Along' the Northern Line igg 



summer residences than the wooded slopes and 

 islands of Lake Washington. 



I regret that the uncertainty about the sailing of 

 the Bear, which has already had three set days for 

 leaving, extending over a waiting period of two 

 weeks, has kept me too close here. I wished to 

 visit Tacoma, the rival city of Seattle. A great 

 city, ranking with our largest, will be built on this 

 Sound, and the site lies between these two cities. 

 The latter city had the good fortune to be the first 

 to report the Alaskan mines, and the result has 

 been that the miners rushed to Seattle, and thus it 

 won the distinction, in the public mind, of being 

 the shipping point for the North. 



The Salvation Army is here. I have a soft spot 

 in my heart for the Salvationists. They preach a 

 crude but a genuine gospel. I always follow them 

 and listen to their music and exhortations with 

 sympathy; one often hears gospel truth preached 

 by them in tenderness, cogency, and even with true 

 eloquence. It is impossible that such preaching 

 should not do vast good. There is a coarse and 

 barren talk mixed up with it sometimes; but as a 

 rule it is true and winsome gospel preaching; and 

 it has the advantage of genuine feeling and convic- 

 tion back of it. I think it is a kind of preaching 

 that is good for anybody. Anyway I would rather 

 listen to it than to some of the "first-class" preach- 

 ing of the day. I remarked to a friend that the 

 best preaching is heard in the "country churches." 



