what is called a "successful" man. He was,
however, a bad financier; he did not understand "business;" and so he
went on through life, contented to remain where he was; his abilities
securing to him competence and comfort; enabling him to give
his children a good education; and to maintain his position as a
respectable and worthy member of society. He had something of the old
Puritan about him, and was "brimful of fun and humour." He was
very original in speech and thought, and he was very earnest in his
religious life and practice. A good story was told me of his quaint
manner. At the chapel of which he was a member, one of the ministers
having died, a successor was appointed, who in some way caused a
division amongst his people, some of whom seceded. Mr. Vince, senior,
remained. Some weeks afterwards it was decided by those who still held
to the old chapel that it would be better for the minister to leave,
but this decision was not made public. A few days after, one of the
seceders, meeting Vince, said, "I understand you're going to buy your
minister a new pulpit gown." "No," was the reply, "you've missed it;
we're going to buy him a _new travelling cloak_."

Mrs. Vince, senior, was a member of a very good family in Sussex,
and was a woman of superior mental powers. She is described as a very
industrious, careful, motherly woman; one to whom all the neighbours
applied for advice and assistance in any trouble or emergency, and
never in vain, for her heart was full of sympathy and her brain of
fertility of resource. She was a pious, humble, God-fearing woman, who
did her duty; trained her children carefully; set them the example
of a truthful, practical, and loving Christian life; and had the
satisfaction of seeing the results of her excellent example and
precepts carried into full life and activity in the career of her only
son.

Such were the parents of Charles Vince, and such the influences which
surrounded his childhood. He was a bright, intelligent boy; he
never had any trouble with his lessons, and was remarkably quick in
arithmetic. His father was very proud of him, and he was sent to the
best school in the place. It was kept by a nephew of the celebrated
William Cobbett. "Tommy" Cobbett, as he was always called, seems to
have been a favourable specimen of a country schoolmaster in those
days. On his leaving the town, about 1837 or 1838, a Mr. Harrington
took his place, and Charles Vince remained as a pupil for