CHAPTER XXX 
WHEREIN THE GENERAL WEEPS OVER THE SUFFERINGS OF 
CHILDREN, TELLS MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL HE IS 
NOT CONVERTED, THANKS GOD FOR A YEAR OF UNIN- 
TERRUPTED MERCY, AND MAKES PLANS TO HELP 
PRISONERS 
IQIO0 
IN spite of his partial blindness, his increasing weakness, 
and his bouts of very considerable discomfort, this wonderful 
man continued to stagger along the path of duty under his 
enormous burdens. 
The fragmentary journal for 1910 is pathetic reading. 
When the entry is not dictated, one finds the writing 
extravagantly large and uncertain, the sentences very 
often incomplete. There are references to sleepless nights, 
dizziness, physical exhaustion, and pain. Other shadows 
than those of blindness were beginning to close about him, 
He feels the inhibitions of age, contemplates retirement, 
fears that the consequence of retirement may be death, 
and once more urges his frail and suffering body to obey 
the beck of his insatiable spirit. 
In the early part of the year he went to Holland, Ger- 
many, and Scandinavia, drawing huge crowds to hear him. 
On his return to England he was too ill to take the Good 
Friday Meeting at the Congress Hall; but the meeting was 
a success, and seventy people came to the penitent-form. . . . 
He says: ‘Praise the Lord. He can do without me. 
That’s a mercy.” But one knows very well that he was 
pawing the ground to be there. Booth blood, with all its 
virtues, is not quiet in retirement, and never descended, 
432Q