The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men"Carpenter, Minnie Lindsay Rowell
Religion
The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men"
Carpenter, Minnie Lindsay Rowell
Lee, Kate; Salvation Army
Many a girl, having received such help is saved to-day, doing well in a
situation, or happily married. Should one be having an unhappy time at
home, the Adjutant visited her people. Sometimes she discovered hardness
of heart and cruelty wrecking the young life; sometimes fault on both
sides. Then she acted as mediator and healer of the breach. She taught
the girls to make and mend their clothes; when ill, she got them to a
hospital. Always she made them feel she loved them and believed for them
to be good. Her work amongst these girls would not have been unworthy of
a sole responsibility, but it was one of her least noticed efforts at
that corps.
Says a soldier saved from terrible sin:--
She was just like a mother. I would go and ask her advice when I had
done anything wrong. She never scolded me, but would look serious
and say, 'Well, you know you ought not to have done that.' And
somehow, in a minute, I could see what I ought to have done, and
would promise to try to do better. How could you help getting on
when all the while she was smiling on you, giving you some work to
do, and believing you to be good.
Her mothering love for souls sharpened her really wonderful faculty for
remembering faces. Years after she had left a corps, if she met a comrade
or friend, her face would light with recognition, and she would greet the
person by name. The pleasure this afforded is mentioned all over the
country.
Motherlike, she could not bear to feel that at night the door was shut
upon any wandering child, and her sergeant-majors tell, 'No poor fellow
who came to the penitent-form went without a bed. She kept bed tickets
for emergencies. She might give away a good number to people who did not
deserve help, but she would rather do that than fail one who did.'
'It's because of all she taught me, and the nice way she taught me, that
I have been able to take such good places,' says a little maid, with
quivering lips and shining eyes.
One motherless girl followed her from corps to corps for years, taking a
situation in the town where she was stationed so that she might catch her
smile now and again, and hear a few words of mother love. Married
women's eyes fill with tears as they recall her tenderness in sorrow and
her wisdom in difficulties. How she took a poor little widow, distracted
by sudden bereavement, and nursed and soothed her. How 'she stayed up
all night with me when my sister died.' How 'she buried my mother and was
so kind I can never forget her.' How 'she helped me to nurse sonny, when
no one else dared come near.'
Women old enough to be her mother felt the pleasure of childhood when the
Adjutant, revisiting an old corps and finding them doing the same
faithful work as during her term, would beam upon them and remark,' Still
at it, you dears!'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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