Old Mrs. Smith, sick and bedridden, lives a couple of miles
from the parsonage; but the thoughtless creature actually expects a
weekly visit and half-hour's reading of certain old familiar English
literature, and will remind her pastor of it, if the expected day pass
without his coming. Jones and his wife, who live in just the other
direction, are wantonly apt, upon the insufficient plea of a long walk,
to be missed from their wonted pew on a stormy Sunday, and must be
looked up. Little Mary Gray has not been to Sunday-school. Cause
suspected,--insufficient shoes. Bessy Bell, up the cross-road, quite
over beyond Beman's Farms, is likewise delinquent, from the opposite
want of a bonnet. Wilson, the cross-grained vestryman, has an idea,
which never fails by Saturday night to break out into a positive rush of
conviction, that the minister is neglecting his studies and "going to
Rome," if he doesn't in the course of the week go to Wilson and carry
him the Church papers and take a look at the Wilson prize-pigs. So good
Mr. Herbert never fails, in due attestation of his "abhorrence of the
Bishop of Rome and his detestable enormities," to foot it over the rocky
hill and down across the rickety little bridge and past the poor-house
farm, (where he stops on a little private business of his own, that
perhaps makes a few old hearts and certainly one old coat-pocket the
lighter,) and so on, a good piece, through the woods, to where Vestryman
Wilson is bending over the hoe or swinging the axe, and thinking the
while what an easy life the parson has of it.
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