Collections and Recollections by George William Erskine Russell
page 42 of 401 (10%)
page 42 of 401 (10%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
I once asked him what he thought of a high dignitary of the English Church, who had gone a certain way in a public movement, and then had been frightened back by clamour. His reply was the single word "_infirmus_," accompanied by that peculiar sniff which every one who ever conversed with him must remember as adding so much to the piquancy of his terse judgments. When he was asked his opinion of a famous biography in which a son had disclosed, with too absolute frankness, his father's innermost thoughts and feelings, the Cardinal replied, "I think that ---- has committed the sin of Ham." His sense of humour was peculiarly keen, and though it was habitually kept under control, it was sometimes used to point a moral with admirable effect. "What are you going to do in life?" he asked a rather flippant undergraduate at Oxford. "Oh, I'm going to take Holy Orders," was the airy reply. "Take care you get them, my son." Though he was intolerant of bumptiousness, the Cardinal liked young men. He often had some about him, and in speaking to them the friendliness of his manner was touched with fatherliness in a truly attractive fashion. And as with young men, so with children. Surely nothing could be prettier than this answer to a little girl in New York who had addressed some of her domestic experiences to "Cardinal Manning, England." "My Dear Child,--You ask me whether I am glad to receive letters from |
|