“Two sisters then spoke.  The first had been very much cast down for seven or eight weeks; but she comforted herself by saying, ’’Tis better on before.’  The second said it was two years since she found peace, and she was very happy.

“A young man told how his sins were taken away.  He worked in the city, and some one took him to hear the Rev. E. P. Hammond.  He did not find peace then, but afterwards, as a young man was talking to him in the street, he was able to see the way of Salvation, and rejoice in it.  He used to fall asleep generally under the preaching.  ‘But here,’ he said, ‘under Mr. Booth, I can’t sleep.’

“A little boy, one of Mr. Booth’s sons (the present General), gave a simple and good testimony.  He was followed by a young man, and then an interesting blind girl, whom I had noticed singing heartily in the street, told of her conversion.

     “A girl told how she found peace seventeen months ago; and then Mr.
     Booth offered a few concluding observations and prayed.  The Meeting
     closed by singing:—­

        I will not be discouraged,
        For Jesus is my Friend.

“Such is a brief outline of this most interesting Meeting, held Sunday after Sunday.  Mr. Booth led the singing by commencing the hymns without even giving them out.  But the moment he began, the bulk of the people joined heartily in them.  Only one or two verses of each hymn were sung as a rule.  Most of them are found in his own admirably compiled Song-Book.

“I could not but wonder at the change which had come over the people.  The majority of those present, probably nearly five hundred, owed their conversion to the preaching of Mr. Booth and his helpers.  How would they have been spending Sunday afternoon, if this blessed agency had not been set on foot?

“In the evening I preached in the Oriental Music Hall, High Street, Poplar, where five or six hundred persons were assembled.  This is one of the more recent branches of Mr. Booth’s work, and appears to be in a very prosperous condition.  I found two groups of the helpers singing and preaching in the streets, who were only driven in by the rain just before the Meeting commenced inside.  This is how the people are laid hold of.

     “Shall this good work be hindered for the want of a few hundred
     pounds?”

The supply of “pounds,” alas! though called for in such religious periodicals as at that time were willing to report the work, did not come, and The General says:  “After six years’ hard work, we had nothing better for our Sunday Night Meetings than a small covered alley attached to a drinking-saloon, together with some old discarded chapels, and a tumble-down penny theatre for week-nights.”

At last a drinking-saloon, “The Eastern Star,” having been burnt out, was acquired, and rebuilt and fitted as a centre for the Work, to be succeeded ere long by the large covered People’s Market in Whitechapel Road, which was for ten years to be The Army’s Headquarters, and which is now the Headquarters of its English Men’s Social Work.