with no companion but his pipe was often used to watch it. Every year he treated his clerks and most of the members of the Society of Friends to the Wrekin. Benthall Edge was another favourite resort, and he would revel at such times in the scene.” “I could tell you many more anecdotes (the old man continued) of the Quakers; I mean the Darbys. They all liked a joke right well; and as for kindness, it seemed as if they thought it a favour to be allowed to assist you. They allow me a weekly pension, have done for years, and pay a woman to wait upon me. They are people that never like to be done, however.” “You knew old Solomon, the Sexton. Well he once went to the haunted house, as they call it, for an Easter offering. The servants were ordered to attend him, and he sat for some time and eat and drank, and smoked his pipe—but not a word was said about Easter dues. He knocked the ashes out of his third pipe, and feeling muddled a bit about the head thought it time to be moving. At last Mr. Darby entered the room, and Solomon made bold to ask for the Easter offering. ‘Friend,’ said Mr. Darby, throwing up the sash, and assuming a determined attitude, ‘thou hast had a meat-offering and a drink-offering; thou hast even had a burnt offering—as I judge from the fumes of this room, and unless thou choosest to go about thy business, thou shalt have an _heave_-offering.’ As Solomon had no wish to be pitched head-foremost out of the window, you may imagine (said the old man) that he quickly disappeared.” The old village sage, whose venerable form and long white locks rise before us like some vision of the past—is gone; he died, as his friends assert, at the advanced age of 107, or, as his headstone more modestly states (and modesty is not a fault common with posthumous records) at the age of 103. He died January 27, 1831, and his gravestone may be seen near the southwest door of Madeley Church, under the wall; but as the inscription is near to the grave, being below those of the Parkers, and that of Samuel Luckock, it will, we fear, be soon obliterated by the damp acting on the stone. Among other servants of the Darbys who succeeded each other and held important positions in the works were the Fords. Richard married Miss Darby, daughter of Abraham, and was manager of the works in 1747. He also was a Quaker; and to him really is due the credit ascribed to Mr. Darby, of the successful use of coal in iron smelting. In the Philosophical Transactions for 1747, for instance, the year Mr. Ford was manager, it is stated that—