as a
representative English gathering, in that it embraced a member of the
Royal Family, a little group of old men and women from an asylum for the
indigent, and members of every grade of society that comes between.
Also, it was a very large gathering--even for the Albert Hall.

It should be remembered that not many weeks prior to this Sunday
afternoon, the people of London, maddened by hunger, fear, and
bewildered panic, had stormed Westminster to enforce their demand for
surrender, and had seen Von Fuechter with his bloodstained legions take
possession of the capital of the British Empire. Fifty Londoners had
been cut down, almost in as many seconds, within two miles of the
Mansion House. In one terrible week London had passed through an age of
terror and humiliation, the end of which had been purchased in panic and
disorder by means of a greater humiliation than any. Now England had to
pay the bill. Some, in the pursuit of business and pleasure, were
already forgetting; but the majority among the great concourse of
Londoners who sat waiting in the Albert Hall that afternoon, clothed in
their Sunday best, were still shrewdly conscious of the terrible
severity of the blow which had fallen upon England.

Having found Constance her half-seat with Lady Tate, I stood beside one
of the gangways below the platform, which lead to the dressing-rooms and
other offices. Beside me was a table for Press representatives. There,
with their pencils, I noted Campbell, of the _Daily Gazette_, and other
men I knew, including Carew, for the _Standard_, who had an assistant
with him. He told me that somewhere in the hall his paper had a special
descriptive writer as well.

Looking up and down that vast building, from dome to amphitheatre, I
experienced, as it were vicariously, something of the nervousness of
stage fright. Londoners were not simple prairie folk, I thought. How
should my friend George Stairs hold that multitude? Two plain men from
Western Canada, accustomed to minister to farmers and miners, what could
they say to engage and hold these serried thousands of Londoners, the
most blase people in England? I had never heard either of the preachers
speak in public, but--I looked out over that assemblage, and I was
horribly afraid for my friends. A Church of England clergyman and a
Nonconformist minister from Canada, and I told myself they had never had
so much as an elocution lesson between them!

And then the Bishop of London