GENERAL BOOTH
that I had one son, he said inquiringly, "An artist, like yourself, I suppose?" "No," I replied, "he is an astronomer." "Worse and worse!" he exclaimed, with a degree of surprise and alarm in his voice, and continued by declaiming against astronomy and all astronomers, stigmatizing the science as one of the most useless on the whole useless list. "It was not God's intention that we should have any knowledge of the sun, moon, and stars," he went on earnestly, and he professed a conviction that no one knew anything of any real importance about the heavens!
He invited me to join him and Commissioner Kitching at tea. After saying grace he turned sharply to me and asked, "Why don't you say 'Amen'? Say 'Amen'! I murmured that I had said "Amen," to which he replied that "Amen" should be said in a loud and grateful voice, and not muttered under the breath. I glanced nervously at the young orderly who was serving the buns and the cakes, and was consoled to see that he looked just a little scared on my account.
The General was very abstemious, too much so for his own good. The food he was taking—bread and tea, or perhaps an egg, was not sufficient to make blood, and I found him pale and far from strong.
The next time I went to paint at Hadley Wood a great change had taken place. Weakness had increased, but a beautiful pallor in the skin harmonized with the white and wonderful hair and beard of my sitter. I looked forward with delight to the opportunity of making a study of his fine head: but he was restless, and now and again forgot that he was sitting for his portrait. I worked with feverish haste, and almost blindly, in order to get something, but soon was disturbed by an orderly who opened the door to
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