family, and always concerned with questions that touch upon the
innermost shrine of our life, I necessarily became the recipient of many
hidden sorrows. In fact, my fellow-creatures used me as a bottomless
well into which they could empty their household skeletons; and I used
often to reflect with sardonic satisfaction that I should never run dry
like other old wells, but that death would come and fill me up with a
good wholesome shovelful of earth, and I and my skeletons would lie
quiet together. But in this way I gained a knowledge of what is going on
under the surface of our life, whether we choose to ignore it or not,
which possibly can only come to those who are set apart to be
confessors of their kind; and the conclusion was forced upon me that
this evil, in one form or another, is more or less everywhere--in our
nurseries, in our public, and still more our private, schools,
decorously seated on magisterial benches, fouling our places of
business, and even sanctimoniously seated in our places of worship.

After the first two years of work among women I found that it was
absolutely hopeless attacking the evil from one side only, and I had to
nerve myself as best I could to address large mass meetings of men,
always taking care clearly to define my position--that I had not come
upon that platform to help them, but to ask them to help me in a battle
that I had found too hard for me, and that I stood before them as a
woman pleading for women. The first of these meetings I addressed at the
instance of the late revered Bishop of Durham, Dr. Lightfoot, who took
the chair, and inaugurated the White Cross Movement, which has since
spread over the civilized world. And throughout this most difficult side
of my work I had his priceless co-operation and approval; besides the
wise counsel, guidance, and unfailing sympathy of one whom but to name
is to awake the deepest springs of reverence, Dr. Wilkinson, then the
incumbent of St. Peter's, Eaton Square, afterwards Bishop of Truro, and
now Bishop of St. Andrews. But so great was the effort that it cost me,
that I do not think I could have done this part of my work but for my
two favorite mottoes--the one, that "I can't" is a lie in the lips that
repeat, "I believe in the Holy Ghost"; the other, received from the lips
of Bishop Selwyn, that "If as soldiers of the Cross we stick at
anything, we are disgraced forever."

But lastly, and perhaps best of all, as giving weight to any