“The opportunity here is immense beyond conception.  The people are delightful, and the Officers also.  If they were my own sons and daughters, I don’t see how either Officers or Soldiers could have been much more affectionate.”

How great was the strain of the Meetings may be guessed from the following remarks as to the final one:—­

“I trembled as I rose.  You must understand that the Hall down which I spoke is about 400 to 450 feet long, and that on this occasion a partition about ten feet high was drawn across it, some 300 feet from the spot on which I stood, so that my voice had to travel all through the entire length of the building before it met with any obstruction, whilst behind me there was at least another seventy feet.  The Press estimate the crowds at 10,000; but, that is an exaggeration.  There would be 7,000, at least.  I had taken the precaution to send an Officer to the far end to see how far he could or could not hear me, and he brought back word ‘excellently.’  So I drove ahead, speaking over an hour and a half, and not losing the attention of my audience for a moment.  Indeed, I felt I had the whole house from the moment I opened my lips.  Of course, it was the greatest physical effort a long way that I ever made, and, considering that it was my seventh address in that ‘dreadful’ building, and that I commenced with a bad throat, exhausted with the fatigues and miseries of the voyage, and that I had ceaselessly worked at smaller Meetings, etc., all the four days, I do think it very wonderful how I went through it, and I must attribute it to the direct holding up and strengthening of the dear Lord Himself.

     “On all hands I think a deep impression was made.  To God be the
     glory, and to my poor constituents, for whom I live and plead, be
     the benefit.

“I am tired this morning, but shall get a little rest to-day and a little extra sleep in the train.  We leave for Bendigo at twelve o’clock, arriving at four for Meeting to-morrow.  We go to Geelong next day, coming back here on Friday morning, and leaving at five for Sydney, travelling all night, and arriving there about noon on Saturday.

“You will get tired of hearing of this round of Meetings, and of the very echo of this enthusiasm; but you will, I am sure, rejoice, not merely that the people of this new world have welcomed your father and General with such heartiness, but that there is for The Army such an open door in these parts.”

That is indeed what lends such endless importance to the recital which we cannot help reporting ever and anon of The General’s Meetings in each country to which he went.  It was not the mere coming together of crowds to listen to a speaker, but the enthusiastic acceptance and endorsement of a system, and of demands made by a perfect stranger in which he so delighted.  The General never went anywhere merely to preach or