bhorred anything beyond the most severe
simplicity in the services of the Church, and had a large contempt for
the badges and symbols of ritualism.

On the festival of St. John the Baptist, in 1903, Bishop Potter and Dr.
Lord were the chief figures at a service held in Christ Church to which
the Masonic lodges of Cooperstown and vicinity were invited. Both the
Bishop and Dr. Lord were thirty-third degree Masons. Dr. Lord, because
of the infirmities of age, at that period seldom officiated in church,
but for this occasion was to have a place of honor in the chancel, and
to pronounce the benediction. Bishop Potter was to deliver the sermon.

Dr. Lord came early to the sacristy of the church, and, having vested in
his long flowing surplice and black stole, seated himself to await
service time. In conversation with the rector, Dr. Lord recalled the
days when more of the clergy were simple in their apparel, and he
deplored the tendency to adopt brilliant vestments, colored stoles, and
academic hoods. A hood, said Dr. Lord, echoing the sentiments of a witty
English prelate, was often a falsehood. Any man could wear a red bag
dangling down his back, but nothing except sound scholarship could
really make a Doctor of Divinity. For his part, said Dr. Lord, he was
content to be a Doctor of Divinity, by virtue of scholastic learning,
without wearing a hood to proclaim it.

At this moment the Bishop appeared, having walked from Fernleigh to the
church fully arrayed in his vestments. He was a resplendent figure. In
addition to the episcopal robes of his office, he wore an Oxford cap,
and a hood of flaming crimson, which an expert in such matters would
have identified as belonging to Union College, or Yale, or Harvard, or
Oxford, or Cambridge, or St. Andrew's, all of which institutions of
learning had conferred the doctorate on Bishop Potter.

It still lacked a few moments of service time, and when the Bishop was
seated in the bright light of the sacristy, another feature of
decoration in his dress appeared. Depending from a chain about the neck
there glittered upon his breast what the Masons call a "jewel." To the
non-Masonic eye it was more than a jewel. It suggested rather a shooting
star, emitting a shower of scintillations from the facets of a hundred
jewels. When the coruscations of this Masonic emblem caught the eye of
Dr. Lord, he became uneasy, and began to finger an imaginary token of
rank upon his own breast. "I ought to