But step by step the disease grew worse. First she was forced to give up Meetings and public work. Then it became impossible for her to use her right hand, and she was therefore obliged to give up her correspondence, though she still continued to dictate her letters, and learnt also to write with her left hand. Soon her daily drives became too tiring, and by and by she went out of the house into the little garden for the last time; and then for the concluding twelve months of her life she was a prisoner in her room, lying in constant suffering. But during these long months the greatest joy and relief that could come to her was to hear of some fresh victory or triumph for the Kingdom of Jesus. Her interest in The Army and her love for the people were as keen as ever, and War Councils were held and new developments planned in her chamber, and much of The General's Darkest England Scheme for the poor and outcast was thought out and decided upon beside her sick bed. Again and again, too, Mrs. Booth would receive deputations of Officers of different classes and from various countries in which The Army was at work, who came to Clacton-on-Sea, where the last fifteen months of her life were spent, to listen to her words of advice and inspiration. There were no Corps Cadets in those days; but our Army Mother left some specially beautiful words about the Juniors, to which I must refer. When she was told by the Officer then in charge of our Junior Work in England that the children loved and prayed continually for her, she smiled. 'The thought of the little ones,' says some one who was there, 'brought our beloved Army Mother wholly out of herself and her pain and weariness.' 'A very choice branch of the work,' she said. 'I have often told Emma that I hoped when I was too old for public work God would let me end where I began--with the children. But it seems that it is not to be so.' 'Give the children,' she went on, in reply to the messages they had sent, 'my dear love, and tell them that if there had been a Salvation Army when I was ten I should have been a Soldier then, as I am to-day. Never allow yourself to be discouraged in your work. I know you must meet with many discouragements; but I am sure the Spirit of God works mightily on little children long before grown people think they are able to understand.' Again and again during that last year of awful suffering it seemed as if Mrs. Booth were about to leave us; but then she would revive, and come back to endure more weeks and months of agony. But at last, on October 4, 1890, all could see that she was on the brink of the River, and even those who loved her the most tenderly could not wish to hold her back. 'O Emma, let me go, darling,' she whispered; and hearing the reply, 'Yes, we will, we will,' she said, 'Now! Yes, Lord, come, Oh, come!'