The Henson Journals

[33]

Wednesday, November 7th, 1917.

1192nd day

I have chosen the text of the sermon for next Sunday when the Mayor comes to the Cathedral to inaugurate his year of office. It is taken from the special Lesson:– "Who is my neighbour?" I shall speak of the City as the sphere in which the neighbourly spirit should find its natural expression: in which there are many influences to develope neighbourliness: in which also the temptations as well as the opportunities of the neighbour's temper are present.

My Birthday begins to receive its recognition, mainly from my female friends. Elizabeth sent a skilfully fashioned string–box, manufactured by herself: Carissima sent a letter, & some handkerchiefs: Olive wrote affectionately. I spent the morning, after attending Mattins, in reading Howorth's "The Golden Days of the Early English Church" in view of the Edinburgh Article, for which that volume must serve as a text. Macartney came to lunch, as pleasant & "feckless" as usual. He reports nothing worse from the Cathedral than the loss of slates & the weathering of the stone. I walked through Houghall Wood. On the way I fell in with Captain Apperley, who suggested that Logic had met his fate in some rabbit hole, into which he had hurled himself in the ardour of the chase. He said he had himself lost no less than 3 dogs in that way. I read through Williams's "History of the Abbey of St Albans". He writes with evident sympathy, & perhaps makes too little of Morton's evidence as to the disordered state of the community, but mainly the history is creditable far indeed dissimilar from the Protestant legend we all know so well.

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