A Sporting Parson

1902

Miss Mary Louise Boyle, who counted Dickens, Lever, Browning, Lowell and Tennyson among her friends, records in her "Book" a story about a sporting parson she knew, the Rev. Loraine Smith, who hunted in purple instead of pink because the former was the correct episcopal color:

"His reverence was always well mounted and was a keen sportsman. He had a pretty living and a good church in the neighborhood, but he surprised his parishioners very much by altering the whole disposition of the tombstones. He thought they looked awkward and untidy in their actual position, so he had them all taken up and rearranged according to his fancy in lines, crosses, squares, etc. One Sunday morning, a very cold winter's day, he had performed the service to a scanty congregation, and on going up into his pulpit, instead of opening his sermon book, he pronounced the following address: 'My dear friends, you require it I will preach you the sermon which I have brought with me, but if you are as cold and hungry as I am I think you will prefer going with me to the rectory, where you will find some cold beef and some good ale.'"