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....
(9MR 136.1)
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.)
(9MR 136.2)