A Farmer’s Life 
held a special meeting about this outrage and 
called him over the coals. I don’t know what 
they were not going to do to him. 
“ But,” he said, “‘ I thought you appointed me 
to grant relief?” 
“Only when you think it a necessitous case,” 
they urged. 
“But then you makes a Judge of me as well 
as Overseer? You've put me into the position 
to grant orders, and I shall grant ’em. I shall 
take the application as a proof of necessity. If I 
found a man asleep on my farm I should send to 
the police; and if he was found asleep in the 
road it would be the duty of the police to lock 
him up. So what else are they to do but come 
to me for orders for the house?” 
It is not recorded how the Vestry answered 
this argument; but they soon relieved Mr. Smith 
of his troublesome office. 
The hardships of poverty, meanwhile, were 
slow to touch his imagination. I found it 
shocking, one winter, to hear him fairly gloating 
over the unemployment of that season. When 
told that the railway company were adding to the 
local distress by stopping one of their ballast 
trains, and that many of my neighbours were 
therefore thrown out of work, he only commented, 
resentfully, that it would do the working classes 
good. ‘They wanted teaching their place. He 
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