Gipsy Smith has paid several visits to America, and each time he has risen higher in the respect and love of the people. Wherever he goes crowds flock to hear him, and they are never disappointed. Americans have learned to look upon his visits as red-letter days for the churches, and if he could be spared from the Homeland, he would be warmly welcomed on this side of the Atlantic. Gipsy Smith has preached in nearly all parts of the British Empire. He has been, for many years now, one of the great evangelists of the homeland. Thousands of people have been made better by his simple, direct message. Many great men have recognized in him a prophet of God, and they have been glad to honour him as such. He has counted among his friends some of the greatest men living, yet he has never lost his simplicity and gratitude to God for making him what he is. Not long ago he said: "I have had rich and strange experiences. I have lived in many houses, the guest of many sorts and conditions of people. I have been presented to two presidents of the United States, dined with bishops and archbishops. In my study hangs a letter from her late Majesty, Queen Victoria, and another from a royal duchess, but the most treasured things in my home are two pictures which adorn the walls of my bedroom. One is the picture of the wagon in which my mother died, and the other is a picture of a group of gipsies. I never sleep in that room without looking at these pictures and saying to myself: "Rodney, you would have been there to-day but for the grace of God. Glory be to His name for ever." CHAPTER IX. A BLIND MAN WHO BECAME POSTMASTER-GENERAL OF ENGLAND. On August 26th, 1833, just four years before Queen Victoria began to reign, Henry Fawcett was born at Salisbury, England. He was sent to a Dame's school where he did not get on very well. The teacher said that he had a head like a colander, and he was so slow in learning his lessons that he became known as the dunce of the class. Young Harry himself admitted that he did not enjoy school. He loved to be out in the open and in the woods, but he went like a snail, unwillingly, to school. There was one thing which never failed him and that was his appetite. He was always complaining that he did not get enough to eat. When his family moved away from Salisbury Harry went to a boarding-school, and in nearly every letter he wrote home he said he was nearly starving. In one letter to his mother he said: "Please, when the family has quite finished with the ham bone, send it on to me." However, in spite of his complaints, he grew stronger and bigger every day, until by the time he was ten he was several inches taller than his school mates of his own age.