they never will do by you, let your conduct be ever so immoral or ever so
irreligious, provided that you let the farmers have their tythes at an
easy rate. Do that, and no complaint will ever be made against you to the
bishop."

While my father was thus addressing me, my mother returned from visiting a
poor gypsy woman, who had that morning been delivered of a fine child,
under an adjoining hedge, without any other covering but one of their
small tents, which are merely composed of a sheet thrown over a few arched
sticks, stuck into the ground. She came into the room just in time to hear
the latter part of my father's observations, describing the life of a
modern clergyman. With her accustomed charitable feeling, she said
"really, my dear, although there is too much truth in the picture you have
drawn, yet you have been a little too severe upon the clergy, when
speaking of them in the mass. There are many excellent and worthy men, who
follow the precepts of their great master, who are an ornament to that
society to which they belong, and are, therefore, most deserving members
of, and do great credit to, the profession which you have so
indiscriminately reprobated."

"Do not tell me," said my father, "about ornaments to society; the best of
them are the _drones of society_, and, without contributing any thing to
the common stock, they feed upon the choicest honey, collected by the
labour of the industrious bees. To be sure, when they do the duty allotted
to them conscientiously, and _do not screw up their tythes too high_, they
may be very necessary evils; but you are aware, my dear, that what I say
is true as to most of them that we know; and I am not sorry that Henry
appears to have no inclination towards that course of life."

"But," said my mother, "because some of the clergy bear the character that