e four walls.

There are also supposed to be prayers every night and there is a
voluntary service, of a very free and easy kind, on Sunday evenings.
Those evening prayers, theoretically a beautiful and moving ending to
the day's labour, were practically a very difficult business. I have
been in huts when the first hint of prayers, the production of a
bundle of hymn-books, was the signal for a stampede of men. By the
time the pianist was ready to play the hut was empty, save for two or
three unwilling victims who had been cornered by an energetic lady.

In the early days the "leader" of the hut was generally a young man
of the kind who would join a Christian Association in the days before
the war, and the lady workers, sometimes, but not always, were of the
same way of thinking. They were desperately in earnest about prayers
and determined, though I think unfair ways were adopted, to secure
congregations. A concert drew a crowded audience, and it seemed
desirable to attach prayers to the last item of the performance so
closely that there was no time to escape.

I remember scenes, not without an element of comedy in them, but
singularly unedifying. A young lady, prettily dressed and pleasant to
look at, recited a poem about a certain "nursie" who in the course of
her professional duties tended one "Percy." In the second verse
nursie fell in love with Percy, and, very properly, Percy with her.
In the third verse they were married. In the fourth verse we came on
nursie nursing (business here by the reciter as if holding a baby)
"another little Percy." The audience shouts with laughter, yells
applause, and wants to encore. The hut leader seizes his opportunity,
announces prayers, and the men, choking down their giggles over
nursie, find themselves singing "When I survey the wondrous cross."

My own impression is that prayers cannot with decency follow hard on
a Y.M.C.A. concert. The mind and soul sides of the red triangle seem
to join at an angle which is particularly aggressive. The body side,
on the other hand, works in comparatively comfortably with both. Tea
and cake have long had a semi-sacramental value in some religious
circles, and the steam of cocoa or hot malted milk blends easily with
the hot air of a "Nursie-Percy" concert or the serener atmosphere of
"Abide with Me."

Yet I am convinced that the evening-prayers idea is a good one and it
can be worked successfully for the benefit of many men. I have seen
th