In Darkest England and The Way Out [92]
He will help you to master your wicked habits and your love of drink. But come to Him now. God is love. He loves me. He loves you. He loves us all. He wants to save us all."
Clear and strong the voice, eloquent with the fervour of intense feeling, rang through the little crowd, past which streamed the ever-flowing tide of East End life. And at the same time that I heard this pure and passionate invocation to love God and be true to man I heard a voice on the outskirts, and it said this: "You ---- swine! I'll knock the vitals out of yer. None of your ---- impudence to me. ---- your ---- eyes, what do you mean by telling me that? You know what you ha' done, and now you are going to the Salvation Army. I'll let them know you, you dirty rascal." The man shifted his pipe. "What's the matter?" "Matter!" screamed the virago hoarsely." ---- yer life, don't you know what's the matter? I'll matter ye, you ---- hound. By God! I will, as sure as I'm alive. Matter! you know what's the matter." And so she went on, the men standing silently smoking until at last she took herself off her mouth full of oaths and cursing, to the public-house. It seemed as though the presence, and spirit, and words of the Officer, who still went on with the message of mercy, had some strange effect upon them, which made these poor wretches impervious to the taunting, bitter sarcasms of this brazen, blatant virago.
"God is love." Was it not, then, the accents of God's voice that sounded there above the din of the street and the swearing of the slums? Yea, verily, and that voice ceases not and will not cease, so long as the Slum Sisters fight under the banner of the Salvation Army.
To form an idea of the immense amount of good, temporal and spiritual, which the Slum Sister is doing; you need to follow them into the kennels where they live, preaching the Gospel with the mop and the scrubbing brush, and driving out the devil with soap and water. In one of our Slum posts, where the Officer's rooms were on the ground floor, about fourteen other families lived in the same house. One little water-closet in the back yard had to do service for the whole place. As for the dirt, one Officer writes, "It is impossible to scrub the Homes; some of them are in such a filthy condition. When they have a fire the ashes are left to accumulate for days. The table is very seldom, if ever, properly cleaned, dirty cups and saucers lie about it, together with bits of bread, and if they have bloaters the bones and heads are left on the table, Sometimes there are pieces of onions mixed up with the rest. The floors are in a very much worse condition than the street pavements, and when they are supposed to clean them they do it with about a pint of dirty water. When they wash, which is rarely, for washing to them seems an unnecessary work, they do it in a quart or two of water, and sometimes boil the things in some old saucepan in which they cook their food. They do this simply because they have no larger vessel to wash in. The vermin fall off the walls and ceiling on you while you are standing in the rooms. Some of the walls are covered with marks where they have killed them. Many people in the summer sit on the door steps all night, the reason for this being, that their rooms are so close from the heat and so unendurable from the vermin that they prefer staying out in the cool night air. But as they cannot stay anywhere long without drinking, they send for beer from the neighbouring public--alas! never far away --and pass it from one doorway to another, the result being singing, shouting and fighting up till three and four o'clock in the morning."
I could fill volumes with stories of the war against vermin, which is part of this campaign in the slums, but the subject is too revolting to those who are often indifferent to the agonies their fellow creatures suffer, so long as their sensitive ears are not shocked by the mention of so painful a subject. Here, for instance, is a sample of the kind of region in which the Slum Sisters spend themselves:
Clear and strong the voice, eloquent with the fervour of intense feeling, rang through the little crowd, past which streamed the ever-flowing tide of East End life. And at the same time that I heard this pure and passionate invocation to love God and be true to man I heard a voice on the outskirts, and it said this: "You ---- swine! I'll knock the vitals out of yer. None of your ---- impudence to me. ---- your ---- eyes, what do you mean by telling me that? You know what you ha' done, and now you are going to the Salvation Army. I'll let them know you, you dirty rascal." The man shifted his pipe. "What's the matter?" "Matter!" screamed the virago hoarsely." ---- yer life, don't you know what's the matter? I'll matter ye, you ---- hound. By God! I will, as sure as I'm alive. Matter! you know what's the matter." And so she went on, the men standing silently smoking until at last she took herself off her mouth full of oaths and cursing, to the public-house. It seemed as though the presence, and spirit, and words of the Officer, who still went on with the message of mercy, had some strange effect upon them, which made these poor wretches impervious to the taunting, bitter sarcasms of this brazen, blatant virago.
"God is love." Was it not, then, the accents of God's voice that sounded there above the din of the street and the swearing of the slums? Yea, verily, and that voice ceases not and will not cease, so long as the Slum Sisters fight under the banner of the Salvation Army.
To form an idea of the immense amount of good, temporal and spiritual, which the Slum Sister is doing; you need to follow them into the kennels where they live, preaching the Gospel with the mop and the scrubbing brush, and driving out the devil with soap and water. In one of our Slum posts, where the Officer's rooms were on the ground floor, about fourteen other families lived in the same house. One little water-closet in the back yard had to do service for the whole place. As for the dirt, one Officer writes, "It is impossible to scrub the Homes; some of them are in such a filthy condition. When they have a fire the ashes are left to accumulate for days. The table is very seldom, if ever, properly cleaned, dirty cups and saucers lie about it, together with bits of bread, and if they have bloaters the bones and heads are left on the table, Sometimes there are pieces of onions mixed up with the rest. The floors are in a very much worse condition than the street pavements, and when they are supposed to clean them they do it with about a pint of dirty water. When they wash, which is rarely, for washing to them seems an unnecessary work, they do it in a quart or two of water, and sometimes boil the things in some old saucepan in which they cook their food. They do this simply because they have no larger vessel to wash in. The vermin fall off the walls and ceiling on you while you are standing in the rooms. Some of the walls are covered with marks where they have killed them. Many people in the summer sit on the door steps all night, the reason for this being, that their rooms are so close from the heat and so unendurable from the vermin that they prefer staying out in the cool night air. But as they cannot stay anywhere long without drinking, they send for beer from the neighbouring public--alas! never far away --and pass it from one doorway to another, the result being singing, shouting and fighting up till three and four o'clock in the morning."
I could fill volumes with stories of the war against vermin, which is part of this campaign in the slums, but the subject is too revolting to those who are often indifferent to the agonies their fellow creatures suffer, so long as their sensitive ears are not shocked by the mention of so painful a subject. Here, for instance, is a sample of the kind of region in which the Slum Sisters spend themselves: