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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Another and constant hindrance which our Army Mother had to fight for the greater part of her life was poverty. It was so difficult, many times, to make two ends meet. She had, during many years of her life, no regular money coming in on which to depend, and during that time it was a constant struggle to have her children properly cared for and give them the needed education.
But most of all did our Army Mother show herself a warrior in her own Salvation campaigns. In those early days there were no praying Soldiers and Sergeants to be had to deal with the penitents - no one, either, to lead her singing, scarcely even to keep the doors or take up the collection. She would arrive in a town absolutely alone. A hall had been taken in which she was to speak, and she would hire a tiny lodging, or stay in whatever home would receive her, and set to work. We can scarcely understand the loneliness of her position. Here was a proof of her mighty faith in God.
She began these solitary campaigns when her sixth child was but a few weeks old, and God most wonderfully owned her labours. At one place she saw one hundred grown-up people and two hundred children come to her penitent-form in six days. But it was a fearful battle.
'I have a comfortable little cot to stay in,' she writes to her mother from one such battle-field, 'very small and humble; but it is clean and quiet; and when I feel nervous no one knows the value of quietness. I have felt it hard work lately. Many a time have I longed to be where the weary are at rest.'
At Margate, some years later, she commenced her Meetings without knowing a single person in the place. For some weeks she had not even a helper in the Prayer Meetings, nor one who would give out a song for her. Mrs. Booth could not sing herself, and there was often an awkward pause before any one would be willing to pitch her tune. 'If only,' she said when The Army was fairly on its feet, 'I had been able to command a dozen reliable people such as I could have anywhere now, I think I could have done almost anything.'
