e grew more intimate we
had many a race and scramble and game together, when bookwork was over
for the day. He rode badly, but with courage, and the mishaps he
managed to suffer when riding the quietest and oldest of my father's
horses were food for fun with him as well as with me.

He told me that he was going to be a clergyman, and on Sunday
afternoons we commonly engaged in strong religious discussions. During
the fruit season it was also our custom on that day to visit the
kitchen-garden after luncheon, where we ate gooseberries, and settled
our theological differences. There is a little low, hot stone seat by
one of the cucumber frames on which I never can seat myself now
without recollections of the flavour of the little round, hairy, red
gooseberries, and of a lengthy dispute which I held there with Mr.
Clerke, and which began by my saying that I looked forward to meeting
Rubens "in a better world." I distinctly remember that I could bring
forward so little authority for my belief, and the tutor so little
against it, that we adjourned by common consent to the Rectory to take
Mr. Andrewes' opinion, and taste his strawberries.

I feel quite sure that Mr. Clerke, as well as myself, strongly felt
the Rector's influence. He often said in after-years how much he owed
to him for raising his aims and views about the sacred office which he
purposed to fill. He had looked forward to being a clergyman as to a
profession towards which his education and college career had tended,
and which, he hoped, would at last secure him a comfortable livelihood
through the interest of some of his patrons. But intercourse with the
Rector gave a higher tone to his ideas. He would have been a clergyman
of high character otherwise, but now he aimed at holiness; he would
never have been an idle one, but now his wish was to learn how much he
could do, and how well he could do that much for the people who should
be committed to his charge. He was by no means a reticent man, he
liked sympathy, and soon got into the habit of confiding in me for
want of a better friend. Thus as he began to take a most earnest
interest in parish work, and in schemes for the benefit of the people,
our Sunday conversations became less controversial, and we gossiped
about schools and school-treats, cricket-clubs, drunken fathers,
slattern mothers, and spoiled children, and how the evening hymn
"went" after the sermon on Sunday, like district visitors at a parish
tea