COWBOY BARONET.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 330, 17 June 1911, Page 9

COWBOY BARONET.

THE STORY OP HIS CONVERSION TO CHRISTIANITY. TO BECOME PREACHER. Sir Gonille Cave-Brown-Cavc, the twelfth baronet of his line, is working as a, caretaker in the Salvation Army barracks at 253 Washington street, Brooklyn, New York. He is receiving 14s a week, and is applying for admission to the Salvation Army training school in New York for the purpose of becoming an officer and devoting the rest of his life to army work.

Colonel Cox, the editor of the War Cry. informed a representative of an English daily that Sir Genille had shown him his birth certificate and photographs of himself and his English relatives, and had produced other documentary evidence that he was the person he claimed daily to be. Colonel Cox communicated with the army headquarters in London, asking for an investigation to he made in order to make assurance doubly sure with regard to Sir Genille's identity. It does not appear that there is any reason to doubt that the new convert is the cowboy baronet. I called on him in Washington street barracks one afternoon, writes the New York correspondent of the London Express, and found him in his shirt sleeves, busily engaged in cleaning one of the rooms. "Yes, I am Sir Genille Cave-Browne-Cave," he said, "but I am NOT THE OLD ROYSTERING, HEAVY-DRINKING MAN of a year ago. I have become converted by the Salvation Army, and I am a new person. I have found happiness and contentment such as I never knew before could exist. Look here " He showed me two photographs, one representing him dressed as a cowboy on horseback, and the other in Salvation Army uniform. "The first one shows what I was last summer before I found religion. This one shows what lam now. See how wonderfully my face has changed. See how the evidence of fast living has disappeared, and how I now look like a real man. This is the change six mouths in the army has done for me. "[ did not join the army because of destitution or anything like that. I simply -found God, that's the so!<> Ten son. ''Moffc England about a year ago. 1 hnd intended to produce a cowboy niacin London, but King Edward's ' death necessitated a postponement, and so T. came to New York. '■l got the job acting in Wild West plays for moving pictures. lam an expert horse-thrower, and I was earning C2 a day by steady work. I was travelling in fast, company, with a rough crowd, and going to the bad. "During the afternoon of September 27 I was drinking in a saloon planning some fresh devilment when a Salvation Army lassie entered, touched me on the shoulder, and said, 'Are you a Christian ?•' She handed me a card with the address of the Salvation Army headquarters. "I do not know why, but her words set me thinking. I have never been a religious man, and whenever anybody asked me to go to church T always refused, saying that I did not want to listen to anybody preaching who was a bigger hypocrite than I. "But, SOMETHING TOOK HOLD OF ME, and drew me to an army meeting. That night I listened, and went the next night and the next. "On the sixth day I saw the light. I was sitting alone in my room when God spoke to me. I saw my old self with loathing. I became a man of God. "They tell me I was one of the most wonderful cases of conversion the army has known. I publicly declared myself for God, and that evening I abandoned my old ways and offered myself for army employment. "One of the most remarkable facts of my conversion was the disappearance of my taste for alcohol and tobacco. I was always a heavy drinker and an incessant smoker. My taste for drink left me that day, but it was a week later when I abandoned nicotine for good. Now the mere odor of either makes me sick. "They put me to work here as a sort of general hanyman. I sleep in the basement of the barracks. "You see thero is only that small cot, this table, a few chairs, and the bare walls and floor. My pay is fourteen shillings a week, out of which I must feed and clothe myself. Yet never before did I know happiness such as I know now. "I have been a soldier in India and a cowboy in the American West. I've hnd as varied an existence as most men, but until 1 came to know what religion was I never realised how happy a human being could be. "Before I was converted my lawyers were negotiating my marriage with a wealthy American. I had several marriage proposals from heiresses. Of course, I cannot reveal their names, but one Washington woman was acting on behalf of young girl. If the marriage took place I WAS TO RECEIVE £IOO,OOO for myself. "All that business is ended now. I intend to give my whole life to the army. I have resigned my vice-presi-dentship of the British Boy Scouts, and intend to give up everything that could interfere in any way with my religious work, and I hope soon to enter the army's training college. "I am forty-two years old, which is six years beyond the age limit for a college candidate, but I am hoping for an exception in my case, for I am in the prime of life and healthy. "It will cost me about £2O to go through the training school, but T hope to be able to obtain that sum from my relatives in England, for T cannot save much out of my present salary, even though I add to it occasionally by selling my photographs at two shillings each. "I hope to make some effort to work for my fellow-men during the rest of my days.''