33^ EARLY REMINISCENCES starts on his work with hope that springs ever in the human breast, and meets with few results. With such he has to remain content, for they are solid and not ephemeral. Another trial the candidate will have to encounter is the neutralization of his teaching among the children by home indifference and example. This applies to the young of the slums in a town, of the cottages in the country, to those of the mansions, and of " Society." They are all on a level. The mothers of the former have no objection to their children attending a place of worship, but do not trouble to go themselves. The mother in " Society " fills her house with guests, plays bridge, or motors about the country, whilst the children are perhaps taken by the governess to church. The mothers in the slums and lanes gossip at their doors with their neighbours, and scratch their heads. So soon as the children come home, parental example undoes all the teaching received in the Sunday School and the Church. Of course there are exceptions in all cases. I did not look out for a curacy, but remained a master at Hurstpierpoint. We had lost our chaplain, moved to Lancing College, and I was particularly desirous to have a friend, the Rev. J. T. Fowler, eventually Honorary Canon of Durham, as a suitable successor. He was, however, engaged to go to the Rev. John Sharp, Vicar of Horbury, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to start a mission in an outlying part of the parish. Accordingly I volunteered to go in his room, if Sharp would give me a nomination, and accept a deacon, waiving his claim on Fowler. Sharp raised no objection, so I wrote to the Bishop of Ripon, Robert Bickersteth, enclosing my nomination, and was ordered to come up to town on an appointed day at a quarter to ten o'clock in the morning. Accordingly, I took an early train, and called on the Bishop at the hour appointed, when he had just finished his breakfast; and he came in to see me, wiping some yellow egg from his lips, and a drop off his black-silk apron, on which it had been spilled. To eat an egg cleanlily is a difficult operation. He received me stiffly, being more interested in getting the drop of egg off his apron than in inquiring into my qualifications. I told him frankly that I was no Greek scholar ; his mouth
