Kate Lee

“ Kate Lee oozed motherliness-that love that is capable, wise, patient, tender-the love that never fails!
One of the sweetest fruits in her spiritual children is that after she had left them they continued to perform the services she loved. One man, saved from nameless sins, slow to speech, and clouded in intellect, would spend his money on Testaments, and ‘War Crys,’ and walk miles to visit gipsy camps to read and pray with these wanderers, and other isolated people. ”

“ It was a great change for Kate Lee when, after her command of Norland Castle, she was appointed to Reading, a prosperous county town in charming surroundings. In its best business part stands a fine Army hall. It was faultlessly kept, and attended by a most respectable congregation. After her heavy term in the slums of London, it might reasonably be expected that she would take things quietly in a provincial corps and recuperate her spent strength. But Kate Lee could no more settle down to enjoy a pleasant time amongst pleasant people than could her old General during his field days. ”

“ Civic authorities paid deference to this spiritual and moral specialist.
How did the glare of the limelight affect Kate Lee? A comrade who knew more of her inner life than almost any other, lets in a sidelight upon her association with ‘Twice Born Men.’ Her experiences in connexion with the book were not entirely sweet. She felt the sting of jealousy, that hurtful thing which, while uncleansed human nature is what it is, will continue to inflict wounds upon those chosen for honour, but Kate Lee bore it with meekness and in silence. ‘It is not easy to bear success,’ she said on this subject. ”

“ One cannot talk with Kate Lee’s people without discovering that they regarded her as a person apart from all others. She would drink tea in a hovel with outcasts, or lead a volunteer brigade in scrubbing her halls; handle hammer and nails as a man; collect produce for the harvest festival with a donkey-cart, and perform a hundred and one other ‘unladylike’ offices. ”

“ Kate Lee loved girls in their teens, and they were much drawn to her.
Some officers who excel in helping the rag-tag class of young people, as Kate Lee did, fight shy of those of refined training and better education. This may possibly arise from a dread lest these keen young folk may take their soundings and soon ‘touch bottom’ in many directions. Kate feared nothing. Common-sense, an even balance, and true love count most with the young, and of these qualities she had abundance.
Major Mary Booth says:–
Dear Angel Adjutant! ”

“ In nothing did her motherliness show itself more beautifully than in the patient love that refused to abandon the most hopeless objects of her efforts, even though they shamed her and caused her sore distress. The love of many a parent for a prodigal child is quenched when son or daughter brings shame upon the family. But Kate Lee’s love was deeper and stronger than shame. One comrade tells of her, that finding one of her converts backslidden, and drinking in a public-house, she sat beside him while he drank of the cup of his destruction, then took him home. ”

“ KATE LEE FERGUSON.
“Cliquot,” a new love romance from the pen of Kate Lee Ferguson, a rising young Southern authoress of the Amélie Rives school, is full of passion, piquancy and breathless interest. All through it possesses that quality which the French call chic, which gives it that flavor which everybody likes. ”

“ I met Kate Lee in all kinds of houses, and at all hours of the day and of the night, and she was always on the one mission–seeking souls. One morning, at half-past two, I was coming out of one of the worst slums in Sunderland, and met the Adjutant and her lieutenant. ”

“ Surely the world is heart-sick for such souls great in compassion, self-forgetful, and triumphant in faith as was Kate Lee.
X ‘The Angel Adjutant’
Kate Lee had been a Salvation Army Field Officer for fifteen years, when suddenly she became famous. In gathering material for the writing of ‘Twice Born Men,’ Harold Begbie had been no less impressed by the sweetness and wisdom of the woman who had won from sin to righteousness several of the notable characters with whom the book deals, than he was with the miracle of their conversion. ”

“ The Churches of the world seem at length prepared to debate within themselves whether they should venture to follow our example, and give to woman a place worthy of her gifts in their various plans of campaign. Perhaps the brief story of this life may help some of them a step forward.
Kate Lee was an unfaltering believer in the power of God to save from the power of sin. This was really her secret. That faith dominated her own frail and often sick body with its nights of sleeplessness–its days of pain. It conquered the worst in the worst of men whom she encountered in her work of mercy. ”

“ Many volumes would be needed to contain the story of all the souls who found deliverance from sin, sorrow and terror by the message of Kate Lee, but her memoir would be sadly incomplete without, at least, a few sketches which illustrate the courage, the faith, and the love with which she sought and won and held souls who, unless such love, and faith, and courage had been expended upon them, would have died in their sin. ”

“ Not a few people both in and outside the ranks of The Army have asked the question, ‘Wherein lay the secret of Kate Lee’s success?’ One person, accustomed only to surface views, gave answer, ’It is that she always aims to win trophies.’
Let any one determine to gain distinction for himself by lifting from the mire of sin souls robbed by the devil of hope and will power, and even desire for deliverance; let them essay to bring back from the far country wanderers sunk to the level of the brute ”

“ Once she almost yielded, but pity for the unsaved prevailed over the most human inclinations of a woman’s heart. She was not sure that she would be as free to seek and win souls if she married. Her lover waited in hope for years, but Kate Lee became increasingly certain that it was God’s will for her to remain as she was. ”

“ That night she spent in prayer, and in the morning she was calm and her face bright. “I have really got the victory,” she told me. “His will be done. If He allows me to return to the fight, that will be glorious. If not, His will is best.” VII The Mothering Heart
One of the joys of Kate Lee’s later years was to have with her, from time to time, her little namesake niece. Sometimes in the midst of a great campaign the hunger of heart to have a child in the house overcame her, and she would prevail upon her brother and his wife to allow Katie to come to her. ”

“ I could hear you talk for ever, dear Miss Lee."
"You have grown very formal; Geoffrey—why Miss Lee? During your illness, I have been simple Kate."
"But I am getting well now," and I tried to smile; my heart was too sore. "Oh, Catherine," I cried, "forgive my waywardness, for I am very unhappy."
"You have been placed in very trying circumstances, but I feel an inward conviction that you will overcome them all."
"My grief, has nothing to do with that," said I, looking at her very earnestly.
I read in her countenance pity and surprise, but no tenderer emotion. ”

“ She saw herself a popular hostess, eagerly sought after and invited everywhere. Arnold Rent was placing his future in her hands now, but it was only like casting his bread on the waters, and the thing would be worth a struggle. It would be glorious to live the scandal down and force the people who regarded her coldly at first to come cringing for an invitation to Alton Lee. For the moment Kate Charlock thought she was genuinely in love with the man opposite. ”

“ He possessed a critical mind, large wealth, great depth of character, and a sureness and quickness of perception, which had all contributed to his success in life. He was a student, above all, of human nature, and he had insisted upon Kate's willing hospitality to her friend, partly from affection to the daughter of his old friend, Winchester Lee, and partly to see what effect such an avalanche of misfortunes would have upon the proud spirit and high-strung nature of Carolina. When he heard of her embrace of Christian Science, he became still more interested. ”

“ It ruffles one’s spirit and lessens one’s influence. We must stoop to conquer.’ I was impetuous and hot before I knew her, but her life taught me the meaning of the beatitude, ’Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’
During the last year of her life, Satan gathered his forces for a last onslaught upon Kate Lee’s soul. She was stationed at the International Training Garrison in London, and her health continuing to be frail, a change was thought to be desirable for her. Therefore, she was appointed to take charge of the Home of Rest for Officers at Ramsgate. ”

“ On the night of her failure at the cave, Kate came back to the cabin and went to her room without any word to Buck or Lee Haines, but when they sat before the fire, silent, or only murmuring, they could hear her moving about. Whatever sleep they got before morning was not free from dreams, for they knew that something was impending, and after breakfast they learned what it was. She struck straight out from the shoulder. She was going up to the cave and if Dan was away she would take Joan by force ”

“ Of course, Kate did not fully understand his character. Such a thing as a young girl's accurate knowledge of the character of the man she is about to marry, is of very rare occurrence. She saw enough of good qualities to make her love him with tenderness and devotion; but she also saw personal defects that were disagreeable in the object of her affections. But she did not in the least doubt that all these she could easily correct in him after she became his wife.
From a defect of education, or from a natural want of neatness and order, Ferdinand Lee was inclined to carelessness in his attire ”

“ She had a supercargo on board; but his name was not Edwin Lee.
Fashionable people were greatly surprised when the beautiful Kate Darlington married her father's clerk; and moustached dandies curled their lip, but it mattered not to Kate. She had married a man in whose worth, affection, and manliness of character, she could repose a rational confidence. If not a fashionable, she was a happy wife. ”

“ Women have more taste than men, you know, and a man never looks and acts just right until he gets a woman to take charge of him."
A happy bride Kate became a few months after this little conversation took place, and Lee thought himself the most fortunate of men in obtaining such a lovely, accomplished, and right-minded woman for a wife. Swiftly glided away the sweet honey-moon, without a jar of discord, though, during the time, Kate saw a good many things not exactly to her mind, and which she set down as needing correction. ”

“ Presently the door opened and Kate stood there.
“Go out in the kitchen and tell Li to give you breakfast. Naughty girls can't eat with munner.”
Through the door came Joan, her little round face perfectly white, perfectly expressionless. She did not cringe, passing her mother; she walked steadily across the room, rose on tip-toe to open the kitchen door, and disappeared through it. Kate dropped into a chair, shaking.
“Out!” whispered Buck to Lee Haines. “Beat it. I got to talk alone.” And as soon as Haines obeyed, Buck sat down close to the girl. ”

“ I wonder what the letter is about, and what is in the package?”
“Probably one of Mr. Lee's jokes. He is quite capable of turning the whole thing into ridicule. I dare say he considers his visit here a prolonged jest.”
“With his poor leg, Kate? You are as unfair to him as you were to Falkner when they first came.”
Kate, however, kept her dark eyebrows knitted in a piquant frown.
“To think of his intimating WHAT he would allow Falkner to say! And yet you believe he has no evil influence over the young man.”
Mrs. Hale laughed. “Where are you going so fast, Kate?” ”

“ Kate, we've shot enough powder to lift that mountain yonder but all we've got is color. You could gild the sky with what we've seen but we haven't washed enough dust to wear a hole in a tissue-paper pocket. I'll tell you the whole story. Lee packs a jinx with him. But—Haines, did you ever see a lion as big as that?”
The dimness of evening had grown rapidly through the room while they talked and now the light from the door was far less than the glow of the fire. The yellow flicker picked out a dozen pelts stretching as rugs on the floor or hanging along the wall ”

“ Ballantyne their opportunity to misjudge the college woman? I've thought a good deal about both sides of this, and I think I have good grounds for carrying on what Lee and I have called, rather as a joke, our crusade. Please don't misunderstand me to mean that the women of really great intellectual power are to let their remarkable [Pg 295] work be interfered with by turning that power aside to every little thing."
"So far as we ourselves are concerned," said Kate, "I think we may agree with you, Marjorie; for probably none of us is a genius except our European Fellow—of course she is. ”

“ In vain she tried to interest herself in Kate's plans for her amusement. In vain she attempted to fix her attention on the white and silver decorations of her boudoir, all done in scenes from "Lohengrin." Instead she found herself dreaming of the ruins of an old home; of the chimneys, perhaps, being partially left; of a double avenue of live-oaks, which led from the gate to the door and circled the house on all sides; of fallow fields, grown up in rank shrubbery; of palmetto and magnolia trees, interspersed with neglected bushes of crêpe myrtle, opopinax, sweet olives, and azaleas ”