Not Immortal Yet .--There are many urgent calls coming from all the conferences for me to come East and attend the camp meetings. They gravely state they have arranged them so that I could go from one to the other without loss of time. One meeting laps over on to the other, and I do not admire your judgment in this arrangement. Better have a set of camp meetings one year full and thorough, in selected places, and then next year take up the places left, and have those well manned, full and thorough. . . .
But should I attend your meetings, I remember I am fifty-six years old, instead of twenty-five or thirty-five, and no provision is made for me to rest, but to rush from one [camp meeting] to the other as fast as the cars will take me. I do not think your plans very flattering to me. I am not immortal yet, and have cause to remember this every day of my life. If you wish to finish me up this year, I think you have planned excellently for it. I think my best course is to remain in California and not trust myself to your mercies.-- Letter 21, 1884, p. 1. (To S. N. Haskell and G. I. Butler, July 10, 1884.) White Estate Washington, D. C. March 19, 1979