Not all of those twelve or fifteen drunkards who knelt at the penitent-form were really converted. Some found Christ. They were changed on the spot; they knelt down dazed with drink, and got up sober, praising God. The others merely took a step in the right direction. Some one has said that we are born with our backs to God, and our faces towards sin. Coming to the penitent-form, to some of those men, meant a turning of the back on the old life of sin and drink. They were too dazed with drink to understand more than, a longing after something better; but that longing was cherished; the man was followed to his home, watched over when the old craving came upon him, and taught how to seek and find God.
In a little room at the hall, a crowd of converts met week by week. The A B C of Salvation was explained to them; again and again the weak and ignorant were taught to pray and seek until the light of God dawned upon the darkened mind.
‘How we loved our Muvver’s meetings,’ exclaimed an ex-criminal to a listener, who smiled at the new kind of Mother’s meetings. He valued the words of his spiritual mother, and this converts’ meeting was to him the meeting of the week.
Eagerly the soldiers looked forward to the next midnight raid. How rewarded they felt as they looked upon some of the converts won during the first raid, donned in cap or bonnet, leading their mates to God.
‘Adjutant Lee must have worked you very hard,’ I remarked to the old keeper of the Congress Hall, Brighton. ’The hall must have been very dirty after a drunkards’ raid, and when it did not finish till one o’clock, how did you get ready for Sunday’s meetings?’ The sweet spirited old man smiled and replied, ’The hall did get dirty, and it did take some time to sweep up the sawdust and make things fresh for knee-drill, but I just went on till it was finished. Yes, I got tired. But no, I never grudged the work, thank God. I was glad to help the Adjutant, bless her! in my little way. To keep the hall in order, and to go on the door humouring the rowdy ones, not keeping anyone out, that was my work for the Adjutant, and I rejoiced to do it. And she was very thoughtful. When, after big demonstrations, the hall wanted extra cleaning, she would organize a scrubbing brigade of about twenty brothers and sisters, who would bring their own buckets and brushes, and she led them herself.’
Not content with directing extraordinary campaigns, there were special personal efforts which Kate Lee made to get in touch with the people. One of these was Saturday night visitation of the saloons. After the meeting –with her lieutenant or, at corps where there were suitable helpers, having sent the lieutenant home to get to bed early in preparation for the heavy strain of Sunday–until closing hours, she sought the souls of the drunkards.
A white-haired veteran soldier, himself a liberated drink-slave, tells of the Adjutant’s saloon visitation:–
I knew the run of these places from sad experience, and asked her, the first time we set out, ’Where shall we go, Adjutant: to the respectable, or the rough?’ ‘The rough,’ she replied. She would sing to the men, then kneel on those dirty floors and pray for the poor drunkards, and she would put in a word too, for the owner and his wife, asking the Lord to help them to find a better job. She could get in almost anywhere the first time round; after that she generally had to keep to the bar. The owners recognized in her a power against the trade. Sometimes men would be rude to her, but she smiled on as though she had not heard a rough remark.
We would go from place to place till half-past twelve. When the houses were emptying the men were quarrelsome, and we encountered many a fight. She had no fear at all; would go right into a fight and stop it. After that midnight work, she would be at knee-drill next morning and often passed me a little note giving the name and address of some drunkard she had got in conversation with and wanted me to follow up.
The old man’s eyes smiled, and he looked far away with an expression of wonder and reverence which I have noticed in many a faithful armour-bearer of Kate Lee, as they recalled her fight.