There was plenty of laughter and fun in that home. The Booth children were all born with the dramatic instinct, and the spirit of the Christian Mission invaded the nursery. Not only were the great dramas of the Bible—Joseph and his brothers, David and Goliath, Daniel and the lions, and a score of others—enacted there, but the meeting and the penitent form, the drunkard and the backslider, the hopeful and the desperate case were all reproduced in the plays of the children. Katie and Emma brought their babies to the meeting, and the babies generally insisted on crying, to the despair of Bramwell or Ballington, who stopped preaching to give the stern order, "Take the babies out of the theatre," against which the mothers indignantly protested, "Papa would not have stopped, papa would have gone on preaching anyhow." But the dramatic masterpiece was Ballington dealing with an interesting case—generally a pillow—coaxing, dragging, banging the poor reluctant penitent to the mercy-seat and exclaiming, "Ah! this is a good case, bless him! ... Give up the drink, brother." That is a scene which is still sometimes re-enacted to the delight of new generations. Jesus Himself watched the games of the children who piped and mourned in the market-place. Life is none the less strenuous for its interludes of mirth. Catherine, who was dramatic to the finger-tips, was very early mastered by a sense of the sacredness of duty. The moral ideal set before her was the highest, and her conscience was tremulously sensitive. She was oppressed with the sense of what ought to be, and inconsolable when she failed to attain it. A word of rebuke cut her like a knife, and she would sometimes weep far into the night if she thought she had put pleasure before duty. It is a great thing to make religion real to children, and especially to give them a sense of the obligation to please Christ in everything. Mrs. Booth found Katie ready to go all lengths with her, and even to outrun her, in her ideas of what was right and what was wrong for Christians. It is amusing to hear that when the mother was going out one day to buy new frocks for her little girls, Katie’s words to her were not "Do buy us something pretty!" but "Mind you get something Christian!" and that when Mrs. Booth came home with her purchases, and Katie rushed downstairs to meet her, the child’s first inquiry was, "Are they Christian?"