Colonel Stanley Ewens, at one time Kate Lee’s Divisional Commander, felt that this Saturday night work was too taxing for her frail body, and suggested that she entrust it to others. The Colonel says:–
I found that I had touched a vital spot. The Adjutant replied, ’You must please allow me to continue this work; some of my best trophies have been won for God as a result of my Saturday night visitations. It gives me an opportunity of getting to know the very worst sinners and following them up in their homes.’ This was better understood when the following incident was told me concerning a convert in this very town. A desperate character was met by the Adjutant every Saturday night in the same bar. She offered ‘The War Cry’ as a means to get into conversation with him, and finding out where he lived, asked permission to visit him. One morning at 5:30, whilst washing himself in preparation for his work, he heard some one knocking at the door. It was the Adjutant and her lieutenant who had called to see him and his wife. ‘Come in, sisters,’ the man said as he opened the door. It was a wretched home. The officers sat on boxes. The drunkard’s wife asked in a friendly way if they would have a cup of tea, and replying in the affirmative, were served with strong tea, in galley-pots. It was only a short visit, but it left its mark for eternity. This man and his wife were induced to attend the meetings and led to the Saviour.
One means to attract crowds to her halls, which she had used with success at many corps, was to dress in rags, and march at the head of the band. Amongst her people this recollection is spoken of with a kind of awe.
’To think that that lovely, pure woman should soil her face, pull her hair about, put on dirty torn clothes, broken boots, and make herself appear a sister of shame!
She asked me to keep her company; and, really, I did not like to walk down the street with her,’ says a sister local officer of one corps.
Arriving at the hall the Adjutant would lead the meeting, still in her ignominious garb, and preach about sin; how it blighted and defiled the lives of millions of men and women; how it made life here wretched, and would land the soul in hell hereafter; then she would tell of the remedy, the glorious Salvation of Jesus.
An officer writes that she was a little girl of eleven when the Adjutant dressed in rags at her corps. The effect upon her mind was to make her hate sin with such a horror, that right then and there she determined to give her life to seek sinners.
But some of the Adjutant’s soldiers could not see past the shame of their beautiful officer, thus making a spectacle of herself. ’It made me cry to look at her,’ said one sergeant-major.
’It fair upset me; I told her never to do that again; I could not abear to see it,’ confessed another.
The Adjutant carried out her part with apparently unconscious calm, and it never occurred to these worthies that their officer thus made herself of ‘no reputation’ at great personal cost.