Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1894-11-02

onies should be men who have been sound
ly converted, and after the proper tests we
can send thcm to over sea colonies"
do you think the millennium will come
if all the world is converted to the Saliva
tion Army" asked mischievous reporter
1T would be very near at hand, and if
the newspaper men were converted it
would be long step in that direction, ="
said the general, with a twinkle in his
eye and no more questions We're asked.
General Booth is a tall and wiry man.
slightly stopped, with hair once very black
but now nearly all gray, with deep clear
grayish eyes and long and rather fleshy
nose and long gray beard He has decid-
ed air of command and the general APP
pearance of II natural organizer. And such
he certainly lis, for at the age of IS he sud
denly changed the plans and habits of a
lifetime and eXtemporized new and very
unique organization, which in less than
a score of years has spread all over the
civilized world, and, whatever may be
thought of its methods, is certainly one of
the great potencies of the age He has a
remarkable memory for details and figures
and can tell at a moments notice how far
be has travelled on his present tour, having
been in Canada four weeks before going
to New York, and how many addresses he
has delivered and at what places and the
average size of his audiences
Counting from the first movement in
the east of London in 1865, it is really 90
years since General Booth began his pecul-
lar sort of work, but the Salvation Army
proper is much younger The general was
reared in the Established church, but as
the result of IA peculiar religious expert
hpRnrnp a Il -t.t II,
no long time an exhorter. He studied dill
igently to fit himself for the ministry and
in due time became licensed preacher in
the New Connection, an oifshoot of the
Wesleyan church. In 1861 he quit the reg
ular ministry in order that he and his
wife might devote themselves entirely to
work among the very poor of London, and
1t is a question if the wife was not really
the originator of the Salvation Army. Its
members always spoke of her as its moth
er, and the remarkable proc edings at her
funeral few years ago attracted much at
tention. His son, Ballington Booth, and
the latter wife are equally active in the
work. Both the ladies had superior OPP
pOrtunities in their youth, and Mrs. Cath
crime Booth, wife of the general, was u
writer of great ability. Although tine
mother of eight children and very efficient
in training them, she preached often and
wrote many interesting works.
No matter what one may think of Gen
eral Booths scheme for retaining Lon
don 5 poorest, his writings thereon are we'll
worth reading merely as scintillatiOns of
an active and peculiar intellect. They are
thickset with sentences which remind one
of Ingersolls epigrams or Carlyle's con
densations. For Instance; A massod pop
ulation in the city outgrows its intelii
gence What we have to do, therefore, is
to grow a new nervous system for the
body polite, TO create a means Of swift
communication between the community
as whole and the meanest Of its IL IN
bers, so that the city may regain what Inv
village possesses.
1t is mistake to imagine that mon
object to be governed. They like to hc
governed, provided that the governor has
his head screwed on right and is ready lo
recognize what is vital TO the commun a.
All the departments Of the scheme will "t
governed not on the principle of counting
noses, but ON the principle of admitting
no noses that Will not be governed by thc
directing brain"
1t was late in 1887 that General and
Mrs Booth projected their first / Ian for
,
abandoned e, their very prucfical mines
realizing that a system of mere eiVia1
Fould not lie maintained, and that if II
could it would do more harm than gucd.
After much study they devised the three
fold plan of metropolis, " home colony and
colony over the sea. The first was TO give
immediate though temporary employment
IN the city. After IA sitting process there
the willing were to go TO a home colony,
and thence in due time to colony oven
the sea. The general in his " Darkest Eng
land" minated that onetenth of the en-
tire population is in extreme poverty, and
of that tenth about one third Is i'm the very
depths of misery and vice. This may be
an eXaggeration, but the reality is bad
enough. He says the difficulty has been
not with money, but with men. He necos-
sarily began on IA small scale, and the re-
suits so far are as stated in his interview