DR DALE OF BIRMINGHAM.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1403, 19 January 1899, Page 14

DR DALE OF BIRMINGHAM.

SOME BEMINISCENCES.

In the recently published biography of ' Dr Dale, the famous noncomformist , preacher, of Birmingha/h, there are many \ good anecdotes from which we select the j following: i A graphic description is given in a < letter to his parents of Dale's first Sunday at Carr's lane, where he went in 1849 ( An excellent old lady, Mrs Gover, one { of the founders ,of Spring-hill Collogc, j feared that the young preacher might be ( unduly puffed up by the kindly compli- ] ments of Mr James. " I had a message i from her on the Monday morning that ' she wanted to speak to me. I called, and ( for half an hour he aid nothing of excep- j tional importance, but as I rose to go, she said, ' Oh, my dear, I hear that Mr James \ said some kindly things about your ser- < mon in his address at the Lord's Supper. ] Well, you must not mind; it is only his * way.' * l ; Once, and once only, did a speech from 1 Dale empty a hall. "One evening in < 1858, soon after Donati's comet appeared, 1 he was speaking at the Town-hall, having ) come in late from another engagement. ■ For a week it had been dark and stormy; : but that night, after the meeting had as- ' sembled, a sudden change had left a m cloudless sky. When called on to speak he soon had his audience well in hand until, by way of illustration, he referred to the comet—' now blazing with matchless splendour m the heavens/ The audience rose at once, and nledfout in long lines; within a few minutes the hall was almost empty. The experience, he used to say taught him to watch, not only I * but whe * «* In 1872 Dale had an unfortunate accident. "In the middle of July, he had arranged to preach at Ventnor, and at the same time to take a few davs' holi--1 day in the island. On the Thursday beI fore his engagement, he made an excur--1 sion to Carisbrooke; and while walking ' alc !i n f iTI °1 e Caßtle walls ; he dipped and fell, breaking an arm anc* dislocating the elbow The nam and the shock kept him on the couch for several days Dr Halley took his plac© on the Sunday, and when he gave out as his text, 'He keepeth all his bones j not one of them is broken, the gravity of the congregaB tion gave way. The good old man was uneasily conscious that something was wrong; but the ripple of laughter 1 -did not enlighten hun, and it was not until he had left the jpulpit that he saw what —especially when he found that some present supposed the incongruity to have been intentional." • Dale first heard Mr Gladstone in 1863, ';>7 .. • i

" I very soon caught Mr Bright, and he took me—not into the ordinary gallery, no/ even into the Speaker's gallery, but to the bar of the House of Lords and other distinguished strangers Commonly sit. He sat down, and chatted with me for a few minutes, and was very pleasant though evidently sore about the present stagnation of political life. In the course of the evening I heard Gladstone, who spoke very much as I expected. He has infinite fluency, a very pleasant tenor voice, speaks with faultless accuracy, and is wonderfully fertile in his thoughts ; but I don*t feel that he could impress me as Bright sometimes does." Mr Chamberlain's famous tribute is well known, but it may be quoted once more :—" I have seen a statement that I go to Parliament as the representative of Mr Dale. Well, if that be so, there is no member of ho House of Commons who will have a better, wiser, or nobler constituency. But you will at least remember this: that if Mr Dale has any influence over the 50,000 electors of Birmingham, he owes it to his devotion to their highest interests, he owes it to his eloquent and outspoken advocacy of all that is good and great." Equally interesting is his letter to Mr Chamberlain, when the latter had returned from his campaign of 1885 :—" I congratulate you very heartily on your recent speeches in tho north: apart from the substance they have reached a level which I think you never touched before, and which I hope you will keep. It is a great thing for a man to make an advance of this kind when he has touched SQ. This criticism is rather presumptuous for a person like myself to offer to an ex-Cabinot Minister, but the delight one has in watching the growing strength of one's comrades remains when a comrade has become a chief and when one has lost the right to speak to him in this way." There is a later glimpse of Mr Chamberlain in 1892 :—" Joseph Chamberlain is, of course, still immensely interesting. Ibut I am not sure that he is quite as interesting as he was 20 years ago, and he is necessariy very much away from Birmingham. The time was when I used to have a smoke with him, and John Henry Chamberlain, and Timins, and tho rest, as often as twice or three times a week."