their coming into direct
collision are neither few nor far between. They divided the vestry
fourteen times on a motion for heating the church with warm water instead
of coals: and made speeches about liberty and expenditure, and
prodigality and hot water, which threw the whole parish into a state of
excitement. Then the captain, when he was on the visiting committee, and
his opponent overseer, brought forward certain distinct and specific
charges relative to the management of the workhouse, boldly expressed his
total want of confidence in the existing authorities, and moved for 'a
copy of the recipe by which the paupers' soup was prepared, together with
any documents relating thereto.' This the overseer steadily resisted; he
fortified himself by precedent, appealed to the established usage, and
declined to produce the papers, on the ground of the injury that would be
done to the public service, if documents of a strictly private nature,
passing between the master of the workhouse and the cook, were to be thus
dragged to light on the motion of any individual member of the vestry.
The motion was lost by a majority of two; and then the captain, who never
allows himself to be defeated, moved for a committee of inquiry into the
whole subject. The affair grew serious: the question was discussed at
meeting after meeting, and vestry after vestry; speeches were made,
attacks repudiated, personal defiances exchanged, explanations received,
and the greatest excitement prevailed, until at last, just as the
question was going to be finally decided, the vestry found that somehow
or other, they had become entangled in a point of form, from which it was
impossible to escape with propriety. So, the motion was dropped, and
everybody looked extremely important, and seemed quite satisfied with the
meritorious nature of the whole proceeding.

This was the state of affairs in our parish a week or two since, when
Simmons, the beadle, suddenly died. The lamented deceased had
over-exerted himself, a day or two previously, in conveying an aged
female, highly intoxicated, to the strong room of the work-house. The
excitement thus occasioned, added to a severe cold, which this
indefatigable officer had caught in his capacity of director of the
parish engine, by inadvertently playing over himself instead of a fire,
proved too much for a constitution already enfeebled by age; and the
intelligence was conveyed to the Board one evening that Simm