PREFACE
To those who know the work of the Winchester College Mission I need offer no explanation why this little book is written, and no apology for the scrappy and imperfect manner of the writing. But if it falls into the hands of those who do not know us, I would plead as an excuse for its many imperfections, that it was written in the odd moments seized out of a very busy Lent, in which I was preaching ten courses of sermons a week, striving to collect money to pay off the debt of £3090, incurred on the Mission, for which I am responsible. I pray that these readers will discover that Mission work like ours, for which so many great cities in England are crying out, is not only the easiest of all religious work to do, but is far the most satisfying in the doing; and I desire to create a great sympathy for the poor folk at S. Agatha’s who were compelled, as they were crossing the stream from an old church into a new one—the most critical moment of their parochial existence—to swop horses, because a new commander discovered that the methods of their old one were not quite orthodox.
R. R. DOLLING.
48, Wetherby Mansions,
Earl’s Court, S.W.
Easter Day, 1896.