In the affairs of the parish, the most remarkable generality (for we had no particular catastrophe) was a great death of old people in the spring. Among others, Miss Sabrina, the school mistress, paid the debt of nature, but we could now better spare her than we did her predecessor; for at Cayenneville there was a broken manufacturer’s wife, an excellent teacher, and a genteel and modernised woman, who took the better order of children; and Miss Sabrina having been long frail (for she was never stout), a decent and discreet carlin, Mrs. M‘Caffie, the widow of a custom-house officer, that was a native of the parish, set up another for plainer work. Her opposition Miss Sabrina did not mind, but she was sorely displeased at the interloping of Mrs. Pirn at Cayenneville, and some said it helped to kill her—of that, however, I am not so certain; for Dr. Tanzey had told me in the winter, that he thought the sharp winds in March would blow out her candle, as it was burnt to the snuff; accordingly, she took her departure from this life, on the twenty-fifth day of that month, after there had, for some days prior, been a most cold and piercing east wind. Miss Sabrina, who was always an oddity and aping grandeur, it was found, had made a will, leaving her gatherings to her favourites, with all regular formality. To one she bequeathed a gown, to another this, and a third that, and to me a pair of black silk stockings. I was amazed when I heard this; but judge what I felt, when a pair of old marrowless stockings, darned in the heel, and not whole enough in the legs to make a pair of mittens to Mrs. Balwhidder, were delivered to me by her executor, Mr. Caption, the lawyer. Saving, however, this kind of flummery, Miss Sabrina was a harmless creature, and could quote poetry in discourse more glibly than texts of Scripture—her father having spared no pains on her mind: as for her body, it could not be mended; but that was not her fault. After her death, the session held a consultation, and we agreed to give the same salary that Miss Sabrina enjoyed to Mrs. M‘Caffie, which angered Mr. Cayenne, who thought it should have been given to the head mistress; and it made him give Mrs. Pirn, out of his own pocket, double the sum. But we considered that the parish funds were for the poor of the parish, and therefore it was our duty to provide for the instruction of the poor children. Saving, therefore, those few notations, I have nothing further to say concerning the topics and progress of this Ann. Dom. CHAPTER XLII YEAR 1801