LANSDOWNE, EDGBASTON, Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, MY DEAR BISHOP, Mrs. Carpenter, at the end of her very kind letter says, "Can Mr. Shorthouse tell the bishop a few of the most important Birmingham worthies?" I am not sure whether is meant past or present worthies. The past would take a lot of thought and writing, and the present would imply a very inodorous task, which I would rather not attempt, but a few thoughts occur to me which, while not mentioning names, seem to indicate some phases of Birmingham life which, I think, are not without use in the present day. Birmingham was a free town, not a corporation, and outside the "Five Mile Act," and in the days of the Restoration a sort of Cave of Adullam. Anyone might come in and set up in business, or Religion, or anything else. This accounts for the great preponderance of Dissent which has always obtained: although it is worthy of remark that the rector of St. Martin's (the parish church), at the Restoration, was John Ryland, a Cavalier parson of the best type; a man of such a character that these chief of Dissenters, together with the rest of the people, never spoke of him except as "that Holy man." It is a remarkable thing that this "freedom of the City" has continued to the present day. Scarcely a single man who occupies an important position was born in the City. I do not think that any one of the Members of Parliament was born in Birmingham. I am not sure of Mr. Dixon. But what I want to arrive at is the statement of what seems to me to be a continuation of the best form of the FEUDAL SYSTEM which, to my certain knowledge, after an experience on my own part of nearly fifty years, and on the part of my family of more than 150, of the manufacturers of Birmingham-a close and friendly relationship between the master and his best workmen. This did not imply any nonsense of Socialism, or any interference on the part of the workman, but a thorough recognition of the relative value of the position as master and servant, and a firm response to the duties of responsibility on both sides. I am far from claiming this characteristic as peculiar to Birmingham; I have no doubt that it existed, and still exists, in Yorkshire and other great manufacturing centres. I am sure that it exists in Birmingham at the present day : but the establishment of Limited Liability companies naturally tends to do away with this feeling, and I seem to feel that such a thought as this, put in your inimitable way and words, would not be without use in an address to Birmingham men in their town hall. I remember when I was a boy, just in business, seeing a distinguished manufacturer, a man who lived in a beautiful country house in a little park-there were such places within two or three miles of the centre of Birmingham fifty years ago-sitting on one side of the old-fashioned carved mantelpiece of his office with an old workman (not a manager but a foreman in his working dress) on the other side over a friendly cup of tea, engaged in important and interesting discussion on manufacturing matters, and whenever a workman, old or young, displayed any industry or any talent, he did not miss his reward. I know that the same sort of thing is going on now; but not, I fear, to such a universal extent. I cannot close this letter, seeing that you are to be guest of Mr. Chamberlain, without saying that I am very much impressed by the unquestionable and striking success of the great idea and scheme which he originated for the advancement of Birmingham to the rank of a county metropolis, and the consequent improvement and advantage of all its inhabitants. Coming as this does from a perfectly impartial source, from one not at all prejudiced in favour of Mr. Chamberlain, it may be of some value, and at any rate it will end my letter, as I began it, in recognition of the work of Birmingham people who were not born in the city. We shall only have a few days' holiday in Yours very affectionately and admiringly, Mr. Shorthouse delighted in hearing good stories, and he had a way of turning them over in his mind, and then presenting them to his friends in a form edited and embellished by himself. I remember well how he came down. one morning at Ripon, and rehearsed with great delight his own adorned version of a tale I had told him the previous night. His genuine enjoyment of things beautiful and things humorous gave a charm to his visits he had none of that timid conventionality which lives in a perpetual panic lest it should by accident lose its correct pose. He understood that in this life God had given us all things to enjoy, and he rejoiced in all the play of nature in its beauty and in its mirthfulness. All that was base and unworthy was outside the circle in which he lived. His spirit was citadelled, like the New Jerusalem; without there might be dogs, but within there were the lovely, joyous and laughable things in which men's hearts could take delight. This happy spirit remained with him, I believe, to the last. I saw him on what was practically his deathbed: he was worn with his long illness-he was painfully emaciated, and I feared that he might be unequal to any conversation. My first instinct was to leave as soon as I could; but I was soon undeceived. His mental vigour and clearness were remarkable he entered into discussion of many points with his old eagerness and quaint originality. I spoke of his little parable of the playing cards, and he told me that a poem containing the same idea had been sent him from America. We spoke of other matters, still deeper and diviner, and the happy, childlike spirit of trust breathed through his utterances. When I left him I knew that I had seen him for the last time, and it was, and has been ever since, a joy to look back and recall the joyousness of one who lived as though the upper atmospheres of life were as real as the lower, and were those with which his soul had the nearest affinity. MY HOURS OF SICKNESS Do you know what it is to be smitten with an illness which brings no pain, but just powerlessness? When you take up a book, and its weight is too much for your inert hands? When you begin to read, and the weary brain cannot take in a single idea, and the words and letters seem a concatenation of senseless symbols? When you can only lie still, and all power of reaction is faint? When you are too feeble to be other than content, but yet are conscious that days are monotonous and uninteresting? When you easily become the victim of some familiar tune which tyrannously repeats itself to your inner hearing? When you wonder whether any happy distraction could deliver your brain from the reiteration of impish ghostly sounds? When everything seems to have come to a standstill: when the hopes that the time of illness may, by its enforced leisure, give you time for reading, are proved to be vain? When the blood forsakes the brain, and the indifference which comes from weakness reigns supreme over the low and stagnant life? I have known such days-prolonged into weeks-when sleep refused to refresh my nights or thought my days: when my wife would read to me night after night for hours at a time, till I heard in her voice that much-needed |