THE RECTOR AND HIS PIG.
“I have been a rector for many years,” writes a clergyman, “and have often heard and read of tithe-pigs, though I have never met with a specimen of them. But I had once a little pig given to me which was of a choice breed, and only just able to leave his mother. I had to convey him by carriage to the X station; from thence, twenty-three miles to Y station, and from thence, eighty-two miles to Z station, and from there, eight miles by carriage. I had a comfortable rabbit-hutch of a box made for him, with a supply of fresh cabbages for his dinner on the road. I started off with my wife, children, and nurse; and of these impediments piggy proved to be the most formidable. First, a council of war was held over him at X station by the railway officials, who finally decided that this small porker must travel as ‘two dogs.’ Two dog tickets were therefore procured for him; and so we journeyed on to Y station. There a second council of war was held, and the officials of Y said that the officials of X (another line) might be prosecuted for charging my piggy as two dogs, but that he must travel to Z as a horse, and that he must have a huge horse-box entirely to himself for the next eighty-two miles. I declined to pay for the horse-box—they refused to let me have my pig—officials swarmed around me—the station master advised me to pay for the horse-box and probably the company would return the extra charge. I scorned the probability, having no faith in the company—the train (it was a London express) was
already detained ten minutes by this wrangle; and finally I whirled away bereft of my pig. I felt sure that he would be forwarded by the next train, but as that would not reach Z till a late hour in the evening, and it was Saturday, I had to tell my pig tale to the officials; and not only so, but to go to the adjacent hotel and hire a pig-stye till the Monday, and fee a porter for seeing to the pig until I could send a cart for him on that day. Of course the pig was sent after me by the next train; and as the charge for him was less than a halfpenny a mile, I presume he was not considered to be a horse. Yet this fact remains—and it is worth the attention of the Zoological Society, if not of railway officials—that this small porker was never recognised as a pig, but began his railway journey as two dogs, and was then changed into a horse.”
SIR MORTON PETO’S RAILWAY MISSION.
Mr., afterwards Sir S. Morton Peto, having undertaken the construction of certain railways in East Anglia, was at this time in the habit of spending a considerable part of the year in the neighbourhood of Norwich, and, with his family, joined Mr. Brock’s congregation. It will afterwards appear how many important movements turned upon the friendship which was thus formed; but it is only now to be noted that, in the course of frequent conversations, the practicability was discussed of attempting something which might serve to interest and improve the large number of labourers employed on the works in progress. They were part of that peculiar body of men which had been gradually formed during a long course of years for employment in the construction, first of navigable canals, and then of railways, and called, from their earlier occupation, “navvies.” They were drawn from diverse parts of the British Islands, and professed, in some instances, hostile forms of religion, but were distinguished chiefly by extreme ignorance and all but total spiritual insensibility. They had, at the same time, a common life and an unwritten law, affecting their relations to each other, their employers, and the rest of the world. That they were accessible to kind attentions—clearly disinterested—followed from their being men, but they required to be approached with the greatest caution and patience.
Mr. Brock’s wide and various sympathy, joined with his friend’s steady support, led—under the divine blessing—to measures which proved very successful. Mr. Peto constructed commodious halls capable of being moved onward as the line of railway advanced, and affording comfortable shelter for the men in their leisure hours, and furnished with books and publications supplying amusement, useful information, and religious knowledge. To give life to this apparatus, Christian men, carefully selected, mingled familiarly with the rude but grateful toilers, helping them to read and write, encouraging them to acquire self-command, and above all, especially when they were convened on Sundays, presenting and pressing home upon them the words of eternal life.
Mr. Brock had liberty to draw on the “Railway Mission Account,” at the Norwich Bank, to any extent that he found necessary, and in a short time he had a body of the best men, he was accustomed to say, that he ever knew at work upon all the chief points of the lines. No part of his now extended labours gave him greater delight than in superintending these missionaries, reading their weekly journals, arranging their periodical movements, counselling and comforting them in their difficulties, and visiting them, sometimes apart and at other times at conferences for united consultation and prayer, held at Yarmouth, Ely, or March.
Results of the best character, of which the record is on high, arose out of these operations.
—Birrell’s Life of the Rev. W. Brock, D.D.