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
One of the Adjutant's special visitations was to the police station on
Saturday night. Her friends the police were glad to see her, and
willingly allowed her to interview the detained prisoners, with whom she
prayed and left a copy of 'The War Cry,' for Sunday's reading. At least
one soul was led to God by this means.
'When she got her sleep, I do not know,' says a faithful armour-bearer at
one corps.
From her various corps come stories of her sick visiting. Here, a child
at the gates of death; there a bedridden old man, whose room she tidied
and breakfast she prepared. Again, a drunken woman, whose body she nursed
to health, while she brought her soul to the Great Physician. An outside
friend tells that once entering a barber's shop he found the topic of
conversation to be The Salvation Army, which was coming in for a
drubbing. 'Wait a minute,' broke in a rough workman; 'You don't say a
word against The Salvation Army while I'm about. This Adjutant Lee is a
dear soul. We were in an awful hole at our place. Missis and the
youngsters all ill at the same time, and this Adjutant heard about us;
didn't know a thing of us except we were in need, and she came in and
nursed them all well.'
For her soldiers who were in health, spiritually and physically, the
Adjutant had little time to spare; none for tea-drinking and social
calls. She expected her soldiers to practise self-denial as she did. One
soldier, feeling rather deprived on this account said, 'Must I go on the
booze to get a little of your attention?' Searching her face carefully,
the Adjutant replied, 'You are all right, my dear; you must spare me for
those who need me.'
She expected to be guided to souls who needed help, and was, as the
following incident shows.
Two local officers moved, with their family, from a distant corps to
London where they had undertaken heavy business responsibilities. The
wife was tired and anxious, and felt that now they had slipped out of a
corps where they had seemed indispensable, it would be better for them to
remain undiscovered. She had, in fact, decided to withdraw from the
fight. When visiting, the Adjutant stumbled upon them, muddled and tired,
as they sat amongst their packing cases. Her radiant face and gracious
spirit soon drew out of the little woman the confession she had meant to
hide. 'When I came in,' says the husband, 'there was the Adjutant sitting
on one of the boxes chatting so happily, she had mother feeling she was
needed as much as ever, and simply _must_ be in the fight. She came
just at the right moment, and we have never looked back again; that is
more than ten years ago.'
The Adjutant, in order to get about quickly, used a bicycle. One of her
local officers says, 'She almost lived on her wheel, and when she heard
of the motor attachment she wrote and asked me to inquire about one for
her so that she might go faster.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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