Catherine Booth — a Sketch

by Mildred Duff

And this same diligent, tireless spirit was with her to the last. When on her deathbed, able only to use her left hand, and propped up by pillows, she devised a little frame on which, painfully, stitch by stitch, she could work a last token of love for The General.

When her hands were folded still in death, I saw those slippers. They were beautifully embroidered, one with the words, ’He will keep the feet of His Saints’; and the other with the sure and certain hope which lay beyond the parting, ‘Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem’–a fitting and sacred service with which to close her many years of toil and labour for others.

But our Army Mother had another way of working in her home–that is, she worked over others. If a girl wished to learn, Mrs. Booth would take endless trouble in showing her the best way to wash or iron, or clean a grate, or do whatever the work on hand might be. She instructed her servants, explaining to them the reason for doing their duties in a certain way, teaching them forethought and common sense, and dealing faithfully with them over all their failures.

‘Better,’ she said, in one of her addresses–and she lived it out in her own home–’better take a girl whom you have to teach how to wash a child’s face, or to stitch a button on, if she is true and sincere, than have one ever so clever, who will teach your children to lie and deceive.’

She worked, too, over the cases of need and poverty which were often at her door. Not content, like so many, with giving a few coppers to a beggar, or some broken food, she would inquire into the cause of the distress; and then, if the need seemed genuine, she would help, either by getting the father work, or by having the home visited and suitable relief given after the true condition of things had been found out.

And this was only a little of the homework with which her hands were ever full. Of her ceaseless care over her children’s mind and soul training I have told you elsewhere. But of her public work perhaps the most exhausting was that which resulted from her Meetings. For she could not rest content with the most careful preparation beforehand, nor with pouring out her whole soul upon the people during the forty or fifty minutes that her address lasted. At the close of the Meeting, whenever her health allowed it, she would labour and toil, often for two hours and more, dealing herself with the penitents, meeting their difficulties, one by one, and was unwilling to leave them until, as far as possible, all had claimed and received the blessing they sought.

The next day, too, she would follow up any special case with a long personal letter from her own pen, or she would arrange another interview, or in some way keep in close, actual touch with the struggling soul, until the step of obedience had been taken, and he or she was fairly started on the Narrow Way.

And it was this careful, earnest, patient after-work which gave such glorious harvests to her soul-saving campaigns. Labour and trouble were a joy to her, if she could but help one sincere, seeking soul into the light.

But remember this: while she so toiled over all who came to her for advice and guidance, she never repeated nor passed on to others their confidences. If she had done so, people would soon have left off corning to her; they would have said, ‘We cannot trust her.’ She was, as you know, a mighty speaker; but about other people’s affairs she was entirely silent–as you must learn to be if you wish to be of any service to God or man.

And Mrs. Booth strove constantly to teach all who were around her to work as she did. ‘You have begun well enough–now carry it through,’ she would say again and again to her children, and whether it was a doll’s frock, or an article for ‘The War Cry,’ or a series of Meetings, it was always the same. Unfinished, half-done work she detested with all her soul. ’If a thing is worth beginning at all, then it is worth finishing,’ she would say; and this great principle followed her through her life in small things as in great.