its “tenderness,” its place in “the richest symbolism of the Holy Scriptures,” he writes:  “David’s harp had ten strings, and, when his great soul was afire with the theme, his sympathetic voice, accompanied by exquisite vibrations of the chords, must have been overpowering....  The simple fact is that the most of us, if we praise the Lord at all, play upon one string or two strings, or three strings, when we