service, were
always welcome to dinner at the parsonage, and sometimes these guests
were so numerous that it took the family half the week to eat up the
cold broken remains. He had something always to spare to make things
decent and becoming. His sister's pew in the chapel he lined neatly with
woolen cloth of his own making.

"It is the only pew in the chapel so distinguished," writes the poet,
"and I know of no other instance of his conformity to the delicate
accommodations of modern times."

Nineteen or twenty years elapsed before this singular and interesting
man attracted any public notice. His parishioners, indeed, held him in
great esteem, for he was one of those men who are not only virtuous, but
who render virtue engaging and attractive. If they revered him as a
benevolent, a wise, and a temperate man, they loved him as a cheerful,
friendly, and genial soul. He was gay and merry at Christmas, and his
goodness was of a kind which allures while it rebukes. But beyond the
vale of Seathwaite, he was unknown until the year 1754, when a traveler
discovered him, and published an account of his way of life.

"I found him," writes this traveler, "sitting at the head of a long
square table, dressed in a coarse blue frock, trimmed with black horn
buttons, a checked shirt, a leathern strap about his neck for a stock, a
coarse apron, a pair of great wooden soled shoes, plated with iron to
preserve them, with a child upon his knee, eating his breakfast. His
wife and the remainder of his children were, some of them, employed in
waiting upon each other, the rest in teasing and spinning wool, at which
trade he is a great proficient; and, moreover, when it is ready for
sale, he will lay it upon his back, sixteen or thirty-two pounds'
weight, and carry it on foot to the market, seven or eight miles."

He spoke also of his cheerfulness, and the good humor which prevailed in
the family, the simplicity of his doctrine, and the apostolic fervor of
his preaching; for, it seems, he was an excellent preacher as well. The
publication of this account drew attention to the extreme smallness of
his clerical income, and the bishop offered to annex to Seathwaite an
adjacent parish, which also yielded a revenue of five pounds a year. By
preaching at one church in the morning, and the other in the afternoon,
he could serve both parishes, and draw both stipends. Wonderful Walker
declined the bishop's offer.

"The annexation," he wrote to th