s my Friend.

"Such is a brief outline of this most interesting Meeting, held
Sunday after Sunday. Mr. Booth led the singing by commencing the
hymns without even giving them out. But the moment he began, the
bulk of the people joined heartily in them. Only one or two verses
of each hymn were sung as a rule. Most of them are found in his own
admirably compiled Song-Book.

"I could not but wonder at the change which had come over the
people. The majority of those present, probably nearly five
hundred, owed their conversion to the preaching of Mr. Booth and
his helpers. How would they have been spending Sunday afternoon, if
this blessed agency had not been set on foot?

"In the evening I preached in the Oriental Music Hall, High Street,
Poplar, where five or six hundred persons were assembled. This is
one of the more recent branches of Mr. Booth's work, and appears to
be in a very prosperous condition. I found two groups of the
helpers singing and preaching in the streets, who were only driven
in by the rain just before the Meeting commenced inside. This is
how the people are laid hold of.

"Shall this good work be hindered for the want of a few hundred
pounds?"

The supply of "pounds," alas! though called for in such religious
periodicals as at that time were willing to report the work, did not
come, and The General says: "After six years' hard work, we had nothing
better for our Sunday Night Meetings than a small covered alley attached
to a drinking-saloon, together with some old discarded chapels, and a
tumble-down penny theatre for week-nights."

At last a drinking-saloon, "The Eastern Star," having been burnt out,
was acquired, and rebuilt and fitted as a centre for the Work, to be
succeeded ere long by the large covered People's Market in Whitechapel
Road, which was for ten years to be The Army's Headquarters, and which
is now the Headquarters of its English Men's Social Work.

Throughout all these years of struggle, however, the Converts were
being drilled and fitted for the further extension of the Work.

The idea of forming them into a really permanent Organisation only came
to their Leader gradually. He says:--

"My first thought was to constitute an evangelistic agency, the
Converts going to the Churches. But to this there were three main
obstacles:--

i. They would not go wher