relating thereto.' This the overseer steadily resisted; he
fortified himself by precedent, appealed to the established usage,
and declined to produce the papers, on the ground of the injury
that would be done to the public service, if documents of a
strictly private nature, passing between the master of the
workhouse and the cook, were to be thus dragged to light on the
motion of any individual member of the vestry. The motion was lost
by a majority of two; and then the captain, who never allows
himself to be defeated, moved for a committee of inquiry into the
whole subject. The affair grew serious: the question was
discussed at meeting after meeting, and vestry after vestry;
speeches were made, attacks repudiated, personal defiances
exchanged, explanations received, and the greatest excitement
prevailed, until at last, just as the question was going to be
finally decided, the vestry found that somehow or other, they had
become entangled in a point of form, from which it was impossible
to escape with propriety. So, the motion was dropped, and
everybody looked extremely important, and seemed quite satisfied
with the meritorious nature of the whole proceeding.

This was the state of affairs in our parish a week or two since,
when Simmons, the beadle, suddenly died. The lamented deceased had
over-exerted himself, a day or two previously, in conveying an aged
female, highly intoxicated, to the strong room of the work-house.
The excitement thus occasioned, added to a severe cold, which this
indefatigable officer had caught in his capacity of director of the
parish engine, by inadvertently playing over himself instead of a
fire, proved too much for a constitution already enfeebled by age;
and the intelligence was conveyed to the Board one evening that
Simmons had died, and left his respects.