THE REV. WILSON CARLILE 189
the women s social department. During last year over 1 500 women and girls applied to us for help. Many were at once passed on to our various homes, and the others helped with food and tem porary shelter whenever possible. Many women and girls have been received direct from police courts, prisons and workhouses ; visits are paid by our mission nurse to women and girls in prison and workhouse, and to people in distress in their own homes. It is an invariable rule in all Church Army homes that the inmates must be total ab stainers while in the home. Drink, undoubtedly, is the chief evil that fills our homes."
As to the work accomplished in the prisons, Mr Carlile was ready with abundant testimony. " During last year," he said, "missions were conducted in most of the prisons of England and Wales thanks to the kindness and sympathy of the Prison Commissioners, governors and chaplains and this difficult work has been greatly blessed. Here is an extract from a letter received the other day from a prison chaplain of long experience :
Captain is emphatically the right man in
the right place. Without the least approach to sentimentality, he has been gifted with great attrac tive power, and the "old, old story" is presented by him in an especially inviting form to his hearers. The private interviews in the cells, I know, were much appreciated, and the missioner in no wise spared himself from this somewhat exacting duty.
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