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 haemorrhage 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.