An Old-time Parson.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXX, Issue V, 31 January 1903, Page 329

An Old-time Parson.

Viscount Halifax, recalling scenes of his youth, gives an interesting picture in the Christmas number of "The Treasury” of the typical country curate of fifty years ago, whom the modern vicar has succeeded. He was

a keen sportsman and entered actively into the pastimes of his flock, whom, by the way, he rated soundly if they did not turn up at church service. A local preacher he detested as he did a poacher or Dissenter. He kept by him memorials of deceased murderers, and imparted into that petition in the Litany to be delivered from sudden death a kind of protest and expostulation. Other evils might be deprecated, but “sudden death!”—■ that was a little too much and a matter that really ought hardly to be mentioned. The curate put on his surplice at the altar in full view of the congregation. Cassocks were unknown, but he made up for this by wearing black gloves in the pulpit.