322 



LIFE IN MONTREAL [Chap. VII. 



and in the evening we had a game of whist, and college jokes 

 and songs. He left us the following afternoon. I was fearful 

 lest his Sunday exertions and his continual conversation should 

 have been followed by exhaustion ; but on his return voyage 

 he wrote : " Now, my darling brother, I cannot tell you what 

 immense delight at the time, and for the future, our brief inter- 

 course face to face gave me. My whole visit has done me 

 peculiar good, just at the time it was wanted. You saw some- 

 what of the state I was in from my letters, which were not 

 exaggerated — just the reverse. I feel now my old power 

 coming back : and just think what I have done without injury. 

 You called Bridport exciting : that was just the quiet rest of 

 my visit." 



He returned to London for a few days, and then visited his 

 friend Mr. C. Broadbent at Latchford, near Warrington. He 

 had dreaded meeting the people ; and had expressed his wish 

 not to give any lecture : or, if he gave' any, only at Latchford : 

 but the lecture, on " American Life," was announced for the 

 Cairo Street School-room. He concluded it with some earnest 

 religious advice : " It was of less consequence where they lived 

 than how" A great crowd had assembled : even those who 

 were not known to have cared for him showed their affection. 

 Among them were many who used to meet him at his swim- 

 ming lessons at Buttermilk Bridge (see pp. 103-105). Mr. 

 Robson wrote : — 



"When he paid his last visit to Warrington, in 1874, and a 

 large crowd of all classes assembled at the well-known Cairo 

 Street School-room, to look once more on their much-loved 

 teacher and friend, and to listen, alas ! for the last time, to his 

 well-known voice and to his encouraging and instructive words, 

 the feelings of quite a number of these rdugh but warm-hearted 

 men, whose associations with Dr. Carpenter were mainly in 

 connexion with these swimming lessons, found vent in the 

 utterance of the local name, emphasized as it never was before, 

 and probably never will be again by men of this class, who 

 when bidding him ' Good-bye,' and clasping his hand, could 

 find no utterance for their pent-up feelings of gratitude and 



