Part 18

But step by step the disease grew worse. First she was forced to give up Meetings and public work. Then it became impossible for her to use her right hand, and she was therefore obliged to give up her correspondence, though she still continued to dictate her letters, and learnt also to write with her left hand.

Soon her daily drives became too tiring, and by and by she went out of the house into the little garden for the last time; and then for the concluding twelve months of her life she was a prisoner in her room, lying in constant suffering.

But during these long months the greatest joy and relief that could come to her was to hear of some fresh victory or triumph for the Kingdom of Jesus. Her interest in The Army and her love for the people were as keen as ever, and War Councils were held and new developments planned in her chamber, and much of The General's Darkest England Scheme for the poor and outcast was thought out and decided upon beside her sick bed.

Again and again, too, Mrs. Booth would receive deputations of Officers of different classes and from various countries in which The Army was at work, who came to Clacton-on-Sea, where the last fifteen months of her life were spent, to listen to her words of advice and inspiration.

There were no Corps Cadets in those days; but our Army Mother left some specially beautiful words about the Juniors, to which I must refer.

When she was told by the Officer then in charge of our Junior Work in England that the children loved and prayed continually for her, she smiled.

'The thought of the little ones,' says some one who was there, 'brought our beloved Army Mother wholly out of herself and her pain and weariness.'

'A very choice branch of the work,' she said. 'I have often told Emma that I hoped when I was too old for public work God would let me end where I began--with the children. But it seems that it is not to be so.'

'Give the children,' she went on, in reply to the messages they had sent, 'my dear love, and tell them that if there had been a Salvation Army when I was ten I should have been a Soldier then, as I am to-day.

Never allow yourself to be discouraged in your work. I know you must meet with many discouragements; but I am sure the Spirit of God works mightily on little children long before grown people think they are able to understand.'

Again and again during that last year of awful suffering it seemed as if Mrs. Booth were about to leave us; but then she would revive, and come back to endure more weeks and months of agony.

But at last, on October 4, 1890, all could see that she was on the brink of the River, and even those who loved her the most tenderly could not wish to hold her back.

'O Emma, let me go, darling,' she whispered; and hearing the reply, 'Yes, we will, we will,' she said, 'Now! Yes, Lord, come, Oh, come!'

The singing of The Army songs seemed to comfort her; and once she raised her suffering arm, and pointed to the text, 'My grace is sufficient for thee,' which hung on the wall. It was lifted down and placed at the foot of her bed, so that her eyes could often rest on it during those last hours.

'Soon after noon,' says the present General, 'I felt that the deepening darkness of the Valley was closing around my dear mother, and a little later I took my last farewell. Her lips moved, and she gave me one look of unspeakable tenderness and trust which will live with me for ever. Again we sang:--

My mistakes His free grace doth cover, My sins He doth wash away; These feet which shrink and falter Shall enter the Gates of Day.

And, holding her hand, The General gave her up to God. It was a solemn and wonderful scene.'

The Chief of the Staff and Mrs. Bramwell Booth, Mrs. Booth-Tucker, and the Commander, and her three daughters, Marian, Eva, and Lucy, knelt round the bed, upon which were placed photographs of the other members of her family who were unavoidably absent. Near to her stood her faithful nurse, Captain Carr, and others of the household, the dear General bowing over his beloved wife and companion in life's long strife, and giving her up to the keeping of the Father.

One by one the members of the family tenderly embraced her; then a gleam of recognition passed over the brightening countenance as The General bent over her. Their eyes met---the last kiss of love on earth, the last word till the Morning, and without a movement the breathing gently ceased, and a warrior laid down her sword to receive her crown.

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You may have heard of those wonderful days from Tuesday morning till Sunday night, when the coffin containing the precious remains of our Army Mother lay at the Congress Hall, Clapton, and when more than fifty thousand people came to have a last look at her dear face.

A piece of glass had been let into the plain oak coffin. It was just large enough to show the head and shoulders, and she lay as if in a sweet sleep.

You wonder if many came merely from curiosity. Some did, of course, but most of the people came because her life and example and words had been so blessed to their souls; and they came as they would come to look at the dead face of their own mother. It was the most wonderful tribute to a woman's life and words that London had ever seen.

For all kinds of people came--rich and poor, good and bad, people of many different religions, and many with no religion at all. Working men came in their dinner-hour, with their tools on their backs and tears in their eyes; mothers lifted up their little children to look at the one who had taught them the way of life; and, best of all, by the side of her coffin knelt many a wanderer and backslider to give themselves afresh to God.

More than one poor girl went direct from the Congress Hall to the Rescue Homes, to begin to live 'as she would have wished'; and the Cadets on guard were all the time dealing with drunkards and helping those who desired to begin from thenceforth to live a new and different life.

Even to-day, twenty-four years later, we often meet those who date their conversion, or their first step in the Narrow Way, from their look at that face lying in its simple coffin.

One of Mrs. Booth's own grandchildren, Mary, the present General's second daughter, looks back to that scene as the time when God in an unmistakable manner sealed her as His. She was only five years old as she knelt by the coffin, but nevertheless she decided there, in her childish consecration, like Ruth of old, that 'Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God'; and in the spirit of this consecration she lives to-day.

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