That boy, forced to labour day and night, without consideration, without comfort, without a kind word, fed upon refuse, palleted on straw, yet doing more than the whole household altogether, was taken in from charity! Believe it, reader, if you can. For my part, I don't believe a word of it. I am quite sure that worthy Mr. Groomber wanted somebody particularly, of an active and willing disposition, to carry out the beer, and to attend to all those little matters which Mr. Groomber could not do himself, and which his servants did not choose to do, and that in taking in Billy Lamb for his own convenience, he persuaded himself, and tried to persuade the public too, that he was doing an act of charity. It is an extraordinary thing to consider how often in the great tragic farce of the world we are our own spectators; or, in other words, how continually, when we act a part, we consider ourselves one of the audience, and strive to deceive that individual the very first. However that might be, there was Billy Lamb, the pot-boy, just before Doctor Miles, with an empty tankard in his hand; and the good doctor no sooner beheld him, than he stopped, and, in a kindly tone, asked him how the world went with him. Now Doctor Miles was a great man in the neighbourhood; he had property of his own of not very great extent, but which rendered the living that he held but an accessory to his principal means of subsistence. He did not live by the altar, but for the altar; and there are no such keen drawers of distinctions as the lower classes. Of this thing all clergymen may be sure, that he who makes a trade of his profession, who exacts the uttermost penny which he has a right to, and something more, who increases burial fees, and makes broad the borders of all his dues, will always be held in contempt. Of the butcher, the baker, and the grocer, the lower orders expect such things. The exaction of a farthing on half-a-pound, more than is really just, they know is a part of the privileges of the knife, the oven, and the scales and weights. But with the ministers of a pure and holy religion, whose grand and fundamental principle is charity and abnegation of self, they expect a higher and a wider sense of benevolence, a more large and disinterested view of the relations of a pastor and flock. Thick must be the veil that covers from the eyes of the humble and the needy that greedy and grasping spirit which too frequently, like the ghoul of Eastern fable, preys among the sepulchres of the dead, and takes advantage of the moment of overwhelming distress and agony of mind, to urge the coarse claims of priestly avarice; claims, but too frequently, untenable in law and always barbarous, even when not illegal--dues which should be swept away for ever, which should no longer exist as a constant source of heart-burning and complaint between pastor and people, making the one derive a portion of his living by laying a tax most onerous and hard