The Staff-Captain in charge here told me his history, which is so typical and interesting that I will repeat it briefly.  Many years ago (he is now an elderly man) he was a steward on board a P. and O. liner, and doing well.  Then a terrible misfortune overwhelmed him.  Suddenly his wife and child died, and, as a result of the shock, he took to drink.  He attempted to cut his throat (the scar remains to him), and was put upon his trial for the offence.  Subsequently he drifted on to the streets, where he spent eight years.  During all this time his object was to be rid of life, the methods he adopted being to make himself drunk with methylated spirits, or any other villainous and fiery liquor, and when that failed, to sleep at night in wet grass or ditches.  Once he was picked up suffering from inflammation of the lungs and carried to an infirmary, where he lay senseless for three days.  The end of it was that a Salvation Army Officer found him in Oxford Street, and took him to a Shelter in Burne Street, where he was bathed and put to bed.

That was many years ago, and now he is to a great extent responsible for the management of this Westminster Refuge.  Commissioner Sturgess, one of the head Officers of the Army, told me that their great difficulty was to prevent him from overdoing himself at this charitable task.  I think the Commissioner said that sometimes he would work eighteen or twenty hours out of the twenty-four.

One day this Staff-Captain played a grim little trick upon me.  I was seated at luncheon in a Salvation Army building, when the door opened, and there entered as dreadful a human object as I have ever seen.  The man was clad in tatters, his bleeding feet were bound up with filthy rags; he wore a dingy newspaper for a shirt.  His face was cut and plastered over roughly; he was a disgusting sight.  He told me, in husky accents, that drink had brought him down, and that he wanted help.  I made a few appropriate remarks, presented him with a small coin, and sent him to the Officers downstairs.

A quarter of an hour later the Staff-Captain appeared in his uniform and explained that he and the ‘object’ were the same person.  Again it was the clothes that made the difference.  Those which he had worn when he appeared at the luncheon-table were the same in which he had been picked up on the streets of London.  Also he thanked me for my good advice which he said he hoped to follow, and for the sixpence that he announced his intention of wearing on his watch-chain.  For my part I felt that the laugh was against me.  Perhaps if I had thought the Salvation Army capable of perpetrating a joke, I should not have been so easily deceived.