Never shall I forget the sea of upturned faces, many of them so plainly bearing the marring imprint of sorrow and sin--despair and misery,--yet behind the scars and shadows there was such an eager longing,--such a hungry appeal for a sight of the gleam of Hope's bright star, that one could but feel an intense inspiration while delivering the message. Never before had I seen the stripes,--never heard the clang behind me of the iron gates, nor had I realized the hopelessness that enshrouds the prisoner. It seemed almost an impertinence for me, coming as I did from a happy sunlit world, from freedom, friends and home, to undertake to preach to these into whose lives I had only just entered and whose thought and feeling I could so poorly interpret. Is it a wonder that tears rose more readily to my eyes than words to my lips, and that it was hard for me to control either thoughts or voice? I did not attempt to preach. Undoubtedly their consciences in many a dark lonely hour had preached far more pointedly than I could. As far as possible I tried in that brief hour to carry them away from prison. I felt it would help them if I could make them forget where they were, whereas the emphasizing of their position and condition might only prove embittering. Stories I had gathered from the great fragrant book of nature, or that had come to me from baby lips, I realized would touch their hearts more swiftly than the most forcible arguments or convincing condemnations. The response I read in those upturned faces--the grateful words that reached me afterwards through the mail and the constant memory of that scene as I witnessed it lasted with me deepening into a determination to make their cause mine when the opportunity should offer. At that time my husband and I were leaders of the movement known as the Salvation Army. It would have been impossible to start prison work under the hampering influence of regulations which governed that movement from a foreign land. When our connection with the Salvation Army was finally severed, we found ourselves free to enter new fields. I wish to make it very clear, as many are often misled, _that our movement has nothing to do with the Salvation Army, is in no way connected with it, and is absolutely dissimilar in method and government_. This distinction I venture to emphasize in order to avoid a confusion that has frequently occurred in the past. I wish to go no further into this subject save to say, that when we severed our connection with the Salvation Army, it was not the action of impulse or of disagreement with individuals, but from conscientious principles and after much anxious thought and earnest prayer. It was not easy to begin over again and build up a new movement. Starting in two small rooms in the Bible House, with half-a-dozen workers to help us, and absolutely no capital or source of income for the work that opened out before us, the Volunteers had many difficulties to face.