580 THE STORY OF MY LIFE [1859
u Sir George said that the Wesleyan Methodists lived a holier, more spiritual life in the Colonies, but then it was because religion was there so easy to them; in London it would not be so; that London, the place in the world most unsuited to Christianity, lived on a great world of gambling-houses, brothels, &c., as if there were no God; no one seemed to care. He said what a grand thing it would be if, in one of the great public services in St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey, the preacher were to shout out as his awful text —' Where art thou, Adam ?' — and show how the Lord would look in vain for His in most parts of London — where, where had they hidden themselves ?
"Sir George told me an anecdote of a dog in New Zealand — that two officers were walking by the shore, and that one of them said, ' You declare your dog will do everything. I '11 bet you he does not fetch that if you tell him," and he threw his walking-stick into a canoe lying out at some distance in the shallow water, where the natives wade up to their waists to get into them, and where they are secured by strong hempen cords. The dog, when told, instantly swam out, but, as the man who made the bet had foreseen, whenever he tried to scramble into the canoe to get the stick, it almost upset, and at length, after repeated struggles, he was obliged to swim to shore again and lie down to rest. Once rested, however, without a second bidding, he swam out again, and this time gnawed through the corcl, pulled the canoe on shore, and then got the stick out, and brought it to his master."1
I told Arthur Stanley much of this conversation with Sir George Grey. Some time after, he was very anxious that I should go to hear Dr. Vaughan preach
1 I wrote to Sir George Grey several times after this meeting, but never saw him again till 1869 in Miss Wright>s rooms in Belgrave Mansions.ave been mle %a lion* of..........-perhapn have, become an object of pil-improves on acquaintance, and has its availabilities, like everythingwhen Ml at, Mary, thru