velopment of progressive and pragmatic methods and its consequent criticism of antiquated and ineffective features of seminary training, some of those of Berkeley then might not all pass muster, still I believe it can be said with verification that taken all in all, it did justify a "gumption" of usefulness in the ministry which a quaint Ordination Preacher once implied to those about to be admitted to the Diaconate from Berkeley. "Young gentlemen, St. Paul tells us that it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe! But that does not mean preaching of foolishness." At any rate any graduate who remembers that final examination covering all the work of the three years course and with no previous installments of examinations has reason to recall those preliminary hours of “quiz,” the nervous strain of Examination Week, and reflect that if he were not up to the mark he ought to have been. Even that harried classmate who in that final fidget, when asked how he would answer a certain objection of the unbeliever, solemnly put himself on record when meaning to say, “I would answer it, Sir, on the general principle of Butler,” did say, "on the principle of General Butler." Eheu, an analogy of the General Benjamin F. instead of the Bishop! CHAPTER III CONNECTICUT HOME-CIRCLE DAYS WITH T HE CONVENTION of Connecticut having, in 1871, 'made provisions for a Bishop's Private Secretary, Bishop Williams gave me the honor of appointment to that position in the second year of my Divinity School course and not long afterward made me a member of his household, thus deepening a a privilege, and I venture to call it, an intimacy, begun in my college days. That household then consisted of the Bishop's mother, Mrs. Emily Trowbridge Williams, queenly and stately, his housekeeper, Miss Eliza Tibbs, and himself. And if there had been no other experience of the Bishop's personality than that of his devotion to his mother and later, in her long and trying illness, to his housekeeper of many years, that would have left me its indelible impression of his great heart. It was my privilege to see much of his mother and to spend many evenings in her room during the Bishop's absences. I chanced to be riding with her in the carriage when she was stricken with the attack which in a few days led to her death. And in that opportunity to know something of her strength of character and of what she was to her filial son and what he was to her, it was all the more of a marvel to note the calmness and self-command with which the Bishop went almost directly from her death bed to the Ordination service for the class just graduated from the Berkeley Divinity School, in the morning hours of Wednesday, May 29, 1872. In that historic Jarvis House with its earlier traditions of a popular tavern-some of its floors were said to have been laid with especial facilities for dancing parties of old time-with the many evidences of adornment in its transformation for the home of the scholarly Rev. Dr. Samuel Farmar Jarvis, son of the second Bishop of Connecticut, its mahogany doors, its Etruscan and Doric ornamentation, its spacious rooms, and its general appearance of dignified age, the Bishop's house shared the occupancy with the Divinity School, including at first, chapel and library, as well as dormitory. Up to the time of his mother's death she occupied the large bedroom on the first floor in the rear of the drawing room suite. The Bishop then had his library with sleeping room adjoining on the second floor in the northeast corner of the building. Soon after he took the room, previously his mother's, and moved his library down to that well known corner room off the main hall. The opportunity of his week's absence on a visitation was taken, the co-operation of the student body was enlisted, the preservation of the arrangement of the books was carefully planned and the "Coit Library," then crowded into the lower room to be metamorphosed for a study, was moved upstairs, and the Bishop's books were moved downstairs. So that when he returned he found the new library room made welcome to him in its freshened paint, papering and shelving with his books and his desks and other appointments in place. In the bereavement which had come to him in the loss of his mother, the material changes of environment seemed to him to mark the break while they braced his loneliness. But how many crowding memories come out of associations with him in that favored spot! Of his lectures there to his classes, of his dictations to my secretarial pen-they were not the days of typewriting-of late evening readings under his rare guidance; of good company when admitted to the privilege of his entertainment of distinguished visitors; of his good stories and visitation and travel experiences, stocking one up for a lifetime; of his astute and informing insight into, and comment upon current affairs of Church and State, as leaders looked to him for learning and guidance and of the thousand subtle contributions to edification and enjoyment which made those hours to the young secretary veritable noctes ambrosianae. It is no exaggeration to say that in the con |