Such was our Rector. Not reverent or discreet, you will say, in his capacity of priest. No, but a kindly, genial old man; devoted to his parishioners, if not to his duties; clever too, and companionable in society, and inexhaustible to the boys of the parish in the matter of marbles and gingerbread. It is with affection that I recall him, for, in spite of his eccentricities, and perhaps because of them, I loved him well.—_R.I.P._ Echoes from an Organ Loft “Pale fingers moved upon the keys, The ghost hands of past centuries.” From Joseph’s flageolet to one of the finest organs in England—from the scene of “our Rector’s” ministrations to a building that could have swallowed up his church and his school room and all the house property in his parish—was a startling transition for a boy of fourteen. I wonder how often, during my first experience of a cathedral service, my thoughts travelled back to the tiny hamlet in the west, with its ruined chancel on which the Atlantic had spent its rage, and its few cottages straggling on and up behind an avenue of elms, to where the new church, safe in a sheltered paradise of its own, looks down compassionately upon the wreckage of the past. In times to come I got to know every nook and corner of the great organ loft at K. It was built in those large minded days before architects had conceived the fatal idea of economising space. Ascending by a broad staircase that rose with the dignity of an inclined plane, you came out upon a plateau, roomier and more comfortable than many a London flat. The sanctum of the organist—indeed, the huge instrument itself—were little more than incidents of the loft. There was a chamber for the wife of the dean, and another chamber for the wife of the organist, together with a library for the Church music; and still there was room in it for blind man’s buff—when the choristers could get the chance. The organ itself might have been a mile away—so little did you hear of it. In this respect the loft resembled the deck of a battleship, where the men who work the guns hear least of the explosion. Only a few muttered growls from the big pipes that lined the walls on either side, or burrowed in the caverns underneath, suggested the proximity of sound. The crash of the full organ was delivered at a point far above your head, somewhere among the shadowy outlines of the roof. The space allotted to the dean’s wife on the other side of the organ was less comfortable than ours, but far more interesting. The floor outside her enclosure was broken by yawning chasms to give the great pipes breathing room; and though they were of wood, and spoke, as wooden pipes should speak, in hollow muffled tones, they must, I fancy, have confused her devotions and raised a small hurricane about the nape of her neck.