The band started a stirring march, Mr. Charrington and I at its head, together with various other workers of the Mission, who distributed handbills of the evening service as we went along.
We marched a little way down the Mile End Road, and then we turned into some of the narrowest and most dreadful slums of London. In some of these slums the policemen have to patrol in couples for fear of aggression. At every door, at every window of these rookeries, were dozens upon dozens of faces, with the marks of drink and deep poverty upon them. Children swarmed everywhere like bees in a hive. And yet, among all that misery and destitution, it was most pathetic to see how many of them—the little girls especially—were as neatly dressed as their parents could manage, and how their shining hair was brushed and tied up with odds and ends of ribbons.
We passed a large group of young men openly gambling upon the pavement. We passed a little house where, not so very long before, two young men had entered at seven o'clock in the morning, and murdered an old woman who lived there for the sake of a few shillings. We passed innumerable drunken men, some of them fighting and quarrelling among themselves, and more than one drunken woman leaned, leering and nodding, against the wall of her house.
And yet, not a word was said against us. In no single instance, during that two hours' progress, was even an insult hurled at Mr. Charrington or his friends. On the contrary, people waved cheerily to him from upper windows, and he brandished the inevitable umbrella, which he carries as a sort of baton upon these occasions, with a merry greeting. The little children ran to him and hung to the tails of his frock-coat, proud to hold his hand, and to march with him at the head of the music. In streets where at least half of the population were known to the police, and were of the definitely criminal classes, there was nothing but welcome for the evangelist and his music. There was no preaching whatever. Now and again, where two or three foul, dark streets converged, the band stopped and played, very touchingly and sweetly, for it is composed of first-class instrumentalists, that beautiful hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light." That was all, though on all hands the eager helpers were distributing handbills and inviting everyone to come to the Great Hall in the evening.
We had started upon the last part of our march, after one of these halts, when a very drunken man came up to me, and thrust his arm through mine. He had not lost the power of his legs—at any rate with my assistance—and for half an hour or more he insisted on walking thus with me, by Mr. Charrington's side and at the head of the band, pouring out praises of the evangelist in a thick, but sufficiently intelligible voice! It was a curious experience—to me, at least—but it did not seem anything out of the way to my new friends. Suddenly the head of an old man protruded from an upper window, and a voice hailed Mr. Charrington in loud and friendly greeting.
"Who's your friend?" I asked, and when the answer came I looked with added interest, for every one who reads newspapers has heard of the old gentleman known as "Bill Onions,"—that writer of curious doggerel verse, who has been imprisoned something like 480 times for drunkenness, and who, for many years now, has been a convinced teetotaler, and every year attends at the police court of his last conviction to receive the congratulations of the magistrate!
When we got back to the Great Assembly Hall the crowd of the hungry had enormously increased, as also had the attendant policemen. The gates leading into the smaller hall, where the feeding takes place, were opened, and the men filed in, shepherded by the policemen, and delivered their cards of admission.
I stood outside and watched, and it was explained to me that only a certain number of men—and women, in another hall which I did not see on this occasion—were able to feed each Sunday. I think the number is somewhat over seven hundred. But it always happens that a certain number of the tickets which have been distributed on the previous Sunday are not used. There are generally about twenty. The recipients may have got work, may have left London in search of it, or may, alas, have succumbed to their privations, and be where hunger can tear them no more, as was the case with one poor woman who came to the hall on a Sunday, and had her first meal for that day. On the following Monday and Tuesday it was afterwards ascertained that she had nothing whatever, and she died on the Wednesday.
This is known, and, in consequence, a large number of poor outcasts join the queue in the hope that there will be room for them.
When all the regular ticket-holders had been admitted, the tickets were counted, and, upon this occasion, it was found that some seventeen more invitations were available.