tion to decency and self-respect is well
worth the cost and labour of the mission. The Officers told me that
they meet with but little success in the case of those women who are
in their bloom and earning great incomes. It can scarcely be
otherwise, for what has the Army to offer them in place of their
gaudy, glittering life of luxury and excitement?

The way of transgressors is hard, but the way of repentance is harder;
at any rate, while the transgressor is doing well. On the one hand
jewels and champagne, furs and motors, and on the other prayers that
talk of death and judgment, plain garments made by the wearer's
labour, and at the end the drudgery of earning an honest livelihood,
perhaps as a servant. Human nature being what it is, it seems scarcely
wonderful that these children of pleasure cling to the path of 'roses'
and turn from that of 'thorns.'

With those that are growing old and find themselves broken in body and
in spirit, who are thrust aside in the fierce competition of their
trade in favour of younger rivals; those who find the wine in their
tinsel cup turning, or turned, to gall, the case is different. They
are sometimes, not always, glad to creep to such shelter from the
storms of life as the Army can offer, and there work out their moral
and physical salvation. For what bitterness is there like to that
which must be endured by the poor, broken woman of the streets, as
scorned, spat on, thrust aside, she sinks from depth to depth into the
last depth of all, striving to drown her miseries with drugs or drink,
if so she may win forgetfulness even for an hour?

Sometimes, too, these patient toilers in the deep of midnight sin
succeed in dragging from the brink those that have but dipped their
feet in its dark waters. _Nemo repente fuit turpissimus_--no one
becomes altogether filthy in an hour--runs the old Roman saying, which
is as true to-day as it was 2,000 years ago, and whether it be spoken
of body or of soul, it is easier to wash the feet than the whole
being. When they understand what lies before them certain of the young
shrink back and grasp Mercy's outstretched arms.

One night about twelve o'clock, together with Lieut.-Colonel Jolliffe,
an Officer of the Army who was dressed in plain clothes, I accompanied
the Major and the lady who is her colleague, to Leicester Square and
its neighbourhood, and there watched their methods of work, following
them at a little distance. Dressed in their unif