“I was glad I was present that day, when Mr. Andrew Carnegie decided upon the gift of a library to the city of Washington.  I was in one of the rooms of the White House talking with Governor Lowndes, of Maryland, and Mr. B.H.  Warner, of Washington, who was especially interested in city libraries.  Mr. Carnegie entered at the opposite end of the room.  We greeted each other with heartiness, not having met since we crossed the ocean together some time before.  I asked Mr. Carnegie to permit me to introduce him to some friends.  After each introduction the conversation immediately turned upon libraries, as Mr. Carnegie was then constantly presenting them in this and other lands.  Before the conversation ended that day, Mr. Carnegie offered $250,000 for a Washington library.  I have always felt very happy at having had anything to do with that interview, which resulted so gloriously.”

Dr. Talmage’s opinions upon the aftermath of the Spanish war were widely quoted at this time.

“The fact is this war ought never to have occurred,” he said.  “We have had the greatest naval officer of this century, Admiral Schley, assailed for disobeying orders, and General Shatter denounced for being too fat and wanting to retreat, and General Wheeler attacked because of something else.  We are all tired of this investigating business.  I never knew a man in Church or State to move for an investigating committee who was not himself somewhat of a hypocrite.  The question is what to do with the bad job we have on hand.  I say, educate and evangelise those islands.”

As he wrote he usually talked, and these words are recollections of the subjects he talked over with me in his quieter study hours.  They were virile talks, abreast of the century hurrying to its close, full of cheerfulness, faith, and courage for the future.

He was particularly distressed and moved by the death of Chief Justice Field, in April, 1899.  It was his custom to read his sermons to me in his study before preaching.  He chose for his sermon on April 16, the decease of the great jurist, and his text was Zachariah xi, 2:  “Howl fir tree, for the cedar has fallen.”  Many no doubt remember this sermon, but no one can realise the depths of feeling with which the Doctor read it to me in the secret corner of his workroom at home.  But his heart was in every sermon.  He said when he resigned from his church:—­

“The preaching of the Gospel has always been my chosen work, I believe I was called to it, and I shall never abandon it.”

During this season in Washington we gave a few formal dinners.  My husband wished it, and he was a cheerful, magnetic host, though he accepted few invitations to dinner himself.  No wine was served at these dinners, and yet they were by no means dull or tiresome.  Our guests were men of ideas, men like Justice Brewer, Speaker Reed, Senator Burrows, Justice Harlan, Vice-President Fairbanks, Governor Stone, and Senators who have since become members of the old guard.  It was said in Washington at the time that Dr. Talmage’s dinner parties were delightful, because they were ostensible opportunities to hear men talk who had something to say.  The Doctor was liberal-minded about everything, but his standards of conduct were the laws of his life that no one could jeopardise or deny.