r
cause in different parts of the country. And, in many cases, those who
addressed these meetings were among the most famous public speakers in
England.

In most towns we spent no more than twenty-four hours, in others no more
than twelve hours, and in some we stayed only a third of that time. In
one memorable day we addressed immense gatherings in four different
towns, and travelled one hundred and thirty miles to boot. But in each
one of those towns, as in every centre visited, we left a properly
organized committee at work, with arrangements for frequent meetings,
and the swearing in of new members.

The Canadian preachers spent only one day in many of the places they
visited. But in large centres they stayed longer, because, after the
first week of the pilgrimage, the attendances at their meetings became
unmanageably large, owing to the arrangements made by railway companies,
who ran special trains to tap the outlying parts of every district
visited. Advance agents--a hard-working band, many of whom were
well-to-do volunteers--prepared the way in every detail for the progress
of both the Canadians and ourselves, and local residents placed every
possible facility at our disposal.

Never in the history of religious revivals in England has anything been
known to equal the whole-souled enthusiasm with which the new evangel of
Duty was welcomed as the basis of our twentieth-century national life.
The facts that the Canadian preachers were rarely seen apart, and that
the teaching of each was identical with that of the other, combined with
the general knowledge that one represented the Church of England and
the other a great Nonconformist body; these things divested the
pilgrimage of any suggestion of denominationalism, and lent it the same
urgent strength of appeal for members of all sects, and members of none.
This seems natural enough to us now, ours being a Christian country. But
it was regarded then as a wonderful testimony to the virtue of the new
teaching, because at that time sectarian differences, animosities even,
were very clearly marked, and led far more naturally to opposition and
hostility between the representatives of different denominations than to
anything approaching united effort in a common cause.

It was during the day we spent in York that chance led to my witnessing
an incident which greatly affected me. My relations with my chief, John
Crondall, were not such as to call for the observance of mu