The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-03-26
GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH.

debarred from entering college, he kept
on undismayed, fighting for souls in
the slums
When he was twenty years old he
had a chance for employment at better
wages in London and moved thither
| Without delay he plunged into reli-
gious work in the great city, preaching
in local pulpits, in the streets or wher-
ever he could find an audience. He
must have had even then an extraor-
binary power of oratory, for almost at
once he made an impression and soon
came to be marked man.
While thus employed coincidental
fate, or, as he would say, Providence,
led him to the second great inspira-
ton of his life. One Sunday he was
invited to supply the pulpit of small
chapel in Chaplain. In the audience
was a young woman named Gather
inc Mumford. She thought William
Booths sermon the finest effort of the
kind she had ever heard. She said so
some time afterward to a man who
knew Booth. Later William Booth
and Catherine Mumford met at this
mans house, fell in love with each
other and after some years of court
ship were married. There could not be
imagined a happier union. Mrs. Booth
was in all ways as extraordinary as
exactly. She was of his faith; she had
all his fervor concerning the saving
of souls; she, too, believed that nothing
else in life was of any Importance, and
hand in hand the two consecrated
themselves wholly to that work. Until
her death, in 1890, an event that called
forth such tributes as few women have
ever had, Catherine Booth labored in
what she felt to be the highest cause,
Ill
paigns, devising improved methods,
while she reared her children in her
own creed and cheered, sustained and
inspired her husband.
On May 20, 1858, William Booth was
ordained q minister of the Methodist
church. and for the next two and a
half years he Travelled through Eng
land as an evangelist, holding revival
meetings in many of the principal
cities. This was the work that he
loved and to which, by a solemn COW
enant with the conference, he was to
be assigned At the meeting of the
conference in 1861 the question arose
whether this compact should be kept
or whether William Booth should be
assigned to local pastorate. Booth
felt very deeply about the matter, and
so did his wife, their idea being that
their chief chance to save souls lay in
eVanS01ca1 laDOrS. Inc conference
split on the issue. A compromise was
suggested. Booth, like all other strong
and sincere men, did not believe in
compromises; to his mind man was
either right or wrong, and there was
nothing between Nevertheless this
compromise seemed to be much es-
teemed by the conference. 1t was put
to vote. 1t was about to carry when
a quiet, strong faced woman arose in
the gallery, lifted one hand above her
head and startled the sedate confer
ence with one word:
srNever!''
Then she turned and moved toward
the exit 1t was Catherine Booth At
the same instant her husband, on the
floor beneath, seized his hat and made
for the door. And so hand in hand
they went out of the church without
a charge, without employment and
without a dollar.
On the night of July 5, 1865, he be-
gan his real life work in an old tent,
pitched in daSartad burial ground ia