“‘We have had enough of action and of motion we,
Tossed to starboard, tossed to larboard, when the surge
was seething free,
And the wallowing monster spouted his foam fountain on the sea;
Let us swear an oath, and keep it with an equal mind;
In this hollow Lotus land to live and lie reclined
(Here where the Queen of Clubs so royally we’ve dined),
On the hills, like gods together, careless of mankind.’
“And now, gentlemen, let me give--
“‘Evermore thanks, the exchequer of the poor.’”
Then President Schurman of Cornell welcomed the Dean on behalf of the
universities. He was followed by Dr. MacArthur, who made a fine speech
and paid a splendid tribute to the guest of the evening. Mr. Brooks was
the next speaker. Dr. Greer raised many a laugh by his witty remarks.
Dean Hole’s first lecture in America was in Calvary Baptist Church,
Fifty-seventh Street, New York. Notwithstanding that the rain came down
in torrents, the great church was crowded. The Rev. Dr. Morgan Dix
introduced the speaker. The good Dean entertained his audience fairly
well, but was a disappointment to many, due largely, I thought, to his
bad advisers. He had been told that the more he amused American
audiences and made them laugh, the better satisfied they would be. It is
often a misfortune to a clergyman to be a wit. There were on the
platform and in the audience people as learned as the one who addressed
them. In his Rochester congregation he had been accustomed to addressing
a different audience--an audience that he must talk down to. It took him
only a short time to discover that in America the pews are as high as
the pulpit, and he gave his audiences a scholarly and delightful
entertainment. His popularity increased to the end of his tour.
He did not come to America for gain. All his earnings on the tour were
applied to the restoration of an arch in the tower of the Rochester
Cathedral, where the good Dean is fond of showing his Yankee visitors
his American lecture proceeds.
It was Mrs. Pond’s and my privilege, during our visit to England in the
summer of 1897, to be guests for three days at the Deanery. During our
stay a garden party was given in our honor by the Dean and Mrs. Hole. We
were shown on the place over a thousand varieties of roses, and we
thought they must certainly be the very choicest in all the world; but
the morning of the day of the garden party, a number of wagons and carts
came driving in, loaded with banks and boxes of roses from various
persons whom the Dean said were his disciples. They were displayed in a
large basement room of the Deanery, and we were invited to view them.
The great room was filled with tables on which the roses were displayed.
It was certainly the most beautiful floral display that we ever saw, and
the Dean assured us that nothing could be more perfect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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