"I never heard The General speak without his having plans, upon the carrying out of which he was at work with all his might. He puts his whole body and soul into whatever he is engaged in. "'The Salvation Army is the most interesting thing under the sun,' said The General at the close of this earnest talk, and then added, jokingly, 'next to the Hamburg Press.' "On the Sunday I saw him again as he spoke to a Meeting of thousands, a curiously mixed public, where there were many of the foremost gentlemen and ladies of society and many very common people. All, however, were equally enthused. I will only mention a couple of sentences out of the speech: 'The Army wants to come into competition with nobody, only to be a friendly helper--nobody's enemy, but the friend of everybody. It will gladly be an inspiration and example. It has become the almsgiver for many Governments. It is not British because it was born in Britain, just as little as Christianity is Jewish because it came into the world in Judea.'"--Else Meerstedt. Now that we see it all but completed, we think this book singularly wanting in reference to The General's frequent merriness of mood. We have thought it needless to insert any of the amusing anecdotes that could have been so abundantly culled from any of his visits to any country had we not been so anxious to select from the small space at our disposal what was most important. Nor have we wished to present the reader with the portrait of an infallible genius, or a saint who never said or did anything that he afterwards regretted. A victim almost all his life to extreme indigestion, it is indeed to all who knew him best marvellous that he could endure so much of misery without more frequently expressing in terms of unpleasant frankness his irritation at the faults and mistakes of others. But really after his death as during his life we have been far too busy in trying to help in accomplishing his great lifework to note these details of human frailty. Chapter XXIV The End It seems almost impossible to describe the ending of The General's life, because there was not even the semblance of an end within a week of his death. The last time I talked with him, just as I was leaving for Canada in January, he for the first time made a remark that indicated a doubt of his continuance in office. He hardly hinted at death; but, referring to the sensations of exhaustion he had felt a few days previously, he said: "I sometimes fancy, you know, that I may be getting to a halt, and then"--with his usual pause when he was going to tease--"we shall have a chance to see what some of you can do!"