Mr. Spurgeon once said of home, "That word _home_ always sounds like poetry to me. It sings like a peal of bells at a wedding, only more soft and sweet, and it chimes deeper into the ears of my heart." Concerning beer-shops he wrote, "Beer-shops are the enemies of home, and therefore the sooner their licences are taken away the better.... Those beer-shops are the curse of this country; no good ever can come of them, and the evil they do no tongue can tell.... I wish the man who made the law to open them had to keep all the families that they have brought to ruin." Again he writes, "Certain neighbors of mine laugh at me for being a teetotaller, and I might well laugh at them for being drunk, only I feel more inclined to cry that they should be such fools." Mrs. Spurgeon's "Book Fund"[1] is well known. In the summer of 1875 Mr. Spurgeon published the first volume of "Lectures to My Students." His wife, feeling that they would do great good, desired to place them in the hands of ministers. Speaking to her husband about it, he said. "Why not do so? _How much will you give?_" She had been keeping for years all the crown-pieces which came in her way; and on counting them, found that she had just enough to send away one hundred copies of the book. Others learned of this work, and were glad to aid it. During the fifteen years since the Book Fund was started, up to 1890, there have been distributed by Mrs. Spurgeon to needy ministers of all denominations, a hundred and twenty-two thousand one hundred and twenty-nine volumes, largely Mr. Spurgeon's sermons, "The Treasury of David," and other works. The books of other authors have also been used. Besides books, clothing and other needed things have been sent to ministers whose salary was the meager sum of sixty-five pounds per annum, or less. One village pastor for twenty years had received but sixty pounds yearly, and sometimes only forty-five pounds. Some had not purchased a new book in several years, and wrote back most thankful letters. The money for this work has been furnished by the very poor as well as the rich. After the death of a woman who had had a struggle to support herself by her needle, more than two pounds, all in three-penny pieces, were found wrapped up in a drawer "dedicated to the Lord's work under the hand of Mrs. Spurgeon." Mr. Spurgeon had suffered from rheumatism for many years, and had been obliged sometimes in winter to go to Mentone, in the South of France. In the middle of May, 1891, he had an attack of _la grippe_, from which, after a serious illness, he seemed to rally; but this was only temporary.