Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 11.djvu/397

 us. xi. MAY i, 1915.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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give, mutatis mutandis, a very good idea of what a sculptured " image of All Saints " might have been in 1545.

JOHN B. WAINEWKIGHT.

The description " image of All Saints," or " of Allhallows," occurs now and then in late mediaeval wills, &c., and has long been a puzzle to archaeologists, but no satisfactory explanation has been found, so far as I know. J. T. F.

Winterton, Lines.

'THE MIRA.GE OF LIFE ' (11 S. xi. 280). In reply to W. B. H., I was well acquainted with Mr. W. H. Miller, author of 'The Mirage.' This would be some time in the sixties, when he had retired from the City bank with which he had been connected. He then resided in Barnsbury, and was a
 * man of singularly mild and pleasant manners.

He took great interest in young men, and Avas a frequent speaker on religious platforms. JMrs. Miller was a comely dame of portly presence, who also used to speak in public. I remember her appearance one afternoon upon the platform of the Sunday school in which I was a teacher. It was to deliver the closing address, and was the first time a lady had appeared in that capacity. The wonderment of the small boys around me was unbounded, and the breathless whisper -circled round, " Lor ! if there ain't a woman a-going to preach." But they listened in- tently, and were well rewarded for so doing. After all these years I vividly recall, while she spoke to the girls, her touching reference to a little daughter whom she had lost some years before. W, S BR.

This work, by W. H. Miller, was first published by the Religious Tract Society in 1850, at Is. In 1867 a fine edition was issued with illustrations by Tenniel, engraved by Butterworth and Heath, followed by another edition in December, 1883, though the British Museum says 1884. It is still in print by the R.T.S.' at Is.

Other works by this author are : The Three Questions : What am I? Whence came I? Whither do I go? 1843. Published anony- mously. Second edition, with author's name given, 1844; other editions in 1850, 1855. The Culture of Pleasure ; or, The Enjoyment of Life in its Sosial and Religious Aspects. 1871. Second edition, 1872. Published anonymously. Reissued, with author's name, under the title of ' Life's Pleasure Garden ; or, Conditions of a Happy Life,' 1884. On the Bank's Threshold ; or, The Young Banker :

a Popular Outline of Banking, &c. 1890. The Great Rest-Giver. 1891.

A reviewer of one of Mr. Miller's books in 1890 says, " At the age of nearly 80, in comfortable retirement, he stretches out a kindly hand to encourage those who are beginning life in a bank."

ARCHIBALD SPARKE, F.R.S.L.

The first edition of this book was pub- lished in 1850, and later editions, undated, with illustrations by Tenniel, engraved by Butterworth and Heath, were issued in 1867 and 1884. The author, William Haig Miller, was in the service of the National Provincial Bank of England, which he entered in the year 1836, only two or three years after its establishment. He became head of the Advance Department, and retired from busi- ness in April, 1879. He died on 14 Sept., 1891, at 38, Lonsdale Square, Islington, in his 79th year. His wife, who was ten years older than he, died only the previous day.

I believe he was at one time editor of The Leisure Hour and sub -editor of The Christian World. At a social gathering of his old colleagues in 1880, he gave an. amusing account of the pleasures that awaited his friends when they reached a pensionable age.

" It was the first pleasure of a retired officer on being called in the morning to say,' What do Icare for the bank? ' Then there was pleasure in eating breakfast in such a way as not to bring on a fit of indigestion ; and he confessed pleasure in looking out of the window and seeing people toiling to the City, having the knowledge that he had nothing to do with the City. There was pleasure in going into the library and taking up a book or dallying with the pen at his own time and inclination. How great the delight of going about the beautiful world, and seeing many things in it which previously one could not see between the hours of 9 and 4 o'clock ! he could not describe it. Then there was the

Eleasure of having time to look into the weekly ills, and even pleasure in drawing the quarterly allowance !"

He did not, howe\er, spend the remainder of his life in slothful ease, but divided his time between literary pursuits and religious or social work. The latter employment was, I think, in connexion with the Salvation Army. A portrait of Miller in old age forms the frontispiece of his book ' On the Bank's Threshold.'

In addition to ' The Mirage of Life,' 1 e also published the following : The Three Questions : What am I? Whence came

I? Whither do I go?-1843, also 1850 and

[1866 ?J. The Culture of Pleasure. Second ed., 1872. The

eleventh edition was advertised in 1890. The

first edition does not appear in the Brit. Mus.

Catalogue, and was probably published privately

and distributed amongst the staff of the bank.