Brooklyn, years ago.

A great event in the world was the announcement in November, 1878, that
Professor Thomas Edison had applied for a patent for the discovery of
the incandescent electric light. He harnessed the flame of a thunderbolt
to fit in a candlestick. I hope he made millions of dollars out of it.
In direct contradiction to this progress in daily life there came, at
the same time, from the Philadelphia clergy a protest against printing
their sermons in the secular press. It was an injustice to them, they
declared, because the sermons were not always fully reported. I did not
share these opinions. If a minister's gospel is not fit for fifty
thousand people, then it is not fit for the few hundred members of his
congregation. My own sermons were being published in the secular press
then, as they had been when I was in Philadelphia.

Almost at the close of the year 1878 the loss of the S.S. "Pomerania,"
in collision in the English Channel, was a disaster of the sea that I
denounced as nothing short of murder. It was shown at the trial that
there was no fog at the time, that the two vessels saw each other for
ten minutes before the collision. If such gross negligence as this was
possible, I advised those people who bought a ticket for Europe on the
White Star, the Cunard, the Hamburg, or other steamship lines, to secure
at the same time a ticket for Heaven. What a difference in the ocean
ferry-boat of to-day!

Scarcely had the submarine telegraph closed this chapter of sea horror
than it clicked the information that the beautiful Princess Alice had
died in Germany. Only a few days later, in America, we were in mood of
mourning for Bayard Taylor, our Minister Plenipotentiary to Germany. In
the death of Princess Alice we felt chiefly a sympathy for Queen