Lighter Moments from the Notebook of Bishop Walsham How

by William Walsham How

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."