Another arrived at the Shelter in such a state that the Officer in charge told me he was obliged to throw his macintosh round him to hide his nakedness.  He was an engineer who took a public-house, and helped himself freely to his stock-in-trade, with the result that he became a frightful drunkard, and lost L1,700.  He informed me that he used to consume no less than four bottles of whisky a day, and suffered from delirium tremens several times.  In the Shelter—­I quote his own words—­’I gave my heart to God, and after that all desire for drink and wrongdoing’ (he had not been immaculate in other ways) ’gradually left me.  From 1892 I had been a drunkard.  After my conversion, in less than three weeks I ceased to have any desire for drink.’

This man became night-watchman in the Shelter, a position which he held for twelve months.  He said:  ’I was promoted to be Sergeant; when I put on my uniform and stripes, I reckoned myself a man again.  Then I was made foreman of the works at Greendyke Street.  Then I was sent to pioneer our work in Paisley, and when that was nicely started, I was sent on to Greenock, where I am now trying to work up a (Salvation Army) business.’

Here, for a reason to be explained presently, I will quote a very similar case which I saw at the Army Colony at Hadleigh, in Essex.  This man, also a Scotsman (no Englishman, I think, could have survived such experiences), is a person of fine and imposing appearance, great bodily strength, and good address.  He is about fifty years of age, and has been a soldier, and after leaving the Service, a gardener.  Indeed, he is now, or was recently, foreman market-gardener at Hadleigh.  He married a hospital nurse, and found out some years after marriage that she was in the habit of using drugs.  This habit he contracted also, either during her life or after her death, and with it that of drink.

His custom was to drink till he was a wreck, and then take drugs, either by the mouth or subcutaneously, to steady himself.  Chloroform and ether he mixed together and drank, strychnine he injected.  At the beginning of this course, threepennyworth of laudanum would suffice him for three doses.  At the end, three years later (not to mention ether, chloroform, and strychnine), he took of laudanum alone nearly a tablespoonful ten or twelve times a day, a quantity, I understand, which is enough to kill five or six horses.  One of the results was that when he had to be operated on for some malady, it was found impossible to bring him under the influence of the anaesthetic.  All that could be done was to deprive him of his power of movement, in which state he had to bear the dreadful pain of the operation.  Afterwards the surgeon asked him if he were a drug-taker, and he told me that he answered:—­

’Why, sir, I could have drunk all the lot you have been trying to give me, without ever knowing the difference.’

In this condition, when he was such a wreck that he trembled from head to foot and was contemplating suicide, he came into the hands of the Army, and was sent down to the Hadleigh Farm.