chimney: and, indeed, almost without a roof; the couples and purlins of the roof having once given way, had never been repaired, and swagged down by the weight of the thatch, so that the ends threatened the wigs of the unwary. The prospect without doors was scarcely more encouraging to our hero than the scene within: the farm consisted of about forty acres; and the fences of the grazing-land were so bad, that the neighbours’ cattle took possession of it frequently by day, and always by night. The tillage-ground had been so ill managed by his predecessor, that the land was what is called quite out of heart. If farmer Gray had also been out of heart, he and his family might at this hour have been beggars. His situation was thought desperate by many of his neighbours; and a few days after his father’s decease, many came to condole with him. Amongst the rest was “easy Simon;” or, as some called him, “soft Simon,” on account of his unresisting disposition, and contented, or, as we should rather name it, reckless temper. He was a sort of a half or a half quarter gentleman, had a small patrimony of a hundred or a hundred and fifty pounds a year, a place in the excise worth fifty more, and a mill, which might have been worth another hundred annually, had it not been suffered to stand still for many a year. “Wheugh! Wheugh! What a bustle we are in! and what a world of trouble is here!” cried Simon, when he came to Gray’s house, and found him on the ladder taking off the decayed thatch; whilst one of his sons, a lad of about fourteen, was hard at work filling a cart from the dunghill, which blockaded the window. His youngest son, a boy of twelve, with a face and neck red with heat, was making a drain to carry off the water from the green pond; and Rose, the sister, a girl of ten years old, was collecting the ducks, which her mother was going to carry to her landlord’s to sell. “Wheugh! Wheugh! Wheugh! Why what a world of bustle and trouble is here! Troth, Jemmy Gray, you’re in a bad way, sure enough! Poor cratur! Poor cratur!” “No man,” replied Gray, “deserves to be called poor, that has his health, and the use of his limbs. Besides,” continued he, “have not I a good wife and good children: and, with those blessings, has not a man sufficient reason to be content?” “Ay, to be sure: that’s the only way to get through this world,” said Simon; “whatever comes, just to take it easy, and be content. Content and a warm chimney corner is all in all, according to my notion.” “Yes, Simon,” said Gray, laughing; “but your kind of content would never do for me. Content, that sits down in the chimney corner, and does nothing but smoke his pipe, will soon have the house about his ears; and then what will become of Content?” “Time enough to think of that when it comes,” said Simon: “fretting never propped a house yet; and if it did, I would rather see it fall than fret.” “But could not you prop the house,” said Gray, “without fretting?”