From London we went to Belfast, on a very stormy day.
Dr. Talmage was advised to wait a while, but he had
no fear of anything. That crossing of the Irish
Channel was the worst sea trip I ever had. We
arrived in Belfast battered and ill from the stormy
passage, all but the Doctor, who went stoically ahead
with his engagements with undiminished vigour.
Going up in the elevator of the hotel one day, we met
Mrs. Langtry. Dr. Talmage had crossed the ocean
with her.
“Won’t you come and see my play to-night?”
she asked him.
“I am very sorry, Madame, but I am speaking
myself to-night,” said the Doctor courteously.
He told me afterwards how fortunate he felt it to be
that he was able to make a real excuse. Invitations
to the theatre always embarrassed him.
From Belfast we went to Cork for a few days, making
a trip to the Killarney lakes before sailing from
Queenstown on October 18, 1900, on the “Oceanic.”
“Isn’t it good to be going back to America,
back to that beautiful city of Washington,”
said the Doctor, the moment we got on board.
Whatever he was doing, whichever way he was going,
he was always in pursuit of the joy of living.
Although the greatest year of my life was drawing
to a close, it all seemed then like an achievement
rather than a farewell, like the beginning of a perfect
happiness, the end of which was in remote perspective.
1900-1902
There was no warning of the divine purpose; there
was no pause of weakness or illness in his life to
foreshadow his approaching end. Until the last
sunset hours of his useful days he always seemed to
me a man of iron. He had stood in the midst of
crowds a towering figure; but away from them his life
had been a studied annihilation, an existence of hidden
sacrifice to his great work. He used to say to
me: “Eleanor, I have lived among crowds,
and yet I have been much of the time quite alone.”
But alone or in company his mind was ever active, his
great heart ever intent on his apostolate of sunshine
and help towards his fellow-men. And the good
things he said were not alone the utterances of his
public career; they came bubbling forth as from a spring
during the course of his daily life, in his home and
among his friends, even with little children.
Books have been written styled, “Conversations
of Eminent Men”; and I have often thought had
his ordinary conversations been reported, or, better,
could the colossal crowds who admired him have been,
as we, his privileged listeners, they would have been
no less charmed with his brilliant talk than with
the public displays of eloquence with which they were
so captivated.
