STRANGE STORIES OF REAL LIFE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 209, 5 April 1913, Page 10

STRANGE STORIES OF REAL LIFE

REMIXISCEXCES AT GENERAL .HOOTII.'S TEA PARTY.

Jt was a striking array of guests that sat down to tea in the Salvation Army Congress Hall at Clapton. There were 1,200 of them, they were from the various Army "elevators," and they were the guests of General Bramwell Booth. After those present gave their "testimonies," and strange enough some of them were. One speaker, a big. stronglooking man of middle age. named Power, who wore the red jersey of the Army under his grey jacket, said he had been in Australia, singing in grand opera, and with the Moore and Burgess Minstrels. Last year he accepted a. pantomime engagement in Edinburgh. He had been a hard drinker, but never a drunkard, and, when fulfilling an engagement in Birmingham, he had made a friend of the staff-captain there. They corresponded, and on his last night in Edinburgh, lie wrote two letters—one to the sfall'-captain. and the other to a partner with whom he had arranged to produce a sketch in Edinburgh. He walked about the whole of a Sunday with the two letters in his pocket, undecided which to post. His fate depended upon the letter he \ osted, and he thanked God that he posed tie letter to Staff-Captain Smith, of Virminghani. and not his partner ; n London

"Twenty years ago a yonmr h'.-l ent'r-." the' public library at Whi'dcdon t.'i consult the newspapers in <ei/ )i of a si!i;afion." said another man. 'lie \vs verv hungry, and when a s.m-v <vitni! 1 onened a door of the liirrVn'house to shake the tablecloth, ti > voua:.' fillov Felt that he would like «om > of the crumbs that fell from the cloth. "Afterwards he became convei'.'d. and he is now adjutant in chare" nf -i Salvation Army shelter at Manchester. Some rears ago. a dissolute, broken down, hnncrrv man was in that shelter. That man'led hcen the librarian of tielibrary in which the vonnir fellow, iiow a Salvation Vrmv ■ulinHnt h-id s-nvli->.i fur a and that librarian was m>-se!f." Others followed. ineindi""- ~ ,_,-,■"'•- h'.lrerl old man vhn sebl ('.•.( hj" 1.-l run through £35,000 left him liv his father, "but," he added, without a trace of reo-Tct in his voice, "the devil soon »n1 hold of it."