This is an etext version of Mildred Duff, Catherine Booth: A Sketch, with preface by General Bramwell Booth. Originally published by Salvation Army Book Department, circa 1907. This edition was created by Jone Johnson Lewis, 2003.
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'If you had had a friend who had understood your very nature, the rise and fall of your feelings, the bent of your thoughts, and the purpose of your existence; a friend whose communion had ever been pleasant–the most pleasant of all other friends–to whom you had ever turned with satisfaction, and your friend had been taken away, you would feel some sorrow at the loss.
'If you had had a mother for your children who had cradled and nursed and trained them for the service of the living God, in which you most delighted–a mother, indeed, who had never ceased to bear their sorrows on her heart, and who had been ever willing to pour forth that heart's blood in order to nourish them, and that darling mother had been taken from your side, you would feel it a sorrow.
'If you had had a wife, a sweet love of a wife, who for forty years had never given you real cause for grief; a wife who had stood with you, side by side, in the battle's front, who had been a comrade to you, ever willing to interpose herself between you and the enemy, and ever the strongest when the battle was fiercest, and your beloved one had fallen before your eyes, I am sure there would be some excuse for your sorrow.
'Well, my comrades, you can roll all these qualities into one personality, and what would be lost in all I have lost in one. There has been taken away from me the light of my eyes, the inspiration of my soul, and we are about to lay all that remains of her in the grave. I have been looking right at the bottom of it here, and calculating how soon they may bring and lay me alongside of her, and my cry to God has been that every remaining hour of my life may make me readier to come and join her in death, to go and embrace her in life in the Eternal City.'
This is an etext version of Mildred Duff, Catherine Booth: A Sketch, with preface by General Bramwell Booth. Originally published by Salvation Army Book Department, circa 1907. This edition was created by Jone Johnson Lewis, 2003.
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