20 JANUARY 1950, Page 5

I am reminded that Charles Haddon Spurgeon, to whom I

made some reference last week, was not Dr. That is true ; I followed a mention elsewhere unthinkingly. In compensation let me tell a story about two persons who were. One was an LL.D., and he naturally registered himself in the passenger-list as Dr. So-and-so. On the second day out he was urgently requested (the ship's doctor being presumably in an epileptic fit or something similar) to attend a young lady who had sprained an ankle. This was no case for disclaiming qualifications, so he followed the steward to the lady's stateroom at speed—to find that he had been beaten on the post by a Doctor of Divinity.

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