YEAR 1800
THE same quietude and regularity that marked the progress of the last
year, continued throughout the whole of this. We sowed and reaped in
tranquillity, though the sough of distant war came heavily from a
distance. The cotton-mill did well for the company, and there was a
sobriety in the minds of the spinners and weavers, which showed that the
crisis of their political distemperature was over;—there was something
more of the old prudence in men’s reflections; and it was plain to see
that the elements of reconciliation were coming together throughout the
world. The conflagration of the French Revolution was indeed not
extinguished, but it was evidently burning out; and their old reverence
for the Grand Monarque was beginning to revive among them, though they
only called him a consul. Upon the king’s fast I preached on this
subject; and when the peace was concluded, I got great credit for my
foresight, but there was no merit in’t. I had only lived longer than the
most of those around me, and had been all my days a close observer of the
signs of the times; so that what was lightly called prophecy and
prediction, were but a probability that experience had taught me to
discern.
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.