of the check which my wet
clothes might have occasioned, I was rapidly gaining strength, and, to
my surprise, got easily through the duty.

At the conclusion of the service, a labourer's wife came up to me with
the usual fee between her finger and thumb, the price of being
grateful to her God for safe deliverance in child-birth. She
apparently deemed me out of my senses, and I had to tell her twice to
keep back the shilling gained by the sweat of her husband's brow.

I had next to visit a dying man, and I had a dread of it. The poor
fellow had been for many years an open and avowed infidel, and
entertained an invincible hatred towards clergymen. He had, at last,
consented to send for me, in compliance with the entreaties of his
wife. Being an industrious man, he had realized sufficient to enable
him to rent a very comfortable cottage, a cyder orchard, to keep a
couple of cows, besides having by him a sum of ready money. A few
years back, in assisting at the harvest, he had strained himself
internally, and induced an atrophy. On asking the wife whether they
were badly off, her sole reply was to take a cup from the
chimney-piece, and show me, in heart-breaking silence, a sixpence and
three half-pennies! Cows, money, and orchard--all had disappeared
during a lingering illness,--and the poor old woman's inevitable fate
was now to await the fast approaching death of a good husband, and
then retire, for her few remaining and widowed years, to the workhouse
of a distant parish!

On speaking to him, I could not but admire his really gentlemanly
self-possession, accompanied by a tone of respect and kindness. After
I had finished the prayers for the visitation of the sick, I read a
few others which I had copied out from some authors, selected by
Paley, and beautiful compositions they are; the poor fellow sunk into
an agony of grief, and I wish I had not read them. Was I wrong or not?
I fear that I was, and am sorry for it; but we shall both know by and
bye.

On returning in the evening through my own church-yard, never was I so
struck with its air of wretchedness. It was placed in the bottom of a
swampy moor, confined on one side by the little decrepit old church,
with its boarded steeple looking like a dog-hutch, and just small
enough to hold three parts of a cracked bell, if I might judge from
the tinkling of it. On another side, it was protected from the bitter
blast by the poor-house, thus judiciously placed for the bene