But long before writing this she had already claimed her boy for God and His war. 'I had from the first,' she says, 'definite longings over Bramwell, and lifted him up to God as soon as I had strength to do so, especially desiring he should be a teacher of Holiness.' These prayers began to be answered very early. The boy had a truthful and conscientious nature. Never, his mother says, does she remember his telling her a lie. But, for all that, he needed, as do all children, training and teaching, and Mrs. Booth was too wise not to be firm. She writes therefore: 'I believe he will be a thoroughly noble lad, if I can preserve him from all evil influence. The Lord help me! I have had to whip him twice lately severely for disobedience, and it has cost me some tears. But it has done him good, and I am reaping the reward already of my self-sacrifice. The Lord help me to be faithful and firm as a rock in the path of duty towards my children!' We know how practical our Army Mother always was; sentimental pity without help she despised. When her little son, therefore, saw and pitied a small boy with shoeless feet, his mother quickly reminded him of his little money-box. 'Would you rather keep the money for barley-sugar, Willie, or give it to the poor boy?' she asked. 'Give it to the boy,' he said at once, and so learnt his first lesson in self-denial. When the boy was seven years old he was converted, to his mother's deepest joy. Some time before she had talked to him in a Meeting, and urged him to get saved. The boy sat still and said nothing. 'Willie, I insist,' said his mother at last. 'You must answer me. Will you give your heart to God or not? Yes or no?' Willie looked up in her face steadily and answered back 'No.' Mrs. Booth said no more just then, but held on in faith and prayer, and some months later, to her unutterable thankfulness, she found him squeezed in among a number of other children at the penitent-form. He had, unasked, made his way there, and was weeping and confessing his sins with all his heart. Needless to say, he was faithfully dealt with, and the boy, now our beloved General, dates his conversion from that moment. A little later Mrs. Booth wrote of him:-- 'Willie has begun to serve God, of course as a child, but still, I trust, taught of the Spirit. I feel a great increase of responsibility with respect to him. Oh! to cherish the tender plant of grace aright. Lord help!' And as with the eldest so with the other seven. One by one they gave their hearts to the Lord as soon as they grew old enough to do so. 'She used to gather us round her,' says one of her daughters,' and pray with us. I wore then a low frock, and her hot tears would often drop upon my neck, sending a thrill through me which I can never forget.' She would pray again and again that she might lay them in their graves rather than she should see them grow up wicked. Mrs. Booth was very particular about the way in which her children were dressed.