Lighter Moments from the Notebook of Bishop Walsham How Part 4

St. Paul went to Damascus to preach to the Gentiles. Asia means the place where they ended when they started from Antiock to Asia.

It happened at Lystra that the two seas met and the soldiers cut the ropes.

The Vicar of King Cross, Halifax, asked a cla.s.s of boys what was the difference between a priest and a deacon, and one boy said the deacon only wore that thing over one shoulder. The Vicar asked why he did so, and after some hesitation another boy answered, "Because he hasn't put both shoulders to the wheel."

At Almondbury in 1897 a cla.s.s of boys were asked the meaning of an Archangel, and one boy suggested "One of the angels that came out of the Ark."

The Rev. T. F. Dale, when in India teaching in his school, asked the boys what is the meaning of faith. A European boy answered, "When you believe something you are quite sure isn't true."

A lady was explaining to a cla.s.s the pa.s.sage "Not with eye-service as men-pleasers," and asked the children if they knew what eye-service meant. One girl suggested, "service in 'igh families."

Mr. B---- of Stamford, in a Teachers' Meeting, urged his Sunday School teachers not to take it for granted that their scholars knew the meaning of words, and ill.u.s.trated his caution by the word "Epiphany," telling them that they should always explain that it meant "manifestation."

Shortly afterwards the diocesan inspector was examining the day school and accidentally asked what "Epiphany" meant. One little girl said, "A railway porter, sir." The inspector asking what made her think that. She said her teacher had told her it meant the "man at the station."

A lady being anxious to teach a new little kitchen-maid something of the Bible, rightly thought she must find out what she knew. So she asked her if she knew about our Lord, and she said "No." So she thought she must begin at the very beginning, and told the girl she would read to her about G.o.d making the world. The girl sat perfectly stolid and unintelligent till they came to the serpent tempting Eve, when she suddenly exclaimed, "I remember summat about that snike." This was her _summa theologiae_.

A child in a school was asked what he knew about Solomon, and said, "He was very fond of animals." Being asked what made him think so, he said, "Because he had three hundred porcupines."

Here is a very up-to-date little story: did it happen in Leicester?

Teacher: "Why did they hide Moses in the bulrushes?"

Answer: "Because they didn't want him to be vaccinated."

My cousin, Mr. G. F. King, teaching a cla.s.s of little London boys one Sunday, was questioning them about the parable of the Good Samaritan, and asked them what it was that the man "fell among." He tried to get them to remember by saying that it was a dangerous road to travel along, when one little boy held up his hand. My cousin said, "Well, what did he fall among?" and the little boy replied, "Buses."

An anachronism:

The Duke of York lately visited Leeds, and there were large crowds in the streets. Shortly afterwards one of the clergy was questioning some little children about the birth of our Lord, and asked, "How came there to be so many people at Bethlehem at that time?" One of the children replied, "Please, sir, the Duke of York was there."

At Denbigh a girl at Howell's school was reading St. Matt. v. 41 to the rector of Henllan, and gave it thus: "And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him by train."

Mr. Castley, curate of Marsden, questioning the children in the school as to the history of St. Stephen, asked what it was of which he was accused before the Council. A boy replied, "Looking after the widows."

When the diocesan inspector was examining the Cathedral Schools, Wakefield, in 1895, he asked the children what Moses said when G.o.d told him to go and speak to Pharaoh. One child answered, "Our Aaron would do it better."

The next story was an experience of the Bishop's own when he was rector of Whittington:

I once set a cla.s.s of girls in our school to write the life of Solomon.

When I looked over the exercises I found one girl began, "Solomon slept with his fathers," and went on after that with his history. On questioning her I found she thought it meant that Solomon when a child slept in his father's bed.

Another girl at the same time brought me a new and wonderful judgment of Solomon in the following words: "The Queen of Sheba was as wise a woman as Solomon was a man. She brought a hundred children, fifty boys and fifty girls, to Solomon, all dressed the same, to see if he could tell which was which. So Solomon commanded water to be brought and bade them wash; whereupon the girls washed up to their elbows, but the boys only washed up to their wrists. So Solomon knew which was boys and which was girls."

The headmaster of the Wakefield Grammar School in an examination-paper on general knowledge asked, "Who was John Wesley?" One boy answered as follows: "John Wesley invented Methodist chapels, and afterwards became Duke of Wellington."

My daughter was teaching a cla.s.s of boys at Upper Clapton just before the boat race, when she saw one of the boys tear a page out of his Bible, crumple it up, and throw it away. She said, "What are you doing?"

to which the boy replied quite demurely, "I'm for Oxford, and this Bible was printed at Cambridge, and I'm not going to use a Bible with Cambridge in it."

The Vicar of St. Augustine's, South Hackney, turned a boy out of his cla.s.s one Sunday for misbehaviour. Next Sunday the boy appeared again in his cla.s.s, when the vicar said, "Wasn't it you I put out last Sunday?"

The boy at once replied, "No, sir, I think it was the gas."

A boy in an examination, being asked to give an account of the Sadducees and Publicans, wrote, "The Sadducees did not believe in spirits, but the Publicans _did_."

Here follows another story which, in common with the last two or three, was noted by the Bishop during the time of his suffragan-episcopate for East London.

The diocesan inspector was examining a very young cla.s.s in the St. Mary Axe Ward School, and asked, "What became of Adam and Eve when they were turned out of the Garden of Eden?" To which a little girl answered, "They went to the workhouse, sir."

In a school examination the question was set, "Explain the meaning of a Bishop, Priest, and Deacon." One boy answered, "I never saw a Bishop, so I don't know. A Priest is a man in the Old Testament. A Deacon is a thing you pile up on the top of a hill, and set fire to it."

A boy, being asked for the derivation of Pontifex, said, "It is derived from _pons_ a bridge, and means the Chief Priest, just as we say _Arch_bishop."

Some children in an Irish school were asked the meaning of "He that exalteth himself shall be abased," when one of them replied, "Turned into horses or cows."

A Confirmation having been held in a Yorks.h.i.+re village, some children were seen very busy in the road making a church with mud. A pa.s.ser-by asked them where the bishop was, and they said they hadn't got mook enough to mak' a beeshop.

A boy in Christ Church, Albany Street, School when asked, "What are the Ember weeks?" answered, "The weeks when we pray for the young gentlemen who are afraid of not pa.s.sing their examination."

Prizes have for several years been offered for the best essays by children on subjects set the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In 1893, in answer to the question, "What pa.s.sages in Holy Scripture bear upon cruelty to animals?" one boy said, "Cruel people often cut dogs' tails and ears, but the Bible says, 'Those whom G.o.d hath joined together, let no man put asunder.'" Another boy, in reply to the question, "Why should you be kind to animals?" said, "If you are very kind to a dog he will follow you to the grave at your funeral."

The next two stories are not of exactly the same nature, but so closely relate to the subject of children and schools that they may be fittingly inserted here.

I met an officer once who was relating his experiences of Sunday School teaching. He said he met an old schoolfellow one day who was a clergyman, and who persuaded him to spend a Sunday with him. In the morning his friend told him that he must come and take a cla.s.s of boys in the Sunday School. This he protested he could not, and would not, do, but was finally over-persuaded, his friend lending him a commentary, and telling him he had only to keep the cla.s.s quiet, as he would his own men, hear them read a chapter, and ask them a few questions which he would find in the notes of the commentary. "All went well," he said, "till we had read the chapter through, when I tried to find the questions. I managed to ask one or two, which I found they answered in a moment, so in my despair I thought I would take them into the Old Testament, and now I was more lucky, for I asked them, 'Boys, who was Mephistopheles?' Well, would you believe it, there wasn't a boy of them that knew! And wasn't I glad! I didn't know anything about him myself, you know, except that he was one of the old patriarchs, but it got me out of this trouble, for, though the time wasn't half up, I closed the Bible with a bang and exclaimed, 'Boys! I can teach you no more. Go home and search the Scriptures!'"

A clergyman living at Rainbow Hill, Worcester, in visiting his parish, called on the mother of one of the girls in the Church School, who, being rather "superior," told him she thought a parish school was not quite suited to Florrie, and, as she was rather delicate, she had decided to take her away and send her to a young ladies' cemetery.