lculated to improve the virtue and happiness of the parish.
Most of them subscribed, and promised to see that their workmen sent
their children. She met with little opposition till she called on
farmer Hoskins. She told him, as he was the richest farmer in the
parish, she came to him for a handsome subscription. "Subscription!"
said he, "it is nothing but subscriptions, I think; a man, had need
be made of money." "Farmer," said Mrs. Jones, "God has blessed you
with abundant prosperity, and he expects you should be liberal in
proportion to your great ability." "I do not know what you mean by
blessing," said he: "I have been up early and late, lived hard while
I had little, and now when I thought I had got forward in the world,
what with tithes taxes, and subscriptions, it all goes, I think."
"Mr. Hoskins," said Mrs. Jones, "as to tithes and taxes, you well
know that the richer you are the more you pay; so that your murmurs
are a proof of your wealth. This is but an ungrateful return for all
your blessings." "You are again at your blessings," said the farmer;
"but let every one work as hard as I have done, and I dare say he
will do as well. It is to my own industry I owe what I have. My
crops have been good, because I minded my plowing and sowing." "O
farmer!" cried Mrs. Jones, "you forget whose suns and showers make
your crops to grow, and who it is that giveth strength to get
riches. But I do not come to preach, but to beg."

"Well, madam, what is the subscription now? Flannel or French? or
weavers, or Swiss, or a new church, or large bread, or cheap rice?
or what other new whim-wham for getting the money out of one's
pocket?" "I am going to establish a Sunday School, farmer; and I
come to you as one of the principal inhabitants of the parish,
hoping your example will spur on the rest to give." "Why, then,"
said the farmer, "as one of the principal inhabitants of the parish,
I will give nothing; hoping it will spur on the rest to refuse. Of
all the foolish inventions, and new fangled devices to ruin the
country, that of teaching the poor to read is the very worst." "And
I, farmer, think that to teach good principles to the lower classes,
is the most likely way to save the country. Now, in order to this,
we must teach them to read." "Not with my consent, nor my money,"
said the farmer; "for I know it always does more harm than good."
"So it may," said Mrs. Jones, "if you only teach them to read, and
then turn them adrif