The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-03-27
na Iss BOOTH will see you at Il

M o'clock in her private apart
 ments" My card was sent in to her at that hour and she received me a few moments later. The door of her apartment was opened and she was stand ing just inside. She looked even taller, more exquisitely slender. more graceful than on the stage She wore the blue gown of the Salvation Army woman
 "Come in," she said cordially, in her English voice. and the next moment we were sitting near the big window, the sunlight streaming in and not sound from the street below.
 The very moment that you look into her eyes you realize what she meant when she said: "I am soldier by blood" I like to be on the firing line! I want to stand where the shot is thickest; l am a soldier by bloodH is what she said over and over again, in one of her pub lie addresses. She does not need to say it when you are talking with her. Her whole face expresses it. It is the fire of lJeanne D'Arc. It is the courage of Mad anne Roland. It is the dream of Sir Gala had. Tremendous strength, sensitIevness to the point of acute suffering, feeling, tenderness, sorrow, a face that is ex- quisite in contour, a face that an ar tist would paint as a face of dreams
 It is the soldiers blood, the fighting Instinct that has kept Miss Booth from bing a dreamer. It is easy to see how a woman of such feeling, so exqustely sensitive, poetical in her fancies fragile, tenderly reared, could have spent her life in dreams. Miss Booth has the ar hstie temperament. This is expressed in her love for music. She is an accomplish ed harpist, and is devoted to music. She lhas the love of books. too, to a marked degree. She is a linguist and sings in both French and German. Her face her slenderness, her long, slim hands, all denote a remarkably artistic tempera- ment-a woman of dreams. What is 1t then that makes her want to be on the firing dine that has lifted her into the world of action, that is still forcing her on?
 After you talk with Miss Booth about her early life in London you wonder how this frail sensitive little English girl began her work in the slums. She told me something of her home life, which was quite like that of any well bred English girl She was reared accord ing to the strictest English standards, wore little pinnafores and possibly had a bread and butter diet and did not know that there was such a thing as sin in the world. But even as a child she was sensitive to the sufferings of others Cruelty to children and animals, the lit tie cruelties that other people possibly overlooked, made her suffer. Her brows contract now when she speaks of cruel ties that she first saw on the street of London.
 As she grew older she learned to know something of the slums. She began to be interested in the awful conditions that existed in the White Chapel district. In her public addresses she has told of her early work, how she clothed her. self in rags and lived among London's most vicious classes. When she tells you of those early days her brown eyes grow more luminous. When she recalls the days when she stood on the street cor ners and sold flowers, when disguised as d singing girl, she went through the most dangerous places of London, her eyes grow darker with feeling. They are eyes that hold memories. They have seen things that she cannot put in words. Her deepest experiences cannot be told, but she will give you if you ask her some few flashes into that dark London through which she wandered
 She will tell you of some of the suf- fering. of some of the sin. of the hope less poverty. of the vieiousness. and she will tell you of the London riots, those of Torquay, Whitechurch, Eastoourne' and Ryde She will tell you of such depths of woe such awful scenes, such sadness, such speetaeles of utter help lessness. of starving babies, left to die in I.ondons attics of places into which she wandered with her flowers, her smiles, her words of cheer, until you feel un- worthy to even hear her and wonder how you have dared to live luXuriously when there is so much suffering in the world.
 But it is not of her own work alone that Miss Booth will tell you, although you may insist upon her talking about herself. and attempt 10 always bring the conversation back to her individually. 1t is the Salvation Army that she loves to dwell upon, It's work, its influence.
 By working among the lower classes, % Miss Booth said, we have now reached the higher The work of the Salvation Army is now receiving the recognition that should have come at the beginning. n- H. .,a,,ovo1 1o,a rt,.,aOtg naptfo,,Ia