Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 August 1892 — Preliminary to Ute Baptism. [ARTICLE]

Preliminary to Ute Baptism.

Bishop Goe, of Melbourne, who has been visiting Deeming in prison and endeavoring to offer spiritual consolation to the condemned man, was for a number of years rector of St. George’s, Bloomsbury. No one will be surprised to learn that, although he gave the bishop a quiet hearing, Deeming was “quite unmoved.” Dr. Goe’s interview with the criminal recalls a good story of his lordship’s earlier years, says the Pall Mall Gazette. When he was a curate a famous pugilist in the parish, who went by the name of Jim the Slugger, and who had never darkened a church door, called at the parsonage, asking him to baptize the baby. Accordingly the bishop repaired to Jim’s house, but was surprised on being admitted to see Jim lock the door and pocket the key. “Be you the parson come to sprinkle my kid?” he asked. On the bishop assenting he continued; “Yer can’t sprinkle that kid till you and me has had a fight, parson ” The unfortunate parson protested, but finding p.-otest useless, “stood up” to Jim. The battle went for the bishop, and Jim pulling himself from the floor muttered, “He’s the parson for me." The baptism was proceeded with, and, as the story goes, Jim took to church-going from that day.