It is also interesting to note how, from time to time, he kept on reproaching himself for not being more alive to his responsibilities, and making better use of his opportunities to do good. He even seemed to begrudge himself the few months' holiday he spent in Palestine recruiting his health and energies. Writing on August 14, 1882, he says:-- "Fancy, since I left Mauritius, with the exception of twenty-nine days on board ship, I have been living at hotels, and, I may say, have not talked of the pearls to more than a dozen people." And again from Palestine he wrote:-- "You know I do not like idleness; I want to get to a place where I can find sick people to visit, feeling sure that is the necessary work for me; I think He will direct me, so I seek no advice elsewhere. I leave it to God, to decide in His time. I do not like the ways of the polished world, and my dislike has increased during the time I have been here." However much Gordon might reproach himself, it must not for one moment be supposed that, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, there was any cause for it. He was in truth a most indefatigable worker, and no matter how hard his official work was, he always seemed to find time to do something for his Master. A case in point is the time he spent in South Africa, when it is difficult to understand how he got through all the official work he managed to compress into his brief sojourn. Yet we find that the herculean task of reorganising the colonial army was not the only thing that occupied his attention, for on the 12th August 1882 he writes to his sister:-- "How odd, those leaflets[6] being in Dutch, and my wanting them, and your sending them just as I am about to go up to the Free State, when, as in the 'Auld time long ago,' I shall be dropping them along the road near the Boer towns. What hundreds I did give away; how I used to run miles, if I saw a scuttler (boy) watching crows in a field! If I, or any one else, went now to Gravesend and dropped them, how quickly men, now grown up, would remember that time. Send me the whole lot out unless you want them, I mean of all languages; it is the loveliest leaflet I ever saw, and it still looks fresh." [6] This leaflet consists principally of a few choice and carefully selected passages of Scripture, and shows how intensely he valued the _ipsissima verba_ of God's own word, as a means of reaching the human heart.