19 JUNE 1915, Page 15

LONGS AND SHORTS.

[To sae Herron or see "Bram:mm."1

Sin,—In the amusing paper in the last Spectator on "Longs and Shorts " there are some good instances of fine language, but for sheer grandeur they are first attempts as compared with the perfection some clergymen have arrived at in the use of words. I may give as one instance that of a preacher who improved on Peter's crude "I go °fishing" by saying that "the disciples now returned to their piscatorial pursuit.." In another sermon, which I heard myself, addressed to a scanty evening congregation, a date was fixed by the statement that the event in question happened so many months or years before or after "the deified Augustus was received into the sensuous if select circles of Olympus." And as a specimen of parsonic correspondence in mid-Victorian times, I may add that in a letter received by friends of mine after a death in the family, their clergyman explained that "as a delegate of the skies it was his mission to offer consolation to the afilicted." I think these outpourings would be bad to