ccustomed company out of the corners of her eyes.

While watching all these sights we lost touch of the Salvation Army
ladies, who wormed their way through the crowd as easily and quickly
as a snake does through undergrowth, and set out to find them. Big
drops began to fall, the thunder growled, and in a moment the
concourse commenced to melt. Five minutes later the rain was falling
fast and the streets had emptied. That night's market was at an end.

No farmer watches the weather more anxiously than do these painted
women in their muslins and gold-laced shoes.

Meanwhile, their night's work done, the Salvation Army ladies were
tramping through the wet back to Titchfield Street, for they do not
spend money on cabs, and the buses had ceased to run.

THE ANTI-SUICIDE BUREAU

This is a branch of the Army's work with which I have been more or
less acquainted for some years.

The idea of an Anti-Suicide Bureau arose in the Army four or five
years ago; but every one seems to have forgotten with whom it actually
originated. I suppose that it grew, like Topsy, or was discovered
simultaneously by several Officers, like a new planet by different
astronomers studying the heavens in faith and hope. At any rate, the
results of the idea are remarkable. Thus in London alone 1,064 cases
were dealt with in the year 1909, and of those cases it is estimated
that all but about a dozen were turned from their fatal purpose. Let
us halve these figures, and say that 500 lives were actually saved,
that 500 men live to-day in and about London who otherwise would be
dead by their own hands and buried in dishonoured graves. Or let us
even quarter them, and surely this remains a wonderful work,
especially when we remember that London is by no means the only place
in which it is being carried on.

How is it done? the reader may ask. I answer by knowledge of human
nature, by the power of sympathy, by gentle kindness. A poor wretch
staggers into a humble little room at the Salvation Army Headquarters
in Queen Victoria Street. He unfolds an incoherent tale. He is an
unpleasant and disturbing person whom any lawyer or business man would
get rid of as soon as possible. He vapours about self-destruction, he
hints at dark troubles with his wife. He produces drugs or weapons--a
point at which most people would certainly show him out. But the
Officers in charge do nothing of the sort. They laugh at him or give
him a cup of tea. They bid him