IN LONDON SLUMS.

As we have already seen, Agnes Jones distrusted her power to rule.  This fact, added to her mother’s dislike to her entering a hospital determined her, for the present at least, to join Mrs. Ranyard in the work of the Bible Mission, for she knew that while she would be relieving her friend of some of the burden of her work she would have ample opportunities of discovering whether she were fitted to govern.

She was soon busy in many ways, in mothers’ meetings, Bible classes, industrial kitchens, dormitories, refuges, and in visiting with the Bible women.  In every department of that varied work she was most helpful to Mrs. Ranyard, even taking the whole charge of the mission for two months while the latter was absent in Switzerland.  She found her knowledge of German very useful, and turned it to the best account on several occasions when she met with German immigrants.

In the narrow courts and lanes of London, unthought of and unheeded by the busy throng, she found many of the Lord’s jewels who, though poor in this world’s goods and sick in body, were yet rich in faith and strong in soul.  One of these, a woman who for thirty-two years had been a terrible sufferer, would whisper, “Blessed Jesus, in everything suitable.  Just the Saviour suitable for me.”  Another, whom she several times mentions in her letters, and to whom she delighted to minister as a nurse, a poor cripple who had only the use of her thumb, and who from lying eighteen years in one position had terrible bed-sores, could yet say, “I am ashamed to talk of my suffering when I think of all Jesus suffered for me.”

[Illustration:]

Her happy work in London was brought to a premature conclusion by a telegram announcing that her sister was ill of fever in Rome, followed by another begging her to go to her at once.  A journey thither was not such an easy one then as it is now, but, after arranging all her work so as to give Mrs. Ranyard as little trouble as possible, Agnes bravely undertook it.  A heavy storm was encountered at Marseilles, where she embarked for Italy, and this delayed her arrival in Rome, so that on reaching there she found her sister out of danger.  A cousin, however, who had formed one of the party, had fallen ill of the same fever, and needed careful nursing, so that she found her hands full, and, as the recovery of both invalids was slow, she determined to give up her London work, and devote herself to them.

Some months were spent in Italy; but her strength, which had been greatly tried by the work in London, again becoming enervated, and her nursing duties being at an end, she proposed that she should go to Switzerland and visit the deaconesses’ institutions there.  This plan she carried out, and visited several of the Swiss institutions, which she considered compared unfavourably with Kaiserswerth, both in organisation and spiritual tone.  She visited besides some of those in Germany, and at Mannedorf had the joy of spending several days with that wonderful woman of faith, Dorothea Trudel.