From a human standpoint, Sara McEnterfer was right when she said to Ellen White, "'You are not fit to go anywhere. You should not go anywhere; ... I dread it for you.'"--Manuscript 43a, 1901. Sara was a nurse, a graduate of Battle Creek Sanitarium; and from a medical standpoint she could see that for Ellen White at the age of 73 and in her current physical condition, to start in late winter across the continent to attend a General Conference session was unwise. Even Ellen White questioned in her own mind as to whether the extra exertion and trip at that time might not cost her her life. Yet she was sure that she must go. And go she would, for God had a work for her to do. This was not the first time she had ventured forth in faith.
The General Conference session would be held in the Battle Creek tabernacle and not the Oakland church, April 2-23. April would be a much more favorable time than February. Now the decision must be made on the route to be traveled. To make the journey directly to Chicago and then Battle Creek would take them over the Sierra Nevadas and the Rockies. It would be a journey she had often taken and one she dreaded, for even when her health was seemingly good she was ill-equipped to stand the high altitude.
The alternative was to take a more extended journey traveling via Los Angeles, New Orleans, and then to Chicago and Battle Creek. This route carried attractive features for both Ellen White and her son Willie. Since returning from Australia, they had not gone a hundred miles from the Elmshaven home. The southern route would give them an opportunity to spend a few days in Los Angeles, and they could survey the work that was beginning to develop nicely in southern California. Then there was Edson White and his work in Mississippi and Tennessee. They could go to Vicksburg, see the Morning Star, inspect the development of the work in Mississippi, then travel to Nashville. There Edson had his headquarters, engaging in publishing and managing the work of the Southern Missionary Society.
So, weighing the high mountains on the more direct and quick journey against the longer tour traveling at normal elevations; weighing the advantage of seeing James Edson White in his work, all of which had been developed since Ellen White had gone to Australia, against the wear and tear of the longer journey, the choice was made in favor of travel by the southern route. Tentative appointments were made for services Ellen White might hold with Adventist churches in Los Angeles, Vicksburg, and Chicago, even though it was a question from day to day as to whether she would be well enough actually to make the journey.
The trip began Thursday afternoon, March 7, with Iram James driving the party to the Southern Pacific Railroad station in St. Helena. The southbound, three-car steam train left at 3:17 P.M. to connect at Port Costa with the Owl on its nightly run from Oakland to Los Angeles. In the party were Ellen White, Sara McEnterfer, Maggie Hare, and William White. When the party boarded the Owl at six-seventeen, they were happy to find Elder McClure, pastor of the Healdsburg church, on the train. In his pocket he had the tickets for the journey, which he had secured from C. H. Jones in Oakland. He also had health certificates to prevent quarantine restrictions upon entering Texas on their eastern journey.
Every member of the party was weary. They retired early and were a bit refreshed when they reached Los Angeles at eight o'clock Friday morning. In making arrangements Willie had asked that provision be made for the party to stay at the Sanitarium in Los Angeles, where they could have pleasant rooms, good food, and be comfortable without the burden of visiting. This could not be done if they were dependent on the graciously offered entertainment in the homes of believers. Two other things Willie had asked for: the use of a carriage for Ellen White while she was in the Los Angeles area, and oranges, which might supplement their diet as they journeyed.
On Sabbath morning Ellen White met her speaking appointment in the Los Angeles church. This experience had an immediate and dramatic effect on her physical condition. In San Francisco after her "decidedly victorious" meeting she had walked five blocks. In Healdsburg a successful meeting left her feeling so exhilarated that she decided that she could stand the trip to Battle Creek. The Los Angeles meeting had the opposite effect. A full hundred visiting believers had come in, some from a distance of sixty miles, to be present for the Sabbath-morning service. Four hundred people crowded into the meeting house. As Ellen White stood before the congregation, she thought of the great work to be done in southern California. "Like lightning" the condition of things "flashed" before her mind. Such was not unusual in her experience. While standing before large congregations, not infrequently visions were given to her opening up to her both general situations and the experiences of individuals in her audience. In this case, several persons were presented to her. Their influence on the work was clearly depicted. Writing of it later, she said:
The presentation distressed me.... While I was speaking, there came to me the assurance of full and abundant grace and salvation. I thought of the wonderful possibilities before those who unite with Christ. They will become true, earnest, self-sacrificing workmen, preparing the way for the coming of the Lord. They work in harmony with the prayer, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."--Manuscript 29, 1902.
Recounting the experience, she declared:
I could not find words to express my feelings at the thought that the warnings of His word have not been heeded. I longed for strength to cry aloud and spare not, to lift up my voice as a trumpet, and show God's people their transgressions and the house of Jacob their sins.-- Ibid.
Then the scene changed:
There flashed before me a presentation of the great mercy and goodness of God in contrast with the perversity of His people, who ought to be far advanced in spiritual understanding. How I longed to arouse those before me to realize the importance of the time in which we are living.... I seemed to see Jesus standing as He stood on the last great day of the feast, stretching out His arms as if to embrace the world, and crying, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink."-- Ibid.
Somehow she was unable to roll off the burden that rested upon her. She was so "anxious, so desirous, that the people should see their danger in not appreciating their privileges, in allowing their opportunities to pass unimproved." She asked herself, "Will they awake? ... Will they come to their senses? I felt my soul fainting at the thought of the situation. The experience was too much for me."-- Ibid.
That noon Ellen White could not eat. She was weary and heartsick. Her vital forces seemed to be giving way. Rapidly her condition deteriorated, and soon she lost consciousness. It was not until two o'clock on Sunday morning, twelve hours later, that she again regained a knowledge of her surroundings. She found Dr. F. B. Moran, a physician, and a nurse laboring over her. The appointments that had been made for her to speak Sunday had to be canceled, and serious misgivings were entertained as to whether she would be able to continue her journey. W. C. White, writing that Sunday afternoon, declared, "We are praying that she may have strength to proceed on her journey Tuesday morning."--16 WCW, p. 298.
By Tuesday Ellen had rallied a bit, and they felt that they could go on. They boarded the Sunset Limited at eight o'clock, found the train not crowded, and a first-class compartment ready for Ellen White and her two women helpers. They also found two bushels of large, luscious oranges there at the station waiting for them. The train pulled out on time for its sixty-hour trip to New Orleans.
Since the car was not crowded, Maggie and Sara spent most of the time in the center of the car, leaving Ellen White to herself. Though uncomfortable from a physical standpoint, she felt she was in the line of duty, and later wrote, "As I lay in my compartment on the train, with no one with me, how precious it was to commune with God. I was alone with Him, and if ever I realized His presence in suffering and distress, I did then. I felt that the everlasting arms were underneath me. I realized the comfort of the Saviour's love."--Manuscript 28, 1901.
W. C. White described the pleasant and interesting task the party had in eating the two bushels of big, sweet oranges before they got to New Orleans. They were there Thursday evening in time to catch the train for Vicksburg, Mississippi, where Edson White had pioneered the work among the blacks. That night on the train Ellen White thought of the Morning Star, which she would see in a few hours. How eagerly she had followed the accounts of its building and sailing and its work as Edson had written to her in Australia, keeping her posted with the developments.
With James Edson White in Vicksburg
On Friday morning, Edson White met the party in Vicksburg and took them to the Morning Star, which would be Ellen White's home for the next few days (Manuscript 29, 1902). It lay tied to a landing in Centennial Lake, just below Fort Hill where the houses of the blacks clustered.
As she stepped aboard, she found the ship's deck was 105 feet long and 24 feet across. In the bow on the lower deck was the boiler room, then the printing office, where two steam presses had printed the Gospel Herald for many months. Next were two staterooms and a dining room, then the galley, and finally the engine room. Photographs of the boat show that instead of having one wide paddle wheel at the stern, the Morning Star had two, one on either side.
Immediately behind the smokestacks, at the front of the upper deck, was a business office. Just behind this were the main cabin and Edson and Emma's stateroom. In the rear portion of the upper deck was a sixteen-by-forty-foot chapel, where services were conducted. Even larger meetings could be held on the third, or hurricane, deck, where two hundred could be seated. The third deck also had a small pilothouse, with the steering apparatus and a bunk for the pilot.
If a hand sketch of the Morning Star published in the Gospel Herald is to be trusted, the boat's emblem, a large metal star, was suspended between the smokestacks at the bow. The star is now a cherished possession of Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama.
"I was pleased with the arrangement of the boat," Ellen White later wrote, "and with the efforts made to make life on it as agreeable as possible. I found that everything about the rooms fitted up as a home for my son and his wife, and their helpers, was of the simplest order. I saw nothing expensive or unnecessary."--Manuscript 29, 1902. Then she commented: "Perhaps some would have been unwilling to live in such narrow quarters."-- Ibid.
Reminiscing, she penned, "I have followed this boat with my prayers. Some most interesting scenes have been presented to me in connection with it. This boat has been a floating Bethel. At the gospel meetings held on it many have had the privilege of eating of the bread of life."-- Ibid.
And looking ahead she said, "I hope it will continue to do its work of taking the truth to those who without its instrumentality would never have an opportunity of hearing the truth. Through its work many have heard the last message of warning."-- Ibid.
Sabbath morning she spoke in the new church building on the hill. It was crowded, for believers had come in from quite a distance. Choosing the first verses of John 14 as her text, she portrayed the reward of the faithful. She pictured Christ as a personal Saviour. She urged a careful and firm witness in favor of the truth, not in their own strength but in the strength and grace that God gives.
While Ellen White was on board the Morning Star at Vicksburg, Edson doubtless had opportunity to tell his mother about the boat, and reminisce about some of the harrowing experiences through which he and his boat and crew had passed.
The Morning Star and its Mission
The Morning Star was built on the banks of the Kalamazoo River at Allegan, Michigan, in 1894, just after Edson's reconversion. It was his ambition, and the ambition of his close friend Will Palmer, to open up a work among the blacks in the Deep South. The boat would provide transportation along the twisting waterways of the Mississippi and its tributaries, as well as house the workers and furnish a portable meeting place for the people.
As the boat neared completion, it sailed under its own steam down the river to Douglass, a port on the east side of Lake Michigan. There Edson hired a fruit steamer, the Bon Ami, to tow the Morning Star with its own engines running, across the lake to Chicago. It was a night journey. On their way a violent storm arose. The steam tubes of the Morning Star clogged and the hull began to fill with water, nearly sinking the craft. Fourteen hours after leaving the Michigan port, the exhausted crews of the two boats stepped ashore in Chicago. The captain of the Bon Ami gave Edson a $10 donation, saying it was something more than human power that had brought them through the storm.
From Chicago the Morning Star, with Emma, Edson's wife, on board, and with an enlarging crew, passed through the Illinois and Michigan Canal to LaSalle, Illinois, down the Illinois River to the Mississippi, and on down to Vicksburg, where it berthed on January 10, 1895. Along the route Edson had picked up a team of workers, including Fred Halladay, who would spend the next fifteen years in service to the blacks of the American South.
Built originally with one deck, the steamer was lengthened and widened in 1897, and received an extra deck. This is how Ellen White found it.
The Morning Star had been used occasionally for meetings while she lay in Centennial Lake at Vicksburg, but the work had had to be established ashore before the steamer could do her best service along the Yazoo River.
Edson had begun his Vicksburg work with Sunday schools and night classes in the Mount Zion Baptist church on Fort Hill. When he was excluded from the church for his belief in the Sabbath, he built a little chapel at the corner of Walnut and First East streets. But this was only after ten days of fervent prayer had resulted in permission from adamant city councilmen to grant a permit for building a church for the blacks.
Now that little chapel and schoolhouse had been outgrown, and Ellen White was on hand to dedicate the new larger church during her 1901 visit. The present Vicksburg church stands on the site of this second building, and in the early 1970s three women who had been aboard the Morning Star were still worshiping there!
Edson undoubtedly told his mother that once the work had been established in Vicksburg, they had ventured into the heart of the delta, using the Yazoo River as their main highway. Halfway up the river to Yazoo City, he had tried to establish a school for the hundreds of black children in the area who had no facilities for education. He was soon informed by the county superintendent of education that his work must stop, and later learned that in the mob that accompanied the superintendent was one man who had volunteered to "hold a Winchester on ol' White while you-all fetch the rope."
He probably told her that a little later the Morning Star had been of great service to the plantation owners of the area, rescuing many of their animals during a flood. That next winter he brought in tons of food and clothing to relieve the suffering among the black tenant farmers who were facing starvation from crop failures and severely cold weather. Then, with some measure of confidence among both the whites and the blacks, they built a little chapel and schoolhouse at Calmar.
Later the work there was stopped also. On the boat Edson had edited and published a monthly journal, the Gospel Herald. One issue carried a mildly critical editorial of the sharecropper system, and this, along with the fact that so many of the blacks were becoming Adventists and refusing to work on Saturdays, spurred the plantation owners to action.
A mob of twenty-five men on horseback called at the school, sent the white teacher, one of Edson's men, out of town "on a rail," nailed the doors and windows shut, and burned books, maps, and charts in the schoolyard.
Then they found one of the leading black believers in the area, N. W. Olvin, and thrashed him with a buggy whip, stopping only when commanded to do so by a white man who brandished a revolver.
While the work was broken up at Calmar, it continued to thrive at Yazoo City and Vicksburg, and in the years shortly after Edson left for Nashville there were encouraging developments in a large number of other Mississippi towns.
One hair-raising episode Edson may have recounted was the time the Morning Star escaped being dynamited in Yazoo City, having left town only hours earlier with the General Conference president and secretary on board. F. R. Rogers, who taught the Yazoo City school, was ordered by a mob to close his school, and was shot at in the streets.
These early workers and believers faced two kinds of prejudice, racial and religious. The black ministers opposed them because they were teaching Sabbath observance and tithe paying; the white people opposed them because they were educating the blacks and introducing new and better agricultural methods, which threatened to break the stranglehold of poverty in the Delta.
Edson had informed his mother of these developments during her years in Australia, and her instruction was of caution and prudence as the only course available to the church if they wished to continue to witness and work in the South. This was as true for the work among the whites as among the blacks. Even though in his contacts Edson said nothing about political matters, even though he did not mention inequalities or the need for social justice, the mere fact that he was educating blacks and trying to improve their economic condition nearly cost him his life and the lives of his wife, fellow workers, and believers. [For the account of James edson White and the Morning Star, see ron graybill, Mission to Black America.]
Service in Vicksburg
Ellen White scrutinized the Morning Star because of the criticism she had heard of it. She knew her son was not always careful with money, and she was glad to report to the General Conference session a few weeks later:
When I came to Vicksburg, I went on board my son's boat, the Morning Star. From the reports I had heard, I thought to find that boat fitted up very extravagantly. I found nothing of the kind. I want all to understand this.
My son and his workers have lived on this boat because they could not get a house suitable to dwell in. The rooms on this boat are fitted up in the very simplest way.... No one can work in the Southern field without some facilities with which to work.--The General Conference Bulletin, 1901, 482.
A little later, she wrote Edson concerning the Morning Star:
I have been shown how when you first went to the Southern field you used this boat as your home, and as a place on which to receive the people. The novelty of the idea excited curiosity, and many came to see and to hear. I know that through the agency of this boat, places have been reached where the light of truth had never shone--places represented to me as "the hedges." It has been the means of sowing the seeds of truth in many hearts, and many souls have first seen the light of truth while on this boat. On it angel feet have trodden.--Letter 139, 1902.
Sunday morning, March 17, the new church, the second to be built in Vicksburg, was to be dedicated. It was a memorable weekend for Ellen White, her son William, and others in the traveling party. Just to be in the setting of the heart of Edson's activities and to witness the fruits of his dedicated labors and the labors of those who helped him was uplifting.
The crowning event of the visit was the Sunday dedication service. Ellen White was asked to preach the sermon. The report is that the church was packed. Word had gone up and down the river that the mother of James Edson White would be the speaker that Sunday morning. She was pleased with the high caliber of people who made up the congregation, and she wrote, "I know that Jesus and the angels were in the assembly, and that, as the church was dedicated to the Lord, He accepted it."--Manuscript 29, 1902.
She also wrote:
I was much pleased with the meeting house. It is neat and tasteful.
Wherever I go, I try to give the light the Lord has given me regarding the building of meeting houses. No haphazard work is to be done in their erection. However small they may be, they are to be object lessons of neatness and thoroughness. All that is done in the cause of God is to be done with exactness.
Our buildings are to represent the character building that should be carried forward by everyone. We are working before God and the inhabitants of the universe. Let us do no halfhearted, slipshod work.-- Ibid.
Sunday afternoon, too, held a unique experience for Ellen White. She had read in letters from her children of the meetings and of the school sessions held in the chapel on the boat, and now she spoke there.
En Route to Battle Creek
The travel schedule called for the party to spend Sunday night on the train en route to Nashville via Memphis. Reaching Memphis in the morning, they found that a meeting had been arranged for nine o'clock (16 WCW, p. 300). There were only a handful of Sabbathkeepers residing there, but they had purchased a lot and a meetinghouse, and thirty-five were present. Among them were four canvassers and one Bible worker.
Leaving Memphis at one o'clock, they arrived at Nashville at eight-thirty. Edson, who had hurried on ahead, was at the station with his wife, Emma, when the train pulled in! He had brought what was called the "Gospel Wagon" to pick up the party (Ibid.). (Willie described it as "a big carry-all.") The reunion between Ellen White and her daughter-in-law was a happy one.
They were to have two days in Nashville, with the time divided between inspecting the work that was being done there and a convention of the Southern Missionary Society, with meetings on both Tuesday and Wednesday. In addition to the Nashville workers and Ellen White and her party, there were Elders N. W. Allee and Smith Sharp, conference workers from Tennessee. Out-of-State workers included Prof. E. A. Sutherland from Michigan, Elder Stone from Kentucky, Elder D. T. Shireman from North Carolina, Elder F. W. Halladay from Mississippi, I. H. Ford from the Review and Herald, and A. F. Harrison, a canvassing agent for the district (The Gospel Herald, March, 1901).
Tuesday morning they climbed into the "Gospel Wagon," fourteen in all, and Edson conducted a tour of the Adventist work in Nashville (16 WCW, p. 300). This included the printing establishment, which later grew into the Southern Publishing Association, treatment rooms for blacks, and the treatment rooms operated by Louis Hanson and his wife for whites.
At the meetings of the Southern Missionary Society, Ellen White spoke strongly in favor of the establishment of an industrial school near Nashville. She "gave a straight testimony upon this point, bringing out clearly the need of such schools, and in regard to other lines of work in the South. She also spoke about the necessity of our people arousing to the needs of this field, which has been so long neglected, notwithstanding the instruction that has come to us as a people, over and over again."--Gospel Herald Supplement, March, 1901. Plans were laid for developing and strengthening the work with some items referred to for study "at the time of the General Conference, to be held at Battle Creek" (Ibid.).
At the Wednesday meeting it was voted "to meet from time to time, as thought necessary by the president of the society, during the General Conference meeting at Battle Creek" (Ibid.).
The party left Nashville on another night journey, arriving in Chicago at ten o'clock Thursday morning, March 21. With the tenuous condition of Ellen White's health when they left Nashville, no firm plans had been made for meetings in Chicago. The general plan was that if she was able to do so, they would spend Thursday in Chicago and go on to Battle Creek on Thursday evening or Friday morning.
The Chicago visit was indeed an interesting one for Ellen White (Manuscript 29, 1902). In visions the work in Chicago had been opened up to her. On the basis of these visions she had written encouraging words and had sounded warnings of the perils of a disproportionate work. Such endeavors would funnel too large a percentage of available funds into a work that was good in itself, but that would yield only a limited lasting fruitage.
The church's medical school, the American Medical Missionary College, had been started in 1895 with its clinical division in Chicago. She was deeply interested in this undertaking to train physicians within the church's educational and medical structure.
The train was late in its arrival in Chicago, but they found a number of workers waiting to meet them. She was urged to remain over and speak on Sabbath, which she consented to do. When she was told that the medical workers in Chicago would like to hear from her, she also consented to speak at the medical school to students, helpers, and patients. She was pleased when it was suggested that she might have a hydrotherapy treatment at the Sanitarium's branch at 33d Place. Miss S. M. Gallion, a youthful Battle Creek Sanitarium nurse, gave her an hour of bath and massage. For seventy years that nurse cherished the memory of this hour spent with the Lord's messenger.
Sabbath morning Ellen White spoke with freedom to a congregation of about 650 (16 WCW, p. 307). As she looked back she wrote, "It was only by the Lord's help that I was enabled to do this work, for I was weary from traveling, and was not free from pain for a moment."--Manuscript 29, 1902.
In Old Battle Creek Again
After the Sabbath, W. C. White hastened by train to Battle Creek, a three-hour journey. The next morning Ellen White with Sara and Maggie made the trip, and they soon settled on the second floor of Dr. Kellogg's comfortable home. Six rooms were made available to the party. A horse and carriage with a driver was at their disposal. Dr. Kellogg arranged for a nurse to come over from the Sanitarium each evening to give Ellen White a treatment, and a young woman in the house did the cooking for the group (16 WCW, p. 307).
W. C. White threw himself wholeheartedly into a publishers' convention, which began Monday morning, but no mention is made of Ellen White's activities until later in the week. W. C. White had been in Battle Creek four years before in connection with his trip to the United States to attend the General Conference session held at Lincoln, Nebraska. But it was Ellen White's first visit in ten years. Sara McEnterfer, of course, was glad to be back. For Maggie Hare, whose home was in New Zealand, it was a new and exciting experience.
With a horse and carriage and driver at their disposal, no doubt Ellen White took the opportunity to show Maggie around Battle Creek. Dr. Kellogg's spacious home, with its grounds, occupied almost a square block at the corner of Manchester and Wood streets, six blocks from the Tabernacle. Just down Wood Street one short block was the little cottage James and Ellen White had built in 1856. It was the first home they had owned, and at the time of this writing it is the oldest Seventh-day Adventist landmark in Battle Creek. Here in 1858 she had written Spiritual Gifts, Volume I, her first account of the great controversy story.
On one day she would, of course, drive out to the Oak Hill Cemetery to the White family plot and pause at the graves of James White and their two sons, the youngest and the oldest. Herbert died at the age of 3 months, and Henry at the age of 16. James White's father and mother were also buried there, and there was the grave of Mary Kelsey White, W. C. White's first wife, and also James White's sister, Mary Chase. What memories must have come back to her as she stood under the leafless trees at this hallowed spot.
On the hillside immediately above were the graves of J. P. Kellogg and his wife, Ann, the parents of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and W. K. Kellogg, of cornflake fame. The Kelloggs were a stalwart family. How they had sacrificed and struggled with the Whites and others in building up the work in Battle Creek in its beginning days.
Of course, there were the institutions in Battle Creek. The Review and Herald Publishing House, with its addition upon addition, stood on West Main Street, on the site originally occupied by a little frame building erected in 1855.
A few blocks away was 303 West Main Street, the home that Ellen White had owned and occupied before leaving for Australia. Deep in her heart, as she had thought of attending the General Conference session, she had hoped that she might arrange to stay in this home. But Dr. Kellogg's invitation to stay in his home had superseded all this.
The Sanitarium was on North Washington Street. Its grounds covered a number of square blocks and reached down to Champion Street and took in the site of the home that the Whites had owned for many years and where many visions were given to Ellen White.
Across from the Sanitarium was the college, the school that had been called into being by the visions. This school, which she and her husband had hoped would be located in the country on a large tract of land with opportunities for industry and agriculture, was crowded in on an eight-acre tract in the thickly populated West Battle Creek.
On Wednesday night, March 27, she spoke at the Sanitarium to the guests and the helpers. Entering the spacious lobby where such meetings were held, she recognized in her audience friends of earlier years. But, of course, the larger part of the audience to which she was introduced was made up of strangers to her--the guests of the institution in its heyday. Now she was speaking:
I am thankful to the Lord for the privilege of meeting my friends here once more, some of whom I have met before, many of whom I have never seen.--Manuscript 28, 1901.
She talked of the love of Jesus, of the home being prepared for the faithful, and of our responsibility as Christians "not to disappoint the Saviour" (Ibid.). From this she turned to the importance of right living--healthful living. Her listeners noted that Christ was the central theme of her address. She reminded the workers and the guests that "God gives the physicians of this institution skill and efficiency because they are serving Him."--Manuscript 28, 1901.
She felt at perfect ease on such occasions addressing a high class of people who were not yet fully informed of the message that Seventh-day Adventists have for the world. She would address this group again.
Thursday evening she spoke to those assembled at the publishers' convention, which meeting was held in the Review and Herald chapel. Her mind turned to the forthcoming General Conference session and its importance.
Regardless of how Ellen White may have spent the first few days after reaching Battle Creek, one thing is certain--she refrained from a great deal of visiting. "I was obliged," she said, "to refuse to see many visitors, for private conversations were more taxing to me than public speaking." This is followed by the observation: "As I stood before the people, I felt that I was leaning on a strong arm, which would support me. But when engaged in conversation with visitors, I had not this sense of special strength.... I was compelled to save my strength for the times when I must stand before the thousands of people assembled in the Tabernacle."--Manuscript 29, 1902.
This opportunity came the next Sabbath, March 30, her first Sabbath in Battle Creek in ten years, when she filled the Tabernacle pulpit for the Sabbath-morning service. Although the few days after arriving in Battle Creek may have given her a bit of respite, looking back several months later, she wrote: "From Chicago we went to Battle Creek, and here my labors began."--Manuscript 29, 1902.