The morning of Thursday in Easter Week, 1899, Marie and John Henry arrived in Chicago, and for a few days were guests of Mr. and Mrs. James Banks, Mr. Banks being Junior Warden of The Church of The Epiphany. The apartment at the southeast corner of Ashland Boulevard and York street, four blocks south from the church (which was at Ashland Boulevard and West Adams street, on the corresponding corner), was selected for them by Mr. and Mrs. Banks. These good friends did not wish them to try to live in the old Rectory that Dr. Morrison and his family had occupied for so many years, since it had been attacked as we have said by the Metropolitan Elevated road, which ran right by the house, and whose frequent trains made the house a very noisy place. Marie and John Henry appreciated this kindness very much, and took to their seven-room apartment as much of their St. Joseph Rectory furniture as they could scatter around its interior. Epiphany parish house was not large, but it had room for a Rector's study and office, which made it possible for the newcomers to have a quiet home at York and Ashland. The apartment house was the oldest one on Ashland Boulevard, and while its plumbing and similar items were old-fashioned, yet the rooms were larger than in the newer apartments, and for nearly eleven years became a haven of refuge indeed to their occupants.

How shall one begin to chronicle those "ten golden years" of life and work at The Church of The Epiphany! The phrase "ten golden years" was coined by Dr. Francis Hemington, the gifted and accomplished organist of the parish, at a luncheon in Epiphany parish house where he was a guest, in Advent, 1931, when Marie and John Henry were the guests of honor, during a month's visit to their beloved Chicago.

The chronicler cannot of course begin to do more than to recall some of the chief outlines, for the details would be impossible, even in an extended biography.

In the first place, they soon found that the underlying atmosphere of the parish was shot through with something akin to anxiety. The irresistible exodus to the North Side, the South Side, and to the suburbs everywhere, had begun in earnest, and it was to go on, unceasingly, in one form or another, during the entire thirty years of parish life which the young people led in the great city. Chicago's average growth was estimated at from 70,000 to 100,000 a year, and this growth, of course, had to be from the center outwards. The city eventually, after the Great War, achieved its skyscrapers in the down-town districts, but its residence districts, both among the rich and the poor, had much room in which to spread around. Homes of two or not often more than three stories abounded all over the mammoth city. As a neighborhood became more crowded, or a bit shabby from poorly built apartment houses, the more substantial people, and sometimes those who sought less expensive rentals, would move into the newer districts and suburbs, thus leaving behind them the local institutions, such as churches, lodges, schools, and stores, which they had patronized or kept going. All of these had to struggle with newcomers, often of less helpfulness and abilities, as best they might. Such circumstances bore very heavily on all organizations that had allowed themselves to run into debt.

This, by the way, is something that Marie and John Henry never did. They never had any debts themselves, and they never ran any of their parishes into debt. If they could not lead their people or find some layman who could lead them, "to pay as they went along" for any improvements that were needed, they went without the improvements. Not all Priests follow this plan, or believe in it, and some who had attained to great eminence in the Church, far ahead of anything that John Henry was ever offered, seemed to have achieved success in spite of running their earlier parishes into almost hopeless debts. Yet the life-long policy of these young people was to avoid debt, and at The Church of The Epiphany they found that the constant loss of helpful parishioners made them both very grateful that there was only about $7,500 debt inherited from Dr. Morrison's twenty-two years of devoted and able leadership. Even this small debt made it most necessary that every atom of time that was available should be applied to calling on new people as fast as they could be found. This duty was fully recognized by John Henry.

He soon saw that the street cars and elevated trains were utterly inadequate to carry him around the large area to which The Church of The Epiphany appealed as an attraction. So he bought, with the advice and counsel of one of his Vestry, George E. Shipman, a fine secondhand bicycle, and on this he rode, summer and winter, for all of the nearly ten years of his Epiphany Rectorship. The Chicago people had no such horror of clerical bicycling as had his good friends in St. Joseph, for every one rode in those days. Marie actually learned how to ride, also, and in all she covered about 600 miles before she gave it up. She never enjoyed it very much, but she "biked" gracefully and well, when she did ride. After a while, the wheels of John Henry's concern gave out, and he then took the wheels from Marie's new instrument, and rode on those, in his own frame, until parish life at Epiphany was exchanged for life on "the road," as Department Missionary Secretary and wife, in 1909 and 1910.

It was plain from the start that Marie had to make her way in the parish without much precedent. Mrs. Morrison, the daughter of a prominent West Side Presbyterian Minister, Dr. Swazy, was so busy with her family cares (she bore six children), that she had but little time or strength for parish work beyond a somewhat nominal amount. So Marie began her fellowship with the various parochial organizations for women, on her own lines. She took hold at once of the Girls' Friendly Society, with Mrs. A. H. King, who founded Epiphany's G. F. S. chapter. She went to the parish house on Wednesdays, when the Woman's Guild met and served luncheon. She was interested from the start in the Woman's Auxiliary, and also took her part in the work of the Altar Guild. She started a Bible class for women which met in the chapel before the evening services on Sundays for several years.

She kept house from the beginning, with a Swedish maid, and also entertained when it was possible at dinner, in her modest apartment, besides staying "at home" on Monday afternoons and evenings to welcome any possible callers. There were not so many of these, for the Epiphany parishioners did not belong to any great extent to the leisure class. They were all very busy people, either earning money or keeping their own homes going.

It soon became evident that there is a very large psychologic and social distance between the North Side and the West Side. Their many St. James's friends, whose unstinted generosity fairly loaded them with gifts of many kinds six years before when they left Chicago, seemed to have forgotten them almost entirely when they came back to the big city. This was because they went to live and to work on the West Side instead of on the North Side. "The North Side is Boston; the South Side is New York; and the West Side is Chicago." So ran the vernacular slogan, in those rather distant days. In actual distance St. James's and The Epiphany were only about three miles apart. It would be hard to describe the three-times-as-large Chicago now (1933) by any such clear cut definition as this one about Boston, New York, and Chicago. In those days it used to be said that Edgewater, on the North Side, had three streets. On one they said "either" and "neither" (pronounced with a long i). On the next street they said "eether" and "neether." And on the third street they said "aythur" and "naythur" (with a long a). That, too, has changed in the ensuing thirty-four years. But the attitude of the North to the West Side has not changed very much.

So Marie and John Henry, after a few attempts to meet this unexpected condition of affairs, simply said, in all frankness and friendliness, "We will not eat the bread of the West Side and hang on to the skirts of the North Side." They just dropped "the whole outfit"--except in the very rare occasions when they received personal invitations to dinner, or the like, from St. James's people--and they soon found themselves so overwhelmed with work that they had no time to give even a second thought to this rather interesting study in human nature. And soon, as will be told, Marie found that the whole extent of the diocese of Chicago was her operating territory, when she was appointed president of the diocesan branch of the Woman's Auxiliary. The North Side was then only a part of her objective, and she gave it its proper share of her time--no more and no less.

As a matter of subsequent fact, John Henry found himself invited for preaching and the like to a large number of Chicago and suburban churches, but rarely to St. James's. He saw less of the interior of that fine old building, during many of the thirty or more years which followed the return from the Missouri Valley, than of almost any other large church in the diocese. So they buried their thoughts of dear St. James's with their happy memories of the unusual atmosphere of friendliness and exciting work which they left behind them in 1893, when the call came to go to Atchison.

Chicago at that time numbered about one million and a quarter inhabitants. The Church in Chicago {i.e., the Episcopal Church), numbered 53 parishes and 50 missions, organized and unorganized. There were 93 clergy, including one Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Dr. William E. McLaren. There were 20,343 communicants and 10,700 Church Sunday school children.

At this writing, reporting the figures for the Convention of 1932 (which are those for the fiscal year ending December 31, 1931), Chicago's population is estimated at 3,500,000. The diocese of Chicago, embracing the same territory as in 1899, enrolls 148 clergy, including one Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Dr. George Craig Stewart. There are 117 parishes and missions, against 103 when Chicago had about one-third of its present population. There are 36,336 communicants, which showing is a little better, and 12,421 Church Sunday school scholars, which showing is about as poor as that of the growth of parishes and missions in their total. The total money raised in the year reported in the Convention Journal of 1899 was $390,671. The total reported in 1932 is $1,184,980. This is more than three times the amount reported in 1899, from 80 per cent fewer communicants, which is a splendid showing.

The Church of The Epiphany reported to that Diocesan Convention of 1899, held just two months after Marie and John Henry entered the parish, 900 communicants, 360 families, 300 Church school scholars, and 50 teachers and officers, 68 baptisms, and 44 confirmation candidates, during the year, and a total income of $17,401 for that preceding year. It was then the fourth parish in the diocese in communicant enrollment, being exceeded only by Grace, Chicago (1755), St. James's, Chicago (1471), and Trinity, Chicago (1090). At this writing, Epiphany has still 435 communicants, while St. James's reports 860, Trinity, 213, and Grace Church, 84. "Sic transit gloria" parochial, amid the swift changes of city life in these United States. All this has happened in thirty-four vivid and changeful years.

A great deal of newspaper comment was given to the call which Marie and John Henry thus accepted. Rarely has so much publicity since been awarded by the daily press to any incoming Rector and wife. This was owing, of course, to the important fact that Bishop Morrison, elected from the Epiphany, went to the important and neighboring diocese of Iowa, and to the additional fact that The Church of The Epiphany, in those days, was one of the largest and most beautiful church buildings in the city of Chicago, and that its resigning Rector, Dr. Morrison, was so widely known throughout the city and the adjacent States and dioceses. Whatever the cause, the unusual publicity took place, and John Henry received about one hundred letters of congratulation from clergy in many parts of the National Church, most of whom were anxious to become his Curate!

The first busy year ran its course almost before they knew it, so swiftly do days pass when work is plentiful and congenial. In spite of the underlying fears caused by the chronic disease of "Suburbanitis," as someone calls it, Epiphany people were happy in their new Rector and wife, and there was always so much going on, in the church and parish house, that time passed on the rush, as is usual among all kinds of real Chicago people.

Summer came, and with it a month of vacation, and a return to Vermont, to visit with the family. The fall of 1899 opened early in September, and then something loomed up along the horizon to which neither the new Rector nor his wife were at all accustomed.

They had almost universally been beloved and liked by their people, in all four of their previous parish homes. Calvary Chapel, of course, had rarely if ever seen such a wonderful and attractive young woman as Marie, and it has been shown how her social genius swept all before her in rushing, fastidious, and kind-hearted St. James's. And in Atchison there was only one person, and she was a poor girl of limited horizons and opportunities, who somehow criticized. The same might have been said of St. Joseph where one could not declare, out and out, that anybody at all was even lukewarm, let alone antagonistic and disagreeable. So when, in the fall and winter following their arrival at The Church of The Epiphany, the daughter of one of the leading parishioners, who shall be called "Miss Q," became critical with a really fanatic dislike, and said so frankly, and acted just as frankly as she spoke, the situation simply bewildered both Marie and John Henry beyond expression. It more than bewildered them, for "Miss Q" was high in office in diocesan activities and was one of the leading women of the Epiphany parish. She attended every service, and every meeting at the parish house, except those for men or boys. And she went to all the funerals of people at all connected with the parish. And wherever she went, she refused to shake hands or to smile, her black looks and frowning brows radiated dislike whenever John Henry preached or spoke, or whenever Marie was in the least degree evident. Of course efforts were promptly made to down this dislike. John Henry eventually went to "Miss Q" six different times, asking what he could do, consistent with Church principles, to make her more contented with his efforts. She steadily refused to change her attitude. As a matter of fact, the most charitable interpretation to put on her deeply distressing and unfair behavior is to say that she was temporarily ill.

Twenty-four years afterwards, when The Church of The Redeemer was their parish home, she wrote a letter of frank apology, saying to John Henry that she was "wrong" in those Epiphany years. Of course all had been long since forgiven, though there had been no opportunity provided by her when it would have been at all proper to inform her of this fact. While she lay on her death-bed in St. Luke's Hospital sometime in 1928 or early in 1929, Marie and John Henry went to call on her, and before she died everything was as it should have been all the time.

The great blessing that came out of all this real suffering, for it was very painful, especially to Marie, was that it made it possible for her to accept, in 1901, the invitation of Bishop McLaren (who had heard of the difficulties with "Miss Q" and had rebuked her strongly for her behavior), to become the "diocesan president of the Chicago branch of the Woman's Auxiliary to the Board of Missions." The full title was almost as "long as she was tall." This was most unexpected, and it was the finest opening for many kinds of service and work that ever came to her. John Henry did not know until after Marie's death that she owed this appointment to a message sent by his cousin, Miss Emily Canfield, to Bishop McLaren. Marie never knew this. Miss Canfield afterwards became one of the most devoted and able parishioners in The Church of The Redeemer. Marie held this responsible position for nine long and wonderful years. This was nearly twice as long as any previous or subsequent president's term (that is up to 1933). The Auxiliary was at that time represented in about 70 parishes and missions of the diocese of Chicago, and its total revenues for missionary purposes, including the valuation of the missionary boxes of household supplies sent to deserving and underpaid clergy in the mission field, reached about $19,000 a year. By the end of Marie's ninth year as president, there ""were Auxiliary branches in all but three or four of the smallest missions in the diocese, making thus the Auxiliary practically co-terminous with the diocese. The average for the Church generally stayed at about 70 per cent. Thus Chicago became the leading diocese of the National Church in the proportion of Auxiliary branches to parishes and missions. And the total revenues rose from $19,000 a year to about $39,000 a year. For years after her resignation, in 1910, even during the period of greatly enlarged missionary spirit throughout the Church, which began with the "Nation-Wide Campaign" of 1919, this total of annual gifts from the Diocesan Auxiliary rarely if ever surpassed the $39,000 figure which she left as her legacy. This was the^ case even as the diocese gradually deepened its missionary spirit until the grand total of gifts to Domestic and Foreign Missions (later called the work of the Church's National Council) rose from about $6,000 a year to $126,000 a year. This superb record of enlisted enthusiasm and devotion on the part of the earnest Churchwomen of Chicago is something so unusual that it is doubtful if it has been paralleled very often throughout the length and breadth of the American Church.

Marie at once took up this utterly new work with the utmost enthusiasm. She started out to visit every parish and mission where there was a branch of the Auxiliary, no matter how small. When these visits took her away from the city over night, John Henry went with her. Then, after having completed this arduous and extensive task, she set about getting invitations from all the other parishes and missions, where no branch of the Auxiliary had been formed, or where one had lapsed for any cause. This was harder work than the other, for she had to encounter the stark ignorance and blighting indifference which had allowed such negligence on the part of Priest and people.

One parish, for instance, steadily neglected her frequent efforts to secure such an invitation. It was one of the smaller congregations, situated in a thriving little city some dozens of miles from Chicago, though in the diocese. So one day Marie took her bag, and started for that city and parish without an invitation, and finally there grew up there a flourishing branch, greatly enlarging the horizons of these good people and widening their real usefulness to God and man, as well as enriching their own spiritual life of prayer and service.

One of the regular features of the Chicago Auxiliary's life was the monthly meeting for officers and delegates from all the constituent branches, usually held in the Church club rooms, down-town in the "Loop" district, on the first Thursday of each month, at 11 a.m. These meetings, which had been a strong feature of the diocesan work, soon took on new and deepened life under her brilliant chairmanship and skilful work as a programme maker. Her own rare gift of speaking found ample scope and almost daily opportunity, as she not only presided at these monthly meetings, but usually made an address of from half-an-hour to one hour in length, whenever visiting a branch, or trying to organize a new one. Her reputation as a speaker and lecturer soon grew widely, and she began to add to her repertory of lectures on literary and historical themes. She was now and then invited to make addresses of these two kinds before women's clubs and the like, but, with the exception of the West End Woman's Club, of which she was a member, and on whose programme committee she did unusual work, she usually declined all these non-Church opportunities. For many years she was urged, from time to time, as has been said, to join the great Woman's Club of Chicago, to which so many of her friends belonged, and where she would have of course shone brightly. She steadily declined to give any of her time or strength regularly to anything except to matters and organizations connected with the Church. Socially this was a mistake, but it was a matter of principle with her, and she would not change her course.

Day after day, when building and enlarging this work she would leave home right after breakfast, would often travel alone to some distant suburb of the great city, where a little band of devoted women had succeeded in organizing a Woman's Guild of some sort to help in the affairs of some struggling mission or small parish, and where the Auxiliary had not been organized. She would go to the luncheon which said guild served, in the church rooms or in someone's home, and would chat readily and laughingly for an hour or two, getting acquainted with her possible clients, and then, after the luncheon, would address these good women, whether there were six or twenty of them, with her utmost persuasiveness and dramatic earnestness, about the splendid work of Missions, and the noble part which the Auxiliary had played and could play in this Christ-like work. Then she would tell these women that they did not need to have another organization, but that if they would hold one of their weekly guild meetings each month as a branch of the Auxiliary, even if they had almost no dues, and would be able only to do a little sewing, or to donate some supplies or goods to some of the diocesan institutions, like St. Luke's Hospital, or the Chicago Homes for Boys (afterwards called Lawrence Hall), to St. Mary's Home for Girls, or to the Church Home for Aged Persons, that meeting and gift would constitute their guild as a branch of the Woman's Auxiliary, and their annual dues of one dollar for the whole guild would be all the definite obligation of money which they would thus incur. Of course she knew, what they afterwards all discovered, that this very small but definite beginning would gradually be enlarged in many directions, as they became more deeply connected with the fascinating and varied work of the Auxiliary. And in nearly every instance such a day's work on her part resulted in the formation of a new branch of the Woman's Auxiliary. She would then take the afternoon train home, or the street car as it might be, and would often arrive down-town in the midst of the "rush hour," with every seat from the Loop outwards grabbed at by from two to a half-dozen persons, while she, tired half to death by this exhausting effort and travel, would have to hang to a strap, which was usually too high for her comfort. On reaching home, she would usually find a pile of letters, and, as she had no secretary and wrote only with a pen, she found the correspondence itself an absorbing duty. She often wrote twenty or more letters in one day, and one day the total was thirty written letters.

When she began her Epiphany life, and also began this arduous Auxiliary work, she was keeping house, and she did all the marketing as well, and also she kept track of all the little money affairs, as John Henry, who was carrying on the parish alone with no Assistant except once a month on Sunday mornings, was quite unable to devote any time to such home affairs. There had been an Assistant Priest in the parish for some time before Dr. Morrison left, but John Henry had a theory that he could develop the leadership of the parish among the laity, leaving for him only the Priestly work, even starting with 900 communicants, and since the parish was $7,500 in debt the only way this debt could be paid was by applying to it the Easter offerings each year. Thus all of this debt was gradually paid off at the rate of more than $1,000 a year, which would have been well nigh impossible had this money been absorbed by the salary of an Assistant. So Marie, by doing all of this home-caring work, as well as everything else that she did, helped definitely if indirectly to pay off the parish indebtedness.

Her monthly meetings of the executive committee of the diocesan Auxiliary were responsibilities as well as opportunities. This committee met about 9:30 a.m. in the Church club rooms, as a rule, and there they blocked out the work for the diocesan branch, and discussed other matters of importance connected with the work. Marie developed into a most skilful and successful chairman, both in these meetings and in the larger ones for all the parochial officers and delegates. At all of these meetings she did everything that a chairman could do to make them pithy, filled with movement and interest, and of service to the Auxiliary. If the invited speaker was bright and able, so much the better. If, on the contrary, he or she was not thus gifted, as was of course sometimes the case, she at once made up for all such deficiencies by her brilliant and humorous additions to the address after its dull conclusion. Of course the larger meetings began on the tick of the clock, and closed promptly at noon, so that busy women knew their time would not be wasted by tardiness. These monthly meetings steadily grew in numbers, and were of increasing usefulness in furthering a diocesan "family feeling" among the ever-increasing numbers of local branches.

In order to promote neighborliness and to increase local efficiency, she invented what were called afterwards "Neighborhood Meetings" (she called them "Sectional Conferences," which was a better name for them in some ways), and to these she would invite all the local branches easily accessible from a common center where there was a fair-sized parish house, and where a luncheon could most easily be served. At these meetings she would use all the methods of friendly rivalry that Victor Hugo puts into the mouth of the "Bishop of D," in Les MiserableSj such as having each branch give a condensed report of what it had been doing in the recent months, or since its organization; spicing each report with timely commendation, or with kindliest exhortation, as the case demanded; telling what other branches similarly located and circumstanced had been doing in other parts of the diocese; asking some officers of the most successful branch represented at the meeting to describe in more detail the work that had been so well done, etc., etc. Above all, she would tell what interesting meetings were being held downtown on the first Thursdays at 11 o'clock, a.m., and would urge each branch always to send at least one delegate or two each month, so that they all might know what was going on in the diocese as a whole, and especially might be helped by the message of the Missionaries or other speakers invited to address these large meetings. Now and then she would have a large group meeting of all the branches on one side of the city, north, south, or west, thus supplementing sectional conferences and the monthly meetings as far as possible.

The annual meeting of the Auxiliary, usually held on the Thursday of the Diocesan Convention week, had grown even before Marie took charge to very large proportions. Her predecessor, Mrs. D. B. Lyman, had worked this up until six or seven hundred women would attend, and the day was always a gala one indeed. Marie worked over her annual addresses for these important meetings, until her messages became real literary gems, polished in every sentence. She learned them by heart, and it is a good thing that they are on record, for they were all published in the Auxiliary's annual reports. She would write and re-write, if necessary, sentence after sentence, until it sounded just as she wished it to sound. The women soon discovered their charm, and they looked forward to Marie's "yearly address" with eagerness and appreciation.

She arranged every detail of these all-day meetings with the utmost care so as to have no dragging and no dullness. This, of course, involved absolute promptness in beginning, and the best kind of chairmanship. It has been said by someone that the ideal chairman has an eye always to adjournment, so that nothing shall lag or drearily bore the people attending.

Sometimes this made trouble. One annual meeting was held at St. Mark's, Evanston, and it was scheduled to begin with the Celebration of the Holy Eucharist at 10:30 A.M. That hour arrived, and the Bishop (it was not Bishop McLaren) was late. The Rector asked John Henry what he should do, and he said, "Go ahead, on time. If you wait it will dislocate the entire programme of the day, both morning and afternoon." When it was convenient, the Bishop arrived, and was in high dudgeon because the service had commenced without him. He was careful to be on time after that experience, though it was evident, in after years, that he did not relish it very much.

Probably the most exacting day of Marie's presidency, so far as these annual meetings were concerned, was the eventful day when she herself was hostess, and the seven hundred women, more or less, came to The Church of The Epiphany for this great assemblage. Of course the heaviest part of the day for the inviting branch was the luncheon. And at Epiphany parish house this item of the programme was complicated by probably the most inconvenient arrangement for serving a large luncheon that could have been found in the entire diocese. As has been said, this attractive little parish house was the first one built in the diocese of Chicago, and at that time parish work was in such a rudimentary state of development that nobody knew just how to build such a building, or how large to make it, or how to place the kitchen, dining room, etc., to the best advantage. As a matter of fact, the kitchen stove was afterwards placed in the basement, and the only rooms which could be used as dining rooms were three in number, including the Rector's study, on the second floor, where there was only a small stove which might be able to make a pot of coffee, or to hold warm one or two smaller dishes.

There was no dumb-waiter between the basement kitchen and the rooms, two flights above, which could be and as a matter of fact were often used for serving meals. The total number of chairs which could be placed around the movable tables (the tables resting on wooden horses) was about 160, in the combined front and rear rooms. So the task of serving 700 guests to a neatly served and appetizingly arranged luncheon was something appalling. It did not appall Marie in the least, however, nor did it paralyze with fright her fine and loyal "crew" of women at The Church of The Epiphany. They boldly invited the annual meeting of the Auxiliary to be their guests. And Marie had not only to see that her lieutenants did their appointed tasks about the luncheon, but she had to preside at the business session, which opened promptly after this extraordinary luncheon was finished, and she had to make her annual address, as well as to keep the big meeting going with zest and interest. It is notable that the 700th guest, or the very last one served, whatever was the exact number, had just as clean a plate, and as neat a napkin, as the first one who sat down in the well-ordered rooms.

When the luncheon was finished, the Rev. Charles Scadding, afterwards Bishop of Oregon, and at that time a keen devotee of the kodak and the camera, induced the women to fill the front steps of Epiphany Church, and to spread out as far as was necessary over the sidewalk, so that he could go to the residence across Ashland Boulevard and photograph the whole group, with Marie in the midst. This was excellently done, and the westering sunlight of the early afternoon lent a fine clarity to the successful picture.

The United Offering, afterwards called the United Thank Offering, and now known by many thousands in many parts of the world as the "U. T. O.", lay particularly close to Marie's heart. There was no especially organized plan of work in the diocese concerning this important fund, when she took charge of the Auxiliary, though the "blue boxes" had been distributed among the faithful, and an offering of some $2,000 had been gradually gathered during the first triennium of her presidency. This offering was presented at San Francisco, at the General Convention of 1901, which, by the way, was the first year that John Henry had revisited the Pacific Coast since he left San Francisco in 1887 to commence his seminary course in New York City. He was a deputy, it being his second General Convention, and of course Marie went with him.

She did not soon forget, neither will he, the tension which the Chicago delegation of women felt as the hour for the great United Offering service approached, and the Chicago Auxiliary was even at that late hour a bit behind its offering of the previous triennium. By a personal subscription, which was forthcoming only when the dire need was learned in San Francisco, the day was saved, and Chicago's Auxiliary did not fall behind in 1901 the gift in 1898. This narrow escape, however, made a deep impression upon Marie. She put her wits to work to think out some way in which this great offering could be increased, from Chicago, without unduly burdening any of the generous givers. And the result was the adoption of two plans, one of which was so brilliant that the whole National Church gradually adopted it. When George C. Thomas, the splendid business man who was for so many years the treasurer of the Church's Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, heard of it from her own lips, he smacked his lips and said "This ought to be adopted widely."

We will therefore describe this new plan first. It was nothing less than the annual holding of a great diocesan United Thank Offering service, which should be as near as possible a replica of the thrilling triennial service held by the National Auxiliary at the time of each General Convention. This simple but very bright plan had several features which ensured success. First, it gave an annual impulse and advertisement to the U. T. O. as a factor in the Auxiliary's work. Second, it gave the leaders of the diocesan branch an opportunity to urge increased efforts from the local branches, if the total in any year -were to fall short of what it might have been, within reason. Thirdly, it ensured that a large part of the offering would be earning at least savings bank interest as it was accumulated. The inception of this plan took its origin in Marie's fertile brain and it has since become almost a universal custom. This great offering has gone on, increasing all the time, till it has passed a million dollar total for a single triennium.

Then Marie adopted a "birthday plan" for the diocese of Chicago, to supplement the historic "blue boxes" which the U. T. O. (as we will now call it) had inaugurated soon after its own origin in Chicago in 1886. She composed a most compelling and vivid address, an hour or so in length, when she felt that she could speak that long without imperilling her objective. She was so fascinating a speaker, with her bubbling humor and her deep dramatic style, and her absolute command of language, that an hour was easily contributed by her privileged hearers, without the faintest suggestion of fatigue on their part. At its close she would ask for a show of hands from all who desired to enter into the "birthday plan" for giving an offering on their birthdays to the United Thank Offering.

Birthdays always appealed to her strongly, throughout life. She always wrote to her brothers and sisters on or near their birthday anniversaries, whether they remembered hers or not. She elaborated the possible significance of a birthday in this remarkable address on the U. T. O., and almost before she realized it, as she went up and down the diocese of Chicago among the Auxiliary branches, she had some two thousand names of women in her birthday-book. Each local secretary sent to her, at her request, a copy of the list from her own parish branch. This list, by the way, was probably at that time the only diocesan list of any organization connected with the diocese, except the names of the clergy, the Vestries, and the Lay Readers and one or two smaller societies. Since then, under Bishop Stewart's most able leadership, there has been compiled and entered at diocesan Headquarters a list of all the communicants in the diocese, and this is to be kept up to date, with their addresses, as the years come and go. The Auxiliary, under Marie, was the first large group to compile any such diocesan list of names in Chicago. The English Lord Bishop of Exeter, Bishop Salisbury (relative of Lord Salisbury), in writing up his visit to this country and to Chicago, in 1932, especially spoke of the diocesan list of communicants as an American feature unheard of in England. Marie started it in connection with the Auxiliary. It was the largest organization then in the diocese, and is so still.

The General Convention of 1901, at San Francisco, was her first Convention after she became a diocesan officer of the Auxiliary. The missionary spirit of the Church was a rather pitiable affair, at that somewhat distant time. The missionary meetings were often held in the evenings, when the Bishops and deputies usually acted on the supposition that they "had earned their salaries" in the day-time, and that attendance at missionary meetings was not obligatory from any angle. It must have been a strikingly encouraging experience for a Missionary, Bishop or not, to come thousands of miles to address a Convention hearing, when he or she found the hour tucked neatly away in some evening solitude, with an attendance of fifty or so, out of a possible 1,500. The writer recalls, at this moment, an exclamation in the sacristy of a New York church, during his Diaconate. The speaker was a distinguished Foreign Missionary of the Church, from the far Orient, afterwards a great Bishop, and he had just returned from the pulpit to unvest, following his address in this particular church. "It's a dead church," he exclaimed. And at that time it was dead, in a missionary sense, or half-dead, which is perhaps worse. Yet Marie went to what opportunities there were for hearing about the great mission field.

She was deeply interested in one of two trips which they took, during the Convention's sessions in San Francisco. One of these was to Oakland, where John Henry showed her the little real estate office on Ninth street, in which he had his rented desk as an insurance and R. R. ticket agent, during those eventful years in California while their engagement was broken, and before he decided to study for the Priesthood. He showed her also the First Presbyterian Church of Oakland, in his time the largest of that denomination west of Chicago, where he played the organ for years, morning and evening, without missing one service.

She was most interested, however, in the attic room of the boarding house on Tenth street where he roomed for two years or more, after his Uncle Caspar, at whose home he had been living, had driven him out of his house one evening in a rage at the young man's complaints concerning the difficulties of the insurance agency business, which said uncle had very kindly worked to secure for him. The inexperienced young fellow had paid $400 for the expirations of the policies written by his predecessor, and he had found out that an ex-convict, whom said predecessor had engaged to keep books for this Oakland office, had made four copies of all the expirations of these policies, for three years ahead, and had sold each copy to a different insurance broker of Oakland, just before John Henry took hold of the office. Having no guarantee, John Henry found himself without income for the first several months of his work in the business which he had paid $400 to buy. It was of this that he was complaining to his uncle. Said uncle, who had brought him to the coast, and had hired him for a year as a clerk in the head office, was the president of the company. His good uncle had also labored diligently with the board of directors before they would appoint John Henry to their Oakland agency, and on hearing these complaints he "kicked" him out of his house as a white-livered, snivelling coward. It was a good lesson to John Henry, and probably well-deserved. He and his uncle became fast friends afterwards. During all the rest of his life John Henry kept his Uncle Caspar on his daily list for Intercession simply in gratefulness for all that said uncle had done for him in his callow days. Marie was much interested in this attic room of the Oakland boarding house, kept by Mrs. MacBean of the First Presbyterian congregation in Oakland.

They also took the Mount Tamalpais trip, but it was on the train, all the way to the top. John Henry had climbed it on foot in a thirty-mile walk, in 1887, just before leaving for his seminary studies. Marie was delighted with the scenic attractions of and around San Francisco, and their trip thus to the General Convention of 1901 was a notable episode in their travels.

Two incidents on their homeward trip were unique. One was at Denver. They had several hours there, between the arrival and departure of their train, and so they went to a theatre for the first part of a play. They had to leave before the play was finished in order not to lose their train. The theatre was very scantily attended that evening, and Marie's heart was so filled with sympathy as she thought of the disappointment which must have oppressed the players, that she could hardly enjoy any of the drama at all! They often thought of this evening, in after years, when some Church service or missionary meeting would be most pitifully attended by the brave handful, while the neglectors gaily went on their worldly way, unmindful of the opportunity, if not of the duty, thus provided. The example of this stranded troupe of players, pluckily going through their parts, in Denver, just as carefully as though the building had been filled with an enthusiastic audience, often boosted them along their subsequent way, when they were in somewhat parallel circumstances.

The other experience began soon after leaving Omaha, on this same return trip. John Henry had been told that the wise deed would be to engage their return Pullman accommodations all the way back to Chicago, immediately after arriving at San Francisco. He thought therefore that he was specially thoughtful, not to say brilliant (to speak modestly), when he rushed to the ticket office, almost before breakfast on the morning after their arrival in the coast city, and engaged their lower berths all along the way back to Chicago. They could not afford a "section," and at that time they always camped out in one "lower," when they had to take Pullman cars on their trips. Well, those were untamed days for the Pullman Company. Many things have happened since that somewhat distant date, and it is doubtful if the company's agents would be so toploftical today, even towards a poor clergyman and his wife on a Convention trip.

To continue the tale, the lowers were all gone in the car, and some traveler wanted an upper. Therefore, the agent, with precise care, looked over the "lowers," to see if there were anywhere two people had tried to economize on the company by occupying one berth. They promptly found the lower, of course, and right over it they put, from Omaha on to Chicago, two of the most objectionable traveling companions that could easily be imagined, viz., an old Swede farmer, who hadn't taken a bath for seventy-five years, and his girl granddaughter, about sixteen or less. And when Marie and John Henry lumbered into their place at Omaha, with their grips, etc., they found that these redolent friends were snugly ensconced as their vis-a-vis all the way to Chicago. One whiff was enough. John Henry sought out the Pullman conductor, who was obdurate. It was "impossible" to make any change, either of Grandpa Bath-less Swede or of his little granddaughter. So John Henry went through the train, and found two chairs in a chair car (which any first class ticket entitled a passenger to occupy without extra charge), and Marie and he cheerfully left the perfumed Swede to occupy the whole of their already paid-for seats as well as his own, while they themselves tilted back their chairs and got what sleep they could, during that memorable five hundred miles of night journey. The love for the Pullman Company which this engendered was fierce and virulent, and lasting. Had John Henry been less smart at San Francisco, and had he waited longer before hurrying to secure the berths from the coast to Chicago which Marie and he planned to occupy, there is a possibility that some other luckless lower passenger might have had the privilege of visiting with the bathless Swede from Omaha onwards. Real philanthropy, one might suppose, would make them glad to have been the sufferers, rather than that someone else should have had that one whiff which sent them spinning towards the chair car. Such are the vicissitudes of economizing travel!

Another railroad episode was connected with this trip, and this took place before the Convention, on the journey westward, over the Canadian Pacific Railroad. They carefully chose this scenic route because they wanted to see the grandeur of the Canadian Rockies. They looked over the time-tables, and found the exact train which would bring them through the most superb mountain views during daylight time. When they started, filled with expectancy, as true Vermont mountain-lovers, they ascertained something which was, of course, fully known to the Chicago ticket agent who sold them their rather expensive tickets, but which he did not divulge in the least degree, as John Henry "forked out" his cash. The fact was that there had been a big strike on this road, for some weeks, and all the through trains were anywhere from two to twelve hours late, all along the line. This, as a matter of fact, brought them through the magnificent scenery at night-time, instead of during day-time. They saw the mountains by the reflected lights from the train!

Another item which possibly the Chicago ticket agent could not have known was that the Prince and Princess of Wales, now (1933) King and Queen of England, were on their Canadian trip, a portion of their great tour through the British Empire, at the time the Hopkinses were traveling to the Convention. The baggage cars were jammed with torches and such paraphernalia, so that ordinary people's trunks had a slim chance. As a matter of fact the baggage men lost both of their trunks for them, and when they reached Vancouver they had no trunks! They went to the railroad company's excellent Vancouver hotel, and there they had to stay for two full days, while their party for San Francisco went on. They had been thoroughly warned not to become separated from their trunks in Canada, for they would have had any amount of delay and trouble in getting them across the line again into the United States, if they went on without them. So they spent Saturday and Sunday in this dull, Low Church city, trying to pass the time as best they could. Often they went to the baggage room to see if the trunks had turned up. Finally, on Sunday afternoon, they found one of the trunks, with its check torn off, and with sundry other wounds and bruises and defects, all due to the employees of the railroad company and the hysteria aroused in its baggage department by the approach of "Royalty," as one baggage-smasher stated excitedly to them.

Marie was desperate. She finally went to the head officer of the baggage department in the Vancouver station, and asked him this question: "Haven't you somewhere in this big station a room where you keep lost and unclaimed trunks?" "Yes," said the Royalty-intoxicated official. (He might have thought of this by himself, one would conjecture, but for the dazed and rattled condition of the bones which he wore under his hat and which passed for his brain.) And he took her downstairs to an inaccessible room, and there was the other trunk, slumbering peacefully, without tag or check. Marie flew at it with the instinct of ownership and the zest of discovery. She promptly produced her keys and unlocked the trunk, and the bewildered official let her take it away, by the aid of an expressman. They then went to San Francisco, by the next available train.

As John Henry was paying the very reasonable bill of twelve dollars (three dollars apiece a day for two days), he remarked to the hotel clerk, "I honestly think that the Canadian Pacific Railroad Company ought to return us this money, for we have been obliged to stay here because its baggage-men lost our trunks." "Good idea," said the affable clerk. "I will give you a receipt, and if you will take the matter up with the Chicago ticket agent on returning home, the probabilities are that you will hear from the company." This we subsequently did. The delay, however, deprived us of the opening service of the Convention and of a big reception which followed, as well as of some other special features of the two opening days of the Convention.

Some weeks after returning, John Henry managed to get the time to write to the ticket agent about the twelve dollars. The gentleman replied very courteously that there was one question which his superior officers would certainly ask him, and which he could not answer without help, namely: "Would not our passengers have had to pay hotel bills in San Francisco, for those two days, had they not been in Vancouver?" To which rather amazing question John Henry replied as courteously as possible, by return mail, to the effect that "if the gentleman's superior officers were incapable of seeing the difference between twelve dollars' worth of Vancouver and twelve dollars' worth of San Francisco and the Episcopal Church's General Convention, we had better dismiss the whole correspondence at once and consider the subject closed." By return mail the twelve-dollar check arrived, and was duly acknowledged. And then! Then! To what a mild kind of a lark they in-indulged themselves! They went down-town, lunched at Marshall Field's, and paid no attention whatever to the cost of the menu, even including the dessert. Then they went to a matinee, and memory suggests that they took a taxicab back to Ashland Boulevard, though this point is not certain. They also bought some candy as a more lasting memento of this achievement than was the dessert at Marshall Field's.

Being an officer of the Auxiliary at that time, Marie had many especial Church groups to address on her return to Chicago, and on this account also the trip was an exceedingly interesting one for her, as she had never been so far from Vermont before. They had one trip to the coast, in 1921, to attend the last General Convention to which John Henry was a Chicago deputy, at Portland. They did not go to California again, but returned to Chicago at that time by the Canadian Pacific route, having gone to Portland by the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railway.

Epiphany parish had already begun to grow in 1901 in numbers of communicants. Starting with 900, in 1899, the growth registered 1,040, in 1900, and in this General Convention year, 1901, the report was 1,070. John Henry's first confirmation class, presented in 1900, numbered 93 candidates, and the following class was one of 80 members. Thus, despite the continual drain of "Suburbanitis," there were enough confirmed, and enough new families and persons discovered by diligent calling, to make the net increase of the parish 170 in two years.

The Church Sunday school had also grown from the eighth place in the diocese to the fifth, with an enrollment of 312 scholars and Bible class members. The total income had also grown from $17,400 to $18,700 and the extra-parochial and extra-diocesan gifts had grown from about $600 to over $1,200, still retaining, however, the third place in the diocese for gifts to General Missions, and the like.

There were 68 baptisms the last year of Dr. Morrison's Rectorate, and there were 60 during the first and 73 during their second year of work. At least two new organizations had been formed in the parish during these two years, viz., the Guild of St. Barnabas for Nurses, which never was very successful, and the Choir Club for ex-choir boys, which John Henry had organized as a secret society, with its initiation, its degrees, its regalia and password, to hold together the horde of adolescent boys who were continually streaming out of the large choir by reason of change of voice. There was no Acolytes' work at The Church of The Epiphany at that time, except that which one or two Servers attended to, and something had to be done to hold the boys. Marie did not give any time to the boys' work, but did what she could in the women's organizations, especially the Girls' Friendly Society.

Our organist, Professor Francis Hemington, afterwards Dr. Heming-ington, was one of the leading organists of Chicago at that time, as for many years, and he had instituted a series of organ recitals on the first and third Monday evenings of each month, exclusive of Lent, which proved very successful and popular. They were maintained all during these ten years of work at Epiphany, and Marie always went to them with John Henry. They had the privilege of sitting together in the same pew in the church during these delightful programmes. After a while Dr. Hemington asked John Henry if he would be willing to give a ten-minute address at each recital, one being on some phase of music, and the other, each month, being biographical. The organist had a large library of musical biography, and he loaned to John Henry all the necessary books for these addresses. The attendance was usually very gratifying, ranging from 300 upwards, and one fails to recall in any part of Chicago, during thirty-three years or more of residence, any series of organ recitals which were so well attended for so many consecutive years. People came from all parts of the city and suburbs. There was no applause. The recitals were opened with the Lord's Prayer and a Collect, and closed with a prayer which John Henry composed for this purpose, and with the Benediction. There was an offering for the expenses, which included the heating and lighting of the large church, and the printing of the programmes, and some tip for Charlie Van Order, the sexton. There was no admission fee, of course.

The prayer which John Henry composed was afterwards copied by some of his Chicago friends, and used elsewhere at musical services and recitals. It was as follows:

"O Almighty God, Whose Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, was born amid the songs of Angels, and before Whose Throne on High the ransomed Saints make music with their harps; We bless Thy Holy Name for the manifold beauty wherewith Thou hast filled Thy world. And we humbly beseech Thee, so to assist us by Thy Grace, that our lives may show forth the beauty of holiness and righteousness, all our days, to the Glory of Thy Holy Name: Through Jesus Christ, our Lord."

Since Epiphany's fine organ was built, nearly forty years ago, great advances have been made in the improvement of the electrical action for large pipe organs. Therefore there are many instruments in Chicago now which far surpass in size this pioneer electric organ, and some of them are in the larger Episcopal churches. Yet, as has been said, no series of recitals that the writer is familiar with has surpassed in attendance and in interest, for so many consecutive years, these which Professor Francis Hemington so enthusiastically and artistically provided, year after year, in The Church of The Epiphany. They were continued all during John Henry's Rectorship, and during all those which followed his, until in the changes which took place on the West Side, the Cathedral congregation was merged with Epiphany's, and Dr. Hemington took another organ, the one in the Pilgrim Congregational Church of Oak Park. He and John Henry continued to be fast friends, and they have corresponded with more or less frequency, up to the date of the writing of these memoirs.

Dr. Hemington served as president of the Illinois College of the American Guild of Organists for one year, and he very kindly made it possible, by invitation, for John Henry to join the guild. This was a great favor, for John Henry always had such respect for the professional organists in his parishes that he would never play in their hearing, or would never in the least degree allow their playing to be compared with his simpler playing by anyone. He had a life-long conviction that there is a strict line of demarkation to be followed between the amateur and the professional, and this he insisted always applies to Religion and to Christology as well as to organ-playing and music in general. Amid all the difficulties and incessant labors of their ten years in Epiphany parish, Marie and her husband felt that these organ recitals shone brightly as one of the great joys and privileges of their life.

So these busy years went on, one after another, until 1903, when the next great experience in their life came to these young people. Never before, and never after, until after their retirement, had they had co-incidently the time and the money for a trip abroad. Marie had studied European history avidly, especially in connection with France and England, and John Henry, though there was no history course in the University of Vermont during his studies for the B.A. degree, had yet made history his special form of reading for many of the years following his Ordination, and both of them were eager for a trip to the Old World. The affairs of the parish were in excellent shape, with the continued growth in numbers, and the steady paying off of the debt, made possible in part by the determined keeping down of the overhead expenses. John Henry dispensed with both Curate and secretary, and had no paid assistance at all except the help of the Rev. Dr. Francis J. Hall on the "First Sundays" (that sacred festival with its second Celebration was a steadfast institution that could not be changed without vital wounds), and on great festivals. And he did all of the writing connected with the parish and the parish paper himself, with the exception of occasional helps from Marie and other ladies of the parish in keeping up the entries in the parish register.

By this time he had emancipated himself from the thraldom of the written sermon, after Marie had so generously copied out 500 sermons for his morning use, as already has been chronicled, and the notes which he took into the pulpit sufficed to guide him through this part of his regular work. This, of course, was a great release for as busy a person as Marie, nevertheless she, kept up her fourteen-pages twice a week in her letters to her mother, all through these overwhelmingly busy years of her parochial and Auxiliary life.

So when the Vestry were cautiously approached by their Rector, soon after Easter in 1903, with a proposition to allow him three months' vacation, and to accept a supply while he and his wife went abroad, they gladly and generously acceded, and said that the parish would pay the supplying Priests, which was a deed of large-hearted kindness on their part. The Rector's contract provided one month's vacation, with salary, the parish paying the supply. This year they made it three months, which, to repeat, for a parish of limited resources, was a deed of unusual generosity and kindliness.

So all during the fleeting moments when they were together without some work to talk over or to do, from Easter-tide onwards, the prospective voyagers pored over maps and guide-books, with keen zest.

They decided at the outset that they would manage their own trip. They did not want to be a part of a tourist company. This decision, of course, cost them some money, and also, when it came to hunting up hotels, some time, but they felt that they were right in thus deciding, and the sequel proved them to be correct. They decided to go at once to the continent, and their choice was the "Red Star Line." Their steamer was the Kroonland, and it sailed on Saturday, June 6th, from New York City.

The annual parish meeting was held on the evening of May 11th, that year. By that time the communicant enrollment of the parish had reached its maximum, namely, 1,267. Of these, 827 were women or girls and 440 were men or boys. Five years previous the parish reported 865 communicants. John Henry always counted his communicants most carefully, never reporting any as "communicants" unless he felt sure that each had received the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar at least once during the two previous years. This was the line of demarkation between a "confirmed person," of whom he had found about 1500 in the parish in 1903, and a "communicant" in good standing. It is very strange that there seems to be no exact rule in the Church for defining a "communicant." John Henry made his own rule, based on the canonical statement in the diocese of Chicago that if a confirmed person went more than two years without receiving, any Rector would have a right to question him or her sufficiently, in case of a request for a transfer, before issuing such transfer.

There had been 628 services during the year, of which 140 were Celebrations of the Holy Eucharist. There was no daily Celebration in John Henry's parish life, except sometimes during Lent, until he reached The Church of The Redeemer in 1910. The Church Sunday school and its Bible classes enrolled 401, there being 30 women and 22 men in the Bible classes. Here again there was no distinct rule for counting enrollment, though later on in the history of the diocese that defect was remedied by diocesan action. John Henry's method was the one usually prevailing in colleges in Illinois, and probably elsewhere, namely to count any pupil as enrolled if he or she had attended a majority of sessions during any one of the three terms of the school year. The choir of men and boys numbered seventy, and all were volunteers. They had by this time learned four Lenten cantatas of the Passion.

They finally learned six. They gave Pinafore and other light Operas for their choir encampment, raising out of about $1,200 receipts some $600 or more for the camp expenses. There were twenty departments of work, and in nearly every case their enrollments had increased to a maximum during this year 1902-3.

The Men's Club had 100 members. Three of their sixteen meetings during the year were devoted to Foreign Missions, the members themselves preparing the papers. No other Men's Club in the diocese had done this, at that time. The themes were Africa, China, and Japan. It was the first parish in the diocese to support its own Foreign Missionary, "O. O. M." they called him, and the choir boys' Church school class supported a day school under Fr. Huntington, in the district of Hankow, and corresponded (in English!) with the boys of this school. The Chinese boys, however, wrote in English, and not in Chinese. The 311 pledgers for Missions raised in their special envelopes $1,195 during the year for diocesan missions and assessment, paying $50 more than their pledge for diocesan missions.

"Our Own Missionary" was a Deacon named the Rev. Fu Ta Huan. He lived on less than $185 a year of U. S. money. A dollar in China went very far in those days, and this was not a niggardly salary, as measured by Chinese values in 1903. For twenty years Epiphany parish, despite its name, had given nothing to Foreign Missions, and very little to Domestic Missions, though they had supported diocesan missions as generously as possible. Marie and John Henry led the parish into this enlarged missionary spirit, which never flagged thereafter, even after changes of Rectors and of circumstances had of necessity reduced the amounts of their gifts. The total receipts of the parish for the year May 1, 1902-3, were $18,882. Receipts as follows:

From pew rents, $4,973; from rent of Rectory, $373; from interest on Endowment, $300; from calendar envelopes, $660; from The Mikado (net), $566; from Easter offering, $3,631; from money borrowed (for the new steam heating plant in the church, chapel, and parish house), $4,160; Sunday offerings, $2,010; from diocesan missions fund, $475; from special offering for repairs, in October, 1902, $655; from the Christmas offering of 1902, $621. The net total, excluding the loan of $4,600, was $14,282.

These figures belong in this biography only as an index to the scale of money matters which Marie and John Henry had at Epiphany Church. She was always deeply interested in financial matters, and John Henry's steadfast adherence to the principle of never running a parish into heavy debt was largely owing to her counsel, and to her dislike and dread of debt, which he also shared.

One new venture which she started and largely organized before going abroad, in planning for the year 1903-4, was "the Parish Lecture Course," which she advised the women of the parish to substitute for the laborious bazaar so common in parish life. She herself organized a group of forty-three "patronesses" who should take two course-tickets apiece for the six lectures at $3.00 for the course, and thus gave the new enterprise a good "send-off" before the fall commenced. The course of programmes, one each month commencing with October, was as follows: "London from the Top of an Omnibus," by the Rev. Charles Scadding, with slides; Marie's lecture on "Mary Stuart"; the Rev. Dr. James S. Stone on "The Mountains of Switzerland"; Dr. D. R. Brower (our Junior Warden) on "A Trip to The West Indies," with slides; a musicale; and John Henry's "Shakespeare's Country," with readings from Shakespeare by our very able Lay Reader, George M. Krebs. These lectures were all given at Illinois Hall, on West Madison street, and Marie's on "Mary Stuart" was an hour-and-a-half in length, with an intermission for music. She never missed a word, during that entire time, and her review of English history and Church history incorporated into the fabric of this remarkable lecture was thrillingly complete and splendidly done. The hall was filled, and the evening was a notable one in every way. She spoke from only a few notes, and her dramatic summary of poor Mary's life and of Elizabeth's doings was something that all deeply enjoyed.

It is impossible to resist a digression here. About a year after this lecture was given in the parish course, Marie was invited to give it at an Auxiliary rally in a small town of the diocese, where the Church has had a mission for many years. There was to be a big turkey dinner, and all the farmers round about were to come. The Town Hall was to be rented, and all in all it was to be a "big" occasion, the net proceeds going to Auxiliary work. Marie was very fond of these smaller groups of her faithful and interested women, and she and John Henry sallied forth for this affair with high hearts and lively interest.

As they drew near to the Town Hall they saw an unusually large number of equipages drawn up around the Roman Catholic Church of the village. And inquiries casually made developed the startling fact that all the Roman Catholics were coming to the turkey dinner after Mass, it being the Patronal Festival of their congregation! Imagine Marie's consternation at learning this unexpected item, for her lecture was throughout an indictment of the Roman plots against Elizabeth and of the whole Roman Catholic effort to dominate English Christianity, for centuries! She had draped this age-long struggle around the biographies of Mary and Elizabeth, much to the disadvantage of the Roman brethren. And here she was, with her carefully prepared notes all in hand, and only a half-hour to spend before the lecture should begin!

Many speakers would have simply quailed before such a tangle. But not she. She shut herself up in a little room for a half-hour or so, and came out smiling with an entirely different handling of Mary and Elizabeth, which did not arouse the enmity of the Romanists, and yet did not blink the historic facts, and all in all gave a delightful review of this great period of English history. As a platform achievement this certainly was something unusual. When it was all over, and she was preparing to go back to Chicago, after a very successful day in this village community, Marie told her chief hostess what she had done, in the sudden emergency, and said lady had intelligence enough to be very much amazed, as well as delighted.

At this time there were nearly thirty parish organizations, large or small, meeting regularly once a week or once a month, or, as in the case of a few only, at less frequent intervals. Just before the European trip began, John Henry, at Marie's suggestion, organized an "annual day" for the women workers of the parish. There were women exclusively or largely at work in seventeen of these thirty or so groups. The first of these annual days was May 14th, a Thursday, and about fifty women attended. The parish was composed of hard-working people, and nearly all the women were doing their own house-work, or were engaged in earning money somehow. So one could not expect a large week-day attendance at any date that was not a holiday. These seventeen organizations were as follows: the Woman's Auxiliary; the Choir-mothers; the Communicants' Reminders' Committee; the Epiphany Guild; the Girls' Friendly Society; the Junior Auxiliary; the King's Daughters; the Parish Paper Committee; the Guild of St. Barnabas for Nurses; the Visiting Committee; the Altar Guild; the Church Periodical Club; the Woman's Guild; the treasurer of the Diocesan Missions' Fund; the Week-day Organists; the Women's Bible Class; the Church Sunday school. The total number of women enrolled in these groups, exclusive of the Bible class and the Church Sunday school, was 190. Marie belonged to many of these organizations, and was the teacher of the Bible class. For some time she was the secretary (i.e., the presiding and executive officer like a president) of the Girls' Friendly Society, and it then numbered nearly one hundred. And the 190 women worked so hard, in spite of their limited means; that only one parish in the diocese raised more money than they did, in 1902-3, and that was Grace Church, Chicago, one of the wealthiest and largest parishes. Grace Church's women raised about $6,000, and' Epiphany's women raised about $3,000. Much of this sum was raised by Marie's direction or direct effort. She was always recognized as a leader by the women of all the parishes where she and John Henry worked.

The Diocesan Auxiliary that year (1902-3, Marie's third) reached a total of $23,000 in money and in the valuation of missionary boxes. It is said this was their largest annual total up to that time.

So the young Rector and his wife felt that they were leaving their work, both parochial and diocesan, in good shape, while they took their first long vacation, and started on this much-anticipated trip to Europe and the British Isles. The Rev. F. J. Bate, the Rev. W. R. Cross, and the Rev. George W. Farrar took charge of the parish, one month each, during this absence of three months. The itinerary of the trip was published in the Epiphany, as the parish paper was called, and it included some fifty cities and towns, in France, Belgium, Switzerland, a little of Germany, and six weeks in England, Ireland, and Scotland. Spending a week or more in both Paris and London, and in one or two other places spending more than one day, they nevertheless made "one night stands" for the most part, and their diary is filled with brief but pithy entries. What they enjoyed most Would be hard to tell. They were spared from illness, except that Marie was a little seasick, and John Henry almost succumbed while they crossed the English Channel from Calais to Dover. They drank only water, as was their life-long wont, and they found no difficulty about this, even in Europe.

Their planned itinerary, which they followed almost exactly, was as follows: Saturday, June 6th, sailed from New York on the Kroonland, arriving at Antwerp. Thence to Brussels and Waterloo; Cologne, up the Rhine to Coblenz; through the Black Forest to Schaffhausen; Zurig, Lake Zug, Mt. Rigi and Lucerne; Brunig Pass to Giessbach; Interlaken, Berne, and Freibourg (the great organ in that Cathedral), Lausanne, Martigny, Chamounix, and Mt. Blanc; Geneva, and the long day-ride from Geneva to Paris; one week at Paris, and then to Canterbury via the Dover Straits; London for one week; Hursley, Salisbury, Exeter, Clovelly, Glastonbury, Wells, Oxford, Stratford-on-Avon, Warwick, and Kenilworth, Chester, Leeds, Northern Wales, Ireland, Dublin, Glasgow, Oban, Iona, The Trossachs, Edinburgh, Lindisfarne, Durham, York, Haworth, Lincoln, Peterboro, Cambridge, Rotterdam, The Hague, Antwerp, and then sailing on the Zeeland on August 22nd, for New York. Three days with Marie's parents at Burlington, Vermont, and then to Chicago on September 4th. For some years after this comprehensive and most interesting and varied trip, Marie would listen while John Henry read the diary of the trip, day after day, during June, July, and August. So many different events and experiences were crowded into these three vivid months, that it would be impossible to chronicle them all. A few stand out, however, for their especial features. One was at London.

Before sailing, John Henry had written to the Bishop of London (who is still living in 1933), whose books and example he has always most heartily admired among all the British Bishops, and he had introduced himself, referring to his grandfather, who had been the Bishop of Vermont and Presiding Bishop of the American Church, and to the position of Marie in the Auxiliary. He had asked three questions: (a) Would the Bishop of London be preaching anywhere in London on the Sunday of their visit; (b) Would there be any great missionary meetings during their week in London; and (c) if this is the kind of letter that the Bishop has time to read and to answer, could he please send a line to them at Paris. On arriving at Paris, they found a polite note from the Bishop's Chaplain, saying that the Bishop would not be preaching in London at that time, and that there were no more large missionary meetings at that time of the year but that the Bishop would be happy to have the tourists lunch with him at Fulham Palace on the Saturday, July 11th. This unexpected invitation to be such luncheon guests filled them with delight, and they of course accepted at once.

The drive to Fulham was a long one from their boarding place near the British Museum (at Mrs. Penny's, where they had been introduced by Bishop Fawcett, of Quincy, Illinois), and they arrived a little before the appointed hour.

The Bishop greeted them most cordially, and asked them to walk around in his rose garden until luncheon time. The English custom of avoiding all introductions embarrassed them not a little, but several of the thirty guests relieved them by introducing themselves to Marie, if not to John Henry. Among these was Bishop Talbot, who chatted with John Henry about the editor of The Churchman, Silas McBee. There were two girls in their early twenties who confided to John Henry that they were American girls who had cultivated a little of the English accent, and were palming themselves off as English girls! Then, at luncheon time the Bishop placed Marie at his right hand, and next to her there was a British admiral, who chatted with her delightfully, and asked her if she knew Admiral Dewey. Dewey having been from Montpelier, in her own Vermont, there was much ice broken at once, and her neighbor said that he had met Dewey at Manila. Marie afterwards found out that he was Admiral Chichester, who had curbed the insolence of the German navy officers at Manila, when they tried to pick a quarrel with Dewey. This was all in all a most interesting experience.

Years afterwards, at Richmond, Virginia, in 1907, the Bishop of London was the guest of the General Convention, and the great scholar and theologian, the Rev. Dr. Francis J. Hall of Chicago, John Henry's helper at Epiphany, who was the American correspondent of The Church Times at that time (the great English Church paper, with the largest circulation of any religious publication in England), asked John Henry to write up the American visit of the Bishop of London for The Church Times. This was done with all the verve and pictorial description of which John Henry was capable, and it took the form of three letters to the Times. Every detail of this notable visit that could be found by diligent search was narrated, and this was the only opportunity that John Henry ever had of repaying, at least in a very small degree, that unexpected and most gracious hospitality which Marie and he so heartily enjoyed that Saturday in July, fourteen years before.

Another unexpected incident was one which took place at Leeds. John Henry had been most eager to hear one of the fine organ recitals on Leeds' great Town Hall organ, by W. T. Best, the distinguished organist. These recitals were mentioned in their Baedecker's, and their disappointment on arriving in Leeds was keen when it was discovered, what the guide-book had not mentioned, namely, that in August these weekly recitals were omitted, it being the vacation season. Whether or not this omission was a piece of shrewd cooperation with the Leeds hotels on the part of the publishers of Baedecker's England (the vacation season being, of course, the tourist season, when organ music lovers from far and near would like to hear Dr. Best play on this grand instrument), we do not profess to know. What we do know is that there the big instrument stood, in the open City Hall, silent and closed as these two tourists arrived.

So John Henry went to work. He tackled the "cop" on the outside of the hall, and asked him the name of "the inside man of the inside wheel" that ran the City Hall. He was given the name of a butcher, whose market was on the street-front of the very hotel where they had taken rooms. So back to the hotel was the next step. Then there ensued a rather unique conversation.

John Henry: "Good Morning, Mr. Blank. May I please ask if you are the gentleman who has the charge of the keys of the City Hall organ?"

Butcher: "Yes, I am. But Dr. Best is away on his vacation, and there are no recitals until his return in September."

J. H.: "Now Mr. Blank, I have come four thousand miles to hear this grand organ. It is one of the celebrated instruments in the world, as of course you know better than I do. I am an organist, and have played in one of the largest Episcopal churches in New York City. I wonder if you could not kindly let me open the console, and look over the wonderful instrument for a few minutes. I assure you that I will not hurt it in the least degree, and I will tell my friends in Chicago, where I live, how unusually kind and considerate you will have been to allow me this very great privilege."

Butcher: "Are you sure that you will not hurt it?"

J. H.: Absolutely sure, Mr. Blank. I know enough about large organs not to try any experiments with stops and couplers and registers with which I may not be familiar."

Butcher: "Well, you may try it, but be very sure that you do not hurt it at all."

J. H.: "Thank you most heartily, Mr. Blank. I shall not forget your great kindness."

And the next event Was to post back to the Town Hall, hot-footed, and there to interview the aforesaid "cop" with a hand-shake that included a good-sized English coin. The grin that resulted, and the orders to the engineer to turn on the power, were the final steps in this progress, which landed John Henry on the organ bench, and opened to his gaze five ranks of keys and an innumerable number of stops and couplers. He pulled out what he recognized, and for a half-hour filled that Town Hall with as much music as he could recall without practice, and most heartily did he enjoy his brief introduction to a very great organ. People came in, as they heard the sounds, and quite a little audience sat through the informal musicale. Marie said that she enjoyed it. Then, as John Henry hastened back to the butcher, to express his thanks again, he found said official with his ear glued to the telephone, and the very much relieved accents of the butcher-voice sang a message of comfort as Mr. Butcher heard the engineer say that "he didn't hurt the organ at all."

Quite different, however, were some of the experiences which they found at the hands of some other British officials. They went to Westminster Abbey several times, but always found the "Jerusalem Chamber" closed. Finally Marie braced up to the uniformed guard who stood outside the closed door, and said, "We have come four thousand miles to see the Jerusalem Chamber, among other London sights, and it is always closed. Could you please tell us why?"

Guard: "For reasons. Madam. Reasons!" (Curtain falls!)

Chicagoesque loyalty to the American Railroad found expression in England in several ways. First, by constant amusement at the English ways of running a railroad. (We will say "we" from now on, for a change.)

We did not so much wonder at the English custom of taking up one's ticket as one leaves the train, nor did we complain of the custom of always walking, driving, or being on the left, instead of on the right. Nor did they find us very much nonplussed by the small compartments in the coaches. But when it came to changing cars, we objected indeed, for there seemed to be no system, anywhere we went, concerning giving the passengers notice that certain ones should change at the next station. Three American men were in the compartment one day, and they decided that at the next station they would all go out onto the platform and sniff the air. And if it had a certain smell, they would change at the next station, and if the perfume of the station was nil or different, they would stay close to their train. They said that it was as infallible a rule as any that they had found!

We give this item of our trip in connection with the visit to Leeds, because in the hotel dining room at Leeds the only other guest (and it was a large room) was an American traveling man. We invited him to our table, and we all discussed English railroads, galore. His story was the best we had heard by that time. He was in London, and was to take a 9 a.m. train for some suburb about twenty miles from the Victoria Station. He went to the immense station early, but could not find anyone who would tell him where to find his train. As 9 a.m. approached he was desperate, and finally accosted a trainman who came running towards him. "Where is Train No. Blank, for So-and-So?" begged the distracted American. "I wish you'd tell me," responded his friend, "I am a guard on that train and I can't find it!"

All the same, the English railways run fast trains, and the prices of tickets are not high, and the stations are well kept.

At Clovelly, the most unique town of our tour, we stayed in a fisherman's cottage, as the husband was at sea, and his wife had an extra room. Our next point was Wells, and the trip was to take fully a half-day by stage-coach and train. Our hostess commiserated with us on the long and wearying journey that would soon begin. This unexpected bit of unwelcome sympathy was a little too much for our Chicago lady, whose home-town is the greatest railroad center in the world, and she remarked, rather didactically, "Well, in our part of the world there are trains which run for a whole week at a time, with bath-rooms and barber shops and dining cars and reading rooms and sleeping rooms, so that the passengers are well supplied indeed." The Lady from Chicago expected several "Ohs" and "Ahs" and "Dear Me's" and other ejaculations of overwhelmed surprise from the wife of the Devonshire fisherman. Not a bit of it came. "Humph," she retorted, "I should think you would need all those things if you had to travel so long on one train!" (Curtain fell.) We departed meekly for Wells.

As a matter of fact we did not keep exactly to the itinerary above given. We did not go to Holland, but stayed so long in the British Isles that we went at once from England to Antwerp, to catch our return steamer for home. The night was rather rough, and our little boat responded liberally to the suggestions of the various North Sea billows. I myself frankly succumbed, before the night was passed, and the cabin echoed with the loud groans of other and more stalwart men, who likewise caved in. There were some soprano parts to this chorus, also, though Marie stoutly refrained from such vocal comments on her own condition and experience. The amazing thing about it all was that when breakfast-call came, and we had been in calm waters for some time, there filed into the dining hall a long row of freshly-shaven, smiling-faced men and calm-souled women, all eager to discuss the ample menu served to this army of recent groaners and shrillers! Recovery was certainly rapid.

Cologne Cathedral is one of the great fanes which had figured intimately in the school and college life of us both. This majestic and historic pile was the theme of Marie's valedictory oration, when she graduated in 1880 from the Burlington high school, with the most tremendous marks--e.g., for one whole term, she received 99 and three-tenths plus as a mark! When I somehow was awarded the place of "last speaker" at the exhibition of my U. V. M. class (1883) during our sophomore year, at the Burlington College Street Congregational Church (Marie's oration was delivered in the "White Street" or Winooski Avenue Congregational Church, modestly called in later years by its large congregation "the First Church") I deliberately chose the same subject, "Cologne Cathedral," as my theme. Marie always said that I stole it from her, which was probably true, though I barely knew who she was at the time of her high school graduation. So we looked forward with keenest interest, on this trip, to our visit to Cologne, that "town of monks and bones, and pavements fanged with hideous stones, and hags and rags and filthy wenches," where Coleridge also says that he "counted two and seventy stenches, all well defined and genuine stinks."

Our train arrived in the early evening and our hotel was near the great Cathedral. I will never forget the impression I received when, backing up against a lamp-post close to the enormous West Towers, I looked up to the Cross surmounting the tower next to me. It seemed miles high. It is, as all know, one of the loftiest pairs of towers in all Europe.

Our night's rest was seriously interfered with by the barking and groaning of a loud-lunged dog, very near our window. I scratched off a load of dust from my German conversation achievements of college days, and tried to remonstrate with the bell-boy about the vocalization of "der Hund," but all to no avail. We were lulled to slumber by the sharp and solid message of said "Hund," but early the next morning we were awakened by the sound of a fine pipe organ in the adjoining church, where good people were already celebrating the 6 a.m. Mass, with music. We found, by the way, in Antwerp Cathedral, a full chorus at the earliest Mass on the Week day when we awoke to the far-famed and gentle music of the great carillon in that Cathedral. In a moment of what we hope was unusual mental decay even for me, I ventured in Antwerp, to say that I knew then why they called it "Bel (l)-gium"!

After sufficient breakfast we sallied forth for further vision of the Cologne Cathedral, and were amply rewarded. Our Puritan consciences were somewhat shocked, however, by learning that the expenses were met in part by an immense lottery!

From Cologne we went up the Rhine, in an all-day trip, which was one of the most dreamy and fascinating experiences of our entire tour. Romance and history, castles and armies, Caesar and Napoleon and Bismarck, Beethoven and everyone else in German music, legends and myths and modern diplomacy, Wagner and Siegfried and the Franco-Prussian War, and all the rest, mingled with our memories and our guide book's data to fill that day to the brim with real tourists' joy.

Two Americans opposite to us at dinner, in the cabin below, found themselves really in a dangerous mood when the menu served butter as dessert! And there was one German couple, young and friendly, who spent several hours, not in looking at the scenery, but in compounding a most elaborate drink, with just the proper amount of ice and spice and various proportions of wines and liquors.

We finally reached "Bingen on the Rhine," where we spent the night. I eagerly searched the town for some Pond's Extract, in vain. I might as well have searched the public library for a copy of the Declaration of Independence, or of Washington's Farewell Address to His Officers. For somehow Marie had developed a blackness over one eye, and we wanted Pond's help. We got something else, but by the time we had reached Strasbourg the blackness was still there in almost full force. At these little German hotels they did not have an honest American register on the office counter, but they sent up to our room, on our arrival, a slip of paper, for us to sign. One line was to indicate our "Station," that is our social position. One would suppose that this meant the nobility, the military, or something else. Well, of course, being free-born American citizens (though the nation had not at that time extended to women the franchise), we were the equals of any "nobility" in Germany, or Patagonia, or anywhere else. But we could not quite bring ourselves to say this, even if we knew how to do it gracefully in German, which I certainly did not know. So we left that part of our slip blank, as we proudly registered from "Chicago, U. S. A." (We never added "Illinois." There is only one Chicago in this world, or any other!) We had to spend parts of three days in Strasbourg, on account of our laundry. This dislocated our itinerary schedule a little at the outset, but we couldn't help it. When, therefore, our bill came in on the following Monday, the hotel clerk, having seen Marie's black eye, directly assumed that we belonged to the "nobility," as that is in some countries the "noble" way to treat women who need encouragement in the way of righteousness. So the bill was made out to "Herr Hopkins, Hoch Wohl-Gebornen." We let it go at that.

We spent Sunday, of course, in this old city, and we tried Church-going. There was an English Mission, which held services in some public hall, like one of our Court Houses, and of all the poverty-stricken misconceptions of how worship ought to be held, this service, led by that poor English Low Church Missionary, took the palm! We got over it as best we could, and then tried the great Roman Catholic Cathedral in the afternoon. It was crowded, mostly with women, and there was an enormous procession of clergy and choristers, or Acolytes, filling the immense chancel. The very minute, however, that the service began, a corps of lusty Vergers, as we would call them, each armed with a staff which he struck loudly on the stone pavement as he entered each row of chairs, sallied forth from somewhere to collect the offerings. Prayers or chants or whatnot might be going on from the crowd in the chancel, but the assiduous Vergers never flagged. They kept up their stamping and collecting during nearly the entire time that we stayed. We hope they garnered a rich harvest. At any rate, they did not sell lottery tickets, as someone must do to support Cologne Cathedral, if our informants were correct. And yet there are infatuated folk who want us Anglicans to ape the religious customs of Rome!

Marie had for years been deeply devoted to Charlotte and Emily Bronte, among her favorite authors. So of course, when in England, we went to Haworth. It was a pilgrimage of reverence and affection. How those brilliant women could have done their remarkable work amid such dreary surroundings is one of the amazing achievements of literature. Perhaps they actually grew to love the drab and dingy atmosphere of the moors.

I well remember once, years after this trip, when we had taken a return trip to Chicago from the Pacific Coast, via Canada, that we passed through some of the tree-less cities which stand out stark and hideous on the Canadian prairie. Soon after our return we were dining with two young parishioners in Chicago who had lived in a tree-less city out there for a while. I happened to make some remark about the miserable sight which a tree-less town must be, and my host bridled up in an instant. I saw my mistake. They had grown fond of tree-less places! I have learned also from my 700 weddings that people can be fond of almost any kind of a looking object, or subject, if they really want to be thus ensnared and attached. So it may be that Emily and Charlotte grew fond of the country round about Haworth. As for me, I was glad enough when we could flee.

We noticed in the ancient parish register an account of a Vestry meeting in the Haworth parish, many decades ago, when it was voted that the clergyman should not, with the consent of the Vestry, get drunk on Easter Day. On second thought I am not quite certain whether it was the cleric or the Vestry who were not to appear at church drunk on Easter Day. It was somebody, however. This went to show me that people who had to live in Haworth simply had to do something to liven up on the great festivals, since they lived within sight of the awful moors. Nevertheless, ours was a dramatic pilgrimage, and we were glad to have made it. Marie wrote a most charming booklet about Emily Bronte, not long after our return home. She sold it, and gave the proceeds to Miss Thackara's noble and difficult hospital work among the Navajo Indians of our West.

In London we boarded, as we have said, at Miss Penny's boarding house near the British Museum. No one could get into this unique yet typical English boarding house without an introduction. We found there twenty or less boarding people, most of them elderly ladies with nice lace caps, who gossiped to their hearts' content about the Queen, and the awful doings of some of the nobility. We decided then and there that this is one great advantage of having an "aristocracy," namely, that it gives the old ladies an endless theme for gossip.

These fellow boarders were much interested in the two astonishing young Americans who came from that unpronounceable city called Chicago. "How do you pronounce it?" they would frequently ask: "Chick-kawgo, or Shickawgo, or Shickahgo, or how?" Marie was always a loyal Chicagoan, and after a while her spirits rose to the challenge of the be-capped old ladies. One day while we were sight-seeing, she happened to catch sight of a bus with the name "Wormwood Scrubbs" written on it in large script. She bided her time until the next occasion at table when the old ladies began again to wrestle with the pronunciation of Chicago. Then Marie opened up her machine-gun, and said, "It is a funny name isn't it! But I found one the other day in London which seems to me to be even funnier." "Why, how impossible! What was it, pray?" And then with her fullest accent, she burst forth "Wormwood Scrubbs/" "Oh! You must be mistaken, my dear. We have never heard of such a name in London. Are you sure that you read it correctly? There certainly is some mistake," etc., etc. Marie stoutly maintained her ground, and the old ladies eventually found that she was right. "Wormwood Scrubbs" is the place where the army have their target practice, far out on the outskirts of London. After that we had no more trouble about pronouncing Chicago.

One of Marie's most compelling and beautiful lectures, which she often gave, even after our retirement, was on "Torfreda," the wife of "Hereward the Wake." This brought into the lecture the thrilling story of the conquest of the island by William the Conqueror in 1066, and the story of the battle of Hastings and the description of the fen country around Ely Cathedral and Lincoln, the monks of the fens, and all that graphic section of English history. So we had intense interest in our visit to Ely and to Lincoln, and in our journey through the fen country. The "Lincoln Imp" fascinated us so much that we bought two or three reproductions of his thoroughbred impertinence, and they still are ornaments, door-knobs, etc., in our home on Grand Isle, Vermont.

We had an amusing experience in the little cafe outside the grounds of the Lincoln Cathedral. Two Americans sat near us, and we simply could not avoid hearing some of their conversation. The gentleman asked the waitress to bring him some fresh fruit. She brought him a dish of stewed prunes. He controlled himself well, but stated very frankly that he had ordered fresh fruit. "Why, they were stewed this morning, sir!" We left him still gasping.

Our experience at Oxford, where we revelled in the atmosphere of the wonderful place, was notable for an extraordinary discovery made by myself. I recalled that a clergyman named Clark had been brought to St. James's, Chicago, by our Rector, Dr. Tomkins, during the second summer of the Chicago part of this biography. Fr. Clark came from the diocese of Oxford, and after two years in Chicago, viz., 1892 to 1894, he returned to the diocese of Oxford. Marie didn't feel rested enough on the evening of their Oxford visit to do any sightseeing, so I intrepidly went out snooping around alone, to see what I could see. I drifted into a large library, and at once got hold of the big English book which gives the brief sketches of the clergy in England. I thought that I might find the address of Fr. Clark, by searching in this book. I could not recall the Priest's full name or all his initials, and when I struck the list of "Clarks" I found it a very long one. About to give it up as a hopeless job, it occurred to me to sweep my eye along the list until I caught the word "Chicago." A half-hour gave me no such clue, for the name "Chicago" did not occur in the entire list of "Clarks." Finally the thought struck me that I would look closer. I found a Clark whose biographical sketch omitted entirely two whole years. These years were 1892 to 1894. These were the exact years in which the Clark I was seeking was at work in Chicago. I at once gambled on the very amusing possibility that the Rev. whatever-his-name-was Clark had been so ashamed of his American experience that he had not been willing to speak of it in his "Crockford" notes! This turned out to be the fact as the correspondence which followed eventually disclosed! This was the most entertaining bit of sleuthing that fell to my personal lot for some years. The Priest in question was in charge of a small parish in the diocese of Oxford.

I cannot of course go into many of the details of this delightful trip. All American tourists follow somewhat similar itineraries, though no two see the same Europe, of course. Perhaps we may close this imperfect sketch with one or two more rather unusual items, as they occur to the chronicler.

One was the trip to Iona. Marie had for some years been deeply interested in all the historical data which show that the Catholic Church of England was not papal in origin, and therefore did not commit schism at the solemn time of Henry the Eighth. This of course involved careful study of the Celtic Church of the organization of Church life in the British Isles, as we call them, before 596, when the monk Augustine came to England at the behest of the Pope, and found the Catholic Church already there. Iona's life in those early ages of the Primitive Church was of course very prominent and vital.

We took the little steamer from the mainland, one Saturday morning. For an amply long time, during the trip, we were exposed to the full swell of the Atlantic Ocean, but we finally landed at the Sacred Isle of Iona on schedule time. A Celtic Cross is among the mementos of this very interesting trip. There is also a small replica of the great font at St. Martin's, Canterbury, in which King Ethelbert was baptized by Celtic missionary effort, about A. D. 596.

At that time we were reading Westward Ho, by Charles Kingsley, and that remarkable story includes a vivid description, as all lovers of English literature know, of the Spanish Armada and its overthrow. As we neared our destination on the return trip from Iona, I was busily reading in this book the very chapter which spoke of the Spanish ships that were sunk along the coast-line of the British Isles, and of the large amounts of gold and other treasures which some of them contained. I looked up, as the steamer neared a landing, and saw a steam dredge at work near the wharf. The men on the dredge were digging for gold sunk in a Spanish vessel of the Armada! This brought Kingsley's great historical novel pretty well up to date. We did not have time or opportunity to find out whether any gold was discovered by the dredgers or not, however.

We might easily fill many more pages with data from this varied and interesting tour, for we traveled with our eyes very wide open, and we covered, at least superficially, a large amount of territory during our three months' absence. The time rapidly drew near, however, when we had to turn our faces homeward, and we were not sorry.

Before we leave this brief sketch of it all, nevertheless, we must set down a few data about our scurrying excursion to Ireland. My able and distinguished grandfather, John Henry Hopkins, "the Great," from whom I was named, was born in Dublin, and therefore to Dublin we went, from North Wales. The trip was a rough one, and Marie almost had the gratification of welcoming her boastful husband to her sea-sick side, before the rolling ceased and Dublin appeared on the inviting horizon. We stopped at a fairly good hotel, where the maids were nevertheless one of the most avaricious sets of hand-extenders that we encountered along the road. We reached the hotel in the latter part of the afternoon, and had decided to stay all that night, and the following day and night before leaving for Belfast.

After dinner we started out on a street car ride. The King and Queen had but lately visited Dublin, and the populace were all stirred up about it, for there was turbulent hatred of England in Dublin at that time, as at many other times. The streets were filled that evening with a motley crowd of young people, and our recollection of them as a mass was that they were the most pitiful, sore eyed, undersized lot of miserable-looking youths and maidens that we had ever seen. The city stank of stale alcoholic drink, and drinking seemed universal. We took a street car to ride out to Phoenix Park, though it was the edge of the evening. An oldish man, quite drunk, was on the platform of the tram, as we stepped aboard. He made some fuss, and the young conductor ejected him from the car. He picked himself up, white with rage and fury, and started to run after the car, swearing murder and everything else akin as he ran. Of course he was distanced as the speed increased, but he ran till he was far behind, shaking his fists and yelling vengeance at the quite calm conductor, who seemed to think it a matter so common as to be scarcely worthy of notice.

The next morning we went to Dean Swift's Cathedral, for Matins, at 10 a.m. The young organist gave a very attractive accompaniment of the chanted Psalter, and I lingered around after service, as was my wont under similar circumstances during our Cathedral visits, to thank the organist for his music. The young fellow, very much pleased, said that the organ had lately been rebuilt at large expense by Lord Iveigh (spelling doubtful). He was asked who Lord Iveigh was, and, much surprised at the ignorance even of tourists, said, "Why Guiness, the Brewer of Ale, of course." And then he went on to tell us the name of the big distiller of whiskey who had given a like large sum quite recently to renovate the other Cathedral of Dublin. They have two Cathedrals there, somehow, for the Church of England, or the Irish non-Roman Church. Later on I was telling this amazing story that afternoon on a street car, when the conductor of the car interrupted me and said, "Yes, Sir, and the big beer magnate of Dublin has lately refitted up the large Presbyterian Church, too." So, what with ale, whiskey, and beer kings, the religious life of Dublin seems to be pretty well in the hands of those who do not believe in Prohibition. We never in any other city saw so many young women, at 10 a.m. or thereabouts, sitting on the curb-stones of the dirty streets, suckling their babies, and drinking either the goods of the religious ale-man, or whiskey-man or beer-man.

We simply "skedaddled" out of Dublin by the first available train, on the following morning. Before we left, however, I openly invented, in sheer self-defense, a barrage against the avarice of the domestics of the hotel. Fortunately I had given notice at the desk the night before, that I wanted, please, to be called at 6:45 a.m. so that we might have ample time to dress, pack, and breakfast before leaving to catch our 9 a.m. train for Belfast. Of course the clerk forgot all about it, and the faithful alarm clock saved us the loss of the day. As I went to pay my bill, on the way to the carriage for the station, I saw this long line of hungry hand-extenders filing up between the office and the door. So I began my "sermon." I announced as my text that "In America, if a clerk forgot to call a guest, that hotel was disgraced and apologetic." I spoke with unwonted deliberation for me, going step by step towards the door and the carriage, as I preached, passing by the lined-up army of hungry palmists with not even side-glances, as I continued my harangue, which did not reach its peroration until Marie and I were safely seated in the carriage, and the door thereof was closed with the climaxing word of said finale! Of course I had feed already the only waiters and others who had done anything for us, and I found that this "sermon along the hall-way" was quite a valuable investment, under similar circumstances. This was not infrequently the case, and almost always the combination of the request for being called at a definite hour, the utter failure of the clerk to ring the call, and the consequent sermon from this text, commencing when the receipt for the hotel bill was being placed in my faithful pocket book, and ending when Marie and I entered our carriage for the railroad station, worked like a charm. Of course we always feed those who deserved it, but the hungry horde who had done nothing for it got nothing but this very valuable sermon, which was delivered without any accompanying circulation of the offertory plate.

And so our rapid and eventful trip came to an end, as we neared Antwerp again, and boarded the Zeeland, companion boat of the Kroonland, for the return voyage. What a difference there is in the whole air and bearing of tourists on their return trip, especially if they have just completed their first tour in the old countries! Outgoing, they are filled with zest, and, at times, with something akin to a form of humility, as they frankly are asking questions. Asking questions is a sign, often, of a certain phase of humility. Those who "know it all" don't have to ask questions and if they don't "know it all," they will not even ask questions if they are too proud to acknowledge their need of information.

But on the return trip, even the humble-minded "know it all." They have seen the sights, and each one has had, of course, the most remarkable and successful tour ever planned or enjoyed by anybody, least of all by any of the fellow passengers. Consequently the return trip on the ocean is apt to be a bit of a bore, whereas the outward trip from the Statue of Liberty is usually a keen delight, always excepting, of course, the experience which keeps people in bed, or leaning over the rail of the ship for the nonce. Ours was unusually boresome at table, for a while, for we were seated near a spoiled girl of twenty-something, and her indulgent parents. All three, especially the girl, found no end of fault with the menu at every meal, even when it was a good one, as it nearly always was. They would discuss the horrible character of dish after dish, in vocalization which was heard far beyond us, their unfortunate table-mates, until anything that the rest of us ventured to order would simply reek with the maledictions of the three: Pa, Ma, and the girl. Enjoyable meals under such circumstances were rare, until one morning since we both had stood this thing about as long as we thought that Scripture commanded I opened up and began. The three growlers (who lived in Philadelphia, as it happened) turned out to be such mere amateurs at food-condemnation, as I loudly proceeded to fling out adjective after adjective, regardless of all the laws of rhetoric, about the indescribable menu (which, as a matter of fact, was very good), that the three Philadelphians actually saw the point, and we had no trouble after that about comments on the menus.

The voyage was enlivened a little for our tourists, who were always such devotees of music, by the companionship of a very gifted youth of nineteen or so, who had such a command of music that he could sit at the piano and play the exact combination of chords and overtones and resultant discords sung by the famous carillon of the Antwerp Cathedral. This was really a musical feat, but it was at least fifteen years ahead of those awful days which followed the War, when even great orchestras were compelled by the degenerate to grunt and growl, screech and yell, whine and snarl in anything and everything but the established harmonies of the preceding two thousand years, and this, too, in the name of "progress" and "modern music." The jangling overtones of the Antwerp bells were as orthodox as "Home, Sweet Home," in comparison with this dreadful post-War cacophony which the galleries usually applauded, and the "up-to-date" always affected. This sensitive youth of the Zeeland passenger list really loved music. He would never enter the dancing hall when the orchestra was playing, for he said frankly that it was desecration of music to dance to it.

Marie enjoyed the return voyage, excepting for one very stormy day and night, with zest, for she had developed a pair of "sea legs," to some extent, and so was not indisposed much of the time, in spite of her delicate digestion.

One day I began a rule of work, on this return voyage, which marked a definite change in my method of sermon-writing. And the change continued during all the rest of my active ministry as Rector. Every parish Priest knows that among the heaviest burdens, so far as brain-work or--to be more modest--head-work is concerned, the weekly sermons are in the front rank. It is quite doubtful if it was ever intended that the parochial clergy should try to preach twice or three times every week, largely to the same people as a matter of course. This custom is one of the inheritances from the Protestant Reformation (?) of the sixteenth century, and we are beginning to learn that the wiseacres of that exceedingly impassioned and head-strong movement did not have a monopoly of all the wisdom of the ages. Nevertheless, as Church life is constituted today, the people expect, as a rule, that their Rectors shall preach every Sunday morning and evening, and shall usually give an address or a class-instruction or something on that order, at at least one week-day service besides. This is a heavy enough burden in the quiet of a small parish, or a small city where not so much is expected, besides, from a Rector, and where the population is not so continually on the move as in the great cities. But in a place like Chicago, and especially the West Side of Chicago, where the pressure was insistent and relentless, and where no two successive congregations, in a large parish, had the same people in attendance, the burden of selecting a sermon theme, and of preparing the message therefrom, was almost an impossible one at times for a busy parish Priest.

One day I sat down in the ship's saloon, on this return trip, and selected my sermon themes for every sermon up to the following January 1st, and wrote out the heads thereof, and selected the illustrations and composed the perorations for them all. I followed the Christian Year pretty closely, and took the texts from either the Eucha-ristic Scriptures or the Lessons at Matins and Evensong for the Sundays involved. When I returned to an unusually busy fall, in the parish, I found such immense relief, due to this preliminary work done on the ocean, that I resolved to continue it as part of my summer work every year. After January 1, 1904, when my list prepared on the voyage homeward was exhausted, I found that the task of returning to the hand-to-mouth schedule of all my previous years was if anything intensified. So this resolution never to be again without all of my sermon-outlines for the whole ensuing time up to the next vacation was clinched by the difficulties which flooded me after that January 1st. As the subsequent years came and went, I found this habit so easy and so helpful, that I often prepared enough at my Grand Isle desk to make much further work on most of the sermons unnecessary in Chicago. Many a time I would find it unnecessary during the last decade or so of my active ministry to spend more than a half-hour or an hour at my desk during the entire week, in preparing the Sunday morning sermons, and these were the years when Marie said that I did my best preaching. This new departure began on the return trip from our European tour in 1903.

One more change in habit resulted from this trip. Usually I had been accustomed to drink one cup of moderately brewed coffee at breakfast, for a good many years. Marie never touched tea or coffee at any time, during her entire life. The pressure of work at The Church of The Epiphany was severe, and I very often awoke in the mornings with a heavy and tired feeling that was not promising, and might really become ominous. I could not tell how much of this would be due to work and how much to coffee, unless I stopped the coffee. And all our friends said that it would take three days to stop, and that the three days would be accompanied with splitting headaches so that I would be not only useless, but might become dangerous. I therefore went for some years without finding a group of three days when it made no difference to anyone what I did or where I was, as long as I kept out of sight and fellowship. The three days came to me, however, at the home of Marie's parents, 96 Colchester Avenue, Burlington, Vermont, as Marie and I spent a little time with her home-people, after arriving from this tour. Dear "Merum," as everybody near her always called Marie's mother, affectionately, made excellent Postum, and I fearlessly drank a cup or two at breakfast instead of my mild coffee. I then fled to the furthest corner in the Billings Library of my Alma Mater, the University of Vermont, near the Graves's home, and there I stayed until the time for luncheon. True, the headache came on at 9 a.m., and gave me ample companionship until noon. Then it stopped, short, and never returned! Thus did I emancipate myself from the thraldom of coffee for breakfast, and I took my place by Marie's abstemious side, so that ever afterwards it made no difference to us where we breakfasted. We could get along admirably on some crackers and fruit, or on either alone, if necessary. In our missionary travels later, around the Fifth Province (then called the "Fifth Department," with true Protestant Episcopalian caution in the avoidance of real ecclesiastical terminology), this freedom from bondage to coffee at breakfast was a definite advantage.

This might be called the pinnacle of the climax of our altogether delightful summer's trip, and we hied ourselves back to the Great West Side of big, growing Chicago with the utmost zest and eagerness for the renewal of our work in the diocese and the parish.

Project Canterbury