ites, in The Way of All Flesh, "distributed tracts,
dropping them at night in good men's letter boxes while they slept,
their tracts got burnt or met with even worse contumely." Ernest
Pontifex went so far as to parody one of these tracts and to get a
copy of the parody "dropped into each of the Simeonites' boxes."
Ernest did this in the novel because Butler had done it in real
life. Mr. A. T. Bartholomew, of the University Library, has found,
among the Cambridge papers of the late J. Willis Clark's collection,
three printed pieces belonging to the year 1855 bearing on the
subject. He speaks of them in an article headed "Samuel Butler and
the Simeonites," and signed A. T. B. in the Cambridge Magazine, 1st
March, 1913; the first is "a genuine Simeonite tract; the other two
are parodies. All three are anonymous. At the top of the second
parody is written 'By S. Butler, March 31.'" The article gives
extracts from the genuine tract and the whole of Butler's parody.

Besides parodying Simeonite tracts, Butler wrote various other
papers during his undergraduate days, some of which, preserved by
one of his contemporaries, who remained a lifelong friend, the Rev.
Canon Joseph M'Cormick, now Rector of St. James's, Piccadilly, are
reproduced in The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912).

He also steered the Lady Margaret first boat, and Canon M'Cormick
told me of a mishap that occurred on the last night of the races in
1857. Lady Margaret had been head of the river since 1854, Canon
M'Cormick was rowing 5, Philip Pennant Pearson (afterwards P.
Pennant) was 7, Canon Kynaston, of Durham (whose name formerly was
Snow), was stroke, and Butler was cox. When the cox let go of the
bung at starting, the rope caught in his rudder lines, and Lady
Margaret was nearly bumped by Second Trinity. They escaped,
however, and their pursuers were so much exhausted by their efforts
to catch them that they were themselves bumped by First Trinity at
the next corner. Butler wrote home about it:

11 March, 1857. Dear Mamma: My foreboding about steering was on
the last day nearly verified by an accident which was more
deplorable than culpable the effects of which would have been
ruinous had not the presence of mind of No. 7 in the boat rescued
us from the very jaws of defeat. The scene is one which never
can fade from my remembrance and will be connected always with
the gentlemanly conduct of the crew in neither using opprobrious
language n