A CLERGYMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 11, Issue 793, 27 July 1888, Page 2

A CLERGYMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL.

How well do I recollect Mr Kickards ! He used to wear a red dressing-gown (as if a cardinal himself) in his study, and always began shaking hands with a friend while ten yards off him. He had the character of being morally cour-* ageous (that was impressed by elders on my young mind), and didn't care a straw what he said in the way of personal rebuke to a man's face. One day ha met an old neighbouring parson in our market town. Said the parson, " Wet day. Wettest day I, ever knew, I think. By George 1 " " Why by George ?" replied Eickards. The other turned on his heal and never spoke to him again. The reproachful question was not polite, i and seemingly uncalled for. Nr RickI ards, however, was certainly original as well as brave. On another occasion I was passing his garden, and saw him capering about with a battledore in one hand and a long clay pipe in the other, at which he every now and then sucked hastily, drawing his cheeks in, and then disposing of the smoke, inartistically, and with gestures of d|state. "What was he about 1 His seivantWM trking " some honey from the bees ; and the parson, being curious to see the process, and at the same time apprehensive, had armed himself with one of his children's battledores and a pipe of tobacco, which he had read of in some classic or cyclopaedia i was deterrent to bees. It did not seem to be so on this occasion. " They came about viciously," and he was as one play inga sort of invisible tennis with imperceptible balls. Mr Richards was a theologian and keeuly sniffed the stir which the " Tracts for the Times" made, even in the still air of our country side. I was too young to apprehend the matter, but learning that, on conscientious grounds, he would no longer attend the Bible Society meetings which my father held (in the church), I recollect wouderiug what made a Jreligious man set himself (so the matter then showed itself to me) against the Scriptures. Those Bible meetings were holidays to children. We didn't take the slightest interest in their object, and felt the profoundest (concealed) contempt for those devout lictie boys who (in tracts) gave up having sugar with their tea in order that they might promote the good cause. Neverthless, we enjoyed the meeting hugely, without any display of irreverence am of hypocrisy. And we were cheerful givers of some coppers when the business was over, and men stood in the porch with willow-pattern soup-plates to waylay the retirng audience. The gatherings — I don't mean the money, but hearers, were popular. A row ot speakers stood in the front seats of the gallery which ran across the church, and talked thence to the audience, who sat the wrong way in the pews. That in itself gave a fresh, if n<H a revolutionary taste to the proceeding. Altogether the occasion was delightful. The speakers were mostly neighbouring parsons, who were always in the habit of reading their sermons, and could utter 10 words easily in public without a manuscript— rigidly prohibited on these occasions. Thus they floundered prodigiously — all but the •• deputation," a confident garrulous old gentleman, with no end of mild stories, which being, however, told in " church," created a sense of halfquestionable naughtiness, and opened cue door to daring young uuformulated coojectures about the liberty of ritual and purposes of consecration. Not at it occurred to me then that possibly fieer use might be made of our places of worship, and that sober, scientific, and literary lectures without an accompanying "service" need not necessarily be reckoued as profane or out of place in a building used by people who proteased a desire to be guided " into all truth. " But Mr Richards struck, and would have no more even of a Bible meeting in the church. Those (not altogether unwholesome) departures from ordinary procedure presently died out. The gallery was pulled down, the church was " restored," and the cheery old deput • ation has long since slept with his fathers. Ah, well 1 I suppose many people are satisfied by any access of seeming " propriety." But if it is possible to be |

too stiff — From " Some Clerical Reminiscences " in the Cornhill Magazine.