Hunt, Henry, 1773-1835; Social reformers -- Great Britain -- Biography
the clock struck six in the evening, we, four of us had completely
winnowed and finished eighty-one sacks of best wheat, besides tailing, and
had loaded the waggon with thirty of them for market the next day. I
having carried the thirty sacks into the waggon myself, now washed,
cleaned, and dressed myself, and had joined my friends in the field,
partaking of the sport of rook shooting, before half-past six in the
evening; and I took care that my three fellow-labourers should be rewarded
with the first three dozen of young rooks that were killed. As a proof
that the corn was well winnowed, my father sold it at the next market-day,
at Devizes, for three shillings per sack higher than any other sample in
the market.
I now met with a very great loss, as my worthy friend and preceptor, Mr.
Carrington, the curate, with whom I had passed so many pleasant hours, and
from whom I had received so much valuable information, and such good and
useful advice, was about to leave the vicarage of Enford, he having been
offered, and accepted, the situation of tutor to the sons of the Earl of
Berkley, and as this was the likely road to preferment, I rejoiced in his
success, although I very much lamented his absence. He was, to say the
least of him, an excellent neighbour and a very worthy man. He was
cheerful, amiable, and conciliating in his manners; he possessed a very
superior understanding, which he had much improved and embellished by his
application to the study of the most useful and refined literature, he
having received a very liberal education; and though he was an excellent
classical scholar he was neither a pedant nor a bigot; he lived a moral,
sober, and rational life, worthy the example of his parishioners, and
although he was not enabled to be very bountiful, having only sixty pounds
a year as his salary, and his house to live in; he nevertheless honestly
paid every one as he went, and saved some small trifle for a wet day. By
all his neighbours he was much beloved, and his society much courted by
those who knew how to estimate the value of a superior mind, and an
enlightened and comprehensive understanding. He took great delight in
imparting to me the knowledge which he had acquired, and when he left the
parish of Enford, no one felt his loss more acutely or lamented it more
sincerely than I did. Because he had the sense and the penetration to
discover, and the honesty to reprobate the fatal mad-headed measures of
Mr. Pitt, he was denounced by the vulgar, the ignorant, and the bigotted,
by the venal and by the corrupt as a Jacobin; but he was admired by all
good and liberal men of all parties, and his society was courted by every
rational, thinking, and intelligent man in the country round where he
lived. The society that I met at his house was my greatest solace and
comfort after the fatigues and the labours of the day. I was always
welcome, and I never passed an hour in his society without having gained
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