“If you please, sir, I will, if you’ll allow me,” I said. “Take them these four bottles of brandy,” he says; and he brought up four bottles with never so much as the corks drawed. “Now,” says he, “what will you have yourself?” And I says, “Gin, if you plase, sir,” I says. And he poured me out gin and water; and then he gi’ed me a lemonade bottle of gin for me to put in my side-pocket. “That’ll keep you alive,” he says, “before you come back.” So he fulled me up before I started, and sent me off to Shop, to four old people’s houses, with a bottle of brandy for each. And then he says: “There’s two shillings for yourself; and you keep pulling at that bottle, and you’ll keep yourself alive afore you come back.” So I went there, and delivered the bottles; and I’d had enough before I started to bring me home again, so I didn’t uncork my bottle of gin. And it isn’t once, it’s scores o’ times, he’s looked out o’ window, after I’ve going home at night, and shouted to me: “Here, stay! come back, Vinson,” and he’s gone into the larder, and cut off great pieces of meat, and sent me with them, and p’raps brandy or wine, to some poor soul; and he always gi’ed me a shilling, either then or next day, for myself, besides meat and drink. “They are crushed down, my poor people,” he would say with energy, stamping about his room—“ground down with poverty, with a wretched wage, the hateful truck system, till they are degraded in mind and body.” It was a common saying of his, “If I eat and drink, and see my poor hunger and thirst, I am not a minister of Christ, but a lion that lurketh in his den to ravish the poor.” The monetary value of the living was £365. He wrote up over the porch of his vicarage— A house, a glebe, a pound a day, A pleasant place to watch and pray: Be true to Church, be kind to poor, O minister, for evermore! Of his overflowing kindness to the shipwrecked, mention shall be made in another chapter. The many sufferers whom he rescued from the water, housed, fed, nursed and clothed, and sent away with liberal gifts, always spoke of his charity with warmth and gratitude. In no one instance would he accept compensation for the deeds of charity which he performed. He received letters of thanks for his services to the shipwrecked from shipowners in Norway, Denmark, France, Scotland and Cornwall, who had lost vessels on this fatal coast, as well as from the Consuls of the several nations. Like his grandfather, Dr. Hawker, he was ready to give away everything he had; and he was at times in straitened circumstances, owing to the open house he kept, and the profusion with which he gave away to the necessitous. This inconsiderate generosity sometimes did harm to those who received it. One instance will suffice.