And now, pray, can you solve me the following problem?
Given a man with a wife and six children: let him be obliged always to exhibit himself when outside his own door in a suit of black broadcloth, such as will not undermine the foundations of the Establishment by a paltry plebeian glossiness or an unseemly whiteness at the edges; in a snowy cravat, which is a serious investment of labour in the hemming, starching, and ironing departments; and in a hat which shows no symptom of taking to the hideous doctrine of expediency, and shaping itself according to circumstances; let him have a parish large enough to create an external necessity for abundant shoe-leather, and an internal necessity for abundant beef and mutton, as well as poor enough to require frequent priestly consolation in the shape of shillings and sixpences; and, lastly, let him be compelled, by his own pride and other people's, to dress his wife and children with gentility from bonnet-strings to shoe-strings.

By what process of division can the sum of eighty pounds per annum be made to yield a quotient which will cover that man's weekly expenses?
This was the problem presented by the position of the Rev.Amos Barton, as curate of Shepperton, rather more than twenty years ago.
What was thought of this problem, and of the man who had to work it out, by some of the well-to-do inhabitants of Shepperton, two years or more after Mr.Barton's arrival among them, you shall hear, if you will accompany me to Cross Farm, and to the fireside of Mrs.Patten, a childless old lady, who had got rich chiefly by the negative process of spending nothing.

Mrs.Patten's passive accumulation of wealth, through all sorts of 'bad times', on the farm of which she had been sole tenant since her husband's death, her epigrammatic neighbour, Mrs.Hackit, sarcastically accounted for by supposing that 'sixpences grew on the bents of Cross Farm;' while Mr.Hackit, expressing his views more literally, reminded his wife that 'money breeds money'.

Mr.and Mrs.
Hackit, from the neighbouring farm, are Mrs.Patten's guests this evening; so is Mr.Pilgrim, the doctor from the nearest market-town, who, though occasionally affecting aristocratic airs, and giving late dinners with enigmatic side-dishes and poisonous port, is never so comfortable as when he is relaxing his professional legs in one of those excellent farmhouses where the mice are sleek and the mistress sickly.

And he is at this moment in clover.
For the flickering of Mrs.Patten's bright fire is reflected in her bright copper tea-kettle, the home-made muffins glisten with an inviting succulence, and Mrs.Patten's niece, a single lady of fifty, who has refused the most ineligible offers out of devotion to her aged aunt, is pouring the rich cream into the fragrant tea with a discreet liberality.
Reader! _did_ you ever taste such a cup of tea as Miss Gibbs is this moment handing to Mr.Pilgrim?
Do you know the dulcet strength, the animating blandness of tea sufficiently blended with real farmhouse cream?
No--most likely you are a miserable town-bred reader, who think of cream as a thinnish white fluid, delivered in infinitesimal pennyworths down area steps; or perhaps, from a presentiment of calves' brains, you refrain from any lacteal addition, and rasp your tongue with unmitigated bohea.