284 EARLY REMINISCENCES talker ! He had a stock of anecdotes that were often repeated. Twenty years after I left Hurst he visited me at Lew, when, at table, out came the whole string of anecdotes that I so well remembered, and not one additional. Arthur Wagner invariably requested him to preach at S Paul's, Brighton, on the annual festival of the Conversion o_ S. Paul. This occurred for six years in succession, and Field complained that he was completely run out of themes for such an occasion ; and when a seventh demand came, he proteste and declined. A trying circumstance occurred one Sunday when he occupied the pulpit at S. Paul's. There was at that time a crazy lady in middle life whose mind had become unhinged through a disappointment in love. When Edmund Field appeared in the pulpit, she started up in her seat crying out: " That is he ! my betrayer, who has deserted me ! Come back to me, my precious, my darling ! " She had to be carried out by the two churchwardens, and Field had to get through with his sermon as best he could, interrupted only by suppressed titters, erupting at intervals from the more frivolous and least constrained in the congregation. Field was compelled to take a sedative that night. An under master named Nevins came to Hurst. He also was a talker. Field invited him to accompany him on a long afternoon wTalk. Off they started, but returned in less than half an hour. Field explained : " Really, I could not stand it any longer. Nevins talked and talked, and did not allow me to get in a word sideways. So I said I must return to my correspondence." Nevins confided to me : " Blessed if I was able to endure it any longer. The chaplain would talk a horse's hind-leg off. I could not slip in one word. So I complained of my corns, pretended to limp, and so got home." One of the dearest and most saintly of men I ever knew was Richard Lewin Psnnell. He was a Devonshire man, the son of a small squire at Cheriton Bishop. He was very short-sighted. Eventually he felt that he had a call to go as a missionary to Zanzibar, with Bishop Tozer, also a Devonshire man. Of Pennell more in the sequel. There was a dear old fellow, I forget his name, who was
