A story about suffragan bishops. Archbishop Tait's coachman, Wyatt, was driving a gentleman one day when the latter asked about the horses, the coachman saying, "We had a hard time of it some years ago knocking about to Confirmations and Consecrations all over the country, but since we've taken Mr. Parry into the business we've done better." (Mr. Parry was the suffragan bishop of Dover.)
The Bishop of Bedford (Billing) when rector of Spitalfields was once visiting a pickpocket who had been very ill, and on whom he thought he had made some impression. One day Mr. Billing saw he was getting better and said he hoped he would soon be able to get to work. "Oh, yes, sir," said the man, "it's a good time of year coming on, just when one meets so many old gents coming home from dinner at night."
Finally, here are two or three stories to which no name is attached:
An ambitious young curate once complained to his bishop that he had not sufficient scope for his energies, and would like a larger sphere of work. The bishop quietly remarked, "Would a hemisphere do?"
A bishop once stayed at a house where they put out for him a set of silver-mounted brushes. When he left, the brushes disappeared, and the master of the house waited some days thinking he should receive them back, but, not doing so, he wrote and inquired if they had got packed up by mistake with the bishop's things. He received a telegram next day saying, "Poor but honest; look in table-drawer."
A young lady sitting by a bishop-suffragan who was also an archdeacon, asked him if it was true that he was an archdeacon as well as a bishop, and when he said, "Yes," she said, "Is not that what they call pleurisy?"
A certain bishop of the old school had a well-known and invariable Confirmation charge, which began, "My dear young friends, we have been engaged in a very interesting, and (as I hold it to be) a perfectly unobjectionable ceremony."
A certain clergyman about to be married is said to have written to his bishop to ask if he could marry himself, as he wished the wedding to be very quiet, and did not want to trouble any other clergyman. The bishop is said to have replied that he could not give him permission to marry himself, but he thought he might allow him to bury himself if he wished and felt able.
STORIES OF THE BISHOP'S OWN EXPERIENCES DURING HIS EPISCOPACY.
These are not very numerous, and occupy a comparatively small portion of the note-book. Some of them have already appeared in the "Life of Bishop Walsham How."