‘By a moving coincidence,’ he wrote, ‘the eve of my ordination has coincided with the twenty-sixth birthday of my old and dear friend Augustus Carp of Angela Gardens. And yet perhaps old is scarcely the right word, for mature as he is, he is now in the full flower of his southern metropolitan Xtian manhood. Nor have I ever seen him looking so large as when he came to see me at 2.35 to receive the hand-painted tooth-brush, with which I had promised to present him, and to give me his benediction for the morrow. Fully a stone heavier than this time last year, his moustache has become noticeably more abundant, and his every movement possesses the weight and gravity of a man twenty years his senior. Admirable as was his diction, too, even as a boy, it has now attained a level of sonorous grandeur, from which it never lapses in even the most trivial pronouncements imposed upon him by necessary human intercourse. Is it surprising, therefore, that I daily thank P,[12] for so noble and inspiring an example?’ Footnote 12: Providence. [Illustration: _The Rev Simeon Whey from a photograph in my possession_ ] Dear Simeon, loyal and appreciative, for many a long year hadst thou been trying to get ordained, but now thou hadst succeeded, and well do I remember thy first sermon at St. Sepulchre’s, Balham. Cast thy bread, thou preachedst, upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days—and mark, thou didst say, it is not demanded of us to cast our jewels or financial securities. No, no, thou saidst, it was well recognized that the former would sink and the latter become unintelligible, whereas bread was nutriment for the fishes of the deep, and in due course would return to our tables. Moreover bread was cheap, thou didst say, and even the poorest of us was sometimes tempted to waste his bread, and for him there was a message—kck—in these beautiful words to place his bread, as it were, out at interest. Let us all then take heed, thou saidst, never to waste our bread but to collect it earnestly with both hands, and whenever we saw any water, yea no matter how little, to cast it upon it in faith fearing not. And then it would return to us, if not in the form of fish, then in some other form which we wotted not of. For what was bred in the bone could never be cast down, nay, not until seventy times seven. Good Simeon, such was thy first sermon, and I doubt if thou hast ever preached a better. Little as we dreamt it, however, Providence was now hurrying towards me with the heaviest cross of my adult life, a cross so heavy that even now I cannot help shuddering at its weight, and one that compelled me not only to retire from business but to remove from Camberwell to Stoke Newington. Nor was it less bitter in that the instrument of deposit was a young and exceptionally attractive female, with whom I had been brought into contact in the course of my work for the Anti-Dramatic and Saltatory Union.