As in those days St. Francis of Assissi and the heroic band of saints who gathered under his orders were wont to go and lodge with the lepers at the city gates, so the devoted souls who have enlisted in the Salvation Army take up their quarters in the heart of the worst slums. But whereas the Friars were men, our Slum Brigade is composed of women. I have a hundred of them under my orders, young women for the most part, quartered all of them in outposts in the heart of the Devil's country. Most of them are the children of the poor who have known hardship from their youth up. Some are ladies born and bred, who have not been afraid to exchange the comfort of a West End drawing-room for service among the vilest of the vile, and a residence in small and fetid rooms whose walls were infested with vermin. They live the life of the Crucified for the sake of the men and women for whom He lived and died. They form one of the branches of the activity of the Army upon which I dwell with deepest sympathy. They are at the front; they are at close quarters with the enemy. To the dwellers in decent homes who occupy cushioned pews in fashionable churches there is something strange and quaint in the language they hear read from the Bible, language which habitually refers to the Devil as an actual personality, and to the struggle against sin and uncleanness as if it were a hand to hand death wrestle with the legions of Hell. To our little sisters who dwell in an atmosphere heavy with curses, among people sodden with drink, in quarters where sin and uncleanness are universal, all these Biblical sayings are as real as the quotations of yesterday's price of Consols are to a City man. They dwell in the midst of Hell, and in their daily warfare with a hundred devils it seems incredible to them that anyone can doubt the existence of either one or the other. The Slum Sister is what her name implies, the Sister of the Slum. They go forth in Apostolic fashion, two-and-two living in a couple of the same kind of dens or rooms as are occupied by the people themselves, differing only in the cleanliness and order, and the few articles of furniture which they contain. Here they live all the year round, visiting the sick, looking after the children, showing the women how to keep themselves and their homes decent, often discharging the sick mother's duties themselves; cultivating peace, advocating temperance, counselling in temporalities, and ceaselessly preaching the religion of Jesus Christ to the Outcasts of Society. I do not like to speak of their work. Words fail me, and what I say is so unworthy the theme. I prefer to quote two descriptions by Journalists who have seen these girls at work in the field. The first is taken from a long article which Julia Hayes Percy contributed to the New York World, describing a visit paid by her to the slum quarters of the Salvation Army in Cherry Hill Alleys, in the Whitechapel of New York.