“Referring to Mr. Spurgeon on this subject of ‘charging to hear a sermon,’ where ‘the managers charged a shilling to hear him preach,’ and he remarked that ‘if he had known it he never would have preached,’ I will ask you to kindly explain the difference between charging a shilling and doing as I have on two different occasions when I went with some friends to hear Mr. Spurgeon. By putting money in a box at the side door I was allowed to go in and get seats, and I always found that a good-sized congregation was accommodated in this way by ‘paying what they liked,’ before the main doors were opened to the general public. “If this is not charging an admission, I want to know what it is. I certainly could not have got a comfortable seat unless I complied with this custom. “I am, yours very truly, “J. B. POND, “Manager of Henry Ward Beecher’s Lectures.” * * * * * [Illustration: RT. REV. HENRY C. POTTER] BISHOP HENRY C. POTTER of New York is the one clergyman of all that I know whom I most wish was a lyceum lecturer. It seems as though he is about the only one of his class of great and lovable clergymen that has been spared to us, now that Chapin, Beecher, and Phillips Brooks have passed away. He is ever going about doing good, and is as much at home and as well appreciated among the very poorest people as among those in the very highest station of life. He is recognized by all who meet him on the street, and something kind is said as he passes by. If he would only be a lecturer! Thousands would pay to see and hear him, because they would know that they were to have something worth while in return for what they gave. There is no great function, public or private, that he is not one of the first to be invited. He marries sons and daughters of the millionaires, and the poorest people as well, and all along the intermediate classes. In the Episcopalian families no name is more generally known, respected and loved. The bishop is one of our very best public speakers. His addresses under all conditions abound with wit, humor and pathos, and sound sense. It is the simplicity, modesty, and real manliness of his make up that causes him to be just what he is and what he cannot help being. In every sense that the word implies, to every one who knows the meaning of the word, he is a _man_. He told me of an incident that occurred as he was passing along Fourth Avenue. Some urchins were playing in the street, and he overheard one of them say: “There goes the Bish. He’s no chump.” I would rather have that eulogy from that urchin than from any statesman I know of.