Our Army Mother's help was practical. She did not only give money or pity, but she--so to speak--rolled up her sleeves and helped the suffering herself. Every sort of suffering and need appealed to her. If an animal was wounded or in pain, she stopped, and herself relieved it as best she could; and to the last, if she saw a horse or any creature being ill-treated, she would not hesitate to rush out and stop the driver, or in some way force him to leave off his cruelty. She was not only kind and helpful to those she liked, but every living thing that suffered had a claim upon her, and the greater the need the more tender and ready was her help. Mrs. Booth was a people's woman, and she was never weary of scheming and planning how to help the poor in the most practical way. 'When I see people going wrong,' she said, when but a girl of twelve, 'I must tell the poor things how to manage.' Dirt and sin, and drink and misery, could not quench this love; it was a part of her very nature. Long, long before Slum Sisters were ever thought of, Mrs. Booth did their work herself, just because she so loved the poor, and longed to help them. You shall read the story in her own words:-- 'I remember in one case finding a poor woman lying on a heap of rags. She had just given birth to twins, and there was nobody of any sort to wait upon her. I can never forget the desolation of that room. By her side was a crust of bread and a small lump of lard. "I fancied a bit o' bootter (butter)," the woman remarked apologetically, noticing my eye fall upon the scanty meal, "and my mon, he'd do owt for me he could, bless'm--he couldna git me iny bootter, so he fitcht me this bit o' lard. Have _you_ iver tried lard isted o' bootter? It's _rare good_!" said the poor creature, making me wish I had taken lard for "bootter" all my life, that I might have been the better able to minister to her needs. However, I was soon busy trying to make her a little more comfortable. The babies I washed in a broken pie-dish, the nearest approach to a tub that I could find. And the gratitude of those large eyes, that gazed upon me from out of that wan and shrunken face, can never fade from my memory.' Before public Meetings took up so much of her time, she delighted in this house-to-house visiting, and went especially for the drunkards, over whom God gave her a wonderful power. 'I used to visit in the evenings,' she says, 'because it was the only part of the day in which I could get away; and, besides, I should not have found the men at home at any other time. I used to ask one drunkard's wife where another lived. They always knew. After getting hold of eight or ten in this way, and getting them to sign the pledge, I used to arrange Cottage Meetings for them, and try to get them saved. They used to let me talk to them in homes where there was not a stick of furniture, and nothing to sit down upon.'