The real Palm Branch was most welcome, with its special blessing: it is behind me as I write, and many happy thoughts and messages does it bring. God bless you for your most kind thought. I intend to forward it in due time to Gerald Rendall (late head of Harrow, then Fellow of Trin. Coll., Cambridge, now Principal of University College, Liverpool), as my share in furnishing his new home: he was married this vacation. The students, male and female, will be glad to see what a real Palm Branch is like. Your gift of last year is now in the valued keeping of Mrs. Edward Bradby, whose husband was a master of Harrow in your day, and, after fifteen years of hard and successful work at Haileybury, has taken up his abode at St. Katherine's Dock House, Tower Hill, with wife and children, to live among the poor and brighten their dull existence with music and pictures and dancing; besides inviting them, in times of real necessity, to dine with himself and his wife, in batches of eight and ten. I look forward to the _Review_[1] with great interest. {22} I show it to the Medical Gentlemen here, read what I can, and then forward it to my sister at Harrow for friends there. I try to realise the old chapel on the beach, in which the branches were consecrated,[2] but fail utterly to do so. _Whereabouts is it_? I suppose you have a chapel in the house also, for invalids, &c., in bad weather. God bless you all: Lady Bute and the children, especially the maiden who is working at Greek.[3] Ever your grateful J. S. From John Smith's _quasi_-parental care, Bute passed in due time into the house of Mr. Westcott (afterwards Bishop of Durham), who occupied "Moretons," on the top of West Hill (now in the possession of Mr. M. C. Kemp). The future bishop, with all his attainments, had not the reputation of a very successful teacher in class, nor of a good disciplinarian; but as a house-master he had many admirable qualities, and was greatly beloved by his pupils. For him also Bute preserved a warm and lifelong sentiment of regard and gratitude; and to him, as to John Smith, he was accustomed to send every Easter a blessed palm from his private chapel, which Dr. Westcott preserved carefully in his own chapel at Auckland Castle. "See that the Bishop of Durham gets his palm," were Lord Bute's whispered words as he was lying stricken by his last illness in the Holy Week of 1900. The tribute of affectionate {23} remembrance had been an annual one for more than thirty years. [Sidenote: 1863, School friendships]