I met Kate Lee in all kinds of houses, and at all hours of the day
and of the night, and she was always on the one mission--seeking
souls. One morning, at half-past two, I was coming out of one of
the worst slums in Sunderland, and met the Adjutant and her
lieutenant. They were radiant. The Adjutant had gone to settle a
family brawl; had reconciled husband and wife, got them converted,
and broken their whisky bottles in the gutter. I met her also in
the houses of the rich, and they would have kept her there, but
she never stayed after she had finished her Master's business.
But Kate did not attempt to encompass the fruitful work of visitation
merely with her lieutenant's assistance; she organized a band of visitors
at her corps, generally godly, married women, who were timid of public
service. They met at the hall one or two afternoons each week, and went
two and two to certain districts. The Adjutant and her lieutenant
initiated these comrades into the way of getting into the homes of the
people. At an appointed hour they returned to the hall and reported any
special case of sickness or sorrow to the officers, who followed it up.
This method was a great feeder to the corps meetings, and provided an
outlet for the awakened spiritual energies of some Salvationists who
hitherto had been soldiers in name only.
She hungered for souls, she sought them everywhere. One morning, scanning
the daily paper to see if there were some call for help in its pages, she
noticed the case of a man awaiting trial for a serious offence. She
remarked to her lieutenant, 'I must try to help that man.' Straightway
she prayed, then wrote the governor of the jail asking permission to
visit the prisoner. This was granted, but the Adjutant was not allowed to
see him alone. She was conducted to a triple cage; a warder occupied one
compartment; the prisoner another; Kate Lee the third. As she gazed at
the man through the bars, to introduce herself to him, and so to
establish friendly contact and to reach his soul, seemed impossible. She
spoke to him for a considerable time and prayed, but the face before her
was like a sphinx, and he did not answer a word. Kate Lee came away from
the prison with a sad heart, feeling that she had accomplished nothing.
At the trial, the man was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years'
imprisonment. The Adjutant continued to pray for the convict, and at
last, to her great joy, she received a letter from him. The prisoner told
her that on returning to his cell, he had thought over all she had said
to him; not only had conviction of sin come to his soul, but hope. He had
asked God to forgive the past and to give him a new heart. God had
answered his prayer. Good conduct shortened the criminal's sentence, and
Kate Lee saw him discharged, placed him in the care of The Army, and
after a term at the Land Colony at Hadleigh, in Essex, he was restored to
his friends. Until the end of her life, this man corresponded with the
Adjutant, whom he always addressed as 'Dear Mother.'
If staying for a night at a house, the Adjutant endeavoured to leave some
blessing behind her, and the Spirit of God, resting upon quite
commonplace words and actions, made them beautiful and blessed to the
receivers. One woman writes, 'She billeted with me when my husband and
son were soldiering. It was such a cheer to have her presence in the
home. She wrote in a book for me her name, and "Be true to the Flag." I
treasure this very much.'
In another and different kind of home where she was the guest for a
night, the daughter of the house, a bright, talented girl, given up to
worldliness, accompanied the Adjutant to her room to make sure that all
her needs were supplied. They fell into conversation about spiritual
matters and talked on till the small morning hours, then knelt in prayer,
and the girl gave herself to God. 'She used to call to see us, but try as
we would we could never persuade her to rest for even one hour in our
home,' writes a girl from another home of comfort.
With her voice trembling with love and emotion, a woman soldier told me
the following incident:--
When the Adjutant was stationed here, I was living away from home at
service, but coming back for a holiday, I found my father ill, and
stayed to nurse him. One evening I had a feeling I should bring the
Adjutant to him. He was a man who went to no place of worship and
made no profession of religion. I went to the officers' quarters,
and the lieutenant said that the Adjutant had gone out of town for
a meeting; she did not know what time she would return. The feeling
that I must get her that night grew on me, and I walked about the
streets until I saw her coming home. It was nearly midnight, and I
caught sight of her face in the light of a street lamp. She looked
like a ghost, so tired and white, and I shouldn't have had the
heart to ask her to start out again, but for the strong feeling
that had come to me. 'Certainly I will come,' she said brightly.
Well, she came and talked to father, told him the way of Salvation,
prayed with him, and he prayed, and she left him at peace with God,
and happy. An hour after she had gone, he became unconscious and
never regained his senses. He died that morning. Just caught his
soul in the nick of time, she did. That's the big thing about
Adjutant Lee that stands out for mother and me, but I couldn't
begin to tell you all the little things she did. _Aye, but she
bothered about us, she did_. I never knew the like.
The year that Kate Lee was born, the artist Dietrich gave to the world a
picture, which, if not destined to become one of the immortals of
religious art, has about it an irresistible charm for the ordinary eye.
The Saviour stands with outstretched arms saying, 'Come unto Me, all ye
that labour and are heavy laden.' About Him are gathered people
representing almost every condition of need and woe. The charm lies not
so much in the central figure as in the adoring love of the sorrowing and
the sick for the One who loves them; little children cuddle about His
robe in utter contentment; a weary mother with babe at her breast, has
brought her sick daughter; husband has carried a crippled wife; a woman
'that was lost' bends at the Saviour's feet in an agony of repentance; an
aged, blind man is led by his daughter; a maniac, whose tortured soul
looks out of haggard eyes, frames a prayer with clasped hands.
When in a remote city, I first saw a print of this picture, a line from
James Russell Lowell--'His Throne is with the outcast and the
weak'--seemed its best title. But as I look at it to-day, all the
sorrowful, needy people who have spoken to me of Kate Lee, seem to gather
around that picture and I seem to hear the words, 'Aye, but He bothered
about us,' and there comes to my heart a realization of the triumph of
Jesus in this servant of His, who grew to be so like her Master. Surely
the world is heart-sick for such souls great in compassion,
self-forgetful, and triumphant in faith as was Kate Lee.
X
'THE ANGEL ADJUTANT'
Kate Lee had been a Salvation Army Field Officer for fifteen years, when
suddenly she became famous. In gathering material for the writing of
'Twice Born Men,' Harold Begbie had been no less impressed by the
sweetness and wisdom of the woman who had won from sin to righteousness
several of the notable characters with whom the book deals, than he was
with the miracle of their conversion. Throughout the book we catch
glimpses of Kate Lee-her loveliness of character, her guileless wisdom,
and her strength of purpose-as Mr. Begbie saw her. Vividly describing
Shepherd's Bush, the locality in which the Norland Castle corps operates,
Mr. Begbie pictures the incessant, roaring traffic of the main roads, the
ceaseless procession of humanity on the pavements, the exhibition of
wealth and extravagance in the shops-almost frightening to those who know
of the terrible destitution which exists only a stone's throw distant--the
crowded street markets of the poor, the shabby residential streets, and
continues:--
One turns out of the respectable streets where the children are
playing cricket, cherry-bobs, hopscotch, hoops, and cards, and
suddenly finds himself in streets miserable and evil beyond
description.
These are streets of once decent two-storied villas, now
lodging-houses. The very atmosphere is different. One is conscious
first of dejection, then of some hideous and abysmal degradation. It
is not only the people who make this impression on one's mind, but
the houses themselves. Dear God, the very houses seem accursed! The
bricks are crusted, and in a dull fashion shiny with grime; the
doors, window-frames, and railings are dark with dirt only disturbed
by fresh accretions; the flights of steps leading up to the front
doors, under their foul porches, are worn, broken, and greasy; the
doors and windows in the reeking basements have been smashed up in
nearly every case for firewood. Here and there a rod is missing from
the iron railings--it has been twisted out and used as a weapon.
In these streets on a summer evening you find the flight of steps
occupied by the lodgers, and the pavements and road-ways swarming
with their children. The men are thieves, begging-letter writers,
pickpockets, bookmakers' touts, totters (rag and bone men), and
trouncers (men paid by costermongers to shout their wares), and
bullies. The women add to their common degradation--which may be
imagined--the art of the pickpocket, the beggar, the shoplifter,
and the bully....
If you could see these bareheaded women, with their hanging hair,
their ferocious eyes, their brutal mouths; if you could see them
there, half dressed, and that in a draggle-tailed slovenliness
incomparably horrible; and if you could hear their appalling
language loading their hoarse voices, and from their phrases
receive into your mind some impression of their modes of thought,
you would say that human nature in the earliest and most barbarous
of its evolutionary changes had never, could never, have been like
this.
Concerning the men, one thing only need be said.... There was
cunning in their faces, there was every expression of ... underhand
craft, but they looked and lowered their eyes.... They seemed to me
'consciously wrong, inferior, and unhappy.'
But more than by anything concerning the men and women of this
neighbourhood, one is impressed by the swarm of dreggy children
playing their poor little pavement games in the shadow of these
lodging-houses. Some--can it be believed?--are decently clothed
and look as if they are sometimes washed.... The mass of these
children, above five or six years of age, are terribly neglected.
I have never seen children more dirty, more foully clothed, more
dejected looking.... I saw many children with sores and boils; I
saw some children whose eyes looked out at me from a face that was
nothing but a scab.
A mortuary chapel has had to be built for this neighbourhood. The
rooms of the houses are so crowded that directly a person dies the
body must be moved.