HOW GENERAL BOOTH RAISES FUNDS. SALVATION ARMY ECONOMIES. A Week of Self-Denial.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 180, 27 November 1886, Page 5

HOW GENERAL BOOTH RAISES FUNDS. SALVATION ARMY ECONOMIES. A Week of Self-Denial.

• ■ «.' "•. ' *" .IknfooN, October 6. General Booth is forced to have recourse to strange methods at' 'times fa order te ,keep the financial wheels of the Salvation Army properly r greaaed. His latest invention for raising the wind takes the form of a "week of self.denial," that is to say, all members of the .Army were recently ordered to economise in some email way or other for a period of' seven days, and to pay in the proceeds of such economies to a, socalled " emergenoy fund." Tno quaintness of the notion just hit the taste of the Salvation lads and lasses, and well-nigh evory "soldier" 'denied himself either some u article of food or clothing, or come indulgonce for the period commanded. A contributor to tho " Daily Nevrs " obtained possession of a pile ot letters sent with contributions in response to this selfdenying ordinance, and very curious reading many of them peem to bo. He says :— The most vivid impression loft on the mind by a perusal of them is that the whole livea of the writers rruet be one prolonged act of self-denial .Evidently they have, most of them been anxiously lookiner round to see whore they can pare a little, and have been eorely pur, to ir, to say whore the pinch can be applied. Poverty, it ia true, ia not invariably the source of difficulty. One good lady was perplexed by the fact that during the week of denial she was the guest cf "dear Miss V., the very essence of kindness, and who, with a mother's, heart, had been taking cave of her in first class fashion." How to practice solf denial to any financial advantage was under such circumstances almost as difficult as in the case of another Salvationist, who pays ho solved the problem by selling his " lasc pair of trousers" and forwarding the amount. But the lady was equal to the occasion. A happy thought struck her. 'She summoned her hostess into her room and told her that in'-tea.d of meat and the chickens and nice things she had been hitherto enjoying, she would henceforth take cash. Chickens and nice things aro sometimes more accessible than ready cash, and there are households in which such a proposal might have been embarrassing Happily, it was not so in this case, and hostess and guest combined their savings for the week. If, however, Salvationists were often given to spnnu; little surprises of this kind on their entertainers it would certainly lend additional lustre to the virtue of hospitality. On the one hand we have one instance of a host managing to squeeze an odd half-crown out of his guest. "Dear General," writes this contributor to the fund whose contribution, oue cannuot help thinking, might possibly have been mora appropriately devoted " I can't deny myself anything, as I have to depend on what people give mo to ; but as I have a friend staying with me who has kept me for a fortnight, I am enabled to send you 2e.6d." Some ot the replies are in the nature of promises, and a few of them are very odd. "I have just been thinking of one of our skirls who went to the International," writes one good masi. " She was beautifully saved in the army, and although she works ail week in a big rlrapor'^ shop* Bhe wears a hallelujah b jnnefc and fights with the army all day Sundays. Well, she got so full of tho glory, and was so happy at seeing the red Indians and Hindoos that she danced and shouted for joy half the night, and in the morning was so full of it that she started for business with only one boot on. She will do her level best, I am sure," promises the proud father, " and," he adds, " what 9he'll do when the next International meeting comes on and eho sees some of the self-denial of Salvationists, I don't know. I expect ehe'll dance and shout all tbo night, and forget both boots then." The writer explains that he himself has got rid of two or three little indulgences in the way of sweets and an extra cup of tea, and feels all the better for it. Sugar, by the way, appears to have been po generally abandoned by Salvationists all over the kingdom that it must have appre ciably affected the sugar market, and some enthusiastic souls are not content to have discontinued tho consumption of it during the appointed week, but intend to persevere in their abstinence " Those who are as fond of sugar, as I am," writes one lady, unconsciously animated by a desire to magnify her little mortification of the flesh into something reppectable, " will believe in the reality of this self-denial." For a whole twelvemonth this heroic soul has foresworn pugar. One cannot but think that it would have been less bother to have done a little out-and-out starvation for a day or two, and have done with the business. Some are evidently very nearly of that way of thinking. "All the soldiers and officers stop in the barracks after the Sunday morning meeting,"wefinditprinted, " with just a piece of bread and butter and a drink of water." And, again, it is on record, that "so many letters are to hand from officers going without dinner on the sth that the' day deserved to be called Starvation Sunday." A grocer promises to give up the whole of his profits for the week Let us hope the good man was not losing money at -the time. A " Hallelujah Cook " brushes up an old bonnet, and makes it do for the winter ; several contributors have saved the expense they had intended to incur by a visit to the Exhibition, and a good many appear to have given up the whole or part of their summer holiday. A Salvation major promises a pound which he and his wife are going to raise by living on brown bread and potatoes, and a captain and hi* - lieutenant • contribute half a sovereign each, one by denying himself a pair of boobs and the other a pair of trouserß, both of which are badly needed. One man contributes twopence, the price of a glass of beer. Another entered on the same sheet foregoes an ounce 6f tobacco' 1 and sends the threepence ; and a third denies himself of food to the value of two and tenpence, which he hands over to the fund. "Dear General," writes one poor fellow, evidently in the deepest of dumps, "been out of word come cix or eeven months. I have nothink to Deny myself of, but having received a shilling to go to the flower show, having no desire to go I here by In close it for the denial fund." " I write," pays another, almost equally lugubrious, "to say 1 will do what 1 can ; my life is one of self-denial, -oit will not boa very hard task to deny myself one thing more." One head of 'a family goes without his lunch, daily paper, and lime juice. ' His bfetter half saves five shillings on her housekeeping bills ; the servantagive part of their week's wages ; and friendsiu the house give up tobacco, railway fare, &c. " A facetious contributor, who sends sixpence, accompanies it' with a poetical Outbreak, not, perhaps, of the highest inspiration,' but at least original : I never 'hay c any veal or ham, A very little mutton or lamb, • • I'll do without my dugtr and my jamb, ' ■ •< Or anything for Jcsuo. \ j,-%\ ' „ A lady addresses a letter, to theSßev. 1 W. Booth, and encloses a contribution. She remarke,u u lnau4t saylthink you-Salva-tionists are in such) a chronic state of'selfdenial that" I* don't know how you can do

more without becoming quite ethereal. The last time I caw you, you were co thin tHat there seemed aaa'ngeF'of your flying' away." That is, a danger that does not lee3tns I ee3tn s so apparent ta everybody, r < The humour and the r pathos of many of ,the communications require , the aid of their caligraphic peculiarities to give them , their full force. 1 , for instance, is a meagre little scrap of paperr— oddly'enough, bearing a suggestive „ resemblance to a coffin-lid in shape— scrawled 'on in a starveling little hand.writing :— "l have sent y/Ht Is in postcd-etampa towards the Army Fund. I have no Father nor Mother to look after me every little eips." Here is another, the thin spidery writing of which almost enables one to ccc tho , frugal old fogey mending his pant?. "Mr P., I Deny Myself of a 'Pair of Flannel Drawers, and will mend the old ones for the present. 2a." With grim humour, one contributor Bigns himsolf " A Backslider," aftor having in the sentence before tho signature exclaimed, "What a good collection you would have to go forward and reclaim the loaf If everybody would pend their beer money. He encloses two shillings, being the price of a pint of beor for eight daya All sorts of people appear to have responded to tho appeal, and many who couldn't send cash have paid iv kind. 1 Drees clotho§ and jewellery, boots' ana book?, and various other gooda have been gent up to headquarters in Queen Victoria-sti-eet, with a request that they ehould be r>old, and fie proceeds devoted to the fund. The four or five thousand pounds collected has, we are assured, been uiade up to a very large extent of the very smallest contr ba<io tF,t! ough thorohave been aftwsomewhat larger. A momber ot the Church Army Committee wrote, enclosing i.3,. the odso of a guide with whom he was about to make an ascent in Switzerland when the appeal roachod him. "Every one in tho army," writes the Secretary of the Fund, li t iok parf in the work moro or k&s. Tne guU and women in the reacuo-homos wont without meat and pudding, and co set.t up a f r iir sum of money, and the carets in tho P.irjs homes lived on their (French) soup for iho week, and thu3 heloed us' considerably."