Pressure built for James and Ellen White to attend the later camp meetings. In anticipation of the Indiana camp meeting she was to attend, she wrote: “I commence traveling again while at the same time I am preparing volume 3 of Spirit of Prophecy.” She added, “God may spare my life to complete it. The future is with the Lord.”—Ibid. Friday, August 10, she was at Kokomo, Indiana, for the opening of the camp meeting. Mary White traveled with her, for James was so deeply involved in publishing and Sanitarium interests, and much worn, that he did not go. The meeting was held in a grove, with excellent attendance—on Sunday the people turned out en masse from neighboring cities, villages, and country until there were seven thousand on the ground. Ellen White addressed them, speaking for an hour and a half (The Signs of the Times, August 23, 1877). And of course she took other meetings. 3BIO 66.4
The plans for the Massachusetts camp meeting, to be held again at Groveland, were too enticing to resist. The Review of August 16 carried the word that James White might accompany his wife. D. M. Canright and S. N. Haskell were expected at the Massachusetts meeting and might go on with the Whites to Maine and Vermont. 3BIO 67.1
On Sabbath morning, August 18, White spoke to the believers in Battle Creek; in the afternoon he gave close attention to hearing the reading of a portion of the manuscript for Spirit of Prophecy, volume 3, on the trial, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. Sunday, he began work at five o'clock in the morning and continued until midnight. Monday morning he was ill. As the Whites later looked back on the experience, they felt it was probably another stroke of paralysis, for it left him greatly debilitated (Testimonies for the Church, 4:276, 277). As the time for the Groveland camp meeting neared, Ellen felt she would probably have to go without James, but when the time came to leave Battle Creek, he decided to go with her, even if he was not well. 3BIO 67.2