of our first year together seemed to be only the prelude to a
long lifetime of companionship and happiness, without age, without
sorrow, without discord.

THE SECOND MILESTONE

1899-1900

In his study no wasted hours ever entered. With the exception of the
stenographer and his immediate family no one was admitted there. It was
his eventful laboratory where he conceived the greatest sermons of his
period. I merely quote the opinions of others, far more important than
my own, when I say this. It is a sort of haunted room to-day which I
enter not with any fear, but I can never stay in it very long. It has no
ghostly associations, it is too full of vital memories for that; but it
is a room that mystifies and silences me, not with mere regrets, for
that is sorrow, and there is nothing sad about the place to me. I can
scarcely convey the impression; it is as though I expected to see him
come in at the door at any moment and hear him call my name. The room is
empty, but it makes me feel that he has only just stepped out for a
little while. The study is at the top of the house, a long, wide,
high-ceilinged room with many windows, from which the tops of trees sway
gently in the breeze against the sky above and beyond. I spent a great
deal of time with him in it. Sometimes he would talk with me there about
the themes of his sermons which were always drawn from some need in
modern life.

With the Bible open before him he would seek for a text.

"After forty years of preaching about all the wonders of this great
Book," he would say, "I am often puzzled where to choose the text most
fitting to my sermon."

His habits were methodical in the extreme; his time punctually divided
by a fixed system of invaluable character. His inspirations were part of
his eternal spirit, but he lived face to face with time, obedient to the
law of its precision. I think of him always as of one whose genius was
unknown to himself.

We could always tell the time of day by the Doctor's habits. They were
as regular as a clock that never varies. At 7.30 to the second he was at
the breakfast table. It was exactly one o'clock when he sat down to
dinner. At 6.30 his supper was before him. Some of our household would
have preferred dining in the evening, but in that case the Doctor would
have dined alone, which was out of the question.

Every day of his life, excepting Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the Doctor
walked five miles. In bad weather he