After waiting a moment, he just clapped his great rough hands together and said, 'O God, jump down my throat and squeeze the Devil out.' And then he said the old child's prayer:-- Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon a little child; Pity my simplicity, Suffer me to come to Thee.
If ever a big rough fellow came 'like a little child' to Jesus he did, for his life from that day was absolutely new.
"Another of those men's wives sent for me, and said she feared he was going mad, for he had hung up his old ragged clothes on the wall.

But we soon heard him come singing up the street, and he said, 'I've hung them up to remind us all what I was like when Jesus set me free.

A lot of our blokes have turned respectable, and gone and joined the chapel, and I thought if ever the Devil comes to tempt me that way I'll show him those clothes, and say, "The hand that was good enough to pick me up will be good enough to lead me on to the finish."' "So I said to his wife, 'He might do a worse thing: let them hang there, if it helps him any.'" How The Army won so many of its worst opponents to be its Soldiers comes out beautifully in a more recent story.
"When I was a drunkard," says a poor woman, "I used just to hate The Army.

But one day, as I was drinking in the 'King George' public-house, I heard them singing to an old tune of my childhood, and that brought me out.

I stood and listened, and the Sergeant of the Cadets, who was leading, came over to me and said:-- "'Isn't it very cold?
Hadn't you better go home?
Don't go back to them,' she said, nodding towards the public-house.