ABSENT-MINDEDNESS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR, I am sorry to demolish a good story, and that which Mr. Harington relates is a good one, and has delighted many hearers and readers both in India and in England. Unfor- tunately, it is untrue. When visiting Peshawar twenty years ago, I went to the cemetery for the purpose of verifying it with my own eyes. The text, engraved in three languages on the marble tombstone of the unhappy missionary who was shot, as the inscription states, by his own watchman, is not " Well done, good and faithful servant," but " I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." I found, however, that in the cemetery register the contemporary chaplain had added to the bare record of the missionary's interment the words which were commonly supposed to stand in such droll sequence above his grave. As I have destroyed one story which would well illustrate absence of mind, or rather, lack of humour, may I offer another, for the truth of which I cam vouch ? A worthy clergyman of my acquaintance, having been presented to an important living, preached his first sermon from the words, "All that ever came before Me are- thieves and robbers." He was surprised and distressed when the churchwardens afterwards hinted to him that his choice of a text had been hard upon his predecessors.—I am,
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