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WAS born in Dublin, the 30th of October, 1850. My father was the Rev. Marcus Rainsford, at that time chaplain of the Hospital for the Blind in Dublin. The chaplain attached to a hospital like that was often the center of quite an important ministry; the hospital was almost subordinate. My father was a preacher from the very beginning; he had drawn about him quite a large congregation in Dublin. He was a man of remarkable power then; he was about thirty years old when I was born. My mother was the daughter of a clergyman who was appointed to the living of Dungarvan, in the South of Ireland, by his father, who was, I believe, Bishop of Meath. This is interesting because my great-grandfather was Fox's one episcopal appointment. He was at Eton with Fox, and Fox died in his house in Mayfair. He stuck to Fox through thick and thin; and there has always been a tradition that my great-grandfather had a great deal to do with bringing out what was best in Fox. I noticed in Trevelyan's "Life of Fox" the pleasantest sort of a letter about him.

An ancestor of my father's had been one of Cromwell's right-hand men in Ireland, and in the rearrangement of things had come in possession of a large estate, the last remnant of which had become heavily encumbered when my father was a young man, and he had volunteered to pay his father's debts, which, as you understand, under English law he need not have done. Therefore, during the early years of my life, my father and mother struggled with very real poverty.

Later he left his work in Dublin to become Vicar of Dundalk, a town in the northeast of Ireland, and to become chaplain to the Earl of Roden, a great friend of my father's; and there, in the old red brick vicarage, we children grew up eight of us. My father and mother at

Copyright, 1903, by the Outlook Company. All rights reserved.

I.

that time had certainly not $1,500 a year to bring us all up on-to school us and everything else. I remember my dear mother, who was a very strong little woman, used to get up at six o'clock every morning to look after her flowers in the garden; a large part of our clothes she made with her own hand; anything very nice we had to eat she cooked herself; she was the soul of brightness; and everything I am I owe largely to her. She suddenly broke down when she was about forty-eight with rheumatic gout-from over-straining-and the last years of her life were spent in blinding torture. She died at sixty-seven, worn out with agony-nearly twenty years of intense suffering. I have never seen in all my ministry pain so persistent and so agonizing.

In Dundalk all my brothers and sisters were born. In England we could not have lived as refined a life as we did in Ireland, on the small amount my father had. Very nice people would come and stay with us. We did not entertain many visitors, but still we did entertain some charming people; and there was in those days a very high tone in the best society in Ireland. There were no country gentry to speak of in the town of Dundalk, and so our housevery simple and plain as it was-was the place where any one of note stayed. Then there were two or three big houses always open to us, and that is a great help to a boy. Lord Roden was well known in England-one of the few good men who still maintained a place in court under George IV., a man of very stern Christian character, though an Irishman, and he was always very kind to me. I remember my first dinner party, in a made-up evening coat at Tullymore Park, a beautiful place (a well-known show place in Ireland to-day) where some of the most distinguished people of the time came. You will see that the life of a poor vicar in Ireland, if he came of a good family, lacked entirely the sordid element. That condition was a good

deal because of my mother; an ordinary woman would have sunk under the burden; she did not; for twenty years she accomplished miracles.

My early life was spent in Dundalk. The old grammar school was the only place where I could go to school; my parents could not afford to send me away. The master of the school, as is often found in Ireland, was a first-rate man-a college man-Trinity College, Dublin; but the other masters did not amount to much. I was a great, overgrown boy, terribly tall for my age and unspeakably thin. Our school hours were long and hard. We had to be there at seven o'clock on a winter morning and do two hours' work on an empty stomach before we could go home to breakfast; then we went back and stayed from ten until two; then a recess from two until four; then returned at four to stay until six.

It was a beautiful place; and one of the blessed things in my life-my love of nature--I got right there. The old vicarage stood facing the bay into which a river emptied itself. There was an ancient quay, and considerable shipping-fishing, coaling, and landing of steamers-mountains 2,000 feet high running down to the sea; and, jutting into the bay, a beautiful mountainous promontory. I can see as clearly as if it were only yesterday the yellow patches of golden grain, the purple heather, the light on the mountains. They were treeless mountains,

except along the base.

Whenever I got a holiday, I was off to the mountains. When I was only about twelve years old, I had an almost crazy desire for sport; and I shall never forget one of my first gifts, a small fishing-rod which my father gave me. The only time I had to fish was on Saturday afternoons, and I had to walk three or four miles to a stream where occasionally a trout was caught. I remember when I caught my first trout I ran home wild with delight, and my father gave me half a crown. When I was thirteen years old, he gave me a gun; and after that, for several summers, I arose every morning at four. I had leave from the Earl of Roden to shoot rabbits on his domain, and my mother gave me sixpence for every rabbit I got. Each one was a real addition to the larder. So I used to get up at four

and poke around looking for rabbits; sometimes I got two or three, and then off to school at seven. As I look back I wonder how I managed to get up so early, morning after morning, and stick it out on an empty stomach until nine. I think my intense love of the open air, my delight in the open country, and the fascination of pursuing rare game (for it was very rare -if a man shot a snipe or a wild duck he would mark that day with a red letter) kept me up. All such things have much to do with giving a lad certain freedom and certain power to see and find himself, and are of immense value in after life.

My school life in Dundalk was not happy. I was stupid, very dull at Latin and Greek, very shy; I was only really happy when off by myself in the country. I was very much bullied by the bigger boys because I was so tall and thin and shy. I cannot think of any master at that time who understood me. School life was brutal then. The boys did not like my father; I never could quite make out why; he was generally most popular; but I think the boys were obliged to go to church and listen to his long sermon, and they took out their spite on me. I remember often in the morning they would shut me in between the inside and outside doors of the school, and pour a bucket of cold, dirty water down my back; that was not exactly a pleasant thing to begin the day on. Schools have changed much; boys now have delightful memories; I have never had any but unpleasant ones. The master wore very heavy boots, and when I made a mistake in class he would kick me violently in the shins. A mistake in Virgil was announced by a fearful kick on thin, boyish shins with his heavy boots; and if through self-consciousness we did not answer quickly enough to suit him, we got a slashing box on the ear. I did the best I could, too. I always worked hard, saving the two or three hours in the morning which I kept for the open air.

I shall never forget the home training I got on the Bible. My mother made me repeat to her five or six verses every day. However hard my school work might be, I always learned those verses for Mother. It was an invaluable thing to me. So, by the time I left home, I knew a vast

land ten years earlier; but the sober Scotch character was partially saved from the emotional manifestations of the Celtic temperament which belonged to the Irish experiences.

When I was fifteen, my father got the idea that the school in Dundalk was not the place for me. He determined to send me to a boarding-school in Shropshire, England, which was eminent throughout the country for its religious position. My father was profoundly impressed by the religious opportunities this school presented, and I and a brother were sent there. It was a boarding-school, but because of my father's position we did not pay full fee. It was in a most beautiful part of England, but it was a regular hell—a horrible place, although there was a good man at the head. I missed immensely the freedom I had enjoyed in Ireland, and I felt I was learning nothing. We were forced to unnatural religious expression; the boys who professed religious experience were favored and pampered, and the whole atmosphere was unreal, unscholarly, and stultifying to the last degree. It was the unhappiest time of my life. I look back to it with the keenest possible dissatisfaction; it was physical, moral, and intellectual death. But it gave me, perhaps unconsciously, the deepest sympathy with multitudes of young people whose school environment has been unhappy; and it helped me afterwards, I think, to do something, by voice and otherwise, towards helping forward education.

In 1866 my father was called to take charge of St. John's, Halkin Street, Belgrave Square, London. I left this abominable school and went to my father and mother. I cannot exaggerate the extraordinary change that came to me—a slow, raw Irish boy who had spent every spare minute on the mountains and by the streams in Ireland and then had been entirely suppressed in this horrible school; I do not think I was aware myself at first of the momentous nature of this change.

It is only fair to say that my father took the West End of London by storm. He was a holy man, a very eloquent man, he was tremendously in earnest; and he very quickly gathered around him what, as I look back, seems to me to have been one

of the strongest congregations in London, from a social point of view. The chapel was soon jammed, not even standing room; and, until the High Church movement took practical shape in the West End of London some years later, he exercised more influence in that section of the city than any other man, I do believe.

I began to get interested in my school life at Kensington, and did a pretty good year's work, until in '67, when I attended the Oxford-Cambridge race at six o'clock and got wet through. A cold settled on my lungs, and I was in bad health for several months. The doctors said I must have change of air, and I went to stay for three months with one of the dearest, kindest friends a man ever had, the late Lord Farnham. He had always been kind to me; and there, in his beautiful estate in the North of Ireland, I got back to the free life of the country-fishing, hunting, and climbing. I did not get worse, but at the end of three months I came back to see the doctor. He was one of the best medical men of the day on pulmonary troubles. He looked me over carefully, and then said to my father, who was present, with almost brutal frankness, "This boy has six months to live." I did not believe him. My father asked what was to be done, and he said, "His only chance is to go to the South of France." The pinch of poverty had gone from our household by that time, but we were not rich. Again kind friends came to the rescue (one of the fortunate things in my life has been my kind friends). They immediately put money at my father's disposal and I went off to the South of France-my second real homeleaving. The first time off to school in England and now to the South of France, an absolutely green boy. I was in most delightful society; the late Duke of Westminster and his wife were very kind to me, and many others, too; I was getting well and strong. I really had a glorious time. I felt that I was not going to die, but that there was something for me to do in the world. I think the time spent in the South of France was of incalculable value.

By this time I was casting about in my mind as to what I should be, and all my hopes and aims tended towards the army, where I had many friends, and where my