Old recollections--and recollections dearer for being old--make Broncoed
and the name of Whitley much dearer to my memory and heart than other
names and places. My own former humble home is now another's,--I know it
no more; and there is scarcely a house now in the parish into which I
would venture to turn besides yours, your cousin's, Mr. Clough's and two
or three more. Yet, I feel a tie between me and Mold and its
inhabitants, which nothing but death can unloose. There lies the grave
of my dear, though poor parents, and there burst the dawn of my brightest
days. The same Providence which smiled upon the beginning of my happier
years, continues kind still. I have indeed abundant reason to thank
heaven for the many, many blessings which have been showered upon my
path; nor do I forget the kind hands which were employed in showering
them, and your own amongst the number.
When I first came to Manordeifi, there was but one service on the Sunday,
and that almost entirely in Welsh. Seeing that five of the principal
families in Pembrokeshire were under my pastoral care, and that neither
themselves nor their dependants understood any Welsh, I established two
services, one entirely English, the other exclusively in our beloved
Welsh.