I asked him to name to me his favourite books. Offhand he said: “The Bible first, naturally. And I’m very fond of George Borrow’s ‘The Bible in Spain.’ I admire Borrow’s persistence until he sold a Testament in Finisterre. ‘L’Avengro’ and ‘Romany Rye’ are splendid, too. I’m very fond of Kipling’s ‘Kim.’ Then I greatly care for the lives of men of action. Autobiography is my favourite form of reading. The ‘Life of Chinese Gordon’—the ‘Life of Lord Lawrence’—the ‘Life of Havelock.’ You see there is a strong strain of the Anglo-Indian in my make-up. My family have been much concerned with colonial administration in India. The story of Outram I delight in. He was everything that is unselfish and active—and a first-class sportsman. Boswell’s ‘Johnson’ is a great favourite of mine. I take keen pleasure in Froude’s ‘Seamen of the 16th Century.’ In the lighter vein I read every one of W. W. Jacob’s stories. Mark Twain is a great man. What hasn’t he added to the world! “Then there is ‘Anson’s Voyages.’ It’s a capital book. He describes how he lugged off two hundred and ten old Greenwich pensioners to sail his ships, though they frantically fled in every direction to avoid being impressed into the service. All of them died, and he lost all of his ships but the one in which he fought and conquered a Spanish galleon after a most desperate battle. “I used to have over my desk the words of Chinese Gordon: ‘To love myself last; To do the will of God,’ and the rest of his creed. “The only man whose picture is in my Bible is the Rev. Jeremiah Horrox, a farmer’s son. He was the first to observe the transit of Venus. That was in 1640. The picture shows him watching the phenomenon through the telescope. It inspired me to think what a poor lonely clergyman could accomplish. He and men like him stick to their jobs—that’s what I like. “I have in my Bible the words of Pershing to the American Expeditionary Force in France in 1917—the passage beginning ‘Hardship will be your lot.’” I was privileged to look into that Bible. It is the Twentieth Century New Testament This he likes, he says, because the vernacular is clear, and sheds light on disputed passages which are not clear in other versions. “I care more for clearness than anything else,” he declared. “When I read to the fishermen I want them to understand every word. But I have often read from this version to sophisticated congregations in the United States and had persons afterwards ask me what it was. Many passages are positively incorrect in the King James Version. For instance, the eighth chapter of Isaiah, which is the first lesson for Christmas morning, is misleading in the Authorized Version.”