e first General
Secretary of the organisation.

I was at the same time secretary of the Liverpool Catholic Club, and in
that capacity I assisted in entertaining the Canadian Papal Zouaves when
passing through Liverpool on their way home, after their gallant but
unsuccessful struggle to uphold the power of the Pope against the
revolutionaries.

In the same way it became my duty as secretary of the club to organise
the Catholic vote in Liverpool on the occasion of the first School Board
Election. The Irish and those of Irish extraction in Liverpool being
reckoned as about one-third of the population, the Catholic body is
correspondingly numerous. We surprised both friend and foe in the
results. There were fifteen members to be elected, and we asked our
people to give three votes for each of our five candidates. They were
not only elected, but the votes actually given for them--on the
cumulative principle--could have elected eight out of the fifteen
members of the Board.

Father Nugent, though immensely popular with all classes, was not, I
think, a _persona grata_, any more than myself, with Canon Fisher, the
Vicar-General of the diocese, who was very anti-Irish, and, so far as he
could, prevented anyone connected with the "Catholic Times" coming into
personal contact with Bishop Goss, who was a typical Englishman of the
best kind. The bishop had a blunt, hitting-out-from-the-shoulder style
of speaking in his sermons that compelled attention. But you could
hardly call them sermons at all; they were rather powerful discourses
upon social topics, which, from a newspaper point of view, made splendid
"copy." Accordingly, during the year before his death, I followed him
all over the diocese to get his sermon for each week's paper. There is
no doubt that Dr. Goss's sermons helped materially to put a backbone
into the "Catholic Times" and greatly to increase its circulation.

In one of the rural districts the bishop was giving an illustration of
the meaning of "Tradition," and, very much to my embarrassment, I found
him taking me for his text. He said--"So far as I know, there were no
newspapers in Our Lord's days; there was nobody taking down _His_
sermons, as there is to-day taking mine; so that _His_ teaching had to
be by word of mouth, and much of it has come down to us as Tradition."

In the interest of the paper, Father Nugent was anxious that I should be
introduced to the Bishop. But he knew, as well as I did, that th