with many officers, he found so much to be done, that
in after years he used to look back upon the time spent there as the
happiest of his life. After the stirring scenes through which he had
passed in the Crimea and in China, it may have appeared to some a very
commonplace, uninteresting sort of life to eke out for so many years,
but no one more than Gordon felt the force of the truth conveyed in the
lines:--

"'A commonplace life,' we say and we sigh;
But why should we sigh as we say?
The commonplace sun in the commonplace sky
Makes up the commonplace day.
The moon and the stars are commonplace things,
And the flower that blooms, and the bird that sings;
But dark were the world, and sad our lot,
If the flowers failed, and the sun shone not;
And God, who studied each separate soul,
Out of commonplace lives made His beautiful whole."

One remarkable characteristic of Gordon was the persistent way in which
he avoided publicity of any sort, evading every effort to bring him
forward. When he first came to Gravesend no one knew him, and he used
quietly to take a seat in the gallery of the parish church. As soon as
it was discovered that the stranger who occupied such a humble place,
was no other than the renowned "Chinese Gordon," great efforts were
made to induce him to take a more prominent position. But it was in
vain. What was good enough for the poor was good enough for him, and he
did not approve of the rich and the eminent occupying all the good
seats, to the exclusion of the poor, whose souls were just as valuable
in the sight of God. Again, he steadily refused to take the chair at
all public meetings. It was not that he could not speak at such
gatherings, for, although he was not a good speaker, he was by no means
a bad one, and he was always willing to conduct services for the poor.
He had a horror of taking a prominent position, and the only occasion
on which he ever broke through his rule as to taking the chair, was at
a meeting of some three hundred children over which he presided. He
was, however, very much at home when sitting in front of a class of
children, and this he infinitely preferred to giving formal addresses
even to children. Only once was he persuaded to address the whole
school collectively. Speaking to a large number of children requires a
special gift, and this he did not possess. His strength with children
lay in the fact that he obtained a person