ire was in his own house. He was lord and master there to
a certainty. In doors and out, he shouted, hurried, ran to and fro, and
made men, maids, and Lizzy herself, fly at his approach, as if he had
got a whole cargo of Mercury's wings, and put them on their feet. It was
the same in parish affairs; and the fame of Johnny's eloquence at
vestries is loud to this day. On one occasion there was a most hot
debate on the voting of a church-rate, which should embrace a new
pulpit. Johnny had hurt his foot with a stub of wood as he was hurrying
on his men at work in thinning a plantation. It had festered and
inflamed his leg to a terrible size; but, spite of that, he ordered out
his cart with a bed laid in it, and came up to the door of the
vestry-room, where he caused himself to be carried in on the bed, and
set on the vestry-room floor, not very distant from the clergyman. Here
he waited, listening first to one speaker and then another, till the
debate had grown very loud, when he gave a great hem; and all were
silent, for every one knew that Johnny was going to speak.

"Now, I'll tell you what, lads," said Johnny; "you've made noise enough
to frighten all the jackdaws out of the steeple, and there they are
flying all about with a pretty cawarring. You've spun a yarn as long as
all the posts and rails round my seven acres, and I dunna see as you've
yet hedged in so much as th' owd wise men o' Gotham did, and that's a
cuckoo. I've heard just one sensible word, and that was to recommend a
cast-iron pulpit, in preference to a wooden 'un. As to a church-rate to
repair th' owd steeple-house, why, my advice is to pull th' owd thing
down, stick and stone, and mend your roads with it. It's a capital heap
o' stone in it, that one must allow,--and your roads are pestilent bad.
Down with the old daw-house, I say, and mend th' roads wi' 't, and set
th' parson here up for a guide-post. Oh! it's a rare 'un he'd make; for
he's always pointing th' way to the folks, but I never see that he moves
one inch himself."

"Mr. Darbyshire," exclaimed the clergyman, in high resentment, "that is
very uncivil in my presence, to say the least of it."

"Civil or uncivil," returned Johnny; "it's the truth, lad, and thou can
take it just as thou likes. I did not come here to bandy compliments; so
I may as well be hanged for an old sheep as for a lamb,--we'll not make
two mouthfuls of a cherry; my advice is then to have a cast-iron pulpit,
by all means, a