way from their secular calling to
become our Officers, I will only say here that we judge of their fitness
not alone by their ability to speak, but by their having proved
themselves to be so devoted to the poor that we can rely upon their
readiness to act as servants of the very neediest in any way that lies
within their power. Only two persons at each of our Stations, the
Officers actually in command, receive any payment whatever from The
Army. All the others associated with us, many of them wearing our
uniform and holding some particular office, give freely their
leisure-time and money to the work, and may be spoken of as "lay
preachers."

Our young "local preacher" generally spent his Sundays in some distant
village where he had been appointed to preach, just as is the case in
these days with thousands of our Soldiers.

"My homeward walk, often alone through the dark, muddy fields and
lanes," he tells us, "would be enlivened by snatches of the songs
we had been singing in our Meetings, and late into the night people
might have heard my solitary prayers and praises. 'Don't sit up
singing till twelve o'clock after a hard day's work,' was one of
the first needed pieces of practical advice I got from my best
adviser of later years."

"But we never felt we could have too much of God's service and
praise, and scarcely regarded the grave itself as a terminus for
our usefulness; for in the case of a girl who had attended our
Cottage Meetings, and who had died of consumption, we lads
organised something very like one of our present-day Salvation Army
Funerals.

"Having ministered to the poor girl's necessities during her
sickness, comforted her in her last hours of pain, sung hymns of
triumph round her bed as her spirit took its passage to the skies,
we had the right, as her only friends, to order her funeral, and we
resolved to make the most of it for the good of her neighbours.

"Although it was in the depth of winter, and snow lay thick on the
ground, we brought the coffin out into the street, sang and prayed
around it, and urged the few neighbours who stood shivering by, or
listening at their doors and windows, to prepare for their dying
day. We then processioned to the Cholera Burial Ground, as the
cemetery in which the poorest of Nottingham were buried was called,
obtaining permission from t