The next day, the funeral march was restricted to Officers of whom 3,000 were present; but the crowds which looked on as it passed right through from our Headquarters in the City to the Abney Park Cemetery were beyond all computation. A crowd of 10,000, admitted by ticket, surrounded the grave, where The General spoke, as one newspaper reported, "as a Soldier, who had disciplined his emotion without effort, and straight from the heart." Of his wonderful address, we have only room to quote the final words:--
"What, then, is there left for me to do? Not to count the weeks, the days, and the hours which shall bring me again into her sweet company, seeing that I know not what will be on the morrow, nor what an hour may bring forth. My work is plainly to fill up the weeks, the days, and the hours, and cheer my poor heart as I go along, with the thought that when I have served my Christ and my generation, according to the will of God, which I vow this afternoon I will, to the last drop of my blood, that then she will bid me welcome to the skies, as He bade her. God bless you all! Amen."
And then he knelt and kissed the coffin, and we lowered it into the grave. The Chief of the Staff read a form of Covenant, which thousands repeated, and then we parted.
From that very day The General rose up and went forward, sorrowing, as every one could see, to his last days over his irreparable loss, but never allowing his grief to hinder his labours for those who, amidst their afflictions have no heavenly Comforter.
A still further blow was to fall upon him, only three years later. Mrs. Booth had delighted, especially during her years of suffering, in the fellowship of her second daughter, Emma, who had been married to Commissioner Tucker, in 1890, and who had always seemed to The General to be the nearest representative, in many respects, of her mother. He had gladly given her up to go with her husband to India, and was equally willing for her, later, to go to the United States. But he always kept up a very full correspondence with her. Her last letter to him, written on an American train, said:--
"I am still on the wing. We were at St. Louis on Sunday, where we had, in some respects, a rather remarkable day. The entire feeling of the city has been distinctly different since your visit--the sympathy now is most marked.