Johnson chuckled with the satisfaction of a man who has hit the mark, and the conversation became general. The Archdeacon tried to interest our hostess in the Revised Version, but she did not know the aorist from the paulo-post-futurum. She skilfully played a spade, and introduced gardening: but he did not know a pelargonium from a potentilla. Then she led a small club, and brought in the Girls’ Friendly Society Annual Meeting, and he followed suit. Some one mentioned the Bishop, and though not much could be said about the local Diocesan in the Archdeacon’s presence--for as you would not abuse a man’s eye to the owner, so you should not abuse the owner to the eye--yet it led to talk about bishops generally, and we became anecdotical, as we ate our gooseberry tart. At that date men told stories of S. Wilberforce, and Magee: Stubbs and Temple were not yet in all men’s mouths. Most of the stories were familiar, but we enjoyed them as old friends, and in the telling of them, and in the subsequent discussion, curious light was thrown on the gradual accretion and expansion to which such legends are subject. In the case of one well-known story we were able to trace the aboriginal myth: “Bishop Magee was at a meeting of bishops, discussing the rubrical words ‘Before the table.’ He wrote on a bit of paper, and passed it to a colleague: “‘Before the table’ means ‘at the north end of the table.’ Qu.: was ‘the piper that played before Moses’ standing at the north end of Moses?” And this is the complete legend, many years younger. The Bishop of Peterborough was standing on a railway platform in Northamptonshire, waiting for a train, when he was accosted by a prominent Evangelical clergyman in his diocese, who was much exercised about the question of the “Eastern Position.” “My Lord,” said the latter, “the case is perfectly clear: when the rubric says ‘Before the table’ it means standing ‘at the north end of the table.’” “I see,” replied the Bishop, meditatively; “in my country we have a saying, ‘By the piper that played before Moses’: hitherto I have always supposed that the piper stood in front of Moses: now I see that he stood at the north end of Moses. Here is my train: good morning.” The stories of Wilberforce were equally familiar, and all went to illustrate what we may call his diplomatic talent. One came from private sources, and may perhaps be recorded here. A man fresh from the Oxford diocese told it: There was a great function of some sort in a church near Oxford, and many clergy had assembled to meet the Bishop, and were using the schoolroom as a vestry. Five minutes before service time the Rector came in great trouble to Wilberforce: the clergy had been specially requested to bring their surplices, but Mr. A. and Mr. B. had come with black gowns, and the effect would be ruined: would the Bishop speak to them? “My dear Mr. X., leave them to me,” was the only reply.