Catherine Booth the elder, the Mother of the Army, was already in her thirty-second year when she wrote her famous brochure upon _Female Ministry_, and, not without fear and trembling, delivered her first evangelistic address in the Bethesda Chapel at Gateshead-on-Tyne, where her husband was minister. Little Catherine, who had been baptised in that chapel, was in her second year when her mother began public speaking, and in her seventh when her father found his destiny. Probably no child ever had greater privileges than she enjoyed. Her earthly home was a house of God and a gate of heaven; and from the first she seemed to respond to all that was highest and best in her environment. She was one of those happy souls who have no memory of their conversion, who cannot recall a time when they did not heartily love the Lord Jesus Christ. Her father was the centre of all her childish thoughts and most vivid recollections, and nothing could ever really dislodge him from the first place in her affections. An interesting page from her earliest memories may be reproduced. When she was three or four years old, her father was a Wesleyan Pastor in Cornwall, where his ministry led to a revival in which hundreds of souls found salvation. One night Katie was taken by her nurse to the meeting, and, on arrival, found herself before a flight of steps leading up to the gallery. Thinking herself quite a big girl, she wished to climb, but nurse, fearing the crowd, snatched her up and carried her to the top. At length they were inside, and what the child then saw and heard remained for ever vividly impressed on her imagination. The great building was crammed. Away down on the platform stood her father, with her mother sitting beside him. He was leading the singing, keeping time with his folded umbrella, and this was the chorus: Let the winds blow high, or the winds blow low, It’s a pleasant sail to Canaan, hallelujah! How well did the eager-hearted little maid enjoy that voyage, and how proud she was of her captain! The winds blew low and the sun shone upon her in those days. But it could not always be fair weather. Often since that far-off Cornish time have the winds blown high, and sometimes the mariner has felt herself tossed, chartless and rudderless, on dark tempestuous seas; but ever the winds have fallen, the sun has shone out again over the waves; and to how many tens of thousands has this daughter of music sung, with sweet variations, her father’s song—"It’s a pleasant sail to Canaan, hallelujah!"