he case with
those who have had but narrow incomes in early life. He kept a sufficiently
handsome establishment as subdean, but he was stingy. A plentiful fall of
snow took place during an evening party at the precentors's; two of Mr.
Subdean's daughters were there; he showed great anxiety on account of the
necessity that seemed to have arisen of sending them home in a sedan-chair;
taking the advice of several of the company, whether such necessity really
and inevitably existed, he said to me, "It is only next door." "The houses
touch," said I, "but it is a long round to your door; the length of both
houses and then through the garden in front of your house." He consulted
the precentor, who, to put the matter in a right point of view, cried out,
"Let the girls have a chair; it is only three-pence a piece."

He preached a sermon at Lincoln for the benefit of a charity school. In the
course of this sermon he related, in familiar but sufficiently dignified
language, a story of a man who, giving evidence on a trial respecting some
prescriptive right claimed by the trustees of the charity, was browbeaten
by the questioning counsel:--"I suppose the fact to which you swear
happened when you were a charity boy, and used to go to school there?" The
witness calmly replied, "I _was_ a charity boy; and all the good that has
befallen me in life has arisen from the education I received at that
school." Paley drew hence an argument in favour of the institution for
which he pleaded. The whole discourse pleased his auditors, and a
deputation waited on him to request he would print it. "Gentlemen, I thank
you for the compliment; but I must give the same answer that I have given
on other like occasions; and that answer is--The tap is out." "The
Archbishop of York," said he, speaking of a late primate, "preached one day
at Carlisle; I was present, and felt muzzy and half asleep; when on a
sudden I was roused, and began to prick up my ears; and what should I hear
but a whole page of one of my own books quoted word for word; and this
without the least acknowledgment, though it was a _white bear_; a passage
that is often quoted and well known." "Now," said Dr. Milner, Dean of
Carlisle, who related the anecdote, "guess what inference Paley drew from
this plagiarism. No; if that court were full of people, not one of them
would be able to guess: it was this--I suppose the archbishop's wife makes
his grace's sermons for him."

* *