Very Versatile Parsons.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVII, Issue IX, 31 August 1901, Page 405

Very Versatile Parsons.

The Rev. J. P. O’Brien is rector of St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church at St. John's, Newfoundland, and is probably the cleverest yacht designer living. He designed a boat called the Columbia, which has raced in Bermuda waters, and has beaten everything she was matched against. At present he is at work on a very much larger craft, the Regina.

But we need not go to the colonies to find clergymen who are as good with their hands as with their brains and voices. Take, for instance, the case of the Rev. G. M. MacDonald, vicar of St. John the Baptist's Church, at Spalding. The church had not been painted for many years and the wood work was getting into bad condition. Funds were scarce, so Mr MacDonald procuted paint, a ladder and a blouse, and set to work at the job himself. And a very good job he made of it.

Dressed in a suit of brown duck the Rev. George L. McNutt looks like a tine type of the Ameiican mechanic. That is, indeed, what at present he actually is. He has given up his pulpit

—that of a Presbyterian church in Indiar.opolis, Indiana, to become for a time a workman in the great Westinghouse air brake works. This he has done in order to study social problems from a standpoint which is impossible to a clergyman.

There are two churches in the old Quaker city of Philadelphia which owe their existence to their pastors. One is a Moravian Church in Kensington Avenue. The Rev. Elwood Kaub, its minister, tried for four years to collect sufficient money to build a new church, but his congregation was poor, and he realised that the work must be done by the hands, not the pockets, of the people. He set to work in spare time to learn all that lie could of carpentering and building. He drew up the plans himself and then broached the subject to his people. They joined heartily and then progressed rapidly during the long summer evenings. By good luck sand suitable for mortar was found in digging the foundations, and also clay usable for bricks. Although small, the chinch is a very handsome one. It is estimated that it cost less by £ '5O than the lowest contract price.

The other builder of his own church in Philadelphia is a negro preacher called Randolph. He and his congregation of two hundred and fifty built with their own hands the whole of his neat church from the

foundations to the steeple. It will hold a congregation of seven hundred, is equipped with a telephone, anil is altogether a model edifice. In the wild delirium of fever Father Lepore, a clever young Italian priest, stood and watched helplessly a great building teeming with sei earning people blaze and burn. When he returned to sanity the vision remained, and he set his capable brain to work to evolve a novel fire escape, which has already been endorsed by experts as almost perfect. Many other useful inventions have been patented by this clever cleric, such as a needle cleverly designed for people with weak sight, and a hospital cot with appliances for painlessly lifting a patient. But Father Lepore’s great invention is t» life-saving suit. Its special feature is the visor. which when closed enables the wearer

to bid defiance to the roughest sea. and yet to breathe in perfect comfort. The suit is provided with food pockets anil with u lamp to signal at night. There is, too, an ingenious arrangement for altering the centre of gravity so that the wearer may float in comfort at any angle he may desire. An Italian priest. Don Giovanni Grannino. of Ivrea, in Piedmont, evidently believes that the only way to stop war is to make fighting so deadly that the nations will be forced in selfdefence to abandon it. He has patented a range finder, which is the smallest, neatest, most compact thing of the kind ever invented. It is specially adapted for infantry, and will make rifle fire accurate up to 3000 yards. More curious even than an inventor of deadly weapons is the new calling of the Rev. Samuel F. Peat son. of Portland, Maine, who is compelled by his

recent election as Sheriff of Cumberland County. Maine, to carry weapons. Mr Pearson is a strong prohibitionist. Maine was the first State in the I nion to pass laws restricting the sale of liquor, but those laws have failed so dismally in their purpose that the desperate step of electing a clergyman to lie sheriff has been resorted to.