RAISING THE FALLEN.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 811, 7 May 1910, Page 12

RAISING THE FALLEN.

A WOMAN'S WORK. Mrs. Blamires, who is helping her husband, the Eev.E. 0. Blamires, at the Central Mission, has bean working for tho last two years m connection with the Helping Hand Mission at Dunediu.. lhere she saw eomo of the saddest sights that the slums of any of our cihes.haveto show, and went through scones in which many a strong man would have had to summon up all his courage. She can toll, out of the stones of her experience a7a mission worker, tales of wrecked homes, and blighted lives, and of the wonderful transformations that have taken place in-many such cases. Some ot tho incidents which she related to a Dominion reporter were so sad and so terrible-concerned, too, as they generally were, with men and women who are.still living, and in many instances leading better lives-that they can hardly lx.set down in newspaper print. She told or weary women in squalid tenements and of the new hope that came into heir lives, so that tkoy no longer lot; th.ngs drift. She has, among other graces, the grace of humour, and'she says that it the had not been able to .see tho ludicrous 7M of situations which often had much of the squalid and distressing about them, she could hardly have done the work she did. . . . ,_, Tho little mission hall in Bath btrect was an unpretentious, but a very busy, place.--Sister Annie, as Mrs. Blamires waf always called' there, often found that a woman could get a hearaw when a man could not. On evenings men's meetings of a rather .informal character were held in the Mission HaU, and sometimes 25 per cents, of the men who oame had obviously paid previous visit* to a hotel bar. On.one such occasion, two men were.engaging in a friendly wrestling bout, when'some others coning in? with their percephve faculties n<H rTerhaps in the best working order, thought it was a real fight, and interfered Very, soon there began .to be real trouble. *Btste7Ahnio 'exerted .herself to .^ctrcumstan^^ulf^vetout wve them a recitation-the longest and fnost Poetic she knew. They listened very quietly, and one at least, as. she afterwards heard, went off to drag a niato from a'public-house.bar, saying, Conio along out of this! I'mjw?S I to .V lt That Sister at Bath Street has bowled "shewa's often struck by the tremondous earnestness of tho struggles of men to

conquer the habit of drunkenness. There wore 6ad evidences of drinking among women, but she found that was not carried-, on to anything liko tho same extent as in the London slums. _ After mission work in London, Leicester, and other English cities Mrs. Blamiros thought hersolf prepared for the worst that could be seen in Now Zealand (which, by fhe way, is her native country), but she was appalled by the amount of drunkenness among youths from 10 to 'U years of age. . They sometimes came to the mission hall in a. helpless condition, quite ill from tho effects of liquor, which she could not but suspect was impure, iii her efforts to keep them from the drink, she had even followed them into the bars. So far as she has observed, Mrs. Blamires, who has been in Wellington three weeks, thought_ there was more drinking among womon in this city than in Dunedin, but that particular evil was far more prevalent in the Old Country than anywhere in New Zealand. Mrs. Blamires will speak at the meeting in the King's Theatre next Sunday evening in connection with the Central Mission.