THAT SICK-CALL OUTFIT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 46, 16 November 1899, Page 6

THAT SICK-CALL OUTFIT.

THE SEQUEL OF A COURTEOUS NOTE. Courtesy is a valued factor in social life. Bat on some people it is thrown away — as, for instance, on book-agents and those oily and enterprising perambulating' agents who supply unwary Catholic householders with new-fangled articles of devotion and religious lumber at not more titan ten times their real value. From a communication received from the Bishop of Christchurch, we learn that on his Lordship's return from Europe he was presented with a ' sick-call outfit.' The donor, on the plea that he was merely an agent, at the same time requested his Lordship to acknowledge the receipt of the article in question. With his usual affable courtesy, his Lordship did so. His letter was a private one, and merely a friendly acknowledgment of what he deemed a friendly gift, and the expression of an intention to exhibit it at the forthcoming bazaar. Bishop Grimes now finds, to his disgust, that copies of his private note are, without his sanction or authorisation, being distributed by those itinerant agents, and that some simple-minded people are deluded into the curious fancy that his Lordship is, therefore, in some way associated with the sale and delivery of the goods I His Lordship requests us, therefore, to state that he is absolutely for nothing in the matter, and that the use of his name in the manner referred to, besides being a breach of common courtesy, is wholly unauthorised, opposed to his wishes, and contrary to the purpose which he had in his mind in giving a courteous acknowledgment to what he erroneously believed at the time to be a courteous and disinterested gift.