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CHAPTER VII

THE CALL TO CALIFORNIA

HE “FITTING INTO" the happy sphere of my third year at St. James' was giving me its "busy career" of quiet routine, when on January 21,

1890, a brother clergyman, Rev. Dr. Miel, called at the Rectory with the surprising announcement that through his son, the Rev. Charles L. Miel, a Presbyter of the Diocese of California, he had been asked to see me to learn if there would be any probability of my favorable consideration of the office of Assistant Bishop of that Diocese in the event of my election. I told him at once that while I felt that no one had the right to anticipate such a grave question until it came positively before him, that at the moment, so far as I knew my mind, it would strongly be that my duty was at St. James,' especially as I had so recently had searchingly to review that claim in connection with the election as Assistant Bishop of Ohio. And I asked him to express my sense of the honor and real humbling before it and strongly to urge them not to use my name. After having slept on it I met Dr. Miel later and requested him to write to California, that I distinctly wished to have my name withdrawn if presented to the approaching Special Convention of the Diocese. Later to Bishop Whitaker and others who had been asked to approach me I expressed myself in like decided terms.

While at breakfast on Thursday, February 6th, the following telegram came to me: "My father, Dr. Miel, writes you direct me not to let your name go before Convention for Assistant Bishop of California. You have been nominated, what shall I do? Answer quickly. (Signed) C. L. Miel." Feeling that there was in the three hours difference of time ample opportunity for my reply to reach the Convention before its morning session, I hurried to the telegraph office and sent this answer, viz: "Telegram just received. Please withdraw

my name with expression of my earnest prayers for a right judgment and profound sense of the honor done me in the nomination. (Signed) W. F. Nichols." That evening, attending a meeting of the old Philadelphia Historical Society, the nomination in the meantime having appeared in the press despatches of the morning papers, some of my parishioners present, asked me if I contemplated going to California. So confident was I that the name had been withdrawn that I said, "No, undoubtedly some one else is chosen by this time." Going home after the reception with a light hearted feeling of not having to face the question, which had been somewhat disquieting, in the providential, as it seemed, opportunity to forestall it by the telegram, I never knew there could be such a difference between the outside and inside state of mind around a front door. Instead of finding, as usual, quietude and hall light only, the rooms were all alight, telegrams were littering a table to the consternation of the "other side of the house" whose look suggested that "the bottom had dropped out of everything," and three reporters had been waiting in my library for an hour to "know what I was going to do." The consternating message was this; viz, "You have this day been unanimously elected Assistant Bishop Diocese California with full jurisdiction. Praying your favorable consideration. (Signed) R. C. Foute, H. D. Lathrop, J. Saunders Reed, Committee. Other messages kept coming through the night and the following memorandum from my diary at the time expressed the effect: "Telegrams and letters begin to come and I enter into the darkness of waiting to know my duty." It transpired that my telegram which was sent, as if at 6 A. M. San Francisco time, a little before 9 A. M. Thursday, February 6th, and ought to have been delivered before the hour of election had been reached on that date, was not received by the Rev. Mr. Miel until 8 A. M. Sunday, February 9th, three days after the election. Some of my Vestry had the delay traced by the telegraph authorities when it was discovered that, while all the

telegrams to me from San Francisco on the day I sent mine (the 6th) came through promptly, my telegram of explicit withdrawal was detained by the snows in the high Sierras until after the Convention had adjourned. Verily there seemed to be something not on the docket in my association with Episcopal elections!

There was "encircling gloom" but the "kindly light" came at last. Bishop Kip sent his warm words of welcome. The President of the Standing Committee, Mr. Foute, came on to Philadelphia to furnish me in detail information as to the Diocese and to answer the leading questions I put to him in the analysis of conditions and opportunities. The usual interest of multitudes of letters came both from within and without the Diocese of California. A difference which had existed in the Diocese of California over the absence from the electing Convention of many deputies from Southern California and which was promptly brought to my notice yielded even cordially to a fuller knowledge of the circumstances of my choice and its peremptory implications as they seemed to me, and later no welcome to the Diocese was heartier than that from Southern California. Counsel was sought from leaders in the Church and others. Many prayers for guidance helped my own. And the outcome of it all by that curious process of psychology in which many contributory influences as invisible and subtle as “atmosphere," shape the convictions and the will, my sense of duty was changed to the "right about." On March 8th, I wrote my acceptance of the election subject to the canonical confirmation. The readjustment of mind led to the readjustment plans for a lifetime. My St. James' people were in every way kind and considerate, though the jesting proposal of one of my good friends on the Vestry was significant of echoes of earlier, rather than the later California eras: "If you must go to that wild God-forsaken country, we of the Vestry mean to fit you to take care of yourself. I will give you a Winchester rifle, so and so a revolver, another a bowie knife and so on." I ventured

to suggest that while I knew nothing of the conditions personally, never having been west of Chicago, that on the data I had there were these facts in reversal. Bishop Kip had been out there nearly forty years when matters had not been as parlous as at present and so far as I gathered had never gone armed nor been molested. Bishop Whitaker had served Nevada under similar pioneer phases nearly twenty years without carrying a gun and had never been in jeopardy until coming back to Pennsylvania as our Bishop, he had not been here long before he was fired at during service in one of our Philadelphia Churches! And though it was the act of a maniac I submitted that in the showing it was a legitimate question where an Episcopal arsenal was the more opportune. And that the chorusing of "climate" and other “Empire-in-itself” of glad California might not be "too unanimous," one fellow-citizen who had been there, but evidently with some untoward experience, volunteered the opinion: "Don't tell me about California. California is a fraud from top to bottom." And a sharing in the then epidemic of "Grip" together with perusal of pamphlets sent me by way of preparedness to deal with an animated controversy of two parishes of the new field about a Church building site, were calculated to temper my course in becoming a "Californiac." However, once clear that my lot was to be cast on that further coast, the "El Dorado" vision of California's lure and opportunity grew upon me and with it a real enthusiasm to begin my new work stimulated by letters from many parts of the field cordial with welcome and assurance of co-operation. In the meantime there was held the regular Convention of the Diocese and my letter of acceptance was presented in which I had expressed my hopefulness out of all the singular experiences in the Call in these terms: "The act of the (Special) Convention, which my efforts proved ineffectual to prevent, seems to me, after prolonged deliberation, to be an imperative call of God and of His Church. In profound humiliation at the sense of my own personal inade