t was a
cricket addressing a cyclone. Had it not been that the audience for the
most part were so completely packed in, there must have been a great
loss of life in the struggle. Hoping to calm the multitude I began to
sing the long meter doxology, but struck it at such a high pitch that by
the time I came to the second line I broke down. I then called to a
gentleman in the orchestra whom I knew could sing well: "Thompson, can't
you sing better than that?" whereupon he started the doxology again. By
the time we came to the second line scores of voices had joined, and by
the time we came to the third line hundreds of voices enlisted, and the
last line marshalled thousands. Before the last line was reached I cried
out, "As I was saying when you interrupted me," and then went on with my
sermon. The cause of the panic was the sliding of the snow from one part
of the roof of the Academy to another part. That was all. But no one who
was present that night will ever forget the horrors of the scene.

On the following Wednesday I was in the large upper room of the college
at Lewisburg, Pa.; I was about to address the students. No more people
could get into this room, which was on the second or third storey. The
President of the college was introducing me when some inflammable
Christmas greens, which had some six months before been wound around a
pillar in the centre of the room, took fire, and from floor to ceiling
there was a pillar of flame. Instantly the place was turned from a jolly
commencement scene, in which beauty and learning and congratulation
commingled, into a raving bedlam of fright and uproar. The panic of the
previous Sunday night in the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, had schooled me
for the occasion, and I saw at a glance that when the Christmas greens
were through burning all would be well.

One of the professors said to me, "You seem to be the only composed
person present." I replied, "Yes, I got prepared for this by something
which I saw last Sunday in Brooklyn."

So I give my advice: On occasions of panic, sit still; in 999 cases out
of a thousand there is nothing the matter.

I was not released from my pastorate of the Brooklyn Tabernacle by the
Brooklyn Presbytery until December, 1894, after my return from abroad.
Some explanation was demanded of me by members of the Presbytery for my
decision to relinquish my pastorate, and I read the following statement
which I had carefully prepared. It concerns these pa