I have said that we came without plans. And yet at every step, as we needed it, the Providence of God rendered possible the fulfilment of the plan, which the voice of the parish suggested. Bishop Harold Browne had evinced considerable nervousness, when I said I should bring my sisters down to Landport. He suggested that their dress might frighten the people. I said I hoped it would not. He intimated other difficulties. But his face brightened up considerably, when I told him that they were fleshly and not religious sisters, whom I hoped to bring with me. The first voice of the parish said, “We want Christian women.” God put it into the heart of three of my sisters, and of two dear friends, who lived with them, to say, “We want to go into every house in Landport, to know every woman, every girl, every child.”

Then another voice spoke, not always heard by the clergy, though it cries out louder to-day than it ever did before, the voice of the hard-headed artisan, the voice of the young man who is just beginning to face intellectual struggle, a voice for which the Free Library and the Press are largely responsible. That voice said, “We want an intellectual thinker, who can put deep profound truths into simple words, who can answer difficulties without suggesting others, who knows something of that agony of doubt without which no soul reaches the summit of faith, and has pity and compassion for it.” And God put it into the heart of Charles Osborne to say, “I want to consecrate all my intellect, all my knowledge, to the lessening of doubts, to the building up of the faith, amongst the working-men in Landport.”

And yet there was a need of a link between the past and the present, of someone to give me true advice about Sunday School Teachers, District Visitors, Communicants, Choir, all those things which my predecessor had created; and God put it into the heart of Gordon Wickham, who had worked two years with Dr. Linklater, to say, “Though it will be very difficult to stay on under a new régime, yet for the sake of the past, for love of the people, for hope of the future, I stay.”

God had given us the workers; would He also give us the places to live in? I was then in lodgings over a girls’ school in the Commercial Road. It was not at all a desirable plan. The woman who did for me was utterly inadequate. I remember discovering in one Saturday’s dinner the remains of Friday’s, for our vegetables were garnished with fish-bones. The lodging, too, was out of the district. Then I took a house in Spring Street, where there was a heavy rent to pay, a ginger-beer factory on one side, a public-house on the other. The difficulty of housing ourselves was not the only house difficulty we had to face. Dr. Linklater had started a Men’s Club, three Boys’ Clubs, and a Girls’ Club. The rent of premises to contain these cost over £120 a year, the buildings were very unsuited to the purpose, and there was a tremendous waste of energy in the management of them. I believed that no good daily example could be set until a clergy house could be provided, which would be our people’s house as well as our own, and no real disciplinary or recreative work could be done in clubs until we had proper accommodation. S. Agatha’s church, with the chancel screened off, had been used, as I knew from my own experience on my first introduction to the people, for entertainments of all kinds, teas, theatricals, even dances; but I made up my mind from the first that this should never happen again. Reverence is a very difficult virtue, and I am quite sure that the remembrance of the entertainments oftentimes marred the devotion at religious service. I remember once scolding a boy for laughing in church, and he said, “I could not help it, I was thinking of Mr. D—— singing ‘Johnny Sands.’” The only premises at my disposal besides the church were a row of houses, which had been purchased as a site for the new church. Two standing in Conway Street were less picturesque, but rather more commodious than the rest, slate roofs, no red tiles. I thought these could be turned into a Mission House. Pulling down the middle partitions, lowering the floors of the downstairs rooms, so as to make two good sitting-rooms below, and joining the houses by an outside balcony, we had our parsonage; not just, perhaps, your idea of a parsonage, but the door open all day, no mat to remind you that your boots were dirty, no carpets, and the plainest furniture, plenty of space in the dining-room to feed all comers, just room enough in the kitchen to cook the food; upstairs four bedrooms to begin our home.

I hope I have never been jealous of any Christian work done in my parish, but I must confess that there is something peculiarly irritating in the music of the Salvation Army drum, though I am not sure whether the shrill voice of the Salvation Army lass is not worse. I remember one night they out-voiced me altogether, though I was inside and they outside S. Agatha’s. By way of consolation someone said to me, “We shall have them always with us now, for they are just going to buy the Baptist Chapel in Clarence Street.” I registered a vow that they never would. Why could I not buy the chapel in Clarence Street? In many ways it was just suited for our purpose. It was a splendid property. The chapel itself had a gallery all round, square pews, three-decker pulpit, a font for immersions, and two dead ministers buried in the middle. Next door was the caretaker’s house, which would just do for Mr. Osborne, and in the street behind, Chance Street, an excellent Sunday School-room, and two cottages. It cost me in all over £3000. I had not a penny of money, but it was so obviously what the parish needed, that I knew we were bound to buy it. I collected something like £1200 in a very few months, and the bank kindly advanced me the balance to pay off the trustees. I was fairly intoxicated at the purchase; I even communicated my enthusiasm to others, so that at Winchester, where I was lecturing, they realised my idea of a great social centre. Alas, when with considerable pomp I ushered the four prefects, who were staying with me that week, into the building, they, who very likely had never seen a chapel before, said, “Now you have got it, what will you do with it?” I suppose that at the best of times the chapel of a hundred years ago never looked very picturesque, but this had been closed for nearly two years, the grotesque pews were worm-eaten, the ridiculous pulpit had an enormous Bible still upon the ledge, and, with the stagnant water still in the font, I think we even realised the bones of the ministers. I never felt so crestfallen. “At any rate, we can kick down some of the pews.” How delightful is the pleasure of destruction. One after another they were coming down, until prudence reminded me that they could be sold for something better than firewood.

Of course, there was the little difficulty at first of placing the old clubs in their new home. These little old clubs had many jealousies; one had driven out a member, after nearly breaking his head, because he would wear a collar, which they wanted to wrench off his neck, the collar being the outward visible sign of respectability; one was so ritualistic, that they would not allow anyone to join, who would not make the sign of the Cross; one so depraved, that losing all patience with the members who persisted in using the most disgusting language in the presence of the lady who managed them, I was compelled to chuck their leader downstairs, and almost broke his leg. Dear “Boss,” how well I remember him, for so we called him, as he had a cast in his eye, though none in his temper, for he forgave me that very night. Two virtues were common to them all—utter lawlessness, supreme exclusiveness.

We furnished the chapel with all things necessary for a rough gymnasium, the gallery being used for games and bagatelle. The rules were the simplest—no gambling, no bad language, no losing of temper, no annoying anybody else. All through the ten years of use, these four rules have remained as the foundation of our management. All sorts and kinds of men have tried to manage that gymnasium, with varying success, the clergy, the lay-readers, Oxford men, officers in the Army and Navy. They have suffered all sorts of contumely and wrong. I have seen them skilfully lassoed, arms and legs bound, and lashed to the gymnasium ladder, or a noose run under their armpits, and hauled up to the ceiling. I have seen them spread-eagled upon the vaulting-horse, with a dance of savage Indians whooping round them. I have seen all the mattresses ripped up and picked to pieces, then strewn over the floor. I have seen the bagatelle-tables used as points of vantage, from which opposing forces sprang at each other. I have seen men playing upon the piano with their feet, and I have known, when no other mischief was possible, the fierce joy of tearing away the front of the piano, and strewing the broken hammers artistically on the floor. And yet there rises before me the vision of a use in that gymnasium, the chief centre of reformation in the parish, of lads who amidst all this disorder, for the disorder arose merely from episodes of high spirits or weak management, gained their first lessons of self-restraint, and bodily and even mental development; weak, sickly lads coming to us, illness not always the cause of their weakness, now healthy and strong; bad-tempered sullen brutes licked into shape, boys learning the priceless benefit of wholesome play, mean unambitious people quivering with the passion of desiring to achieve success. How often the lad, just needing the inch to become a soldier, has won it by continuous use of our ladders, how often the lad, needing an inch in chest measurement, has won it by the use of our dumb-bells, many a regiment, many a gallant ship, could testify to-day. How many it has won from the awful fascination of the public-house, from the vulgarity and worse of the sing-song room, from the delirium of gambling, from hideous forms of sins, impossible for those who desire to achieve a wholesome mind in a wholesome body! From all parts of the world, strong, healthy self-respecting men, bless and praise God for the old gymnasium in Clarence Street. Some years ago, when I was at Vienna, I was watching a troupe of acrobats in one of the beer-gardens. They had reached their final feat by forming themselves into a living ladder, when suddenly, in a kind of ecstasy, I heard the topmost boy exclaim, “Don’t you see? there is the Father”; and before I knew where I was, three out of the five had precipitated themselves, and were clinging round me. There are scattered throughout the world to-day my brave army of gymnasium boys, but I believe they know that the Father’s eye is still on them, and I know their love still compensates my heart for many of its sorrows. You say, “Mr. Dolling, were you not very imprudent in spending so much money on an object which was not religious? What fruit did it bring forth in your church? Did it pay ecclesiastically?” I can reckon in that sense no fruit. I do not believe that in that sense it paid. So oftentimes, when we hear of the great waste of time and energy spent on games at school and college, we are inclined to think it wasteful, sometimes to condemn it as being of the Philistine character. But anything that is graceful, and done with true skill and just precision, in itself ministers to the highest beauty; anything that tends to the perfecting of the body, to the sweating out of the evil humours of discontent; anything that cures sloth and gives an incentive to activity, ministers not only to the purifying of the body, but to the strengthening and increase of the soul. I have heard a mother say, “When my boy comes home, he can talk of nothing but games.” Dear lady, if it is so, thank God; many boys talk of things evil and base and enervating.

The best effort that had been made under the old régime, and, I think, the manager who was most successful even in the gymnasium, was my old friend Charlie Claxon; and though stress of work and other reasons forced him to give up personal supervision, most of the old gymnasium members will remember him as a true and real friend.

One class of lad baffled all our allurements. Standing at the street corners all night, and most of the day, we got to know them by sight sooner than anybody else in the parish. In East London they had crowded into our club-rooms, and soon became amenable to order. I suppose one never learns that one’s own plans always fail, and yet that God always has His own plan. Late one night I was sent for to go to the hospital. An old woman was slowly dying of burns; drink and a paraffin lamp the cause. I only knew her by sight, and she did not seem to listen when I prayed; but, as I stooped down, to try and catch any word she might say, she whispered, “He didn’t do it,” and then nodded with her head to a boy in the corner of the room. In five minutes she was dead.

When I had got the son quieted down in my own house, I found that he had come suddenly home, found her under the influence of drink, and in some scuffle the lamp had been upset.

Dear Dan, there was not much difficulty afterwards in getting hold of him, but I soon found it was impossible to help him so long as he stayed at home. Not that Dan was to blame, for he would have worked if he could; but no one would employ him. He stands as the representative of many thousands, just like himself, full of good-nature and recklessness, with no habits of obedience, discipline, or order. He had never learned anything since he left school. It was some time before I could venture to emigrate him, and I thank God for that, for it gave us the opportunity of getting him confirmed; and, in the meantime, he brought—one by one—lots of his mates to know us, the most influential of whom, a lad we called “Nobby,” suggested that our own house was the only fitting club-room for his mates. And that really was the solution of the difficulty. Every Sunday night he brought, and kept in perfect order, whomsoever he would, and I trace to Dan and Nobby the breaking up of a gang, unkindly called “The Forty Thieves,” though very few of them had ever really stolen, yet a real terror to the neighbourhood. Dan is at this present moment a most prosperous person in Canada, with a wife and family. Nobby is a stoker. I hear from both of them from time to time.

The real difficulty of work like this is that it makes tremendous demands on one’s own personality, and that the larger part of the expenditure is in vain. And yet one has no right whatsoever to be astonished at this, when we try for a moment to measure all the chances that we have had in life, and then realise that these have never had any chance at all. God has two infallible methods of education—He hopes for everyone, He loves everyone; and yet many live in this world for whom no one hopes and whom no one loves. As the Mission work became heavier, I had to surrender much of this individual work, and then God sent us one who could do it infinitely better than we had ever done it; and, strangely, it was against all my own theories, for this time it was a woman who was to do it. Night after night I have seen her sitting in the midst of those whom decent society utterly refuse to help. On our missing a face, she would answer, quite simply, “Oh, he has gone to gaol for a little! Poor fellow, he cannot help fighting.” Or, “The temptation was too great for him, and he took something which did not belong to him.” She was the first to welcome him after his trouble, to show him that she had forgotten it; never preaching, never teaching, but with infinite tact dealing, in the truest sense, with their souls. I have prepared many of them for confirmation; I have heard the plain story of their whole lives simply and repentantly told; I have known them get up at six o’clock in the morning, to go and call each other for Communion; I have known them stand any amount of ridicule and temptation; I have seen one stand up for his mate when the rest thought he had brought disgrace on her whom they call “mother,” because he knew that that would be “mother’s” wish. I see them come home as soldiers and sailors, and from situations that we have got for them at a distance, in the truest sense refined. I have given them their Communions after days of earnest struggle against sin, or on the mornings of their departures; I read as much of their letters as any eye but hers may read. The world might call it almost miraculous, but it is a miracle that could be reproduced in any single place, even the worst, if we workers had but those methods of hope and love.

And God gave me later on another worker, with the same methods, perhaps in an even more difficult sphere. All boys from fourteen to sixteen are cruel and disagreeable. Passion, soon to find itself expressed in their manhood, troubles them, irritates them, brings forth mischief. Where there is the restraint of home or school, this is often mitigated, and outwardly the boy looks delightful. Where there is no restraint, “devilish” is the only adjective that represents him. Though the most important class for a clergyman to touch, fearing, as they do, neither God nor man, they remain as a rule untouched. You may cure them individually, when they reach the age of twenty, but I always knew that the only sound method of working would be to “prevent” them. All of us at different times tried our hand on them. All of us failed. I cannot speak of our last trial as successful, because it only lasted two years, but I believe in my heart that it would have been successful. It called itself a Brigade, but it was no more like a Brigade than the Tower Hamlets Militia is like the Guards. There was a semblance at first in the way of caps, and belts, and pouches, which I paid for, but Dowglass found that all of that was more or less, as he would call it, “tommy rot.” I remember bringing some ladies with great pomp to see the drill, when the leader on the left flank suddenly beat a hurried retreat, but not before we had seen that, in the exertion of stooping, the braces which kept together an otherwise disunited pair of trousers had given way. They were certainly the most ragged, noisy, and disobedient crew that ever a clergyman gathered together. The vision of one evening last August is vividly borne in upon my memory. Dowglass had had to go up to town for the day, and Charlie Davidson, our one-legged gymnast, who used to give them instruction, was also away. But the Brigade were not to be thus put off. Some of them effected an entrance into the gymnasium, and opened the doors for the rest, who swarmed in and proceeded to turn it upside down. Conibeere tried in vain to stem the torrent, and when I came in from church utterly tired, Looey, who was rushing out to summon aid, nearly fell into my arms, exclaiming, “Thank God, master, you are come. The house is being wrecked.” My sudden appearance in their midst produced no effect, except that the missiles, including a leg of the piano, were now directed at me. I hurled them all out into Clarence Street, and shut the doors, but three times did they burst them open.

And yet I am quite sure that, given two or three years’ more work, there would have been tremendous results. If the loafer class is ever to be exterminated, if that menace to society, the unemployed, is ever to disappear from the face of the earth, it will only be done by men with large enough hearts and sufficient faith preventing the loafer.

In 1886 Mrs. Richardson—I had rather say Mrs. Dick, and I am sure she won’t mind—invited me to bring a party of mission men to Winchester to spend the day in College. About sixty went, I having to pay all their railway fares, in some cases even paying them their day’s work—false pride on my part, because I did not like College to think we had no men to go. They broke into the warden’s garden, and stole his fruit; they climbed over the wall of the bathing-place, and laughed at the men who were learning to swim; they tried to kiss the ladies who waited on them; they most of them got drunk before we went home. Mrs. Dick’s invitation is as elastic as her own heart. Year by year more and more men have wanted to go. This year we limited it to a hundred and sixty; we had to refuse an equal number. All of them paid their own journeys, except a few old men out of work, and some of the better-off men clubbed together, so that no expense should fall on the Mission. I don’t suppose men ever had a more delightful day. I am quite sure no lady ever entertained a more delightful company. We visited the cathedral, St. Cross, and all the places of interest. We had two splendid meals. One whole day’s perfect enjoyment, everyone sober, not a rude or rough word, and yet some of us were the identical people who had gone ten years before, and all of the same class, all the Mission’s children.