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 you say they do, is that any reason that Henry should follow their example? If he should be a clergyman, he will have great power of doing good among his parishioners; he may be a magistrate, or perhaps a Doctor of Divinity; and who knows but he may by and bye be a bishop?" My father now began to grow impatient. "A bishop indeed!" said he, "God forbid that I should ever live to see him act in such a way as to obtain a bishopric, even if he were to go into the church."