The thoughtless boys and undeveloped men who gathered about the street services of the Army badgered Bulger incessantly. They called upon him to give oral testimony to his conversion, and criticized the technique and style of his drum performance. But the old man paid no attention whatever to their jeers. He rarely spoke to any one except when, on coming and going, he gruffly saluted his comrades.
The sergeant had met many odd characters, and knew how to study them. He allowed the recruit to have his own silent way for a time. Every evening Bulger appeared at the hall, marched up the street with the squad and back again. Then he would place his drum in the corner where it belonged, and sit upon the last bench in the rear until the hall meeting was concluded.
But one night the sergeant followed the old man outside, and laid his hand upon his shoulder. “Comrade,” he said, “is it well with you?”
“Not yet, sergeant,” said Bulger. “I’m only tryin’. I’m glad you come outside. I’ve been wantin’ to ask you: Do you believe the Lord would take a man in if he come to Him late like — kind of a last resort, you know? Say a man who’d lost everything — home and property and friends and health. Wouldn’t it look mean to wait till then and try to come?”
“Bless His name — no!” said the sergeant. “Come ye that are heavy laden; that’s what He says. The poorer, the more miserable, the more unfortunate — the greater His love and forgiveness.”
“Yes, I’m poor,” said Bulger. “Awful poor and miserable. You know when I can think best, sergeant? It’s when I’m beating the drum. Other times there’s a kind of muddled roarin’ in my head. The drum seems to kind of soothe and calm it. There’s a thing I’m tryin’ to study out, but I ain’t made it yet.”
“Do you pray, comrade?” asked the sergeant.
“No, I don’t,” said Bulger. “What’d be the use? I know where the hitch is. Don’t it say somewhere for a man to give up his own family or friends and serve the Lord?”
“If they stand in his way; not otherwise.”
“I’ve got no family,” continued the old man, “nor no friends — but one. And that one is what’s driven me to ruin.”
“Free yourself!” cried the sergeant. “He is no friend, but an enemy who stands between you and salvation.”
“No,” answered Bulger, emphatically, “no enemy. The best friend I ever had.”
“But you say he’s driven you to ruin!”
The old man chuckled dryly:
“And keeps me in rags and livin’ on scraps and sleepin’ like a dog in a patched-up kennel. And yet I never had a better friend. You don’t understand, sergeant. You lose all your friends but the best one, and then you’ll know how to hold on to the last one.”
“Do you drink, comrade?” asked the sergeant.
“Not a drop in twenty years,” Bulger replied. The sergeant was puzzled.
“If this friend stands between you and your soul’s peace, give him up,” was all he could find to say.
“I can’t — now,” said the old man, dropping into a fretful whine. “But you just let me keep on beating the drum, sergeant, and maybe I will some time. I’m a-tryin’. Sometimes I come so near thinkin’ it out that a dozen more licks on the drum would settle it. I get mighty nigh to the point, and then I have to quit. You’ll give me more time, won’t you, sergeant?”
“All you want, and God bless you, comrade. Pound away until you hit the right note.”
Afterward the sergeant would often call to Bulger: “Time, comrade! Knocked that friend of yours out yet?” The answer was always unsatisfactory.
One night at a street corner the sergeant prayed loudly that a certain struggling comrade might be parted from an enemy who was leading him astray under the guise of friendship. Bulger, in sudden and plainly evident alarm, immediately turned his drum over to a fellow volunteer, and shuffled rapidly away down the street. The next night he was back again at his post, without any explanation of his strange behaviour.
The sergeant wondered what it all meant, and took occasion to question the old man more closely as to the influence that was retarding the peace his soul seemed to crave. But Bulger carefully avoided particularizing.
“It’s my own fight,” he said. “I’ve got to think it out myself. Nobody else don’t understand.”
The winter of 1892 was a memorable one in the South. The cold was almost unprecedented, and snow fell many inches deep where it had rarely whitened the ground before. Much suffering resulted among the poor, who had not anticipated the rigorous season. The little squad of Salvationists found more distress then they could relieve.
Charity in that town, while swift and liberal, lacked organization. Want, in that balmy and productive climate, existed only in sporadic cases, and these were nearly always quietly relieved by generous neighbours. But when some sudden disastrous onslaught of the elements — storm, fire or flood — occurred, the impoverished sufferers were often too slowly aided because system was lacking, and because charity was called upon too seldom to become a habit. At such times the Salvation Army was very useful. Its soldiers went down into alleys and byways to rescue those who, unused to extreme want, had never learned to beg.
At the end of three weeks of hard freezing a level foot of snow fell. Hunger and cold struck the improvident, and a hundred women, children and old men were gathered into the Army’s quarters to be warmed and fed. Each day the blue-uniformed soldiers slipped in and out of the stores and offices of the town, gathering pennies and dimes and quarters to buy food for the starving. And in and out of private houses the Salvationists went with baskets of food and clothing, while day by day the mercury still crouched among the tens and twenties.
Alas! business, that scapegoat, was dull. The dimes and quarters came more reluctantly from tills that jingled not when they were opened. Yet in the big hall of the Army the stove was kept red-hot, and upon the long table, set in the rear, could always be found at least coffee and bread and cheese. The sergeant and the squad fought valiantly. At last the money on hand was all gone, and the daily collections were diminished to a variable sum, inadequate to the needs of the dependents of the Army.
Christmas was near at hand. There were fifty children in the hall, and many more outside, to whom that season brought no joy beyond what was brought by the Army. None of these little pensioners had thus far lacked necessary comforts, and they had already begun to chatter of the tree — that one bright vision in the sober monotony of the year. Never since the Army first came had it failed to provide a tree and gifts for the children.
The sergeant was troubled. He knew that an announcement of “no tree” would grieve the hearts under those thin cotton dresses and ragged jackets more than would stress of storm or scanty diet; and yet there was not money enough to meet the daily demands for food and fuel.
On the night of December the 20th the sergeant decided to announce that there could be no Christmas tree: it seemed unfair to allow the waxing anticipation of the children to reach too great a height.
The evening was colder, and the still deep snow was made deeper by another heavy fall swept upon the wings of a fierce and shrill voiced northern gale. The sergeant, with sodden boots and reddened countenance, entered the hall at nightfall, and removed his threadbare overcoat. Soon afterward the rest of the faithful squad drifted in, the women heavily shawled, the men stamping their snow-crusted feet loudly upon the steep stairs. After the slender supper of cold meat, beans, bread, and