Reminiscences

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THE LIBRARIES

The Right Reverend William Paret, D.D., LL.D.
Sixth Bishop of Maryland

REMINISCENCES

BY THE

Rt. Rev. WILLIAM PARET, D.D., LL.D.

SIXTH BISHOP OF MARYLAND

PHILADELPHIA
GEORGE W. JACOBS & CO.

PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1911, by
George W. Jacobs & Co.

Published May, 1911.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

These ' i Eemembrances ' ' are written, not with
any wish for their being published, — but at the
earnest request of my children, and of a few
dear friends. I have tried to state facts only,
very plainly, avoiding as far as possible any
expression of my own opinions.

PREFACE

In a conversation with Bishop Paret a few
days before his departure on a trip abroad
in the autumn of 1909, I suggested that he
write for publication a book of "Reminis-
cences" during his vacation. He demurred
on the ground that while such a book would
undoubtedly be a source of pleasure and
gratification to his immediate family and
intimate friends, he feared it might not be
of commensurate profit to others. I in-
sisted, but he would make no definite prom-
ise. During his sojourn at Nice, France, he
wrote me that he had begun the book, and I
wrote him renewing my request and empha-
sizing it as follows: "I do not agree with
you that these Reminiscences should not be
prepared for public use. As I have before
told you, in my judgment they would not
only accomplish a great deal of good, but
would, also, constitute a very important part

vi PREFACE

of the history of the Church in the Diocese
of Maryland. This is not only my view, but
the view of many Churchmen in the Diocese
whose judgment you are accustomed to re-
spect in all other affairs ;and sol hope that in
the work you are now doing upon these Rem-
iniscences you will have in mind at least as
their ultimate end, publication for general
use ... as a matter of self -protection
you should consider this view of the case,
because, as you know, if work of this kind
is not done by a man himself wThose life and
labor have been such as yours, an attempt
at it is made by someone else, with a result
that is generally disastrous, and frequently
humiliating. ' '

This letter was not without effect, and
upon his return he placed the manuscript in
my hands, saying: "I have complied with
your wish, and found great gratification in
the exercise it afforded me. Here is what I
have written. It is purely from memory.
Read it at your convenience, and make such
use of it as you may determine. If you
should decide to publish it you will do well to
have it edited to the extent of verifying

PREFACE vii

dates, amounts and other more minute par-
ticulars."

Upon reading the manuscript I found it
so characteristically natural, so pleasing and
profitable withal, and containing so many
things of personal and historical significance
to the Diocese of Maryland, that I decided
to publish it with only the necessary revi-
sion. What of the latter has been done is
the work of the Bishop's grand-daughter,
Miss Emily Paret Atwater, who served him
in the capacity of private secretary for
many years, and whose confidential inti-
macy with the Bishop, and perfect knowl-
edge of all his affairs, personal and official,
peculiarly fitted her for the task she has
most lovingly and loyally performed.

The influence of the life and labor of
Bishop Paret will be felt in the work of the
Church in the Diocese of Maryland for all
time. My desire is that his memory shall
live commensurate with his influence. This
book, which is a living epistle of the man, is
published with the hope that it will find its
way into every household among us, and be
the medium of transmitting to our children,

viii PREFACE

and to our children's children, not only the
name, but, also, something of the wisdom
and worth of William Paret, the sixth
Bishop of Maryland.

John G. Murray,
Bishop of Maryland.

Baltimore, Md., March, 1911.

CONTENTS

OHAPTEB PAGE

Author's Preface iii

Preface v

Introduction xi

I Early Days and School-Life .... 1
II From the Twelfth to the Twentieth

Year 13

III From the Twentieth Year — College,

Ordination, My First Parish ... 27

IV My Life at Pierrepont Manor ... 47
V From 1864 to 1869 77

VI Rectorship at Christ's Church, Wil-

liamsport, Penna., 1868-1876 ... 95

VII From 1876 to 1885 at Washington . . 105

VIII As Bishop of Maryland 133

IX The DrvisiON of the Diocese .... 151

X The DrvisiON of the Diocese (continued) 157

XI The Church's Work for the Masses . 165

XII The Maryland Theological Class . . 171

XIII At the Lambeth Conferences . . . 181

XIV Some Things Accomplished .... 195

INTRODUCTION

In sending out these "Keminiscences" of
Bishop Paret to the public, a few explan-
atory words may not be out of place. Hav-
ing been associated since childhood with my
grandfather as his private secretary, and
having had some share in the " earnest re-
quest" for the writing of the Reminiscences,
the task of editing them was, after his death,
entrusted to me. It was a task reverently
accepted, and, I hope, completed with im-
partiality as well as care.

Although most of the incidents related
have long been familiar to me in the form
in which they are given, still, recognizing
that the book was written entirely from
memory, I have tried to verify them, in so
far as possible. In many cases, and par-
ticularly with regard to his early life and
work, this was, of course, impracticable, and
should an occasional misstatement be de-
tected, I can but crave the reader's indul-

xii INTRODUCTION

gence by calling attention to the Author's
Preface in which he states that these "Re-
membrances" were not written primarily
with a view to publication.

The work was begun and finished during
the year that Bishop Paret spent abroad,
following the consecration of his coadjutor
(1909-10), and the manuscript was written
out entirely by hand in that clear and beauti-
ful chirography so familiar to his corre-
spondents.

Although this trip was taken at his ex-
press wish, and largely for his own benefit,
he soon grew homesick for his diocese, his
people, and for his daily office routine. Too
infirm for much sight-seeing, time hung
heavy on his hands, and so it was that the
writing of his Reminiscences, although un-
dertaken with reluctance, soon became of
absorbing interest to him. Far from home,
with no books or papers of any kind for ref-
erence, these Reminiscences of a man eighty-
four years of age are remarkable for their
clearness, conciseness and faithfulness to the
smallest detail. Conversational in tone, yet
pastoral rather than personal, they furnish

INTRODUCTION xiii

a far better portrait of the author, both as a
man and a priest, than any words of another,
no matter how laudatory they might be.

This pastoral rather than personal char-
acter of the book accounts for the omission
of much concerning his family life. The
few such incidents mentioned relate more to
his ministry than to his home. Yet none
who knew him, — those nearest to him least
of all, — could doubt the deep tenderness that
lay beneath his quiet, and often reserved, ex-
terior for the members of that home-circle.
What he has seen fit not to dwell upon, in the
more intimate relations of life, could not
with propriety be supplied by another hand,
and, save for a few brief notes, I have en-
deavored to respect his silence.

It is less easy to explain the absence of
any but the slightest allusion to the meetings
of the General Convention. It seems prob-
able that Bishop Paret may have intended
to give a more accurate and comprehensive
account of the deliberations and legislation
of this Body, with which he was so long and
so closely associated, than could have been
done from memory, and so left the whole

xiv INTRODUCTION

subject practically untouched until his re-
turn home.

But that home coming was to be a very
sad one, and any additions to the Reminis-
cences that he may have planned were never
made. Mrs. Paret's health had begun to
fail in the preceding summer, and soon after
their return to Baltimore, in September,
1910, she was taken to the Johns Hopkins
Hospital, where she passed to her rest on
the 15th of January, 1911.

The illness and suffering of his devoted
wife cast a cloud over her husband's life that
was not to be lifted. Leaving the more ar-
duous part of his work to him whom he so
affectionately calls his " Brother Bishop,' 9 —
he resumed some of his official duties, and,
in the hope of diversion, spent many hours at
his desk. But his anxiety told on his
health, an attack of la grippe developed into
pneumonia, and without knowing that his
beloved wife had two days before preceded
him, — he entered upon his reward January
18th, 1911, in the 84th year of his age, and
the 26th year of his Episcopate. His clear
and vigorous mind remained unclouded to

INTRODUCTION xv

the last, and the sense of humor, so strongly
discernible in the Reminiscences, never de-
serted him. Almost his last conscious act
was a participation in the Holy Communion ;
and death found him calm and unafraid.
To him the words of St. Paul seem pecul-
iarly fitting: "I have fought a good fight, I
have finished my course, I have kept the
Faith."

In concluding, the editor wishes to ex-
press her grateful appreciation for much
valuable assistance given in the editing of
the Reminiscences by the Rt. Rev. John G.
Murray, D.D., Bishop of Maryland, the late
Rev. Dr. Eccleston, one or two others of the
clergy of Maryland, and to Mr. Lawrence C.
Wroth, Librarian of the Maryland Diocesan
Library.

Emily Paret Atwater.

Baltimore, Md.? March, 1911.

EARLY DAYS AND SCHOOL-LIFE

REMINISCENCES

CHAPTER I

EAELY DAYS AND SCHOOL-LIFE

I was born in the City of New York on the
23rd day of September, 1826.

My grandfather was Stephen Paret, from
Prance, the hamlet of Latour near Serillac,
in the department of Correze in France.
He left his home as a soldier in the French
Army, — serving for a time in South Amer-
ica,— but after his service found his way to
New York City where he became a success-
ful merchant.

His son, John Paret, was my father.

My mother's maiden name was Hester
Levi. Of her ancestry, I know only that she
was of Jewish origin.

The home of my parents was on Green-
wich Street (No. 221), near Barclay Street.
It is now all given up to business, chiefly

2 REMINISCENCES

wholesale, but was then a place of pleasant
family homes.

Though not the eldest born, the death of
an older brother made me, while yet in early
childhood, the oldest living son in a family
of twelve children. Remembrances of those
earliest days are very few and indistinct.
One incident comes back vividly. When I
was about four years old, before I had been
to school, or had received any lessons, my
mother found me one clay, seated on the
floor, with a book in my lajD and my hands.
To her question, — "What are you doing,
William'?" I answered, "I am reading."
" Nonsense, child," she said, "you can't
read; let me see if your book is not upside
down." But it proved to be right side up.
"What book is it?" was her next question;
and I gave the name rightly. Amazed, she
asked, "Do you really mean that you can
read % Let me hear you read on that page."
And I read, where she pointed, several lines,
clearly and distinctly. It always remained
to her and to the others a problem of won-
der, how I learned my letters and the use of
wrords. But I am quite confident that I have

REMINISCENCES 3

the explanation. My two sisters, one of
them two years, and one five years older
than myself, were in the habit of studying
their lessons in the large room where I was
free to stay and play. The younger sister
was just learning to read; and I think that
by watching and listening I must have
caught unconsciously much that they were
getting by careful labor; and my love for
reading and books became strong.

My father had an excellent, though small,
collection of books; and before I was ten
years of age I had gone through almost all
of them. At eleven years I had read all of
Shakespeare, Anquetil's Universal History
in seven volumes, much of Byron, much of
Scott, and was able to repeat, from memory,
the "Lady of the Lake" from beginning to
end. This love of books and reading never
left me. It had much to do in determining
the course of my after life.

When little more than six years old, I was
sent to a boarding school in Connecticut, at
South Farms, about four miles from Litch-
field. There were no railroads in that di-
rection ; and I remember well the very slow

4 REMINISCENCES

journeys in the clumsy small steamboat to
Bridgeport or Norwalk, whence we took an
old-fashioned stage coach, hung on straps
and swinging wildly. It was almost or quite
an all day's ride. The master of the school
was Mr. Samuel M. Ensign. Just across
the green was the Congregational Meeting
House (they did not call it church), where
we all had to go on Sundays under charge of
Miss Ensign, the Master's sister. Of the
worship or the preaching I can remember
nothing. But I well remember the dreary
coldness; for there were no stoves or
fires in the church. We carried two or
three little foot-warmers containing ashes
and coals, one for Miss Ensign, and two for
the boys to use in turn. And to keep us
awake and out of mischief she occasionally
passed around cookies and fennel seeds.

By the old-fashioned reckoning of those
days, each day began not in the morning,
but at sunset. The Master's father (old
man Ensign, we called him) would take his
chair on the green before the house, on Sat-
urday evening about fifteen minutes before
sunset; and while we were at our free and

REMINISCENCES 5

noisy games he was watching the sun. Pres-
ently he would give warning, " Almost sun-
set ;" but we played on, until in a loud, clear
voice he shouted, " Sundown!" and instantly
play stopped, noise gave way to stillness, and
Saturday faded suddenly into Sunday.

The order was reversed the next evening ;
again "old man Ensign" was in his chair on
the green. The boys, not daring to be
noisy, gathered around him, eager for their
freedom. "Sundown yet?" we would ask,
and his answer would be "not quite;" till
at last, as we watched, he gave the word,
"Sundown," and with our yells and shouts
of play, Sunday broke instantly into Mon-
day.

Of the incidents of school life I have re-
tained very few. I was there in the year
1833, at the time of the great shower of
"Shooting Stars." The people of the
neighborhood thought that the last day had
come; and our schoolmaster shared that
thought, so we were all waked out of sleep
and taken into the larger room for a prayer
meeting of half an hour. Another incident
was strongly fixed in my mind by ten weeks

6 REMINISCENCES

of childhood's suffering. We had ginger
cookies, one apiece, on Sundays only. My
cousin, John Dunkin, at school with me, had
found and taken a robin's nest with four
young birds. I bought one of the birds,
promising to pay ten cookies, one each Sun-
day. Alas ! in three days my bird was dead,
but John remorselessly insisted on full pay-
ment. So for ten weeks I had to pocket my
cookie at the table and carry it out and
watch while he ate it without giving me a
crumb.

I have a memorial of those school days in
a letter written from school to my mother,
when I was about eight years old. She care-
fully kept it, and gave it to me some fifty
years later. It was as follows :

"Dear Mother, —

"Your kind letter with one to Mrs. En-
sign was duly received from which I was
pleased to hear that my dear parents brother
and sisters were alive and well. When I
think of you I feel sorry for John who can
never again see his parents or receive from
them their kind embraces. I am studying

REMINISCENCES 7

History from which I learn that it is a nar-
rative of the events which have taken place
in the world it sets before us striking in-
stances of virtue heroism and patriotism it
opens the hidden springs of human affairs
and by the principle of emulation it incites
us to copy such noble examples by present-
ing us with the vicious ultimately overtaken
and punished for their crimes it also has an
important connection with Theology which
teaches the perfections of God and the duty
which we owe to him. I would write more if
I could but I have not any time. Mr. En-
sign told me to tell you that I have wrote 12
letters but he would not let any of them go
because they were blotted I remain
"Your Affectionate

"Son William Paret."

It was evidently not entirely original. I
do not think it was dictated to me, but prob-
ably giving the substance of something
fresh in my mind from some book I was
studying.

I do not think I could have remained at
that school more than two years ; because at

8 BEMINISCENCES

nine or ten, I was again in New York City,
attending the Grammar School of Columbia
College on Murray Street. There I completed
the full English and French course, but did
not take Latin or Greek, it being my father's
purpose to put me into business life as soon
as possible. Among the teachers I remem-
ber most kindly Prof. Henry Drisler who
afterwards became a famous scholar; and
very unkindly, Prof. Charles Anthon, then
Professor of Latin and Greek in the Col-
lege. He taught us not mentally, but phys-
ically, in his use of the rattan.

During those Grammar School days my
relations with my father were very helpful
and pleasant. He was an enthusiastic fish-
erman, and had his jDrivate boathouse on the
wharf at or near the foot of Barclay Street.
Every pleasant Saturday, or other day free
from school, he would take me with him for
a fishing trip in or near the harbor ; at Ellis 's
Island or Governor's Island, or Eobbin's
Eeef or the Kill von Kull ; and so began the
love for fishing which clung to me all my
life. But it was not in fishing only that we
were brought close. As I was one evening

KEMINISCENCES 9

reading the daily paper, I turned to him and
asked, " Father, what does the inside of a
theater look like ? " i ■ What a question ! ' ' he
answered. ' ' Don 't you know V " Certainly
not," I said, "I have never been in a the-
ater.'? A few days after, on my coming
from school, my mother told me to put on
my Sunday clothes, because my father
wanted me to go out with him in the even-
ing. And he took me to the famous Park
Theater for my first enjoyment of that kind.
It was an unusual occasion, the benefit of
one of the most popular actors ; and as such
it had gathered all the theatrical celebrities ;
Macready, Charlotte Cushman, Placide, the
Burtons and others. The chief play was
" Hamlet." On our way home my father
asked whether I understood and enjoyed it.
"Yes, greatly," I answered, "I had read it
several times, but never so well understood it,
as I do now. " " Well, ' ' he said, ' ' if you will
promise that until you are twenty years old,
you will not go to a theater without my
knowledge and consent, I promise that when-
ever you want to go, I will go with you, un-
less there should be some strong reason to the

10 REMINISCENCES

contrary." That promise was kept, and it
saved me from what might have been low and
harmful, and cultivated my taste for higher
and better things. And from this and other
things I learned from him the principle
which I afterwards followed with my own
sons; keeping them near me by sympathy
and participation in their enjoyments.

When I was a boy the city covered but a
very small portion of the ground it now oc-
cupies. Above Tenth Street there were very
few buildings. At Gramercy Park, now
below the center, it was all bare fields or
woods. I remember a Sunday afternoon
walk with my father and one of his friends.
We went far out beyond streets and houses,
and on a hill covered by rocks of mica slate,
my father said to his friend, "I have bought
a good sized lot here for one hundred dol-
lars." "Why, John," said his friend, "I
did not think you could be so foolish. It will
never be used. The city will never come so
far as this."

"Not in my time," was the answer, "but
it will be in my children's time, and I have
bought it for them."

REMINISCENCES 11

This must have been about the year 1835.
Thirty-one years later, in 1866, my father
died, leaving all his estate for the use of
my mother during her life. Some ten years
after my two brothers, co-executors with me
wrote that my mother needed larger income
than she was receiving, and that they had
an offer of twenty thousand dollars for that
lot. They asked my consent. The lot was
sold; and within three wTeeks the purchaser
sold it again for eighty thousand dollars.
If in the market now, it would be worth
probably a million, for it is just at the South-
ern entrance to the Park.

FEOM THE TWELFTH TO THE
TWENTIETH YEAR

CHAPTER II

FROM THE TWELFTH TO THE TWENTIETH YEAR

When I was about twelve years old, I was
taken from school and placed as store-boy
in a dry goods jobbing house in William
Street; salary for the first year, nothing;
for the second year, fifty dollars. I had a
mile and a half to walk from home, the fam-
ily having moved to a new home still on
Greenwich Street, but near the corner of
Beach Street. My duties were to open and
sweep out the store very early, save twine
by tying and rolling it in balls, and help to
pack and mark goods for shipping. But in
the second year, because I was found to be
a good penman, and good at figures, one or
two of the less important books were en-
trusted to my keeping, and I was soon pro-
moted to be assistant bookkeeper.

In my sixteenth year, my father took me
as his own assistant bookkeeper, and from

16 REMINISCENCES

being assistant I soon became chief. It was
a place of responsibility, since beside his
New York house he had branch establish-
ments in Mobile, and in Columbus, Georgia,
with a partner in each.

I am sure that the business experience
and training thus gained have been of very
great value to me in all my after life.

I continued as bookkeeper until almost
nineteen years of age ; but during those years
came a great change in my life. In one of
the summer vacations, I went with my oldest
sister to visit friends in Palmyra, New York.
In our company also was one who was called
my cousin, though really no blood relation ;
Miss Maria G. Peck, of Flushing, Long Is-
land, whom three years later I married.
There being no railroad available beyond
Syracuse we there took what was called the
Packet-boat on the Erie Canal; a boat en-
tirely given up to passengers, and it was
crowded. There were eating accommoda-
tions and berths for sleeping, but after the
berths were filled, mattresses were spread on
the cabin floor and many of us took our rest
there. That part of our journey took about

REMINISCENCES 17

twenty-four hours and was quite interesting.
On the Sunday after our arrival, my sis-
ter, a very strict Presbyterian, said, "We
will go to the Episcopal Church this morn-
ing, with our friends, out of respect for
them." It was my very first glimpse of the
Church and of the Prayer Book. For
though living in New York for nearly eight-
een years, I had never crossed the threshold
of an Episcopal Church, and had never
even seen a Prayer Book. My mother,
being a regular attendant at a Dutch Re-
formed Church (though not a member of
it), I had gone with her every Sunday. It
was the most rigid form of Presbyterian
Calvinism, giving me the idea that as an
unconverted person I had no part or lot in
religion. I was an outsider. I must wait
till I should be converted, and I could do
nothing to help to that conversion. It was
all foreordained. When the time came
which God had fixed for it, if it came at all,
I should be converted, and I must wait. The
prayers offered by the minister were all for
the saints, for those who had been converted,
not for me. They passed over my head.

18 REMINISCENCES

They may have prayed for me, as a sinner,
but they did not expect me to pray with
them.

That first Prayer Book Service was a rev-
elation to me ; the beginning of my first ear-
nest religious thoughts. From the first
sentences, through the Exhortation and Con-
fession, it was a call not for the saints to
pray, but for sinners to pray for themselves.
I said to myself at once, "Why this is wor-
ship in which I can take part ; worship for
the sinners even if not yet converted." And
before that service was ended I was taking
my part in it heartily. In the evening my
sister said, "Now we will go to our own
Church." And I answered, "I am going
where I went this morning. ' ' I never went
back to the Presbyterian worship. On my
return to New York I went with my mother
to the door of the Dutch Reformed Congre-
gation, and as leaving her I turned away she
asked in surprise, "Are you not going in?"
And I said, "No, Mother, I am going to an
Episcopal Church."

Soon came the feeling that I could and
must do something for my soul's sake ; and I

REMINISCENCES 19

began to study the old Puritan Book, Dodd-
ridge's "Rise and Progress of Religion in
the Soul." I tried to work myself into the
feelings there pictured ; the meditations, the
convictions of almost agonizing despair, at
last giving place to hopeful raptures. The
effort was a failure, and in my difficulty I
sought advice from a clergyman of the
Church, the Reverend Dr. Haskins of Wil-
liamsburgh, Long Island, telling him of my
efforts and my failure to work myself up to
and through the vivid emotions there de-
scribed as necessary to a "change of heart."
And he soon convinced me that the necessity
was not for the emotions, but for the reality
of a wish and purpose to serve God. Some
months later, after careful preparation, on
Easter day in the year 1844, I wTas baptized
in St. Mark's Church, Williamsburgh ; and
on the same day, there being then no Bishop
for that diocese, I was, as "ready and desir-
ous to be confirmed," admitted to my first
Communion.

In connection with that baptism and my
life in the Church, arose the only serious dis-
agreement between my father and myself.

20 REMINISCENCES

Some weeks before the day fixed for my
Baptism, I told him of my purpose ; and he
at once and in the strongest manner forbade
it; declaring that until I should be of full
age I was under his authority and bound to
obey. Now my father, as lovable and hon-
orable a man as I have ever known, had been
turned strongly away from all religious re-
lations and worship. He was, what is rarely
found in these days, a thoughtful and ear-
nest-minded deist. Believing that God is
the Father and Creator of all, he stopped
there, not accepting the Gospel as a Revela-
tion, nor acknowledging Christ as a Divine
Redeemer. He long after gave me the rea-
sons for this position; saying that in his
early life he had been greatly wrought up in
the excitement of a great Methodist revival ;
but when the temporary excitement was
past, a reaction came. He felt that it was
all unreal, and in his disappointment he
turned not only against that particular phase
of religion, but against all the Christian re-
ligion which it claimed to represent. He
had been baptized in his infancy, in the
Church of Rome, his father and ancestors

REMINISCENCES 21

in France having been all members of that
Church. But from the time of this unhappy
revival, until almost the last of his life of
some seventy-four years, he never attended
any place of worship, and would not permit
one of his children to be baptized, or to go to
Sunday School, while he left them free to go
to Sunday services with their mother.

My proposed Baptism was therefore in
absolute opposition to his wishes, and, his
prohibition was declared most absolutely.
I again sought pastoral advice, and was told
that my duty to God was above my duty to
my father ; and so I told him. He insisted
that he must see the clergyman, and they
had an interview the day before that fixed
for the service. At the close of their con-
versation, my father called me before them,
and said very calmly, " William, you must
choose between this clergyman and myself.
You know what I wish, and what I am sure
I have a right to claim. Which shall it be ? "
And my answer was, " Father, I must be
baptized." And I went, feeling that the re-
lations between my father and myself must
afterwards be very unhappy. But in this I

22 KEMINISCENCES

was mistaken. On my coming home the
next day everything was as pleasant as if
there had been no disagreement. And the
matter was not even mentioned until many
years after. When I had been for some
time a clergyman and had to study such
cases from the standpoint of a pastor, I
went voluntarily to my father and told him
that I knew now I had been badly advised,
and that my duty would have been to yield
full obedience to him until I should come to
full age. But during all the interval his
confidence and affection for me, instead of
being diminished, grew stronger.

Some six months later came a second dif-
ference of will between us. I was not a
lover of business. Though an accurate
bookkeeper I disliked buying and selling.
My mind turned not only to books, but very
strongly towards the ministry. I told him
of my wish to give up business, take a col-
lege course and become a clergyman. In
his strong objection to this, there was none
of the arbitrariness he had before shown;
only reasoning and persuasion. He told
me of his wish and plans that I should be

REMINISCENCES 23

with him in business ; that he would take me
into partnership so soon as I should be of
age. And he asked me to consider it a
month before deciding. At the end of the
month I told him my purpose was not
changed. He then offered to give me one of
his southern business establishments, or to
give me, and sustain me in, a large planta-
tion which he owned in the State of Georgia,
and asked me to take another month's con-
sideration. I did so, but did not change my
own plans. He yielded pleasantly, saying
he could not let me go till I had brought in
my next younger brother, Henry, and had
trained him to be ready to take my place.
After that he would provide all my expenses
through College, and until my ordination,
"but after that," said he, "you know I can-
not continue to help."

My mother also advised me not to seek to
be a clergyman, urging that I w7as entirely
unfit for it ; that my health was too poor, —
my voice so bad that I could never be a good
speaker, — and that I had an ungovernable
temper. In all which respects I think the
results have shown that she was mistaken.

24 REMINISCENCES

It took several months to get my brother
used to his new position and work; after
which I was free to make my own plans. It
was thought better that instead of remain-
ing in the city and taking the course at Co-
lumbia College, I should go away from home ;
and I chose Hobart College at Geneva, New
York, as having three advantages. It was a
Church college, a small one, and in a very
pleasant and healthful place. But the work
of preparing for it, since I had no Latin or
Greek, was a serious matter.

Taking a third story room which I had
to myself in my father's house, I engaged a
tutor, the Reverend James Millet,1 a
graduate of the University of Dublin, and
an excellent scholar, to give me private les-
sons. He came every day for twelve days
for lessons of an hour and a half each. He
was a good teacher for just such work, and
I was a diligent and determined student,
and made great progress. After the twelfth
lesson I dismissed the tutor and studied by
myself. This began in February, 1846. I

1 The Rev. James Millet, rector of the Church of the Holy
Martyrs, New York.

REMINISCENCES 25

began my day's work very early, had two
hours of study before breakfast, an hour's
walk for exercise, study again until lunch at
half joast twelve, another hour's walk, and
study till seven; some ten hours a day of
solid study. But my heart was in it ; and to
my own amazement I found that in eight
months I had not only fully prepared for
entrance, but had read also all the course of
the Freshman year. In September I pre-
sented myself for examination, passed, and
took my place as a Sophomore.

One advantage of the method I followed,
of depending on myself, was that I was more
thoroughly grounded than any of my class-
mates, and early kept the lead.

PROM THE TWENTIETH YEAR-
COLLEGE, ORDINATION, MY
FIRST PARISH

CHAPTER III

FROM THE TWENTIETH YEAR — COLLEGE, ORDI-
NATION, MY FIRST PARISH

The life at college was a very pleasant
one, yet very strict. We had to rise early,
go to chapel at six, have an hour's recitation
and were then free for breakfast, &c, till
nine o 'clock. There was no arrangement for
eating at the college, and I had to walk a
mile and back for every meal. Then came
study in our rooms from nine to eleven, rec-
itation till twelve, and freedom till two;
study and recitation till five, then tea and
freedom till seven, when we were expected
to be in our rooms for study and enjoyment
and sleep. But after a good hour's study,
the rest of the evening was generally given to
visits and good-fellowship.

My room was a very pleasant one, and
there was a circle of six or eight, who loved
to gather there to have me read for them

30 REMINISCENCES

the next morning's lesson, to smoke, and
play cards and chess. I was the only one
who did not smoke, and I soon found myself
a little lonely. For good-fellowship I de-
termined to learn. I thought I might lose a
lesson and a meal from tobacco sickness, yet
I took a pipe. The first day I lost three les-
sons and three meals. Supposing the vic-
tory won, I began again the next day, and
again I lost three recitations and three
meals; and the third day brought the same
result. But I persevered; and the fourth
day brought only some temporary uneasi-
ness. But I never loved smoking, and I
continued it not for pleasure, but for com-
panionship, and on the day of graduation I
gave it up; and from that to this present
time, sixty years, I have never touched to-
bacco.

The college life was very quiet. There
were not more than fifty or sixty students in
all, and the craze for athletics was unknown.
There were no football or baseball games.
And this quietness helped much to the ef-
fectiveness of study.

Among my fellow students there were two

REMINISCENCES 31

only with whom I became quite intimate.
One of them wras Henry Adams Neely, who
afterward became an assistant minister of
Trinity Church, New York, and later the
Bishop of Maine. The other was Charles
Wells Hayes, who later became the principal
of the De Lancey Divinity School in Geneva.
With both of these, as long as they lived, the
close friendship continued. Both are now
(1909) at rest; and of all my college mates,
I think only one is living.

During the Junior year, I earned my first
money for literary labor. At the medical
department of the college, there was one
female student, Miss Elizabeth Blackwell.
She was, I think, the first woman to take a
medical degree in America. As commence-
ment was coming near, the authorities of the
medical department were troubled by finding
that their engraved forms of diplomas did
not suit the case. They were in Latin, and
prepared for the masculine gender. They
applied to the Rev. Dr. Hale, our president,
seeking someone who could write a good
hand, and good Latin also. The president
named me. I drew up a diploma on parch-

32 REMINISCENCES

merit, and received fifteen dollars as a fee.

I passed only two years, the Sophomore
and Junior, in actual college residence. At
the close of the Junior year, the president,
the Rev. Dr. Hale, came to me and earnestly
pressed an unusual request. He said that
there was in Syracuse, a very large and im-
portant school, the Parish School of St.
Paul's Church, which needed a competent
principal, and had asked him to find one.
He flattered me by saying he knew no one
else so well fitted for the post as I was, — that
I was so far ahead of my class, that I could
easily do the Senior work privately, and he
begged that I would take the charge. I did,
and though then only twenty-two years old,
I became the principal of that school, which
had three departments, and two assistant
teachers. It kept me closely busy, but did
not break up my studies ; for at the close of
the year, I went back to the college, and
passed all examinations with honor.

That school year brought me into relations
with one who afterward became quite dis-
tinguished, both as scholar and statesman.
Andrew D. White, then living with his

BEMINISCENCES 33

father in Syracuse, became a regular pupil
in the Parish School. He was then about
seventeen years old. But he was far above
all the other scholars, not in age, but in char-
acter and earnestness. His aim was to pre-
pare for, and enter college. We soon found
that the regular class work was holding him
back ; and he asked me to take him as a pri-
vate scholar, outside of school hours. I de-
clined to do so, because I needed some hours
for my own study and for exercise. He was
persistent, and promised that if I would take
him, he would at half past five every morn-
ing bring two saddle horses to my door, one
for me, and one for himself, and we could
take our exercise in that way. On that con-
dition I promised to give him an hour and a
half daily for tuition. The result was that
the next year he entered Hobart College with
credit, just as I was graduated (1849).

At my graduation, the first honor, the val-
edictory oration was given to me; and not-
withstanding my father's unwillingness to
have me give up business for study, he,
bringing one of my sisters, came on from
New York to be present at the time.

34 REMINISCENCES

One month after my graduation, I mar-
ried Miss Maria Gr. Peck,2 with my father's
approval and his promise to continue to
help me in money, with the increased ex-
penses, until my ordination. I remained
one year longer in charge of the school at
Syracuse, earning some six hundred dollars,
to which my father added three hundred;
and we were able to keep house very moder-
ately.

At the end of that year, again at the ur-
ging of President Hale, whose friendship for
me was very helpful, I took charge of an
important academy at Moravia, Cayuga
County, removing thither with my wife and
young child. Our house there was very
small indeed; hardly large enough for our-
selves; rent, fifty dollars a year. But we
soon had to crowd in another. My former
pupil, Andrew D. White, after his first year

2 August 22nd, 1849. She was the daughter of Isaac and
Agnes Peck of Flushing, Long Island. The children of this
marriage were Adaline Peck, William Hale and John Francis
(twins), Milnor Peck, and Adelia Vassar. Mrs. Paret died
February 1st, 1897, and on April 21st, 1900, Bishop Paret
married Sarah Hayden Haskell, widow of Henry Tudor Has-
kell of Chicago. Mrs. Sarah Haskell Paret had one daughter
by her former marriage, — now Mrs. David M. Robinson.

REMINISCENCES 35

at Hobart, determined to go to Yale. And
lie wrote to me, asking me to take him again
as a private pupil, and prepare him for ad-
vanced standing at the University, and to
give him room and board at my house. I
told him it was impossible, there being no
room to spare. But he was again insistent,
wanted no other teacher, and said he would
be content with a closet or a garret, if it had
only room for a bed. He came, remained
several months, proved a very pleasant com-
panion, and went from me to Yale. He
afterwards became Attache and Minister at
the United States Embassy in Russia, Pro-
fessor of history in the University of Mich-
igan, President of Cornell University, Min-
ister and United States Ambassador to
Germany.

From Moravia I was recalled to Hobart
College, to be tutor in Greek, and in the
mathematics, with opportunity to continue
my theological studies. Those studies were
under the personal direction of Bishop De
Lancey, and several clergymen whom he
called to help him chief among whom and
most helpful was the Rev. William D. Wil-

36 REMINISCENCES

son, D.D., a man of very great learning,
and of great ability to impart it.

At the time of graduation from college,
there were four or five who were seeking to
enter the ministry; and the bishop, calling
us together asked us not to go to a theolog-
ical seminary, but to remain at or near
Geneva, and form a class under his direc-
tion. It was an experiment, but a success-
ful one. Out of a class of six, two after-
wards became bishops, and two became the
heads of schools of theology.

Besides the general direction and planning
of the course, the Bishop's personal instruc-
tions were in preaching, in reading the serv-
ices, and in pastoral work. Those instruc-
tions and his personal near influence were
more helpful to me than any possible the-
ological seminary.

When the time for our ordination came,
our own bishop, Bishop De Lancey, was in
Europe ; and the Bishop of New Hampshire,
the Right Reverend Carlton Chase, acting in
his place admitted me to Deacon's Orders.
And again my father's objections gave way
to his interest and affection, and he came to

REMINISCENCES 37

Rochester to be present at the ordination.3
My first pastoral work was at St. John's
Church, in Clyde, N. Y., to which President
Hale acting for the absent bishop had as-
signed me. It was a small town on the Erie
Canal, with a small wooden church, and a
small congregation. On the munificent sal-
ary of $500 a year I was expected to support
my wife and child and myself, even paying-
house rent. It called for much self-denial,
and close counting of pennies ; and it would
not have been possible, but for the loving
generosity of my country parishioners. I
remember one family coming in some four
miles and every Simday leaving at the par-
sonage either a pail of butter, or a basket of
eggs, or a pair of chickens; and another
farming household which at least twice every
winter sent a load of wood ; and others who
at killing time would send a generous part
of their mutton or beef.

One of the parishioners at Clyde was Mr.
Charles A. Rose, an accomplished gentle-
man, graduate of college, living pleasantly
as a gentleman farmer some three miles from

s 1852. Ordained priest by Bishop De Lancey in 1853.

38 REMINISCENCES

the church, where with his wife and daugh-
ter he was a regular attendant. Our rela-
tions became somewhat intimate. I sup-
posed that he was a communicant, but the
parish records were very imperfect, and at
the times of Holy Communion I was gener-
ally absent, since being only a deacon, I could
get the administration only by exchanging
services with some neighboring priest.
While riding one day with Mr. Rose, our
conversation turned upon some recent pub-
lications of plausible and bitter skepticism.
And I said that there were things more
harmful to Christianity than that; for in-
stance, the powerful influence of example,
when men esteemed in a community as men
of uprightness and honor and lovable qual-
ities, instead of openly avowing themselves
Christians, by becoming communicants,
threw all the power of their character and
influence practically against Christ and the
Church, by their attitude of neglect.

Some weeks after when I had announced
an appointment for Confirmation, Mr. Rose
was one of the first to come to me, asking to
be confirmed. I expressed my surprise, say-

REMINISCENCES 39

ing, "I thought you were a communicant."
He said that though often invited to be con-
firmed, he had not only always refused, but
had, for personal reasons, declared that he
never would be ; but that God had spoken to
him through me, and he had changed his
mind. I asked whether he remembered
what I had once said about the example of
practical disobedience on the part of other-
wise good men ; and I almost apologized for
seeming to be so personal, saying that I
would not have been so rude, had I under-
stood his position.

"I am glad you did not," he said; " in-
stead of blaming you, I thank you for it, and
for your plainness. It was by that conver-
sation my eyes were opened. I saw then
what was meant by 'He that is not with me
is against me. ' And I learned a lesson, not
to let the fear of man keep me from being
true to God."

Another warm friend wTas Mr. Scott, a
plain man in whose hat shop near the post
office I used to linger, while waiting for the
opening of the mail. He was an earnest and
devout man, a great reader of the Bible, and

40 REMINISCENCES

very determined in his position as a Univer-
salist ; and he loved to talk about it. He was
well read and ready as to all the writings in
defense of his views. Our disagreements
were very clearly expressed, but always with
the greatest kindness. He lovingly tried to
convince me, and I as lovingly tried to con-
vince him; but both remained firm. After
some weeks of such acquaintance, he told me
that he had a son, about twenty-one years
old, lying very ill with consumption, and be-
yond hope of recovery ; and he asked me to
visit him.

"As a clergyman or only as a social
friend?" I asked. "As a clergyman," he
answered. And I told him I would gladly do
so, if he would leave me free to do all that I
felt to be my duty. "You know," I said,
' ' that we differ much in our views. You say
that you do not believe in any Water-Bap-
tism. I do ; and I count it, as by our Lord's
appointment, a very great necessity. I shall
try to make him see it so, and to be baptized.
It would do harm, instead of good, if you
tried in any way to prevent it, or to speak in
opposition to my teachings." He assured

REMINISCENCES 41

me that he would in no way interfere, but
wished to be present at our interviews. It
was so arranged, and weeks passed with my
almost daily visits of prayer and teaching;
the father being always present, and deeply
interested. The son at first tried to reject
my teachings, saying that he believed as his
father did, and could not believe in eternal
punishment. I refused to consider that
point, saying that I did not ask him to be-
lieve in eternal punishment, but in eternal
salvation. And as often as he tried to bring
that subject forward, I pushed it aside. At
last he listened, joined in the prayers, and
was eager for my visits. When I began to
speak to him about the duty and the blessing
of Baptism, again he said, "There is no use
in talking about that, I agree with my father,
and do not believe in any Water-Baptism."
And I answered that the question was not
what he thought, but what Christ wished and
commanded; and I read and explained the
passages about it in the New Testament.
Again there was long hesitation and slow
yielding. And at last I said to him, l ' Now I
am going to ask your decision. Will you be

42 REMINISCENCES

baptized or not ? If you say yes, I will be
very glad. If you say no, I will accept that
as final. Think and pray over it to-night,
and when I come to you to-morrow, give me
your answer.' '

The next day he told me he had been much
in doubt ; at one time thinking he would be
baptized, but then not feeling entirely sure,
he thought it wTould be wrong to do an act
about which he was in doubt. ' ' So, ' ' he said,
"I will not be baptized.'' His father, who
during those many weeks had said nothing
except to join in the prayers, started up, ex-
claiming, "O, Walter, do not say that," and
then asked my permission to speak to him
which I gave. He said to his son, that he
thought he was an absolutely temperate man,
and the son confirmed it, saying that he did
not drink anything that could intoxicate.
"That is right," said the father, "it is good
to be temperate, but there is a society called
the Sons of Temperance and those who are
members of it have help to keep their own
good habits, and help in trying to save others.
But your being temperate does not make you
a Son of Temperance. They require that

REMINISCENCES 43

you should say so in their way, should put
your name to their pledge, and be bound by
their rules. Now Mr. Paret says, and I
think that the Bible agrees with him, that
God has a Society called the Church; and
membership in that brings you help for your-
self, and helps you to help others. Now I
am sure you do really repent of all you have
ever done that was wrong. But repentance
alone does not make you a member of the
Church. The Saviour wants you to say so
in his way ; to put your name to his pledge ;
and that is by being baptized. ' '

After a few moments' silence, the young
man said, — "I wish to be baptized." In
further preparing him I read and explained
the service for Baptism. As I reached the
first question, "Dost thou renounce the Devil
and all his works'?" he exclaimed, "I was
afraid something would prevent it. I can't
answer that question ; I do not believe in any
devil." "I do not ask you to believe in the
Devil. I only want you to believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ. ' ' And I read to him the
passages in the New Testament which speak
of the Devil, or Satan, and I said, "Now

44 REMINISCENCES

neither you nor I know exactly what it
means; but put your own meaning on it.
Whether it means, as I think, a personal
wicked spirit or only the power of sin and
evil ; put the Bible meaning on it. Dost thou
renounce the Devil and all his works?"
''With all my heart," was the answer. The
next day he was baptized, lived some three
months after, received the Holy Communion,
and on his death, I buried him.

Soon after my Bishop insisted on my go-
ing to another parish, and some few months
later I received a letter from Mr. Scott tell-
ing me that he, his wife and his daughters
had all been baptized and confirmed. To
my questions of surprise that one so fixed in
his peculiar views should make such a
change, he said, "Before I knew you, when-
ever I read my Bible, there was always one
thought which hid everything else from my
mind; and that was the question of eternal
punishment. But when you visited my son,
you pushed it out of the way as a trifle. It
has been a trifle to me ever since. I am will-
ing to leave that to God's loving justice.
And now I can see, as I never saw before, the

REMINISCENCES 45

great truths told in the Apostles' Creed; and
my Bible seems full of light."

It was at Clyde that I became an enthusi-
astic trout-fisherman. I had opened a par-
ish school which I taught myself ; and with
this added to general pastoral work, I was
closely confined. I became dyspeptic. The
good country doctor, after a few visits, said
that he could not help me, unless I would
keep my own rules. I preached to others
that they must wTork only six days in the
week, and I was working seven. " You must
go trout-fishing, one day each week." But
when I said I knew nothing of trout, he an-
swered, "It is a poor country doctor that
cannot administer his own medicine. I will
take you fishing next Monday." He did so,
and before we left the stream, he asked how
I liked it. "Greatly," I answered. He
took a prescription pad, and wrote, "To be
repeated one day each week, till November."
I obeyed, and the dyspepsia vanished.

MY LIFE AT PIERREPONT MANOR

CHAPTER IV

MY LIFE AT PIERREPONT MANOR

About the year 1855, after only two years
at Clyde, much against my own will, but at
the Bishop 's almost positive command, I be-
came rector of Zion Church, Pierrepont
Manor. The salary was still only $600
(with wife and three children to care for).
But there was a parsonage with some six
acres of ground. Having been before used
only to city or town life, I knew nothing of
the country; but I soon became a farmer,
and with that scanty salary, I had to do
much of my own work. I learned to take
care of my own horse, and to milk my two
cows.

My work soon grew from the one little
church holding only 100 people, to two
churches, six miles apart, a parish school
which I founded, and in which, with two as-
sistant teachers, women, I taught for two

50 BEMINISCENCES

hours daily except Mondays and Saturdays.
Besides the church at Pierrepont Manor,
finding myself the only resident minister in
a region of more than 150 square miles, I
began services in four distant schoolhouses,
giving my Wednesday and Friday evenings
to them, so that each had a service once in a
fortnight. The schoolhouses were always
well filled, and the people interested. I soon
found also a church which had been built,
while he was a layman, — by him who after-
ward became Bishop Whipple. It was in
the thriving town of Adams. I found three
or four remaining church members, and I
offered my services to keep the church open,
and try to rebuild the work. They de-
clined, saying it was impossible to pay any
salary; and I answered that I did not ask
any salary. If they would open the church,
light it and heat it, I would hold service
every Sunday evening. And after much
urging they agreed. But since I had at the
Manor, two full services and a Sunday
School, and had to get home to attend to
barn duties there by 10 p.m., I had to fix
my services at Adams at half past six. It

BEMINISCENCES 51

seemed at first that the hour was so incon-
venient, that attendance would be very
small. But it proved the very opposite.
There were five other places of worship ; but
at half past six, none of them had services,
and their people were all free to come to
mine. They did come. My church became
the popular place and was always well filled.
Among the regular attendants soon were
found the Baptist minister, the Methodist
and Congregational ministers, and one re-
tired Presbyterian minister, the Eeverend
Jedidiah Burchard who had been a famous
revivalist. Sitting in the congregation they
took hearty part in the services, and we be-
came warm personal friends.

My work at Adams lasted some ten years,
and was full of pleasant incidents ; and left
as a result a congregation so strong that it
afterwards had its own resident rector.

One of the regular attendants and regular
in receiving Holy Communion, was Mr.
John H. Whipple, the chief merchant of the
place. He was the father of Bishop Whip-
ple, and was soon elected a member of the
vestry. After some eighteen months, there

52 REMINISCENCES

was to be a Confirmation, and in preparing
for it, I learned to my surprise that he had
never been confirmed, and I told him he
would be glad to have the opportunity now.
He answered that he did not intend to be
confirmed; that he was a member of the
Presbyterian congregation, his wife regu-
larly attended that worship, his friends and
business associates were Presbyterians, and
he could not separate himself from them. I
reminded him that he was claiming and had
claimed for eighteen months, all the priv-
ileges of a regularly recognized communi-
cant ; and read to him the Prayer Book rule
which made Confirmation necessary to such
a position.

To this he answered that his son, the
bishop, assured him that in his case it was
not necessary. And in the confidence of
enthusiastic youth I answered that while his
son was Bishop of Minnesota, he had no
authority in Adams, and that I was rector.
He hoped that I would not press the rule,
and I said I hoped he would not compel me
to do so. But, ' ' I insist, ' ' he said. ' ' Do you
say that I cannot continue as a communi-

BEMINISCENCES 53

cant without being confirmed?" I said I
was sorry, but there could be only one an-
swer, and that was given in the Prayer
Book. "Then you shut the door of the
Church against mef " No, ' ' I said, ' ' I hold
the front door of the Church wide open ; but
if you say you will not come in that way;
and unless you can come in through the back
door, or a window, you will not come in at
all, then you are shut out not by me, but by
yourself." Several times before the Con-
firmation, and even only a week before it,
we went over the matter again. But he
would not yield. The evening of Confirma-
tion came, and I was called out from the
vestry room with the statement that some-
one wished to see me at the door. It was Mr.
Whipple, wTho said, "I have changed my
mind, and if it is not too late, I wish to be
confirmed."

It was one of my earliest confirmations of
a principle and truth which I have never
found to fail in all my nearly fifty-nine
years in the ministry ; that is, that it is pos-
sible to maintain with absolute firmness, and
yet with most perfect kindness, the princi-

54 REMINISCENCES

pies and rules of the Church ; and in so do-
ing I never lost a friend but gained the con-
fidence and respect of those who did not
agree with me.

Some other incidents of my pastoral work
at Adams will illustrate this. Among the
most regular attendants at our early even-
ing service was the Baptist minister, the
Reverend Mr. Cleghorn. He wTas a Scotch-
man by birth, a clear-headed man and firm
in his own views. He always brought his
own Prayer Book, and I heard his clear, full
voice in the responses. He soon made him-
self known to me, and expressed very great
love for the Prayer Book, and satisfaction
for his enjoyment and help in the services.
He had another congregation at Woodville,
a village some five or six miles distant; and
one day he came to me asking a favor. He
said, "My people at Woodville have never
known a Prayer Book service. It would
help them much. Will you not give us a
service there ? I will put the church at your
disposal, and will sit with the congregation
and lead them in the responses. ' ' I accepted
the invitation and took a number of Prayer

REMINISCENCES 55

Books and some of my own people. And at
least twice a year for the nine or ten years
of my longer stay, he repeated the invita-
tion, saying, "My people want it, and I want
it for them."

A few years later, returning from a jour-
ney, as I entered the cars at a place thirty
miles south of my home, the voice of Mr.
Cleghorn called me by name saying, "Come
here, come ; your name was just on my lips."
He introduced me to several Baptist min-
isters who were returning with him from the
meetings of a Baptist "Association." "I
was just telling them," he said, "how greatly
your services and sermons delighted and
helped me. And if you would only change
two things, I think I would be confirmed
and join your Church." "What two
things?" I asked. "Give up baptizing
babies," he said, "and have the Baptism of
Repentance, and give up sprinkling and
have only immersion." To my question,
"Why not baptize infants'?" he answered,
"because they cannot repent, and there can
be no right Baptism without repentance."
"Oh, yes, there can be," I said. And he an-

56 REMINISCENCES

swered, "Repentance must come first. Re-
pent .and be baptized, is the command. "Why
the very act of Baptism is itself a profession
of repentance, the acknowledgment of sins
to be forgiven and washed away. And acts
speak as plainly as words." To my re-
peated assertions, that there could be a right
Baptism without repentance, he said that if
I could show him a proof of a right Baptism
without repentance, he would come and be
confirmed, and his fellow Baptist ministers
said they would all come if I could prove it.
"Very well," I said, "I may hold you to
that. But leave that point for the present,
and come to the other. Why must we be
immersed?" "Because Christ was," he
said. I denied it, saying the ancient inscrip-
tions, in the Catacombs and elsewhere, rep-
resented Him as standing knee deep in the
water, while St. John poured water on Him
from a shell; "but yielding that point for
the time, why must we do just the same?"
"Because," he said, "that was the great ex-
ample, the pattern of what a right Baptism
must be. ' ' And I answered, ' ' That, you say
was the great, right Baptism. But please

REMINISCENCES 57

tell me when He repented." "Why He
could not repent, He had no sins of His own
to be repented.'' "Just what we say of an
infant," was my answer. "But that was
only for an example," he said. "What,"
said I; "you say the very act of Baptism is
a profession of repentance ; then Christ by
being baptized made a profession of re-
pentance ; if so, the profession was not hon-
est. You acknowledge that it was the great
pattern of right Baptism, and you acknowl-
edge that He did not repent. I hope you
will all keep your promise. Our bishop will
be with us for Confirmation in about four
months, and I shall expect you then. But
we have reached my station and I must leave
you."

The Methodist minister at Adams was, as
I have said, a regular attendant at our serv-
ices. One Sunday evening he waited for
me at the door, asked me to go into his house
which was very near, and meet his wife, who,
lie said, was not a Methodist, but a communi-
cant in the Episcopal Church. On a subse-
quent visit he was telling me some of his ex-
periences ; and among them of his residence

58 REMINISCENCES

in a certain city, where there were two Epis-
copal clergymen and churches. One of
them, the Eev. Mr. G., he said was an un-
usually liberal man ; "he not only often came
to our worship, but also often asked us to
take part in his, sometimes by offering
prayer and sometimes by iDreaching. It
seemed very liberal."

Now the Rev. Dr. S., the other Church
clergyman was a man of a different school.
I asked, "Did you know the Rev. Dr. S.V9
1 ' Oh, yes, very well. " " Did he ever ask you
to take part in his services?" and he said
"No." "Which of the two," said I, "did
you respect more, Mr. G. or Dr. S.?" "I
don't understand," was his answer. "You
said you liked Mr. G.'s liberality. I am not
speaking of liking, but of respecting.
Which did you respect more?" And the
answer was, — "Dr. S. We saw that he was
true to the rules of his own Church, wThile
the other was not."

That same Methodist minister proved a
great help to me. There came a strike on
the part of our organist and choir. The or-
gan was a very wretched instrument, and it

REMINISCENCES 59

was played in such a manner that, in the
chants especially, no one could join. For
some weeks I adopted the method of reading
the chants, and calling the congregation to
respond heartily by reading; and they did
so. The choir took offense, and one even-
ing as I announced the hymn and waited,
the singers, though in their usual seats, re-
mained silent. After a pause I announced
it again and read the first verse. Still no
answer. I saw that there was a very full
congregation, and I said that I did not want
to lose that part of our worship; "I see a
good number of Methodist brethren here,
and they are used to singing. The hymn is
of long metre ; Old Hundred or Duke Street
wTould go well with it. I would be much
pleased if someone would lead." The
Methodist minister rose, and some twenty or
more of his own people, rose with him. And
such good hearty singing as we had then,
that little church had never known before.
After service the Methodist minister came
to me and said, "That was grand. I will
stand by you. I will be here, and have some
of my good singers with me."

60 REMINISCENCES

The winters in that northern region (al-
most up to the St. Lawrence) were very se-
vere and very long. Beginning with deep
snows in November, they lasted all through
March, the thermometer often going down to
20° below zero, and sometimes 30 or 32.
But during all my eleven years there I did
not, more than five times in all, fail in an ap-
pointment. The people soon recognized my
punctuality, and by their own they proved
their appreciation. In the severest weather
I was sure of a fair congregation. For my
long cold rides I wore two overcoats, and two
pair of shoes ; the outer pair very loose, of
cowhide with the hair still remaining on the
inside; under my feet a piece of soapstone
well heated and wrapped in carpet; in my
lap, a piece of railroad iron heated and
wrapped in the same way. For the first two
years I had no horse of my own. For my
services, Mr. Pierrepont lent me one of his,
a very old one, named Doctor, with the un-
derstanding that on my return in the even-
ing I was not to take it back to him, but
should keep it in my own barn until the next
day. Coming home one night, about half

REMINISCENCES 61

past ten, from a service at one of my school
houses, nine miles distant, I had fallen asleep
in my sleigh. The horse, left to his own
guidance, instead of going to my barn,
stopped at his master's door. He shook his
bells, and the family, still in their reading-
room, recognized it, and said, "The Elder is
coming." (I was rarely called by my own
name, almost always, "The Elder," as being
the only resident minister in a very large
district.) But I did not go in. Again the
bells were shaken ; and after a pause a third
time. Mr. Pierrepont came out, and saw me-
sitting in the sleigh. He called me, but I did
not answer; called again and still no an-
swer. He came and touched me, yet I did
not move. Then, frightened, he called his
family and servants. They lifted me out,
slapped me with hands and reins, to restore
circulation, rubbed my face with snow, and
at last I began to awake. The waking was
full of pain, though the going to sleep had
been painless. Had the good horse taken
me to my own barn, the result would have
been very different. The thermometer that
night marked 32° below zero.

62 REMINISCENCES

When I went to Pierrepont Manor, I
found the people near it, almost all nomi-
nally Universalists, but practically indiffer-
ent and without any religion. From our few
Church families I could gather only some
fifteen children for my Sunday School. Dis-
couraged by this, after my first year, I said
to Mr. Pierrepont, "If I cannot get more
than fifteen children for an hour on Sunday,
I see how I could get at least double that
number for several hours, five days during
the week. I want a daily parish school."
After consideration he approved the idea,
and offered a site for a schoolhouse, exactly
opposite the church. Being himself a prac-
tical engineer and architect, he drew a plan
which I liked, and said, "It will cost about
$1,800, and I will give it. " I said that I did
not want that ; because the people would call
it Pierrepont 's School. I would send out
an appeal, explaining the purpose, and ask-
ing contributions. To my pleasant surprise
I secured some $200 and he gave the rest. I
secured a lady as an excellent chief teacher,
at a salary of $350, and gathered in the
teacher and pupils of a little village infant

REMINISCENCES 63

school. Then came another pleasant sur-
prise. There were seats in all for forty-
eight scholars, and on the opening day, fifty
presented themselves. In the circular sent
out I explained fully that it was a Church
school, that there would be daily worship and
religious instruction, and that both would be
after the method of the Prayer Book; but
that all would be welcome who would con-
form to the rules of the school. I was my-
self present and teaching for two hours
every school day but Monday.

The school continued successfully for ten
years more, and there being nothing to com-
pete with it, but a very poor District School,
I soon commanded and controlled the young
life for miles around. Boys and girls would
come in and take places for morning and
evening work in families, that they might
attend the school. The positive but plain
teaching, based on Bible, Prayer Book and
Catechism (the last being thoroughly
taught), soon had effect, and the scholars
began voluntarily to come to church on Sun-
days. Their parents followed them, and
my little church accommodating only about

64 BEMINISCENCES

100, had to be enlarged to double that size.
Many proofs of its wider influence have
come to me; one lad, who came as a plain
farm boy, became in later years the superin-
tendent of public instruction in one of our
large Western States.

Among the brightest were two brothers,
seventeen and fifteen years of age, of a
family of Universalists, and themselves
quite firm in that direction. Now I had
made it a rule of the school, that in the daily
prayers, everyone should kneel, and should
also repeat the Apostles' Creed. After two
or three months, I thought some were not
obeying. I called attention to the rules, ex-
plained their reasonableness, and said that
the next day I would ask if any failed. The
next morning after prayers, I said that if
anyone had failed to say the Creed, or to
kneel, they would please stand. Five stood.
I again explained the reasonableness, and
beginning with the older of the two brothers,
I asked him whether he would hereafter
obey the rules, and he said that he could not.
His brother said the same. All the others
promised obedience. Then speaking to the

REMINISCENCES 65

older brother (Pardon Williams), I said,
" Pardon, yon have been in all other respects
one of my best scholars, and I have been
much interested in you. I should be sorry
to lose you. But the good order of the
school must be maintained. We have been
personally good friends, and I hope and
think we shall continue to be so. But if you
cannot change your mind, I must ask that
when the school is closed to-day, you wTill
take your books home and cease to attend
the school."

Two weeks later the two brothers called
at my house, and said, — "We have made a
mistake. We cannot give up the great ad-
vantages of your teaching. And if you will
let us return you will have no trouble about
our full obedience."

Some twenty-five years later, in a steamer
on the St. Lawrence, I recognized in a fel-
low passenger, my former pupil. I went
to him and he recognized me joyfully. I
asked about his life since, and he said he was
"District Attorney" for his county, was a
candidate for one of the judgeships in the
Supreme Court of the State, and was quite

66 REMINISCENCES

confident of his election. (He was elected.)
I asked where he completed his education,
and he said, " Nowhere but in your parish
school. I owe all I am to that." I re-
minded him of his early Universalist convic-
tions and asked whether he was still firm in
those views. His answer was that his wife
was a conununicant of the Episcopal Church,
his children all baptized, and he himself at-
tended there every Sunday.

Some incidents of the life at Pierrepont
Manor are worth recording. As at Clyde
it would have been impossible to live on my
very small salary were it not for the untir-
ing kindness of my parishioners. If the
hay in my barn grew low, they found it out,
— and a load soon arrived. In those long
cold winters we burned a great quantity of
wood; there was no coal. For the first
winter I bought a large supply, but early in
the second winter, as one of my farming
people, Mr. F., after dining with us, stepped
out and looked around, he said, "Why your
wood is almost gone." And when I said I
was just about ordering thirty cords, he in-
sisted that I must not do it, until I should

REMINISCENCES 67

have heard further from him. Going to Mr.
Pierrepont, who owned several thousand
acres of good wood land near at hand, he told
him that the rector's wTood pile was almost
exhausted, and that he, Mr. P., could easily
spare from his wood land all that was
needed ; and he asked permission to have it
cut, offering himself to superintend, and to
see that no damage was done. Mr. Pierre-
pont agreed on condition that it should be
delivered at my door without any cost to me.
Mr. Eoresman at once arranged what he
called a logging-bee. Some ten or more
men volunteered to go out and cut down the
trees. And in due time I wTas notified that
they were going to draw, and that since it
was so cold, we must have a good supply
of hot coffee, and something to eat ready for
them as they came in. My door-yard, by
no means a small one, was in two or three
days' work, pretty well filled with maple
and beech, the best kinds of fire wood, — in
long logs of sled length. In thanking them
I asked how I should get that out of the way,
since, though I split and carried in my own
wood, I was not able to chop those great

68 REMINISCENCES

logs. They named a man some three or
four miles distant who had a horse-power
saw. He agreed to saw it, and when I asked
the price, he said, "Time enough to talk
about that." I told him it was necessary
for me to count my money closely, and I
must know beforehand. "Did you think I
could be as mean as that?" he asked.
"Don't you know me?" I did not. "Well,"
he said, "you did not see much of me, but
only of my wife. But last winter when my
children had the diphtheria, and almost
everyone was afraid to come near us, you and
your wife came again and again and helped
us greatly. I don't belong to your church.
I am a Baptist. But I will saw your wood,
and it shan't cost you a dollar."

For all my many winters after in that
parish, the logging-bee was an annual cus-
tom and my fuel cost me nothing.

There were many such incidents in my life,
of "bread cast upon the waters, and return-
ing after many days. ' '

Midway between Pierrepont Manor and
Adams there was close by the roadside a
small house where a young laboring man and

KEMINISCENCES 69

his wife were living very plainly. I
passed that house every Sunday in going to
and returning from my evening service at
Adams. Learning that the wife was very
ill, and that they had no friends, I stopped
there one Sunday evening on my way to
church, talked writh them, and offered to
pray with them. But it seemed as if my
visit was not welcome, and they did not like
the prayers. The next Sunday, taking my
wife with me, I left her at the house of sick-
ness to wait and help there, until I went on
to the church at Adams and returned; and
little by little we found our way to their
confidence. Nearly twenty years later, when
I was rector of the Church of the Epiphany
in Washington, I was walking far out in the
suburbs to visit a sick person. There was a
heavy blizzard of hail. My cap was pulled
down, my collar turned up, leaving nothing
visible but my eyes. A mounted policeman
rode past me, and as he glanced at me, he
slackened his pace, looked at me again, and
finally drew up to the sidewalk and stopped.
As I reached him I asked, "Did you want
me?" And he said, "Yes, is your name

70 REMINISCENCES

Paret?" And on my answer he asked
whether I did not remember him. I con-
fessed that I did not. "Did you ever know
Alf Tredway ? ' ' he asked ; and when I said I
remembered the name many years back, he
said that I ought to remember the little
house where I stopped so often on my way to
Adams, to help and encourage a young man
and his wife who were in much distress ; and
that he was that man, Alf Tredway, and
could never forget me.

While at Pierrepont Manor I was a very
earnest trout-fisherman, and regularly from
May 1st to November 1st, gave every Mon-
day to that. It was a duty, a necessity for
health of body and of mind, for Monday was
my only rest day. Rising at five, I drove
seven or eight miles to reach the trout
streams, reaching home again at about dark,
and always with a good basketful of fish ; for
the trout were abundant, the country was
wild, and there were only two or three be-
side myself who went after them. To reach
one of my best trout streams, I drove some
six miles, turned into a wood road for two
miles, and stopped at a log cabin occupied by

REMINISCENCES 71

Mrs. Fitzgerald, a very aged Irish woman,
and her two middle aged, unmarried sons.
They were very hospitable, took care of my
horse, and had a bowl of bread and milk
ready for me in the evening. But I was a
fisher of men, as well as a fisher for trout,
and the two went well together. After a few
weeks' acquaintance I asked the good old
lady if she ever went to church. "Sure,
how could IT " she said; "they have what
they call meetings and revivals at the school-
house, but I can't worship that way. If I
could find a church of my own I would go."
I asked what church she meant and she took
from a high shelf a book which she handed
to me, saying, ' ' That will show you. ' ' It was
a Prayer Book of the Church of Ireland. I
told her she could find her Church at Pierre-
pont Manor, only seven or eight miles away,
and in proof I showed her my Prayer Book,
and told her I was the minister. With tears
streaming she kneeled and kissed my hand,
and said that if she was a living woman the
next Sunday the boys should take her there.
And at least once a month after that, she was
at church. She had also a married son liv-

72 REMINISCENCES

ing in the neighborhood, and his four chil-
dren had not been baptized. I soon had a
service in her log cabin, inviting the neigh-
bors, baptized the four children, and ex-
plained the need and the blessing. Going
out occasionally for services and instructions
I soon had the pleasure of baptizing a num-
ber of other children, and several adult per-
sons. And years later after I had left that
neighborhood, I learned that a neat chapel
had been built at the corners, and was used
as a mission of the Church at the Manor.

Besides my trout fishing, for many years
I took August as a vacation, taking my own
horse and wagon and two of my parishioners
as companions, and driving some forty or
more miles into the southwestern part of the
Adirondack Woods or John Brown's Tract.
There were no Adirondack hotels then. We
built our own bark shanty, made our own
beds of hemlock branches, cut our own wood,
and did all our own work. And now as I
am writing this in my 84th year, I am sure
that I owe my good health and long life,
under God's Providence, to my long drives
and walks, my hard pastoral work, my fish-

REMINISCENCES 73

ing, and the open-air life to which all these
led me. It was a very happy life; and
many years later, after experience in city
parishes, including Washington, I asked my
wife, in which of our homes she had been
most contented, and she answered that she
thought our happiest days were those of the
very plain life at Pierrepont Manor.

There were some amusing things in my
stay there. I have said that I was the only
resident minister in a very large region.
But after a while there came for temporary
stay, a man named Taft, wTho practised sev-
eral callings. He sold tinware, bought
sheepskins, practised medicine, and on Sun-
days preached in the district schoolhouse.
One day he came to me saying that he was
reading a book about the Episcopal Church,
which had some quotations in Latin and
Greek from what is called the early Fathers.
And since he did not understand those lan-
guages he asked me to write out the transla-
tion for him. I did so, and soon after I
found that the book was written as an at-
tack on the Church. Armed with that he
announced that he was going to preach five

74 REMINISCENCES

or six sermons exposing the errors of the
Episcopal Church. In his second or third
sermon he began using his quotations, saying
i ' On this point Tertullian says ' ' &c. But he
pronounced the name as if it were Turtle-
lion, and after two or three uses of it, one
of the good countrywomen said to her neigh-
bor, "I wonder if it is anything like a Camel-
leopard. ' ' And a little laugh passed around.
Presently he passed to another of the early
Fathers, with the words, "On this point Cy-
prian says," etc. And again he mispro-
nounced the name, as if it were "Si-pran,"
and to the same good woman after the sec-
ond use, it suggested the familiar play
of "Simon says up, Simon says down, Simon
says wiggle," and soon planting her thumb
on her knee, she said "Simon says up."
The hint took, and several thumbs followed.
At the next use of the same, she turned her
hand saying, "Simon says down;" and five
or six imitated her. "When it came to
"Simon says wiggle," the preacher noticed
it, and closing his book in anger, he said, i ' I
have been insulted while preaching the
Gospel, and until an apology is made, I will

REMINISCENCES 75

not preach here again.' ' No apology was
made, and his preaching at that place was
ended. The same man's medical practise
will illustrate many things that I had to
meet among uneducated quacks. In a farm
house near the rectory, was a young man
very low with consumption. I was in the
habit of visiting him almost daily ; and one
morning I found the tin and sheepskin
wagon at the door. Going in I found the
family and some friends standing around the
walls of the sittingroom; while in the cen-
ter sat the sick man supported by others,
and opposite him, their knees touching, sat
Mr. Taft. Both were bent forward, so that
the tops of their heads touched. Presently
he looked up, and to my question as to what
he was doing he said, "I was making an ob-
servation of this case." And when I asked
an explanation he said, "You know that I
practise medicine on spiritualistic princi-
ples; and when we get into what is called
* report' the organ of vision is the top of
the head." "Do you mean that you could
see?" "Saw clean through him, way to
his boots. " " You could see his lungs then, ' '

76 EEMINISCENCES

I said, "and the trouble is there?" "Not
at all," he answered. "His lungs are as
sound as yours or mine. But you know he
has a portable sawmill down in the woods,
and he hurt himself there. In lifting some
heavy logs, he bust his diaphragm. That
is all."

FKOM 1864 TO 1869

CHAPTER V

from 1864 to 1869

But happy as that active life was at the
Manor, the time came when it was a duty to
leave it. My children were reaching an age
when they needed better opportunities for
education than they could get at home. And
on a salary of six hundred and fifty dollars,
boarding schools were out of possibility.
So when an unexpected call came to me from
a Western city, offering me $1,800 a year I
accepted it, and removed to East Saginaw
in Michigan.4 My stay there was not long,
only some two years, and was marked by
few things save continual family sickness.
One incident, however, is worth recording.
There were very large lumber camps a few
miles out of the city. I had found a lumber-
man, very ill with consumption, at one of
the very low city taverns, where he had no

4 This was in 1864.

80 KEMINISCENCES

comfort and no care. Two ladies of the
parish, at my request, visited and helped
him ; and before he died, I had the happiness
of baptizing him as one truly penitent. At
his burial fifty or sixty of the men from
camp came to the church. Some three months
later, returning at 10 p. m. on Sunday from
an exchange with a neighboring clergyman,
and passing through the city toward my own
house on the further side, I was stopped by
the Mayor and Chief of Police who told me
I could not go on; that several hundred
lumbermen were in the city on a strike, had
become a drunken mob, and threatened
every man who approached them. I in-
sisted on seeing for myself, and they ac-
companied me a little nearer. Slipping
away from them, I entered the crowd, hop-
ing to pass through, but I was seized and
whirled about, seized again by another and
whirled, then as he was about to repeat it, he
saw my face, and asked :

"Are you not the parson that took care of
Jim?"

"If you mean the man who was sick at the
Lone Star Tavern, I am."

BEMINISCENCES 81

"Boys," he said, "I told you of the par-
son who took care of Jim. Here he is.
Hats off, boys."

And every head was uncovered.

"What do you want, Parson?"

"My wife and children are over there on
the hill, I know they are frightened, and I
must get to them."

"Make a lane, boys!"

And he, and one other led me through to
my own house. Half an hour later that
mob had dispersed and all was quiet.

Western New York was calling me back,
and I gladly left a city of great unhealthi-
ness and very low morals, and became
Bector of Trinity Church, Elmira, N. Y.
My stay there was made very pleasant by
my happy association with the Bev. Thos.
K. Beecher, an eminent Congregational
minister, a brother, or possibly a half
brother of Henry Ward Beecher. His
church was on the corner diagonally across
from mine. Some ten days after reaching
Elmira, I was in a store purchasing furni-
ture fcr the rectory, when the merchant
came to me saying, "Tom Beecher is here,

82 REMINISCENCES

— (I beg pardon, the Eev. Mr. Beecher, but
we always call him Tom) , and he wants much
to be introduced to you, if you will permit
it." I expressed my pleasure, and we met.
After some ten minutes of conversation,
Mr. Beecher said that perhaps he ought to
apologize ; I might think he had been study-
ing me. I said that, on the contrary, the
interview was very pleasant indeed, and I
hoped it might lead to many others.
"But," said he, "I have been studying you;
I began to study when I first heard that you
were coming, and I have been studying you
since, and somewhat selfishly. I am going
away in two or three weeks on a voyage by
a sailing vessel to San Francisco. I shall
be gone eight months or more. Our trustees
have made no arrangements for continuing
services while I am absent, and I fear they
will not do so soon, now why cannot you
preach to both congregations'?" On look-
ing and speaking my surprise, he said that
he was fully in earnest, if he ever was in his
life, and really meant and wished it. I an-
swered that if he really wished it, I might
do it in one way; that my church was very

EBMINISCENCES 83

large, large enough I thought to have room
for both congregations ; and that my people
scattered by long vacancy in pastorship were
very few; that I would take the responsi-
bility to declare our pews free during his
absence; and I would be glad to have him
give my love to his people, and assure them
of a hearty welcome. "But as for the week
day work," I said, "the work from house
to house, I fear I could not undertake that.
It will take all my time to hunt and find and
bring my own scattered flock."

"Week day work? House to house?" he
answered. "Yes, you are a priest and
pastor, I am only a preacher. You are a
rightly ordained minister ; I am only a Sun-
day lecturer. I would no more think of go-
ing around to inquire into the spiritual state
of my people, than a dentist would go and
ask to look at their teeth."

The Sunday before his voyage he said to
his people: "This is my last worship with
you for some time. Our trustees have, as
yet, made no provision for services. But
I beg ^ou, do not scatter to the four winds.
Keep together, and do not go far away from

84 REMINISCENCES

home. There is an excellent place on the
opposite corner, called Trinity Church. I
have had a conference with the rector. He
sends his love to you, and says there will be
free seats and a hearty welcome for you. I
advise you to go there. You will like the
worship and it will help you."

They took him at his word and came in
very large numbers. On his voyage he
sent back letters to his people, which were
published in one of the daily papers. In
the first one he said he was reading Froude's
History of England, with which he was
greatly pleased because of the light it shed
on the Prayer Book. "And don't be
alarmed, dear Congregational friends, be-
cause I tell my love for the Prayer Book.
When I travel, my Bible and my Prayer
Book go together." His second letter was
sent from Rio. He said that reaching there
Sunday morning he asked the Captain where
he could go to Church, "and please note,"
he said, "that I spell Church with a capital
C. It is all very well to be a Congregation-
alist, when you are among your personal
friends, who can give you their personal

REMINISCENCES 85

support. But if you are abroad in the
world, and want Christian privilege or
sympathy, you must be a member of a
CHURCH, which can go with you the world
over, and has a history to stand on way
back to the first Apostles. You must be a
member either of the Roman Catholic or of
the Protestant Episcopal Church. And
since I cannot be the former, when I travel
I am a Churchman. The Captain advised
me to go to the Chapel of the English Em-
bassy, and I did so. The service was all
sung, but so simply that I was soon able to
take my part. I said the Confession, took
home to myself the Absolution, heard a good
plain Gospel sermon and went away much
helped by it. And so will all of you, dear
friends, if with real wish to worship you do
it with a Prayer Book."

A fortnight after his return I visited him ;
and he said, "Well, my people took me at
my word." And when I said yes, that they
came in good numbers, he said that he saw
they had not all come back to him. I an-
swered that some five or six families seemed
to linger, but that I had not tried to keep

86 REMINISCENCES

them. I had even abstained from visiting
his people unless there was sickness, or
some special request. ' ' I know it, ' ' he said ;
"but I am glad they are staying. And if I
could have my way we would all be back in
the old Church we ought never to have left."
And when I asked why he did not come, he
said, " Because I am a Beecher. I cannot
work in harness. I should kick over the
traces and make you a great deal of trouble. ' '

Our close association continued. He was
at my house or I at his almost every week.
On one occasion he found me lying on a
lounge in my study suffering from a heavy
cold. "Has Brother H. (the rector of the
other church) been to see you?" I an-
swered no, that I was not sick enough for
that. "Then he has failed in his duty."

"No," I answered, "if there was any fail-
ure it was mine, for the Prayer Book says
that when anyone is sick notice shall be
given to the minister; and I did not give
notice."

He presently asked for a Prayer Book,
and having it he found the place he was
seeking, and said to me, "I have opened at

REMINISCENCES 87

the Office for the Visitation of the Sick.
Do you think it would lose any of its efficacy
if it was said by Congregational lips? I
would like to read it to you." I welcomed
the suggestion, and he went through it very
earnestly, kneeling at the prayers, and
standing to say the Creed.

Some weeks later he told me that there
was a family in his congregation which did
not belong there, but belonged to me, and he
wanted me to go after them. They were
English; not poor, nor ignorant, but good
and useful. He said that going through his
Sunday School he noticed a newcomer.
Asking his name, the answer was, " Ed-
ward." "Who gave you this name?" was
the next question, and the lad answered,
"My godfathers and godmothers in Bap-
tism." "You do not belong here," was
Mr. Beecher's answer, and the lad said,
"They told us that this was the English
Church." "Yes," said Mr. Beecher, "we
speak English, but you mean the Church of
England. That is over on the other corner,
and I will ask the minister to find you."

After awhile, in his impulsive way, he

88 BEMINISCENCES

tried to bring the Prayer Book into use in
his own congregation. He said one Sun-
day, that he had been with them many years,
and they had made him do all the work.
They ought to help him more. How ? Per-
haps they would like to take part in the
preaching, but he wanted to keep that to
himself. But they might help him in pray-
ing. Hitherto he had prayed alone and
they had listened. He wanted them to pray
with him. 6 i If so, we must all say the same
thing, must agree on the words ; there must
be a form for the prayers. And a form of
prayers is a Liturgy. Now, I have seen
many books called Liturgies, but there is
only one book in the English language which
is worthy of the name, and that is the Book
of Common Prayer. It was composed — I
beg pardon, it was not composed. It grew.
It began to grow when the New Testament
did." And then after giving a grand eu-
logy of the Prayer Book, he said: "Now, I
have asked the book-sellers to get a hundred
cheap copies of it. I want you to buy them.
I will not ask you to bring them here just
yet, but on pages 4 and 5 you will find what is

KEMINISCENCES 89

called the General Confession. I want you
to commit that to memory. I will give you
two weeks. And, by the way, if any of you
do not know the Lord's Prayer, you will
find it right after it. And two weeks from
to-day we will begin to use it here, all speak-
ing together. But how? Over at Trinity
Church where they do it well, they all kneel.
But Congregational knees are stiff, and we
are used to stand while praying. Now, I
read that the Lord kneeled down when he
prayed, and that St. Paul kneeled to pray
on the seashore. But if any of you feel
that you can confess your sins more truly
and humbly while standing, do so. For my
part, I will kneel as the Lord did."

Some four months after Mr. Beecher's
sailing, his brother, the Eev. James Beecher,
came to take his place. Some of the Con-
gregationalists went back, but at least one-
half stayed with me.

One day I was called into the parlor to see
a lady and gentleman. The man introduced
himself as " James Beecher, brother of
Tom, whom I think you know. At least he
knows you, and says he loves you. I have

90 REMINISCENCES

come to take his place until his return."
Then introducing the lady as his wife, he
added, "My wife is not a Congregationalist,
but an Episcopalian (I beg pardon, my
dear, I should have said Churchwoman, but
I do not often make that mistake). She
has come to ask pastoral advice. I will go
into your study, if you permit, while she
talks with you."

She said, "Yes, I attend my husband's
services generally; but always on the first
Sunday of the month, and the holy days, I
go to my own Church for the Holy Com-
munion. Now, my husband has his Con-
gregational Sunday School at his church;
but we live some two miles out of town, and
there are many neglected children there. I
have gathered forty or fifty, and am going
to have a Sunday School. I am to be
superintendent, and my husband is to be
one of the teachers. I want your advice,
that it may be as much like yours as possible.
What prayers and what hymns shall we use ?
What books'? What order of studies'?
And if you could visit it sometimes we would
be very glad."

KEMINISCENCES 91

I arranged a full program, and Mr.
Beecher, returning to the room, said that
he understood and approved all that his
wife was doing; that out there he would be
a thorough Churchman, and teach just as
I wanted him to do. "By the way," he
asked, "is your Bishop coming before long
for Confirmation ?" And when I said that
he was expected in about three months, he
asked whether if they got some children
ready to be confirmed, they might bring
them. Surprised, I said, "Yes, certainly,
but first I must examine them."

"You want them to know your Catechism.
I know it by heart, and love it. I will see
that they know it, and will try to give any
special instruction about it that you wish."

About ten days before the Confirmation,
they brought me fourteen children. I
found them admirably taught, and on the
day of Confirmation, after my own candi-
dates had been presented, they brought
up and presented their fourteen.

Mr. James Beecher at that first interview
told me of a remarkable incident in his own
life. He said that his first receiving of

92 BEMINISCENCES

the Holy Communion, and his first two
years of communicant life, was in the
Episcopal Church, and it always seemed
home to him; that during our Civil War
he had been a chaplain in the United
States Army, but grew out of that into
active service, and became colonel, and
acting brigadier general. He was sta-
tioned for some time in one of the South-
ern States, and while there regularly at-
tended the Episcopal Church and received
the Communion. He became very intimate
with the aged rector, who came to him later
to ask a pass for a friend who wished to go
North. Beecher knew that it was to get
supplies and information, and he was obliged
to refuse. This displeased the rector, and
made him ready to receive the reports and
insinuations which soldiers were always
ready to give. A friend came to Mr.
Beecher and told him that the rector had
said that should Mr. Beecher present him-
self again for Communion, he would not
administer to him.

The next Communion Sunday Mr.
Beecher was in his usual place in church,

REMINISCENCES 93

and after all the others had received, and
the clergyman paused to see if others were
coming, Mr. Beecher rose and said, " Rev-
erend sir, I am informed that you have
said that if I should present myself for
the Holy Communion you would not ad-
minister to me. And in the Name of Him
who died on the cross for sinners, for you,
and for me, I ask what grievous crime is
charged against me, by reason of which
I may not be permitted to receive the Body
and Blood of my Lord?"

There was a silence of two or three min-
utes. The rector grew very pale, his color
came back, and drawing a full breath he
said, " Ye who do truly and earnestly repent
you of your sins, and are in love and charity
with your neighbors, and intend to lead a
new life . . . draw near with faith and
take this holy Sacrament to your comfort."
He went forward, received, and they were
good friends again.

RECTORSHIP AT CHRIST'S
CHURCH, WILLIAMSPORT,

PENNA, 1868-1876

CHAPTER VI

RECTORSHIP AT CHRIST CHURCH, WILLIAMS-
PORT, PENNA., 1868-1876

I was willing after a time to leave Elmira,
and when a call came (utterly unsought) to
the rectorship of Christ Church, Williams-
port, Penna., I promptly accepted it,5 and
there I passed eight years of happy, and I
think useful work.

The financial arrangement was very pe-
culiar. My predecessor had been called at
a salary of $1,000 and rectory to a pew-
rented church. He declined that arrange-
ment, but said that if they would let him
take off the pew doors, make the seats all
free, and put a card in each pew explaining
that all morning offerings would go to the
rector's salary, and the evening offerings
must supply needs for mission, charity, and
parish expenses, he would come. The
vestry demurred, saying it would not pro-

5 1868 to 1876.

98 REMINISCENCES

vide the $1,000. But on his insisting, they
yielded. The first year the morning offer-
ings were $1,100, the second year still larger ;
and in rny first year they reached $1,800.
And I had a vestry and people who stood by
me lovingly.

Among many pleasant experiences with
neighboring ministers, was one with a
Methodist Minister. A committee includ-
ing a Presbyterian, a Congregationalist,
and a Baptist Minister, called on me ask-
ing my signature to a document which
claimed to be a protest from "the clergy of
the city," against certain things which were
thought to be in use at the Methodist camp
meeting grounds some miles out of the city.
The protest was very severe indeed in its
terms, asserting that the Methodists in
charge were violating Christian principles
and dishonoring our Lord, by permitting
milk, ice and other necessaries to be delivered
on Sunday. I declined to sign, giving as
one reason, that I had no knowledge in the
case. "But we assure you of the facts,"
they said. And my answer was that when
I signed a paper it was understood to be

EEMINISCENCES 99

on my own personal knowledge, and that
besides, I counted their government of their
own religious assemblies and usages, as
matters of their responsibility and not of
mine; that we, of the Episcopal Church,
were sometimes charged with exclusiveness,
but it was because we believed in minding
our own business, and leaving others free
for theirs. And in spite of urging, I de-
clined to sign.

Not long after I was stopped on the street
by one who introduced himself as the Metho-
dist Presiding Elder. He said he had re-
ceived that protest, and noticed that my
name was not signed. He asked whether
my signature had been asked, and, if so,
whether I had refused it, and why. I gave
him my reasons, as I have given them above.
Again grasping my hand, he thanked me,
and said, "I do not care a fig for their pro-
test, but I do care for and want your judg-
ment. Let me tell you all that we do at
that camp meeting ground; and if you say
that any of it is really wrong, it shall be
changed." But I kindly and firmly ad-
hered to my position of not interfering; and

100 REMINISCENCES

the relations between the Methodists and
myself were very kind.

The Roman Priest, Father Stack, once
proposed to me a clerical hunting party,
there being many pigeons and squirrels close
at hand. I said that twelve or fourteen
ministers going together with guns on their
shoulders would alarm the people, and I
suggested hunting in couples. I took the
Methodist Minister, the Rev. Mr. E., after-
wards well known as a Presiding Elder.
We tramped the woods for several hours.
Game was plentiful, but we were too busy
in talking to see much of it. I shot one pig-
eon, and he one squirrel. He had said to
me that he wanted to ask me a question, and
get a short, sharp answer, without any ifs
or buts. I agreed, on condition that I might
ask a question and get the same kind of an-
swer. The first question falling to my lot, I
said, "If John Wesley were to return to life
and live in Williamsport, would he go to
your Church, or go to mine ? ' ' " That needs
some explanation," he said; and I said, "No
ifs or buts ! " "I give it up, — Wesley would
go to yours." "Why then," I asked, "if

EEMINISCENCES 101

you are a follower of John Wesley, do you
not follow him in that respect ?" His an-
swer was ingenious: "Wesley was a blind
instrument in the hand of Providence. God
used him to open a wide door, and we went
through it."

The new Christ Church, half built when I
went there, but completed during my first
years, was an excellent stone building, and
well filled not only by the wealthier people,
but, to my great pleasure, by a large num-
ber of the men and their families who
worked in the saw-mills, lumber-yards,
foundries and factories. The architecture
and arrangements were entirely in agree-
ment with the advice given by some of the
eminent architects in England, when they
were asked how churches should be built in
order to secure the attendance of the masses.
Their answer was, "Make them quite large,
very rich towards God, and very plain and
simple towards man." Our church was not
carpeted nor cushioned; and I think that
was one reason why the plainer people felt
at home. Presently the ladies proposed to
cushion and carpet. I objected, saying it

102 REMINISCENCES

would give an air of proprietorship for the
rich, and I should lose some of my poor peo-
ple. But the ladies prevailed, the improve-
ment ( ?) was made, and in four months I
had lost almost one half of the plainer part
of my flock. I am sure that here lies the
secret of the large attendance of the plainer
people in the great cathedrals and churches
of Europe. They are rich toward God ; but
there is no provision for luxurious ease for
the people. There are no carpets or cush-
ions, only very plain seats, or chairs.

My mission chapel at Swampoodle, in the
suburbs, with its quite plain congregations,
furnished some strange and amusing inci-
dents. After afternoon service, at which all
the Sunday School (a very large one), re-
mained, I superintended and catechized. I
had exchanged one Sunday with the Rev.
Leighton Coleman, afterwards Bishop of
Delaware. After the service, in talking to
the children, he very earnestly urged them
to be always prompt and early in attend-
ance; and as he was still urging and illus-
trating, a boy, stepping out from his seat,
raised his hand, saying, " Mister, Mister

KEMINISCENCES 103

preacher! I always do come early, but I
tell you I have to run like the very devil to
doit!"

On another Sunday, catechizing about the
Ten Commandments I asked who gave them
to the people, and the many- voiced answer
came, " Moses." I explained that God gave
the Commandments and Moses only passed
them on to the people. "Now, once more,
who gave the Commandments?" And this
time the loud answer came right. But as it
ended, a single voice said, "Moses." It was
a little boy of ten, George B. McClellan
Yeager. I explained to him again, and
again asked the question. When the right
answer from the whole school ended, again
George said, "Moses." A third time I ex-
plained to him personally, again asked the
question, and again his answer was "Mo-
ses." Presently I had to give out some
prizes for good behavior, and the first name
on the list was George's. Calling him up I
held out the little book, then drawing it back
I sent him to his seat, and calling his teacher,
asked her to hand him the book. ' ' George, ' '
I said, "who gave you that book?" "You

104 REMINISCENCES

did, sir." "Did not Miss Edwards give it
to you?" "No, she only handed it to me."
"That is what I said about the Command-
ments. God gave them and Moses only
handed them to the people. Don't you un-
derstand it now V9 He said he did. ' ' Now,
once more, the whole school, wTho gave the
Commandments ? ' '

The loud-voiced answer was right, and
then came George's voice, — "I stick to
Moses!"

FROM 1876 TO 1885 AT WASHINGTON

CHAPTER VII

from 1876 to 1885 at Washington

My rectorship at Williamsport lasted very
happily for some eight years, from 1868 to
1876, and it would have lasted much longer,
but for an unexpected call to the rectorship
of one of the most important parishes in the
land; the Church of the Epiphany at Wash-
ington. My acceptance was only after a
visit to Washington, and a full understand-
ing with the vestry. I asked what they did
for the poor; and the answer was that the
parish had no poor ; every pew was let. And
I said then I could not come, for a church
without any poor was too spiritually poor to
be useful. They asked what I could do for
the poor; build chapels'? I said, "No, no
money spent on brick and mortar unless it
becomes an absolute necessity. Take a les-
son from the Romanists. Use the same
church building more often, and instead of

108 REMINISCENCES

brick and mortar, let me have two assistants
instead of one, and four or five services on
Sunday instead of two ; and at least three of
them with free seats. "

I also suggested the need of more fre-
quent administrations of Holy Communion,
because with seats all rented, no poor people
could ever come to it. After suggesting some
other possibilities, I left them to consider,
and a half hour later they called me back,
saying I had suggested some things of which
they had never thought ; and that if I could
give them more spiritual privileges, and
show them how to do better work, I might
be sure of full confidence and support from
both vestry and people. That promise was
grandly kept ; and I do not think there was
anywhere a better or better working vestry,
or a truer and better working people than
those of that parish. My eight years in that
charge (from October, 1876, to January,
1885) brought me much satisfaction in the
work, and many true and faithful friends ;
and it was very rich with incidents of inter-
est.

I found about 350 communicants when I

KEMINISCENCES 109

went there, and at my leaving there were
about 1,400. There were strict parish
boundaries in that city, marked out by
streets. Epiphany Parish was very large,
having at one end some of the best resi-
dences, and at the other, near the Potomac,
many of the worst and vilest. Feeling my
responsibility for all within its lines, and
having succeeded somewhat in reaching and
helping to Christianize many of the very
poor women, my thoughts turned to the neg-
lected and neglectful men of the same dis-
trict. I told the assistant minister that I
would relieve him from all week day duty
at the parish church, for two months, if he
would give his whole time to seeking the men
in that poorer part; and that he should give
two evenings weekly for going to their
houses after working hours. He tried faith-
fully, but reported that there were no results.
We then changed work. He took the week
day duty at the church, and I for two months,
gave my whole time to that missionary effort.
I do not think I ever did more faithful
work, but I, too, found almost no results.
Then remembering that it was he and I,—

110 KEMINISCENCES

men, — who by personal work gained those
women, I reversed the idea, and sent women
to seek and bring the men ; and the plan was
successful. We gathered, in a rented house,
what we called the Men's Meeting, for men
alone, every Monday night ; but women were
to be the only workers. Beginning with
only five or six men, it grew rapidly until
in some three months there were more than
80 in regular attendance. The two or three
ladies in charge made the evenings interest-
ing by illustrated papers, magazines, songs,
chess, checkers, etc., and at half-past nine
every man had coffee and sandwiches.

But it was not an ordinary " Settlement' '
work. It was distinctly Church settlement
work. We were not afraid, nor ashamed
of Christ and His Church. We began with
only the Lord's Prayer. The men them-
selves soon asked for more prayers, and for
hymns, and that I should come and speak to
them. Soon the Confession and Creed fol-
lowed ; each man had them on a printed card.
Bishop Pinkney visited it with me one even-
ing and said that he had never heard the
Creed so grandly said. During the remain-

REMINISCENCES 111

ing years of my stay in that parish I had
the happy privilege of baptizing and pre-
senting for confirmation fully one hundred
of the men who had been so gathered out of
vile surroundings and influences. The
growth of the work compelled us to build a
modest chapel on the adjoining lot, and to
establish regular morning services and Sun-
day School. It was a fair illustration of a
principle on which I have always acted, that
the truest and best charitable work was that
which was distinctly Christian. Our Lord
made His bodily works of mercy and His
spiritual teaching go together and help each
other.

When I became Bishop there were one
or two so-called " Settlement" works begun
in Baltimore by our own Church people, in
which, to make them as they thought popu-
lar by being "unsectarian," they practically
excluded all religion. Inviting me to visit
them they asked that I would have no pray-
ers, and say nothing specially religious. I
declined to go. One of these settlements,
founded by some members of St. Stephen's
Church, was called St. Stephen's Club. I

112 REMINISCENCES

told them to take down that name, for St.
Stephen gave up life rather than disown his
Lord.

The " Men's Meeting" brings me some
very pleasant remembrances. One evening
the lady in charge told me there was a man
near the door who would surely make trou-
ble ; he was half drunk, and swearing to him-
self. Looking around I saw two of my men,
who, some eighteen months before were al-
most as bad, but were now earnest Chris-
tians. I went to them and asked them to
help me by taking that man into a far corner
and mounting guard over him. A little later
one of them came to me saying, "Dr. Paret,
we are going to have that man here next
week, and have him here sober." The next
week he was there, sober ; and they said, "We
are going to watch him, and try to help him. ' '
By God's grace the man was saved, through
their zeal, and became useful and trusted.

I might add many instances confirming
my position that the poor are more helped
by openly Christian charity than in any
other way; that they are not repelled, but
rather won and held by our being faithful

EEMINISCENCES 113

to Christ and His Church, and by speaking
boldly in His Name, as St. Paul prayed for
grace to do.

About a week before a Confirmation ap-
pointed for the Mission, at which some thirty
or forty men were to be confirmed, the good
lady in charge for the evening told me that
some of the men wanted to ask me questions.
I called all who wished to ask to follow me
up to the smoking-room, and nearly all who
were to be confirmed did so. After my an-
swering many questions as to their personal
duty, they went downstairs, but one man
seemed to linger. "Well, Edward," I said,
"I am glad you have just been baptized, and
you are, I am sure." And when he an-
swered, "Yes," I added, "And I am glad you
are going to be confirmed." "But I am not
going to be confirmed. " " Oh, yes, ' ' I said,
"you promised it, and if you were prepared
to be baptized, you are ready to be confirmed.
You must be. Tell me what is the trouble. ' '

"Mr. Paret, you did not know me eighteen
months ago. " I said I had only known him
about a year. "If you had," he said, "you
would have known the wickedest man in

114 REMINISCENCES

Washington. I was an awful swearer. If
my work went well, I swore ; if it went wrong
I swore worse. When I went home and be-
gan to talk to my wife or children, I was
swearing all the time. One evening, in a
speech you made at the Mission, you said
something about swearing. I thought you
meant me, and I began to get angry. But
you stopped just in time. It made me think.
I was ashamed to go to you, so I went to Mr.
M. (the assistant minister), and asked him
if a man who had been for many years an
awful swearer, could be cured of it. And
he said he could, by the help of God's grace.
And when I asked how I could get that help,
he wrote on a paper a little prayer in two or
three lines, told me to learn it, to say it every
morning and night, and every time I caught
myself swearing. I began, but it was an
awful fight. Yet do you know, until to-
night, I have not sworn an oath for four
months; but to-night (it was winter, and
the six stone steps at the front door were
very icy) , when I came in, my foot slipped at
the top step, and I swore all the way to the
bottom."

REMINISCENCES 115

" Yes," I said, "the devil is making a hard
fight for you, but you must not let him win.
All the more need for the help that will come
to you in Confirmation. ' ' And, with further
persuasion, he yielded, — was confirmed, and
I knew him for years afterwards as an ear-
nest, helpful Christian man.

The fact that my parish church had so
very large a proportion of men, and many of
them men of high standing, reputation and
influence, made me think seriously of my
special duties towards men. My early ex-
perience in the Ministry had shown me, what
was confirmed later by my oversight of other
clergyman in my office as bishop,— that most
clergymen find it much easier to speak to
women than to speak to men about their spir-
itual condition and duties. The approach to
men does not seem easy. I determined not to
have "the fear of men," but to speak boldly.
One of the members of my congregation, a
man of lovely character (whose wife and
daughter were communicants), while a reg-
ular attendant at the services, had never been
baptized. I went to his office and asked for
an hour's interview on a very important

116 REMINISCENCES

matter. He gave it, and I began by telling
him it was a duty that I owed both to my-
self and to him. I wanted to speak to him
about his relation to God, and his duty to
God and to himself. And I promised that
if he would hear me fully, I would feel that
my conscience was clear.

The interview was held, and after asking
him why he was not baptized and confirmed,
I kindly but very plainly, urged it as a duty
to God, a duty to himself, a duty to his own
household, and a duty to the community, that
his influence and example might be plainly
on God's side. The conversation was long
and full, and he asked many thoughtful ques-
tions. I closed by again asserting that having
cleared my own conscience, I left the further
responsibility with him; and that I would
not again approach him privately on that
matter unless he should request me to do so.
A fortnight after, meeting him in the street,
he stopped me, and referring to my promise
not so to speak to him again until he asked
it, he said that now he did ask it. And the
result was that within a month he was bap-
tized.

REMINISCENCES 117

Similar good fruit came in the cases of
several public men, one of them a judge of
the Supreme Court, and all men older than
myself.

During my eight years' residence in
Washington, I was many times brought into
interesting relations with public men. The
Surgeon General of the United States Army,
General Barnes, was a communicant and
vestryman. When he was very ill with a
sickness that he knew would be fatal, and
I was visiting him daily, he asked that I
should sometimes come to him for prayers
late in the evening, just before his sleeping.
Going for that purpose one evening at nearly
ten o'clock, I found the President of the
United States, President Grant, seated at
his bedside. The President recognized me,
and said that since I had probably come for
a pastoral visit, he would be in the way and
would withdraw. I told him that I did
come for prayers, but that he would not be
in the way. "If I may stay and join in the
prayers," he said, "I would be glad to do so.
Barnes and I were together at West Point,
and in the Mexican War, and have always

118 REMINISCENCES

been friends. And it is one of the comforts
and reliefs in my busy life that I am able to
come sometimes and sit up with him at
night."

Another Presidential incident relates to
President Arthur. On the death of Presi-
dent Garfield, Mr. Arthur succeeded to the
office. He was a Churchman. One of my
vestrymen asked me to go with him and call
on the President, with whom he was well
acquainted. He knew that the President,
if he had his own way, would attend at my
parish church of the Epiphany, yet very
strong pressure was used to take him else-
where ; and that if I would go and give a per-
sonal earnest request and invitation, he was
almost sure that would secure him. After a
moment or two of thought, I said, "I cannot
do it. Tell me of some poor man, or plain
man who needs my urging to bring him to
church, and I will gladly go to him. But I
will not solicit a rich man, or one high in
position to patronize the Church by his
presence."

Some weeks later, walking on Pennsyl-
vania Avenue, I met the President. He

BEMINISCENCES 119

stopped and said lie wanted to walk a little
way with me; and as we walked lie said, "I
heard of your declining to call on me, and
of the reason you gave for it. And I am
glad you took that position. It was right,
and I honor you for it. My personal pref-
erences would take me to Epiphany Church ;
but very strong influences, and the pressure
of long tradition, seem to say that the Pres-
ident, if a Churchman, should go to St.
John's where there is a state pew set apart
for him. But if you cannot come to see me
for that particular purpose, do come and see
me as a friend.''

I recall also a meeting (after I had be-
come Bishop of Maryland) with President
Cleveland at the beginning of his second
term. There was much anxiety at the time
about what was known as the Chinese Ex-
clusion Act. It was very severe indeed in
its terms, and in the method of its enforce-
ment. The Chinese Government was
threatening severe measures in retaliation;
and at a meeting of the House of Bishops
when it was felt that our missionary opera-
tions, and our clergy, and colleges and hos-

120 REMINISCENCES

pitals, and other property in China were en-
dangered, action was taken to ask of the
President his protection for onr interests.
A commission of five bishops was appointed
to secure an interview ; and since Washing-
ton was in my Diocese, I was made the chair-
man. The interview was appointed, and
the night before it, the five bishops met to
study the matter. "We took a printed copy
of the Act, and marked all the objectionable
features, with our suggestions for a change ;
and they requested me to be the spokesman.

The next day passing through a crowd of
office-seekers, all claiming promised inter-
views, we were taken into the President's
library where he, and the Secretary of State,
soon appeared. I introduced the other
bishops, and began to speak about our pur-
pose. But the President stopped me say-
ing, "Do not begin business so quickly; let
us talk about something else. Yours are
the first faces I have seen for days that were
not those of hungry office-seekers."

But it was not easy to talk at the word
of command, and there was a short silence,
till the President asked, "Do any of you

KEMINISCENCES 121

fish?" I answered that I was a fisherman,
and two or three fishing stories were ex-
changed between him and myself.

This opened the way pleasantly for our
business. I said that though bishops, we
had come to him as citizens, feeling that all
citizens had a right to seek the President's
protection for their interests when endan-
gered in foreign lands, and that interests
very dear to us were so endangered by rea-
son of the Chinese Exclusion Bill. Grant-
ing our right to seek his help, he said that he
was ashamed to say it, but that he knew very
little about that Bill, his time having been
so occupied of late by election campaign
matters. "But tell me about it," he said.
I read and explained the points from our
marked paper, and then from the instruc-
tions of the Secretary of the Treasury ; "Not
yours, Mr. President, but your predeces-
sor's." After hearing them, and asking
many questions, he said, "They do seem
needlessly severe, but I do not see how I can
help you. I did not make that law ; I can-
not change it. I am only an executive offi-
cer whose sworn duty it is to do all I can to

122 REMINISCENCES

see that the laws of the country are en-
forced. Yet you may have a remedy. The
constitutionality of this law has been ques-
tioned, and the Supreme Court will in a few
weeks decide that point. If they say it is
not constitutional you have what you ask.
If not, I must see that the law is enforced.' '

"But, Mr. President," I said, " there are
two ways of enforcing such a law." "No,
no!" he said. "Only one straightforward
honest action. " "I beg your pardon, ' ' I an-
swered, ' ' such a law could be enforced either
with the utmost possible severity, or with the
utmost possible gentleness. ' '

He said that there might be such a dis-
tinction, and then put out his hand to dis-
miss us. But instead of taking it, I said,
"Mr. President, we were hoping that we
might have some assurance from you."

"What assurance could I give?"

"We hoped for your promise that if you
had to enforce the law, it should be with the
utmost possible gentleness."

He seemed to grow angry, and said, "Do
you know that you are making a very strange
demand?"

KEMINISCENCES 123

"Not a demand," I answered, "but only
the expression of a hope." Presently the
smile came back, and again he put out his
hand saying, "Well, I promise. If I have
to enforce that law, it shall be with the ut-
most possible gentleness."

Two weeks later the Supreme Court de-
clared that the law was constitutional. Soon
after that an official notice was published
cancelling the former Secretary's very se-
vere instructions, and issuing new ones in
which every change we asked had been made.
And a little later an informal notice ap-
peared that the President was not able to
enforce the law very strictly, since it would
require an expenditure of several hundred
thousand dollars for which Congress had
made no appropriation.6

6 An interesting incident concerning one of the Vice-presi-
dents was often told by Bishop Paret. At the Centennial of
the Laying of the Corner Stone of the Capitol in Washington
in September, 1893, Bishop Paret was to have the opening
prayer at the exercises at the Capitol, and Vice-president
Stevenson one of the principal addresses. The exercises were
held on a grand-stand in front of the Capitol, and a strong
wind was blowing at the time. In a short conversation with
the Vice-president, Bishop Paret said that he feared the Vice-
president's speech would not be heard by many of the people
as the wind was in the wrong direction. "That is where you

124 REMINISCENCES

Again, during the Administration of Pres-
ident McKinley, the House of Bishops ap-
pointed a commission to see the President
and try to secure better arrangements for
insuring efficiency and helpfulness in the
service of the chaplains in the Army and
Navy, and especially those who were of our
own Church. And once more I was made
the chairman. Telling him of our purpose,
I said we felt that most of the chaplains were
unhelpful and often unworthy men ; that the
office was almost always given through po-
litical influence of senators, or others, with-
out regard to real fitness for the work ; and
for the good of the soldiers and sailors, and
for the credit and influence of the Church,
we wished to suggest a way for improve-
ment. We asked that hereafter no clergy-
man of the Protestant Episcopal Church
should have such appointment without an
assurance from his own bishop that he would
be a worthy and useful man.

i i Impossible ! Impossible ! ' ' exclaimed

have the advantage of me," returned the Vice-president. " In
what way?" asked the Bishop. "Because He to Whom you
speak always hears."

REMINISCENCES 125

the President. "Why our chaplains are from
all denominations, Presbyterians, Baptists,
Congregationalists, and others, who have no
bishops; and we must treat all alike/'

We continued our argument, and there
was a long debate. At last I asked him who
were the best chaplains in the service. He
said they were Roman Catholics, and I knew
that would be his answer.

"But, Mr. President, do you ever appoint
a Roman Catholic chaplain except upon the
request and assurance of his bishop?"

He dodged the question, and began to talk
about something else. A second time I
asked it, and a second time he evaded it. I
asked it a third time, and then he answered,
"You know they have their own peculiar
methods of watchfulness and influence with
us." "Yes," I replied, "but you said you
must treat all alike. Give us the same priv-
ileges you give to them, and wait before ap-
pointing any of our clergy until you hear
from his bishop." After a little more de-
murring he yielded, and gave the orders;
and during his Administration they were
obeyed. I, as Bishop of Maryland, received

126 REMINISCENCES

four requests for such information. Of
three I answered unfavorably. One had my
approval, and he only was appointed. But
I fear the rule was afterwards forgotten.

In connection with Epiphany Church
there are some very pleasant memories about
money matters. I have never been a money-
raiser, nor in the habit of making any per-
sonal appeals for gifts for the Church. I
only, when need came, stated the case in a
plain business-like way, in church, or in
printed appeals, and left it to the con-
sciences of others to determine their action.
And the results were good. For instance,
the Epiphany Church Home was in debt. I
mentioned the fact at one of the Church
services, and stated my hope that some way
might be found for meeting it. The next
week a generous Churchwoman called on me
and asked what the amount of the debt was.
I told her, I think, about $2,500. She
wanted to know exactly, and after study I
named the exact sum. She turned to the
desk, drew her check for that amount, and
asked me to see that the debt was cancelled
at once.

REMINISCENCES 127

I needed money to sustain the work of the
Men's Meeting at the Epiphany Mission. I
mentioned at a Sunday morning service our
responsibility for that needy part of the
parish, and told how we were trying to meet
it. I added that the actual labor and serv-
ice was to be done by women alone, but it
would cost $1,000 a year to maintain it, and
I thought the men should provide that. I
said I would not have a collection in church,
nor send out a subscription list, but that I
left the responsibility with them. If within
the next two weeks that amount should be
sent to me, I would know that the parish-
ioners approved and would sustain the work.
If not, it would be abandoned. "Within ten
days I received fully $1,200.

I might give many more interesting in-
cidents. I will only add that while Wash-
ington as a city of political life, and of much
wealth has been thought by some to be es-
pecially worldly, I have never known a place
where the Lord's Day was better observed,
and where attendance at church was so gen-
eral and constant, and especially on the part
of the men. I have heard, also, the insinu-

128 REMINISCENCES

ation, that the ladies in Washington were
given up to the ways of fashionable society ;
the round of calls and receptions. My ex-
perience did not prove it so. True, some
whose husbands held official positions were
bound for their sakes to the fulfilment of
many social duties. But I have never
known women more earnest as Christians,
or more ready and helpful to aid me in the
work among the poor, the sick, the ignorant
and neglected, than the helpers I found
among the wives and daughters of senators,
cabinet officers, and judges.

It was during the time of my rectorship
in Washington that I was able to take my
first voyage to Europe. Taking with me my
youngest son, I sailed in the year 1881.
There is no need to tell the general incidents
of the three months ' travel. They were only
the repetition of the usual experiences of
tourists. But there was one part that does
call for record. I had, some years before,
found among papers left by my father, sev-
eral letters from his grandmother, my great
grandmother, written from the old family
home in France to her son in New York, my

REMINISCENCES 129

grandfather. They were dated about the
year 1765, and were very quaint and inter-
esting with their details of simple home life,
and neighborhood affairs. By the help of
these letters I had been able to locate the old
family home. It was in the Commune of
Latour, not a town or village, but made up of
farms; near the village of Tricolet in the
Department of Correze, in that part of
Southern France known as Auvergne.

One of the plans of my journey was to
visit that place. It was far off the beaten
track of railroads, the nearest town of any
size, Brive, being some sixteen miles dis-
tant. We drove there from Brive early on
Sunday morning; choosing that day that I
might be sure of meeting the priest of the
Roman Church.

The parish church of St. Eutrope, was at
Tricolet, about seven miles from Latour. 1
was sorry that we reached it too late for the
service. It was a rude building of early
irregular Norman architecture, built in the
thirteenth century. I was able, a little
later, to find the priest at his house, and had
an hour of very pleasant and helpful con-

130 REMINISCENCES

versation. He told me that the family place
had been under the Paret ownership for
some 200 years; that the present occupant
was Barthelemy Paret, a man of over
eighty years, and that, as he had no sons, the
property would at his death, lose the family
name. At the close of our conversation he
said, laughing, that I must take an inter-
preter with me. I thought, at first, that he
meant a little criticism of my imperfect
French. But he explained .by saying that
the old gentleman did not speak French, nor
understand it ; that he was one of a few of
nearly the same age who prided themselves
on keeping the old patois, the Provencal
language called Langue d' Oc. Taking a
young man as interpreter, we found the old
gentleman living alone in his comfortable
stone house with its stone floors. His two
married daughters, living very near and on
the same property, kept his house in order
and provided for him. Learning from our
interpreter who I was, he sent for those
daughters and their families, for a relative
from America was something remarkable in
their lives. It being Sunday they were all

REMINISCENCES 131

free, and the daughters, their husbands and
their children soon appeared. For nearly
two hours the conversation went on through
three languages ; I first telling, in English to
my son, what I was going to say; then re-
peating it in French, and our interpreter
repeated it in their rough dialect. The an-
swers filtered back in the same way. Bar-
thelemy Paret proved to be second or third
cousin to my father. He remembered the
family stories about my grandfather and his
going to America, and told me many things
of interest about his earlier days, and their
life and ways.

When I rose to depart he said that I could
not go until we had eaten bread and drunk
wine together. The bread, he said, was
from wheat grown on their own farm, and
the wine from their own vines; and he
thought they had one of the best wine farms
in France. This being ended, he came to me
to say farewell with the kiss in the French
manner, he kissing me on each cheek, and
receiving my two kisses in return. His two
sons-in-law followed doing the same, and
passing from me to my son. Then the two

132 REMINISCENCES

daughters ; then the children. I think there
were eighteen girls and four boys. All was
in absolute silence, as solemn as a funeral
procession. After we were out of the house,
we counted up the kisses; the old man, the
sons-in-law, and daughters, the twenty-two
children, twenty-seven in all. Four times
twenty-seven would be one hundred and
eight kisses to each of us ; two hundred and
sixteen in all.

AS BISHOP OP MARYLAND

CHAPTER VIII

AS BISHOP OF MARYLAND

In my work in Epiphany Parish, I felt
that I was in a position of usefulness and
influence, and I had no desire to leave it.
But in the fall of 1884 there came a demand
to which I was compelled to yield. In
October of that year, at a special Convention
held at St. Peter's Church in Baltimore,
after protracted balloting lasting for some
three days, I was elected to be the sixth
Bishop of Maryland. It was an utter sur-
prise. I had not sought it, and I can most
truly say I did not desire it. But the dio-
cese had been without a bishop for two or
more years, and Convention after Conven-
tion had been unable to complete an election.
And these facts seemed to make the call im-
perative.

There were some things of interest in that
election. Up to that time the Church in

136 REMINISCENCES

Maryland had been sadly disturbed by the
strifes then prevailing between what were
known as the high Churchmen and the low
Churchmen. In preparation for that Con-
vention, one of the two parties, the one which
was much the stronger, held a caucus, in
which they agreed upon certain points;
namely, that the one elected must be a south-
ern man, born south of Mason and Dixon's
line; that he must be not over forty-five
years of age ; that he must be a low Church-
man ; and that he must not be one now in the
diocese, for, if so, and if he were a man of
any force, he would not be able to heal the
divisions because he must have taken part in
some of the vexed questions and debates.
But when the election was completed all
these caucus agreements were broken. The
one they chose was a northern man, born
and brought up in New York ; was fifty-nine
years old, instead of only forty-five ; was not
a low Churchman, but an old-fashioned con-
servative high Churchman; was already in
the diocese, and for eight years had taken
active part in all the debates.

Another incident mav be of interest. The

REMINISCENCES 137

ladies of Epiphany Parish, of which I was
rector, had provided for me, from Europe,
a very full outfit of Episcopal robes and
necessities, and had presented them with
the request that I would wear them at my
Consecration, to which I agreed. But soon
after came a letter from the family of Bishop
Whittingham, a former Bishop of Mary-
land, saying that they still had one set of
his robes, and they wanted to present them
to me with the understanding that I would
wear them at my Consecration. And they
enforced their request by saying that they
knew I was that Bishop's choice for the suc-
cession, he having once said that it was his
wish and prayer that I might some day be
Bishop of Maryland. I did not wear the
grand newT English robes at my Consecra-
tion,7 but, thinking of Elijah and Elisha and
their mantle, I wore the very old-fashioned
and much worn robes of Bishop Whitting-
ham.

The long vacancy in the Bishop's Office
had left room for many irregularities ; and
my first years as Bishop gave me much to

7 January, 1885.

138 REMINISCENCES

do in "setting in order the things that were
wanting." But, northerner though I was
by birth, the good southern people received
me lovingly, and readily conformed to my
wishes.

I remember well my first round of visi-
tations in the southern counties, Anne
Arundel, Calvert, Prince George's, St.
Mary 's and Charles. It was in July, 1885.
Through almost all those parts there were
no railroads, and my two weeks ' continuous
travel was by buggy, zizgagging from church
to church. It was still so near the Civil
War times that the war feelings had not all
died. To make my first visit to one of the
churches in Charles County, I had taken an
early morning drive of some twenty miles,
and getting out on the green before the
church, I stood beside a pleasant looking
country gentleman, who, of course, did not
recognize me. My immediate predecessor,
Bishop Pinkney, was a man of very vener-
able ap2)earance with long gray hair and
gray beard ; and, I, unfortunately, had then
not a gray hair on my head.

The good man said to me, "I thought

REMINISCENCES 139

our Yankee Bishop was coming over."

I knew how he felt, as a warm southerner,
and I said, "He did come." He said, "I do
not see him. Where is he?" When I re-
plied that I was the Bishop, putting his
hands on my shoulders, he gave me a very
vigorous shove, and said, "See here, young
man, stop your fooling!"

I had asked the vestry to meet me after the
service, and they did so ; only one was lack-
ing, and that was the good man on the green.
But we soon became warm friends.

At another parish in that neighborhood,
where there had been a long vacancy, the
warden, speaking for the vestry, asked me
to appoint and send a rector to them.
"But," said he, "there is one thing you
ought to know. Every man in this parish is
a Democrat, and in war time every man was
a Confederate. You must not send us any
Republican, or any northern man."

"Why not?" I asked. "I do not choose
ministers in that way. ' '

"It would split the parish in pieces.
There would not be a man in church in a
month; not a woman after two weeks."

140 KEMINISCENCES

To all his constant urging I refused, say-
ing that they must choose their own minister,
that I would not. Some fifteen months
after, on my next visitation, the same warden
said, " Bishop, I wish you would say a word
or two to our minister."

"What shall I tell him?"

"Tell him the War is over. He has been
here a year, and has not preached a single
sermon without a war story in it. Say some-
thing to him."

"No," I said, "you called him here on
Democratic principles. You must do your
own talking."

At my next visitation, the warden said,
"Well, Bishop, our minister has gone, and
we want a new one, and we want the Bishop
to choose him, but not on Democratic princi-
ples."

I grew to love the people of those Southern
Maryland Counties very greatly, and I
think they grew to love me ; and my almost
yearly visitations for twenty-five years, made
me much at home in their houses and in their
lives. It was not the life of cities and towns.
There were no cities or large towns in that

REMINISCENCES 141

region. It was the quiet rural life, the con-
tinuation of what had been, before the War,
the old plantation life. It was pleasant to
find among them man after man, who had,
and whose conversation and manners showed
it, full college training : men from Yale and
Harvard and Princeton, and the University
of Virginia. And among the women, the
hours at the table showed that they had re-
ceived the advantages of the best schools in
the country.

But from the long interregnum in the
Episcopate, there had grown an irregularity
and seeming carelessness about the churches
and the services. The parson, living often
on the ' ' Glebe ' ' of 50 or 100, or 150 acres, and
getting much of his support from that, was
obliged to be often both farmer and parson
in one, and the farmer's duties interfered
with those of the parson. Many of them
held only one service on Sunday, and, except
on great days, no week day services at all.
It was thought too much for the people to
take too often the long drives to church that
were necessary, and if a rainy Sunday came
often neither parson, nor people thought it

142 REMINISCENCES

necessary to open the church at all. I re-
member one occasion when having an ap-
pointment at one of the churches in the fields,
the day appointed proved quite stormy. I
had sjDent the night before with the rector
of an adjoining parish, and when I said it
was time to start he expressed his surprise at
my thinking of it, saying I would find no one
at all at the church. I insisted, but his
words proved true. We arrived only some
ten minutes before the hour appointed.
There was no sign of life, and the church
doors were locked. We waited until a few
moments after the hour, then drove around
the church, leaving our tracks in the light
snow which had fallen, and after tacking my
card on the door, we went away.

There were several like instances. I was
to visit and confirm at one of the oystermen's
chapels on the Chesapeake. The night be-
fore I had spent with one of the oystermen
near a like chapel some twelve miles distant.
The morning brought a heavy drenching
rain and violent wind. My good host pro-
tested that I ought not to go (by sail-boat)
in such weather, but I went. We arrived at

REMINISCENCES 143

the place at the time when it had been agreed
that someone was to meet me on a point of
land about a mile from the chapel. There
was no one there, and it was raining hard.
Sending back those who had brought me, I
made my way to the chapel, picking up a boy
on the way. The doors were locked. I sent
the lad for the keys, and he and I made the
fire and rang the bell. We began the service
half an hour late, and with some fifteen in
the congregation who apologized, saying that
nobody dreamed I would venture out in such
a storm.

The isolated position of those churches in
the fields made another difficulty. Asking
one rector, whose parish covered nearly 200
square miles, what Sunday School he had, he
answered that he had none. The farming
people living at a distance had their home
and farm duties, and could not come an hour
and a half before the service to bring their
children; neither could they wait so long
after the morning service. So he had given
up thought of Sunday School. I protested
that if I were in his place I would find a way.
If I could not have one Sunday School at the

144 REMINISCENCES

church as the central point, I would have
four or five neighborhood schools, and so
reach all. I would find some earnest com-
municant, man or woman, who besides his,
or her, own children, would gather at the
house a few children on Sunday afternoons,
teaching them after my advice and direction,
with an occasional visit from myself. After
full study together he followed my advice,
and two years later he was able to tell me
that he had five Sunday Schools with seventy
scholars. I urged these neighborhood Sun-
day Schools also in some others of the large
rural parishes, and always with excellent re-
sults.

I might give many amusing incidents of
my life and work as Bishop, but a few must
suffice. Some of them I have told so often
that they will seem old stories ; and in record-
ing some of them now I will not attempt to
give them in order of time and occurrence.
I tell them only as they come to my remem-
brance.

Among memories of pleasant hospitalities,
there is one experience which has often ap-
peared in print, but distorted and incorrect.

KEMINISCENCES 145

I think of a visit in one of the good old fam-
ily residences in Southern Maryland, where
the sad results of the war had made it im-
possible to keep up all its former state. As
I came down early in the morning, my kind
hostess asked what I would like for break-
fast ; and I said that my memories of my sup-
per were so pleasant, that I was sure any-
thing she offered would be delightful. But
she insisted, and I suggested boiled eggs,
moderately soft-boiled about four minutes.
But she had told me the day before that they
had neither clock nor watch in the house, but
could tell the time of day very closely by
looking at the sun, or sky. So I proposed to
go to the kitchen with her and mark the four
minutes. But she said, "I do not boil them
that way. Perhaps you have noticed that I
sing a great deal. I always sing when I am
at work, whatever the work may be. And I
have noticed that when I am boiling eggs, if I
take my favorite hymn, 'Just as I am,' and
sing it all but one verse, the eggs will be very
soft. If I sing it all and one verse over, they
will be quite hard. I think I will give you
about the whole hymn."

146 REMINISCENCES

I asked permission to go with her and see.
When the water came to boiling, she put in
the eggs, folded her hands, and looking up
sang the hymn somewhat slowly; and the
eggs were done to perfection. But alas! a
few hours later, at the service in the church,
the first hymn sung was that same " Just as
I am," and my thoughts were somewhat
mixed.

On a visitation in St. Mary's County, after
the morning service, a lunch was enjoyed un-
der the grand oak trees in the churchyard.
As it drew near the close, a bright looking
middle-aged colored man asked to speak to
me. He said, * ' Bishop, I heard your sermon
this morning ; a mighty good sermon ; it did
me a heap of good." And in answer to my
question he told me the text, and gave a fair
idea of the substance of what I said. He
added, "I heard your sermon yesterday."
"But I was twenty miles away." "I was
there," he said, "and that was a grand good
sermon." And again he gave me the text
correctly. "Bishop, I heard your sermon
the day before." "But I was thirty miles
away ! " "I was there, ' ' he said, ' ' I Ve been

EEMINISCENOES 147

following you up"; and again lie gave the
text correctly. "Now, Bishop," he said,
"them are what I call stayin' sermons.
That kind of a sermon stays with a man ; it
sticks to him, he can't shake it off; he can't
get rid of it." After a pause he continued,
"Bishop, I'm a preacher, too."
i ' Are you ? What kind of a preacher ? ' '
"I'm a Methodist preacher, but I can't
preach that kind of sermon. I preach what
they call rousin ' sermons. I do wish I could
preach some stayin ' sermons. Now, see here,
Bishop, you've preached them three sermons.
You won't want them no more. If you'll
only give them to me I'll give you a quarter
apiece for them."

It may be well here to say something of
the Church work among the Negroes. I
was, from the beginning of my Episcopate,
greatly interested in it. I felt the great need
and my responsibility; and I soon found,
also, the very great difficulties. Yet, with
many disappointments, the work grew
slowly, and I found among them some very
earnest and devout souls.

148 REMINISCENCES

My relations with members of the Roman
Church, including Cardinal Gibbons, have
been quite pleasant. On one of my visita-
tions, talking with one of their priests, he re-
minded me that in old times in Maryland it
was the custom to speak of the two Churches
as the " Roman Catholic, and the Protestant
Catholic." The Cardinal and I often met
and took part together on many public, or
charitable occasions, and sometimes in social
gatherings, and our differing views never
marred the pleasantness of our intercourse.

I will allude briefly to another incident,
which has become somewhat historical.8
The Legislature of Maryland had deter-
mined to erect a monument over the grave of
Leonard Calvert. That grave was in the
consecrated churchyard of our parish at St.
Mary's City, and my consent was necessary.
I cheerfully gave it. The Cardinal was to
have had the opening prayers, and I the final
prayers and benediction. On his way to the
place the Cardinal was taken ill, and he sent
a note to me apologizing for, and explaining
his absence, and saying that he had ap-

s November, 1890.

EEMINISCENCES 149

pointed a certain priest to act for him, and
had given him the prayers he had prepared.
There was a very large gathering of peo-
ple. But the first speaker, a member of the
Roman Church, went out of his way to make
a bitter attack on the Church of England;
and claiming for the Eoman Church all the
credit for religious liberty and freedom of
conscience in the United States, because the
charter which secured religious liberty was
given to Calvert, a Eoman Catholic noble-
man of the grandest pattern of Christian
character. The next speech was by an
eminent lawyer, a member of our own
Church; but stirred up by the former speech
he retorted with some bitterness. When the
time came for me, having secured the prom-
ise that those of the Eoman Church would
unite with us in saying the Lord's Prayer
and the Creed, I prefaced the prayers by a
very few words; saying I was sorry there
should be any disagreement about giving
credit for the blessing of religious liberty.
I did not think it belonged exclusively to any
one Church or denomination. If the
Eoman Church might rightly claim some

150 REMINISCENCES

part in it, so could the Quakers of Pennsyl-
vania, and the Baptists in Rhode Island.
And it should be remembered that if the
Maryland Charter ensuring such liberty was
given to a Roman Catholic nobleman, it was
given ly an Anglo-Catholic king. And
granting all that might be said about the
noble Christian character of Calvert, it
should be remembered that that character
was formed in the Church of England,
where he was baptized, taught and con-
firmed.

THE DIVISION OF THE DIOCESE

CHAPTER IX

THE DIVISION OF THE DIOCESE

The time came when the Diocese of Mary-
land had grown too large for the labors of
one bishop, and I asked for a division which
would make the important City of Washing-
ton a Bishop's See. But I made it a condi-
tion that each of the two Dioceses should
raise $50,000, as an endowment to avoid bur-
dening the parishes with taxation. Wash-
ington promptly did its part, but Baltimore
did not. The Committee appointed, at first
very sanguine of success, at last reported to
me that they could raise only $20,000 ; and as
the only hope, they asked that at a certain
business office I would meet twenty or thirty
of the leading Churchmen and try to urge
them. I named Thursday, at 2 p. m.9 On
Tuesday I sat in my office, somewhat de-
spondent, and feeling that I was going to de-

» March, 1895.

154 KEMINISCENCES

feat, when, most unexpectedly, I heard that
by the death of Eversfield F. Keerl, which
had occurred that day, the sum of $90,000,
held in trust by a firm of New York bankers,
would fall unconditionally to the Diocese of
Maryland.

The burial was to be on Thursday at two
o'clock, the hour I had named for meeting
the laymen. But not waiting for that, I tel-
egraphed for information to the New York
bankers, saying that an answer was imper-
atively needed before noon of Thursday.
At noon on Thursday, no answer as yet. At
one, no answer. At one-thirty, no answer.
At two o'clock a message, "We hold in trust
for the Diocese of Maryland, at par values
$97,500." Taking that and the extract
from the will I had secured, I had just time
to meet my appointment with the laymen ; a
coincidence of time to the minute. Asking
them to speak first, one of the bankers told
me of the panic which made people slow to
give money. Another talked about their
disapproval of endowments. Then I said
something like this: "Well, gentlemen, this
is the only instance in which there seems to

KEMINISCENCES 155

be a disagreement between the laymen and
myself. It shall not make any trouble. If
you will not yield to me, I will cheerfully
yield to you. But last week there were only
two parties to this question. Now a third
one has come in. That one is God. You do
not believe in endowments; He does. You
say it is impossible to raise it. Things im-
possible to men are possible with God; and
He has provided it. I showed the two pa-
pers, the extract from the Will, and the
bankers' telegram, and they agreed that the
Diocese should be divided.

Then came another wonderful coincidence.
The New York bankers wrote me a few days
later that the market value of the fund was
$101,000. And out of this my legal advisers
estimated there would be about $5,000 for
commissions and other expenses. At my
meeting with the laymen one of them showed
that instead of $50,000, we would need $64,-
000 to make up for our loss in annual income
by the going off of the new Diocese. Now at
our next Convention, it was voted that we
would give to the New Diocese one-third of
all our invested funds up to the time of its

156 REMINISCENCES

full establishment. From $101,000, take
$5,000, and we have $96,000, of which one-
third would go to Washington and two-
thirds remain with us. And two-thirds of
$96,000 would be $64,000, the exact amount
we needed. These coincidences, in time, to
the minute, and in money to the dollar, are
so wonderful that it would be hard to doubt
that it was God's will that the Diocese should
be divided.

THE DIVISION OF THE DIOCESE

(Continued)

CHAPTER X

THE DIVISION OF THE DIOCESE, CONTINUED

I have found it impossible, in noting these
remembrances, to keep to anything like
chronological order ; and I must group with-
out order of time, some matters not yet fully
touched upon. I have alluded too briefly to
some things connected with the division of
the Diocese. When I was consecrated as
Bishop, January 8, 1885, the Diocese of
Maryland included both all of Maryland
west of the Chesapeake Bay, and also the
District of Columbia, including the City of
Washington. It had 162 clergymen, 130
fully organized parishes or congregations,
and 10 mission stations and chapels.

Although the Canons do not require that
the Bishop should visit all oftener than
once in three years ; yet the very long inter-
regnum in the bishopric seemed to call for
something more, and I began by making a

160 REMINISCENCES

complete round of the Diocese every year.
For many years, being then in full bodily
strength, I was able to do this, and I found it
a pleasure. It brought me into closer rela-
tions with all the parishes and their people,
and quickened my own interest, and helped
me to develop plans for work. The Church
life quickly responded to my efforts. The
numbers confirmed were large ; the number
of communicants grew steadily. In 1885
there were reported 22,104 communicants;
in 1894 the number was 29,918.

A full visitation of the Diocese required
that the Bishop should be absent from his
home for nearly three-fourths of the time ; so
that there was scant opportunity for study
and deliberate thought. Besides, with each
year added to my age my bodily strength
became less, and I was convinced that the
measure of work with which I began could
not much longer be maintained. Two ways
of solving the problem presented themselves
to me. One was the lessening of my visita-
tions; making them once in two years. I
sent out a letter of inquiry to the clergy in
the rural parishes, suggesting that change,

KEMINISCENCES 161

and asking their advice and wishes ; whether
they counted an annual visitation a neces-
sity; whether my coming less frequently
would harm their work and make the num-
bers confirmed smaller. From more than
half the answer was that while the Bishop's
visit was a pleasure and a stimulus to clergy
and people, they would not really suffer by
having him come once in two years. And
yet quite a number seemed to think the more
frequent visitations would be much more
helpful.

I turned then to the other plan, the di-
vision of the Diocese. But before making
any decision of my own, I again tried to find
the judgment and wish of the Diocese at
large. The general impression was in favor
of division, if the money problem could be
met (in the support of two bishops and two
full working organizations instead of one).
Besides, it was felt that the City of Wash-
ington, large in itself and important as the
Capital of the Nation ought to have its own
resident bishop. Several years passed after
the first suggestion before it took shape in a
definite proposal in my address to the Dio-

162 REMINISCENCES

cesan Convention. There was some slight
opposition, but after very full discussion it
was determined by an almost unanimous
vote, that a division should be made.

But on what lines? Some of the clergy
and people of Washington wanted that that
City, by itself alone, should form the Dio-
cese. But the feeling was strong that both
for its own sake and larger life, and for the
help of the weaker country parts, it should
have some work and sympathy for those be-
yond. Others proposed the Patuxent River
as the dividing line, but the final agreement
was to give to the new Diocese, just the ter-
ritory included in what had been known as
the Convocation of Washington.

One of the very pleasant things in this di-
vision was the loving spirit shown through-
out, and especially in the resolution unani-
mously passed, that we should give to the
new Diocese, which took less than one-third
of the territory, one-third of all our invested
funds up to the day of the organization of
that Diocese. It was an act of loving lib-
erality never equaled, before or since, in any
such separation. The mother Diocese sent

REMINISCENCES 163

out its daughter, not weak, but richly en-
dowed; having, with its own contributions,
an endowment for its Episcopal fund much
larger than that of the mother Diocese.

THE CHURCH'S WORK FOR THE

MASSES

CHAPTER XI

THE CHURCH'S WORK FOR THE MASSES

Among the noteworthy things, during my
many years of work in the holy ministry,
were the practical proofs in refutation of a
popular charge against us, that the Church is
for the more intelligent and refined, and not
for what are called the masses and the poor.
A few instances out of many may be given.

The village of Alberton, about an hour's
ride by railroad out of Baltimore, is strictly
a manufacturing village. All the property
of every kind, is owned by the proprietors of
the cotton mills. Nearly all the inhabitants
are either laborers or officers in the mills.
Thinking that among them there must be
many English families, I tried to make some
provision for their spiritual needs. I sent
a young man whose enthusiasm soon found
a way to their hearts. Many children and
some adults were baptized, and a helpful
Sunday School was established in a room of

168 REMINISCENCES

the factory buildings. After a year of such
work, the two chief proprietors, father and
son, neither of whom I had ever met, called
on me with a proposal. They said that they
felt their responsibility for the welfare of
their laborers, and they included in that
their spiritual welfare. To help to that they
had, several years before, built a good church
which had been used by different Christian
bodies. "But now we propose, if we can
agree as to the conditions, to build a good
stone church, with a Sunday School room,
to furnish it, to heat and light it from our
factories, and to put it, without any charge
whatever, under your care. ' '

The conditions were favorable and ac-
cepted. The church was built, and now for
many years a minister of the Church has
been in residence and doing pastoral work.

A second instance. Hampden, another
suburb of Baltimore, is occupied almost en-
tirely by the people of the large foundries,
and of the cotton mills. A new rector had
just gone to take charge of St. Mary's
Church and soon became acquainted with
the head of the foundry works, a generous

REMINISCENCES 169

man, and an ardent Methodist. This gen-
tleman, however, was skeptical as to the
Church's ability to work successfully among
the laboring classes, and for sometime held
aloof. But after a year had passed, the
positive and kindly work of the rector
proved successful. The church, of stone,
seating about 300, was soon filled to over-
flowing; and the head of the works asked
the rector to call again. He said, " Per-
haps I was mistaken in what I said before to
discourage you. They tell me you are
reaching our people, that your church is
always full and not large enough; and that
you need and want a larger one. How large
do you want it?" The answer was, "A
church to seat a thousand."

"Can that church be enlarged"?"

The clergyman said he was himself a prac-
tical architect, and it could be enlarged at a
cost of fifteen thousand dollars.

"If I give you ten thousand, can you raise
the rest?"

The clergyman said he could; the money
was given and the church enlarged to hold
one thousand.

THE MARYLAND THEOLOGICAL
CLASS

CHAPTER XII

THE MARYLAND THEOLOGICAL CLASS

One of the happinesses of my Episcopate
I found in my "Maryland Class of Theol-
ogy. ' ' I had become dissatisfied with the in-
fluences of the theological seminaries. If
I sent students to the General Seminary in
New York, and any of them proved really
good, they were stolen from me by some of
the New York churches which could offer
them things more attractive than they could
find in Maryland. Or if they came back to
me, I found they had become used to ways
and associations of city life and work, and
were not fitted for the harder and heavier
work needed in our country parishes. And
remembering the great advantages to myself,
as a student, in the close association with my
own Bishop De Lancey, I determined that I
must have for my candidates Maryland men,
trained in Maryland, and for Maryland, and

174 REMINISCENCES

under my own personal influence and watch-
fulness. Some six well qualified clergymen
of the Diocese promised and gave me their
help. We began with eight or nine young
men. The place for lectures was in my res-
idence, or the Library adjoining. And I
was more than satisfied with the results.10
The small number of students permitted each
to be brought into closer touch with the in-
structors.

During the few years for which I was able
to continue the School it prepared about
twenty young men for their holy duties.
With perhaps only two exceptions, all
proved eminently useful, and two or three
of them went on to reach remarkable schol-
arship. But when the Diocese of Washing-
ton was set off from Maryland, it took not
only one-half or more of the money which I
was able to use for the School, but more than
half of my supply of young men ; and I was
most reluctantly compelled to close the
work.

10 Bishop Paret's motto to the members of his Theological
Class in regard to preaching was: "First, — be sure you
have something to say. Second, be sure you know how to
say it. Third, say it. Fourth, stop' "

,t "

REMINISCENCES 175

Needing a teacher in Hebrew for my
class, Rabbi Szold, one of the oldest and
most respected of the Rabbis, offered him-
self. I protested that he was too eminent a
man, and I had so little money to offer that
I was sure he would not accept it. He an-
swered that he did not want, and would not
take, a dollar. He was " Rabbi emeritus;"
laid on the shelf, because of age, and with
nothing to do, and meeting with some
young bright minds two or three times a
week would be a help and pleasure to him.
At his request I was present at some of his
lessons. At the first he asked where he
should begin, and I said I supposed with the
Alphabet and the Grammar. But he said,
"No, begin with something from the Bible.' '
We took the 23rd Psalm. Opening the
books for the young men, I offered the book
to him, but he said that he did not need it.
And from memory he went through it, teach-
ing the Alphabet as he went, — giving every
letter and every vowel point. Then he did
it again, and gave a beautiful (Jewish) ex-
position.

At the next lesson, again he asked me to

176 BEMINISCENCES

name the passage, and I suggested the 9th
Chapter of Genesis, and offered him the
book. But he said he did not need it ; and
as accurately as before, he repeated twenty
verses, word by wTord, and letter by letter.

At the third lesson, I named one of the
very dry chapters in the Book of Chronicles ;
and again he declined to take a book. When
that lesson was ended, I asked, — "Babbi,
how much of that Old Testament do you
know in this way?" Pointing to his head,
he said, "Prom the first verse of Genesis, to
the last of Malachi, it is all there." And as
I said it was almost incredible, he told me to
try him; to open the book anywhere, and
read two or three verses. I opened at ran-
dom, somewhere in the Book of Kings, and
when I stopped reading, he took it up and
went on without a mistake. The trial was
made four times and he never faltered. He
said, "It is not so wonderful ; I am more than
80 years old, — and that Book has been the
Book and the wTork of all my life." When
all his teaching was ended, I offered him
$200, but he absolutely refused to take it;
and all I could do was to get from England

EEMINISCENCBS 177

three or four rare volumes which he prized.

The money for the expenses of my Theo-
logical Class came in one of the remarkable
ways which I must call Providential. The
widow of a clergyman of "Washington had
asked my help in selling her husband's li-
brary. It was a large and a very valuable
one ; but she wanted to keep it together, and
not break it up by sale at auction. She
would gladly let it go for $500. I told her
that King Hall, our school for training col-
ored men for the Ministry, had no library,
and it would be very useful there; and I
thought that for that use I might raise the
money.

Now among my own former parishioners
in the Church of the Epiphany, there was a
lady, a very earnest Christian, very rich and
very generous. And she had told me to call
on her for help when there was anything im-
portant. This, however, was the first, and
only occasion of my doing so. I wrote to
her, stating the case, and my hope that she
might be able and willing to make the gift.
But the very next day there appeared in my
study three clergymen, warm friends of the

178 KEMINISCENCES

Theological Seminary near Alexandria, who
protested that I was interfering with their
efforts ; that the son of the deceased clergy-
man had offered the library to them for
$500, and they had raised half that amount,
and they learned that I was now trying to
get the books. I explained my position and
my action, said I would not interfere with
them, that I preferred that the library should
go to Virginia, especially as its theological
tone was such as Virginia much needed. I
added my own subscription to their list, and
telegraphed my friend in Washington, that I
withdrew my request and would write in ex-
planation.

The next day came a letter from that
friend, enclosing a check for $500, and say-
ing she was just signing it wrhen my message
arrived, and she would not take it back. I
must keep it, if not for the use I had named,
then for my own work in theological educa-
tion, or for anything else I thought impor-
tant; and, if she lived, she would repeat it
on the first day of September for five years.
After the five years, she passed me in her
carriage as I was walking, and asked me to

EEMINISCENCES 179

ride with her. I thanked her for what she
had done in those five years, and told her
how many men it had helped into the Min-
istry.

"Yes," she said, "the five years are ended,
but my life still lasts, and my prosperity,
and so long as God continues them, you shall
have that money every year." She lived
some four years longer. And her generous
help it was, that enabled me to keep up the
Maryland Class in Theology.

AT THE LAMBETH CONFERENCES

CHAPTER XIII

AT THE LAMBETH CONFEEENCES

As Bishop of Maryland, I attended two
sessions of the Lambeth Conference, held at
the Palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury ;
all the Bishops of the Anglican Communion,
English, Colonial, Missionary, Scotch, Irish,
American, having right to attend. The first
time was in the year 1888, — Archbishop Ben-
son, presiding. The session lasted almost
through the whole month of July, and
brought me into very near and pleasant re-
lations with many of the English Bishops.
There were some incidents worth recording.
At the session of 1888, I was one of the two
who had been appointed sometime before to
make one of the opening speeches in the full
meeting, on the subject of Divorce. The
hour had been named to me as on the morn-
ing of July 2nd. But when the time came,
there were some serious matters occupying

184 KEMINISCENCES

attention, and the Archbishop asked me to
wait till afternoon. The appointed after-
noon hour came, and my address was again
postponed. On the third day of the month,
again I was told to wait until the next day.
On that day, at about 3 p. m. the Archbishop
called for my address. I went forward, not
to make it, but to offer a protest. I said that
if my address was worth making, it was
worth hearing, and at that very late hour,
after the usual time of adjournment, I saw
that there were not more than one-third of
the English Bishops present, and of the
American Bishops only two. I asked, there-
fore, that I might be permitted to make my
address on the morning of the next day, July
5th, to a fuller house.

The Archbishop and his Assessors (the
other Archbishops and Metropolitans) put
their heads together, and the Archbishop
said he could not grant my request, I must
speak then. I was about to decline to speak
at all, when Bishop Seymour of Springfield
arose, and walking forward in his usual bold
manner, said, "Your Grace, the Bishop of
Maryland has said there are only two Amer-

KEMINISCENCES 185

ican Bishops present. In another minute,
there will be only one, that is himself. You,
sir, as an Englishman, have perhaps forgot-
ten what we as Americans love to remember,
that this fourth day of July is the birthday
of our national freedom and independence ;
and we count it our duty to go to-day and
pay our respects to the United States Min-
ister who represents our Nation in this coun-
try. Good day, Sir."

And out he went. It was somewhat as if
a thunderbolt had fallen. The Archbishop
started, recovered himself, smiled, and said,
6 ' I cannot resist that appeal. The Bishop of
Maryland may speak to-morrow morning."

An occasional sparkle of wit sometimes
enlivened an otherwise dull morning. The
Bishop of Haiti sent word that he could not
be present because a great fire had swept his
city, destroyed nearly all the churches and
the church property, including his own
house, all his manuscripts and his library.
In the sympathy which was at once ex-
pressed, one of the English Bishops pro-
posed that as a beginning of a new library,
each bishop should give a book; and he

186 REMINISCENCES

would see that all such gifts should reach the
Bishop of Haiti, without any expense to him.

Another Bishop opposed it, saying he
knew what the Bishop 's new library would
be; five or six copies of Home's " Introduc-
tion,' ' as many of " Pearson on the Creed,"
and of "Paley's Evidences" and the like;
books of which the giver would gladly get
rid. "No," he said, "instead of a book, let
each send him a pound. ' '

"I agree," said the original proposer.
"It is only the change of a letter. Instead
of Da librum, it is Da libram. ' '

At one of the Lambeth Conferences, my
wife had accompanied me to London, under
peculiar circumstances. Her brother had
been killed, a little while before, in an
elevator accident. She was in deep sorrow,
much broken, and the physicians insisted, as
the best hope that she should take the voyage
with me. But she consented only on the con-
dition that she should not make any social
visits or the like, and that to insure it, I
would avoid all such for myself.

As the Conference was about ending, the
last week in July, the Bishop of Lincoln,

REMINISCENCES 187

Bishop King, made a special request. He
and I, having been nearest in Consecration,
sat next to each other through the whole ses-
sion, and walked side by side in every pro-
cession. He said, most kindly, that he had
never been for so long a time in close com-
panionship with any English Bishop. We
had agreed in our views, in our speeches and
in our votes, and he was glad that he knew me
so well. "Now, come and make me a good
visit. I have just sold the old Bishop 's Pal-
ace which was inconveniently at some dis-
tance from the city; and I have built a new
one within the Cathedral grounds. The fur-
niture was moved in only a day or two before
my coming to London. I want you to be my
very first guest." Gratifying as this invi-
tation was, my promise to my wife com-
pelled me to decline it, even when pressed by
more than one repetition.

(I may note here as necessary to the full
understanding of the following incident, that
I was one of the four or five American Bish-
ops at the Conference who refused to make
any change in their usual costume, and de-
clined even to put on the Bishop's apron.)

188 REMINISCENCES

On our way northward to York, where I
had promised to make an address, we were
compelled to rest at Lincoln for a day; but
I was determined to keep out of sight of the
Bishop. The White Hart Inn could not give
us rooms, but provided for us in one of the
best private dwellings. I went to the three
o 'clock service at the Cathedral, and as I was
going out through the nave, someone asked,
' 'Is not this the Bishop of Maryland?"
"Yes," I said, "but how did you know mef
"I am the Chancellor of this Cathedral, I
was in London all through July, and we no-
ticed that the same Bishop walked with our
Bishop in every procession. He told us it
was the Bishop of Maryland ; and he has been
telling his great disappointment because you
were not able to visit him. Come to his room
in the Cathedral and see him." But I ex-
cused myself and returned to the house.
About an hour later, the lady of the house
was called to speak to someone. It was the
Bishop of Lincoln seeking me. But she as-
sured him there wTas some mistake ; there was
no bishop there. He went back to the Inn,
and with their reassurance came again to

REMINISCENCES 189

the house asking for me. Again she de-
clared with great emphasis that there was no
bishop there.

"Is there anyone here from the White
Hart Inn?"

"Yes."

"A gentleman and two ladies?"

"Yes."

"It is a clergyman?"

"Perhaps so."

"I think it is the Bishop of Maryland."

"Oh, no, my Lord, I assure you it is a mis-
take."

"Well, it will do no harm ; please show him
my card. ' '

She came to me smiling, as if having a
good joke, and said, "The Lord Bishop of
Lincoln is downstairs, — and he thinks that
you are the Bishop of Maryland."

"And so I am," I answered.

And with clasped hands, and a look of en-
treaty, she said, "Oh, my Lord, pray forgive
me. You know there is nothing about you
that looks like a bishop !"

My wife, overhearing it, said, "Now I
hope you will wear an apron."

190 REMINISCENCES

"No," I answered, "I will not be a tailor-
made bishop. If it takes a tailor to make
me look like one, I will not look like one, as
long as I live. I came over American, I re-
main American, and I will go back Amer-
ican. ' 9

At another time I wanted to see the Ca-
thedral at Chester. Calling first at the
Bishop's house, I was told he was not at
home. I left a card, and went to the resi-
dence of the Dean. He also was out of the
city, and I went to the Cathedral. At the
entrance the verger met me, and in answer
to my request for admittance told me it wTas
impossible, — that no one could be admitted
that day. I said that I was from across the
ocean, and was a bishop, — and it would be
my only opportunity to see the Cathedral.
He expressed very politely his regret, but
said that his orders were absolute, that wTork
and repairs were going on within, which
anyone's presence would interrupt, that he
would risk losing his place if he violated his
orders. "Why our own Bishop could not
get in to-day. No one in England could.
The King could not."

EEMINISCENCES 191

So, yielding, I said I wanted the Bishop
and the Dean to know that I had been there.
I had left cards at their houses, but to make
sure, I would leave one with him, and asked
him to give it to them. The card had not
only my name, but my title also. As soon
as he read it, he said, "Are you the Bishop
of Maryland? If so, come in. But you are
the only man in England who can come in
to-day. ' '

In answer to my question, "Why?" he
said, "I will show you." And stopping
four or five workmen on the way he led me
to the north transept of the Cathedral, and
pointing to a large bronze tomb, with the life
size image of a bishop, he said, "There is
the reason. We owe that to the Bishop of
Maryland, Bishop Whittingham. That is
the tomb of Bishop Pearson who wrote a
great book on the Creed. And Bishop
Whittingham was so great an admirer of
Bishop Pearson and his book, that he raised
in America the money for this tomb, and
came over here and found the grave where
the Bishop had been buried, and had the
body removed to this place. And the Bishop

192 EEMINISCENCES

of Maryland can always get into this Cathe-
dral."

Some three years after the Lambeth Cc i-
ference, I was again in London, and in o e
of the underground cars found myself s ;-
ting opposite and very close to Bishop Tem-
ple, then Bishop of London. Calling his
attention, I said, "You do not recognize me,
but I recognize you." "No," he said, —
"my eyesight has so failed that I do not
recognize my own brother." I was
about to name myself, when he said,
— "Don't tell me who you are, I think I
recognize your voice." After a little fur-
ther conversation, he said, — "I think you
are a bishop, and were at the last Lambeth
Conference. Did you make an address
there as appointed on one of the subjects?"
I answered "Yes." And after a while he
asked, "Was it the question of Divorce?"
And when again I said "Yes," he said,
"Well, the two speakers were the Bishop of
Bombay and the Bishop of Maryland. You
are not Bombay, you must be Maryland."
Presently we compared our two dioceses.
Measuring mine by miles 200x60, he said, —

REMINISCENCES 193

" What an enormous charge ! I have only a
part of the whole of London, the strictly
legal part."

"But, Bishop Temple, how many clergy
have you?"

"About 1,300."

"And I have only 220. Do you person-
ally know all yours?"

"Not a quarter of them."

"But I do know all mine, have been in all
their houses, and know their wives and chil-
dren."

I

SOME THINGS ACCOMPLISHED

!

CHAPTER XIV

SOME THINGS ACCOMPLISHED

One of the clergy recently asked what
things of special importance had been
accomplished during my Episcopate. I
turned the question back upon him ; and he
named, besides the division of the Diocese,
first, the bringing back the Diocese to the
Prayer Book ideal and rule of the early
confirmation of children ; second, the higher
standard for the studies and examinations
of candidates for Holy Orders; third, a
higher standard for the support of the
clergy, and especially for those who were
aged or disabled ; fourth, the opening of the
Silent Churches ; fifth, the Diocesan Libra-
ries; sixth, the work of the Bishop's Hun-
dred Helpers;11 seventh, the Washington

n "Hundred Helpers"; an organization of one hundred
women pledged to contribute $5.00 each to the Bishop when
notified of the death of a clergyman leaving a widow insuffi-
ciently provided for.

198 REMINISCENCES

Cathedral; eighth, the C ithedral in Balti-
more ; ninth, the disappe^ 4ance of old party
lines and bitter divisic is between high
Churchmen and low Churchmen.

I take them in the order thus named.

My first general idea of the Bishop's work
was that which St. Paul gave to Titus as
Bishop of Crete; "That thou shouldst set in
order the things that are wanting, and or-
dain elders in every city"; correcting and
inspiring the Church life where it needed
it, and providing pastoral care for all. And
I found, as one of the things needing cor-
rection, a general usage of delaying Con-
firmation until the sixteenth or seventeenth
year or later; so that instead of "Children
brought to the Bishop," they were almost or
quite adult persons. And the clergy
thought it a matter to be mentioned with
satisfaction that there was so large a pro-
portion of adults in the classes. In one of
my early rounds I preached, or made ad-
dresses on that subject in almost all the
churches; reminding them of the Prayer
Book command that "Children should be
brought so soon as they are able to learn the

KEMINISCENCES 199

Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Com-
mandments," and can answer the other ques-
tions in the Catechism. And soon I saw
the result in the large number of children
from twelve to fourteen years of age.

Out of my work in the Maryland Class of
Theology came my wish for a higher stand-
ard of preparation for the Ministry. I
found that in every seminary thorough fa-
miliarity with the English Bible was not
secured; and I made that the first requisite.
I requested of the Examining Chaplains that
without being needlessly severe, they should
be thorough, and not pass any who did not
fairly come up to the right standard. I
soon found that the candidates coming from
the seminaries complained that our exam-
inations were more severe than those to
which they were accustomed ; and that some
students, more anxious for getting through
than for being thoroughly furnished, tried
to evade our examinations by being trans-
ferred to other dioceses.

I hope and pray that the Maryland stand-
ards may not be lowered. I am sure that
even though improved, they are by no means

200 REMINISCENCES

so severe as those re uired in the schools of
medicine and of law. I look back upon the
results in those who during my twenty-five
years have been ordained in this Diocese,
with much satisfaction. While there were
two or three cases in which their work in the
Ministry disappointed me, all the others
proved themselves "Able ministers;" and
some of them rose to eminence.

At the beginning of my Episcopate the
salaries of the country clergy were very low
indeed, averaging only about six hundred
dollars. But kindly conference between the
Bishop and the vestries proved helpful,
though there were some troublesome things.
For instance, when from funds at my con-
trol I had added one hundred and fifty dol-
lars to the salary of one who was receiving
only five hundred dollars, the vestry seemed
to think that amount too large, and at once
cut off one hundred and fifty from the
amount they had been paying. Still, little
by little, the general standard was raised;
and now the Convention has by vote named
one thousand dollars as what should be the
minimum for a married priest.

REMINISCENCES 201

In 1885, the year of my consecration, the
largest sum paid in Maryland for the relief
of a clergyman aged or disabled, was three
hundred dollars, but the people of the
Church responded so readily to our state-
ments of the need that now we find ourselves
able to grant five hundred or six hundred
dollars.

The story of the Silent Churches is to me
a very pleasant one. I found, in my first
year, that there were fourteen churches in
the Diocese, in which for more than a year
there had been no resident pastor, and no
provision for worship or for Sunday School.
Preaching on the subject of Diocesan Mis-
sions, in one of the larger churches in Wash-
ington, I mentioned that fact; and then,
with a sudden impulse, looking up from my
manuscript, I said, "Do you know that with
the very little the people themselves could
do, and what our Committee of Missions
could give, an additional three hundred dol-
lars would keep one of those Silent Churches
open for a year? And when I know that
some of you spend more than that on the
wages of a single servant not really needed,

202 BEMINISCENCES

or for a single social entertainment, I won-
der whether there is not someone in this con-
gregation who covets the luxury of opening a
Silent Church/'

Three days after the rector of that
church brought me a letter written by a
lady who did not give her name, saying that
in her journey she reached Washington on
Saturday, and, obeying her conscience,
rested there on Sunday to pay her duty to
God in worship ; that she heard the Bishop 's
story of the Silent Churches, and she cov-
eted the luxury of keeping one of them
open. Three one hundred dollar bills were
enclosed.

The next Sunday the rector read that let-
ter to his congregation, and suggested that
someone might follow the example. There
were two responses of two hundred dollars
each. I told the story in several of our
stronger churches, with good result, and
asked for the formation of a Guild or Soci-
ety to help the Bishop in this or in any other
work for which he should have urgent need.
The Bishop's Guild, of women, was soon or-
ganized. Its contributions for the first

REMINISCENCES 203

year, about twelve hundred dollars, were
given to the Bishop's Theological fund.12
Since that time, by the Bishop's request, it
has given to the Silent Church fund, a yearly
sum of nearly always one thousand dollars.
The Maryland Branch of the Woman's
Auxiliary gives three hundred dollars a year
or more. And now all the churches which I
found closed have been made vocal again;
while the fund is still needed to keep them
and others from relapsing into silence.

I found at my coming a Bishop's library
of about nine thousand very valuable vol-
umes of doctrinal and historical theology;
the gift of Bishop Whittingham, to be (us-
ing his own words) "for the use of the
Bishop of Maryland and his successors for-
ever."

It was admirable for the use of the Bishop
and the more studious of the clergy, but not
for general use. It was open to visitors
from ten till four o'clock, but only as a li-
brary for reference, and not for circulation.
Thinking of the clergy in the rural
churches, their few books, and their distance

12 This was before the Diocese of Maryland was divided.

204 REMINISCENCES

from libraries, I began the formation of a
lending department whose books should be
lent to clergymen at their request, without
charge, we paying the charge of sending
them (but not of return) by express or mail.
This collection grew rapidly by gifts and
purchases until now our combined "Dio-
cesan Libraries'' number some thirty thou-
sand volumes, and are proving themselves
very useful.

As to Cathedrals, I have not been a
builder, but only a beginner, in two cases;
and in both I did not seek the work, but it
sought me and was, providentially, made my
duty. About the year 1891 the Rector of St.
John *s Church, Washington, brought me the
tidings of a gift offered for Cathedral uses
in that city. It was not from a person of
very great wealth, but from a woman, Miss
Mann, who, by her own work and saving,
had accumulated a little money. Invested
in real estate it grew. Being unmarried and
wishing to live plainly, she offered to give,
for the endowment of a Cathedral when it
should be built, property worth about $80,-
000 or more.

REMINISCENCES 205

The laymen of Washington took up the
idea, subscribed money and received, largely
by gift, a valuable site 13 for the Cathedral.
A special act of incorporation was secured,
and statutes were framed. Soon followed
a generous offer from Mrs. Hearst, of $175,-
000 for a building on the Cathedral grounds
to be known as the Cathedral School for
Girls.14

On the division of the Diocese, I passed
over the whole property to the Bishop of
the new Diocese. That Cathedral work
was the strongest influence for determining
my choice of the Diocese of Maryland in-
stead of that of Washington. I felt that I
did not have the special qualities for a Ca-
thedral builder. I knew that the task
would be very burdensome, and that I was
too old to undertake it, and must leave it for
younger shoulders.

In like manner the beginning of a Cathe-

is The site of the Washington Cathedral, known as the

Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, is now at Mount St. Alban.
The foundation stone was laid on the Feast of St. Michael
and All Angels, 1907.

14 The Hearst Cathedral School for Girls has since been

built, and has become one of the best known and most in-
fluential schools in the Country.

206 REMINISCENCES

dral in Baltimore was not by my suggestion.
Many years before I bad been asked whether
I wanted a Cathedral. I said that I did, if
I could have it after my own ideas. I did
not want the five millions proposed for New
York, and for Washington. I would be
content with one-third of that sum. I
should want it placed not in the rich or
aristocratic part of the city, for the enjoy-
ment of the wealthy, but among the poor.
It should be truly a bishop's church, under
his control. One-half of the money should
be used for buildings, and one-half as an
endowment for the support of the work.
The seats must be always free ; no pew rents
or pledges, but voluntary offerings at every
service, which should be used for missions
and for charity. The ushers should be in-
structed to give the best seats to the plainer
people, and to put those in gay clothing fur-
ther off. This idea of a Cathedral did not
meet the popular wish.

But when, through the wise foresight of
the Reverend E. B. Niver, an excellent site
was selected, and he proposed the matter to
me, I approved it, and requested him to act.

REMINISCENCES 207

By his energy, and that of others, not mine,
the interest of many laymen was secured,
money was contributed, and the work begun.
And again, being in my 84th year, I am too
old to be the leader in the work, and I leave
it to one who as younger and more hopeful
can look forward to some fruition of our
plans.15

In the spring of 1909, being then in my
83rd year, I saw that I could not longer do
effectively all the work which the Diocese
needed ; that the interests of the Church, and
my own health called for some change; I
asked for the election of a Bishop Coad-
jutor. It was readily granted, and the con-
secration accomplished in the fall of the
same year.16

And the way in which my dear Brother,
Bishop Murray, has entered on his work has
most effectively relieved me from all anx-
ieties, and from the heavier duties. It is
my purpose to leave to him almost the entire
control, reserving to myself only some points

is Bishop Murray.

is September 29th, 1909, at the Church of St. Michael and
All Angels, Baltimore.

208 REMINISCENCES

of ultimate decision, and such parts of the
work as I find myself able to undertake.

I am devoutly thankful for a long life
which has been a happy one, and, I hope, in
some measure a useful one. I see, as I look
back, many short-comings and mistakes on
my part. And in practically laying down
my task, it is a happiness to me that I can
leave to my successor a Diocese which,
though before my election had been torn by
bitter party dissensions, now for twenty-five
years has been free from them. And this is
not as a result of my wisdom and work, but
entirely through God's wise ordering and
love.

. A few weeks after the Consecration of the
Bishop Coadjutor, I carried out my wish to
leave him for a year in control as the Eccle-
siastical Authority, so enabling him fully to
understand and take up his work. And on
the 21st of October, 1909, with the approval
of the Standing Committee of the Diocese, I
sailed for a year's absence in Europe, and I
write these closing words in the City of
Naples on the 13th day of March, A. D.,
1910.17

REMINISCENCES 209

17 After leaving Naples, Bishop Paret and his family spent
several months in travel in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and
a short time in England, returning to Baltimore the latter
part of September, 1910. Mrs. Paret, who had been in failing
health for some time, became much worse soon after her re-
turn, and after a long illness died at the Johns Hopkins Hos-
pital in Baltimore, January 15th, 1911. The Bishop survived
her only two days. Shortly before her death he was taken
with pneumonia, and passed peacefully away on the 18th of
January, 1911.

THE END

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