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.