e week
following there were meetings of weavers and others, and volunteers were
enrolled in defence of king and country.

In the course of the next four or five years many changes took place in
the parish. The weavers and cotton-mill folk and seceders from my own
kirk built a meeting-house in Cayenneville, where there had been for a
while great suffering on account of the failure of the cotton-mill
company. In the year 1809 the elders came in a body to the manse, and
said that, seeing that I was now growing old, they thought they could
not testify their respect for me in a better manner than by agreeing to
get me a helper; and the next year several young ministers spared me
from the necessity of preaching.

When it was known that I was to preach my last sermon on the last
sabbath of 1810, everyone, including the seceders to the meeting-house,
made it a point to be in the parish kirk, or to stand in the crowd that
made a lane of reverence for me to pass from the kirk door to the
back-yett of the manse. It was a moving discourse, and there were few
dry eyes in the kirk that day; for my bidding them farewell was as when
of old among the heathen an idol was taken away by the hand of the
enemy. Shortly after, a deputation of the seceders, with their minister
at their head, came to me and presented a server of silver in token of
their esteem of my blameless life, and the charity I had practised
towards the poor.

I am thankful that I have been spared with a sound mind to write this
book to the end, having really no more to say, saving only to wish a
blessing on all people from on high, where I soon hope to be, and to
meet there all the old and long-departed sheep of my flock, especially
the first and second Mrs. Balwhidders.

* * * * *

ELIZABETH CLEGHORN GASKELL

Cranford

Mrs. Gaskell, whose maiden name was Elizabeth C. Stevenson,
was born in Chelsea, London, Sept. 29, 1810. She married a
Unitarian clergyman in Manchester. Her first literary work was
published anonymously, and met with a storm of mingled
approval and disapproval. Charles Dickens invited her to
contribute to his "Household Words," and it was in the pages
of that famous periodical, at intervals between December 13,
1851, and May 21, 1853, that her charming sketches of social
life in a little country town first appeared. In June, 1853,
they were grouped togethe