Chapter XIX

Chapter XIXConquering DeathOnly those who have had some experience of a perfect life-partnership--such as existed for thirty-five years between The General and his wife--can form any conception of the sufferings he had to pass through, in connexion with her prolonged illness and death.She had always been more or less delicate in health, yet had, through nearly all those years, triumphed so completely over weakness and suffering as to be at once one of the happiest of wives and mothers, and the most daring of comrades in the great War.During much of 1887 she had suffered more than usually, and yet had taken part with him in many great demonstrations; but in February, 1888, new symptoms made their appearance, and she decided upon consulting one of the ablest of London physicians, because she had always dreaded that her end would come, like that of her mother, through cancer, and wished to use every possible care to prolong, as much as might be possible, her days of helpfulness.When in February, 1888, Sir James Paget told her that she had, undoubtedly, got this disease, and would, probably, not be alive for more than eighteen months or two years, she received the announcement with the greatest calm and fortitude. The General says:--"After hearing the verdict of the doctors, she drove home alone. That journey can better be imagined than described. She told me how, as she looked upon the various scenes through the cab windows, it seemed to her as if sentence of death had been passed upon everything; how she had knelt upon the cab floor and wrestled in prayer; and how the realisation of our grief swept over her."I shall never forget, in this world or the next, that meeting. I had been watching for the cab, and had run out to meet and help her up the steps. She tried to smile upon me, through her tears; but, drawing me into the room, she unfolded to me gradually the result of her interview. I sat down speechless. She rose from her seat and came and knelt beside me, saying, 'Do you know what was my first thought? That I should not be there to nurse you, at your last hour.'"I was stunned. I felt as if the whole world was coming to a standstill. She talked like a heroine, like an angel, to me. She talked as she had never talked before. I could say nothing. I could only kneel with her and try to pray."I was due in Holland for some large Meetings. I had arranged to travel there that very night. She would not hear of my remaining at home for her sake. Never shall I forget starting out that evening, with the mournful tidings weighing like lead upon my heart. Oh, the conflict of that night journey! I faced two large congregations, and did my best, although it seemed to me that I spoke as one in a dream. Leaving the Meetings to be continued by others, I returned to London the following evening. And then followed, for me, the most painful experience of my life. To go home was anguish. To be away was worse. Life became a burden, almost too heavy to be borne, until God in a very definite manner comforted my heart."After this, there were two years and a half of such tortures for him to bear! For some time, indeed, Mrs. Booth was still able occasionally to take part with him, even in very large Meetings. But any one can understand how such privileges only increased his sense of coming loss.Her last address was delivered in the City Temple, on June 21, 1888, and she had to remain for nearly an hour after in the pulpit before she could move. Nevertheless, she was able to continue her help by writing for our publications, and to individuals, for a long time after this. Before the Self-Denial Week of 1888 she wrote to our Soldiers:--"Although not able to be at the front of the battle in person, my heart is there, and the greatest pain I suffer arises from my realisation of the vast opportunities of the hour, and of the desperate pressure to which many of my comrades are subject, while I am deprived of the ability to help them, as in days gone by."In 1889 she wrote:--"I am now realising, as never before, how much harder it is to suffer than to serve. I can only assure you again, by letter, that my heart is as much with you as ever. Regard no opposition, persecution, or misrepresentation. Millions upon millions wait for us to bring to them the light of life."To the great Crystal Palace Demonstration of 1889 she sent a message which was displayed in large letters:--"My place is empty, but my heart is with you. Go forward. Live holy lives. Be true to The Army. God is your strength. Love and seek the lost. God is my salvation and refuge in the storm."Hers was, indeed, a prolonged storm of suffering, the strain of which upon The General cannot easily be realised. He would go out, time after time, to his great journeys and Meetings with, necessarily, a gnawing uncertainty as to what might occur in his absence, and would be called, again and again, to what he thought might be her last agony, only to see her, after hours of extraordinary pain and weakness, rally again, to suffer more. To the very end her mind continued to be as clear and powerful as of old, so that her intense interest in everything connected with his work made it difficult for The General to realise that she might at any moment be called away from him. Often through the long hours of the night he would watch beside her.To a party of Officers who visited her in 1889, she said:--"I feel that at this moment I could put all my children into their graves, and go to a workhouse bed to die, sooner than I could see the principles of The Salvation Army, for which I have lived and struggled, undermined and sacrificed. God will not fail you. Give the children my dear love, and tell them that, if there had been a Salvation Army when I was ten years old, I should have been as good a Soldier then as I am to-day."To the last she maintained her interest in comrades who were furthest off, as well as in those who were near. To Australians she sent the message:--"Tell them I look on them and care for them, as for my English children, and that I expect them to gather in many a sorrowing mother's prodigal, who has wandered far from his Father's house."Of one of those terrible occasions when it seemed as if the end had come, The General writes, in December, 1889:--"To stand by the side of those you love, and watch the ebbing tide of life, unable to stem it, or to ease the anguish, is an experience of sorrow which words can but poorly describe. There was a strange choking sensation in the throat which threatened suffocation. After several painful struggles there was a great calm, and we felt the end had come."What a mercy that nobody knew how many months of agony were yet to follow! It was not till October, 1890, that the end really came. She sent that year to The Army for its Self-Denial Week, the message:--"My Dear Children and Friends,--"I have loved you much, and in God's strength have helped you a little. Now, at His call, I am going away from you."The War must go on. Self-Denial will prove your love to Christ. All must do something."I send you my blessing. Fight on, and God will be with you. Victory comes at last. I will meet you in Heaven."Catherine Booth."On October 1st violent hæmorrhage set in. The General was telegraphed for, and after days and nights of continual suffering and extreme weakness, she passed away on Saturday afternoon, October 4, 1890.Writing immediately afterwards, The General said:--"Ever since our first meeting, now nearly forty years ago, we have been inseparable in spirit; that is, in all the main thoughts and purposes of our lives. Oh, what a loss is mine! It cannot be measured."And yet, anxious, as in every other case, to make the very best of the funeral for the good of souls, The General rose, by God's grace, so completely above his own feelings as to be able to take part in all the unparalleled services that followed. More than forty thousand people visited the Congress Hall, Clapton, to look upon her remains there, and to pray and give themselves to God in many cases, whilst her favourite hymns were sung by bands of Cadets. The coffin was then removed to the Olympia, the largest covered building we could hire in London, and 30,000 persons passed the turnstiles to attend the funeral service, conducted mostly by signs, according to a printed programme.The next day, the funeral march was restricted to Officers of whom 3,000 were present; but the crowds which looked on as it passed right through from our Headquarters in the City to the Abney Park Cemetery were beyond all computation. A crowd of 10,000, admitted by ticket, surrounded the grave, where The General spoke, as one newspaper reported, "as a Soldier, who had disciplined his emotion without effort, and straight from the heart." Of his wonderful address, we have only room to quote the final words:--"What, then, is there left for me to do? Not to count the weeks, the days, and the hours which shall bring me again into her sweet company, seeing that I know not what will be on the morrow, nor what an hour may bring forth. My work is plainly to fill up the weeks, the days, and the hours, and cheer my poor heart as I go along, with the thought that when I have served my Christ and my generation, according to the will of God, which I vow this afternoon I will, to the last drop of my blood, that then she will bid me welcome to the skies, as He bade her. God bless you all! Amen."And then he knelt and kissed the coffin, and we lowered it into the grave. The Chief of the Staff read a form of Covenant, which thousands repeated, and then we parted.From that very day The General rose up and went forward, sorrowing, as every one could see, to his last days over his irreparable loss, but never allowing his grief to hinder his labours for those who, amidst their afflictions have no heavenly Comforter.A still further blow was to fall upon him, only three years later. Mrs. Booth had delighted, especially during her years of suffering, in the fellowship of her second daughter, Emma, who had been married to Commissioner Tucker, in 1890, and who had always seemed to The General to be the nearest representative, in many respects, of her mother. He had gladly given her up to go with her husband to India, and was equally willing for her, later, to go to the United States. But he always kept up a very full correspondence with her. Her last letter to him, written on an American train, said:--"My Precious General,--"I am still on the wing. We were at St. Louis on Sunday, where we had, in some respects, a rather remarkable day. The entire feeling of the city has been distinctly different since your visit--the sympathy now is most marked."I also spoke for 'fifteen minutes' (stretched a little) in the Merchants Exchange, a huge marble structure. No woman, they say, has ever been heard there before. This was on Saturday at noon, and quite a number of the leading business and money men turned up at Sunday's Meetings."Can't write more. How I wonder how you are! Up above us all so high, like a diamond in our sky, though perhaps I ought to say cyclone or race-horse, or--but there is no simile fine enough."Good-night! Would that you were here, so that I could say it, and hear all that you would like to say, and then start off again to try and carry out your wishes with better success, as"Your unfailing Emma."Alas, alas, for the uncertainties of human life! Little did she imagine that before the letter could reach him she would be gone from another train, for ever from his side.Her own devotion to the War, from her very childhood, had always been such as to set an example to all who knew her. As head, for ten years, of our Training Home for women Officers, she did more than can ever be known to ensure the purity and excellence of The Army's leaders, so that it may be easily guessed how much her father valued her.As joint leader with her husband of our forces in India, and afterwards in the United States, she never spared herself, but, in spite of repeated illnesses, and without, in any way, neglecting her duties as mother of six children, she travelled and laboured incessantly.Starting out at one o'clock in the morning of October 28th, from Colorado, to ride to Chicago, she managed to make a rush-call, between trains, in Kansas City, to view a new building The Army was about to take as an Industrial Home. Throughout most of the two days' journey, she was in conversation with one or another Officer as to coming extension of the work until, finding that Colonel Addie, whose Province she last passed, had composed a new song, she asked him to sing it over to her, and to repeat three times the last verse, which was as follows:--Time and place will cease to know you,Men and things will pass away;You'll be moving on to-morrow,You are only here to-day.Little did either of them imagine how terribly the words were to be verified within four hours of their being sung.Just as she was leaving her place in one carriage, to go to the sleeping berth prepared for her in another, a tremendous crash announced to all the passengers that the car through which she and one of our Officers were passing had left the rails and been destroyed. Both were buried in the debris. The Colonel (Holland) survived, but Mrs. Booth-Tucker, after lingering in unconsciousness a couple of hours, passed away.What a blow for The General! He wrote at the end of the year: "This has been, is, and will be, to the end of my earthly chapter, a mysterious and painful dispensation--at least, so it appears at the moment. What God may do for me in the future, and how He may make it work for my good does not at present appear. But He is able to make it mightily helpful to His glory, and the Salvation of souls. With this prospect, God forbid, then, that I should be other than content--nay, filled with praise. I am at present strangely supported and cheered; and not strangely either, for is it not what might have been expected, with so many loving prayers going up to Heaven on my account hour by hour."Remembering that he had lost not only the most tenderly beloved one left to him, but an Officer holding one of the most important posts he had to fill, we can somewhat estimate the grace that could thus sustain him, and make it possible, even then, to go gladly forward!Yet again he was to drink the bitter cup of family bereavement, this time affecting his youngest daughter, who had married Commissioner Hellberg, already mentioned as one of our first Swedish Officers.Not only had he kept all the promise of his first brave and sturdy stand for The Army as a student, but, gaining by every year's experience in various lands, he had shown remarkable ability in many spheres.With his no less able and devoted wife, he had laboured in India, at International Headquarters, in France and in Switzerland, when consumption, alas! showed itself, and, in spite of all that could be done for him, during years of suffering, in Algiers, and in various resorts of health-seekers, he steadily sank. Though, of course, death had long threatened him, he was caught suddenly at the last, and died in Berlin on the journey homewards to Sweden from South Germany, at a time when his wife could not be with him.It will be readily understood how much more trying this was to The General than if he had been near to comfort his daughter in all her sorrow. And yet this blow, falling upon him when he was seventy-nine years old, found him no less resolute than ever. He sent this widowed mother out into Denmark, where she was a stranger, to persevere in the fight. She had showed herself, like her father; able to plead at the very grave-side with the crowd, for God.In connexion with the loss of Mrs. Booth we began a system of special Memorial Services which have been wonderfully blessed. The first one, held on the first anniversary of her death, in the Agricultural Hall--one of the largest buildings in London, was altogether too large for any speaking to be heard. The plan was adopted, therefore, as at the funeral, of a complete form of service, each point of which was indicated on the programme, and by large illuminated signs. By this means the audience, of some 15,000, was able closely and unitedly to join in all the songs and prayers, whilst scenes from Mrs. Booth's life, and messages taken from her writings and from The General's, were also on the great lantern screen passed on to them. Thousands of the most careless and thoughtless were present; but there was no break in the solemnity of the service. Hundreds went as requested, from the Meeting to a room in the stables, to volunteer for life-service as Officers.What it cost The General to be present on this, and, since then, on similar occasions, specially after his daughter's death, may be imagined; but he never hesitated to endure this, for the sake of the many souls such services have invariably aroused to repentance, faith, and self-sacrifice for the War. Writing, in 1905, to a friend, he says:--"Were you at the Memorial Service? That was a trying ordeal for me, but I hear that many were benefited. It seems selfish to ask for so many intercessions; but I cannot get on without them. (In all our Memorial Services all present are asked to unite in prayer for the bereaved ones.) The mere fact of my knowing that so large a number of the very elect of the Kingdom are pleading for power and love on my account, helps me forward. God bless and keep and comfort you every day and every hour."Undoubtedly, these services, whilst blessed to all present, have also served to provoke much prayer and faith for all our bereaved ones, and for The General most of all, and have thus made it easier for him, and for all of us, to triumph over personal sorrows and losses, and press forward to ever-increasing victory.That The General's example of burying his own sorrows in redoubled effort to cheer and help others has been followed everywhere, may count as large compensation for all he has lost. And yet, all who knew him best, have seen that the wound caused by Mrs. Booth's loss was never healed. With the badge of bereavement, which we have substituted for any costly mourning, ever upon his left arm, just as it was twenty years ago, our first General went onward to the great re-union above, "as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing," his sadness ever touching as many hearts as his merry remarks aroused.Curiously enough, The General, whilst anxious at all times to remind every one of death and judgment, and to prevent their being so intoxicated by pleasure and passing trivialities as to prevent their thinking of their souls and of eternity, abolished, so far as his followers were concerned, the horrible formalities which, in all countries have come to be thought necessary whenever death and the grave come into view.Nothing could be more opposed to everything taught by Christ than the usual processes of "Christian burial," and the records of "the departed." He who "brought life and immortality to light" through His Gospel could not wish to see His people's graves surrounded exclusively by signs of mourning, and then plastered over with flattering records of earthly glory, making, as a rule, no mention of His Salvation, and the eternal glories it assures. He manifested, indeed, and always shows the deepest sympathy with our sorrows; but He does so most by teaching us to make them steps to higher life and joy.This great purpose The General aimed at in all his arrangements as to burials, and thus alleviated sadness, and turned death into victory to a very remarkable extent. No widow or orphan under his Flag will add to all the inevitable costs of nursing the dying those of fashionable "mourning," clothing, flowers, or monuments. The cross and crown badge worn on the left arm by himself and his bereaved ones, sometimes for years, whilst providing a most touching token of abiding affection for lost friends, is, at the same time, a special declaration of faith and hope, and yet obviates entirely the need for any peculiar dress "for the occasion."Every funeral thus becomes a very valuable opportunity for comforting and strengthening the mourners, and for urging the unsaved to ensure an eternal triumph. It would not be easy to compute the total of crowds thus brought under the sound of the Gospel, in connexion with our losses, every year.Thus all these occasions for sadness have been turned into fountains of joy, not merely to those most immediately concerned, but to the whole community. We have not yet had time or opportunity, thank God! sufficiently to redeem the grave and the cemetery from the scandal of men-praising expenditure, for any sort of tombstone has generally been too costly for our people. But the small, simple edge-stone which marks the resting-place of "Catherine Booth, Mother of The Salvation Army," and which asks every passer-by, "Do you also follow Christ?" has set an example, consistent with all our past and our eternal future.Surely, the day will come when our General's teaching and practice in this matter will help to lighten the burden of every bereaved family, and make every cemetery the birthplace of crowds of souls. The music and song with which we surround every deathbed and funeral, still too much tinged sometimes with the follies of traditional show, have already been used by God's Spirit to bring life and gladness to many a spiritually dead soul.

Only those who have had some experience of a perfect life-partnership--such as existed for thirty-five years between The General and his wife--can form any conception of the sufferings he had to pass through, in connexion with her prolonged illness and death.

She had always been more or less delicate in health, yet had, through nearly all those years, triumphed so completely over weakness and suffering as to be at once one of the happiest of wives and mothers, and the most daring of comrades in the great War.

During much of 1887 she had suffered more than usually, and yet had taken part with him in many great demonstrations; but in February, 1888, new symptoms made their appearance, and she decided upon consulting one of the ablest of London physicians, because she had always dreaded that her end would come, like that of her mother, through cancer, and wished to use every possible care to prolong, as much as might be possible, her days of helpfulness.

When in February, 1888, Sir James Paget told her that she had, undoubtedly, got this disease, and would, probably, not be alive for more than eighteen months or two years, she received the announcement with the greatest calm and fortitude. The General says:--

"After hearing the verdict of the doctors, she drove home alone. That journey can better be imagined than described. She told me how, as she looked upon the various scenes through the cab windows, it seemed to her as if sentence of death had been passed upon everything; how she had knelt upon the cab floor and wrestled in prayer; and how the realisation of our grief swept over her."I shall never forget, in this world or the next, that meeting. I had been watching for the cab, and had run out to meet and help her up the steps. She tried to smile upon me, through her tears; but, drawing me into the room, she unfolded to me gradually the result of her interview. I sat down speechless. She rose from her seat and came and knelt beside me, saying, 'Do you know what was my first thought? That I should not be there to nurse you, at your last hour.'"I was stunned. I felt as if the whole world was coming to a standstill. She talked like a heroine, like an angel, to me. She talked as she had never talked before. I could say nothing. I could only kneel with her and try to pray."I was due in Holland for some large Meetings. I had arranged to travel there that very night. She would not hear of my remaining at home for her sake. Never shall I forget starting out that evening, with the mournful tidings weighing like lead upon my heart. Oh, the conflict of that night journey! I faced two large congregations, and did my best, although it seemed to me that I spoke as one in a dream. Leaving the Meetings to be continued by others, I returned to London the following evening. And then followed, for me, the most painful experience of my life. To go home was anguish. To be away was worse. Life became a burden, almost too heavy to be borne, until God in a very definite manner comforted my heart."

"I shall never forget, in this world or the next, that meeting. I had been watching for the cab, and had run out to meet and help her up the steps. She tried to smile upon me, through her tears; but, drawing me into the room, she unfolded to me gradually the result of her interview. I sat down speechless. She rose from her seat and came and knelt beside me, saying, 'Do you know what was my first thought? That I should not be there to nurse you, at your last hour.'

"I was stunned. I felt as if the whole world was coming to a standstill. She talked like a heroine, like an angel, to me. She talked as she had never talked before. I could say nothing. I could only kneel with her and try to pray.

"I was due in Holland for some large Meetings. I had arranged to travel there that very night. She would not hear of my remaining at home for her sake. Never shall I forget starting out that evening, with the mournful tidings weighing like lead upon my heart. Oh, the conflict of that night journey! I faced two large congregations, and did my best, although it seemed to me that I spoke as one in a dream. Leaving the Meetings to be continued by others, I returned to London the following evening. And then followed, for me, the most painful experience of my life. To go home was anguish. To be away was worse. Life became a burden, almost too heavy to be borne, until God in a very definite manner comforted my heart."

After this, there were two years and a half of such tortures for him to bear! For some time, indeed, Mrs. Booth was still able occasionally to take part with him, even in very large Meetings. But any one can understand how such privileges only increased his sense of coming loss.

Her last address was delivered in the City Temple, on June 21, 1888, and she had to remain for nearly an hour after in the pulpit before she could move. Nevertheless, she was able to continue her help by writing for our publications, and to individuals, for a long time after this. Before the Self-Denial Week of 1888 she wrote to our Soldiers:--

"Although not able to be at the front of the battle in person, my heart is there, and the greatest pain I suffer arises from my realisation of the vast opportunities of the hour, and of the desperate pressure to which many of my comrades are subject, while I am deprived of the ability to help them, as in days gone by."

In 1889 she wrote:--

"I am now realising, as never before, how much harder it is to suffer than to serve. I can only assure you again, by letter, that my heart is as much with you as ever. Regard no opposition, persecution, or misrepresentation. Millions upon millions wait for us to bring to them the light of life."

To the great Crystal Palace Demonstration of 1889 she sent a message which was displayed in large letters:--

"My place is empty, but my heart is with you. Go forward. Live holy lives. Be true to The Army. God is your strength. Love and seek the lost. God is my salvation and refuge in the storm."

Hers was, indeed, a prolonged storm of suffering, the strain of which upon The General cannot easily be realised. He would go out, time after time, to his great journeys and Meetings with, necessarily, a gnawing uncertainty as to what might occur in his absence, and would be called, again and again, to what he thought might be her last agony, only to see her, after hours of extraordinary pain and weakness, rally again, to suffer more. To the very end her mind continued to be as clear and powerful as of old, so that her intense interest in everything connected with his work made it difficult for The General to realise that she might at any moment be called away from him. Often through the long hours of the night he would watch beside her.

To a party of Officers who visited her in 1889, she said:--

"I feel that at this moment I could put all my children into their graves, and go to a workhouse bed to die, sooner than I could see the principles of The Salvation Army, for which I have lived and struggled, undermined and sacrificed. God will not fail you. Give the children my dear love, and tell them that, if there had been a Salvation Army when I was ten years old, I should have been as good a Soldier then as I am to-day."

To the last she maintained her interest in comrades who were furthest off, as well as in those who were near. To Australians she sent the message:--

"Tell them I look on them and care for them, as for my English children, and that I expect them to gather in many a sorrowing mother's prodigal, who has wandered far from his Father's house."

Of one of those terrible occasions when it seemed as if the end had come, The General writes, in December, 1889:--

"To stand by the side of those you love, and watch the ebbing tide of life, unable to stem it, or to ease the anguish, is an experience of sorrow which words can but poorly describe. There was a strange choking sensation in the throat which threatened suffocation. After several painful struggles there was a great calm, and we felt the end had come."

What a mercy that nobody knew how many months of agony were yet to follow! It was not till October, 1890, that the end really came. She sent that year to The Army for its Self-Denial Week, the message:--

"My Dear Children and Friends,--"I have loved you much, and in God's strength have helped you a little. Now, at His call, I am going away from you."The War must go on. Self-Denial will prove your love to Christ. All must do something."I send you my blessing. Fight on, and God will be with you. Victory comes at last. I will meet you in Heaven."Catherine Booth."

"My Dear Children and Friends,--

"I have loved you much, and in God's strength have helped you a little. Now, at His call, I am going away from you.

"The War must go on. Self-Denial will prove your love to Christ. All must do something.

"I send you my blessing. Fight on, and God will be with you. Victory comes at last. I will meet you in Heaven.

"Catherine Booth."

On October 1st violent hæmorrhage set in. The General was telegraphed for, and after days and nights of continual suffering and extreme weakness, she passed away on Saturday afternoon, October 4, 1890.

Writing immediately afterwards, The General said:--

"Ever since our first meeting, now nearly forty years ago, we have been inseparable in spirit; that is, in all the main thoughts and purposes of our lives. Oh, what a loss is mine! It cannot be measured."

And yet, anxious, as in every other case, to make the very best of the funeral for the good of souls, The General rose, by God's grace, so completely above his own feelings as to be able to take part in all the unparalleled services that followed. More than forty thousand people visited the Congress Hall, Clapton, to look upon her remains there, and to pray and give themselves to God in many cases, whilst her favourite hymns were sung by bands of Cadets. The coffin was then removed to the Olympia, the largest covered building we could hire in London, and 30,000 persons passed the turnstiles to attend the funeral service, conducted mostly by signs, according to a printed programme.

The next day, the funeral march was restricted to Officers of whom 3,000 were present; but the crowds which looked on as it passed right through from our Headquarters in the City to the Abney Park Cemetery were beyond all computation. A crowd of 10,000, admitted by ticket, surrounded the grave, where The General spoke, as one newspaper reported, "as a Soldier, who had disciplined his emotion without effort, and straight from the heart." Of his wonderful address, we have only room to quote the final words:--

"What, then, is there left for me to do? Not to count the weeks, the days, and the hours which shall bring me again into her sweet company, seeing that I know not what will be on the morrow, nor what an hour may bring forth. My work is plainly to fill up the weeks, the days, and the hours, and cheer my poor heart as I go along, with the thought that when I have served my Christ and my generation, according to the will of God, which I vow this afternoon I will, to the last drop of my blood, that then she will bid me welcome to the skies, as He bade her. God bless you all! Amen."

And then he knelt and kissed the coffin, and we lowered it into the grave. The Chief of the Staff read a form of Covenant, which thousands repeated, and then we parted.

From that very day The General rose up and went forward, sorrowing, as every one could see, to his last days over his irreparable loss, but never allowing his grief to hinder his labours for those who, amidst their afflictions have no heavenly Comforter.

A still further blow was to fall upon him, only three years later. Mrs. Booth had delighted, especially during her years of suffering, in the fellowship of her second daughter, Emma, who had been married to Commissioner Tucker, in 1890, and who had always seemed to The General to be the nearest representative, in many respects, of her mother. He had gladly given her up to go with her husband to India, and was equally willing for her, later, to go to the United States. But he always kept up a very full correspondence with her. Her last letter to him, written on an American train, said:--

"My Precious General,--"I am still on the wing. We were at St. Louis on Sunday, where we had, in some respects, a rather remarkable day. The entire feeling of the city has been distinctly different since your visit--the sympathy now is most marked."I also spoke for 'fifteen minutes' (stretched a little) in the Merchants Exchange, a huge marble structure. No woman, they say, has ever been heard there before. This was on Saturday at noon, and quite a number of the leading business and money men turned up at Sunday's Meetings."Can't write more. How I wonder how you are! Up above us all so high, like a diamond in our sky, though perhaps I ought to say cyclone or race-horse, or--but there is no simile fine enough."Good-night! Would that you were here, so that I could say it, and hear all that you would like to say, and then start off again to try and carry out your wishes with better success, as"Your unfailing Emma."

"My Precious General,--

"I am still on the wing. We were at St. Louis on Sunday, where we had, in some respects, a rather remarkable day. The entire feeling of the city has been distinctly different since your visit--the sympathy now is most marked.

"I also spoke for 'fifteen minutes' (stretched a little) in the Merchants Exchange, a huge marble structure. No woman, they say, has ever been heard there before. This was on Saturday at noon, and quite a number of the leading business and money men turned up at Sunday's Meetings.

"Can't write more. How I wonder how you are! Up above us all so high, like a diamond in our sky, though perhaps I ought to say cyclone or race-horse, or--but there is no simile fine enough.

"Good-night! Would that you were here, so that I could say it, and hear all that you would like to say, and then start off again to try and carry out your wishes with better success, as

"Your unfailing Emma."

Alas, alas, for the uncertainties of human life! Little did she imagine that before the letter could reach him she would be gone from another train, for ever from his side.

Her own devotion to the War, from her very childhood, had always been such as to set an example to all who knew her. As head, for ten years, of our Training Home for women Officers, she did more than can ever be known to ensure the purity and excellence of The Army's leaders, so that it may be easily guessed how much her father valued her.

As joint leader with her husband of our forces in India, and afterwards in the United States, she never spared herself, but, in spite of repeated illnesses, and without, in any way, neglecting her duties as mother of six children, she travelled and laboured incessantly.

Starting out at one o'clock in the morning of October 28th, from Colorado, to ride to Chicago, she managed to make a rush-call, between trains, in Kansas City, to view a new building The Army was about to take as an Industrial Home. Throughout most of the two days' journey, she was in conversation with one or another Officer as to coming extension of the work until, finding that Colonel Addie, whose Province she last passed, had composed a new song, she asked him to sing it over to her, and to repeat three times the last verse, which was as follows:--

Time and place will cease to know you,Men and things will pass away;You'll be moving on to-morrow,You are only here to-day.

Time and place will cease to know you,

Men and things will pass away;

You'll be moving on to-morrow,

You are only here to-day.

Little did either of them imagine how terribly the words were to be verified within four hours of their being sung.

Just as she was leaving her place in one carriage, to go to the sleeping berth prepared for her in another, a tremendous crash announced to all the passengers that the car through which she and one of our Officers were passing had left the rails and been destroyed. Both were buried in the debris. The Colonel (Holland) survived, but Mrs. Booth-Tucker, after lingering in unconsciousness a couple of hours, passed away.

What a blow for The General! He wrote at the end of the year: "This has been, is, and will be, to the end of my earthly chapter, a mysterious and painful dispensation--at least, so it appears at the moment. What God may do for me in the future, and how He may make it work for my good does not at present appear. But He is able to make it mightily helpful to His glory, and the Salvation of souls. With this prospect, God forbid, then, that I should be other than content--nay, filled with praise. I am at present strangely supported and cheered; and not strangely either, for is it not what might have been expected, with so many loving prayers going up to Heaven on my account hour by hour."

Remembering that he had lost not only the most tenderly beloved one left to him, but an Officer holding one of the most important posts he had to fill, we can somewhat estimate the grace that could thus sustain him, and make it possible, even then, to go gladly forward!

Yet again he was to drink the bitter cup of family bereavement, this time affecting his youngest daughter, who had married Commissioner Hellberg, already mentioned as one of our first Swedish Officers.

Not only had he kept all the promise of his first brave and sturdy stand for The Army as a student, but, gaining by every year's experience in various lands, he had shown remarkable ability in many spheres.

With his no less able and devoted wife, he had laboured in India, at International Headquarters, in France and in Switzerland, when consumption, alas! showed itself, and, in spite of all that could be done for him, during years of suffering, in Algiers, and in various resorts of health-seekers, he steadily sank. Though, of course, death had long threatened him, he was caught suddenly at the last, and died in Berlin on the journey homewards to Sweden from South Germany, at a time when his wife could not be with him.

It will be readily understood how much more trying this was to The General than if he had been near to comfort his daughter in all her sorrow. And yet this blow, falling upon him when he was seventy-nine years old, found him no less resolute than ever. He sent this widowed mother out into Denmark, where she was a stranger, to persevere in the fight. She had showed herself, like her father; able to plead at the very grave-side with the crowd, for God.

In connexion with the loss of Mrs. Booth we began a system of special Memorial Services which have been wonderfully blessed. The first one, held on the first anniversary of her death, in the Agricultural Hall--one of the largest buildings in London, was altogether too large for any speaking to be heard. The plan was adopted, therefore, as at the funeral, of a complete form of service, each point of which was indicated on the programme, and by large illuminated signs. By this means the audience, of some 15,000, was able closely and unitedly to join in all the songs and prayers, whilst scenes from Mrs. Booth's life, and messages taken from her writings and from The General's, were also on the great lantern screen passed on to them. Thousands of the most careless and thoughtless were present; but there was no break in the solemnity of the service. Hundreds went as requested, from the Meeting to a room in the stables, to volunteer for life-service as Officers.

What it cost The General to be present on this, and, since then, on similar occasions, specially after his daughter's death, may be imagined; but he never hesitated to endure this, for the sake of the many souls such services have invariably aroused to repentance, faith, and self-sacrifice for the War. Writing, in 1905, to a friend, he says:--

"Were you at the Memorial Service? That was a trying ordeal for me, but I hear that many were benefited. It seems selfish to ask for so many intercessions; but I cannot get on without them. (In all our Memorial Services all present are asked to unite in prayer for the bereaved ones.) The mere fact of my knowing that so large a number of the very elect of the Kingdom are pleading for power and love on my account, helps me forward. God bless and keep and comfort you every day and every hour."

Undoubtedly, these services, whilst blessed to all present, have also served to provoke much prayer and faith for all our bereaved ones, and for The General most of all, and have thus made it easier for him, and for all of us, to triumph over personal sorrows and losses, and press forward to ever-increasing victory.

That The General's example of burying his own sorrows in redoubled effort to cheer and help others has been followed everywhere, may count as large compensation for all he has lost. And yet, all who knew him best, have seen that the wound caused by Mrs. Booth's loss was never healed. With the badge of bereavement, which we have substituted for any costly mourning, ever upon his left arm, just as it was twenty years ago, our first General went onward to the great re-union above, "as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing," his sadness ever touching as many hearts as his merry remarks aroused.

Curiously enough, The General, whilst anxious at all times to remind every one of death and judgment, and to prevent their being so intoxicated by pleasure and passing trivialities as to prevent their thinking of their souls and of eternity, abolished, so far as his followers were concerned, the horrible formalities which, in all countries have come to be thought necessary whenever death and the grave come into view.

Nothing could be more opposed to everything taught by Christ than the usual processes of "Christian burial," and the records of "the departed." He who "brought life and immortality to light" through His Gospel could not wish to see His people's graves surrounded exclusively by signs of mourning, and then plastered over with flattering records of earthly glory, making, as a rule, no mention of His Salvation, and the eternal glories it assures. He manifested, indeed, and always shows the deepest sympathy with our sorrows; but He does so most by teaching us to make them steps to higher life and joy.

This great purpose The General aimed at in all his arrangements as to burials, and thus alleviated sadness, and turned death into victory to a very remarkable extent. No widow or orphan under his Flag will add to all the inevitable costs of nursing the dying those of fashionable "mourning," clothing, flowers, or monuments. The cross and crown badge worn on the left arm by himself and his bereaved ones, sometimes for years, whilst providing a most touching token of abiding affection for lost friends, is, at the same time, a special declaration of faith and hope, and yet obviates entirely the need for any peculiar dress "for the occasion."

Every funeral thus becomes a very valuable opportunity for comforting and strengthening the mourners, and for urging the unsaved to ensure an eternal triumph. It would not be easy to compute the total of crowds thus brought under the sound of the Gospel, in connexion with our losses, every year.

Thus all these occasions for sadness have been turned into fountains of joy, not merely to those most immediately concerned, but to the whole community. We have not yet had time or opportunity, thank God! sufficiently to redeem the grave and the cemetery from the scandal of men-praising expenditure, for any sort of tombstone has generally been too costly for our people. But the small, simple edge-stone which marks the resting-place of "Catherine Booth, Mother of The Salvation Army," and which asks every passer-by, "Do you also follow Christ?" has set an example, consistent with all our past and our eternal future.

Surely, the day will come when our General's teaching and practice in this matter will help to lighten the burden of every bereaved family, and make every cemetery the birthplace of crowds of souls. The music and song with which we surround every deathbed and funeral, still too much tinged sometimes with the follies of traditional show, have already been used by God's Spirit to bring life and gladness to many a spiritually dead soul.

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