Lighter Moments from the Notebook of Bishop Walsham How

by William Walsham How

LIGHTER MOMENTS

Bishop Walsham How was the happy possessor of a nature essentially sunny. Deeply pious from his childhood onwards, his piety was neither of that morose, narrow, gloomy description met with among some people, nor was it of that gushing, uncertain, hysterical kind occasionally found among others. He was happy because he was good. His simple joyous life was a song of praise to his Creator, like that of a bright spring day. He rejoiced in the Lord alway. No one who knew him could fail to be struck with this all-pervading note in his character. No matter what the anxiety, no matter what the trouble, he was always ready to turn his face to the Sun and be gladdened by the Light.

A quality on a slightly lower level, but having its own part in helping to sustain his sunniness of disposition, was his keen sense of humour. He never could help seeing the funny side of things. A visit to some dreary and neglected parish in East London would sadden him, but the ready answer of a street boy, or the good story told him by a fellow traveller in train or tram, would not fail to be appreciated, and would give him something cheery to talk about when he got home.

Surely this sense of humour is in some way closely allied with the power of sympathy. This is apparently true in the case of men. Women must be considered from a different point of view, for, while the world would be but a poor place bereft of their sympathy, they have for the most part but little sense of humour. Occasionally one meets with a supposed exception, but even then one is liable to be deceived. It is natural to all women to wish to please, and sometimes an apparently humorous disposition is the result of consummate acting. A lady was staying with a large house party at a country house, and gained a great reputation by her power of telling amusing stories with a vast appreciation of their fun. It was noticed that other people's stories were received by her with remarkable gravity, and seldom called forth her laughter. This was ascribed by some to jealousy, by others to a limited sense of humour. At last the true explanation was forthcoming. An accident revealed the fact that every story she heard was carefully noted, and entered afterwards in a book, with the place and date where it was told. Hence the grave attention with which she listened. It was not the fun that attracted her, but the opportunity of adding to a store of anecdotes from which a selection was carefully rehearsed day by day in her bedroom, to be let off like a number of little set pieces for the amusement of the company and her own glorification.

Bishop Walsham How entered most of the amusing incidents and stories he met with in a notebook, but his sense of humour was very different from that of the lady mentioned above. There was no lack of spontaneity. It was part and parcel of himself, and he would never have been the man he was, or had the influence he possessed, without it.

Although far more men than women seem to have this sense, yet every one must be familiar with some few of those unfortunate people in whom it is lacking. Let a man think of his schooldays. There were masters who understood—who saw the joke underlying a breach of discipline; who punished, indeed, but who did it with a twinkle in the eye which helped to cure the smart. These were the men whom the boys trusted, just because they felt that they were sure of sympathy. But there was probably one at least among the staff, ponderous, dull, and worthy, well-meaning, but a failure simply by reason of an entire lack of the sense of humour. By dint of dogged perseverance he got certain facts into the heads of his class, but he never succeeded in interesting them in their work. He took boys out for a solemn walk, but never gained a confidence. What was the good of talking to him? He never had been a boy: he could not understand.

It is just the same in other professions. The clergyman with pale and heavy features, who sees no fun in anything, may just as well stop at home as go round from house to house with his awkward unsympathetic questions. The children run away from him, their parents are simply bored. The doctor or the lawyer loses touch with his clients when he is unfortunate enough to be set down as a man who cannot see a joke.

In fact, the sense of humour is a real part of the power of conveying a sense of sympathy. The sympathy may be there in the dullest and heaviest of men, but he has not the power of conveying it. One of Bishop Walsham How's great delights was to share with others the amusement he gleaned from day to day, and it was his wish that after his death some of the stories that he collected should be published. Many of them he frequently told, and they have been repeated from mouth to mouth till they are well known, others were perhaps well known when he first heard them. The following selection has been made with the hope of including all the more original anecdotes, and it is hoped that they may have some small share in keeping alive the memory of one whose sense of humour helped to increase his wide-hearted sympathy for his fellow creatures.

Many of the stories told by Bishop Walsham How centre round Whittington, the Shropshire parish of which he was Rector from 1851 to 1879. In the early days of his residence there superstition was exceedingly rife. There is a note by the Bishop to this effect:

The prevalence of superstition in these enlightened days (as we call them: how our great-grandchildren will laugh at us!) is most marvellous. The following are in this parish generally approved and seriously recommended remedies for the whooping-cough, popularly called the "chin-cough": To be swung nine times under a donkey. To pass the patient three times under and over a briar growing from a hedge, saying, "Over the briar and under the briar, and leave the chin-cough behind."[1] Anything recommended by a seventh son. (One woman cured several people, she tells me, by sending them to meet a boatman who is a seventh son, and to ask him what would cure them.) Anything recommended by a man on a piebald horse. (I have been told of cures being thus effected by gin, honey, cold water, and an ounce of tea taken wholly.)

[1] This process I can remember undergoing at the hands of my nurse in the garden of Whittington Rectory.—Ed.

Soon after I came here [Whittington] an old neighbour, Kitty Williams, was ill, and my wife was ill at the same time. In speaking of the latter fact to an old woman who lived at the hamlet of Babies' Wood, she said she hoped we were good to old Kitty, for she had an evil eye and might have caused Mrs. How's illness. She then told me the following story: When Kitty was young she lived in service near Whittington, but was sent away for some misconduct, and after a time married Jonathan Williams and came to live where I knew her. From the time she left her place nothing prospered there. Cows died, horses went lame, and all went wrong. So they consulted a wise woman, who told them to get a pair of black horses with long tails and to drive them about till they stopped of themselves, and then to give the first woman they saw whatever she asked for. They did so; the horses stopped opposite Kitty's cottage close by Whittington Rectory. Kitty came out, and they greeted their old servant and asked what they should give her. She chose a shawl, so they went to Oswestry and bought her one, after which all things prospered with them. This was told me with the seriousness of profound belief.[2]

[2] The following facts may throw some light on the horses stopping at that exact spot. First, they were probably hearse horses; secondly, there is a public-house on the other side of the road.—Ed.

Scarcely less curious were many of the phrases and sayings which he came across in visiting the old inhabitants of the parish. Here are a few which found a place in his notebook:

A woman from whom I was making some inquiry concerning a neighbour answered me, "I really can't tell you, sir, for I've not much confection of cheerfulness with my neighbours."

Another woman, who had been ill, described herself to me as being "as thin as a halfpenny herring."

A poor woman in the parish, speaking to me of the wonders of the heavens, expressed her astonishment at the sun rising in the east, whereas it set in the west. "I suppose," she said, "it gets back in the night when it is dark."

The following words are given verbatim as spoken by an old woman in the parish on the occasion of my first visit soon after I became Rector. "The old man and me never go to bed, sir, without singing the Evening Hymn. Not that I've got any voice left, for I haven't; and as for him, he's like a bee in a bottle; and then he don't humour the tune, for he don't rightly know one tune from another, and he can't remember the words neither; so when he leaves out a word I puts it in, and when I can't sing I dances, and so we gets through it somehow."

Queer letters, too, find a place among the other curiosities of Whittington. Mrs. How received the following remarkable epistle about a poor woman who had been sent to a lady in Oswestry. There is not a stop in the letter from beginning to end:

I am sorry to send to you Ellen Morris which her his heavy afflicted with the favor on the brain which her is not fit to get her living and her did go to Mrs. G—— and I did write a note to go to her and her said if her had a note from a clergyman her would give her 2 6 [two-and-six] what does it matter who write a note for a person when they are in distress people that can write a note and tell the truth which her has got a pair of boots in a shoemaker's shop which her cannot get them out without two shilling and her his very near barefoot and I hope you will bestow your charity this once for my sake and yours what we give to the poor we never shall want which I do give her what I can give her and God will bless us all that will give with a good free willing heart my dear Mrs. How which I hope you will bestow you are a very good to the poor and it his a great charity to give to this poor woman yours truly Mrs. D—— which her does beg her living from one or another and her does do very well considering.

The above is the complete letter, no date, and no other word of any sort. Vicarious begging letters are not unknown to the police of our big towns, but the scribe who could not do better than the above would have small chance of employment. A modern London begging letter is often a work of fine art.

A further note on a curious letter tells how, in December 1875, a good widow in the village received a proposal from a man she had never spoken to, couched in the following terms:

Dear Friend, I am a widower with two little girls, and I want some one to take care of them. I think we could live very comfortably together in this world, & afterwards we could rejoin those we have loved who have gone before. If you accept this, please write & say so on the other side of this sheet. If not, please return this letter, & dont make it public.[3]

[3] Proposal declined.—Ed

The famous and eccentric Jack Mytton lived at Halston, a country house in the parish of Whittington, not very long before Bishop Walsham How went there as Rector. Some of the old servants from that house were still living in the village, and wonderful were the stories that they told. One would relate how he was compelled to go out on a snowy night and crawl over the ice to shoot wild ducks with his master, dressed only in his nightshirt. Another told how, after Jack Mytton's famous roasting match against a professional roaster in Shrewsbury, his master called for him in his carriage on his way home, and drove him up to Halston that he might scrape him where he was burnt. Happily such days were over before 1850, and no doubt the stories of these old servants lost nothing in the telling. One of the last to survive was the subject of the following passage in the notebook:

Mrs. J——, formerly housekeeper at Halston in Mr. Mytton's time, has long been a sufferer from asthma. She lost a sister, and in speaking of arrangements for the funeral told me she had a vault made for four, in which three, including her own husband, had been already buried, and that she wished her sister to have the fourth place. When I said, "Surely, that is meant for yourself," she answered, "No, I never could breathe in a vault. I must have fresh air. She shall have it, and I'll be buried in the open ground, if you please."

While speaking of Halston a good story may find a place concerning the gentleman who owned the property in Bishop Walsham How's time.

One of my curates, in walking down from Frankton, fell in with a man who startled him by saying what a pity it was that the owner of Halston was not a better man. On being asked what he meant, the man said that no good man would do as was being done on that property, and build cottages in pairs or close together. My curate asked why not, and the man said, "Because it is written 'Thou shalt not add house to house'"; and, on my curate explaining the true meaning to him, he repudiated it entirely, and said he had no doubt the thing was condemned in the Bible because next-door neighbours always quarrel.

Here is an account of a curious interview the Rector had with a local stonemason. Probably the spread of education would make such a thing impossible to-day.

A stonemason one day brought a stone to put into the churchyard, with a verse on it in which occurred the line—

Till life's brief span be ended.

I had given no permission for this, and make a rule of refusing to allow poetical effusions upon tombstones. However, the mason had omitted the 's' after "life," so I was able to remonstrate with him, and told him that if he had sent me his epitaph beforehand I could at least have saved him from making ridiculous mistakes. He was quite incredulous, and asked me to point out the mistake. When I did so he put his head on one side, and, after contemplating the stone for some moments, said, "Now I should say, if you were to put an 's' in that line, it would come in better after 'brief.'"

Some anecdotes relating to pastoral visits occur here and there in the notebooks. The following story is interesting as illustrating the fact that it does not always do to trust to first impressions.

I was visiting on his death bed an old man in the village called John Richards, and one day found a very rough-looking fellow sitting by the head of his bed with his hands in his pockets, and his legs stretched out, so I asked him if he was the old man's son, to which he answered with a rough "Yes." I then asked him where he lived, and he answered in the same insolent tone, "Manchester." So, thinking he was not a pleasant specimen of Manchester manners, I took no further notice of him, but read and prayed with his father as if he were not there, he sitting in the same irreverent attitude all the time. Just as I was going he said abruptly, "I'll tell ye something." "Well," I said, "what is it?" "I had a mate once," he said, "down with the small-pox, uncommon bad, black as your hat. 'John,' he says to me, 'fetch me a minister.' So I went for one of these Chapel ministers, and I says to him, 'Come along o' me, I've got a mate bad.' So he came. So when we got to the house, before we went up, I says, 'You don't know what's the matter with him?' and he says, 'No, what is it?' 'Small-pox,' I said, 'as black as your hat.' And what do you think he did?" "I don't know," I said. "Why, run away!" he said, breaking into a loud laugh. I thought this was the end of the story, and that it was meant as a hit at all ministers, but he went on, "I warn't to be done that way, so next I goes for a Church minister, and I says to him, 'Come along o' me, I've got a mate bad.' And he came. Well, when we got to the foot of the stairs I says to him just like t'other one, 'You don't know what's the matter with him?' and he says, 'No, what is it?' So I says again, 'Small-pox as black as your hat.' Well, what do you think this chap did?" "Not run away, I hope," I answered. "No," he shouted in the most defiant way, "No, he walked straight up to the bedside and prayed with him just like you've done with my father." So I found that my rough and defiant friend was all the time paying me a compliment. But it was the most pugnacious bit of friendship I ever encountered.

No one who knew the Bishop and his wide-hearted sympathy would think for a moment that he told this story to contrast the ministers of various denominations. That was not the point. The fun lay in the man's manner. Might it not be fair to suggest that possibly the one minister had been vaccinated while the other was a "conscientious objector" arrived before his time? Here is another story of pastoral visitation:

A woman in a small Welsh farmhouse [Whittington is on the border of Wales] being taken very ill, a neighbour went for the clergyman, who said he would come directly. The neighbour going back to the farmhouse said they had better get out a Bible, as the parson might ask for one. The farmer thereupon told the woman she would find one, he thought, at the bottom of an old chest, "for thank goodness," he added, "we have had no occasion for them sort of books for many a long year—never since the old cow was so bad."

Talking of family Bibles, when Bishop Walsham How was Rector of Whittington he copied the following list from the entries in the family Bible of some people called Turner. The names are those of the twelve children of the family:

1. Turnerina de Margaret.
2. Turnerannah de Mary Elizabeth.
3. Alfred Fitz Cawley de Walker.
4. Bernard de Belton.
5. Cornelius la Compston.
6. Turnerica Henrica Ulrica da Gloria de Lavinia Rebekah.
7. John de Hillgreave.
8. Eignah de George Turner Jones.
9. Fighonghangal o Temardugh Hope de Hindley.
10. Turnwell William ap Owen de Pringle.
11. Turnerietta de Johannah Jane de Faith.
12. Faithful Thomas.

Surely the father who invented these names was a born humorist! It must have been the father, for no mother would have permitted her children to be thus bedizened with absurd appellations if it had not been that her lack of humour failed to see the fun of her husband's gorgeous caricature of the "upper ten."

It has often been said that the power of recognising an object when represented in a picture is not natural but acquired. The following story of one of the "Old Men's Dinners" at Whittington Rectory goes to show that in the early days of photography the rustic population had difficulty in discerning the portraits somewhat dimly shadowed forth on the old-fashioned glass and metal plates.

I always have a dinner of from twenty to thirty of the oldest men of the parish on New Year's day, and on one of these occasions I was displaying to my guests a photograph of two old men who had long worked at the Rectory, and who were taken in their working clothes, one with a spade, and the other holding a little tree as if about to plant it. A very deaf old man, Richard Jones, took it in his hand, and looking at it said, "Beautiful! Beautiful!" So I shouted, "Who are they, Richard?" "Why," he said, "it's Abraham offering up Isaac, to be sure!" I tried to undeceive him, and, as the old men who had been photographed were sitting opposite to him, I said, "You'll see them before you if you will look up." But all I could get was a serene smile, "Yes, yes, I sees 'em before me—by faith."

The Rector of Whittington was blessed with a succession of valuable curates, who for the most part became his close personal friends, and he was also on the most friendly terms with the clergy of the neighbouring parishes. Concerning his curates or his neighbours, he would now and then note an amusing incident, some of which must find a place here while we are dealing with his Whittington career.

When the curacy of Whittington was vacant on one occasion I had an application from a young clergyman who sent me a sermon on Baptism, which he had preached in his last parish, thinking that I should like to see what his doctrine was. However, his opinion on every controverted point was studiously concealed. I have, nevertheless, preserved one passage, the doctrine of which is interesting. It ran as follows: "In the East baptism was frequently practised by immersion, but in a cold climate like ours, where we apply water only to the face and hands, such a practice would be injurious to the health."

A very shy, nervous curate of mine had to take the service alone here one Sunday morning soon after his ordination. There were banns of marriage for two couples to give out, the first being for the third time of asking, and the second for the first. After reading out the four names he paused, turned very red, and astounded the congregation by adding, "The first are last and the last first."

When the house, in which a curate of mine lodged, changed hands, the new landlady agreed to pay the old one £10 for the curate. He complained to us that, having been paid for, he could not leave, however uncomfortable he might be. Shortly afterwards the new landlady told him that she had not paid the £10 and could not do so, so he paid it for her, thus paying his own valuation!

A neighbour of mine, a clergyman, who had a great dislike of discouraging little children, was one day examining a class, and asked how many sons Noah had. "Four," a little girl answered. "Ah! yes," he said, "perhaps, but one died young." He next asked what their names were. "Adam," suggested a small child. "Yes, my child," he said, "that would doubtless be the one that died young."

An Irish curate in Oswestry quoted in his sermon "the deaf adder that stoppeth her ears," and, being suddenly struck with the physical difficulties of the process, he paused a moment, and then proceeded. "How does she stop her ears? I suppose, my friends, she must clap one ear on the ground and stick her tail in the other." Curiously enough I see that Brunetto Latini, in his "Booke of Beastes," relates this as a fact in natural history. Latini was contemporary with Dante, and a great naturalist, but of the inventive sort.

The following story will be recognised by many, in spite of the absence of names. When we were children it was one of our greatest treats to be taken to see the clergyman in question, who was very kind to us and used to ask us to play drums and other instruments in his quaint sitting-room. The occasions of his visits to our house were also much looked forward to, as he was sure to do something original. He once came to a dinner party and brought two or three musical-boxes which he set off, all playing different tunes at the same time, during dinner. This is the story that occurs in the notebook:

The first time that Archdeacon Wickham visited this deanery as archdeacon I drove him to a parsonage where the incumbent insisted upon his inspecting everything. In the garden is a little pond, and over this pond we beheld a strange erection of posts and planks, with a sort of saddle-like seat on the top. On the Archdeacon asking the incumbent what it was, he explained with great delight that it was a capital contrivance by which you could take exercise and make yourself useful by pumping water up to the church, where he had just been building a transept. So, saying that he would show us, he clambered up, sat down on the saddle smiling, and began to work the treadles eagerly. Unfortunately, however, the work at the church having been just finished, the pipe which had conveyed the water to the workmen had been cut off just above the surface of the water. The consequence was that he immediately produced a jet of water which shot straight upwards and almost lifted him off his seat, entirely upsetting the archidiaconal gravity. As we returned to the house the incumbent begged the Archdeacon to go into the back yard and smell the pump, which, he said, stank horribly. The Archdeacon protested that he had no authority over pumps, but he would take no denial, and when he got into the backyard he said, "Now, Mr. Archdeacon, if you will put your nose to the spout, I will pump." The Archdeacon was, however, quite equal to the occasion, and said, "No, I depute the Rural Dean to put his nose to the spout, and I will receive his report, and, if needed, pronounce an ecclesiastical censure."

Bishop Walsham How's love of botany took him frequently into the wilder and more mountainous parts of the neighbourhood, and in the course of these expeditions he made friends with the gentleman, since dead, of whom he tells the following story:

The Vicar of the little parish of Criggion, under the Breidden hills, asked me once to come there for a certain All Saints' Day, when he was going to have a meeting of choirs. I could not go, but seeing him a little while afterwards, I asked him how the choral festival had gone off. "Oh! very well," he said. "And how many choirs had you?" I asked "Oh, well, only two," he said; "L——'s from over the hill and my own." "And how many voices had you?" I next asked. "You should not be so inquisitive," he said, "but to tell the truth, there were only his Buttons and my own little maid!"

Before he went to Whittington, he had some experience of another quaint character among Shropshire clergymen, as is related in the following passage taken from the notebook:

Mr. C—— was curate of a parish near Shrewsbury when I was curate of Holy Cross and St. Giles' in that town. He was very eccentric in all his ways. Among other peculiarities he, though very High Church in views, adopted a very secular style of dress. Archdeacon Allen undertook on one occasion to speak to him on the subject, and at a Visitation very kindly and pleasantly remarked that his dress was not quite what was usual on such occasions. Whereupon Mr. C——, taking hold of the Archdeacon's coat, said, "Well, Mr. Archdeacon, you know this is not quite the correct thing: I believe it is an old coat made to do!" The Archdeacon could not resist a good laugh, and acknowledged that he was quite right in his supposition.

One day my good fellow curate, the Rev. F. P. Johnson, was walking along the road when he saw Mr. C—— approaching, a gaunt figure with long strides, in a striped waistcoat and blue muffetees, intoning at the top of his voice the prayer for the Queen's most excellent Majesty. He slackened pace, finished the prayer, duly sang the Amen, and then shook hands with a hearty "How do you do, old fellow?" On Johnson expressing astonishment at the performance, he said he was only saying Matins as in duty bound, and, since his rector would not have it in church and he had no time in his lodgings in Shrewsbury, he always said it as he came back from visiting the school in the morning. "If you had been a minute or two sooner," he added, "you would just have come in for the anthem. You know 'in choirs and places where they sing, here followeth the anthem.'" "And what anthem did you have to-day?" asked Johnson. "Oh," he replied, "I always have the same, for I only know one. When I come to that place I always sing 'God save the Queen.'"

Another time Mr. C—— was spending a day with Mr. Peake, then curate of Ellesmere. At noon he went up to his room, and Mr. Peake heard him whistling very strangely on one note. He went up, knocked at his door, and asked him what he was doing. "Oh nothing," said Mr. C——. "But what are you whistling in that queer way for?" said Mr. Peake. "Oh, well, if you must know," he answered, "I was saying my prayers." "Saying your prayers!" said Mr. Peake, "why, you were whistling!" "Yes, I know," said Mr. C——; "the fact is your maid was cleaning your room next to mine, and I thought she would think it odd perhaps if I intoned my sexts, as I generally do, so I thought I would whistle them to-day."

Several stories occur in connection with Oswestry, which was the market town for Whittington.

Extract from a sermon preached by a curate of Oswestry upon the scene between St. Paul and St. Peter at Antioch. The words were taken down at the time [N.B.—Hibernice legendum]: "So Paul seized the banner of the Gospel out of the hands of poor, weak, compromising Peter, and waved it in a flood of light and liberty over the head of the Galatian Church."

Again:

A certain Calvinistic curate of Oswestry met a neighbour who had unhappily seceded to Rome, and thus described the interview to his vicar. "I met —— yesterday, and said to him, 'Not a day of my life passes that I do not pray for you.' And what do you think he said? Why, 'And not a day of my life passes that I do not pray for you.' The impudence of the fellow!"

Here is another:

A certain clergyman of this diocese, risen from the ranks, was preaching at Trinity Church, Oswestry, and found in the course of the service that he had forgotten his pocket-handkerchief. As he felt he should require one during the sermon, the weather being very warm, he asked a lady in a pew close to the pulpit, as he went up, to lend him hers, which he duly returned as he went down again!

Whittington being on the borders of Wales, Dissent was extremely prevalent, and the Church's action towards Dissenters was a burning subject. Hence the following story:

At a clerical meeting soon after I came into these parts the subject discussed was, "How to treat Dissenters." After most of those present had spoken, a neighbouring rector said, "I make it a principle never to speak to Dissenters about religious matters. But I have a very good garden with a southern slope, and I send them baskets of early vegetables, and by this means I have brought several over to the Church."

Next come two stories from the same neighbourhood of Oswestry, but of a more unclerical nature:

A relation of Sir Watkin Wynn was one day hunting with those hounds when his horse stumbled in a lane and fell with him. Whereupon Simpson, at that time Sir Watkin's second horseman, jumped off to help him, and thinking him dangerously hurt tried to comfort him with a text of Scripture, saying, "Ah, sir! naked we came out of our mother's womb and naked we shall return thither!"

Dr. B——, of Oswestry, has three horses which he has named "High Church," "Low Church," and "Broad Church." The reason he gives is that the first is always on his knees, the second never, and as for the third you never know what he will do next.

This last story leads on naturally to a number of good things on the subject of Ritualism. A High Churchman was practically an unknown quantity in those parts when Bishop Walsham How first went to be Rector of Whittington in 1851. The smallest innovation or improvement in a service, such as are generally accepted nowadays in Evangelical Churches, raised a storm of protest, and the ignorance displayed by newspapers as well as by private individuals is almost past belief in these days when we have been satiated with articles and correspondence on "advanced practices." For instance:

A Wellington paper, commenting severely on the supposed ritualistic practices at Welsh Hampton, spoke of the Vicar as "practising the most unblushing celibacy."

The same paper describing an evening service at St. Mary's, Shrewsbury, spoke of the vicar as walking in procession with his curate from the vestry and then entering the desk and beginning the evening service, "or, as, borrowing the language of these gentlemen, we ought more correctly to say, evening matins."

A short time ago the Reverend James Hook, Vicar of Morton, was coming to see me by train. There were several women in the carriage, and one of them began to talk to the others about Whittington, asking them if they knew what shocking things were done in the church there. She then said she once went into Whittington Church and saw the host on the altar. There were great exclamations of horror, when Mr. Hook quietly looked up from his paper and said, "I beg your pardon, what did you see?" "The host on the altar, sir," she said. "Oh, and what was it like?" She hesitated and said she could not exactly describe it. He told her not to mind about being very exact, but would she tell him what sort of a thing it was? She then said she did not notice very carefully. So he then said he would tell her what it meant, and having done so, he told her how wicked it was to invent such stories. She was then frightened, and said with some alarm, "Well, sir, I am certain I saw two rows of candlesticks down the two sides of the church."

An advertisement copied from the Liverpool Courier, January 1874. [N.B.—This refers to a prosecution of Mr. Parnell, of St. Margaret's, for ritualistic practices.] "Parnell Prosecution.—A gentleman who intends subscribing £10 to the St. Margaret's Defence Fund is desirous to pair with gentleman about to subscribe the same sum towards the prosecution, in order to save the pockets of both. Address C. I., Courier Office."

A clergyman going into a very advanced church could not make out what they were doing, and said he tried various parts of the Prayer-book in vain, and at last bethought him of "Prayers for those at sea." But this, too, failed, so he gave up trying.

A clergyman going to see a parish offered him, was shown it by a farmer churchwarden, who in the course of conversation said, "Are there many Puseyites, sir, where you come from?" He answered, "Not many; are there many here?" Farmer: "There used to be, but they are getting scarce now." "How do you account for that?" Farmer: "Well, sir, the boys have taken the eggs." This curious reason was explained when it turned out that the farmer meant "peewits."

A lady friend of mine the other day wrote to say that their clergyman was accused of ritualistic tendencies. She could not herself discover them, but she said he certainly had something on the back of his neck which to her looked like a button, but which she was credibly informed was really the thin end of the wedge.

As may be supposed a large number of the stories in Bishop Walsham How's note-book refer to curious incidents and awkward situations during divine service. The following are a selection of anecdotes of this class, and are in almost every case authentic.

My grandfather, the Reverend Peter How, was Rector of Workington, in Cumberland, where there was (and is untouched to this day, 1878!) a large "three-decker" clerk's desk, reading-desk, and pulpit, one on top of the other, blocking up the centre of the church and, of course, all facing west. My grandfather was reading the prayers one Sunday, when his large black dog came into church and found him out, so he opened the door, to which is attached a small flight of steps, and the dog came in and lay down under the seat, unseen by the congregation, who were deeply ensconced in the high square pews, and at last was forgotten by his master. In due time the latter went to the vestry, put on his black gown, and ascended the pulpit, when, soon after beginning his sermon, he became aware that the people were all convulsed with laughter, and looking down over the pulpit cushion he saw his dog with its hind legs on the seat and its forefeet on the cushion of the reading-desk gravely regarding the congregation.

Another story of the Bishop's grandfather follows:

My grandfather was once baptizing a small collier boy of three or four years old at Workington. Other children having been first baptized, he proceeded to baptize this boy also, but when he put the water on his forehead the boy turned upon him fiercely, saying, "What did you do that for, ye great black dog? I did nothing to you!"

Workington was also the scene of an awkward situation in which, when a very young man, the Bishop found himself.

When I was a deacon, and naturally shy, I was visiting my aunts in Workington, where my grandfather had been Rector, and was asked to preach on Sunday evening in St. John's, a wretched modern church—a plain oblong with galleries, and a pulpit like a very tall wineglass, with a very narrow little straight staircase leading up to it, in the middle of the east part of the church. When the hymn before the sermon was given out I went as usual to the vestry to put on the black gown. Not knowing that the clergyman generally stayed there till the end of the hymn, I emerged as soon as I had thus vested myself and walked to the pulpit and ascended the stairs. When nearly at the summit, to my horror I discovered a very fat beadle in the pulpit lighting the candles. We could not possibly pass on the stairs, and the eyes of the whole congregation were upon me. It would be ignominious to retreat. So after a few minutes' reflection I saw my way out of the difficulty, which I overcame by a very simple mechanical contrivance. I entered the pulpit, which exactly fitted the beadle and myself, and then face to face we executed a rotatory movement to the extent of a semi-circle, when the beadle finding himself next the door of the pulpit was enabled to descend, and I remained master of the situation.

When curate at Kidderminster, I had on one occasion to baptize nine children at once. The ninth was a boy of nearly two years of age, and was taken up and put into my arms. This he stoutly resisted, beginning immediately to kick with all his might. His clothes being very loose and very short, he very soon kicked himself all but out of them, but I had got him fast by his clothes and his head, and was repeating the words of reception into the Church with as much gravity as I could command, when his mother, possessing a strong maternal appreciation of the fair proportions of her lively offspring and a relatively weak appreciation of the solemnity of the occasion, remarked aloud to me, with a gratified smile, "He's a nice little lump, sir, isn't he?"

The Earl of Powis, among his many acts of generous kindness, has given substantial aid to the Rev. C. F. Lowder's very poor district of St. Peter's, London Docks. He went to the laying of the stone of the church there, and just as the ceremony was about to begin a bottle was handed by some one to Mr. Lowder. He could not make it out, and consulted Lord Powis, who at last ingeniously suggested that, as it looked like oil, it was probably intended for the anointing of the stone. So they agreed to pour it quietly on the stone then and there. The smell that arose was dreadful, but the service began, and very few had noticed the bottle. In the evening an old woman, a former parishioner, came up to Mr. Lowder, and asked after his rheumatism, and said she hoped he got the bottle. On his saying, "Oh, yes, it reached me quite safely," she explained that it was a wonderful cure for rheumatism, which she had manufactured herself.

If an ingenious way was on this occasion found out of a difficulty, what about the next?

When Archbishop Longley was Bishop of Durham, he was one day obliged to absent himself from the prayers in his chapel, and asked an old clergyman who happened to be there to read the prayers. It happened that the first lesson was Judges V., and in reading verse 17 the poor old clergyman, mindful of the presence of Mrs. and the Miss Longleys, modestly altered the last word and read, "Asher continued on the sea-shore, and abode in his garments." This was told me by a daughter of Archbishop Longley.

A former vicar of Newbiggin received a message one Sunday morning from a neighbouring clergyman, who had been taken ill, to ask if he could provide for his duty. So he sent to his curate (my brother-in-law) to tell him he should not be at church that morning, ordered his carriage, and put an old sermon, which he had no time to look at, in his pocket. When he began to preach he soon found out that the sermon was one which he had preached on bidding farewell to his first curacy. For a page or two he tried to omit the more pointed allusions to the occasion of its previous use (which must have been many years before), but, to quote his own account, "I soon found that wouldn't do, as it was all about it, so I spoke boldly of the close of my twelve years' ministry among them, and I do assure you, sir, I left many of the congregation in tears."

A somewhat similar story comes a little later in the book, but must be placed here:

A shy, nervous clergyman near Bradford was about to help a friend by reading the prayers when a message came to say that a neighbouring incumbent was taken ill and to ask for help. The rector could not go, so the friend had to be sent, but, having no sermon with him, he borrowed one from the rector, who wrote a clear good hand. He selected one well written, of which the subject was "the value of time," and meant to read it over on the way, but eventually did not like to do so as he sat beside a servant who drove him over. So it happened that he had to read it for the first time in the pulpit. He got on very well till he came to a sentence saying that, as the parish possessed no church clock, it was his intention to present one. He was too nervous to omit the sentence, and (I was assured at Bradford) did actually present the promised clock, which cost £70.

Here is another authentic sermon story:

While an undergraduate at Oxford I went with some friends to hear a somewhat noted Evangelical preacher preach for the Church Missionary Society at St. Peter's Church. He was exceedingly affected and bombastic, and, having tickled us undergraduates a good deal by his manner, at last produced a complete explosion by involving himself in a hopeless difficulty by a metaphor after this fashion: "When I contemplate the great human family I am often reminded of some mighty river. See how it draws its tribute of many waters from many a distant land, many a mountain range, and many a wide moor-land, sending their ever-growing streams to swell the noble river as it pursues its way down the valley, till all these various tributaries converging into one great volume, it pours its glorious flood into the bosom of the boundless ocean! Such, my brethren, is the race of man." Here the preacher paused, and it was quite obvious to every one that he saw that his metaphor was just the wrong way up! So he coughed and hemmed, and changed the subject.

At Uffington, near Shrewsbury, during the incumbency of the Rev. J. Hopkins, the choir and organist, having been dissatisfied with some arrangement, determined not to take part in the service. So when the clerk, according to the usual custom of those days, gave out the hymn, there was dead silence. This lasted a little while, and then the clerk, unable to bear it, rose up and appealed to the congregation, saying most imploringly, "Them as can sing do ye sing: it's misery to be a this'n" (Shropshire for "in this way").

Canon B—— was on a voyage to Egypt in a Cunard steamer, and on Sunday, in the Bay of Biscay, he undertook to hold a service. He read one of the sentences, and said "Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places," when he had to bolt and collapse. He told me he thought this a record service for brevity.

At St. Saviour's, Hoxton, the daily prayer is held in the south chancel aisle. The Vicar, the Rev. John Oakley, having to go out, left the evening service at 8.30 to a curate, but, returning home at 8.50, thought he would step in to the west end of the church and be in time for the end of the service. When he went in, to his dismay he saw a few women kneeling in the accustomed place but no clergyman. Concluding that the curate had forgotten, he rapidly passed up the north aisle to the vestry, slipped on a surplice, went across to the south side and read the service. He afterwards found that the curate had already done so, but, being in a hurry, had somewhat shortened it, and had left the church a minute before he (Mr. O.) arrived. The good women who always knelt some time at the close of the service thus did double duty that evening.

At Kensington parish church one of the curates asked for the prayers of the congregation for "a family crossing the Atlantic, and other sick persons."

At Wolstanton in the Potteries there was a somewhat fussy verger called Oakes. On one occasion just at the time of year when it was doubtful whether lights would be wanted or no, and when they had not yet been lighted for evening service, a stranger, who was a very smart young clergyman, was reading the lessons and had some difficulty in seeing. He had on a pair of delicate lavender kid gloves. The verger, perceiving his difficulty, went to the vestry, got two candles, lighted them, and walked to the lectern, before which he stood solemnly holding the candles (without candlesticks) in his hands. This was sufficiently trying to the congregation, but suddenly some one rattled the latch of the west door, when Oakes, feeling that it was absolutely necessary to go and see what was the matter, thrust the two candles into the poor young clergyman's delicately gloved hands, and left him!

A clergyman in a church in Lancashire gave out as his text, "The devil as a roaring lion goeth about seeking whom he may devour," and then added, "The Bishop of Manchester has announced his intention of visiting all the parishes in the diocese, and hopes to visit this parish on such a date."

A former young curate of Stoke being very anxious to do things rubrically, insisted on the ring being put on the "fourth finger" at a wedding he took. The woman resisted and said, "I would rather die than be married on my little finger." The curate said, "But the rubric says so," whereupon the deus ex machinâ appeared in the shape of the parish clerk, who stepped forward and said, "In these cases, sir, the thoomb counts as a digit."

The rector of Thornhill near Dewsbury, on one occasion could not get the woman to say, "obey," in the marriage service, and he repeated the word with a strong stress on each syllable, saying, "You must say, O-bey." Whereupon the man interfered and said, "Never mind; go on, parson. I'll mak' her say 'O' by-and-by."

At the church of Strathfieldsaye, where the Duke of Wellington was a regular attendant, a stranger was preaching, and the verger when he ended came up the stairs, opened the pulpit door a little way, slammed it to, and then opened it wide for the preacher to go out. He asked in the vestry why he had shut the door again while opening it, and the verger said, "We always do that sir, to wake the duke."

Mr. Ibbetson, of St. Michael's, Walthamstow, was marrying a couple when the ring was found to be too tight. A voice from behind exclaimed, "Suck your finger, you fool."

Two or three stories about vergers naturally find a place here. Possibly some of them are well known, but, even so, they will bear repetition.

A gentleman going to see a ritualistic church in London was walking into the chancel when an official stepped forward and said, "You mustn't go in there." "Why not?" said the gentleman. "I'm put here to stop you," said the man. "Oh! I see," said the gentleman, "you're what they call the rude screen, aren't you?"

A clergyman in the diocese of Wakefield told me that when he first came to the parish he found things in a very neglected state, and among other changes he introduced an early celebration of the Holy Communion. An old clerk collected the offertory, and when he brought it up to the clergyman he said, "There's eight on 'em, but two 'asn't paid."

A verger was showing a lady over a church when she asked him if the vicar was a married man. "No, ma'am," he answered, "he's a chalybeate."

A verger showing a large church to a stranger, pointed out another man and said, "That is the other verger." The gentleman said, "I did not know there were two of you," and the verger replied, "Oh yes, sir, he werges up one side of the church and I werges up the other."

Two little stories connected with Bishop Walsham How's episcopal life may well conclude the anecdotes about vergers. The Bishop's dislike of ostentation was well known. He caused much amusement on one occasion when living in London, by frustrating the designs of a pompous verger. It had been this man's custom to meet the Bishop at the door of the church, and precede him up the centre aisle en route for the vestry, thus making a little extra procession of his own. One day the Bishop, after handing this verger his bag, let him go on his way up the centre of the church, and himself slipped off up a side aisle, and gained the vestry unobserved, while the verger marched up in a solemn procession of one!

The other story occurs in the note-book, and runs as follows:

On my first visit to Almondbury to preach, the verger came to me in the vestry, and said, "A've put a platform in t' pulpit for ye; you'll excuse me, but a little man looks as if he was in a toob." (N.B. To prevent undue inferences I am five feet nine inches in height.)

Bishop Walsham How's love of children was well known, and it is not surprising to find a large number of stories about them in his note-book. These stories are mainly of two kinds, those relating to answers made in Sunday school, &c., and those of a more general nature.

Some examples of the latter follow, but it must be borne in mind that these stories have, many of them, become well known owing to the Bishop's fondness of telling them. If he was not able to enjoy children's society, the next best thing was to talk about them.

A very little girl, when taken to church, always knelt down reverently to say a short prayer when she went in. Her mother, not having taught her any prayer to say at that time, asked her to tell her what she said. The child answered that she always prayed that there might be no Litany.

A little boy had a German nursery governess, and told her he thought she ought to learn Hebrew. On her saying she didn't see the use of that, he explained that it was that she might say her prayers properly, for he was sure God knew Hebrew, but he didn't think He could be expected to understand German.

A child being taken to the seaside for the first time, was asked how she liked it, and in answer said it was very beautiful, but she didn't see "all the tinnimies," an expectation due to her private version of the Fourth Commandment.

I recollect, when a child, being exceedingly interested and affected by a story which used to be read to me from a small periodical—I think it was called the Magazine for the Young—about two boys who went to school. Their names were Master Cruelty and Master Innocent Sweetlove, the former taking with him to school a bow and arrow, and the latter a dove in a cage and a lute. The natural result followed, Master Cruelty shooting Master Innocent Sweetlove's dove, and the latter thereupon taking his lute into the churchyard, and, seated on a tombstone, solacing his grief with mournful music. This seemed to me very beautiful!

One of the children of the Vicar of St. Peter's, Eaton Square, told his father he thought some of the things they collected for in church were very silly. He could not think why they should have a collection for the Bishop of London's fun.

Archdeacon Denison told me that his brother, when a boy, among many bits of mischief did the following: His father was very fond of pictures, and had one of the death of Isaac in which the patriarch appeared lying on a couch in a splendid crimson damask tent supported by four Corinthian pillars, with a beautiful white damask table-cloth spread on the table before him. Through the tent door you saw Esau running after a stag while Jacob was bringing in the savoury meat. The offender one day carefully painted on the corner of the table-cloth "Isaac 6."

A boy being asked whether he always said his prayers, said, "Yes, always at night." He was then asked, "And why not in the morning?" To which he answered, "Because a strong boy of nine, like me, ought to be able to take care of himself in the daytime."

Two little boys, grandchildren of a former vicar of Great Yarmouth, were looking at some pictures in a copy of "Bunyan's Holy War," and found one of the devil chained. One of them asked his mother whether the devil was chained, and, being told "no," asked whether he ever would be. To this she answered, "Yes, some day." The boy replied, "When he is, need we say our prayers?"

The Bishop had a niece who is head-mistress of the Godolphin High School at Salisbury, and the following story was told him by her.

A child at the school asked if there were any saints now. The mistress replied that she hoped there were many, on which the child said, "Then, I suppose they've left off wearing those hats," by which she meant the nimbus.

The next story is told of a little great-niece of the Bishop called Molly.

Little Molly, aged four, after saying her prayers one evening to her aunt, remarked, "There's no one to make you say your prayers as you make me." "No," her aunt said, "we don't want any one to make us, for we like saying our prayers." "Do you?" said Molly, "Then I wish you'd ask God not to let my goloshes fall off so often."

A little girl unused to surpliced choirs, on seeing such a choir enter the church, whispered in dismay to her mother, "They're not all going to preach, are they?"

The Bishop was chairman of the Committee of the Society for providing Homes for Waifs and Strays, and in connection with this work told the following story:

Some children kept some hens, and were allowed to sell the eggs for the "Waifs and Strays." One Sunday morning they brought nine eggs in to their father and mother, and said, "We did give it out to the hens that there would be a collection to-day."

The annual children's parties which the Bishop delighted to give were great events, and the following incident which occurred at one of them must find a place here:

At a children's party given by me shortly after the death of Archbishop Thompson we had a Punch and Judy to amuse the children. The man who showed it came up to my son before the performance and said that he had heard that I had been at the Archbishop's funeral, and perhaps I should prefer his leaving out the coffin scene!

Here are some odd notions about the unseen world which were developed in the brains of some of the Bishop's little friends:

Little Rupert B——, aged just three, one day when it was raining, said to his father that he did not think heaven could be a nice place to live in. "Why not?" asked his father. "Because," he answered, "the floor is all full of holes and lets the water through." Before he was three a little baby sister was born, and he was taken into his mother's room to see her. "Where did it come from?" he asked. His mother said, "God sent it us." "Then," said Rupert, "I suppose it is a sort of an angel." His mother explained that it was only a baby. "Hasn't it got any wings?" he asked, and on being told "No," added, "Hasn't it got any feathers at all?"

A little boy, hearing the hymn read which says,

"Satan trembles when he sees
The feeblest saint upon his knees,"

asked, "Why does Satan let the saint sit on his knees if it makes him tremble?"

A little girl who had been taking raspberries in the garden was talked to by her mother, and told to resist the temptation. She afterwards appeared with evident signs of having been again among the raspberries, and, when her mother asked her how it was that she had not resisted the temptation, she said that when she was looking at the raspberries she did say "Get thee behind me, Satan," and he got behind her and pushed her in.

A very little girl was asked, "Who made you?" She answered very reverently, "God," and then, looking shocked, whispered, "Nurse says He made me naked."

On my visit to Illingworth to consecrate a new chancel in 1889, the churchwarden gave a luncheon party, and his little boy, aged nine, told my chaplain that he wanted to go to church to be confirmed. The chaplain told him it was not a confirmation but a consecration, whereupon the small boy said he didn't care which it was so long as he was done.

A little cousin of mine when very small was asked who was the first man, to which he promptly answered "Adam." He was next asked who was the first woman, when he thought a little, and then hesitatingly suggested "Madam."

Bishop Knight Bruce's little boy accounted for the number of fleas in South Africa by saying, "God made lots and lots of people, so you see He had to make lots and lots of fleas."

A little girl, known to Mr. Edward Clifford, hearing much of the praise of stylishness, once prayed, "O Lord, make me stylish."

When the Bishop was rector of Whittington he was a most diligent teacher in the village school, going there from nine to ten almost every morning. He was also for some years a diocesan inspector of schools. He was, therefore, keenly alive to the numberless mistakes and misapprehensions of children, and recorded in his note-book a large number of absurd answers which he either heard himself or of which he was told by friends. A selection of these is given here.

In examining the schools of the deanery of Oswestry I once visited Selattyn school, and set four questions for the senior class to answer in writing. They were, (1) "What do you know about Tarsus?" (2) "Why did St. Paul go to Damascus?" (3) "What is the meaning of Asia in the New Testament?" (4) "What happened at Lystra?" The following is a copy of one paper sent in:

John Jones, 12 last birthday, a teacher in Selattyn. Tarsus was a man which could not walked from his mother womb and he used to go to the temple every day and St. Paul heal him St. Paul said to tartus I say unto thee arise so Tarsus sat up and leap and walked.

St. Paul went to Damascus to preach to the Gentiles. Asia means the place where they ended when they started from Antiock to Asia.

It happened at Lystra that the two seas met and the soldiers cut the ropes.

The Vicar of King Cross, Halifax, asked a class of boys what was the difference between a priest and a deacon, and one boy said the deacon only wore that thing over one shoulder. The Vicar asked why he did so, and after some hesitation another boy answered, "Because he hasn't put both shoulders to the wheel."

At Almondbury in 1897 a class of boys were asked the meaning of an Archangel, and one boy suggested "One of the angels that came out of the Ark."

The Rev. T. F. Dale, when in India teaching in his school, asked the boys what is the meaning of faith. A European boy answered, "When you believe something you are quite sure isn't true."

A lady was explaining to a class the passage "Not with eye-service as men-pleasers," and asked the children if they knew what eye-service meant. One girl suggested, "service in 'igh families."

Mr. B—— of Stamford, in a Teachers' Meeting, urged his Sunday School teachers not to take it for granted that their scholars knew the meaning of words, and illustrated his caution by the word "Epiphany," telling them that they should always explain that it meant "manifestation." Shortly afterwards the diocesan inspector was examining the day school and accidentally asked what "Epiphany" meant. One little girl said, "A railway porter, sir." The inspector asking what made her think that. She said her teacher had told her it meant the "man at the station."

A lady being anxious to teach a new little kitchen-maid something of the Bible, rightly thought she must find out what she knew. So she asked her if she knew about our Lord, and she said "No." So she thought she must begin at the very beginning, and told the girl she would read to her about God making the world. The girl sat perfectly stolid and unintelligent till they came to the serpent tempting Eve, when she suddenly exclaimed, "I remember summat about that snike." This was her summa theologiæ.

A child in a school was asked what he knew about Solomon, and said, "He was very fond of animals." Being asked what made him think so, he said, "Because he had three hundred porcupines."

Here is a very up-to-date little story: did it happen in Leicester?

Teacher: "Why did they hide Moses in the bulrushes?"

Answer: "Because they didn't want him to be vaccinated."

My cousin, Mr. G. F. King, teaching a class of little London boys one Sunday, was questioning them about the parable of the Good Samaritan, and asked them what it was that the man "fell among." He tried to get them to remember by saying that it was a dangerous road to travel along, when one little boy held up his hand. My cousin said, "Well, what did he fall among?" and the little boy replied, "Buses."

An anachronism:

The Duke of York lately visited Leeds, and there were large crowds in the streets. Shortly afterwards one of the clergy was questioning some little children about the birth of our Lord, and asked, "How came there to be so many people at Bethlehem at that time?" One of the children replied, "Please, sir, the Duke of York was there."

At Denbigh a girl at Howell's school was reading St. Matt. v. 41 to the rector of Henllan, and gave it thus: "And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him by train."

Mr. Castley, curate of Marsden, questioning the children in the school as to the history of St. Stephen, asked what it was of which he was accused before the Council. A boy replied, "Looking after the widows."

When the diocesan inspector was examining the Cathedral Schools, Wakefield, in 1895, he asked the children what Moses said when God told him to go and speak to Pharaoh. One child answered, "Our Aaron would do it better."

The next story was an experience of the Bishop's own when he was rector of Whittington:

I once set a class of girls in our school to write the life of Solomon. When I looked over the exercises I found one girl began, "Solomon slept with his fathers," and went on after that with his history. On questioning her I found she thought it meant that Solomon when a child slept in his father's bed.

Another girl at the same time brought me a new and wonderful judgment of Solomon in the following words: "The Queen of Sheba was as wise a woman as Solomon was a man. She brought a hundred children, fifty boys and fifty girls, to Solomon, all dressed the same, to see if he could tell which was which. So Solomon commanded water to be brought and bade them wash; whereupon the girls washed up to their elbows, but the boys only washed up to their wrists. So Solomon knew which was boys and which was girls."

The headmaster of the Wakefield Grammar School in an examination-paper on general knowledge asked, "Who was John Wesley?" One boy answered as follows: "John Wesley invented Methodist chapels, and afterwards became Duke of Wellington."

My daughter was teaching a class of boys at Upper Clapton just before the boat race, when she saw one of the boys tear a page out of his Bible, crumple it up, and throw it away. She said, "What are you doing?" to which the boy replied quite demurely, "I'm for Oxford, and this Bible was printed at Cambridge, and I'm not going to use a Bible with Cambridge in it."

The Vicar of St. Augustine's, South Hackney, turned a boy out of his class one Sunday for misbehaviour. Next Sunday the boy appeared again in his class, when the vicar said, "Wasn't it you I put out last Sunday?" The boy at once replied, "No, sir, I think it was the gas."

A boy in an examination, being asked to give an account of the Sadducees and Publicans, wrote, "The Sadducees did not believe in spirits, but the Publicans did."

Here follows another story which, in common with the last two or three, was noted by the Bishop during the time of his suffragan-episcopate for East London.

The diocesan inspector was examining a very young class in the St. Mary Axe Ward School, and asked, "What became of Adam and Eve when they were turned out of the Garden of Eden?" To which a little girl answered, "They went to the workhouse, sir."

In a school examination the question was set, "Explain the meaning of a Bishop, Priest, and Deacon." One boy answered, "I never saw a Bishop, so I don't know. A Priest is a man in the Old Testament. A Deacon is a thing you pile up on the top of a hill, and set fire to it."

A boy, being asked for the derivation of Pontifex, said, "It is derived from pons a bridge, and means the Chief Priest, just as we say Archbishop."

Some children in an Irish school were asked the meaning of "He that exalteth himself shall be abased," when one of them replied, "Turned into horses or cows."

A Confirmation having been held in a Yorkshire village, some children were seen very busy in the road making a church with mud. A passer-by asked them where the bishop was, and they said they hadn't got mook enough to mak' a beeshop.

A boy in Christ Church, Albany Street, School when asked, "What are the Ember weeks?" answered, "The weeks when we pray for the young gentlemen who are afraid of not passing their examination."

Prizes have for several years been offered for the best essays by children on subjects set the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In 1893, in answer to the question, "What passages in Holy Scripture bear upon cruelty to animals?" one boy said, "Cruel people often cut dogs' tails and ears, but the Bible says, 'Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.'" Another boy, in reply to the question, "Why should you be kind to animals?" said, "If you are very kind to a dog he will follow you to the grave at your funeral."

The next two stories are not of exactly the same nature, but so closely relate to the subject of children and schools that they may be fittingly inserted here.

I met an officer once who was relating his experiences of Sunday School teaching. He said he met an old schoolfellow one day who was a clergyman, and who persuaded him to spend a Sunday with him. In the morning his friend told him that he must come and take a class of boys in the Sunday School. This he protested he could not, and would not, do, but was finally over-persuaded, his friend lending him a commentary, and telling him he had only to keep the class quiet, as he would his own men, hear them read a chapter, and ask them a few questions which he would find in the notes of the commentary. "All went well," he said, "till we had read the chapter through, when I tried to find the questions. I managed to ask one or two, which I found they answered in a moment, so in my despair I thought I would take them into the Old Testament, and now I was more lucky, for I asked them, 'Boys, who was Mephistopheles?' Well, would you believe it, there wasn't a boy of them that knew! And wasn't I glad! I didn't know anything about him myself, you know, except that he was one of the old patriarchs, but it got me out of this trouble, for, though the time wasn't half up, I closed the Bible with a bang and exclaimed, 'Boys! I can teach you no more. Go home and search the Scriptures!'"

A clergyman living at Rainbow Hill, Worcester, in visiting his parish, called on the mother of one of the girls in the Church School, who, being rather "superior," told him she thought a parish school was not quite suited to Florrie, and, as she was rather delicate, she had decided to take her away and send her to a young ladies' cemetery.

Besides the mistakes made by children, the Bishop not unnaturally collected a number of curious answers made in examination papers by older people. The candidates for ordination in the Wakefield diocese supplied some of these, and others he was told by his brother-bishops. Some of these stories were told in the "Memoir of Bishop Walsham How," and others may be well known, but they form an important part of the Bishop's note-book, and must not be omitted here.

The following are answers made in writing by different candidates for ordination:

A number of words were given for explanation, and among them was "cherub." One man wrote, "A cherub is an infant angel, who died before baptism, and will undoubtedly be saved."

Another question was, "How may St. Paul's Epistles be grouped?" One answer was, "St. Paul's Epistles may be divided into two groups, those he wrote before his conversion and those he wrote after."

Another candidate rather surprised the examiner by stating that "in the early Church, before a person was baptized, he was obliged to learn a catechumen."

Another, to the question "Who were the Ophites?" gave the interesting answer that "the Ophites were people who walked by sight and not by faith, the word being derived from the Greek word for to see."

In the Ripon diocese an ordination candidate, in answer to the question, "What religious sects have been founded during the last two centuries?" gave a list which included "the Ecclesiastical Commissioners."

An ordination candidate, being asked in a paper on doctrine to write out the Nicene Creed, wrote (with a magnificent grasp of faith), "I believe in all things visible and invisible."

The Vice-President of the Liverpool Philomathic Society vouches for the story that, in answer to the question "Define a parable," an examinee wrote, "A parable is a heavenly story with no earthly meaning."

A young man having attended some University Extension lectures on physiology, remarked to his clergyman how much light they threw on many things. "For instance," he said, "I never understood one of the Collects in the Prayer-book, which speaks of 'both our hearts,' before. But I see now that it refers to the right and the left ventricle."

Here is another physiological story:

The late Canon Lyttelton, of Gloucester, when rector of Hagley, was fond of scientific teaching, and formed a class in his school for physiology. After a few lectures he received a letter from the mother of one of his pupils, saying, "Reverend sir, Please not to teach our Susan anything more about her inside; it makes her so proud."

In a paper on practical subjects one of the questions asked what rules for almsgiving could be recommended. One of the candidates advised a plan he had seen of having about six boxes in the house, and sending them round at meals for various charities according to the viands on the table. Thus, when the fish was served the box for the Deep Sea Fisheries would be sent round, and when pineapples were being eaten that for the S.P.G.

In answer to the question, "What is a churchwarden?" one of the Battersea College students wrote, "A churchwarden is a godly layman, who appropriates the money of the offertory, and acts as a check upon the extravagance of the parochial clergy."

A friend of mine, when taking missions in Australia, met a clergyman in Victoria who had an old Sunday-school teacher, a man who had taught for thirty years, and who asked him one day whether infant baptism was not invented by Philo at the Council of Trent.

The Warden of University College, Durham, asks the young men of the College to breakfast occasionally. One day, when a few of them were at his table, the following conversation took place: Warden to student, "Have you ever read the Apocrypha?" Student to Warden, "Not all, sir." Warden, "How much have you read?" Student, "Oh, not much, sir." Warden, "Have you read the Maccabees?" Student, "No, sir." Warden, "Or Esdras?" Student, "No, sir." Warden, "Or Wisdom?" Student, "No, sir." Warden, "Well, have you read Bell and the Dragon?" Student, "Oh yes, sir, I've read part of that." Warden, "How much?" Student, "Three chapters, I think." Warden, "Then you've read more than any of us, for there is only one chapter." Poor student!

In one of the examination papers I set as examining chaplain to Bishop Selwyn of Lichfield, it being Michaelmas, I asked the candidates to give an outline of a sermon upon the text, "Are they not all ministering spirits?" One man wrote as follows: "I should consider this a good text for a sermon for the Additional Curates' Society or the Church Pastoral Aid. I should begin by describing in what our ministrations consist, and should speak of the privilege of being called to minister to others. I should then go on to speak of the heirs of salvation to whom we minister, and I should conclude with an earnest appeal to the congregation to provide funds for the sending forth of more such ministering spirits."

A candidate for ordination was asked what he knew of St. Bartholomew, and wrote, "He was almost, if not quite, identical with Nathanael."

Bishop Bickersteth of Ripon had occasion to reject a conceited young deacon who was a candidate for priest's orders, and when the bishop told him of his failure, he said, "I suppose, my Lord, you know that Ambrose was made a bishop, though only a deacon." "Yes," the bishop replied, "and I quite think that if ever you are made a bishop it will be direct from the diaconate."

Archdeacon Bather, who was a great educationist, went into his parish school one day where there was an old and not highly educated master, who was giving an oral lesson on the English language, in which, he said to his class, there are many words pronounced the same, but spelt quite different. "Now," he said, "there's the word 'har.' There's the har you breathe, and the har of your head, and the har that runs in the fields, and the har to an estate, all spelt quite different, but all pronounced the same."

The Bishop of Brisbane, when he was in England before his consecration, was examining in one of the Oxford Local examinations. He set the candidates to write out the Fourth Commandment. One wrote, "Six days shall thy neighbour do all that thou hast to do, and the seventh day thou shalt do no manner of work."

A number of stories in the Bishop's note-book are connected with Scotland and Ireland. Both of these countries were resorted to from time to time by him for purposes of the annual fishing holiday, and it is not too much to say that he made many friends in each among the ghillies and others who accompanied him on his various excursions on loch and riverside. Great was the amusement of two Highland boatmen, who many years ago were rowing him on a Sutherlandshire loch, when during an hour when the fish were very "stiff," he sang them, "Hame cam our gude mon at e'en," an old Scotch ballad by Wilson. The Irish boatmen, he used to think, were more melancholy, and he expressed his surprise at the character for rollicking fun which is often given them in books. At the same time he now and then drew out a real witticism, and more than once he notes with delight a real Irish "bull." Here are some of the stories, not all gleaned from the actual countries, but all referring to persons of these two nationalities:

An Irish clergyman, a neighbour of mine, thought it his duty to speak to a lady who had unhappily lost her faith in Christianity, and after a few arguments he ended by saying, "Well, you will go to hell, you know, and I shall be very sorry indeed to see you there."

A well-known Irish judge in the Insolvent Court once detected a witness kissing his thumb instead of the Book in taking the oath, and in rebuking him sternly said, "You may think to deceive God, sir, but you won't deceive me."

The Reverend G. B——, of Bridgenorth, told me that on a recent visit to Ireland he heard a preacher conclude his sermon with these words: "My brethren, let not this world rob you of a peace which it can neither give nor take away."

At the conclusion of the Irish Church Disestablishment in the House of Commons an enthusiastic Irish member got up and thanked God that at last the bridge was broken down which had so long separated Catholics and Protestants in Ireland.

An Englishman was driving through a beautiful glen in county Wicklow, and asked the driver the name of the valley, to which he replied, "Sure, and it's the divil's glen, yer honour." A little further on the stranger again asked, and the driver said, "Sure, and it's still the divil's glen, yer honour." They afterwards drove through another valley, and the stranger said, "And pray what do you call this?" "It's the divil's kitchen, yer honour," was the reply. The stranger then remarked, "He seems to have a good deal of property in these parts." "Indade, yer honour, he has," said the driver, "but he's mostly an absentee, and lives in London."

An Irish professor created a laugh, when called upon to speak at the Birmingham Church Congress, by beginning, with a rich brogue, "Before I begin to speak, let me say——" No one heard any more of the sentence.

At Bishop Lonsdale's first Ordination at his palace at Eccleshall there were a large number of young men, and at dinner a young Irish deacon called out from the other end of the table to the Bishop, "Me Lord, do you happen to have read my sermon on Justification by Faith?" "No," said the Bishop, "I don't happen to have met with it; but surely, Mr. ——, you have chosen rather a difficult subject." "Not at all, me Lord," the young deacon called out, "and when you've read my sermon you'll find no difficulty in the subject at all!"

A former Dean (an Irishman) in one of his sermons, speaking, as he often did, disparagingly of the Fathers of the early Church, said, "As for unanimity, there was no unanimity in any one of them." In another sermon the same dignitary spoke about "Standing on the seashore and watching the ever-receding horizon." Again, in another he urged his hearers to "take their immovable stand on the onward path of progress."

An Irishman of a certain church in Shrewsbury spoke one day of "the narrow way in which there was only room for one to walk abreast."

A certain clergyman, who was preaching a sermon on behalf of a new burial ground in a large parish, spoke of the sad condition of a population of thirty thousand souls living without Christian burial.

I was driving in a car from Glengariff to Killarney with a friend, and, on starting, a ragged boy on an old white horse rode by our side joking with the driver. My friend spoke to the boy, and said, "Are you the boots at the inn at Glengariff?" To which the boy answered instantly with a grin, "Did yer honour pay the boots? For, if you didn't, I am."

This ready reply is matched by the following story which again shows the readiness to seize an opportunity of personal advantage.

Bishop Wigram of Rochester insisted on his clergy shaving, and when his successor, Bishop Claughton, came to confirm in Oswestry he sat at luncheon opposite to an Irish curate who had a large beard. The bishop, as a joke, looked across the table and said, "You know, Mr.——, if you came into my diocese you would have to shave off your beard." To which came the instant reply, "Me Lord, I accept the condition!"

At a Retreat which I conducted in 1894 one of the services was given out to be held a quarter of an hour earlier than on the printed time-table. An elderly clergyman had not heard this and came in at the printed hour, and found us singing a hymn. He found a seat and then whispered to his neighbour with a strong brogue, "Is this the end of the last service, or the beginning of the next?"

I once heard an Irish clergyman preaching at Barmouth, in recounting the mercies for which we ought to be thankful, speak of "deliverance from savage wild beasts and noxious insects of the night."

An instance of an Irish bull, which was of so natural a kind that it might have been made by any one, occurred when the Bishop and some of his sons were waiting at Athenry Station. Two farmers were overheard talking, and one said, "Will you be going by the first train to-morrow" To which came the reply, "There's no first train from here at all!"

There are in the note-book a large number of entries under the heading of "Taurology," but most of the stories are already well known. One or two only need be quoted.

Two sisters whom I knew, Miss B——s, received a letter from a brother in Australia, and one read it aloud to the other and then began reading it to herself. The other said, "You might let me have a look at it," whereupon the first cried out, "I call that selfish: didn't I read it all aloud to you before I'd seen a word of it meself?"

I asked a Mr. B—— whom I met in July 1896 whether he was any relation to another Mr. B——, a friend of mine, to which he replied, "No: I have no relations of my own. My father was the last of his race."

An Irish footman brought for his master to put on two boots for the same foot. He was sent to rectify the mistake, but returned with the same two boots, saying, "Indeed, yer honour, it wasn't my fault, the other pair's just the same."

The difference between Scotch and Irish character comes out clearly in these stories. Connected as they almost all are with matters ecclesiastical, it is not strange to find the strong Presbyterian dislike to Anglican ceremonial cropping up in the following stories about Scotsmen. But, apart from this, the wit is of a drier kind, and the sayings of a far more sanctimonious character. Here is one about an old forester with whom the Bishop made friends during several of his holidays. This man was invited by a certain duke, whose retainer he was, to pay a visit to his English seat. On the Sunday he was taken to church, and he said afterwards that when the choir came in he thought it was some daughters of the duke and other girls dressed up, and thought it all perfectly disgraceful and making a mock of religion. When the organ played they had to hold him to prevent his going out. "It was," he said, "sic a terrible noise." Other stories follow in the Bishop's own words:

The Duchess of B—— had an old Presbyterian nurse, who was once persuaded to attend the beautiful church they had built. The Duchess afterwards asked her if it was not very beautiful, and she said, "Oh yes, very." "And the singing," said the Duchess, "was not that lovely?" "Yes, your Grace," she said, "it was lovely; but it's an awfu' way of spending the Sabbath."

A Scotch lady and her gardener used to worship together, not agreeing with any form of Church doctrine. A friend remonstrated with her and asked, "Do you really think you and your gardener are the only two real members of the true Church on earth?" To which she replied, "Weel, I'm nae sae sure o' John."

A Scotch minister from a large town once visited and preached in a rural parish, and was asked to pray for rain. He did so, and the rain came in floods and destroyed some of the crops; whereupon one elder remarked to another, "This comes o' entrusting sic a request to a meenister who isna acquentit wi' agriculture."

Bishop Wilberforce used to tell a story of a Scotch minister who always regulated his grace before meat by the prospect before him. If he saw a sumptuous table he began, "Bountiful Jehovah," but if the fare was less tempting he began, "Lord, we are not worthy of the least of Thy mercies."

Archbishop Tait when in Scotland had to sign the receipt for a registered letter before the postman, who, when he heard it was the Archbishop, looked at him and remarked, "Weel, I must say you look rather consequential about the legs."

One of the Bishop's sons was fond of sketching, and on one occasion brought back a story which the Bishop delighted in telling. This son and an artist friend arranged to go on a sketching expedition to the west coast of Scotland, and on arriving there the latter went to interview the minister of the little village which was to be their headquarters. In the course of conversation he asked the minister whether, if they attended his ministrations in the morning, he would be greatly scandalised if they did a little sketching on the Sunday afternoon, to which the good man replied, "Well, your business is to paint pictures and mine is to preach and pray. I preach and pray on the Sabbath, you paint pictures on other days. If you saw me preaching and praying on other days you would raise no objection, so I shall raise none if you paint pictures on the Sabbath." It was a curious argument, and probably it would be difficult to find another minister in all Scotland who would agree with him.

A number of stories relating to sermons have already been given, but a large part of the Bishop's notebook which relates to them has not yet been touched. There are some sermons given almost in extenso, and to these it is only possible to refer briefly. The longest report of a sermon is of one that was printed after it had been delivered by an old gentleman who married his cook and thought that it was necessary to justify his action to his parishioners. He described his bride as "one of plebeian birth and the superintendent of my establishment." He based his explanation on the fact that he himself was of such extraordinarily high birth that, in order to make his hearers comprehend how utterly incapable he was of appreciating the little social distinctions which existed in that parish he would tell them that he could no more appreciate such distinctions than, standing upon a mountain, he could judge of the heights, as compared with each other, of the mole-hills lying scattered around its base. Where, therefore, was he to a find a woman, and moreover a woman willing to take charge of a gouty old gentleman like himself, whose birth in comparison with his own was not plebeian? In the matter of his wife's little peculiarities of pronunciation, &c., he would just remind any satirists that their tenements were constructed of a material certainly not iron, and that to such persons the throwing of stones was a proverbially dangerous practice. He announced in conclusion that all these things were of small importance, as he and his wife had resolved to lead a life of almost absolute seclusion, devoting themselves entirely to her improvement, to the duties of their station, and to the preparation of their souls for heaven.

Another long extract is given from a sermon preached at Llanymawddy. The original is said to be in the British Museum, and the copy made by Dr. Griffith of Merthyn. The sermon is headed "A funeral sermon for a dead body," and is a wonderful example of "English as she is spoke" by the Welshman. It begins with these words: "Good people of Llanymawddy. My dearly beloved brethren, we are met together here to-day for a great preachment for a dead body, the body of good Squire Thomas, the squire of our parish. We did all love him, though he has scolded us shocking, &c."

The preacher went on to say that he knew the words of his text in three languages, "The Latin tongue which is the language of all learned people: I do know them in the English language—it is the language of all genteel people. I do know them in the Welsh language of course—it is the language of all vulgar people."

Much of the sermon is given up to a description of Adam and Eve, the latter being described as "the beautifullest of all women, but she was a very peculiar woman. She wanted to know everything she ought not to know." The Garden of Eden is thus portrayed: "The garden of Squire Thomas was nothing to it: it would take twenty thousand of Squire Thomas' to make such a garden."

It is altogether a most wonderful discourse, and it would be well worth anyone's while to hunt it up in the British Museum, if the original is really to be found there.

Then there is an extract from a sermon preached by an Irish bishop, which, says Bishop Walsham How, "I heard described by one of his clergy who heard it." The point of the sermon was an illustration of the joy over the one repentant sinner by the joy in a household over the baby which had been ill and had recovered. The curious part of the story lies in the fact that at every mention of the baby the preacher dandled his hands up and down as if he were holding it. The constant repetition of this must have been trying to the gravity.

A few more "sermon-notes" may find a place here just as they were jotted down by the Bishop.

A certain preacher, after describing all sorts of evil, exclaimed, "And all this in the so-called nineteenth century!"

A working man refused to go to church because (he said) the parson could tell him nothing in a sermon he didn't know. However, a friend persuaded him to go, and asked him afterwards if he had learnt nothing. "Well, yes," he said, "I did learn one thing. I learnt as Sodom and Gomorrha was two places. I always thought they was man and wife."

It is said that Dean Goulbourn while preaching on the intermixture of evil with good in the Church, said, "Remember, there was a Ham in the Ark"—then, thinking it might sound odd, corrected himself and added, "I mean a human Ham."