When They Were Girls

by Rebecca Deming Moore

Little Evangeline and her sisters heard so much of their father’s work that even their favorite game was playing prayer meeting with their battered dolls. She and the others had very few toys, because their parents thought that the money should be spent for the poor.

It was a very busy home in which Eva, as her father preferred to call her, grew up. The bell was always ringing. Messengers were coming and going. In one room her father’s deep voice might be heard planning his work. In another room her mother was busy writing for the Cause. The younger children murmured their lessons in a third room, and in a fourth, one of the older girls practiced on the piano.

The General would often stop in the midst of his work for little chats with his children. He would take Eva, for whom he always had a specially deep love and tenderness, upon his knee and ask her about her puppies or kittens. Once when Eva felt very sad over the death of her pet dog, her father took her to the city and spent the whole day telling her stories and comforting her.

At an early age Eva learned that she should pick up her books and toys for, above everything else except sin, her father hated disorder. Orderliness was a useful habit to be acquired by one who was later to have charge of the affairs of a great organization.

Though Eva’s mother was often too busy to spend much time with her, she heard her daughter’s prayers and urged her to study so that she could help the weak, the poor, the ignorant, and the wicked. Mrs. Booth often reminded Eva to carry out in her life the meaning of her beautiful name, Evangeline, “bringing glad tidings.”

Evangeline Booth began her work of “bringing glad tidings” when she was very young. She had inherited her father’s gift of eloquence as well as his fearlessness and love of work. At fifteen years of age she spoke very beautifully at a meeting near London. When she was seventeen years old she was made an officer in the Army and began the work in the slums which won her the title of “White Angel.”

After ably filling various positions in the Salvation Army in Great Britain, Evangeline Booth was made Commander of the Army in Canada. At the time of the Gold Rush in 1898, she sent Salvation Army workers to the Klondike. In 1904 she was made Commander-in-chief of the Salvation Army in the United States. Besides her duties as Commander she has composed words and music for the Army’s songs and has written articles for the Army publications and other magazines.

In addition to its religious work the Salvation Army maintains homes, hospitals, clinics, and day nurseries; it finds employment for men and women out of work; and it sends mothers and children on summer outings. Every Christmas and Thanksgiving pennies dropped into the big red Salvation Army kettles provide dinners for thousands of the poor. In a single year the Army in the United States made 175,698 children happy with Christmas toys.

During the World War the pies and doughnuts served by the Salvation Army lassies cheered thousands of lonely soldiers, and many a mother has the Salvation Army to thank for her boy’s last message.

Evangeline Booth was for almost twenty years Commander-in-chief of this great organization in the United States. She believes, as her father did before her, that the first step in influencing a man to lead a better life is to make him feel that you really care whether he sinks or swims. Her courageous, selfless life shows that she does care.