The building of the church of St. John the Divine, at Fairfield, greatly interested me, and during my holidays I was taken up to the top of the tower to lay the first stone of the steeple. When the church was consecrated in 1854, Bishop Graham, of Chester, lunched at the "Hollies," my father being the chairman of the Building Committee. After spending two years at a dame's school at Kensington, I was sent to the upper school of the Liverpool Collegiate. I was placed in the preparatory school, under the Rev. Mr. Hiley. From the preparatory school I proceeded to the sixth class. My career was by no means distinguished; four times a day I walked up and down from Edge Lane to school. My companions were Tom and Hugh Glynn; they, like myself, made but little headway. Dr. T. Glynn is now one of the leaders of our medical profession, and a short time ago I asked him how it was that we as boys were so stupid. He replied that our walk of eight miles a day exhausted all our physical and mental energies, and we were left good for nothing; and I might add we had in those days little or no relaxation in the shape of games. There was a little cricket in the summer, but this was the only game ever played, so that our school-days were days of unrelieved mental and physical work, which entirely overtaxed our strength. The Rev. J. S. Howson, the principal of the Collegiate, was very much beloved by the boys. I was a very small boy, but not too small for the principal to notice and address to him a few kindly words; in after life, when he became Dean of Chester, he did not forget me. His sympathy and love for boys and his power of entering into their feelings made him a very popular head-master.