VERSITY RUGBY UNION FOOTBALL TEAM
W.T. Grenfell at left of bottom row]

We were Church of England people, and I always attended service with
my mother at an Episcopal church of the evangelical type. At her
suggestion I asked the minister if I could in any way help. He offered
me a class of small boys in his Sunday School, which I accepted with
much hesitation. The boys, derived from houses in the neighbourhood,
were as smart as any I have known. With every faculty sharpened by the
competition of the street, they so tried my patience with their pranks
that I often wondered what strange attraction induced them to come at
all. The school and church were the property of a society known by the
uninviting title of the "Episcopal Society for the promotion of
Christianity among the Jews." It owned a large court, shut off from
the road by high gates, around which stood about a dozen houses--with
the church facing the gates at one end of a pretty avenue of trees. It
was an oasis in the desert of that dismal region. It possessed also an
industrial institution for helping its converts to make a living, when
driven out of their own homes; and its main work was carried on for
the most part by superannuated missionaries. One was from Bagdad, I
remember, and one from Palestine, both themselves Jews by extraction.
These missionaries were paid such miserable salaries that in their old
age they were always left very poor.

One instance of a baptism I have never forgotten. I was then living in
the court, having hired a nice separate house under the trees after my
father had died and my mother had moved to Hampstead. In such a
district the house was a Godsend. One Sunday I was strolling in the
court when the clergyman came rushing out of the church and called to
me in great excitement, "The church is full of Jews. They are going to
carry off Abraham. Can't you go in and help while I fetch the police?"
My friend and I therefore rushed in as directed to a narrow alleyway
between high box pews which led into the vestry, into which "Abraham"
had been spirited. The door being shut and our backs put to it, it was
a very easy matter to hold back the crowd, who probably supposed at
first that we were leading the abduction party. There being only room
for two to come on at once, "those behind cried forward, and those in
front back," till after very little blood spilt, we heard the police
in the church, and the crowd at once took to flight. I reg