Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 August 1881 — Brown’s Benelice. [ARTICLE]

Brown’s Benelice.

It is some years now since an old clergyman died—we forget liis name, bnt Brown will do—of whom a story was told which even then seemed incredible; it would seem more so now. Mr. Brown had been in the army, and, finding his occupation gone after Waterloo, gladly accepted an offer of a fat living down in Cornwall. “You needn’t reside, you know,” his friend, the patron, said, “ you can get a curate to do the work for £BO a year or so, and you can live about town on the rest. ” There was a little difficulty about procuring ordination, but 11. it. H. the Duke of York overcame that. He gave the candidate a note to take to the Bishop of Cork: “ Dear Cork—Ordain Brown. Yours, York.” In a few days Mr. Brown presented himself before the comman-der-in-chief with a note: “Dear York— Brown’s ordained. Yours, Cork.” The thing was done. Brown went down to Cornwall, read himself in, and returned to London. He lived some fifty years more, and never visited his benefice again ! When such things were, we need not wonder that a Bishop of Llandaff could reside permanently on the banks of Windermere, never visiting his diocese. But happily the absentee is an impossibility in these better days, and the mere sportiug parson is a rara avis. | London Society.

Egg socials, at which the young men are expected to shell out, are popular all ova the West.