"Yes, dear Lord, I am trying to."
"Would you be willing to lay down your life for little Rita, for the sake of her soul?"
"Blessed Savior, surely that will not be required, but fill me full of love, a great love for her soul and other souls. I promise that with thy help I will do my best, for oh, how I love thee now! how I love thee! and I will do anything thou dost require to prove my love."
Some one is pulling my sleeve. I turn my head to find Rita leaning against me and quietly whispering, "Mother, don't cry; I'll be good. Don't cry."
From that time on the change in Rita was unmistakable, and although she had many hard battles to fight, to lose, and to win, she came out gloriously victorious.
"Who was Rita?" I'll tell you.
Rita was a roguish, fun-loving, childish little woman, twenty-one years old, who neither acted nor looked her age. Her mother had been a waitress in one of the dives of a locality called "The Barbary Coast," San Francisco, where are many low, vile haunts of vice. Her father, she never knew. She was very dark, apparently part Spanish, quite attractive, and rather pretty.
Some time prior to my advent she was brought to the home in a semi-intoxicated condition by one of the Lord's consecrated missionaries. Full of mischief and depravity, she was, from the first, a trouble-maker. From her earliest recollection, her companions had all been of the type with whom her mother associated; therefore it would take time, great and loving patience, and a constant waiting on the Master for her to harmonize perfectly with new environments.
This poor girl had seen no other life, up to within a few weeks of my meeting her, than a life replete with vice from one day's ending to another. Much of the time she had participated. But be it recorded to the credit of her mother that, to the extent of her knowledge, she had guarded her girl from criminal assault as long as she was able to control her, and that, when told of Rita's being in the rescue home, she seemed greatly pleased that at last her daughter had found friends who would do their utmost to help her lead a better life.
Rita had an uncontrollable temper, in consequence of which the entire household was sometimes made to suffer keenly; but she would eventually yield to earnest persuasion, then kneel down and ask forgiveness of God and the family. She was very ambitious to learn to read, being entirely devoid of education. Different members would take it in turn to teach her, and it was a proud day when she could decipher a few words in her Bible. I never shall forget the evening of her first realization of the price Jesus had paid for her. It dawned upon her soul so suddenly, so beautifully, following a mid-week prayer-meeting, in which some of the Christians interested in this work often participated, that a great shout of joy went up, and when we retired that night, some of us were too grateful and too excited to sleep. Oh, how the adversary attacked and tried over and over again to get her back to his territory! He once so well succeeded that we finally deemed it necessary to exchange her into another home. I was the one deputized to take her there, and very soon was introducing myself to Mrs. Elizabeth Kauffman, whose noble work for the erring, in San Francisco and other places, is known to the thousands. After placing Rita under her kind care in the rescue home, then situated on Capp Street near Twenty-first Street, in San Francisco, I returned to my post of duty in Sacramento, little dreaming at that time what an important place I was destined, in the future, to occupy with Sister Kauffman.