Mr. George Ord, who was a delightful _raconteur_ as well as a learned naturalist, took great pleasure in relating a story of his friend Dr. Abercrombie, a fellow-member of the society. Dr. James Abercrombie, sometime rector of Christ and St. Peter’s Churches, was a divine of the old school, who despised not the good things of this lower world while engaged in preparation for those of the higher. Once, while on a pastoral visit to the small town of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, where an Episcopal church had been established, Dr. Abercrombie was regaled with some very fine old Madeira wine, which he drank with evident appreciation, and probably some surprise at finding anything so choice in that region of the country. The next day, according to Mr. Ord’s story, the good parson chose for his text that most appropriate verse from the Acts of the Apostles, in which St. Paul says, “And the barbarous people showed us no little kindness.” Another clerical member of the learned fraternity was William White, one of our early American bishops, who was an ardent patriot and a genial companion, as well as the most devout of churchmen. A warm friend of Benjamin West, the artist, Bishop White was fond of telling how he helped West to secure his bride, Miss Betty Shewell. Mr. West was in England, and so busy painting for the court and royal family that he could not come over to America to marry his _fiancée_; but, as his father was about to sail for England, he wrote to Miss Shewell, begging her to join his father, and make the voyage with him. Miss Shewell’s brother, who was averse to the match, chiefly because West was an impecunious genius, put a stop to the proceedings by confining the fair bride-elect in an upper room. Bishop White, then a very young man, Dr. Franklin, and Mr. Francis Hopkinson determined to help on the “course of true love” by facilitating Miss Shewell’s escape to the ship, which was waiting for her at Chester. This they did by means of a romantic rope-ladder and a carriage around the corner. Miss Shewell with her maid reached the ship in good time, and a few weeks after was married to Benjamin West in the English chapel of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. In telling this story, the kindly bishop was wont to add, gleefully, “Ben was a good fellow, and deserved a good wife, and I would do the same thing over again to-day,”--a sentiment, we may be sure, that was greeted with applause by the gravest of the philosophers, they being no exception to the rule that “all the world loves a lover.” An active member of the society, and for years one of its counsellors, Bishop White was present on all important occasions, grave or gay. Having known General Washington and the other great men of the Revolution, and met and conversed with Samuel Johnson while in England, his was one of the few familiar faces that greeted the Marquis de Lafayette when he revisited America in 1824.