"The one phase of spiritual activity which had any life in it during
the time Ernest was at Cambridge was connected with the name of
Simeon. There were still a good many Simeonites, or as they were
more briefly called 'Sims,' in Ernest's time. Every college
contained some of them, but their head-quarters were at Caius,
whither they were attracted by Mr. Clayton, who was at that time
senior tutor, and among the sizars of St. John's. Behind the then
chapel of this last-named college was a 'labyrinth' (this was the
name it bore) of dingy, tumble-down rooms," and here dwelt many
Simeonites, "unprepossessing in feature, gait, and manners, unkempt
and ill-dressed beyond what can be easily described. Destined most
of them for the Church, the Simeonites held themselves to have
received a very loud call to the ministry . . . They would be
instant in season and out of season in imparting spiritual
instruction to all whom they could persuade to listen to them. But
the soil of the more prosperous undergraduates was not suitable for
the seed they tried to sow. When they distributed tracts, dropping
them at night into good men's letter boxes while they were asleep,
their tracts got burnt, or met with even worse contumely." For
Ernest Pontifex "they had a repellent attraction; he disliked them,
but he could not bring himself to leave them alone. On one occasion
he had gone so far as to parody one of the tracts they had sent
round in the night, and to get a copy dropped into each of the
leading Simeonites' boxes. The subject he had taken was 'Personal
Cleanliness.'"

Some years ago I found among the Cambridge papers in the late Mr. J.
W. Clark's collection three printed pieces bearing on the subject.
The first is a genuine Simeonite tract; the other two are parodies.