Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/97

Rh hope Miss Wilberforce will not be frightened, but I am afraid she must be called a Methodist.

"I asked the farmers if they had no resident curate. They told me they had a right to insist on one, which right, they confessed, they had never ventured to exercise for fear their tithes should be raised. I blushed for my species. The Glebe House is good for any purpose. The Vicarage of Cheddar is in the gift of the Dean of Wells, the value nearly £50 per annum. The incumbent, a Mr. R——, who has something to do—I cannot here find out what—in the University of Oxford, where he resides. The curate lives at Wells, twelve miles distant. They have only service once a week, and there is hardly an instance of a poor person being visited or prayed with. The living of Axbridge belongs to the Prebendary of Winchscombe in the Cathedral of Wells; the annual value is about £50. . . . . Mr. G—— is intoxicated about six times a week, and very frequently is prevented from preaching by two black eyes, honestly earned by fighting."

The reason of writing to a manufacturing town was that the school was, as far as possible, to be made selfsupporting by setting the girls to spin flax and wool for the numerous factories of Gloucestershire and Somersetshire. Mrs. Trimmer had established this plan, and the good Ladies Bountiful had declared that thus work could never be wanting, since spinning could never go out of fashion. The difficulty of getting clothes